Page 8 of Angel Down

and it’s Goodspeed, paper, and Bagger, scissors, and while Goodspeed spits gum, Bagger watches Veck dispatch both Popkin, who bellows like a bear, and Arno, who looks betrayed by the flamethrower operator he once escorted from the 368th to the 43rd, with whom he shared his cup of corn meal mush and kidney beans when Veck’s shaking hands dropped his own cup, for whom he pilfered a piece of chalk so Veck could write his wife’s name on the P3 fuel tank, dozens of small testaments of affection,

and amid the clerical brouhaha of proclaimed wins and unjust losses, the kid pouts at his winless fist, as futile as his Chauchat, before looking up at Bagger with naked vulnerability, for that’s the only duel left, Bagger versus Arno, and if Bagger wins, that’s it, it’ll be the kid, not Popkin, going over the top alone, and Bagger, like those apocryphal cannibalistic lifeboaters, will have no choice but to live with it, same as he lives with everything else,

XI

and here’s the scammer’s tightrope, to really scam someone you need to get to know them, but the worst thing you can do is get to know someone too well, you want to flirt, not fall in love, Bagger watches Butcher Birds make the mistake every day, an offered cigarette, a smile of acceptance after some expulsion of fear or bodily fluid, the trading of photographs, this sweetheart for that, friendship is what Army leaders count on, that a buddy’s struggle becomes your struggle, and for them you’ll gladly die,

and it’s propaganda, the same pablum peddled by every cop who’s ever dragged Bagger off a riverboat by his collar, don’t you care about your fellow man, Mr. Bagger, not really, sir, what has this so-called fellow man ever done for me, but the problem with Lewis Arno is that the kid never shuts up, and so Bagger knows things about him he wishes he didn’t,

and that includes how Arno’s an orphan, a sad little pauper straight out of Dickens, and though the kid’s never explicitly said he fibbed his way into the Army to procure a family, it doesn’t take a genius to see it, orphanages are staffed with, at best, backward nuns and, at worst, opprobrious careerists, and are either way devoid of adventure, leading the little dope to seek adventure above all else, safe enough when listening to Bagger read dime novels, but lethal when plunged into the murder machine of the War to End All Wars,

and now their shared sagas of jungle avengers, false kings, desert plunderers, and viperous pirates twist between them like taut rope, Arno watching Bagger so ardently he worries the kid might salute, this feels less like a game now and more like he’s re-delivering Reis’s assignment, and as much as he hates to do it, he knows it’s best to deliver it with axe brutality,

and the kid says with a pained smile, “Didn’t win a single one. Just unlucky, I guess,” which requires no reply from Bagger, yet he feels himself shrug and say, “Wild was the way to play it. You did right. Just wasn’t your day,” and Arno winces upward, Reis’s blue sky still permeating the battlefield smoke with the luminescence of hungry bluegill beneath frozen Lake Zabriskie, the cracks of distant guns nothing but expanding ice,

and Arno asks, “What happens to Korak?,” and Bagger replies, “You want to know how it ends?,” and Arno nods, “In case I don’t make it,” and Bagger is reminded of dressing deer as a boy, he’s got a hunch Arno has hunted before, how else to explain how the kid knows how to cut a heart out while leaving other organs undisturbed,

and so Bagger says, testily, “You haven’t lost yet, kid. Like I said, play it wild,” but the smile Arno returns is that of a kid who knows Santa Claus isn’t real but appreciates an adult’s attempt to preserve the ruse, and Goodspeed cries, “What’s all this chitchat? It’s cold and getting colder, get on with it!,” while Popkin glares with spooky red eyes and Veck holds his clackity jaw shut with both hands, and all three scratch their ears, the shriek a scythe through skin, muscle, and bone,

and Arno raises his fist like he’s holding his neck out, and Bagger’s briefly furious at the world, what sadistic author plotted their dime novel to this disconcerting climax, but as the shriek dives about their heads like a conventicle of magpies, Bagger just does the fucking thing, lifts his fist in the air like felled men do to signal stretcher bearers,

and quickly he whispers, “Korak and Tarzan end up having to fight to the death,” and Arno gasps, “To the death? Does Tarzan win?,” to which Bagger nods sagely, saying, “There can be only one Lord of the Jungle,” an ending he’s just made up, but Arno ponders it, before smiling and declaring, “Good ending,”

and at that, the kid drops his fist and Bagger, too well trained, matches it, one, and now he’s scrambling to recall the kid’s symbol history thus far, two, before realizing the kid’s doing what Bagger suggested, truly playing wild with no idea what symbol he’s about to throw, the kid’s Korak and Bagger’s Tarzan, and the only way for the son to defeat the father is to become the Killer, three,

and Arno drops his hand a beat too soon, an error that gives Bagger the split second he needs to choose whatever symbol is required to win, which makes him wonder, in that flash, if he has it in him to deliberately lose, but the symbol Arno chooses isn’t rock, or paper, or scissors, his hand is curled into a C-shape like he’s back home, a home he never had, hand wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate made by someone who loves him,

and it’s the biggest choke Bagger’s ever seen, he could fucking murder the kid, and Popkin howls, “He lost! Arno lost! You all saw it!” and while Arno examines his hand like it’s a reptile he’s got by the tail, Bagger’s own fist, symbol still unchosen, melts away, and he really feels the melt, skin and muscle sliding off his bones, seems fitting, his inability to choose a weapon only his latest failure to fight,

XII

and if forced to choose, Cyril Bagger would say the ugliest minutes of his life are the five it takes Lewis Arno to prepare for his solo mission to dispatch the shrieker, doughboy packs weigh seventy pounds and the kid weighs probably ninety, so he disencumbers himself of everything he won’t need, canteen, magazine belt, SBR gas mask, shelter canvas, entrenching tool, soap dish, mess kit, sewing kit, shaving kit, which looks brand-new because the fucking kid’s too fucking young to fucking shave, and, of course, The Son of Tarzan, a sight that hurts Bagger more than any bullet,

and yet he doesn’t do fuck-all about it, he feels filleted as the others shoot the shit like Arno’s already gone, and Bagger joins in only to cover the flapping wings of an incensed Uncle Sam, “Who do you think’s out there?” Goodspeed fakes, “Gotta be some cornholer, he screams like a lady,” Popkin fakes, “Strong voice. 2nd Battalion have any good singers?” Veck fakes, and “Duck Casey could sing. Kept half the division awake before he bit it,” Bagger fakes,

and Arno places his first aid kit into one pocket of his coat and his wire cutters into the other, eyes half-lidded, his mind’s somewhere far off, tucked into bed, while his physical form takes the sides of the trench ladder and climbs it, artichoke-colored mud seeping where the ladder presses into the trench, and Arno peers over the top, his M1917 wobbling like a cereal bowl, the Army never did make a kid-sized helmet,

and because life is cruel, and because Bagger deserves it, the kid looks back at him one last time, and there’s so much Bagger could say, words of encouragement, words of regret, but Uncle Sam is livid and Bagger can think of nothing but the shriek, so he flaps an impatient hand and snaps, “What? Get going already,”

and Arno obeys, and Bois de Fays rumbles as it digests him,

and Bagger stares at the empty ladder, the cowlick of grassy mud where Arno’s boot pushed off looks like a scalp, and Bagger has the urge to slip it into his pack, a memento truer than anything Goodspeed sells, while behind him, the others stir,

and it goes, “Don’t look at me like that. What did I do?,” and “Shut your face. Or I’ll shut it,” and “I’ve been the one. Plenty of times I’ve been the one,” and “The one what, darkie? To get their face rearranged?,” and “To jump off like that. No one cares if I live or die,” and “So he’s a kid! So what! We’re all kids! We all have to take our turns!,” and “Bury me. Just bury me here,” and “Darkie. I’m warning you,”

and a new voice, saying, Save me,

and the words are so clear, Bagger assumes they come from a fellow Butcher Bird, a loiterer who played dead in No Man’s Land until it was safe to drag himself back to the line, but it’s not, the voice, Save me, comes from inside Bagger, the same way it did back when it first called to him, Bagger, which Bagger had thought had been Arno, but clearly he’d been wrong,

and Bagger searches himself, Save me, it’s nowhere he can pinpoint, Save me, if it was only in his head he’d ascribe it to the mortar blast, Save me, if it was only in his heart he’d reject it as maudlin bunk, Save me, but it comes from the center of who he is, like his every molecule has been halved with a shrieking mouth, Save me,

and Bagger’s going to fall, suddenly fall, so he hooks an elbow through a ladder rung, which swings him so he’s facing the duckboard shelf of Arno’s belongings, and there’s The Son of Tarzan, abandoned, unfinished, once a book, now a headstone, leaving Bagger to make the graveside conclusion that the voice is a ghost, or not-quite a ghost, a pre-ghost, Arno begging Bagger to be the man Uncle Sam wants him to be,

and though Bagger never reached The Son of Tarzan’s end, come on, there’s no doubting that Tarzan, Prince Greystoke, Lord of the Apes, will show up in time to save his son, Jack Clayton, aka Korak the Killer, the novel isn’t a novel at all, it’s a chapter-and-verse psalmbook that has been training Bagger better than any Camp Winn drill sergeant, to be Tarzan, finally Tarzan,

and so he does it, just goddamn does it, starts stripping himself of the same impedimenta Arno did, but with none of the bedtime fastidiousness, off comes the shovel, the mess kit, all of it except the gas mask, each piece hurled like a punch, the lighter items lodging into sticky clay, the heavier items splooshing into the ratty moat, and Bagger pauses only once to open the red leather Bible and inhale its strength before cramming it back into his pack and putting that pack on his back, he’ll bring the Bible and the Bible alone,

and Popkin sputters, “The fuck. Where you going? Where’s that fucker going?” and Goodspeed cries, “Stay down, you stupid asshole!” and Veck, in a multioctave splinter, begs, “Bagger, don’t,” but none of them give a shit, they only know that, if Bagger goes over the top, the cowardice they have hidden away will break through the dam and engulf them,