Zero

The rum came at six, in a stone jar, and a sergeant of the battalion with a spoon.

He came along the boards from the second traverse with the jar under his arm and a mess tin, and went along the third platoon on the fire step, one man after another, and put a spoonful into each man’s tin, or into his mouth if he had no tin, and said nothing, and went on. Lucien held out his mess tin and the sergeant put the spoon in it and the rum went in, dark, and smelled of molasses and of the cane fields south of the city in October when they burned the stubble, and he drank it, and it went down into him like fire down a chimney, all the way to his feet, which he had not been able to feel since three.

“Breakfast,” said Kerrigan, beside him, holding out his tin for a second spoon. “The breakfast of champions.”

The sergeant with the jar looked at him, and gave him a second spoon, and went on.

---

They sat on the fire step in a row and waited.

There was nothing else to do. Everything had been done. The bridges were along the back of the wall, behind them, on the boards, one for every two men, the duckboards on their empty petrol tins; the rifles were cleaned and loaded; the bayonets were fixed, Rosalie, the Parigot’s girl, sticking up over their heads in a row in the dark, catching the flashes of the guns. They had their masks in their satchels on their chests and their two days’ rations in their haversacks and their two hundred rounds in their pouches and their water bottles full, and their dry socks on, morning and night, by order, in writing, by name. Lucien had his tunic buttoned over the pocket with the letters in it and the medal. He could feel it, the small hard oval, against his chest, every time he breathed.

The guns went on.

They were the sky. That was all there was to say about them. Fifty-nine hours, then sixty, then seventy; Lucien had stopped counting. They were the whole sky, from end to end, flickering, white and red, and the sound of them was the whole world, so that you did not hear it any more, the way you did not hear the lake under the floor of the front room at night; you only knew it was there by what happened in your chest. And over the French wall, a quarter of a mile off across the water, and over the dunes, where the Casino was, the shells landed. You could see them. Not one at a time. A low continuous wall of fire and earth and water going up, along the whole of the French line, from inland to the sea, all night, all at once, with the dark coming down between.

Somewhere under that, twenty feet down, in the concrete, there was Pépère. And the Parigot, and Marius, and the men who had gone along the back of the French wall at three in the morning in the dark, with the clink of things. He thought of them lying in the bunks with their hands over their ears.

He thought of ma Marthe and the pig.

He took the thought and put it away. He put it in the pocket of his tunic with the letters and buttoned it.

---

Lieutenant Whitcomb came along the boards at seven.

He came from the second traverse, from the dugout where Major Corliss was, slowly, along the fire step, stopping at each man. He did not say much. He said each man’s name. Haskell. Weintraub. Kerrigan. As if he were taking a roll. As if he wanted to say each one once, out loud, in his own voice, before.

His face was white. It was not shining. It had not shone for a week. It was a boy’s face, very white in the flashes of the guns, with the trench coat with the belt done up and the pistol on its lanyard and the whistle on its cord round his neck; and he came along the fire step saying names, and the third platoon said sir back, one after another, and it was like the responses at Mass.

He stopped at Lucien.

“Prudhomme,” he said.

“Sir.”

Lieutenant Whitcomb looked at him for a moment, in the flicker. Behind him, a yard back, at his elbow, there was Sergeant Cutter.

“Sergeant Cutter tells me you’ll go first,” said the lieutenant. “In front. On the road.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the platoon will follow you. In file. Where you walk. Not in waves.” He said it carefully, as if he were reading it off a page, and it was a page he had written himself. “Not behind the barrage. Behind you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Whitcomb was quiet for a moment.

“That isn’t the order,” he said. “The order is two waves, close behind the barrage. I’ve been told it twice. In writing.” He looked at the wall. “The rest of C Company will go in waves. I can’t change that. I’ve asked.” He looked back at Lucien. “This platoon will go in file. Behind you. On my responsibility. I’ve told the major. He didn’t say no.” He stopped. “He didn’t say anything.”

Sergeant Cutter, at his elbow, did not move.

“Find it for us, Prudhomme,” said Lieutenant Whitcomb.

He said it very simply. He did not say it like an officer. He said it the way Ti-Paul Bazile had said I can crew the boat on the gallery in May, with his cap in his hands and his face red, to a man who would not let him.

“Yes, sir,” said Lucien.

The lieutenant nodded. He went on along the fire step. Lindgren. Prudhomme. Gallagher. Sergeant Cutter went after him, at his elbow, a yard back, and as he went past Lucien he looked down at Lucien’s boots, on the fire step, in the dark, for a moment; and then up, at his face, and nodded, once; and went on.

---

Ed Haskell was at the end of the row, by the board over the hole.

He was sitting on the fire step where his brother had sat in the mornings with his mess tin and his little round mirror, with his back against the traverse and his rifle between his knees and the bayonet up over his head, and he was not doing anything. He had not said anything all night. He had not said anything, much, in five weeks. He sat with his back against the traverse and his eyes open and looked at the hole full of water with the iron standing up out of it, and the board across it.

Sol Weintraub, beside him, had his hand on his arm.

Not holding it. Just on it. The way Harlan’s had been on Lucien’s on the platform in the pump house, when Marius said nous autres. Sol Weintraub, from New York, with his spectacles, who was very polite and had tried to say Lucien’s name four times on the first night and apologised, sat on the fire step beside Ed Haskell with his hand on his arm and looked straight ahead and did not say anything either.

Kerrigan, on Lucien’s other side, saw Lucien looking.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Kerrigan, very low, out of the side of his mouth, the way they had talked in the ranks at Smoky Hill. “When this is over. When we’re back in Kansas, or wherever. I’m going to find that corporal with the voice like a mule. And I’m going to buy him a drink. A big one.” He was quiet for a moment. “Because he gave out the letters by hand. He didn’t have to.”

“Yes.”

“And then I’m going to hit him,” said Kerrigan. “For the megaphone.”

Lucien laughed. He did not mean to. It came out of him in the dark on the fire step, short, and Kerrigan grinned, his red face lit white by the guns, and the bruise from Boston long gone, and Lucien thought it was the best joke he had ever heard in his life.

---

At half past seven the guns stopped.

All of them. At once. As if somebody had shut a door.

Nobody on the fire step moved. The silence came down over the line like water closing over a stone, and it was worse than the guns. Much worse. After seventy-three hours of the whole sky going, the silence was a thing you could hear: a high thin ringing, in your own ears, from inside, going on and on; and under it, very small, very far off, things you had forgotten. The water lapping at the foot of the wall. A man along the line coughing. A bird, somewhere, inland, over the drowned fields, one bird, calling, as if it had been waiting three days to be heard.

And, a long way off, behind the dunes, the sea.

Lucien sat on the fire step and listened to it.

It was getting light. He saw it start. Over the drowned fields, from somewhere behind them, a long way back, the way it came up over the lake at half past six on a winter morning: not light, at first, only less dark; the black going to grey, very slowly, so slowly you could not see it happen, only that it had. The water in front of the wall coming up out of the dark, flat, grey, with the wire in it and the stumps of the hedges in their rows and the old dead horse. The French wall, a quarter of a mile off, coming up out of the dark too, black, low, broken now, ragged along its whole length, with holes in it, after three days, like a row of bad teeth. The pump house, in the middle of the water, two walls and half a third.

And the colour of the water.

He saw it before anything else. Before the wire, before the French wall. The drowned road. In the grey light, going away from the gap in the wire in front of him towards the pump house, crooked, lighter, a yard wide, the mud close under it; much clearer than in the dark. Much clearer than at dusk. He had only ever seen it in the dark and at dusk, and now in the first grey light of the morning it lay out in front of him on the water like a path in grass, so plain that he could not believe the whole of C Company could not see it.

They could not. He knew they could not. He looked along the fire step at them, sitting in their row with their bayonets up, looking out over the top at the grey water and the French wall, and they were looking at the French wall. Nobody was looking at the water. Nobody had ever looked at the water. Only Sergeant Hodge, once, in the dusk, with his arm in it to the elbow.

Your road, Sergeant Hodge had said.

---

At seven forty the lieutenant stood up.

Along the line, all the way along, the officers were standing up, on the fire steps, with their watches in their hands; Lucien could see them in the grey, a long way off in both directions, inland to the elbow and seaward to the dunes, the officers of the whole of the Second Kansas, standing up behind the wall in their trench coats with their watches and their whistles, like the men at the edge of the meadow with the red flags.

The third platoon stood up.

They stood on the fire step with their bridges behind them and their rifles in their hands, and the sergeants went along behind them saying things very low, the same things, steady, now, steady, wait for the whistle, steady. Lucien stood at the left end, by the board over the hole, at the place where the gap in their own wire was, with Harlan behind him and Sergeant Cutter behind Harlan and the lieutenant behind Sergeant Cutter, which was not where an officer went, and the lieutenant knew it.

Harlan put his hand on Lucien’s shoulder. Flat. And left it there.

“Breathe out, Lucky,” he said.

Lucien breathed out.

He thought about the boat.

He did it the way Achille had said, on purpose, deliberately, the way you put your hand on a gunwale in the dark. The Marie-Ange at the end of the wharf at four in the morning, tied under the gallery, with the lantern on the post making a small yellow room in the black and the water slapping at the pilings. His father bent over the gunwale in his old canvas coat, with his hand flat on it, saying something to her, very low. Allons, ma belle. Allons, asteur. And the mast going up into the dark and the brown sail the colour of strong coffee, and the oars, and the mouth of the bayou, and the lake opening out in front of them, black and then grey and then the colour of milk.

Allons, asteur.

He had it in his pocket. In capitals. Going uphill.

At seven forty-five the lieutenant’s whistle went, and every whistle along the line went with it, inland and seaward, all at once, a thin high shrilling from end to end of the Second Kansas like a flock of birds getting up off a marsh; and behind them, behind the dunes, in the fields, everywhere, four hundred guns opened together, and the whole world came down in front of them on the water.

---

He went over the wall.

He did not remember deciding to. He was on the fire step with Harlan’s hand on his shoulder and then he was on the top of the wall, on the sandbags, on his knees, with his rifle, and the whole of the drowned country in front of him was gone. It had gone up. Two hundred yards out, in front of the pump house, across the whole width of the water, there was a wall of it going up into the air, water and mud and smoke and fire, white and brown and black, roaring, a hundred feet high, going up and coming down and going up again, from inland to the dunes, the whole length of the line; and it was theirs. It was the barrage. It was the red flags.

He went down the far side of the wall into the water.

Through the gap in the wire. He knew where it was. His body knew. And then the water, cold, to the knee, the mud under it, and he was on the road, and he stood up.

He stood up. That was the strangest thing of all. In five weeks he had never once stood up on the drowned road; he had gone along it on his belly in the dark with the water over his back and Harlan’s hand on his ankle. Now he stood up on it, in the grey light, and walked.

It was easy. That was the second strangest thing. It was easy to see. It lay out in front of him on the water, lighter, crooked, a yard wide, plain as a path in grass, and he walked on it, at a walk, with his rifle held across his chest, the water to his knees, the mud firm under it, the way he had walked the shell beach at the end of the camps after a blow looking for what had come in; and behind him, without turning, he could feel the platoon coming. Harlan. Sergeant Cutter. The lieutenant. Kerrigan. One after another, in file, down off the wall and through the gap and onto the road, behind him, where he walked.

To either side of him the rest of C Company was going into the water in waves.

He saw them. He could not help it. On both sides, inland and seaward, long lines of men coming over the wall and down into the water and going forward, in two waves, close behind the barrage, the way they had in the meadow behind the town; and going into the water to the knees, and the thighs, and the waist, and keeping going, with the bridges, falling, getting up. The barrage was two hundred yards in front of them. Then two hundred and fifty. It was walking away from them across the water, a hundred yards every four minutes, roaring, and they could not keep up, and they were trying to.

Laisse le barrage s’en aller, Achille had said. Il va s’en aller de toute façon.

He let it go.

He walked on the road. He came to the bend, where the bridge over the drain had been, a hundred yards out, and the road went round, crooked, to one side of where the map said, and he went round with it, and the platoon came round behind him; and he heard, a little way off, to the side, where the map said the road went straight, a shout, and a splash, and another, and did not look.

---

The French wall did not fire.

He waited for it. Everybody did. He walked on the road with his rifle across his chest and his eyes on the French wall, three hundred yards off, two hundred and fifty, black and broken and ragged in the grey light behind the barrage, and waited for it to fire; for the rifles to come over the top of it and the flashes to start along it, the way they had in the meadow when the major with the watch said imagine the enemy is firing; and it did not. The barrage reached it, and went over it, and on, roaring, beyond it, towards the ground behind; and the French wall stood there in the grey light with the smoke coming off it and the holes in it, and nothing moved on it at all.

It was empty.

On laisse la muraille, the Parigot had said.

Along the lines on either side of him, in the water, men began to shout. He could hear it, over the barrage, very thin: a cheer. They had seen it. The wall was empty. Nobody was firing. The French had gone, or were dead, or were hiding in the bottom of their wall with their heads down, the way the lieutenant had said they would be when the barrage lifted; and the long lines of C Company in the water to the waist on either side of the road began to go faster, and to cheer, a thin high sound like boys on a football field, going forward through the water towards the empty wall with their bayonets up.

Seven minutes.

He was counting them without knowing he was, the way he had counted the eleven seconds at Smoky Hill. From the whistle to the bend to the pump house, which he could see now, close, a hundred yards off, two walls and half a third standing up out of the water with the rusted engine inside; seven minutes in which the barrage walked away from them and the French wall did not fire and C Company of the Second Kansas went across the drowned fields of Flanders in the grey light of a December morning cheering.

He did not cheer. He walked on the road. He thought of Pépère at one in the morning, in his deep slow voice, without any bitterness at all.

Les cow-boys arriveront dans une muraille vide.

Behind him, Harlan said something. He did not hear what.

And then, from the side, from inland, from a long way off along the French wall, from the elbow, where it bent, there was a sound.

It was not loud. That was the thing he would not have believed. After the barrage, after seventy-three hours of the whole sky, it was not loud at all. It was a small sound. A dry, quick, even sound, like a stick drawn very fast along a picket fence; like a woman’s sewing machine on a gallery on the lake shore on a summer evening; going on, and on, and on, steadily, from the side, from the elbow, along the water.

He knew what it was. He had never heard one. He knew.

Une à chaque coin, the Parigot had said. Au coude, là-bas.

The water on the inland side of him went up in a line of little white spouts, very fast, one after another, coming towards him along the surface from the side, from inland, like a row of fish rising, like rain beginning on the lake; and the long line of men in the water beyond the road, inland, the first wave of C Company, cheering, going forward, stopped cheering.