Soldiers of ’44

Chapter Twenty

December 22, 1944. Mont Reynard/Lepont. Friday, 0600 Hours.

The first light of dawn was reflected flatly in the freezing waters of the Salm. Fog had moved across the valley during the night, surrounding Section Eight’s position with currents of opaque white haze.

The isolation was so complete, seamless, that Docker was startled when a flock of rooks flew overhead, dark forms and faint cawing sounds fading swiftly away into banks of gray clouds.

On the precipice of the hill the huge dog began barking at something in the valley below the cannon revetment. Trankic and Docker unslung their rifles and walked out to the level crop of rock where Radar was growling at the mists coming up the mountains.

“Maybe it’s a rabbit or something,” Trankic said.

Farrel, who had joined them, said, “If it was, Radar’d go after him.”

“Let’s tone it down,” Docker said.

Winds gusted through the fog and cracked the ice on the limbs of the trees, but these were the only sounds they could hear over the barking.

“At ease, goddamn it.” Trankic clamped the dog’s jaws shut with his gloved hands. “You heard the sergeant.”

Docker said then, “Tex, get over to the ammo dump and pick up a few grenades. Collect a pair of bazookas and bring them back here.”

Trankic released the dog, who snarled again at the mists, and bounded after Farrel.

“Where do you think Larkin is? The way he’s belting that booze, he could be passed out somewhere. You think of that?”

“Surprisingly enough, that occurred to me,” Docker said.

He could now see the white curve of the river and smoke curling from houses in the village, and thought of the schoolteacher, and the priest who had told her that if she could have resisted one more minute, one more second...

Lowering his binoculars, Docker let them hang free around his neck.

“That tank they saw, maybe it was hit,” Trankic said. “Pulled into the valley to make repairs. Or maybe it was heading for the action near St. Vith or Bastogne. Hell, it might be miles from here by now.”

“Well, we’d better stop guessing about it.”

“Sure. You want me to ask for volunteers?”

“No, take Farrel and Kohler. Stay close to each other and go slow. Use hand signals. If you find the mother, don’t try to be heroes. I just want to know where that tank is and what shape it’s in.”

Larkin had decided not to risk driving down the mountain at night. Instead, after loading the truck with Bonnard’s help he had coasted only a mile or so, the wet grind of the big tires the only sound in the darkness. With the child huddled beside him, he had then slept for a few hours off the road, scrubbed his face with snow and started out again at dawn, driving with careful concentration, taking the looping turns under controlled power, double-clutching on the grades and not relaxing until they were out of the mountains and on the level road beside the river. Visibility was good for several hundred feet then, and he could mark the sentinel beeches along the banks, dappled trunks blurred with the sleeting snow. Larkin settled himself more comfortably behind the wheel, trying not to disturb the little girl who was asleep or resting now, lying quietly beside him.

“Excuse me, darlin’.” He moved her just enough to let him pull the bottle from his pocket, then let her snuggle up to him again and took a drink without taking his eyes from the road. He put the Cutty Sark on the dashboard, wedging it against the windshield with a grease rag.

He could feel the whiskey exploding in his stomach, and some of it ran coldly along the chinstrap of his helmet. About nine miles. Docker had said, stone walls and a gate past some oak trees. Sacred Heart Convent, Sister Gabrielle. Even though the little girl seemed asleep, Larkin started talking to her because his thoughts felt warmed and honest with the whiskey... “It’s gonna be all right, you’ll see,” he said. “It’s gonna be all right, Matt Larkin says so...”

He saw the reflection of his smile in the windshield, teeth starkly white against his black beard. “You got it rough, I’ll admit that. Being a Jewish kid without a home on a night that would freeze the balls off a brass monkey. But if you think I had it good when I was your age, you got another think coming...” He drank more whiskey, grateful for the heat flowing from his loins down his legs and into his feet, which had felt wet and frozen for weeks. He was sorry he’d started talking about what it was like when he was a kid, but it was something he couldn’t help... “How’s it at the synagogue? They give you that Lamb of God crap?” His voice was harsher, demanding answers from his reflection in the windshield... “Ark of the Covenant, Gate of Heaven and that old Lamb of God, which is funny if you think about it, like the Lamb was the way He got his gun off. I guess we stole it all from you anyway. Tower of David, House of Gold, Refuge of Sinners. Maybe that’s what drove my uncles into such crazy drunks, sitting in church with their hangovers and the priest telling them to say their prayers to all those Jews in Jerusalem. But I’ll tell you one damned thing that’s for real... it’s what made the Virgin Mary bedtime story go down smooth and easy, because if those priests ever tried to tell them holy mackerels that Joe the carpenter was really screwing Mary, they’d have got their churches burned down...” He glanced at the child. “Look, I’m sorry. Don’t pay no attention to me.” He was embarrassed by the language he’d been using. She was just a little girl, after all... “It’s gonna be okay, we got these Heinies on the run, and things are gonna be okay for you. Maybe you’ll grow up and get married and have some kids. You might even get to the States someday. This is a night we could talk about, even though you won’t probably remember it. We could have a steak or something and maybe some drinks at a place I hang out at called the Green Castle. It’s on Lexington, right at Forty-ninth Street...”

Larkin felt a spasm of disgust for himself and the sentiments spilling from his mouth. It would bring a tear to his mother’s eyes, it would make his uncles pour sloppy drinks all around the kitchen table. The priests would cream themselves over it, stuffing the Lamb of God down your throat with beauty and peace and love and sending you home to get your ass kicked or your nose broken by a brutal, brutalized parent or cousin or uncle who’d heard you were necking with one of the Moran girls on the roofs of those rotten brownstones that stretched up from the city streets to contaminate the stars... Ahead on his right, Larkin saw an immense pair of oak trees and beyond them a gray stone wall set back from the road. Parking the truck in front of the convent’s iron gates, he climbed down from the cab and rang a bell suspended above a cairn of stones.

Within a few minutes, candles appeared at the foot of a graveled driveway leading through a grove of fir trees. The two nuns who unlocked the heavy gate wore rough wool habits and had the faces of weathered, aging peasants.

Larkin explained the situation to them in English, speaking loudly in an effort to stir a gleam of understanding in their watchful eyes.

When he switched in frustration to the few phrases of French he’d picked up, one of them walked to the truck while the other smiled tentatively and pointed to a wooden alms box on a post outside the gates.

“Sure, sure.” He took out his wallet and stuffed a half dozen Belgian notes into the poor box.

One of the nuns lifted the child from the truck. The little girl stared at Larkin, her eyes wide and dark above the edge of the coarse brown blanket. There was nothing more he could do for her but he felt guilty just standing there and looking at her. He waved but wasn’t sure whether she tried to wave back because her hands were tucked underneath the blanket.

“I tell you, it’s gonna be all right,” he called to her as the nuns closed and locked the tall iron gates.

Waving again, he watched the nuns and the little child and the twin lights from the candles disappear on the graveled path through the fir trees, then feeling lonely as hell, swung himself into the cab of the truck, gunned the motor and pulled back onto the road that would take him into Liège and Gervais’ warehouse.