Walk in Hell

propellers without shooting themselves down. However they did it, they shot up the troop train, spun in the air like circus acrobats, and then shot it up again. Then, still low, they streaked back toward the free side of the St. Lawrence.

Galtier expected the train to streak toward Riviere-du-Loup. Instead, it came to a ragged halt. Maybe the aeroplanes had killed the engineer, and the brakeman was doing what he did best. Maybe they had filled the boiler with so many holes, it was either kill the pressure inside or explode.

“It could even be-both,” Galtier said, not altogether unhappily.

Soldiers started spilling out of the train. Some of them came running his way. He scowled and thought himself a fool for having stopped to watch the spectacle. But if he tried to leave now, those soldiers would not be pleased with him. And they had rifles.

“Frenchie! Hey, Frenchie!” they shouted as they got closer. “Bring your wagon on over here. We got wounded.”

“Mauvais tabernac,” Lucien snarled. No help for it, though. As he pulled the wagon off the road and bounced toward the track, he felt a curious mixture of joy at having the enemies of his country wounded and sorrow at having young men who had never personally done him wrong wounded.

The chickens did not approve of the rough ride he was giving them. “Be still, you fools,” he told them, for the first time including them in his…He groped for a word. In my salon, he thought, pleased with himself. “This will keep you alive a little longer.”

Ahead, soldiers in green-gray were sometimes helping out of the train, sometimes carrying from it other soldiers in green-gray extravagantly splashed with red. “How many can you hold?” a captain called to Lucien as he drew near. “Four, maybe five?”

“Yes, it could be,” the farmer had replied. Exposure had improved his English-to a point. When he turned to indicate the chickens and their cages in the wagon bed, he was reduced to a helpless wave and a single word: “But-”

“Here.” The American captain dug in a trouser pocket and tossed something to Galtier, who automatically caught it. “That ought to cover them.” He looked down to see what he had: a twenty-dollar U.S. goldpiece.

He took off his hat in salute. “Oui, monsieur. Merci, monsieur.” The American could simply have had the chickens thrown out onto the ground. He’d expected the Boche americain to do just that. Instead, the fellow had given him more than a fair price for them. Lucien jumped down and piled the cages in a wobbly pyramid, then hurried to help the Americans land their comrades in the space thus vacated. A service for a service, he thought.

“Here, pal,” an unwounded U.S. soldier said. “Careful with Herb here. He’s a damn good fellow, Herb is.” As gently as he could, Lucien arranged the damn good fellow so he could sit against the side of the wagon. Herb had a rough bandage, rapidly soaking through with blood, on his right leg. He also had a streak of blood running down his chin from one corner of his mouth; he must have bitten through his lip against the pain.

The horse snorted and tried to shy, uneasy at the stink of blood. One of the American soldiers caught his head and eased him back toward something approaching calm. There was no earthly reason Americans should not be good with horses. Nonetheless, Lucien felt almost as betrayed as if his wife had been unfaithful with a man who wore green-gray.

“We came past a hospital back there, didn’t we?” the captain asked. “I thought I saw it through the window.”

“Yes, sir,” Galtier answered. “It is, in fact, on my land.” The American didn’t notice the resentment with which he said that. Well, the fellow had paid him. One surprise of a day was plenty; with two, nothing would have seemed certain any more. In the memory of the one surprise, Galtier added, “And my daughter works as a nurse’s helper there.”

“I’m afraid we’ve given her more work to do,” the captain said, to which Lucien could only nod. The wagon was already packed tight with wounded, some moaning, some ominously still. More lay on the ground. Their unhurt comrades were doing what they could for them, but most, obviously, had little skill.

Lucien pointed to the road. “There is an ambulance from the hospital. It goes to Riviere-du-Loup to pick up the blessed.” The captain looked confused. Lucien realized he’d made a mistake, using a French word for an English one with the same sound but a different meaning. He corrected himself: “The wounded.”

“He doesn’t need to go that far, not now he doesn’t,” the captain said. Soldiers were waving to the ambulance. As Galtier had done before, it pulled off the road and came jouncing over the rough ground toward the tracks. The driver and his attendant scrambled out of the machine. The attendant shook his head. “What a mess,” he said.

“Yeah.” The ambulance driver scowled. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen or so, not with that unlined face, but was dark and handsome and looked strong as a bull. “This is what you do. You die.” He sounded world-weary beyond his years. “You do not know what it is about. You never have time to learn.”

“Let’s get ’em on the stretcher and into the bus,” the attendant said.

“Yeah,” the driver said again. But then he recognized Galtier. He nodded. “You are Nicole’s father, n’est-ce pas?” His French was bad, but few Americans spoke any.

“Yes,” Lucien answered. In spite of himself, he’d come to know some of the people at the hospital. “Bonjour, Ernest.”

“Not a bon jour for them,” the ambulance driver said. His broad shoulders-almost the shoulders of a prizefighter-went up and down in a shrug. “We will take them back. We will do what we can for them.”

Up in Riviere-du-Loup and elsewhere along the St. Lawrence, the antiaircraft guns started banging away again. Lucien noticed that only in the back part of his mind till he heard the buzz of aeroplane engines.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” an American screamed-doubly a blasphemy for Galtier. Then the man in green-gray said something even worse: “Here they come again!”

Whether they were the same two aeroplanes or two others, Lucien never knew. All around him, soldiers scattered, some diving for cover under the halted train, others running as far away from it as they could. Lucien stood there, foolishly, as the machine guns began chewing up the dirt close by.

The pilots did not try to shoot up either his wagon or the ambulance near it. He was and remained convinced of that. But they were flying fast, and didn’t miss by much. The captain who’d given him the goldpiece spun and toppled like someone with no bones at all, the top of his head shot off. Fresh cries of pain rose from every direction.

Roaring just above his head, the aeroplanes streaked away. A couple of Americans fired their rifles at them. It did no good. They were gone. Galtier looked around at carnage compounded.

A moan that stood out for anguish even among all the others made him turn his head. The young, strong ambulance driver lay beside the soldier he had been about to help. Now he was wounded, too. His hands clutched at himself. Lucien shivered and made the sign of the cross. Maybe, if God was kind, he had been wounded near there, but not there.

The ambulance attendant, whose name Galtier did not know, came over to him and the injured driver. “We’re going to have to bandage that and get him back to the hospital,” he said, to which Lucien could only nod. The attendant stooped beside the driver. “Come on, kid, you got to let me see that.”

In the end, Lucien had to hold the fellow’s hands away from the wound while the attendant worked. The driver writhed and fought. He wasn’t altogether conscious, but he was, as he looked, strong as the devil. Hanging onto his hands turned into something just short of a wrestling match.

Lucien hadn’t intended to look as the attendant cleaned and bandaged the wound. But his eyes, drawn by some horrid fascination of their own, went to it. He winced and wanted to cross himself again. There, indeed.

He and the attendant got the driver into the back of the ambulance with another wounded man. “Thanks for the help,” the attendant said.

“Not at all.” Galtier hesitated. “With this bl-wound-do you think he can-? Will he be able to-?” He ran out of English and nerve at the same time.

“If he’s lucky,” the attendant said, understanding him anyhow, “if he’s real lucky, mind, he’ll be able to just do it.” He climbed into the ambulance and drove it back toward the hospital. Galtier followed at his necessarily slower pace. He said nothing at all to the horse.