“I was out killing Fritz,” Elijah answers.
Some of the others choke back laughs. Colquhoun grows angrier.
“You obviously do not understand the seriousness of this, Corporal. I have a mind to court-martial you. Just because you have been awarded citations does not mean you have immunity under my command!”
Ah! So this is what it is about! Colquhoun and Breech are jealous. Rather than say anything more, Elijah remains silent, must bite his tongue so that it does not say what he will later regret. The silence that ensues is awkward. Elijah can see me behind Colquhoun, but I try not to look at Elijah.
When we’ve stopped marching for the evening and completed duties, Elijah searches me out to tell me where he has been and what he has done. He doesn’t sound proud or sad. He speaks in a low voice. On the day we took the trenches of Amiens, Elijah continued advancing fast as he could. He moved all afternoon, staying close to a company of retreating Fritz, stalking them.
With the sun behind him now, Elijah finds a place on a ridge and sights in his Ross, follows the retreating soldiers as they run desperately across a long, open plain. He places his crosshairs square on the back of each retreating soldier, one by one, and squeezes the trigger, watches him tumble forward and lie still. Elijah feels badly after his tenth kill. The shooting is too easy. He’s almost out of bullets now, and continues knocking the Hun down until he has no more.
When the sun of this glorious day is setting, he stands upon the ridge and looks about him. He’s completely alone and realizes that he’s gotten far ahead of our section and has lost us. No one to witness this killing spree. He calculates in his head and his conservative estimate is twenty dead, all within a half-hour. His rifle barrel is too hot to touch, and the bolt is sticking from the expansion of British-made shells. He turns back west and follows the dirt road he’s come up from.
Elijah passes companies of French and smiles at them, looking for familiar faces. They smile back, handing him cigarettes and bottles of wine to take pulls from. By the time the sun is down, he decides that it will be impossible to find his own, and walks up to a quickly constructed camp of Canadians.
Taking water and a little food, he only then realizes that he sits among the 48th Highlanders, the old rivals from our days of training back in Ontario. He recognizes none of the faces, asks about the little marksman who was such a challenge to him and me so long ago and finds out that he is dead, killed by another sniper while out hunting. The battalion took the little sniper’s death hard. He’d surpassed a hundred kills and was a legend. Elijah has reached 356 kills as of today, and these are only the ones of which he’s quite positive. Today is a new personal record for one day and he says as much to the others that sit around a fire and talk with him. They offer congratulations and look at him when they think he does not notice, stare at the thin Indian with the sharp nose and blackened face, cheekbones glinting in firelight, rifle with its scope mounted on the left lying next to him, wrapped in burlap. So many knife cuts in the stock it looks hand carved.
His head pounds through the haze of wine and rum, and he reaches for his kit to find another syringe, only to find none. He asks where he might find the medic, and is pointed toward him. The medic is in a large open tent, working by lantern light. Soldiers lie in rows, moaning or unconscious, and he rushes with his batman from one to another. Elijah watches all this from the darkness and knows that to try and approach him with no obvious malady would be a great mistake. The medic has time only for the wounded. Spotting the wooden box, he’s sure it contains what he’s after. It lies beside a man who drifts in and out of consciousness, and Elijah should have easy access without being seen. When the medic and assistant are at the opposite end of the tent, he walks up and sits on the side of the bed of the soldier. Elijah looks down at him and the soldier opens his eyes, grasps his stomach. Elijah looks at it. The man’s middle is bandaged tight but has bled through. Elijah can smell the stink of the man’s bowels. The man’s mouth moves but Elijah can’t hear the whisper. The pallor of death is on his clammy skin. Elijah leans closer to his mouth.
“Morphine,” he whispers.
Elijah smiles.
“Morphine,” he says again.
Looking up, Elijah sees that the medic will not notice. He walks to the box, squats, opens it and grasps at the row of shining glass. He grabs handfuls and places them in his kit. There will be time to wrap each one in cloth later. He goes back to the soldier and sits on the side of his bed once more.
“Who are you?” the soldier whispers, then falls into mumbles.
Elijah takes out a syringe, takes the soldier’s arm in his hand and searches out the vein that he desires. Elijah peers over his shoulder and sees that the medic remains busy. Elijah’s own body screams out for the needle. He doesn’t listen to it as he slips the needle into the soldier’s arm and flushes the medicine into his veins. Elijah watches and imagines the dull warmth spreading through the soldier. The man’s body relaxes, his face goes slack and his eyes close.
Elijah takes another needle and slips it into the same tiny hole in the soldier’s arm, flushes more into his veins. He watches as the slow shadow of death creeps across him, watches as what was once alive goes cold and tightens.
I listen to Elijah tell this story, watch his mouth moving, watch his eyes. His eyes absorb the light, don’t want to reflect back what he has done. I can’t listen any more and so get up and walk away with ringing ears.
After our victory at Amiens, we are moved north once more to the familiar country near Arras. We are not given much rest before the orders arrive to march the Arras–Cambrai Road and into the bitter fighting near the Canal du Nord.
Even though I walk away from Elijah when he tells me these stories, he doesn’t seem bothered. He simply searches me out like a pesky child. Not long after the story of killing the Highlander, Elijah tells me of a dream that begins to come to him every time he closes his eyes and drifts into sleep. A family sits in the snow, cold and starving. They are too tired to move. Elijah can feel their cold, the gnaw in their bellies. Death is everywhere around them in the forest, staring at them from behind trees. But something far worse than death crouches close by. It is felt rather than seen. It waits for the moment when they close their eyes to approach.
Is this an old story of yours, Niska, that’s come back to haunt him? Elijah tells me he has no room for such things in his head. He pushes the dream away.
Near the front lines, Elijah and I are told to report to Lieutenant Breech’s dugout early one evening. The sky is grey and it feels like it does before bad weather strikes. The Germans have begun another bombardment, but the shells are farther down the line, and when they explode I feel a dull shuddering up my legs. In the dugout, Elijah and I are surprised to see Grey Eyes sitting in a chair beside Breech. He’s been gone a few weeks, and we all figured he’d either deserted for good or been killed, but here he is beside the lieutenant. He is as thin as ever, and his uniform is dirty and torn. His eyes have the look of a wild animal caught in a snare.
“This private brings some serious charges against you and Private Bird, Corporal,” the lieutenant says. He talks to Elijah, still assuming I cannot speak English. “Among other things, he claims you are an addict of the morphine and that you have been committing atrocities on the battlefield.” The look on Breech’s face is smug in the knowledge that he has finally gotten Elijah.
Elijah looks at Grey Eyes, who stares at the ground near his feet. The shells continue to erupt. I wish for them to come closer so that we can get out of this mess.
“Now why would you want to do this to me?” Elijah asks. “What happened? You deserted and were captured and to save your own stinking life you are turning me in?” An anger blossoms in Elijah that grows uncontrollably.
“What is this you’re saying?” the lieutenant says. “And what of this claim that you scalp your enemies like your heathen ancestors?”
Shells begin to scream closer. All of us but Elijah lo
ok up at the rafters as they shiver down bits of dirt and dust.
“I am saying that he acts out of jealousy and out of fear.” Elijah reaches for his revolver and snaps open the holster. “And jealousy is what prompts you to threaten to court-martial me for doing my job too well.” The blackness of his anger boils just below his skin. His voice shakes with it.
Breech sees what Elijah’s doing, does not seem to want to believe it. “We’ll have none of this, now stand down, Corporal, and do not make matters worse.” His eyes are suddenly frightened.
A whistling starts in my head. Later, Elijah tells me that the same pain that he’d experienced on the aeroplane came back to him in Breech’s dugout and he had trouble seeing. The rage inside him grew. Does he not go out at night into great danger for men like these two in front of him? His revolver is out and is pointed at Grey Eyes. Grey Eyes stumbles from his chair and pulls it in front of him. Elijah’s head is going to explode, and it is all Grey Eyes’ fault. The whistling becomes a scream and a bright light flashes and a concussion sends all of us flying into the air. The air is sucked out of the dugout as earth rains down and the world goes black.
I’m on my stomach and force myself up onto all fours. How long have I lain here? It couldn’t have been too long. The dugout is still mostly intact, but the smoke is thick and I find it difficult to breathe. I crawl over to where Elijah had been standing and find him. He is bleeding from the head.
“Quick, help me,” Elijah says, tugging at me.
I shake myself out of my daze and we crawl to the lieutenant and Grey Eyes. Elijah checks and finds that both are breathing. He lost his revolver in the shelling, but he mutters that that was the wrong weapon anyways.
Searching the ground, he finds a solid piece of wood. I watch stunned as he grabs it in both hands and sits on Grey Eyes’ slight chest.
“Grey Eyes,” Elijah calls out. “Wake up.”
He opens his eyes and looks up at Elijah. Elijah raises the wood in both hands and swings it down hard as he can onto Grey Eyes’ forehead.
“Mo-na!” I shout out.
“We have no other choice,” Elijah answers. “I do not want to spend the rest of my life in one of their prisons.” He swings the wood again and again, battering the little man’s head until the life has left him.
“We’ve got to get the lieutenant to a medic,” I say.
“Are you kidding?” Elijah answers. “The little prick knows everything.” He crawls over and finds Breech, turns his head to just the right angle and begins smashing it with the wood.
Elijah feels wonderful solving the last problem to confront him. I can see it.
Slowly, the anger in him begins to subside. He throws dirt across the two men and then lifts loose boards onto them. “Providence,” he says. “And the pain in my head. All gone.”
Elijah turns to me. I sit with my head in my hands.
“Let’s go,” Elijah says.
I don’t move.
“We had to do it,” he tells me. “Would you rather have faced the consequences, X? Don’t you see that we are free of it all now? We have no more worries.”
I hear voices shouting outside, and Elijah calling back for help.
Over the next few days Elijah continues to talk to me when night is blackest. He is fighting what’s become of him, he tells me. One memory has come back to him lately. We are going out to hunt for a few days. Mid-autumn and the air is cold. He and I say goodbye to Niska early in the morning before the sun has come up. We travel along the river in our canoe for a day. We are fifteen winters and think we know the world well.
The bawl of a cow moose travels to us when the sun is setting. We head toward it but it grows too dark to go any further. After making a camp and building a fire, we sit by it and talk of girls.
Without planning it or wanting to, Elijah tells me the story of the nun, Magdalene, who liked to bathe him each week when he was a boy. He tells me of how she would rub her soapy hands over him, how Elijah would get an erection, how she would scold him and then take his erection in her hands and rub him until his taut penis thumped against his lower belly in a spasm.
Elijah tells me of the first time that he actually ejaculated in her hand, a little white current shooting out of him. He was horrified. He thought he was broken. She looked at it on her hand. She began screaming at Elijah until he was afraid she’d gone mad and might try to drown him. He ran from her then. Many months later he had the chance to steal her rifle, the very one we had with us hunting the moose.
Elijah tells me I just stared into the fire after he told this story. I didn’t say anything. I was always like this with Elijah, he says. Quiet and calm and listening, but never saying what Elijah needed to hear.
The next morning we got up before the sun again and found the moose tracks. We followed them and flushed the animal out of the thicket where it was hiding. Elijah shot her through the lungs and she did not run far before collapsing. Between the hide and meat, there was almost too much for us to paddle back with. But we did. You were happy, Niska, to see our prize. You smiled proudly at us from the shore, your long hair loose in the wind. You were always worried about having enough for us to eat through the winter. Elijah never quite knew why you worried.
And he never spoke of that experience again.
Elijah and I are tired and we’re actually relieved to find that the Second Division is to stand back while the Fourth and First Divisions spearhead an attack on a canal. We sit behind the line a little ways one night and watch the flash of the big guns like lightning across the horizon. Another new lieutenant has been sent to us now, and he is young and proper and understands that Elijah and I are corps élite. Elijah does not think he will bother us much.
We sit with a group of others by a fire tonight, and I notice that Elijah smiles a lot, the warm flow of the medicine carrying him along. The smell of roasting meat is in the air and we know that in the next couple of days our brothers will do something brave and great once again and push through Fritz’s desperate lines. They must ford a canal, though, and it will be dangerous, miserable work. In this early autumn evening, Elijah tells everyone he’s happy for once to sit back and let it happen without him.
I remain my silent self. Elijah jokes a little with me, knows I do not like what he did, but he feels he had to if he and I are to survive. We talk in Cree. Elijah does not want the others to know what we say.
“Fritz has nearly had enough,” Elijah tells me. “It will not be too long now before this is all over and we return to Mushkegowuk.”
I nod, but do not answer. I am very sad, Elijah sees.
“I know I’ve done horrible things here,” Elijah says. “I know that you think I have gone mad.” He pauses. “Sometimes I feel like I was mad too. But I feel like I must leave this place, that I am ready. We will go back home and you and I will return as heroes.” He points to the moccasins that he wears, the ones I made him so long ago back in Ontario. I have re-stitched them many times, but they are clearly near their end.
“There’s no fixing those,” I say.
“Despite what I’ve done here, what you’ve done here,” Elijah says, pulling my eyes from the campfire, “we can still go home together like we always planned.”
Still, I do not answer. Elijah needs me to. I can see that this emptiness inside him cannot be filled up.
“We can go back into the bush and live with Niska,” he says.
I turn to him when I hear this. His words release the agony that I have not been able to face till now, that I have not been able to speak aloud until now. I have lost everything. “No, we can’t,” I say. “Niska is dead.”
WEESAGEECHAK
Hero
WE ARE IN THE LONG PART of the afternoon. Only wispy remnants of the medicine remain in me. My body cries out for more, not wanting to believe there isn’t any. “Paddle me to shore, Auntie,” I call out.
When the canoe’s nose settles into the mud of the bank, I pull myself out and crawl into the bu
sh, nothing more than a wounded animal. I get my pants down just as the badness of my body leaves me in a stinking rush. The cramping eases a little, and I clean myself best I can with leaves. I pull myself back out to the shore and see that Auntie is making camp. It is a good place with a flat grassy plain and dried hard driftwood lying about.
“We will camp here,” she says when she sees me. “And I will help you through this.” She builds a fire and leaves me by it to go into the bush.
I am sweating. My shirt is soaked through. Waves of cramps hit my belly, bend me over and make me grit my teeth. It feels like the stab of a bayonet. My body has been wrung out and yet great invisible hands twist it more until I want to scream. I place a small piece of wood between my teeth to ease the pain in my jaw. Just one more needle. I wish I had one more needle. I begin to think of all those times I took the medicine in the last months when it wasn’t needed. I might better have saved it up, stored it away for the hard months. What was I thinking? Didn’t I realize this day would come crashing into me? Elijah would call it my lack of foresight.
Elijah. He should be here. We could help each other through this. A pain squeezes my guts so bad that I cry out in a long growl. I need to sleep. Sleep will help me.
I look over to the woods where Auntie went, a little like the woods in our last days over there, a thick stand. Nicest woods I have seen, the trees big, the ground soft and dark. The section advances quietly, makes our way through a mist that hovers about our knees so that we can’t tell what we are about to step on. Me, my ears are no good today. A dull buzz, people’s voices echoing in my head. I must rely on my eyes and keep a watch on Elijah. Elijah will be the first to notice anything.