Page 27 of Angel Down

and Bagger shakes his head, dried mud flaking from his neck, and objects, “Sir, that’s why I’m here, it’s not too late, not too late for anything, sir, I have what you need,” to which Reis gives a rueful puff of laughter that makes the lantern flame duck, and in doing so discovers his left hand and examines the gleaming leather,

and he says, “In your intellectual free time, Private Gravedigger, while digging potties or sepulchering men, do you wonder what will come of us when this war ends?,” a question that bewilders Bagger, since Camp Winn he has thought of little else but his triumphant return to rookery, until only hours ago when an angel brought a dead kid back to life,

and yet Bagger senses the question isn’t for him, and, sure enough, Reis peels off his glove, feather-dusts it along his ivory coat, and says, “Some of us do think about it. Some of us have devoted our lives to our country. Lived and bled and died for it, only to live again so we could die again. Such was the marinade in which men like myself were cooked, the promise that our devotion would reap its reward. But it’s falderal, Gravedigger. Even those of us gifted with vision cannot carry the day. There is no appreciation for the feigned retreats and ambush attacks of Hannibal, the cunning delays of Fabius, the guileful maneuvers of Turenne. Today’s generalship is that of a child with toy soldiers, hurling them into the face of a playmate. I endeavored toward a superior design. I should have known better,”

and Bagger doesn’t know what to say, so takes a step closer to assert himself, and Reis cuts a look at him, the swiftest motion the major general’s made yet, and now he sees Bagger, really sees him, and makes the corners of his eyes sharp enough to chip away at the gravedigger,

and he says, “And who do they supply me with to execute their blunt stratagems? Men like you. Men afflicted with the European Disease. Are you familiar with the term, Private Gravedigger?,” and Bagger is pained, if he could only show Reis what he carries, so quickly he admits, “No, sir, but,”

and Reis runs over him, “Then permit me a professor’s privilege. The European Disease is more insidious than the Spanish flu. ’Tis a curious scourge, one that has raced across the continent, soldier to soldier, debilitating millions with a peculiar feebleness of leg, the inability to fix bayonets, the disinclination to attack. Sufferers of this condition show an unwillingness to do anything but sit in place and plead for more artillery. And these are the men with whom I am supposed to orchestrate frontal attacks?,”

and Reis gazes at the table before him, upon which lays a cartographer’s map, and as much as Bagger disdains the major general, he finds the stack of wooden-block battalions poignant, whatever grand plan Reis had hoped to demonstrate to Pershing, the army commander had ignored, and though Bagger ought to be delighted, he needs this overweening asshole, and Reis, though he doesn’t know it, needs Bagger, too,

and Reis picks up one of the blocks and says, “See this? This is you. You and the other leeches I left in Bois de Fays,” and he gives the block a jeweler’s inspection before flinging it to a cobwebbed shelf, where it gongs against a teakettle, a noise that makes Bagger, trained on ricocheted bullets, squat low, to which Reis chuckles,

and he says, “I did not expect to see you again, Private Gravedigger. You come like a wraith. It stirs in me a melancholy notion. That I expired out there in battle. And somehow went awry, for instead of opaline gates I have been routed to Lucifer’s caverns, and instead of St. Peter, it is you entrusted with my welcome. I can think of no other explanation for your appearance. This, by the by, is the sort of insight of which the general they are sending here will be incapable,”

and there it is, confirmation that Reis is being replaced, it only hasn’t happened yet, and Bagger feels another press of urgency, he may never get an audience with a new division leader, and so Bagger takes a step that brings him to the map’s edge, and that’s how he feels, on the edge of the world, but it’s an insouciance that makes Reis pull away in affront, Bagger knows this look, he’s about to be banished back to the empire of dung, he’s got to talk fast,

and so he blurts, “The screaming man wasn’t a man,”

and Reis’s clenched jaw dislodges in repugnance, and Bagger panics, “It was a… let me show you…,” to which Reis’s brow crashes down, “Do not uncover a dead soldier in my presence!” but Bagger’s already pawing through the cape to find the hood, and Reis uses his good arm to push himself to his feet, hollering, “Neurological hospital is too good for you! I’ll pin you with a blue ticket, Gravedigger! You will die a pariah!,”

and Bagger’s fingertips slip through fabric and graze the softest cheek, a scant touch that nevertheless fills him with the equilibrium of hope, and he takes the hood edge and draws it back, whereupon the dugout’s tabernacle of lanterns bows in deference to a brighter master, and Reis’s rage melts to butter inside the scintillant splendor,

XXXVI

and there’s no way for a menial boot like Bagger to know the insides of a command dugout, these cellars of flickering mystery from which ferment the schemes to bend thousands of men forward or back, but in the angel’s light Bagger sees all, a fifteen-by-ten stupefaction of gimcrack luxury, walls of sandbag and hay bale and clay brick, a tracery of defunct electric lights, a field telephone box, a dip pen and inkwell and blotter, a stack of newspapers, shelves of books and manuals, an actual fucking bed on wire fucking springs, and a table beneath red-checked restaurant cloth holding the offerings General Pershing spurned, steaming bread, weeping cheese, and wine bottles, two of which hold candles, the rest holding the drinkable stuff,

and a hand-carved cuckoo clock tailed with weighted chains, probably nabbed from a German hutch, hangs where a taxidermied elk would flaunt its antlers in a hunting lodge, the pendulum going thuck with every arc, the secret heart, perhaps, that shuttles blood to its soldier capillaries, and for several seconds thuck is the only sound as Reis traces the angel’s halo with eyes starbursting in white light,

and Reis whispers, “What is she?” and Bagger, adrift in pride, says in a voice that cracks like a new father’s, “An angel, sir,”

and Reis studies, and frowns, and blinks, and asks, “Where did you find her?” and Bagger replies, “In the field, sir. Caught up in barbed wire. She fell from the…,” and he coughs, a throat of sand, desperate for that wine bottle, but he’s said enough, Reis’s eyes roll to the ceiling that’s less than a foot over his head, and to the heavens beyond,

and Reis’s good hand touches his heart, a gesture so unplanned Bagger finds himself stirred, though, on second glance, he sees Reis’s fingertips play along the medals pinned to his breast and loiter at the infamous space left for the Medal of Honor, and Bagger feels a tickle of unease, rather like Uncle Sam the shamefly,

and Reis whispers, “Minerva,” and Bagger hasn’t the faintest idea who Minerva is, but it can’t matter much, he didn’t know Effie Weffie or Naomi Veck or Arno’s old lady either, so Bagger chooses encouragement in hopes it greases the wheels, and nods, and says, “Minerva, that’s right, sir,”

and Reis stands taller, his hand pressed harder over his medal-fortified heart, and his eyes flick over Bagger’s shoulder, checking to confirm the gas curtain blocks any and all prying eyes, before returning to the angel, only the angel, Bagger all but forgotten, though the major general manages half a breathless question, “Does she… What can she…?”

and Bagger nods eagerly, this is what he wants, and gestures his head at the map table, and Reis’s reaction is to snatch up his golden walking stick and hasten backward to allow Bagger the space to set her down, something Bagger can’t believe, the commander of the U.S. 43rd, scuttling aside as if he, Lyon Reis, is the ignoble private to Cyril Bagger’s lofty superior,

and Bagger gentles the angel upon the map, all the wooden warriors of Europe smothered beneath her, and he takes a tailor’s beat to adjust her dress, cape, and hood, comb back her fine copper hair as if in preparation for a photograph,

and he pushes up her sleeves to demonstrate the extent of her skin’s radiance, which, doubled and tripled now, zeroes out the bunker’s pervading decay, corroded trench tools and soot-blasted gadgets reforged into instruments of deliverance as silvered as papal scepters,

and Bagger says, “She saved us, sir. Me and another private. Lifted us out of the path of a minnie, sir,” and he’s not sure Reis is listening, the major general circles the angel who follows his movement with an unreadable expression, so Bagger continues, more emphatically, “And Private Veck, sir. You remember. The Negro with the P3. He was going to hurt her and she made, and I know it sounds crazy, sir, but she made the dead stand up, and they stopped him,”

and Reis looms over her, a hand floating near her resplendent face, while his hidden hand, tucked into its coat-sleeve pouch, twitches in longing for the same, “Her helmet,” he sighs, an odd couple of words, “is as golden as it ever was,”

and because Reis seems so moved, Bagger feels that way, too, and raises his voice another notch, “And then there’s Private Arno, sir. The kid. Well, the kid was killed, sir. Killed dead. But the angel brought him back,” though Reis doesn’t seem to care, so Bagger inserts the name Reis used before, “Minerva, sir. Minerva brought the kid back to life,”

and this gets through to Reis, he looks at Bagger with pupils pinpricked by coursing rapids of light, he seems lost, but at the same time found, a drowning man taking hold of a sudden buoy, a miracle Bagger’s father never got to enjoy, and Reis swallows hard, he needs wine, too, and croaks, “Resurrection. Yes. We could all use a resurrection,”

and Reis breaks away as hard as a snapped rubber band, the heel of his walking stick snapping against floorboards, and when he wheels back around, he looks more like the Lyon Reis that Bagger knows, sharp and shrewd, and in a familiar tone he asks, “She is capable of the impossible, is that so?,”

and Bagger distrusts the question but can only respond with a nod, and Reis draws an inhale through his nostrils for what must be fifteen seconds, face pink, ears purple, left hand curling into a fist, and he says with trembling resolve, “Then the impossible is what I shall request,”