The Heavenly Table

48

BOVARD WAS ON his way to breakfast when Malone caught up with him and informed him that Private Franks had been injured in a barroom brawl sometime yesterday evening and was now in the infirmary. Instead of going into town and being tempted to stop by the Majestic to see Lucas, the lieutenant had stayed in his quarters last night with a pot of tea and read over Thucydides’s account of the first invasion of Attica in his History of the Peloponnesian War. Unfortunately, stirring images of charging an impenetrable German bunker with a group of loyal young lads following behind him kept slipping in and preventing him from generating anything close to the enthusiasm he usually felt for his favorite historian of ancient Greece, and he had finally turned out the lamp in order to better succumb to his fantasies. Still, it was the first morning in a week or more when he hadn’t woken up benumbed with a hangover, and if nothing else, he felt well rested. “In the infirmary?” he said to Malone. “How bad did he get hurt?”

“They say he lost an eye.”

“Good Lord!” Bovard said, looking a bit startled. “Are you sure it was Wesley? I mean Private Franks?”

Malone nodded. “Oh, yes, sir, it was him all right.”

Bovard thought he detected a slight note of self-satisfaction in the sergeant’s voice, and it took him a moment to realize the reason for it. Just two days ago, he had told Malone that he had chosen Wesley to be his groom. The sergeant had questioned his choice, said that the boy seemed a bit too immature for such a responsibility. “What about Cooper?” he had suggested. “He’s the best I’ve seen with the horses.” Even though he’d already made up his mind, Bovard had been careful with his reply. He didn’t want Malone to think he didn’t value his opinion. But Cooper, a pudgy, bucktoothed dullard with jugged ears and a perpetual heat rash, was a veritable ogre compared to the dark-eyed and smooth-skinned Wesley. Just the type of beautiful young man, the lieutenant liked to imagine, that fought and died for honor and glory on the sun-drenched Grecian plains twenty-five hundred years ago. He couldn’t help it. Even after all his initial dissatisfactions with the caliber of the recruits, and his subsequent acceptance that he was going to be stuck fighting alongside well-meaning but uncouth farm boys and law clerks and shopkeepers, he was still loath to completely surrender certain noble ideals about men and war that he knew the sergeant would never understand. Besides, what did it matter as long as he kept his sentiments to himself? Or if the boy was any good with horses or not? The cavalry would soon be a thing of the past; modern, mechanized warfare had taken care of that. In the first few months of the conflict, thousands of unfortunate bastards had already proven that charging a machine-gun nest on horseback was tantamount to suicide. By the time they arrived in Europe, the majority of the animals would be relegated to hauling boxes of supplies and pulling artillery. “But I don’t understand,” Bovard said to Malone. “What was he doing in town in the first place? Wasn’t he scheduled for guard duty last night?”

“Well, that’s the worst part,” the sergeant said. “He left his post without tellin’ anyone. I know it’s no excuse, but a couple of his buddies said he got a Dear John letter yesterday.”

“How did it happen?” Bovard asked.

“Probably the same way it always happens,” the sergeant said. “She found her some new meat once he—”

“No,” Bovard said quickly. “I mean the eye. How did he lose it?”

“Oh, that,” Malone said. “Well, from what I heard, he was in a saloon and some preacher started spouting off about the war being nothing but a moneymaker for the fat cats. One thing led to another, and Franks took a swing at him. Before it was over, he had a piece of glass in his eye. Broken bottle, I suspect.”

Bovard took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “Have they arrested the man who did it?”

“I believe so.”

Just then, First Lieutenants Waller and Bryant appeared on their way to the dining hall. Bovard waited until they passed on by, then said, “Well, there’s not much we can do about it now. I just wish he’d come and talked to one of us before he did something so stupid.”

“Ah, sir, he’s not the first man to fuck his life up over a letter from home.”

“No, I suppose not,” Bovard said, thinking of the anguish he’d felt upon first receiving his last one from Elizabeth.

“Over at the Front, I saw a dozen or more go to the firing squad over that silly horseshit. People can get downright crazy when it comes to gettin’ dumped.”

“Christ, you don’t think they’ll execute him, do you?”

“No, sir, not over here, but I imagine they’ll make it rough on him for a while, then send him home with a dishonorable.”

“I suppose I better go see him this afternoon, write up a report,” Bovard said. He started to turn away toward the dining hall. He hated to think what that obnoxious loudmouth Waller would say about this. Ever since Lucas’s name had come up during lunch that day, the sonofabitch had been needling him in pissy little ways. Bovard had been thinking a lot about a story Malone had told him that involved some soldiers who had murdered their commanding officer and made it look like he had stepped on a land mine. Five months ago he would have never dreamed of doing such a thing, but if Waller kept it up, well, who knew what might happen once they got to France? “Sir, you still need a groom,” he heard the sergeant say.

Bovard stopped. From where he stood he could see the hospital, and, beyond it, the stables. Oh, well, he thought, if he couldn’t have his pick, what did it matter who it turned out to be? Maybe the pain of Wesley’s absence at his side would make death at the Front even sweeter. “You were right,” he said over his shoulder to Malone. “I should have listened to you in the first place.”

“Sir?”

“About Cooper. He’s by far the best man for the job.”