Hanging on

1

Sitting at the desk in his office in the HQ building, Major Kelly dipped his fingers into a tin bowl full of mud, smeared the thick slop on his head. It was cool and soft, but it stank. He massaged the gunk into his scalp in lazy circles, then scooped more of it from the bowl and repeated the process until his head was capped in a hardening layer of wet, black soil.

Major Kelly had been plagued by a widow's peak ever since he was a teen-ager and he had never once thought that it was in any way becoming to him. His mother said it was becoming to him and that it made him look sophisticated. So far as Major Kelly was concerned, it only made him look old and bald. He didn't want to be old or bald, and so he was always anxious to find some medication or process which would restore the hair around his widow's peak and make him look young again. He had tried massages and salves, greases and tonics, internal and external vitamins, less sex, more sex, less sleep, more sleep, sleeping with a bed cap, sleeping without a bed cap, washing his hair every day, washing it only twice a month, eating lots of carrots, eating lots of eggs, beer shampoos, standing on his head, prayer. Nothing worked. Now, Sergeant Coombs had mentioned the mud treatment, and Major Kelly was trying that.

He was desperate. Ever since they'd been dropped behind German lines, his hair had been falling out faster than it usually did, and his widow's peak was widening and deepening. In fact, he now had a widow's promontory, flanked by two enormous bays of baldness. If he didn't stop the erosion soon, he'd have a widow's island, encircled by gleaming skin, and then no one would love him any more. No one loved a bald man. Was Mussolini loved?

Ever since General Blade had called on the wireless more than a day ago and Major Kelly had learned of the possibility of the Panzer division moving his way, his hair had been falling out at an unprecedented and alarming rate of speed, like snow or autumn leaves. It fell out in clumps, in several twisted strands at a time, fell out when he combed his hair, when he scratched his scalp, when he turned his head too fast, when he nodded. He was even afraid to think, for fear his hair would fall out.

Major Kelly couldn't tolerate the prospect of baldness. He had known too many bald men — his Uncle Milton, a grade school teacher named Coolidge, a high school chemistry teacher, Father Boyle, and Sergeant Masterson in basic training — and he knew how cruel well-haired men could be when they talked about the baldies behind their backs. Chrome dome, skinhead, glass bean, bone head… The nasty names were limitless. Major Kelly refused to be known as Chrome Dome or anything similar. He'd rather die first.

Of course, he might. The odds on his living through this were damn slight, after all. If that Panzer division, complete with supply trucks and ack-ack guns and infantrymen, moved toward the bridge and stayed by it overnight, then Major Kelly wouldn't live long enough to have to endure any cruel nicknames. And that was exactly why his hair was falling out. He was worrying too much about the Panzer division, and his hair was falling out — and it was all a vicious circle.

He put more mud on his head. It stank.

He was still putting mud on his head ten minutes later when Nurse Pullit wobbled into his quarters wearing Lily Kain's high-heeled white pumps. Nurse Pullit was also wearing what was intended to be a beatific smile — which didn't look as good on the nurse as the pumps did. In fact, Major Kelly thought the smile was a leer, and he was immediately defensive.

“You've got to come to the hospital!” Pullit squealed. Pullit's red bandanna had slipped back, revealing a still predominately male hairline. “It's a real miracle! A real miracle!”

“What is?” Major Kelly asked, peering into his shaving mirror to see how stupid he looked with mud all over his head. He looked very stupid.

“Kowalski!” Nurse Pullit said, oblivious of the mud.

“Is he dead?” Kelly asked.

Pullit frowned, looking at Kelly's face in the mirror. “I said it was a real miracle!”

“Then he is dead?”

“No,” Pullit said. “He's come around, and he's talking!”

Major Kelly looked up from the mirror, turned, and stared at Nurse Pullit. “Your bandanna's askew.”

Pullit reached up and tugged it into place and smiled sweetly. Pullit could look exceptionally sweet, at times. “What about Kowalski?”

“He's talking, is he? What's he saying?”

Nurse Pullit pulled on a bee-stung lip. “We're not exactly sure about that. It's — it's strange. Tooley says you ought to come and hear it right away.”

“He does, huh?”

“Yes, sir. He sent me to fetch you.”

Reluctantly, Kelly got to his feet. A drop of warm mud slid down his forehead, down the length of his nose and hung there like a decoration. He followed Nurse Pullit to the hospital bunker, across the dried grass and dusty clearing, staying ten paces behind where he could admire the excellent slimness of the nurse's legs. The white pumps had done well by those legs. All that could improve on them now was a pair of stockings. Perhaps he could bribe the pilot of the supply plane and have some nylons flown in for the nurse. Pullit would appreciate…

He suddenly remembered who Nurse Pullit was: Private Pullit. He decided that, if in a moment of weakness he ever ordered and received those nylons, the best thing to do would be to use a pair of them to strangle himself.

In the hospital bunker where the three dim bulbs cast eerie shadows on the rough plaster walls, where the centipedes ran and water dripped steadily in the black corners, Kowalski was sitting up in bed, his eyes opened wide, his mouth loose. Liverwright, currently the only other patient in the bunker, was standing at the foot of the mad Pole's bed, holding his swollen hip, having temporarily forgotten his own pain, engrossed in the miracle of Kowalski. Lily Kain and Private Tooley flanked the Pole, bent towards him as if he were a wise man whose every word was priceless.

“Sir,” Tooley said, looking sideways at Kelly, “you've got mud all over your head.”

“I know,” Kelly said. “I know.” He looked down at the Pole. “What's this bag of shit been saying?” As he spoke, he scanned the ceiling for any nearby centipedes. He did not know why he feared centipedes so much, but he did. Maybe he was afraid that, if they fell on his head, they would kick around and tear out even more of his hair.

Obligingly, though he only addressed the air, Kowalski began to speak. Spittle collected at the corners or his mouth, dribbled down his chin. His lips were like two large, inflated rubber tubes glistening with oil. “Stuka bomber… in darkness… a power glide… concealed approach… people on the bridge… many people… bridge… ”

Then Kowalski was silent once more. No one else dared speak, and when the silence was thick enough to cut, Kowalski cut it with a fart.

Lily looked up, lips puckered. Her freckles stood out like flecks of cinnamon on the soft golden tissue of a fresh-baked roll. Kelly wanted to eat her up. “What does he mean?” she asked.

“It almost sounds like a. warning,” Tooley said. “As if he were just looking into the future, as if he wants to warn us.”

“He's raving,” Kelly said. “It's nothing more than that.” He felt a new trickle of mud run down his nose, and he wiped it away as inconspicuously as possible.

“But if he's really—”

“First of all, no one ever goes out on the bridge,” Kelly said. “You know that. So there couldn't be, as he said, many people on the bridge. The reason no one ever goes out on the bridge is because everyone's afraid of getting bombed.” As Tooley tried to speak, the major waved him down and went on: “And the Stukas wouldn't make a special night mission of it. They always come in the daylight.”

“If you're sure,” Tooley said.

“You can take my word for it,” Kelly said.

Kowalski fell back against his pillows, returning to his dumb trance, and crapped on the sheets.

2

On that night's edition of the Blade and Slade Show, the general told them they would probably come through this war without a single casualty in their unit — aside, of course, from Kowalski. And you never could tell when Kowalski might spontaneously reject the sliver of steel in his brain, thereby insuring complete recovery. That was what the general expected, he confided in Major Kelly: spontaneous rejection. He told the major that people were all the time spontaneously rejecting arthritis and cancer and other dread diseases. There were hundreds upon thousands of cases of spontaneous rejection in medical histories. Why shouldn't Kowalski, then, spontaneously reject his brain damage? If he could see his way clear in this matter, the general said, Kowalski would be doing the general a great service. He would, by spontaneously rejecting that sliver of steel, be vindicating the general's policy in this matter. With Kowalski cured in such a fashion, rescued from certain death, then none of them would die behind enemy lines, because this would be a good omen, a sign, a portent, an assurance. Again, the general promised the major that none of them would die in this war, for they were his favorite men, his own.

“Yes, sir,” Major Kelly said.

“I love you guys,” General Blade said, choking a little on the line — either because it was a bald-faced lie, or because he actually had deceived himself into thinking he loved them.

“Yes, sir,” Major Kelly said.

“Kelly, if that Panzer division actually gets sent your way. if you have to fight those Nazi bastards, I want you to know one important thing. The men who die fighting to keep that bridge erect will not be dying uselessly. They will be dying for a cause, for Truth and Freedom. They will all be long remembered in the American history books and, no doubt, in the hearts of all mankind.”

When Major Kelly delicately observed the discrepancy between the general's earlier assurances and his second speech about dying for a cause, the general said the Blade and Slade Show was over for another night.

They were one hundred and eighty-six miles behind German lines.

3

Several hours later, Major Kelly crawled up from the bottom to the top of the hospital bunker steps and looked out at the few unlighted buildings, the silent machines, and the flat black open spaces of the camp. “It's okay,” he whispered. “There's no one around.”

Lily appeared at his side, crouching on the steps. She was wearing her made-over fatigues, no shoes. “Are you sure?”

Kelly grimaced. “I'm sure.”

“Are you really sure?”

“For Christ's sake,” he said, feeling like a fool, “why don't you look for yourself?”

Lily moved up one more step and peeked out at the camp. It was dark and quiet, oddly like a motion-picture studio lot when the filming was done for the day. She tilted her head to one side, listening for footsteps, conversation, laughter… Nothing. “I guess it's okay.”

“Of course it is.”

“We better go before someone comes along.”

Kelly took her hand, helped her up, and ran with her along the riverbank toward the slope by the bridge.

When Major Kelly had the urge to put it to Lily Kain— and, naturally, when Lily Kain was of the mind to have it put to her — he could not satisfy his desires in his own quarters. Major Kelly's quarters were in the HQ building, because the major had decided early to set a good example for his men by refusing to sleep in the bunker by the trees. The men did not know that the major's rejection of the bunker was more paranoid in nature than it was heroic. He feared being buried alive in the bunkers while he slept more than he feared being blasted to bits if the Germans should drop a bomb on the HQ structure. Therefore, he slept well and still managed to look like a hero to the men. Unfortunately for the major's love life, Sergeant Coombs and Lieutenant Slade also made their bunks in the HQ building, separated from the major's quarters by nothing more than a series of blankets strung on wire. If Kelly and Lily attempted to satisfy their desires in Kelly's quarters, Lieutenant Slade was certain to report them to General Blade, who might very well order the major castrated. Or worse. After all, this was fornication. Besides, the general wanted all the major's energies to be put into the maintenance of the bridge. Kelly also feared that Sergeant Coombs, in a position to watch and listen, might discover that the major was less of a cocksman than himself, and would thereafter be more difficult to discipline.

Lily, of course, slept in the hospital bunker, as did Nurse Pullit and Private Tooley. Kelly had considered the possibilities of the hospital as a temporary den of iniquity. If they pilfered the drug supply, they could put Liverwright or any other patient to sleep, and they wouldn't have to worry about Kowalski observing their love rites. Private Tooley would most likely be generous enough to take a long walk if Kelly threatened to beat his head in. After all, Tooley was a pacifist. But that left Nurse Pullit, and Kelly didn't think for a minute that Nurse Pullit would want to stay. He was afraid Nurse Pullit would say, “Put it to me, too!”

Despite Pullit's genuinely lovely gams, Kelly didn't want to put it to anyone but Lily Kain.

The other bunker was always in use by men who slept there. The rec room, which was the mess hall, which was half of the rickety HQ building, was never without a few men playing cards, bullshitting, or arguing. That left the great out-of-doors.

When they had first searched for a secluded place for their amorous activities, Major Kelly and Lily Kain had chosen the slopes of the ravine beneath the bridge. It seemed certain to be the most private place available. No one ever went near the bridge, because no one could ever be sure when the krauts would bomb it again. Once the bridge had been rebuilt, it was taboo. And, though making love under the bridge meant that they courted instant death from a Stuka attack, they went back again and again. What was instant death, after all, compared to a brief moment of orgasmic pleasure?

Besides, they only went under the bridge at night, when the Stukas never attacked, when they could forget their fear and indulge their senses. Sex, Kelly had long ago concluded, was essential if a man were to hang on. If a man couldn't fuck now and then, he'd start taking chances, lose his grip. You can't hang on if your grip is gone.

Sex was as important to survival as was cowardice.

That night, two days after the Panzers, Major Kelly and Lily Kain went down the green slopes — which were actually mostly brown and burnt and all muddied by the tracks of dozers and other equipment, but which appeared nonetheless Elysian to them in their rutting heat — went under the bridge to a patch of generally undisturbed grass by the edge of the oiled, burbling, light-flecked river. There, with little time for the niceties of civilized romance, the major undressed her and lowered her to the grass, preparatory to putting it to her.

Overhead, on the bridge floor, there were sounds like autumn leaves rustled by the wind — or like a gentle rain pattering out of the open heavens. It was good background music for their performance.

Now and then during the day when the major caught a glimpse of Lily Kain in her dancer's costume as she was on her way to or from the mess hall, he would comment to Lieutenant Beame, his right-hand man, on the fine structure of the woman. He would say, under his breath because he actually was breathless, “She has one of the finest bodies I've ever seen!”

Beame was a virgin, though he thought no one knew he was. He believed that his best defense against discovery and ridicule was cool indifference, since he thought the world's greatest lovers were really rather coolly indifferent except when they were in bed. Beame would say, “Oh, well, a body is a body.”

“Tits,” Major Kelly would say. “She has the finest pair of tits I've ever seen, big and round and pointing right at the sky.”

“Tits are tits,” Beame would say.

“And those legs! Sleek, trim — longest legs I've ever seen!”

And Beame would say, “Legs are legs.”

One day when he felt like teasing Beame, Kelly had gone his usual horny litany, then added, “She has the sexiest thumbs I've ever seen!”

And Beame had said, “Thumbs are thumbs.” Then he had realized what he'd said. He blushed. “Yeah,” he had added, “she does have nice thumbs.”

And she had a nice body, too. It was all breasts and hips and firm buttocks and legs. Very little waist. Right now, Major Kelly didn't care about her mind or her personality, her religion, politics, or even about her moderately bad breath. He only cared about her wonderful body. He lay beside her, kissing her forehead, her eyes, her pert nose, then her lips, sucking on her tongue until he thought he might swallow it. He took handfuls of her jugs which she offered him with a graceful arching of her back, and he pondered the engineering miracle of those breasts. They were engineering miracles. He should know: he was an engineer. He tested those jugs for solidity and texture, squeezing and releasing them, massaging them with his fingertips and palms. He swept his hands up their undersides to gauge their thrust, took the big hard nipples between thumb and forefinger and gently turned them this way and that, making them even larger. A miracle. Two miracles, perfectly matched. He caressed and bounced and licked those miracles until he felt he was ready to explode with an infusion of divine power.

Overhead, the pattering sound ceased and was replaced by the soughing of the wind.

Major Kelly let the wind help build the atmosphere of sweet sensuality, and when he felt that it had been built high enough, he took off his own fatigues. He seemed to be moving through syrup, undressing so slowly that he would never finally be unfettered and able to achieve penetration. A man on a slow-motion film, he peeled off his shirt and, an eternity later, pulled off his shoes and then his trousers. It was, he thought, like that old mathematical riddle: if a chair is ten feet from the wall, and if you keep moving it half the distance to the wall, how many moves will it take until the chair is touching the wall? The answer, of course, is that the chair will never be touching the wall. It will get closer and closer through an infinite number of moves but can never, theoretically, be finally there. Right now, as he pulled off his shorts, Kelly thought that he was the chair while Lily was the wall. They were never going to get together.

And then he was nude and between her legs. He lifted her buttocks, another pair of engineering miracles, and guided himself into her, all the way, moaning in the back of his throat as she moaned in the back of hers.

The gentle breezes above were punctuated by hard, regular gulping sounds, like something thick and wet being dropped down a pipe, sounds that did not belong here in the midst of romance. As these gulping noises increased, grew louder and more frequent and finally dominated the night, Major Kelly broke his embrace of Lily Kain with a wet, mournful sucking noise of rudely disengaged organs. He got to his feet and, utterly unashamed of his own nakedness, walked out of the shadow of the bridge floor, and looked up at the twenty or thirty men who were lying on the bridge and hanging over the edge watching the action.

“We can forget the patter of feet,” Kelly said, “and pretend it's only leaves rustling.”

None of the men replied. They just hung up there, wide-eyed, looking down at him and stealing quick glances at Lily Kain.

“And we have agreed to imagine that the breathing is the sigh of the wind.” He spread his arms imploringly. “But I can't deal with that sound. Is someone up there eating peanuts?”

Lieutenant Beame was eating peanuts. He grinned sheepishly.

Half a dozen of the other men, without saying a word, picked him up, took him to the end of the bridge, and beat the shit out of him. When they came back and stretched out again, the major returned to Lily Kain.

“Idiots,” she said.

“It was only the leaves,” he said.

“Morons.”

“Gentle breezes.”

“I suppose,” she said.

Lily had been sitting up, waiting for him to come back. Now, she lay down again, parted her thighs which were another pair of engineering miracles.

That was all Kelly needed to put him back in the mood. He walked forward on his knees, slipped his hands under her, lifted her, and got into her again as smoothly as a greased piston into a firing chamber. He thrust several times as she moved up against him, and when they were firmly joined, he rolled her over, holding her against him, until he was lying on his back and she had the dominant position.

Above them, many breezes worked across the bridge floor.

Lily began to bounce up and down on him. It was the most miraculous thing Kelly had ever seen. Her two big jugs worked round and round, slapped together, rose and fell, jiggled, quivered, swung, bounced. In the wash of yellow moonlight, those gyrating globes became more than twin miracles. They transcended the mere miraculous. They were a divine experience, a fundamental spiritual vision that stunned him and left him gasping.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” one of the breezes said, above.

Kelly ignored it. He raised his head and nipped at her jugs, took part of one of them between his lips and nearly suffocated himself in flesh.

Lily was climbing toward her brink, sliding up and down on him, her head thrown back, mouth open. She made little sounds in her throat. Little obscene sounds.

As he felt her reaching her crest, Kelly thrust up, jamming hard into her, trying to finish with her. He knew that he would never again endure such incredible pleasure. He was sure of it. Of course, he was sure of it every time that he had her, was convinced in every instance that this was the ultimate and final joy; but now, his certainty was nonetheless complete for its familiarity. He could not conceive of anything to match this. He could not imagine another bout of this wet, hot, soft, nibbling, licking, jiggling, sucking, bouncing, sliding, slipping, thrusting, exploding excitement. Wide-eyed and breathless at the sight of her, he rushed both of them toward completion. “Soon, soon, soon, soon,” he mumbled ardently into her right breast.

But it was just not their night. As Major Kelly felt himself swept toward the brink, as he redoubled his efforts so that he might reach his end with hers, the Stukas bombed the bridge.

4

The hospital bunker was full of wounded men. Nurse Pullit was holding cold compresses against the back of Private Angelli's neck, while Angelli bent forward and let his nose drip blood into a rag. Tooley was treating a man for minor burns of the right arm, and a dozen men waited for treatment. All ten cots were occupied, and four men sat on the damp floor with their backs against the wall, cradling their arms or legs or whatever was hit.

Fortunately, the attack had first been directed against the farside pier. The men lying on the bridge floor staring over the edge at Major Kelly and Lily Kain on the grass below had time to jump up and run before, on a second pass, the Stukas placed two hundred-pounders exactly where they had been. Their wounds, for the most part, were minor: scrapes, cuts, weeping lesions, nosebleeds from the concussion, second-degree burns from being too near the outward-roiling flash of an explosion, twisted ankles, pulled muscles.

“You should all be thankful you're alive!” Major Kelly told them as he paced back and forth in the crowded bunker. He was trying to keep up company morale. He recognized that company morale was constantly hitting new lows, and he felt he had to do something to check this dangerous slide into utter dejection, depression, and apathy. The only problem was that his own heart wasn't in it. His morale kept hitting new lows, too, and he just could not think of any way to improve things. Except to harangue the men. “You should be thankful you're alive!” he repeated, grinning fiercely to show them how thankful he was.

The wounded men stared at him. Soot-smeared, blood-dappled, eyes white and wide, hair greasy and twisted in knots, clothes filthy and tattered, they did not seem cheered at all. One of them, when Kelly's back was turned, muttered, “Shallow philosophy.” But that was the only response.

“What's a nosebleed?” Kelly asked them. “What's a little cut on the arm or a burn?” He waited for an answer. When no one said anything, he answered himself: “It's nothing! Nothing at all. The important thing is to be alive!”

One of the men started crying.

Kelly tried to talk some more, but the crying drowned him out. He walked down the row to the fifth cot on the left. “Liverwright? What is the matter, Liverwright?”

Liverwright was sitting on the edge of the cot, leaning to one side to take the weight off his swollen hip. Tears streamed down his face, and his mouth quivered unprettily.

“Liverwright? What is it?”

“The important thing is to be alive, just like you told us,” the wounded man said.

Kelly smiled uncertainly. “Yes. That's right.”

“But I'm dying,” Liverwright said. He was crying harder than ever, sobbing, his voice distorted as he tried to cry and breathe and talk at the same time.

“You aren't dying,” Kelly said. He didn't sound convincing.

“Yes, I am,” Liverwright said. “I'm dying, and I can't even die in peace. Now, all these men are moved in here. Everyone's rushing around. There's too much noise. And you're standing there shouting at us like — like General Blade.”

Liverwright had been the radio operator on alternate nights, before he took the piece of steel in the hip. He knew Blade. Even so, Major Kelly thought Liverwright must be delirious. “Me? Like Blade?”

Liverwright sniffed and wiped halfheartedly at his running nose. “Here we are in the worst trouble of our lives— and you're telling us we never had it so good. Half of us are wounded — and you're telling us it's nothing. Most of us will never get home again — and you're telling us we should take it easy, relax, count our blessings.” Liverwright blew his nose without benefit of handkerchief, wiped his sticky fingers on his shirt. “I always thought you were different. I thought you weren't like other officers. But down deep, you have the potential.”

Kelly was stunned by the accusations. All he could say was, “What potential?”

“To be another Blade,” Liverwright said. “You could be another General Blade.” He began to bawl again. His whole body shook, and he rocked back and forth on the edge of the cot, nearly tipping it over.

“Me?” Kelly asked, incredulous.

“I'm dying, and you're talking at me like General Blade. I can't take it. I can't.”

Suddenly, not really aware of what he was doing, Kelly reached down and took hold of Liverwright's shirt. He lifted the wounded man clear off his cot, held him up as if he were an airy ball of rags. He pulled Liverwright against him, until only an inch or two separated their faces. “Don't you ever say anything like that.” His voice was tight, issued through clenched teeth. His face was red, and he was sweating more than the heat could account for. “Don't you ever call me anything like that. Blade, the rest of them like Blade, on both sides of this fucking war, aren't a whole hell of a lot different. They're the throw-backs, the brutes, the cavemen. Don't you goddamned ever call me something like that!” He dropped Liverwright back on his cot, without regard for the man's hip.

Liverwright blew his nose again, wiped at his eyes. “Am I dying?” he asked.

“Probably,” Kelly said. “We all are, bit by bit.”

Liverwright smiled slightly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Nauseous, ashamed of himself, Major Kelly went up front where Lily and Nurse Pullit were treating the last of the wounded.

Amazingly enough, the major and Lily Kain had escaped injury, though they had been directly under the bridge when the Stukas glided in. Lily told Nurse Pullit all about their escape as the two of them treated the wounded. “He was lying there, flat on his back, shoved right up in me. You know?”

Nurse Pullit giggled.

“Even if the Stukas hadn't glided in, we probably wouldn't have heard them any sooner. Anyway, when the first bombs hit the far side of the bridge, he got his hands and feet under him and started off.”

“With you on top?” Nurse Pullit asked.

Lily explained how it was. Kelly, his back still parallel to the earth, Lily still screwed on tight, had pushed up and scuttled along the riverbank like a crab. Two minutes later, when they were a quarter of a mile downriver from the bridge, he was still lodged firmly inside of her, and she had climaxed at least half a dozen times. It had been like riding a horse with a dildo strapped to the saddle. She wanted to try it again, Lily told Nurse Pullit, but she thought it might be best to wait until the bridge was likely to be bombed again. After all, the fear of death was what had given the major the energy to perform these acrobatics.

When Kelly came up front, after the confrontation with Liverwright, Nurse Pullit said, “I heard all about it!”

“It wasn't like she said,” Kelly told the nurse.

“He doesn't remember,” Lily said.

She and Nurse Pullit giggled.

So far as Kelly was concerned, Lily's story was fantasy. One moment, he was under the bridge watching it come apart over him; the next moment, he was a quarter of a mile downriver, by the water's edge. He couldn't figure out how he got there, and he refused to believe the grotesque picture Lily painted. He chose, instead, to believe that he had pretended to be out from under the bridge— and therefore was out from under it, just as Danny Dew had pretended to be white.

“Just like riding a horse with a dildo,” Lily Kain said, shaking her head and laughing.

Major Kelly couldn't take any more of that. He turned away from them and walked to the far end of the bunker. As he passed Liverwright, he said, “You're dying.” Liverwright seemed pleased by his honesty.

Private Tooley, who was stationed at that end of the bunker, washing out scrapes and cuts which his new batch of patients had sustained, said, “If you'd heeded Kowalski's warning, you wouldn't have been under the bridge in the first place.”

“Who in the hell would ever think Kowalski knew what he was talking about?” Major Kelly asked, turning to look at the mad Pole who lay quietly in his cot, staring at nothing. “Kowalski is a zombie, a bag of shit. He can't even feed himself any more. How in the hell was I to know that this dumb bag of shit would be right?”

Private Tooley daubed some grit out of a sliced forearm, then sent the man to the front of the bunker where Lily and Nurse Pullit were dispensing antiseptics and applying bandages. He said, “I wish you wouldn't call him names like that.”

“What should I call him, then?”

“Private Kowalski,” Private Tooley said. “That's his name.”

Major Kelly shook his head. “No. That isn't the Private Kowalski that I knew. The Private Kowalski that I knew always laughed a lot. Has this bag of shit laughed recently?”

“No, but—”

“The Private Kowalski I knew liked to play cards and used to bitch a blue streak when he lost. Has this man tried to get up a poker game since he was brought here, or has he cursed you out?”

“Of course not, but—”

“Then this isn't Private Kowalski,” Major Kelly said. “This is nothing more than a bag of shit. The sooner you accept that, the better you're going to feel. A bag of shit doesn't die. You don't have to be sorry for it.”

“Next time,” Tooley said, trying to change the subject, “you better listen to him.”

“Next time, let's hope there's more to his ravings — like dates and times. What good is an oracle who can't give dates and times?”

Private Kowalski belched.

“There!” Tooley said.

“There what?”

“He's improving.”

“How so?”

“He belched.”

“The only thing a belch is an improvement over is a fart,” Major Kelly said.

“But it is an improvement.”

Major Kelly shook his head. His head felt as if it were going to fall off. He could not allow that. His headache was bad enough now. “You will never learn, Tooley. Things don't get better. They just don't. They stay the same way, or they get worse. Kowalski is a bag of crap, and he'll only get worse. If you want to hang on, accept that. Otherwise, you'll never make it.”

“I'll make it.”

Kowalski belched. Then he farted. Then he relieved himself on the clean sheets.

“A relapse,” Tooley said. “But only temporary.”

Major Kelly got out of there. He turned so fast he stumbled into Private Angelli who was no longer suffering from a bloody nose and who was now seeking treatment for his abraded shoulder. He weaved past Angelli, did not even look at Liverwright. At the front of the bunker, Lily Kain and Nurse Pullit were still giggling, so he avoided them as well. He pushed through the bunker door and collided with Sergeant Coombs.

“I was looking for you,” Coombs said. He was huffing like a bull, and his eyes were maniacally alight. It was obvious that the sergeant would have liked to add something to his statement, something like: “I was looking for you, Diarrhea Head.” However, he restrained himself.

That surprised Major Kelly, because he was not accustomed to the sergeant restraining himself. Apparently, even Coombs could be affected by disaster and the brief but fierce presence of death.

“And I was coming to find you,” the major said. “I want the men on the job fast. That wreckage has to be cleared, salvage made, and the reconstruction begun by dawn. I want you to check the men in the hospital and be sure there's no malingering; if a man's fit to work, I want him out there working. We're not going to dawdle around this time. If there is really going to be a Panzer division sent this way, I don't want them to show up and find a pile of ruins where the bridge should be. I don't want them angry, and I don't want them having to linger on this side of the gorge. Is this clear?”

“It's clear,” Sergeant Coombs said. He thought: you coward. He wanted to stand and fight the krauts for a change, even if they would be putting handguns against tanks. “Something I want to show you, first,” he said, cryptically, turning and stomping up the steps.

Major Kelly followed him topside where the fire in the brush around the bridge had not yet been fully doused and strange orange lights played on the darkness, adding an unmistakable Halloween feeling. They walked east along the river to the latrines, which had taken a direct hit from a misplaced two-hundred-pounder. Most of the structure was shredded, with the undamaged walls leaning precariously.

“Was anyone inside?” Major Kelly asked. The nausea he had experienced in the hospital bunker returned to him now.

“No,” Coombs said. “But look at this!” He led Kelly to the line of earth-moving machines which were parked in the vicinity of the outhouses.

“They don't look damaged to me,” Kelly said.

“None of the machines were touched,” Coombs said.

“Well, then?”

“But they were covered with crap,” Coombs said. He held up his big hissing Coleman lantern as if searching for an honest man. “What a cleaning-up job this is going to be. Christ!”

On closer examination, employing his olfactory sense as well as his eyes, the major saw that what appeared to be mud was not actually mud at all. It really did look like mud from a distance, great gouts of mud sprayed across the windscreens, splashed liberally on the mighty steel flanks, packed around the controls, crusted in the deep tread of the oversized tires. But it was not mud. The sergeant was right about one thing: if Major Kelly had ever seen shit, this was it.

Coombs lowered his lantern and said, “Now let's hear the bit about Aesop, about how all of this is just a fairy tale, grand in color but modest in design.”

Major Kelly said nothing.

“Well?” Coombs asked. He held the lantern higher, to give them a better view of the crap-covered vehicles. “What kind of fairy tales, I'd like to know, are full of crap?”

“All of them,” Kelly said, “I thought you understood that.”

5

The following day was the hottest they had endured since they'd been dropped behind enemy lines. The thermometer registered over ninety degrees. The sun was high, hard, and merciless, baking the earth and the men who moved upon it. The whispering trees were quiet now, lifeless, rubbery growths that threw warm shadows into the gorge and across the fringes of the camp. The river continued to flow, but it was syrupy, a flood of brown molasses surging sluggishly over rocks and between the high banks.

In the gorge, Kelly's men worked despite the heat, wrestling with the steel beams that never wanted to go where they were supposed to go. The men cursed the beams, each other, the sun, the still air, Germans, and being born.

Private Vito Angelli, whose bloody nose Nurse Pullit had treated last night, worked on the near side, wielding a pegging mallet against the newly placed bridge plates, tightening connections which Private Joe Bob Wilson tempered with a gasoline hand torch. Angelli slammed the mallet in a slow, easy rhythm designed to accomplish the most work with the least effort. Each blow rang across the camp like the tolling of a flat bell, punctuating the other men's curses.

At the other end of the bridge, Privates Hoskins and Malzberg were working hard to line up and secure the couplings between the farside pier and its cantilever arm. They were in charge of a dozen men, and they were the only two in the detail with preliminary engineering training, but they were hefting the wooden wedges and driving the hammers as hard as anyone. This surprised the men working with them, for no one had ever seen Hoskins or Malzberg work. Between them, the two men controlled all the gambling in Kelly's camp: poker games, blackjack, craps, bets on the hour of the next Stuka attack, penny pitching, everything. Hoskins and Malzberg were natural con men. They were the only men in the entire unit who had thought to bring cards and dice along when the unit had been flown behind German lines, and both of them acted as if this were the only contribution they should have to make for the rest of the war. However, now that Kelly had warned them about the possibility of more Panzers coming this way, they were as desperate as the other men to get the bridge repaired. If the bridge weren't in shape when the Panzers came, and if the Nazis had to stay by the bridge all night and everyone in Kelly's camp was killed, that would put quite a crimp in their rake-off from the games.

In the gorge, the cement mixers rattled as some of the strongest men in camp turned them by hand. Saws scraped through damaged planking, cutting new boards for braces and flooring. Stoically, the men worked. Fearfully, too.

As Major Kelly paraded back and forth from one crisis point to another, he saw that, as usual, the most valuable worker was Danny Dew whose expertise with the big D-7 dozer made the whole thing possible. Because of Dew, the unit put the bridge in place in a record, for them, twenty-six hours.

As Coombs often said, “Even if he's a nigger, and he is, he can handle that machine like a man should handle a woman.”

Sergeant Coombs was always the first to admit that a black man could be good at something. He didn't like them, he said, but he was willing to give them their due. Once when some of the men went to Eisenhower, the village, to a dance that Maurice had arranged, all the young village girls wanted to dance with Danny Dew. “All them niggers,” Coombs observed, “have a natural rhythm.” Later, when the men discovered some of the village girls were not averse to a well-presented proposition, Danny Dew seemed always to be disappearing with one or another. “That's a darkie,” Sergeant Coombs told Slade. “They have puds like elephant trunks and always ready. It's a primitive trait that's been refined out of white men.” When the men played Softball, they all wanted Danny Dew on their team, because he was the best player. “Natural for his kind,” Coombs said. “They're all good at sports, because of their primitive muscles. Our primitive muscles atrophied when our brains got bigger, but them niggers still have primitive muscles.” Even when Danny Dew won a pot in poker, Coombs looked for hereditary explanations. “Never play poker with a nigger,” he told Slade. “That natural rhythm of theirs tells them when good luck's coming, when to bet heavy and when light. They have a natural instinct for gambling. A nigger can have a fantastic hand and not show it. Natural poker faces. Too dumb to get excited about the right things.”

But the thing Danny Dew did best was operate the D-7 dozer. He could plow up ruins, stack them neatly, and not bend the pieces which had survived the bombing and might be used again. All the hot day, he sat high in his dozer seat, shirtless, ebony muscles gleaming with sweat He waved at Kelly now and then, and he talked constantly to the D-7 as if it were alive.

The machine was his virility symbol.

Kelly was fascinated by Danny Dew's relationship with the dozer, because he'd never thought a black man needed a virility symbol. White men bought fast cars or owned guns, built huge and phallic homes and amassed fortunes. But a colored man needed no symbol of his manhood. His manhood was formidable enough to speak for itself. Yet here was Danny Dew with a virility symbol he could not do without. In the morning, he washed the dozer in the river, oiled it, greased and polished it. In the afternoon, he raced it back and forth across the field for fifteen minutes, because he was afraid it would come to feel unwanted unless it was used every day. In the evening, he slept on its wide tread, on a bundle of folded blankets, forsaking his cot in the main bunker. At odd moments, he amorously caressed the wheel, the clutches, the seat, the backrest…

If you asked — few ever did — he explained in detail about the hydraulic steering clutches, the forward reverse lever which allowed you to drive in all speeds front and back, the booster springs… the stressed blade… the four mammoth cylinders!

One night when they had been drinking, Kelly asked Danny Dew why he needed a virility symbol. And Dew said, “Because of my balls.”

“Your balls?” Kelly had asked.

“My testicles,” Danny said glumly.

“They're gone?”

“No. I've got them.”

“Well?”

“They're not normal. My testicles are abnormal.”

“Abnormal?” Kelly asked, incredulous.

Danny took a drink of whiskey. “It's been the curse of my life, Kelly. I feel silly. And feeling silly makes me feel inadequate — and so I need the dozer.”

Kelly hesitated, drank. Then, “What's wrong with your — balls?”

“They're silly.”

Major Kelly's face felt fuzzy. He wiped at imaginary cobwebs. “Yes, but how are they silly?”

Danny was exasperated. He waved his arm for emphasis. “Silly! They just are, that's all. They're laughable.”

“Has anyone ever laughed at them?” Kelly asked.

“Everybody who's seen them.” Danny looked suicidal.

“Even the girls in Eisenhower?” Kelly asked, recalling how easily Danny had gotten the girls there.

“Even them.” Danny took a drink and let whiskey run out the corner of his mouth. He didn't seem to know he was losing it.

Kelly poured another drink. He was only using the whiskey as an excuse not to ask what, finally, he had to ask. “Could I see your funny testicles?” When Danny sighed, Kelly said, “I don't want to touch them.”

“Sure, sure,” Danny said, as resigned as a weak woman submitting to a powerful rapist.

“You don't think this is an odd request?” Kelly asked anxiously.

“No,” Dew said. “Everyone wants to see them when they hear how damn funny they are.” He stood, unzipped his pants with considerable fumbling effort, reached inside, cupped himself, and revealed his cock and balls.

“What's funny about them?” Kelly asked.

“Come on,” Danny said. “I can see you want to laugh. I'm used to it.”

“They're perfectly ordinary,” Kelly said. He looked closely, because he wanted a good laugh, needed a good laugh, but he couldn't find anything funny about them.

“Don't be sarcastic. Go ahead and laugh, but don't make it any worse.”

“Really, Dan, there isn't—”

“Shit,” Danny Dew said. “You're smirking behind that frown. You think you'll make me let down my defenses— and then you'll laugh at me. I know you sadists. Come on, now. Everyone laughs. No one's ever sympathetic.”

“Nothing to be sympathetic about,” Kelly said. “You have ordinary—”

“There!” Dew said, pointing and grinning. “That's better! Laugh. Go on, don't worry, laugh your head off. That's the way!”

Kelly looked around the blanket-walled room. Only the two of them were there, and neither of them was laughing. “I'm not laughing,” he said.

“That's it!” Danny went on. He slapped the table, grinning and nodding his head. “Laugh it up. I told you they were funny!”

“But—”

“Well, now, try to be decent about it,” Danny Dew said, no longer grinning. “You don't have to laugh that hard. You'll make yourself sick if you keep it up, for Christ' sake. Now, stop it!”

“Who's laughing?” Kelly wanted to know. He wasn't laughing at all.

“Stop it, you bastard!” Danny said. “Come on, Kelly!” He put his balls away and zipped his fly, stepped back against the blanket. “I'm going to leave if you don't stop. You ought to be ashamed. Do you laugh at cripples and blind men?” He lifted the blanket flap. “You get hold of yourself. I'll expect an apology.” He left.

To the empty room, Kelly said, “But I wasn't laughing, Danny.”

It was a shame, the major thought later, that Danny Dew — who could think himself into being anyone else in the world — could not pretend himself another set of balls if he thought his own were funny. Not even Danny Dew, who could become a white man at will, not even Danny could escape everything.

So thanks to Danny Dew, the bridge was completed at two o'clock in the morning, twenty-six hours after the unit set to work on it. The last of the men staggered out of the ravine like the dead returning from hell. They had worked a sweltering day and a muggy night, and they could hardly see where they were going. Most of them trudged back to the main bunker, but no one wanted to sleep underground. They fell down in the grass and looked at each other and mumbled about the heat and fell asleep. A few men could not sleep, at first. They had been driven to the limits of their endurance, and they had come around the bend of exhaustion to a sort of manic insomnia. But in an hour, lulled by the snores of their fellows, they too slept.

A score of men went to the rec room where there was ice for cold drinks that Maurice supplied. Privates Hoskins and Malzberg were trying to start a poker game in the rec room, even though they were almost too tired to shuffle the cards. The men slumped on the benches and floor and looked at Hoskins and Malzberg as if they were insane. Actually, they were.

Hoskins sat at a scarred table talking to the men. “You worked hard,” he told them. “You deserve a little fun, an interesting game.”

Malzberg, the tallest in the unit, stood in the middle of the room and spread his arms despairingly. “We're doomed anyway,” he said, in a rumbling voice full of the sadness of ages. “We've no chance. We're all dead men. We can't afford to throw away our last precious hours of life in sleep.”

By the time he'd finished, all the men in the room had fallen asleep.

“Blackjack?” Hoskins asked.

Malzberg sat down, dwarfing the table. “Deal,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, even they were asleep.

6

“Kelly, wake up.”

The major snorted, blinked, opened his eyes and looked directly into Private Tooley's flashlight. “Turn that thing off!”

Tooley turned it off, blinding both of them. They were only inches away from each other, but it was like being sealed up in two separate cans side by side on a grocery shelf. Talking from his can, the pacifist said, “I have something to tell you.”

Kelly sat up on his cot, felt the canvas shift under him and the spindly frame twist with his weight. He smacked his lips. “What time is it?”

“Four in the morning.”

“What morning?” Kelly asked.

“I know you just got to sleep,” Tooley said. “So did I. But this is important. Kowalski just sat up in bed and warned me about another raid. He was shouting so loud he woke me.”

Kelly tried to think who Kowalski was, but he couldn't get his mind functioning. The room was too hot. His undershorts were pasted to him with sweat, and even the cot canvas was damp and slippery. “Another air attack?”

“Yes, sir,” Tooley said. “His exact words were: 'Rising sun, bombs in the trees, bridge kaput.' “ Tooley shifted as his haunches stiffened, wiped sweat out of his eyes. “Did you hear me, sir?”

Major Kelly remembered who Kowalski was. He said, “Tooley, the Germans haven't had time to learn that the bridge is back up. And if they're judging by our past record, they won't come around again for a couple of days. No informer in this unit could have passed the word to the krauts in so short a time.”

“Sir—”

Kelly kept his eyes closed, trying not to wake up any more than he had to. Besides, he was afraid that if he opened his eyes again, Tooley would flick on the flashlight and shatter his corneas. “Don't pay any attention to a bag of shit like Kowalski. Look, the rising sun is the symbol of Japan, not Germany. I don't think the Japs could have diverted a bomber to the middle of Europe just to attack our little bridge, eh? Not likely, eh? Eh? Look, Tooley, what you do, you go back to the hospital and go to sleep. And if Kowalski starts blabbing again, you smother him with a pillow.”

“But Major Kelly, I—”

“That's an order,” Kelly said.

He listened as, reluctantly, Tooley got up and lifted the blanket and went away. Then he lay there, trying to imagine that the heat was not heat at all, but a snug blanket draped across him and that he was twelve and back home and sleeping in his attic room and that it was winter and snow was falling and his blanket kept him warm, very warm, against the cold… In a few minutes, he fell asleep as the frogs and crickets, cavorting in the snow, croaked and chirruped secret messages all the way around the world to Germany.

In the morning as dawn lined the horizons, after the frogs had gone to bed and the crickets had been silenced by the growing dew, in the first orange rays of the elevating sun, Major Kelly was awakened by the shrieking approach of a bomber. A big one. Coming in low.

Kelly leaped out of bed, wearing only his damp shorts and an expression of admirably controlled terror in the face of a familiar intolerable persecution. He grabbed his service revolver from the top of the pasteboard trunk and plunged through the khaki-colored Army blanket and out the door of the HQ building.

The day was far too bright, even at dawn. The sunlight put a flat glare across the mist that lay over the camp and made the French countryside seem like a stage setting under the brutal beams of a score of huge kliegs. He raised an arm to shield his eyes, and he saw the plane. It was a B-17, highlighted by the new sun. It swooped over the camp, straight for the bridge.

“One of ours!” Slade shouted. He had stumbled out of the HQ building in the major's wake and now stood at his left side. He was, as usual, a vocal repeater of visual events.

“Why didn't I listen to Kowalski?” Kelly asked.

Slade gave him a curious look.

The B-17 let go at the bridge with two bombs that slid straight for the span's deck like Indian arrows for cavalry targets. All of this was out of place, unfitted to the peaceful morning, the slightly chilled air, and the sun like an open oven door in a country kitchen. Still, as the big plane turned up on the other side of the gorge, the bridge leaped up in a spray of steel, wood, cable, and concrete. A flash of light made the day seem less bright by comparison, and the roar of the explosion brought the sky falling down. The twisted beams, miraculous in flight, glittered prettily and fell back in a chiming heap. The flash of the explosion gave way to smoke which rolled out of the gorge and devoured the edge of the camp.

“Our own plane,” Kelly said. He was numb.

The B-17 came back, loosed six bombs. Two fell over the northeast edge of the woods, two over the open space between the main bunker and the HQ, and two over the bridge approach.

When Kelly saw the second two released, he shouted, “Christ! He's after everything!” He put his head down and ran for the hospital bunker, though he knew it was useless.

The two bombs released over the woods angled down and slammed into the earth directly between the main bunker and the HQ. The blast made Kelly scream. He glanced sideways as he ran, saw a wall of earth rising skyward and pouring across the space between the buildings like a brown wave of lava.

The second pair of bombs, which had been dropped over this now devastated area, exploded in twin balls of searing, white flame at the southwest corner of the HQ building, not far from where Kelly and Slade had been standing. Flames spewed out in all directions. The earth convulsed, showering heavy clumps of ground in all directions. Aflame, the west wall of HQ buckled inwards, then popped out again and tore loose of the other three partitions. It fell to the earth with a sound like a slammed door. The three standing walls shuddered violently.

The two bombs let loose over the bridge approach sailed toward the center of the span. They passed either side of it and exploded below, in the ravine. More flames. The ground near the gorge heaved and rolled and settled reluctantly.

Dazed men streamed out of the rec room which now had only three walls. They had been awakened by the attack, startled to see their room open around them like a packing crate, and they had yet to figure out exactly what was going on.

Major Kelly reached the head of the hospital steps and looked up at the B-17 which was circling around for another run at the camp. Far above it, in the morning sky, a trio of Allied fighter planes which acted as its escort went around in lazy little circles, waiting for big brother to finish and come back to them.

Slade hurried up, panting. His face was flushed, but he looked more excited than frightened. “What can we do?”

Kelly ran down the steps and tried the bunker door. Locked. He really hadn't expected anything else.

The B-17 came back. It roared in lower than before and let go at the HQ building again.

The missiles overshot and blew a huge chunk out of the riverbank. Shrapnel and dirt cascaded over six or seven men who had run the wrong way after coming out of the rec room.

Major Kelly thought he heard someone screaming in pain, but he could not be sure.

“We have to do something!” Slade insisted.

Major Kelly watched the bomber circle again. The damn pilot wasn't done with them. Any pilot with a grain of sense would have cut out by now; this asshole had to be some patriotic, gung-ho promotion seeker with no real sense of his own mortality.

Slade grabbed the major's arm. “Listen to me! We have to stop them, for Christ's sake!”

Kelly pushed the lieutenant away and shouted at the men who were still too dazed to get away from the HQ building. “Over here! Run, you idiots! Move! Run! Get away from there!”

Slade grabbed him again, using both hands this time and digging in hard with his fingers, molding a grip in Kelly's bare arm as if the major were made of clay. “What are you going to do? You cowardly son of a bitch, what are you going to do?”

Kelly drew back his free arm and struck Slade across the face, harder than he had ever hit a man before. When the lieutenant fell back, stunned, Kelly grabbed him with a fierceness far worse than Slade's bad been a moment ago. Kelly's eyes were so wide open they appeared on the verge of falling out; his mouth was a twisted, thin-lipped hole in his face; his nostrils flared like those of an animal. “What can I do, you fucking little creep? Did Blade give me artillery? Did Blade give me antiaircraft weapons? What am I supposed to do with nothing? Can I fight a fucking B-17 with a bulldozer and pegging mallets? Use your fucking brain, Slade!” Then he let go of him, because they were both knocked off their feet by two more explosions.

Kelly rolled to the bottom of the hospital bunker steps and smacked his head against the bunker door. Cursing, he crawled back to the top to see what had been hit.

The bridge. It made a tortured, metallic squeal the same pitch as the squeal inside Kelly's head and collapsed into the gorge with an almost practiced grace.

Slade was standing on top of the hospital bunker, holding his service revolver in both hands and shooting at the bomber. Kelly had lost his own gun somewhere, but he didn't feel like hunting it just now. He watched Slade fire all his chambers at the plane, to no effect.

While the lieutenant was reloading, the B-17 climbed skyward to join its escort, and the four United States Air Force planes streaked westward, out of sight, back toward the safety of Allied territory.

Up near the HQ building where the bombs had torn away a large piece of the riverbank, someone was screaming. It was a monotonous scream, rising and falling and rising and falling again in a predictable pattern. Kelly walked that way, though he didn't want to. He passed a smoking crater that smelled like rotten eggs, passed the charred wall of the rec room which was still smoldering a little, and he came to three men who were lying on the ground midst pieces of bomb casings, fragments of limestone, and clods of earth.

He knelt beside the first. Private Hoskins. “You okay?”

Hoskins's eyes fluttered, opened. He looked at Kelly, got it sorted out remarkably fast, reached out for support and sat up. He was twenty-eight years old, a small-town boy from upper New York State — but right now Hoskins looked a hundred, and as if he had seen everything bad there was to see. His nose was bleeding across his lips, wet ribbons of some gay disguise. Most of his clothes had been torn off by the blast. Otherwise, he seemed to be in good shape.

“Can you walk?” Kelly asked.

“I think so.”

Kelly helped him to his feet. “Go see Pullit and Kain.”

Hoskins, the gambler, nodded. He walked off toward the hospital bunker, weaving a bit, as if a pair of roulette wheels were strapped to his shoulders.

The second man lying on the ground was Private Osgood from Nashville, Tennessee. Kelly did not know him well. He would never know him well. Osgood was dead, pierced by twenty or more pieces of shrapnel, bleeding from the face and neck and chest, from the stomach and the legs, a voodoo doll that had gotten into the hands of a witch with a real grudge to settle.

Kelly walked closer to the ravine where the third man lay on his side, holding his stomach with both hands. It was Private Peter Danielson, Petey for short. He was the unit's foremost drinker and hell raiser. Kelly had reprimanded him on three separate occasions when Danielson had pissed in Sergeant Coombs's office window, all over Coombs's desk and papers.

“Petey?” Kelly asked, kneeling beside the man.

Danielson's scream died into a low sobbing, and he focused his watery eyes on the major.

“Where are you hurt?” Kelly asked.

Danielson tried to speak. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth and dribbled down his chin, thick as syrup.

“Your stomach, Petey?”

Danielson blinked and slowly nodded his head. He jerked as his bladder gave out and his trousers darkened with urine. Tears came to his eyes, fat and clear; they ran down his round cheeks and mixed with the blood on his chin.

“Can I look?” Kelly asked.

Danielson shuddered and managed to speak. “Nothing to see. Okay.” His teeth and tongue were bright with blood.

“If I could look, maybe I could keep it from hurting,” Kelly said.

Danielson started to scream again, that same monotonous ululation. His mouth was wide open, all red inside, and bloody foam bubbled at both nostrils.

Slade had come up beside Kelly while the major was talking to Petey Danielson. “What's wrong with him?”

Kelly didn't answer him. He took hold of the screaming man's hands, which were cold. He was prepared to pry Danielson's hands away from his stomach, but the wounded man surrendered with surprising weakness. Then, with nothing to hold in its place, his stomach fell away from him. It just bulged out through his shredded shirt in a shapeless, awful mass. Undigested food, blood, intestines, feces, and the walls of his stomach flopped onto the ground in a slithering, glistening mass.

Danielson screamed and screamed.

“Christ,” Slade said.

Major Kelly looked at Danielson's insides, trying to pretend them out of the way, trying to pretend Danielson back to health. He couldn't do it. He stood up, trying not to be sick. He turned to Slade in the jerky way of an automaton in a big department-store Christmas display, and he took the loaded revolver out of Slade's hand.

Danielson was curled up on himself now, trying to stuff his ruined intestines back through the neat slit the shrapnel had made in him. He was screaming and crying and apologizing to someone.

Major Kelly aimed the revolver at Danielson's chest but found that he was shaking too badly to make a good shot. He planted his feet farther apart and gripped the gun with both hands as he had seen Slade doing when the B-17 was over them. He shot Danielson four times in the chest, until the man was dead.

He gave the gun back to Slade.

He walked away, holding his hands over his ears, trying to block, out Petey Danielson's scream which he imagined he could still hear like a siren cutting across the smoking campsite.

In his quarters, Kelly put on new shorts and a dirty pair of khaki slacks. He took his bottle of Jack Daniels out of the pasteboard trunk and took several long pulls straight from the neck. Although he wouldn't have believed he could be functional so soon, though he wouldn't have thought he could push Danielson out of his mind so quickly, Kelly was ready to listen to Lieutenant Beame half an hour later when Beame came in to report on the condition of the bridge.

“Both piers are undamaged,” Beame said. “But we'll have to repair the entire floor and superstructure. All in all, not so bad.”

“We'll have to get on it right away,” Kelly said. “The Panzers must be on the way.”

Beame didn't understand.

Kelly said, “We were hit by one of our own bombers. That means the Panzer division is on its way west and the brass wants to deny it the use of this bridge.”

Beame didn't like that. “No. It can't be.”

“There's no other reason for them to risk a B-17 and its escort on such a limited target. We're all doomed.”

7

The HQ building had not been damaged, except for the fallen wall. In a few hours, even that was in place and all was as it had been in that corner of the camp. The radio room was undisturbed, and the wireless hummed menacingly.

Major Kelly wanted to call the general to order supplies and ask about the big Panzer division, but he could not do that. The wireless communications link between the camp and Blade was decidedly one-way; only the general could initiate a conversation. So far, this had been fine with Kelly. Now, however, once the men had been set to cleaning up the debris and there was nothing to do, the major's mind dwelt on too many unpleasant possibilities which a single call to the general could have confirmed or negated. Probably confirmed. The worst would happen. The B-17 had bombed the bridge because the Panzers were on their way. Still, until he got word for sure on tonight's Blade and Slade Show, Kelly would have to occupy his time in some manner that would take his mind off these other things. He decided he might as well return to the problem of the camp informer. Operation Traitor Hunt would keep him busy and, perhaps, gain him some respect from Slade and Coombs.

He sat behind a plank table-desk just inside the door of the mess hall, toying with a dagger. For the first time since they'd been dropped behind enemy lines, he was wearing his uniform. He felt it was only proper, while carrying on an interrogation, to wear his uniform and to toy with the dagger, thereby instilling a combination of respect and fear in the men he questioned, insuring their cooperation. Also, he wore his uniform because it gave him an excuse to wear a hat which covered the worst of his widening bald spots and prevented the interrogation subjects from laughing at him and making cruel jokes. The only trouble was that he perspired heavily, leaving the uniform wrinkled and streaked with sweat. And he had twice cut himself while toying with the dagger.

“Next!” Kelly called.

Lieutenant Slade opened the door and escorted the next man inside: Danny Dew, who had just taken a break from his D-7 work in the gorge. Danny sat on the hot seat, leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head and smiled. “What's the hubbub?” he asked, flashing white-white teeth.

“Wipe that smile off your face, soldier,” Major Kelly said.

But he was no good at discipline, and he knew Danny Dew too well to throw the least bit of fear into him. Danny Dew looked sideways at Slade and grinned, as if they all shared some private joke.

“That's better,” Major Kelly said, refusing to acknowledge that the smile was still there. He leaned forward on the table, pointing the dagger at Danny Dew. “Corporal Dew, have you any idea why we're questioning every man in this unit?”

Danny grinned at him. “No, Massah Kelly.”

“Because,” Major Kelly said, “there is a traitor among us, and we are going to find out who he is before he has another opportunity to report us to the German Air Force or to — any other German force.”

“Wonderful, wonderful!” Danny Dew said.

Kelly nodded. “I will tell you what I've told every man so far, Dew: I want to trust you, but I can't. For all our sakes, I've got to assume that you could be the kraut agent. There's no way I can actually find out for sure, short of torturing you, and that is impractical. Therefore, I want to say this, Dew: if you are a kraut agent, and if you don't tell me now and let me find out on my own, later, I will have you executed without trial.”

Dew smiled. “Ain't nothin' in my ole head, Massah Kelly.”

“Christ,” Kelly said. “If you insist on doing that bit, can't you at least get it right? Not 'head'—'haid'!”

“Ain't nothin' in my ole haid, Massah Kelly!”

Kelly toyed with his dagger awhile. “Execution without trial,” he said again. “But that isn't all, Dew. Before I have you killed, I'll assign you to the radio room where you will be tied to a chair and forced to listen to every one of General Blade's calls.”

Danny Dew stopped smiling.

“Furthermore,” Major Kelly said, warming to the routine again, “I will order the shortwave channels kept open at periodic intervals so that you will have to listen to other transmissions of other officers like General Blade, wherever and whenever we can locate them.”

Danny Dew looked distinctly ill. He had taken his hands from behind his head and clasped them between his knees. He was hunched forward as if he were going to be sick on the floor.

“And when you're screamingly insane, then we'll kill you.” Kelly waved the dagger to emphasize the point. “Now, are you the damned traitor, the kraut informer?”

“No, sir!” Dew said.

Kelly smiled. He softened his tone of voice and tried to look sincere. “Actually, I wouldn't turn you in, even if I learned you were a traitor. You understand that? I wouldn't interfere with your work. It's just that I want to know, you see. I'd promise not to get in the way of your traitoring, so long as you stopped trying to fool me. Do you get my meaning?”

“Yes, sir. But I'm not the traitor.”

Kelly sighed. “Dismissed.”

Shaken, wondering if he were still under suspicion, Danny Dew got up and left the interrogation room.

Lieutenant Slade brought in the next man, who wasn't a man at all. It was Lily Kain. She was wearing a skimpy, sequined dancer's costume out of which her jugs might pop at any moment. She sashayed across the interrogation room and sat down in the chair in front of Major Kelly, crossed her gorgeous legs, and folded her hands in her lap. She grinned at Kelly and licked her lips and winked.

“First,” Kelly said, “you've got to understand that this is serious business, Miss Kain!” To forcefully underline this statement, the major raised the dagger and, as he finished the sentence, drove the wicked point of it into the top of his plank table-desk. He also drove the point of it through the edge of his left hand. “That's okay,” he said. He smiled at Lily and Slade to let them see how okay it was. “This is all a fairy tale anyway, a figment of some Aesop's imagination. None of it is real.” However, the blood was real enough.

8

When General Blade called at nine o'clock that night, he listened to Kelly's report on the B-17 attack, then got right to the bad news. “The German high command has ordered those Panzers and all attendant companies westward. According to our sources, Kelly, they'll be coming your way.”

Although he had been expecting this for days, Kelly was speechless. His hands shook. He felt cold and weary. “When, sir?”

“They'll be moving out from a staging area near Stuttgart the day after tomorrow, taking as direct a land route as possible. Twice they'll leave the regular highways for shorter secondary roads that will take them through the back country where Allied reconnaissance won't be likely to spot them. That's maybe a-hundred-eighty miles from your position, as the crow flies — two hundred and sixty miles by road. Considering the size of this deployment, they'll be lucky to make your camp in four or five days. So you'll have guests in about a week, Kelly.”

The major brushed nervously at his face. “How many guests, sir?”

“Not easy to say,” Blade said. “According to our sources inside Germany, this isn't a neat division. It's an amalgam of broken Panzer brigades that escaped the disaster in Russia — and some of the new tanks fresh from Hitler's underground factories near München. There will also be a detail of SS overseers to watch that the Wehrmacht fights according to Hitler's orders. So you have maybe ninety Panzers—”

“Ninety!”

Blade went on as if he had not heard. “Approximately fifteen armored cars, ten self-propelled howitzers, four Jagd-panthers — that's the tank-hunting tank the krauts have — nine heavy-transport trucks carrying well-anchored 88-mm ack-ack guns to provide defense against air attack on the convoy. Then there are two big flatbed transports with high-range aerial searchlights to pick out targets for the 88s, forty-odd trucks carrying fifteen hundred infantrymen to secure what objectives the Panzers overwhelm, and an undisclosed number of motorcycle escorts and message men.”

“Has anyone there estimated the length of time they'll need to get across the bridge, sir? It's a narrow bridge, awfully narrow.”

“Twelve hours,” Blade said. “Or more.”

Kelly swallowed hard. “Maybe we could tear down this bridge and build a wider one before they get here. We could do it if you'd get us the materials—”

“Wouldn't do much good,” Blade said. “That convoy isn't going to drive straight through. They'll need a rest about the time they get to you. Even if the bridge were wider, they'd stay overnight.”

“Why don't we bomb the convoy, sir?” Major Kelly asked.

“It would be a high-risk proposition,” Blade said, “taking a squadron of bombers that far behind enemy lines to hit a well-guarded convoy.”

“Yes, but—”

“Command already decided to let them come ahead until they're in our territory where we have the advantage. We can take them out much easier and with fewer field casualties if they're closer to the front. Since your bridge was bombed this morning, I guess Command also decided to slow them down until a good defense can be readied. Otherwise, I can't tell you much.”

“How far behind the lines are we?” Kelly asked.

“Only one hundred and sixty-two miles, Kelly!”

“I don't suppose there's any chance that the front will have moved this far by the time the Panzers get here?”

“You never can tell,” Blade said. That meant no.

“Sir, what can we do?”

“I've given considerable thought to your problem,” Blade said. “Is it possible to use the ruse you employed with the first Panzer unit?”

“No,” Kelly said, though it pained him to say it. “That was a small force that passed in half an hour. But this division, this big convoy is going to stay the night. We'd never make them believe we were Germans, sir, especially when none of us speaks the language.” He felt hollow inside, eaten out by termites. In a moment, he'd fall down in a heap of dust. “Is it possible for us to be airlifted out of here, sir?”

“No,” Blade said. “That bridge must be kept open after the Panzers are across, so our own people can use it if the front suddenly breaks eastward.”

“If we're dead, we can't keep it open, sir.” This seemed like an inescapable truth to Kelly, an argument so sound it would knock Blade off his chair.

It didn't knock him off his chair. “I have faith in your ingenuity, Kelly,” General Blade said. “I'm sure you'll pull through this with some clever plan or other.” He cleared his throat, or perhaps he snarled at someone in his office, and he said, “Now, what supplies do you need? I think I can have them flown into you before dawn.”

Five minutes later, the Blade and Slade Show was over.

Shortly before midnight, Major Kelly sat in his quarters and put mud on his head. His heart really wasn't in the treatment tonight. If they were all going to be killed a week from now, what did it matter if he was bald or hairy? Nevertheless, he smoothed the muck all over his head. By worrying about his hair, perhaps he was making a rebuff to death. Perhaps, in this simple ceremony, he was actually taking a courageous stand. Or maybe he just didn't have the guts to face up to what was coming.

He was interrupted in the midst of these unpleasant thoughts and in the middle of his pate ministrations by Maurice and two tough-looking French kids who were about sixteen years old and deadly as sharks. His hair slicked back and glimmering in the dull light, his face shiny, grease beaded in the folds around his nose, wearing his customary baggy pants and dirty checkered shirt, smiling that dangerous smile that meant he smelled a profit, Maurice sat down on the end of Kelly's cot and said, “Bon soir!”

Kelly, sitting at his table-desk with a headful of mud, reluctantly nodded at the bootleg bottle of Jack Daniels that stood out in plain sight. When Maurice smiled for an answer, Kelly poured him a drink in a battered tin cup. Maurice tossed this off in one swallow.

“What can I do for you, Maurice?” Kelly asked, wiping his muddy left hand on a damp towel.

Maurice ignored the major's strange cap. “You have hurt your hand!” He pointed at the bandage under the mud on Kelly's left hand.

“It's nothing. A minor knife wound.”

Maurice pushed his glass forward, brushed a fat mosquito off his forehead, and raised his greasy white eyebrows in surprise. “Hand-to-hand combat, Major? I've had no report of Germans in the area, not in our backwater!”

“No Germans,” Kelly agreed.

Maurice accepted a second slug of whiskey as graciously as if it had been freely offered, but he did not drink it. He was perplexed, trying to figure out where his complex information-gathering network could have failed. “Then how do you say — mutiny?”

“No mutiny,” Kelly said.

“Who cut you, then, bon ami?”

Kelly recalled the interrogation of Lily Kain when he had run himself through, and he couldn't see how he could explain that. “I stabbed myself.”

“Suicide!” Maurice said, clutching his chest. “You musn't think it!”

“Not suicide,” Kelly said. “If I'd wanted to kill myself, I wouldn't have used a knife — and I wouldn't have stabbed my hand, Maurice.”

“Where would you have stabbed?” Maurice asked, leaning forward. He was clearly interested.

“Perhaps my neck,” Kelly said.

“Ah. Yes. Quick.”

But Kelly didn't want to talk about the knife wound any more. He couldn't explain it and, besides, the longer they sat there the more conspicuous his headful of mud seemed to become. Hoping to get rid of the Frenchman quickly, he said, “What brings you here tonight, eh?”

“Trouble,” the old man said.

The hard, young sharks with him nodded gloomily like a couple of mutes accidentally signed on for a Greek chorus.

Kelly sipped his whiskey. It tasted awful. It didn't really taste awful, he knew, but his subjective sense of taste had been badly thrown off by Maurice's sudden and unwelcome appearance.

Maurice said, “When my friends face trouble, I face it with them.”

“And I'm facing trouble?”

Maurice nodded gravely. “You, your men, bad trouble.”

Because he was feeling perverse, because the drying mud made his scalp itch, because he felt foolish, and chiefly because he didn't think even Maurice could get him out of the coming debacle, Kelly didn't respond as Maurice expected. “No trouble here,” he said.

“You toy with me,” Maurice said.

“No. No trouble.”

“Credat Judaeus Apella.”

“It's true.”

Maurice tossed off his whiskey. “You know as well as I that a major Nazi Panzer division is corning. It's far larger than the one we hoaxed.”

“True enough,” Kelly said. He squashed a mosquito that was burrowing in the mud on his head, poured himself more whiskey even if it did taste horrible.

“And you don't call this trouble?”

The sharks raised their eyebrows, looked at each other for Kelly's benefit.

“No,” Kelly said. “You call it trouble when there's a chance of your escaping it. Words like trouble, danger, risk — all imply safe options. There is no way out of this. Therefore, it is no longer trouble; it is merely fate. We have a bad case of fate, but no trouble.”

“There is one flaw in your reasoning,” Maurice said. He was smug as he poured a third glass of whiskey, his heavy lips tight, as if he had just sampled a fine vintage wine or had delivered a particularly special bon mot.

Kelly watched the greasy frog carefully. What was in Maurice's crafty mind? What did the old man have to gain here, now? “What's the flaw?”

“There is a way out,” Maurice said.

“Can't be.”

“Is.”

“Can't be.”

“Is.”

“Tell me about it,” Kelly said, tossing back his whiskey. “Better yet, I'll tell you about it, because you've got to be thinking some of the same things I've thought myself. First, you're going to suggest that my men and I take our machines and withdraw into the woods, hide out for the duration of the Germans' crossing. But that won't work. Even if we could eliminate every sign of the camp, we couldn't get the big machines deep enough into the woods to hide them. Someone would stumble upon them; we'd be found out and killed in an hour. You might also suggest my men and I level the camp and move into Eisenhower where we could hide until the Panzers are by. That won't work either. Moving the machines would churn up the road through your village and leave us wide open to any other German patrols on another route. Besides, and most importantly, the Nazis are bound to run at least a minimal search of your town. There is no way we could conceal seventy-odd men and all these big machines against even a cursory inspection. Lastly, you might think we could hide out in the woods and abandon our machines to be destroyed by the Germans. But if we did that, General Blade would abandon us, and then we'd be as good as dead— stranded here behind German lines.”

“I'm aware of all that,” Maurice said.

“But there's still a way?” Major Kelly, against all his better judgment, allowed himself a bit of hope, the terminal disease. He couldn't help himself.

“Yes. A way out,” Maurice said.

His sixteen-year-old sharks nodded soberly.

Having forgotten the mud on his head, treacherous hope kindled, Major Kelly leaned toward The Frog. “How much will this cost us?”

“Considerable,” Maurice said.

“I was afraid of that.”

“However, you will receive a great deal in return — you will live.”

Kelly gave himself another dribble of whiskey, though he could not afford to drink much more. Already, he was seeing two of everything, including two of Maurice. He did not want to get drunk enough to see three of everything, because the pair of Maurices was already more than he could stand. “Specifics. What do you want in return for whatever help you give me?”

Maurice held up a hand for patience. “First let me explain how you can save yourselves. After that, the price will not seem so bad.”

“Go ahead.” He drank his dribble of whiskey.

Maurice put down his glass, got up, stiff and serious even in his baggy trousers. “You will not move any of your equipment or attempt to conceal your presence. Not even the big D-7 must be driven away. Instead, you will build a town on this site, a town designed to shield all of your heavy machinery and your men from the Nazis.”

Kelly butted the heel of his palm against his head to clear his ear and hear better. Chunks of dried mud rained down around him. “Build a town?”

“Exactly,” Maurice said. He smiled, warmed by his own suggestion. “You will build a French village here and hide your massive machines in the specially designed buildings. Clever, eh?”

“Impossible,” Kelly said. “You don't throw up a building in a few hours. And we'd have to — construct a whole town before the Germans got here.”

“You do throw up the building in a few hours,” Maurice said. “If you do not intend to live in it for very long.”

“That's another problem. Who will live in this town?” Was he hearing Maurice right? Did he have mud in his ears? He checked. No mud.

“I will supply half the population of my village. With your men, they will make a convincing citizenry.”

“My men don't speak French. They'll be found out immediately.”

“I've considered that,” Maurice said. He poured himself a last whiskey. “The one institution the Nazis have been careful not to tamper with extensively is the Roman Catholic Church. Hitler respects the Church's worldwide power if not its philosophy. Himmler himself is a Catholic. Therefore, our fake town will be a religious community, a retreat for priests and nuns and selected members of the laity. It will be built around a convent. And we will tell the Nazis that, in this convent, the deaf and dumb are taught simple skills. Your men will be the poor afflicted peasants, while the women from my village have already volunteered to be the nuns. It is quite simple, really.”

“More simple yet,” Kelly said, “why not build the convent in Eisenhower? We could conceal the machines and my men inside of it and not have to build a whole damned village.”

“No good,” Maurice said. “According to my resources, the man in charge of this Panzer convoy is General Adolph Rotenhausen. He was in the first waves of shock troops to overwhelm France. He passed through my town then, out on the main highway. He made his headquarters in my house four nights running during the invasion of France. He knows Eisenhower has no convent. And he knows that, in the midst of this awful war, no new convent could possibly be built, for lack of supplies.”

“But if he knows your town,” Kelly said, “he must know that no other village exists here, in this clearing.”

Maurice shook his head. “Rotenhausen's Panzers invaded and departed France on the same highway, that which passes through my village eight miles south of here. Perhaps follow-up troops came down this old back road. But no Panzers. In those days, they did not have to use unlikely routes to avoid air attack. There was no resistance to them at that time.”

“Still… build a whole town? Madness!”

“The alternatives are unworkable. And while Eisenhower is not built to conceal your machines, a town of your own making would be so built.”

“We can't build a village in a week,” Kelly insisted.

“I've heard that the Army engineers can do the impossible.”

“Not in a week. Not with the bridge to rebuild as well.”

Maurice waved his hand as if to say this was taken care of. “I will detail workers from my village to augment your labor supply.”

“Unskilled labor. It's—”

“Remember that your town must last only one brief night! And the convent alone will house your machines— and be beyond suspicion.”

They listened to the crickets chirrup outside the corrugated walls. The same insects would probably sing on his grave, Kelly knew. Above their chorus, he imagined the clatter of Panzer-tread, the stamp of marching feet, ack-ack guns, submachine guns… He knew it was hopeless, knew they were doomed. Yet he had to play along. A character in a fairy tale must play his role regardless of the certainty of the outcome. Otherwise, the disaster might be even worse than that which the script, the story, called for.

“We'll have to talk about this some more, though it won't work.”

“But it will work,” Maurice said. The sharks smiled. “It will.”

“Never. But let me wash this mud off my head. Then we'll talk about it some more and pretend we think it really could work.”