“I what?”
“Your bombers. They killed my baby. Only yesterday.”
“Damnation! So that’s why you’re—” He looked at her blouse and reddened again.
She glanced down at herself. She was leaking a little, and the pressure was maddening. So that’s what he was blushing about!
There was a crushed paper cup in the hack of the truck. She picked it up and unfolded it, then glanced doubtfully at the sergeant. He was looking at her in a kind of mournful anguish.
“Do you mind if I turn my hack?” she asked.
“Hell’s bells!” he said softly, and put away his gun.
“Give me your word you won’t jump out, and I won’t even look. This war gives me a sick knot in the gut.” He stood up and leaned over the back of the cab, watching the road a head and not looking at her, although he kept one hand on his holster and one boot heel on the hem of her skirt.
Marya tried to dislike him a little less than before. When she was finished, she threw out the cup and buttoned her blouse again. “Thank you, sergeant, you can turn around now.”
He sat down and began talking about his family and how much he hated the war. Marya sat with her eyes closed and her head tilted back in the wind and tried not to listen.
“Say, how can you have a baby and be in the army?” he asked after a time.
“Not the army. The home guard. Everybody’s in the home guard. Please, won’t you just be quiet awhile?”
“Oh. Well. Sure, I guess.”
Once they bailed out of the truck and lay flat in the ditch while two Russian jets screamed over at low altitude, but the jets were headed elsewhere and did not strafe the road. They climbed back in the truck and rolled on. They stopped at two road blocks for MP shakedowns before the truck pulled up at a supply dump. It was pitch dark.
The sergeant vaulted out of the truck. “This is as far as we ride,” he told her. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way. It’s dark as the devil, and we’re only allowed a penlight.” He flashed it in her face. “It would be a good chance for you to try to break for it. I hate to do this to you, sis, but put your hands together behind your back.”
She submitted to having her wrists bound with telephone wire. She walked ahead of him down the ditch while he pointed the way with the feeble light and held one end of the wire.
“I’d sure hate to shoot you, so please don’t try anything.”
She stumbled once and felt the wire jerk taut.
“You’ve cut off the circulation; do you want to cut off the hands?” she snapped. “How much farther do we have to go?”
The sergeant seemed very remorseful. “Stop a minute.
I want to think. It’s about four miles.” He fell silent. They stood in the ditch while a column of tanks thundered past toward the front. There was no traffic going the other way.
“Well?” she asked after awhile.
“I was just thinking about the three Russky women they captured on a night patrol awhile back. And what they did to them at interrogation.”
“Go on.”
“Well, it’s the Blue Shirt boys that make it ugly, not so much the army officers. It’s the political heel snappers you’ve got to watch out for. They see red and hate Russky. Listen, it would be a lot safer for you if I took you in after daylight, instead of at night. During the day there’s sometimes a Red Cross fellow hanging around, and everybody’s mostly sober. If you tell everything you know, then they won’t be so rough on you.”
“Well?
“There’s some deserted gun emplacements just up the hill here, and an old command post. I guess I could stay awake until dawn.”
She paused, wondered whether to trust him. No, she shouldn’t. But even so, he would he easier to handle than half a dozen drunken officers.
“All right, Ami, but if you don’t take wires off, your medics will have to amputate my hands.”
They climbed the hill, crawled through splintered logs and burned timbers, and found the command post under-ground. Half the roof was caved in, and the place smelled of death and cartridge casings, but there was a canvas cot and a gasoline lantern that still had some fuel in it. After he had freed her wrists, she sat on the cot and rubbed the numbness out of her hands while he opened a K-ration and shared it with her. He watched her rather wistfully while she ate.
“It’s too bad you’re on the wrong side of this war,” he said. “You’re okay, as Russkies go. How come you’re fighting for the commies?”
She paused, then reached down and picked up a handful of dirt from the floor, kneaded it, and showed it to him, while she nibbled cheese.
“Ami, this had the blood of my ancestors in it. This ground is mine. Now it has the blood of my baby in it; don’t speak to me of sides, or leaders, or politics.” She held the soil out to him. “Here, look at it. But don’t touch. It’s mine. No, when I think about it, go ahead and
Marya went on eating cheese. “Do you want an argument, Ami?” she asked, chewing hungrily while she talked. “You will get awfully dirty, if you do. I have a simple mind. I can only keep tossing handfuls of Russia at you to answer your ponderous questions.”
He did an unprecedented thing. He sat down on the floor and began—well, almost sobbing. His shoulders heaved convulsively for a moment. Marya stopped eating cheese and stared at him in amazement. He put his arms across his knees and rolled his forehead on them. When he looked up, his face was blank as a frightened child’s.
“God, I want to go home!” he croaked.
Marya put down the K-ration and went to bend over him. She pulled his head back with a handful of his hair and kissed him. Then she went to lie down on the cot and turned her face to the wall.
“Thanks, Sergeant,” she said. “I hope they don’t bury you in it after all.”
When she awoke, the lantern was out. She could see him bending over her, silhouetted against the stars through the torn roof. She stifled a shriek.
“Take your hands away!”
He took them away at once and made a choking sound. His silhouette vanished. She heard him stumbling among the broken timbers, making his way outside. She lay there thinking for awhile, thoughts without words. After a few minutes, she called out.
“Sergeant? Sergeant!”
There was no answer. She started up and kicked something that clattered. She went down on her knees and felt for it in the dark. Finally she found it. It was his gun.
After awhile he came stumbling back. “Yes?” he asked softly.
“Come here.”
His silhouette blotted the patch of stars again. She felt for his holster and shoved the gun back in it.
“Thanks, Ami, but they would shoot you for that.”
“I could say you grabbed it and ran.”
“Sit down, Ami.”
Obediently he sat.
“Now give me your hands again,” she said, then, whispering: “No, please! Not there! Not there.”
The last thing would be vengeance and death, but the next to the last thing was something else. And it was clearly in violation of the captain’s orders.
