Hanging on

“I didn't put him in any box,” Kelly said, feeling not unlike a character in a Lewis Carroll fantasy.

Tooley wiped his broad face with one hand, pressed the hand on his shirt, and left a huge wet palm print. “We were clearing out the machinery shed so it can be knocked down. The last thing we came to was this big crate Sergeant Coombs has been meaning to convert into a tool chest for several weeks. The crate was supposed to be empty; but Hagendorf was inside. With maybe twenty bottles of wine. He's naked and drunk, and he insists you put him in the box.” While he talked, Tooley unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. His thick weight-lifter's torso was shiny with sweat and alive with muscles.

“I didn't put Hagendorf in the box,” Kelly said.

“We didn't force him out, because we didn't know why you put him there.”

“I didn't put him there.”

“We didn't want to interfere in whatever you were doing. We thought maybe you put Hagendorf in there to guard the box.”

“Hagendorf isn't guarding the box,” Kelly said, wiping sweat from his own face.

“That's what I said. I said you must have put him in the box for some other reason.” Tooley spat on the dry earth.

“I didn't put Hagendorf anywhere,” Kelly said.

“Hagendorf says you did.”

“Let's go talk to Emil about this,” Kelly said.

Thirty French men and women and a dozen of Kelly's men were clustered in the late morning sunshine outside the open machinery shed door. The noise and stench of perspiration were unendurable. Kelly and Tooley pushed through the crowd into the cool, dark, empty, and comparatively quiet interior which had been gutted for demolition. “Why aren't these people working?” Kelly asked.

Tooley shrugged. “They're Angelli's people, and they aren't worth a damn when he's not egging them on. Of course, he's up at the hospital bunker.”

Kelly stopped just inside the door. “Is Vito hurt?” He hoped not. Angelli was essential. No one could handle the Frenchmen like he could. Besides Maurice, he was their only real contact with the French.

“It's not that,” Tooley said. “He's okay. He's just up there romancing Nurse Pullit.”

“Romancing Nurse Pullit?” Kelly was not certain he had heard right.

“Well sure. The nurse is attractive. Sooner or later, someone was bound to fall for her.”

“Fall for her?” He felt as if he were Tooley's echo.” Not that too!”

The pacifist did not seem to see anything strange in the Angelli-Pullit romance. “There's the box,” he said, pointing across the room. “Hadn't we better get Hagendorf out of it?”

The only thing remaining in the large, main room of the shed, besides Sergeant Coombs and Lieutenant Beame, was an unpainted crate near the far wall. It was eight feet long, four deep, and four wide. It looked like a natural pine coffin. Standing at the foot of it, Coombs might have been a mourner. A disgruntled and angry mourner. “Hagendorf won't get out of this box you put him in,” Coombs said, as Kelly approached.

“He's not in there to guard it,” Tooley told Coombs.

“Then why'd you put him in there?” Coombs asked Kelly.

“I didn't put him in there.” Kelly reached the crate and peered inside.

Hagendorf, the chief surveyor, was lying in the box on a bed of his own clothes, naked as the day he was born. If he had been born. Kelly was not sure about that. Naked, pale, chubby, Hagendorf looked more like something which had been hatched. “You put me in here,” he told Kelly.

Kelly looked at the two dozen wine bottles which surrounded the surveyor. More than half were empty. “You got wine from Maurice, and now you're drunk, Emil.”

“This is my coffin,” Hagendorf said. “You put me in it. You made me get out my theodolite and survey your crazy village. You're the one who gave me a glimpse of the order and purpose I once knew and can never know again.” Hagendorfs voice had grown quavery. Now, he started to cry. “You destroyed me. You put me in this coffin — you and no one else.”

“Get out of the box,” Kelly said. “It's heavy enough without you in it.”

“I'm dead,” Hagendorf said. “I can't get out.”

Kelly sighed, looked at the others. “Let's get him out of there.”

“No you don't!” Hagendorf screamed as they reached in for him. He spread his legs, braced his knees against the side of the box, his feet against the bottom. There was a supporting frame holding the sides of the crate together, and the surveyor gripped this with fingers like chitinous claws. Though Coombs pulled at his legs, Tooley at his left arm, Beame at his right arm, and Kelly at his head, all of them grunting and putting their backs into it, Hagendorf would not be moved. He was the most tenacious corpse they had ever seen.

“Look here, Emil,” Major Kelly said, letting go of Hagendorf's head and wiping the chief surveyor's spittle off his hand, “we don't have time to fool with you. The goddamned Panzers are coming, Emil. We have a whole town to build before they get here. This shed has to come down and fast. This site has to be made ready for another building. These walls have to be torn up so we can reuse the wood and metal. Now, you come out of that fucking box, or I won't be responsible for what happens to you.”

Hagendorf began to blubber again, and when he spoke his voice was, once more, the 78 rpm record played at an eternal 60 rpm. “I'm dead and rotting… What more can happen?” He held on to his coffin, his soft pudgy body now lumpy with muscles that had not been flexed near the surface of Hagendorf s body for as long as ten years.

Kelly picked up an empty wine bottle, and held it like a club. “Emil…”

“You destroyed me,” Hagendorf said, tears running down his face.

“No violence, please,” Tooley said, rubbing his hands together as he watched the scene leading inevitably to spilled blood.

“I'm sorry, Emil,” Kelly said. He swung the bottle at Hagendorf s head.

The surveyor jerked out of the way. The bottle missed him, shattered on the side of the crate.

“Hold him down,” Kelly told the others.

Coombs grabbed the surveyor's legs, while Beame stood across the box from Kelly and pressed down on Hagendorf s chest. Tooley wanted no part of it.

Kelly picked up another bottle and raised it over Hagendorf's head. “We haven't any time to waste, Emil. But I'll try to make this just a tap,” he said when he saw Hagendorf was watching him intently through a veil of tears.

Then he swung the bottle.

Hagendorf let go of the box, grabbed Beame and pulled him in as a shield. The bottle smashed on Beame's golden head, spraying glass and dark wine.

“Ugh,” Beame said, and passed out. Blood trickled out of his scalp.

“You killed Beame,” Tooley said, stunned, hugging himself.

“It's just a tiny cut,” Kelly said. “I didn't swing hard enough to kill him.”

Coombs was disgusted. “Now you've got two of them in there.”

Kelly considered the crate for a while. “Maybe we could get a bunch of men in here and carry the box out with Hagendorf still inside.”

“With Hagendorf and Beame inside,” Tooley said. He had stopped hugging himself, but he looked at Beame out of the corner of his eye as if he remained unconvinced that the lieutenant was alive.

Kelly saw that getting Beame out of the box was going to be every bit as difficult as getting Emil Hagendorf out of the box, because Hagendorf was holding tightly to Beame to shield himself from further violence. Kelly could almost hear the clatter of Panzer tread, louder by the second… “We'll get a dozen men—”

“No,” Coombs said. “If we lift that box and Hagendorf starts jumping up and down or rocking in it, we'll fall with it. Someone'll break a leg. Or worse.”

“Worse — like Beame,” Tooley said.

“Beame's okay,” Kelly said. He ignored the two of them and searched desperately for a solution. He could not leave the crate here and order the shed's demolition, for Hagendorf would probably be killed by collapsing walls. Major Kelly did not want to kill anyone. Petey Danielson had been enough… “I've got it!” he said, suddenly turning