After seventy-two hours Joseph went to see Hook in his dugout. It was yet another gray morning, with a weeping pall of cloud across the sky. The rain seemed to have soaked into everything. There was no dry ground, no food or equipment untouched. Everything dripped and was clammy to the touch. Bread was moldy before it arrived at the forward trenches, battle tunics never dried out, socks and boots were permanently sodden. Men’s hair was plastered to their heads, and their pale skins shiny wet, streaked with mud and blood.
Joseph slipped on the step and jarred himself against the wooden lintel on the way down to the dugout. Hook looked up as he heard him and called out to come in.
“Morning, Reavley,” he said a little huskily. His face was colorless and lined with exhaustion.
Joseph let the sacking fall back over the entrance and stood to attention.
“Morning, sir.” He gave the casualty figures as he knew them, and mentioned the names of those men he was aware Hook had known personally. Then he moved on to close the issue of Northrup’s death. “I’ve made all the inquiries I can, sir. If it was the sort of thing we feared, no one is saying anything. Of course it shouldn’t have happened, but in the face of the circumstances, I strongly recommend that we close the issue. There seems to me to be two possible answers: either the whole thing is no more than loose talk by men angry and demoralized, speaking out of turn. This could be the best answer for all of us, especially Major Northrup himself. Or there was a piece of very regrettable indiscipline, but those concerned are themselves dead now. We can’t now determine what it was, and in respect to Major Northrup, who can’t defend himself, we should mention it no further.”
Hook regarded him with a bitter humor in his eyes. “You did actually ask?”
“Yes, sir.” That was the truth, although he had neither expected nor wanted an answer.
“Thank you, Reavley. I’ll inform General Northrup. I don’t imagine he’ll be pleased, but he’ll have to accept it.”
But Northrup did not accept it. He sent for Joseph personally and demanded a more detailed explanation, and there was nothing Hook could do to protect him from it. It was in Hook’s dugout again, in the early afternoon. Joseph had spent almost twenty hours helping wounded and dying, endlessly carrying stretchers. He had struggled through the mud and round the awkward corners of the few trenches that were still negotiable in the ever- deepening water. He had watched young men he knew and cared for die in indescribable pain.
He had managed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep, his body bruised, wet to the skin and shivering. Now he fumbled to straighten his clothes, splash his face with moderately clean water, and report back to Hook again. There was no time to shave, none even to try to light a flame and heat water for a cup of tea.
Outside, the earth smelled of death. The light was gray and the air close and warm.
Inside the dugout one oil lamp was burning, the light red and green on the backs of a pile of books. He saw General Northrup immediately. He looked thin, a little stooped; his face was tight with anger.
Joseph drew himself to attention, pulling his shoulders back with an effort. The muscles in his body shot through with pain and he could not fill his lungs with air.
Hook’s voice was rough-edged. “I gave your report to General Northrup, Captain. However, he has made certain inquiries himself and he is not satisfied that we have exhausted all possibilities.”
“I know of no others, sir,” Joseph said doggedly. He knew that Hook was prepared to back him, and the men.
Northrup did not wait for Hook to reply but cut across him looking straight at Joseph. There was both pain and contempt in his voice. “I can understand your desire to shield your men, Chaplain. I even have some sympathy with your reluctance to believe any of them capable of such a crime. But if we have any right to claim that we fight for civilized values, a way of life acceptable to man and God, then we do not look away from the truth because it is not what we wish it to be or find comfortable to deal with.”
Joseph was speechless with fury. The word
Hook heard the warning in it, the self-control fraying and coming apart. He intervened. “Chaplain, General Northrup has been speaking to the men also, and he believes that Corporal Fuller may have been involved and knows what happened. He insists that we ask him, under pressure if necessary.”
“Punch Fuller?” Joseph was startled. “I haven’t seen him for days. He must be…” he blinked, trying to hold back his emotion. “Among the dead.” He had liked Punch with his pleasantly ugly face and his inexhaustible memory for the words of every song, orthodox and otherwise.
A nerve twitched in Northrup’s cheek. “He is not dead, Chaplain! Not even wounded. Corporal Fuller is on leave in Paris, and no doubt enjoying himself. If we fight for anything, it must be for honor. If we have lost that, then there is nothing else left worth winning—or losing.” His voice thickened. “I will not bury my son the victim of a cowardly murder and keep silent about it. I do not know if you would—that is not my concern—but if you would, then I pity you, and those who love or trust you I pity even more. What use are you to your men, sir, if you have neither the courage nor the strength to uphold the truth or the honor of the God you chose to serve?”
“General…” Hook began to protest, leaning forward a little, his skin yellow now in the lamplight.
Joseph could not allow Hook to fight in a defense he was not prepared to make for himself. “General Northrup.” He turned to face him. “If Corporal Fuller knows something of Major Northrup’s death, then with Colonel Hook’s permission, I will go to Paris, find him, and learn what it is. Supposing you believe
Northrup blinked.
It was Hook who answered. “I think you had better try, Reavley. You could get a little sleep on the train, some dry clothes, maybe hot food. Give it a couple of days anyway.”
“Yes, sir. Immediately?”
“Might as well,” Hook replied. “If Fuller comes back and you miss him, you might not get another chance.” He gave Northrup a sidelong glance, but Northrup was impervious. He could see only justice; the near certainty of death in battle seemed not to touch him.
“Yes, sir.” Joseph saluted and left.
He was tired enough to sleep most of the journey from Ypres to Paris, jammed into a seat between other soldiers going on leave, a few staff officers, and several silent and uncomfortable civilians in cars rattling and jolting over the tracks. He was barely aware of them. Exhaustion lent him a few hours of oblivion, and when he finally disembarked at the station and pulled his thoughts together it was to consider at which of the many places the men on leave stayed in Paris he should begin to look for Punch Fuller.
He had heard many of the men joke about the music halls that were still open, the nightclubs, the cafes, and the brothels.
He stood on the platform outside the railway station looking at the street, hearing the clip of horses’ hooves and the hiss of tires on the wet cobbles, the blare of motor horns and someone singing loudly and offkey, miserably drunk. A boy with a cap too large for him was selling newspapers, black headlines counting more losses at Passchendaele, Verdun, the Somme, and right along the front. A group of sailors swung by, with trouser legs flapping around their ankles. An ambulance passed, driven by a woman.
Joseph felt an overwhelming sense of being lost, even though he had been to Paris many times, both before the war and then on leave. He had spoken French passably since school. It was not that he did not care about France, or appreciate the country’s wit, history, and culture; he just ached for the familiar, the idioms of his own people. He longed for things he did not need to think about, places his feet would find unguided. He was too tired to begin a search for one man in all this weary, grieving city that had lived the last three years with the enemy on its doorstep, trying to keep a brave face while smiling at disaster, pretending it wouldn’t really happen. God knew how many of its sons would never return. Did they hear the guns in their sleep?
It would be dusk soon. He must find a billet of some kind for the night, maybe three nights. He did not really want to find Punch Fuller, but he had to try. Damn Major Northrup for his stupidity, a father too blind to let his son lie buried in peace.
He found a room; it was small and expensive, but quite clean. The landlady made him an omelette with herbs and charged for it extortionately. But it was the best meal he had eaten since the early spring and he told her so with gratitude. There was no tea, and the coffee was bitter, but at least it was served in a cup, not a Dixie can, and there was no taste of oil to it.
He slept late, vaguely discomforted by the physical ease of a bed, and the silence compared with the guns he
