THE DAWN PATROL

A reading

Photo by Nhi Dam on Unsplash

We began the long walk home following the rail spur where it met up with the railway bridge, and from there we turned onto a smaller trail to the right of the tracks. The foot and wagon road they’d built above the train bridge years before had been totally dismantled, the old road we followed so overgrown with grass and weeds it was just a smoke of memory. The shadows hanging off the Patullo Bridge above us came as a welcome relief from the heat of the day. Dad reached out for the bottle and I stopped to let him have a drink. He looked at me briefly, and then he offered it to me. I shook my head, squinting as we entered the sunlight again.

“You don’t wanna have a drink with your Dad?” he asked, amused.

“What is it?”

“Rum, boy!” he laughed. “It’s rum. A man’s drink. It’s what the pirates used to drink. ‘Fifteen men on a den-man’s chest!’”

“Sixteen,” I smiled.

“What?”

“‘Sixteen men on a dead man’s chest’—”

“‘Yo-ho-ho an’ a bottle of rum!’”

I took the bottle and tried a small sip.

“That’s not a drink! I said take a drink.”

“What’s in it?” I asked, holding it up to the light and looking at it.

“That cola stuff.”

“Coca-cola?”

“‘Things go better with Coke,’ or whatever it is. It’s better than the tea we used to mix it with, in France.”

“You put Rum in your tea?”

“Tea, coffee, Ovaltine. Water. Even wine.”

“It tastes bad enough as is; that sounds disgusting.”

“Everything about war is disgusting. From the mud to the blood. Ha! That rhymes. Get it? From the mud to blood.”

I nodded.

“Jackie’s gonna find out soon enough what it’s all about. God, I’d give my arm all over again, not to have him there. An’ you too,” he added, looking at me. “I don’t want t’ lose you, too.”

He clapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer. I could feel the bottle banging against my arm. We stopped walking and he looked me in the eye, moving closer and touching his forehead to mine as he swayed from side to side. It was all I could do to hold him up.

“I can’t be losin’ neither of you,” he said in a soft voice before he let me go. He took a last puff of his cigar and tossed it to the side.

“We’ve as good as lost Jackie already, he’s been gone so long. Christ!” he swore as he staggered back three steps. He bent over holding his arm out for balance, and spat into the dust of the road. He looked up at me.

“He’s a man now, my Jackie is. He’s his own man — footloose an’ fancy-free. He’s always been his own man. Ever since he could walk, he’s been his own man.”

Dad stood in the middle of the dirt road. Weeping willows lined both sides of the lane, their shadows freckling the path; a cool breeze filtering through their long tendrils. Spreading his good arm out as if he were appealing to God, he looked up at the sky, suddenly screaming. His shadow appeared broken in the gloom of the trees, as his scream echoed through the loneliness around us.

“Aggghh! How much does a man have to give, dear God! How much! Isn’t it enough You took my arm? You half blinded and crippled me! Now You wanna take my son! My firstborn! Do I have to paint the blood of a lamb on my door so as You spare me an’ mine? Do I?”

“Dad,” I said with a gentle pull on his arm. “He’s not going to die. Jackie? He’s going to be an officer.”

“Ahh, boy, those’re the first ones they shoot,” Dad said, pulling himself free and stumbling back; he fell backwards, sitting on the dusty lane. “It happened all the time in the trenches.”

“What do you mean? The Germans shot the officers?”

“No, boy! We did! We shot them!” he said, looking up at me as he hit himself in the chest with his closed fist; the near empty bottle he held sloshed about as he hit himself.

“If you refused to go over the top, the officers made sure you did, by God! They’d shoot you on the spot. Bang!” He pointed his finger at me like a gun. “You see that once, or twice, you don’t forget, because there’s gonna be a time when you’re gonna freeze. An’ when that time comes, you’d better be sure you know who your friends are.”

“You shot officers?” I asked, squatting down beside him.

“Not me! I never once shot one. But I knew men who did, and to my anger and my shame, I did nothing to stop them.”

“But that’s murder.”

“An’ what was it they were doin’? Shootin’ a man for refusing t’ face certain death? Ha! It was murder all around — on a grand scale. They called us cowards. I’d gone over the top more times than I can remember, an’ they still called us cowards. An’ the day I lost my arm — that day I was thinkin’ I was gonna die for sure, with the blood streamin’ down my face, an’ the pain so bad I wanted to scream as long an’ loud as I could — layin’ in the mud with my life bleedin’ outta me — I watched a young lieutenant shoot two men. They were done for — anyone could see that — both men shakin’ so bad with fear. An’ he shot ‘em. Both of ‘em. Isn’t that murder? I watched a man put his gun to the side of the Lieutenant’s head an’ pull the trigger. BANG! I watched his face explode. I still see it sometimes if I think about it too long. I had pieces of his brains stuck on me. An’ d’ya think I want you t’ go through that!”

“What did you do?”

“Do? I did nothin’ boy! I went back to England where I was laid up in a hospital for months and it took all I had just to learn how to walk again. Shattered knee, they said. Better than cutting it off, I guess. You can live with one arm, they said. I don’t know how I’d’ve been as just half a man. But I was done with killing. I’d killed so many men I lost count.”

He took a long drink, looking at me as he did, smiling through the bottle and letting it spill down his neck. He stopped, smacking his lips and laughing quickly. He looked at the last little bit in the bottle and offered it up to me. I shook my head.

“Help me up,” he said, and I did.

We began to walk again. A cool breeze coming in from the river stirred the grass along the side of the road, rustling through the willows branches. I looked up at the cobalt sky and the light, cirrus clouds over the distant mountains, suddenly wondering if Jack had ever had a talk such as this. I doubted it. Jack was never one to listen.

  “We used to count them when we first got there, you know,” Dad said after a moment. “The men we killed? We counted them. And we were happy to be there, happy to count them out. It was supposed to be the War to end all Wars. The last great adventure. Why wouldn’t we wanna be there? I lost count of how many men I killed after twenty, and that was the first day. I know it was more than that. Can you imagine losing count after killing twenty men, and not caring anymore? I could see their faces as I killed them; I can still see ‘em, as plain as I see you. We laughed about it later — all of us. But that night, when no one saw me? I cried. We lost almost twenty thousand men that first day. I don’t know how we made it.

“The next day we did it all over again. I killed thirty-two men, that day. But that day, one of my best friends bought it. On the third day, another two of my mates died. On the fourth day…on the fourth day I almost bought it. That was a bad day. Over the top, an’ into the gas. Barely had time to get our masks on, but I did, thank God — although that day I cursed Him — goddamn I cursed You for the goddamned God that You are!”

He looked up at the sky and I looked as well, thinking this time he’d get an answer. All I could see was an eagle flying circles overhead as if watching us — or perhaps waiting.

“I lost six good friends that day because of the gas. We’d grown up together; played together. Reggie’s sister was the first girl I kissed. I think we were eight. On the fifth day, we stopped laughing. And then, every night the guns roared to life — a noise as such to spread a fear in you as any you’ll ever hear — an’ every morning we’d go over the top again, charging through No Man’s Land and stepping over yesterday’s dead as easily as we stepped on that day’s dead, beatin’ a hasty retreat.

“An’ today I had to hang a man,” he said with a note of finality — taking his last drink and tossing the bottle to the side. “That’s one more soul added to my chain of sins.”

“Chain of sins?” I asked.

He looked at me and tried to force a smile; it was weak, limp, quivering on his thin, wet lips.

“Marley’s ghost. Only this chain is made up of the souls of men I killed. Souls were weighed down by souls of the men they’d killed — an’ the children they murdered. So it all works out,” he said with a quick bark of laughter. “They don’t tell you about that in basic.”

“No,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I don’t suppose they would.”

I looked ahead and saw Mom standing out on the road waiting for us. She still had her apron wrapped around her tiny waist, the sleeves of her dress rolled up to her narrow shoulders. She was shading her eyes with one hand, brushing her long, dark hair out of her eyes as the wind swept it about her; she stood with her other hand on her hip. I knew she wanted to run out and meet us. I could see it in the way she stood. I could almost imagine her tapping her foot impatiently on the soft grass. And then Dad saw her. He stopped.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking at him.

“Ya have to promise me you won’t go,” he said, looking at Mom and then back at me.

“Go where?”

“Following your brother off to war — you have to promise me you won’t.”

“But I want to learn how to fly airplanes. I’ll never get another chance like this!”

“I need you to promise me,” he said, looking down the road at Mom again. She started to take a step forward, but stopped, perhaps thinking better of it.

“It’ll break her heart if you leave. She’ll die inside if anything happens to either of you.” He grabbed me by the arm, pulling me closer. “Promise me, goddamn you!”

“I promise!” I said angrily.

“Swear it to me, by Christ!”

“I swear, by the Saviour.”

He smiled and laughed, hugging me close to him and kissing my forehead. I pulled away from him, feeling the anger mounting inside of me. He looked at me with a puzzled expression, his head tilted to one side. I backed away — all the while wanting to scream at him for having made me promise such a thing. I looked at Mom and could almost imagine the relief that would cross her face when he told her what he’d done. I stepped back another few steps.

He called out to me, but I refused to listen; I turned my back instead, walking up the road, kicking at the dusty rocks. I looked at the willow trees, thinking how they looked as if there were crying, and I wondered if they were crying for me.

That’s when I told myself a promise is just another way of breaking your word, and I wondered if he would forgive for breaking his heart.