This is an ongoing serialization of an unfinished novel I wrote and Carson illustrated in 2001. New chapters will be published every Friday at 10 a.m. Read: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, and Chapter Six.
Author’s note: it is *hilarious* to me that we ever thought this thing we were writing was “ostensibly for children.” Read on.
Chapter Seven
For as long as Ruthie could remember, the occasional sound of mortar fire and rifle cracks had provided a constant soundtrack to her life at the chateau, each explosion endowed with a certain dull, sleepy quality as a consequence of its distance from her immediate surroundings. She could not help but notice, however, that as she rode along, sitting comfortably on a small, threadbare cushion atop the soldiers’ tank, those same explosive sounds grew more and more defined with every hillock they crossed, every stand of pine trees they overcame. Evening was falling quickly, and Ruthie could make out the first glimmerings of stars peaking through the dark blue of the sky. The wind was picking up, blowing dust-like flurries of snow across the front of the tank and Ruthie was forced to grip her small coat tightly to her throat. Off in the distance, barely illuminated by the last light of the sun on the horizon, she could make out little puffs of light exploding against the sky; in her mind, she counted silently the distance between each explosion and the sound of mortar fire. As they traveled, the distance grew shorter and shorter. When night finally fell completely, it was by these transient bursts of light that Ruthie made out the silhouettes of the tents of the soldier’s camp.
“Nearly there,” said Franklin, shifting uncomfortably in his perch beside Ruthie. His rifle, which had for the duration of the trip been held tightly in his hands, was now slung over his shoulder. Out of the darkness, a ragged group of soldiers, marching in a disorganized formation, appeared suddenly, their wet, wrinkled fatigues spattered with mud. A few of them saluted weakly at the returning platoon which Ruthie accompanied. “That must be the nine o’clock watch,” Franklin said, saluting feebly in return. The explosions in the distance were now becoming exponentially louder and Ruthie gripped her kit bag close to her chest. Rows of khaki green tents began to appear on either side of the moving tank, their sides plastered with globs of wet, gray mud. Small campfires crackled beyond each of the tent’s door flaps, giving ugly illumination to the huddled, poncho-shrouded figures before them. The figures watched silently as the tank’s entourage navigated through the encampment and Ruthie, against better judgment, smiled at them, though she received no smile in return. The ground below the tank was torn and rutted by the tracks of many wheels and the seemingly endless rows of tents slowly gave way to deep, muddy trenches as the tank finally wheeled to a stop. The soldiers that accompanied the tank on its trip back into the camp, once boisterous and giddy, now dropped into quiet reverie as they fell away from the tank and marched back to their waiting tents.
“Welcome to camp,” said Franklin, leaping from atop the tank to the muddy ground below.
Ruthie shivered as she accepted Franklin’s hand and clumsily vaulted from the tank turret. From the ground, she continued surveying her surroundings, frowning deeply. What she could see, from her feet to the distant horizon, was similarly cast in a great gray wash in the dying light of the evening, interrupted intermittently by flashes of khaki green as troops of soldiers appeared from the trenches and shuffled by. Presently, a mortar shell exploded above the muddy scene, revealing in shocking brightness a labyrinthine complex of trenches extending well beyond Ruthie’s line of vision, before the landscape dwindled again into the gray-black bracken of mud and nightfall.
“This way,” said Franklin, waving to Ruthie as he descended a rickety ladder into one of the trenches. Ruthie followed him wordlessly, struck dumb by the overwhelming bleakness of the landscape. She stepped down on to trench floor, feeling her foot sink several inches into the mud.
“Mind you don’t lose your shoes,” Franklin said, noting her look of disgust, “It tends to get a little muddy down here.”
The trench was lined with a series of pipes and hoses, leading on into the distance. Several soldiers sat huddled in the lee of the gully walls, some blowing into clutched fists, some reading tattered books by the dim light of a kerosene lamp. They scarcely noted the presence of Franklin and Ruthie.
Franklin grabbed Ruthie’s hand and led her down the passage way, saying “Stay close by me. I don’t want you to get lost in here.”
“Where are we going?” asked Ruthie, carefully curling her toes with every step so as not to let her shoes slip from her feet as they walked.
“I want to show you something,” Franklin said.
Watching Franklin intrepidly navigate the seemingly endless complex of passages that made up the camp’s trenches was astounding to Ruthie, who could not distinguish the difference between one corridor from another and often felt as if they were inevitably going to end up where they began. After several twists and turns through the passageways, Franklin finally came to a dead end: a room, inhabited by an unfortunate, mud covered soldier who was in the process of heating a tin of sardines over the feeble flames of several book pages burning. Behind the soldier sat a massive cannon, set atop several wooden crates, its barrel precariously propped above the trench wall.
“Aye! Lieutenant!” cried the soldier, dropping his sardine tin at the sight of his unexpected visitors.
“As you were, private,” said Franklin, saluting, “I just wanted to show a new recruit around. Why don’t you run off and get some rest. We’ll man this post for the evening.”
“Oh, yes sir!” said the private, ecstatic. He grabbed the sardine tin and, pulling his dirty wet poncho around his shoulders, ran off down the corridor.
“We’ll man this post?” asked Ruthie, incredulously, the sound of mortar fire intensifying in her ears, “I don’t know if I’m quite ready for that sort of thing.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” said Franklin, sitting down on the small wooden bench the private had been previously occupying. “If you’re to be a soldier, you’ll have to learn how to work one these things,” he said, slapping the side of the cannon like the rump of a mule. He smiled widely, his cheeks revealing deep dimples amidst his ruddy complexion. “Have a seat.”
Ruthie smiled shyly and sat down beside the lieutenant on the bench.
“Now, a soldier’s life is pretty simple, actually. Don’t let anybody tell you differently,” said Franklin, adopting a proffesorial tone, “All those stories of glory and valor are typically pretty exaggerated. Going over the top and all that. It’s a bunch of hogwash. No, what a soldier does around here is sit around and read books and write letters to his sweetheart.” He paused, and smiled at Ruthie. “Or her sweetheart. Do you have a sweetheart?”
Ruthie blushed and looked down at her feet, now immersed to the laces in mud. “No, I suppose I don’t.”
“Well, you’ll have to do something about that,” Franklin said, “Every soldier, no matter what rank, need must have a sweetheart to pine over from the trenches. And I think with a face like yours, you’ll have no trouble in that department.” Here he winked at her before continuing: “No, aside from reading and writing love letters, all you will have to do is occasionally fire a shot at the enemy, when you see one.”
Ruthie’s mood changed immediately. “Oh. Right. Killing people.”
“Don’t get discouraged. It’s really not that difficult.” Franklin shifted in his seat and leaned an arm against the cannon. “Think of it this way: you really don’t know these people. All they will be to you is figures in your crosshairs. To you, they lead insignificant lives, unencumbered by the trial and tribulations you know to be the flesh of living, following blindly the orders of their betters. And if there’s nothing else you understand,” he said, looking Ruthie directly in the eye, “Understand that they will shoot you if you do not shoot them first. This is the one universal truth of a soldier’s life.”
Ruthie nodded gravely.
“Okay,” continued Franklin, “What I want you to do is take a peek over the top of the trench and see if you can’t see one of the enemy.”
“Now?” exclaimed Ruthie, surprised at the quick clip at which her tutorial was moving.
“Yes, now,” said Franklin, handing her a battered pair of binoculars, “I believe there’s a pesky squadron over that far hillock that’s been giving us trouble all night. Let’s see if we can’t give them something to squeal about, huh?” Franklin smiled again handsomely, revealing those same dimples, and Ruthie melted a little.
“Okay,” she said, taking the binoculars, and, standing atop the bench, she peered over the trench wall.
“What do you see?” asked Franklin, now set squarely behind the cannon.
“I see a lot of mud,” said Ruthie, straining her eyes, “A lump. . .off in the distance. I see some campfires.”
“Do you see any bodies?”
“No, I don’t think so. I see. . .I see some. . .euuuugh,” cried Ruthie. Instinctively, her hands flew to her mouth in a gesture of disgust, consequently letting the binoculars fall to the ground below.
“What is it?” asked Franklin, picking up the binoculars and wiping them clean of mud on his jacket.
“There’s bits of people . . .there’s body parts everywhere,” said Ruthie, her stomach doing flips. She began to wish she hadn’t eaten that second sandwich. “It’s disgusting!”
“Oh, yes,” said Franklin, dramatically blasé. “Unfortunately, this is something that you might have to get used to. You see, the violent and gruesome scattering of human remains is something that occurs on a daily, nay, minute by minute basis around here and really is quite the norm in a war situation. It is not uncommon for a soldier to be wading about, knee deep in human detritus and filth, his trousers spattered and stained by the gore that has adhered itself to his shins like so many barnacles on a ship’s hull, hacking through limbs and bayoneting aside disembodied skulls, still half covered by the bloody film of rotting human flesh, the stench so offending his nostrils that it is all he can do to keep from vomiting down his fatigues.”
“Eeeugh,” said Ruthie.
“Yes. But mostly we just blow them up from far away, like this.” Franklin then leaned over the cannon, lit a match, and held it to its wick. The wick took spark and within seconds, an ear-shattering explosion rocked the foxhole in which the two figures sat. Immediately, Franklin leapt to the edge of the trench and peered over, the binoculars at his eyes.
“Got one, by gum!” he shouted.
Ruthie likewise peeked over the edge. “How can you tell?” she asked, perplexed. Truly, the horizon was so littered with the orphaned limbs of so many human bodies that she was barely able to discern the ground from the human remnants that littered it.
“I saw him go. He was like an exploding pumpkin, that one.” He flashed her a smile, his eyes widened with excitement. “By God, it makes a man feel really alive!” He then reached out for her hand. “Why don’t you give it a shot?”
Ruthie, still reeling a bit from the shock of it all, demurred. “I don’t know about this. It seems a bit soon for me to be doing this sort of thing. If I’m to be a proper recruit, shouldn’t I be swabbing out lavatories and cleaning rifles or something? Why, I haven’t even gone through basic training yet.”
“Hogwash!” said Franklin, “This is the best training you can get. Besides, most of our ‘recruits’ are a bunch of corn-fed yokels and daydreaming boarding school truants who have never held a pellet gun. None of them actually volunteered per se—they were all somewhat forcefully liberated from their pedantic, bourgeois pursuits in order to join the ranks.”
Whether it was the painfully facetious way that Franklin emphasized the word “recruits,” or the sight of the maniacal grin that had been plastered on his face since the first cannon fire that made Ruthie feel tremendously uneasy, she couldn’t really say, but she was certainly beginning to feel disheartened by the prospect of leading a soldier’s life. His hand, however, was still outstretched as she pondered, and, unsure of what else to do, she reluctantly obliged and stepped up to the cannon.
“What do I do?” she asked, forcing a smile.
“First, you’ll want to try to find a target. Not very difficult, considering how many of those bastards are around here.”
Ruthie took the binoculars again from the eager lieutenant and scanned the horizon beyond the foxhole. A stiff, black silhouette suddenly appeared against the smoke-filled sky, the shadow of a rifle jutting up from its shoulder. “Okay. I think I have one.” Ruthie said, handing the binoculars back to Franklin.
“Now, simply take aim.”
Ruthie grabbed the barrel of the cannon carefully, still warm from the previous shot, and pointed it in the general direction of the distant figure. A shutter ran down her spine with the thought that she was going to erase this poor, silent apparition from existence. She suddenly began envisioning the entire linear movement of what she imagined to be that particular soldier’s life: his dusty, pastoral childhood, the passionate tumult of his teens, the sadness of his bereft parents at his enlistment, the heartfelt letters received and carried in his breast pocket, the weeping of his absent sweetheart and the earnest promises of his safe return. All this, truncated, came sweeping through Ruthie’s mind as she lowered the cannon to meet its line of fire. “Okay. I guess,” she said.
“Now, take this match here—mind you don’t burn yourself—and set it to the wick.”
Ruthie did as she was instructed and immediately the cannon reported violently, sending a ball of steel and spark from the end of the barrel toward the figure in the distance. Ruthie waited breathlessly, recoiling from the retort of the gun, until she saw the missile meet its target in an ugly, brief explosion of steel and flesh. The anonymous soldier, once so proudly erect, fragmented comically into a mealy shower of arms and legs, which fell noiselessly to the mud below. Ruthie, horrified, winced and gritted her teeth. When a few seconds had passed, she let out a breath.
“Nice shot, private,” said Franklin, encouragingly.
“That was horrible,” she said, dropping to the bench beside Franklin, “Really horrible.”
“Don’t worry,” said Franklin, putting his arm around Ruthie’s shoulder, “You’ll get used to it. Not a day goes by that one soldier or another feels the pang of being a licensed murderer, but in the end, you have to realize that it’s for the good of the cause, the fight against oppression and tyranny and all that. It may be saddening to know that one human life has been disintegrated, but remember, that that is also one less fascist sociopath on this earth who would just as soon turn you into a propaganda-spewing automaton as treat you to a nice afternoon of cocoa and cribbage.”
“I suppose so,” was Ruthie’s unenthused reply.
“Here, this might lift your spirits,” Franklin said as he reached into his rucksack and removed a long, brown bottle. He uncorked it and, lifting it to his lips, drew heavily from its contents. He then handed it to Ruthie. “Nothing like a few hard-earned slugs from the bottle after a melee. Gives you courage.”
Ruthie took the bottle from Franklin and turned it around in her hands, eyeing the sloshing liquid within. She had always watched her father drink the stuff—he often took a snifter of brandy at night, right before he sent Ruthie to bed, and would stand, his red fez cap set cocked on his pate, gazing rhapsodically into the fire. She had once tasted the liquor when her father was absent and found it the most patently reviling stuff she had ever tasted. Now, with her father gone and her being newly orphaned, she decided that her palette must have changed along with the bizarre and unexpected change in her circumstances and risked a strong, stiff drink of the liquor.
It was absolutely disgusting. She choked back a gasp as the liquid rolled around in her mouth, her throat insistently refusing to open up and swallow the stuff. Finally, after feeling her tongue begin to burn and her forehead begin to perspire, she forced the liquor down and began gasping desperately for air. Franklin laughed heartily at this and grabbed the bottle back. “That’s something you’ll have to get used to as well,” he said. He took another slug off the bottle and handed it back to Ruthie. She took it reluctantly and began studying the bottle, biding her time before she was to take another swallow.
“How long have you been a soldier, Franklin?” asked Ruthie, turning the bottle around in her hands.
“For far too long, I suppose,” said Franklin, “My father was a soldier, you know. I don’t really remember him very well—he seemed to be always gone on some mission or other. It was my duty then to watch after my family, I being the eldest, and I had the rare misfortune of watching my mother slowly lose her mind from worry that he would never return. He would come home after months of being away and make all sorts of promises to us that he would give up the soldiering life, become a father again, but then there was always a messenger who would appear after a few days with new instructions for my father and he would be gone again in a flash. This went on for several years until finally, he stopped coming home at all. A corporal came to our door and explained to my mother that he had been killed valiantly rescuing a group of crippled monks from a bombed out monastery and that he received an honorable burial on the battle field, replete with elegizing generals and trumpeters playing and locals wailing and all that. But I never really believed the news. My mother broke down completely after that and threw herself into the well, leaving me with my two sisters to look after. The family broke apart; I joined the army and my sisters left for St. Petersburg to try their luck. It wasn’t until years later that I found out what had really happened to my father. Apparently, he had been abducted by a band of bandits and had, after a few weeks of imprisonment, consented to join their raggle-taggle clan, quickly climbing in the ranks until he became the leader of his own bandit band. Apparently, he gained quite a name for himself. His luck was cut short, though, when he ran into a farmer at a brothel in Dresden from whom he had stolen a tractor. Abducted by this farmer’s ranch hands (who happened to be enjoying a weekend away from the plantation), he was fed, alive, through a combine and his remains were used to fertilize a field of alfalfa.”
“Wow,” said Ruthie, having just finished her second nip off the bottle. The liquor was becoming surprisingly tasty. “So whatever happened to your sisters?” She waited for him to speak, readying herself for another tug at the bottle.
“I get letters from time to time. Apparently, they left for St. Petersburg, intent on becoming seamstresses, both of them being quite handy with a needle and thread. They had a hard go of it, though, and both ended up working in a factory in the outskirts of town. There, they struggled for several long years, tortured by a grueling work schedule and the attentions of a misogynistic boss (by whom my little sister Liza had a child), before the factory closed down and they were put out on the street with nary a penny to their names. The letters have become less frequent with time, but I understand that they now have taken to prostitution. The eldest, Ekaterina, is suffering from consumption and Liza is trying to provide for them both, though she herself is racked with such a wide array of venereal diseases that she has lost all her teeth and one of her legs. I would try to send them money, but my lieutenant’s salary these days is barely enough to keep myself in food and drink. Indeed, it would seem that my family is a cursed lot.”
“I guess so,” said Ruthie, now well into her fourth swig from the bottle. Fully conscious of the depravity of the Franklin’s story, Ruthie was suddenly feeling very happy and she smiled widely at the lieutenant. “You know, I think I’m starting to like being a soldier.”
Franklin smiled, and took the bottle back from Ruthie. “Careful with this stuff,” he said, “It’ll knock you flat before you know it.” He took a long drink and handed it back. “Someday, I suppose I’ll have enough money to return to St. Petersburg, buy my sisters out of their unholy slavery, and we’ll go back to our home city and begin again. This is my dream.”
Ruthie, having taken another drink, hiccuped and said, “Let’s drink to that.”
Franklin smiled and, taking the bottle, raised it in the air. “Here’s to finding our families.”
“Yes,” said Ruthie, suddenly finding herself unable to pronounce the word correctly. Franklin then handed her the bottle and she drank again. “Here’s to finding our families,” she repeated.
“And here’s. . .” said Franklin, taking the bottle again, “To the brotherhood—or sisterhood, rather—of a soldier’s life!”
“Yes!” said Ruthie, grabbing the bottle forcibly, “Here’s to the soldier’s life!” She drank again, though this time, as she felt the warm liquid hitting her stomach, she felt the ground sway perceptibly under her feet. Franklin must have noticed her falter, as he quickly grabbed the bottle from her hands, which was in danger of falling to the floor, and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“You’ve had a long day,” he said, “Perhaps you should lay down. Try to get some rest. You’ll have another long day tomorrow, I can assure you.”
It was true; Ruthie was beginning to feel pretty sleepy. She slowly laid her head down on Franklin’s lap and looked up at him. “Will you tell me a story before I go to sleep?”
“Certainly,” said Franklin, putting the bottle down on the bench, “I’ll tell you a story my father told me when I was a child. He said it was a true story.”
“Tell me,” said Ruthie.
The wind blew softly through the foxhole, momentarily taking precedence over the mortar blasts and the cannon fires of the chaotic battle front soundscape and Ruthie nestled her head into the khaki of Lieutenant Franklin’s legs, listening to his voice sound quietly over the din:
“Once there was a woman whose man was a sea captain. And the day came when the admiralty called this sea captain to war. So the woman wept and cried and begged her man not to go to war, to stay with her there in their cottage by the sea. But he would not listen to her and the next day he assembled his men and loaded up his ship and, saying a brief word of farewell, sailed away. Now the woman was so beside herself with worry that she began to knit a cap for her husband, so that when she saw him again, he would have a hat to keep himself warm on those cold, lonely nights at sea. And when she had finished the cap and he had still not come home, she began knitting another cap. And still, when that cap had been finished, he had not come home, so she began knitting another. Days and days and months and months went by and the sea captain did not return but the woman continued knitting cap after cap until the sitting room was filled with knitted caps. But still she kept knitting, until their bedroom and their kitchen was filled with caps, all pumpkin orange and seawater blue, and still her man did not return. And then finally, after years and years had passed, she knitted so many knitted caps, of so many different, beautiful colors, that the entire cottage by the sea was filled to the brim with knitted caps and when the corporals came to tell her that her sea captain had been lost at sea, it took them two days to burrow through all the hats to find her on the sitting room floor, dead, with knitting needles in her hand, drowned in all the hats.”
But Ruthie did not hear the last sentence of the story, as she had fallen into a deep slumber.
And this is what she dreamt:
illustration
Author’s note: I remember part of the plan for the book was for the illustrations to tell some of the story; Carson was going to draw Ruthie’s dream in a kind of graphic novel form. Alas, she never got around to it. You’ll have to supply your own version of Ruthie’s dream.