Work Text:
The cradle is soft and warm
Couldn't do me no harm
You're showing me how to give
Into temptation
Knowing full well the earth will rebel
Crowded House–Into Temptation
They find an orchard, the apples ripening and going to rot on the ground, the air smelling of the sickly-sweet funk of ferment, the skins golden-red like a jewel. They pick what they can from the trees when the officer’s backs are turned, hiding the fruits of their labors in their mucky uniforms and dirty musette bags, trading the apples back and forth when evening falls and everyone is too tired to reprimand them. Babe peels one, sitting near Ralph and Gene as they mutter about casualties and supplies, eyeing up their meager supply. Even with raiding a Pharmacie they found two villages back, it’s not enough. Babe watches the spiral of apple skin weave under his hands, cheery like a party streamer or a coil of jump rope. He cuts it in two imprecise halves and elbows Gene gently.
“Apple a day keeps the doctor away,” he teases, holding one half out. He’s had some already, shared an apple with Malark earlier. They’ve all been taking turns sitting with him since Bastogne, but not even Luz can elicit a smile. Hopefully in time, the wounds will scab over, like the one on Babe’s hand, which itches now. He always hates that part of the healing process, and it’s even more irritating when you’re fucking bored in the bombed out Belgian countryside.
Gene smiles, quick and small, but it’s a victory Babe will gladly accept and hoard like a dragon with his gold.
“Are you tryna to get rid of me?” Gene asks, taking the half and biting into it enthusiastically. The apples are just the way Babe likes ‘em: they ain’t mealy at all if you don’t pick ‘em off the ground, and there’s a tartness to the flavor.
“You? Nah, I’m tryna get rid of fuckin’ Ralph,” Babe jokes, handing the other half to Spina, who sighs in mock resignation. The two of them have started a type of double act to keep their spirits up, but Gene specifically, ever since the day Babe found him crouched under a tree and so far in his own head it scared Babe like nothing had so far. Gene shivering so fiercely he didn’t notice it, eyes a distant thousand yard stare, blank and dark like the dead. Babe never wants to see that expression ever again, not on anybody and especially not on Gene.
“This is the thanks I get,” Ralph says beseechingly to the heavens. “You save a guy one time and he makes it your problem for the rest of the war.”
“When did that happen?” Gene frowns as Babe takes out another apple and begins to peel it. His knife is still sharp, stolen off a dead German in Holland. The handle has the initials H.F.M. scratched into it. Sometimes Babe likes to think of possible names to go with the knife–Hans, Herman, Hubert. It’s a way to kill the time when they’re sitting in the back of a jeep getting shuttled to the latest muddy hellhole they have to defend from the endless German barrage.
“It was nothing,” Babe brushes it off, peeling faster. “We were going to the 3rd battalion and ran into some frozen krauts in a foxhole.”
“Heffron over here fell in feet first,” Ralph adds, because he’s a lousy rat bastard. Gene’s brow furrows and he doesn’t take the half Babe holds out to him.
Babe rolls his eyes at Ralph. He didn’t want to make Gene more worried than he already is. The poor guy is like a fuckin’ spring, coiled and tight with tension.
“I got more hurt with that nick outside of Noville, he’s just bein’ a blabbermouth,” he tells Gene, which is the truth. They hadn’t even been shot back in Bastogne, the Germans too surprised to immediately go for their guns. “And see if I give you anymore apples, Spina,” he adds with a scowl at Ralph, who brushes his ire aside dismissively.
“Then don’t have two left feet, wiseass.”
“Don’t have two left feet, he says,” Babe grouses, taking a pointed bite of apple. “And this coming from a guy who can’t do a two-step properly.” He directs that at Gene in a theatrical undertone, trying to get another smile out of him. He doesn’t know what Gene was like before he joined up, if he was always this quiet and serious. All the medics are, to a degree, but Eugene seems to carry the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.
“I’ll show you when we get back to Philly,” Ralph retorts good-naturedly before Gene can say anything. “Then you’ll be fuckin’ sorry.”
“When we get back to Philly,” Babe replies, the answer coming easily from frequent use, “You promised me you’d let me come over to try your ma’s lasagna, and if it’s as good as you say then I’m gonna make an honest woman out of her.”
“Aw, don’t threaten my ma like that, she’s a nice lady, Babe.”
“Can you believe this shit?” Babe rolls his eyes and gets Eugene to take the rest of the apple without protest. He’s apparently too caught up in watching them verbally bat back and forth, having the expression of an idle spectator. It’s another kind of victory, to get Gene to accept that type of help. Ralph notices and says nothing about it, just kicks Babe lightly in the ankle and then they’re half-heartedly roughhousing like they always do when their bickering winds down, usually with Eugene refusing to get involved and smoking a cigarette on the sidelines.
In the dirt, the apple peels lay haphazardly, and Babe thinks about how he read once that the Romans used to divine omens from cutting open a bird. He wonders what the future would read in those bits of forgotten skin. The nuns said divination was a sin, but Babe wishes he could read it, with a longing so keen it must be what a bayonet to the gut feels like. He wishes he could know who would live or die by the lines on their faces or their hands, that he could prepare his heart for the wound of it, and would God hate that? Would God not forgive one boy who wants to prepare himself for all the weeping mothers of his dead buddies? He can’t imagine God would disapprove, not after He killed Julian.
Babe dreams a lot, after they get the Ardennes behind them. Freezing in a dank hole, Julian wheezing to death, or Bill and Toye with their legs blown off. But there are times when he dreams of falling into that German foxhole, his whole body seized and frozen for a moment in shock and bewilderment more than fear. It feels oddly absurd, like something out of a goddamn movie. Oops! There goes the plucky private, feet first into a den of SS snakes! He got out fine, but in his dreams it plays out differently.
In his nightmares cold, blue hands reach out for him, their nails ripped out, fingertips bleeding. Frostbitten digits close around his arms and legs and his throat, clawing at him, ripping, tearing his fragile flesh apart, their words unintelligible, their voices the wet heave of a man with pneumonia. Bloodshot eyes stare back at him from that pit of hell and Babe can’t even scream.
Every time that nightmare visits him he wakes with a jerk, the impulse to howl lodged behind his teeth. He never makes a sound louder than a heaving gasp of fear, because if a man yells that’s a sure death sentence for him and his buddies. He lays there instead, bathed in sweat, damp and trembling like an anxious animal. He hates those dreams, but the ones of Julian are worse. Julian was just a kid, face still puppy-soft because he hadn’t hit his last growth yet. He reminded Babe of his own little brother, and the realization that this was how he had probably looked to Guarnere and all the other Toccoa men hits like a sock to the gut. They’re all so young, what the hell have they done? Jumping out of planes and blood on his hands and Gene’s handkerchief against his palm and the slick-wet fear of his dreams. Babe is twenty-one. He prays he makes it to twenty-two.
It’s not that he’s lonely. Far from it, his ma always teased him that Babe could make a friend in an empty room. It’s just that he feels…understood, when he looks at Gene. Like Gene can see all the way down to the core of him. As if he sees it and still likes him, despite the people the circumstances around them have turned them into. Eugene Roe, who has steady hands and a heart so big that every boy gone is killing him, slowly. He’s not sure when they started doing it. Sometime in the last few weeks, he thinks. The two of them seeking each other out in a crowd. Eye to eye. Walking shoulder to shoulder when they can. Sharing rations, a foxhole. There’s so little that belongs to you in the army. You sleep, eat, shit, and die together. You share your victories and your tragedies. All Babe has to call his own is a few letters, his crucifix, and the knife he stole during Market Garden. The rest is property of the U.S. army–he’s property of the army. But he doesn’t mind sharing what he has, especially with someone like Gene, who has to sacrifice so much every day.
Gene even gives him that handkerchief he’d been holding onto. It’s blue, reminding Babe of his sister Felicity’s favorite calico dress, the color of summertime skies and clear streams. Gene stares at it for a weighted moment before he rips it in two, his face calm, but Babe understands the ritual of the action. He does feel a bit guilty as Gene wraps it around his hand. Gene shouldn’t have to sacrifice something he so clearly cares about, probably a gift from back home. As it is, the cut is a shallow slice in the meat of Babe’s palm, parallel to the longest groove in it, which he thinks is called the heart line. Perhaps that’s an omen.
“I’m sorry,” Gene says into the quiet of the early dawn. Babe twitches in surprise. Gene’s looking out at the frozen landscape like it holds the answer to every hurt in his heart.
“Gene, it was an accident,” Babe rushes to tell him. “It ain’t even that deep.”
“What good am I if I just hurt you?” Gene asks, plaintive, his eyes wide and scared under his helmet. “What kind of medic hurts people, Babe?”
“Hey, hey,” Babe doesn’t know how to make Gene understand, how to ease his worries. “You helped Skinny and Welsh, right? They’re alive. They’re in a hospital by now, I bet.”
“Some days, I think I ain’t no better than a butcher.” The words are said with a type of finality that puts a lurch in Babe’s gut, makes his heart twist. He takes one of Gene’s freezing hands in his own, rubbing the pale digits as he thinks. The medics all refuse to wear gloves, arguing that they can’t waste the time it would take to remove them to help an injured man. Babe thinks it’s another one of those necessary cruelties the army is so fond of. Watching men carve out all the kind parts of themselves until a hollow shell is left.
“It counts for something, what you do,” Babe murmurs.
“Babe–”
“No, Gene, I mean it.” Babe squeezes his hand gently, wishes he could take them both away from this frozen hell. Gene’s from Louisiana, it must be warm and soupy-humid all year ‘round. He must be miserable out here but nobody’s heard a word of complaint. “I ain’t mad about my hand. And I’m glad I had you and Ralph after we lost Julian.” He sniffs, his eyes watering from more than the chilly wind kicking up. Gene ducks his head, lets himself lean into Babe’s side a little, some of the tension leaving him. Babe hasn’t been warm once since they came out here except for when he slept in that foxhole with Ralph and Gene. He feels that phantom heat here in the merciless white of the early morning, Gene’s hand in his, his exhaustion slowly catching up to him as he falls into Babe’s side in a sort of controlled fall. Babe wraps one arm around his shoulders, holds him close. Fuck the line, the German’s are quiet now anyway.
“Take five,” he suggests, as Gene’s helmet knocks into his own softly, the movement causing a low reverberation to thrum in the back of his head. “I’ll shake ya if someone calls for a medico.”
It’s telling how worn out Gene is that he doesn’t object, just lets his eyes slide closed and mutter, “Okay, Babe.”
Babe tucks his chin into his scarf as he fights down the inappropriate grin that wants to break out. Maybe he and Gene will end up friends after all. That would be nice, he thinks.
He’s not even fucking there when Guarnere and Toye get hit. He was stuck in his foxhole and then above ground again, gasping with it, and then had found himself tumbled into a too-small dig-out with Lieb and Alley, the three of them huddled close like sardines in a can. Lieb had kept poking both of them because he’s a bony fuckhead who can’t sit still, and Alley had hissed at both of them to quit it once the shells had let up.
“Heffron,” Gene says, not even bothering to acknowledge the other guys. Babe gets that twist in his gut that screams death. “Guarnere got hit.”
There is a beat of quiet, not even Lieb’s making a smart remark. They’re all looking at him. Bill Guarnere is a son of a bitch and a sergeant, and he is one of Babe’s best friends since the moment he joined. Other replacements had floundered, but Bill Guarnere had taken Babe under his wing, a gesture he’ll never be able to fully repay. A tangible thread back to home, one they both desperately needed over here in the ice and frozen despair. Babe watches Gene. It’s awful, the way Gene looks as he crouches at the edge of the hole, his hands gorey with fresh blood, the color like a slab of butchered meat. It’s too cold for the smell to get overwhelming, but Gene stinks like old metal far too often, the cuffs of his jacket a permanent wine-dark red.
“Is he…?” Babe can’t say the word. Can’t even contemplate it.
“No,” Gene says immediately, something like remorse on his face. “No, but he’s gonna lose his leg. He’s at the aid station now, and he was pretty stable when they took him. He was trying to help Toye.” Gene pauses. The four of them exhale in relief. It’s bad. It could be so much worse.
“Christ alive,” Liebgott swears lowly, digging around for his light. Babe tries not to think about how if he dies out here, he’ll never see Bill again. He takes it and puts it in the back of his brain, in an ugly, dark corner where a lot of teeming worries live and shuts the door. Later, he’ll have time later, once they’re off the line. Or at least when they aren’t in the fucking Ardennes.
“A shell got Muck and Penkala,” Gene adds, because of course bad omens come in threes. That is a fact Babe is certain of. He waits for the last one to slide into place.
“Jesus fucking Christ, how’s Compton?” Alley asks for all of them, and Gene doesn’t have to say it. They know. Threes. Bad apples and dead boys in the snow. Babe closes his eyes, lets himself heave with sorrow for one great, horrible moment before he gets up to move.
“I’m crashing with you,” he tells Gene as he climbs out. “I’m not cut out to be their third stooge.” When he can, he likes to be with Gene or Ralph, partially because Dike insists on keeping the medics all spread out and if he can help one of them be warm for a night, it’s a small victory. “Have fun with your little comedy routine,” he tells them. Moe grins toothily and Joe flips him off, so they’ll be fine.
Gene wrinkles his nose. “You smell like resin.”
“Gee thanks, Doc, I got accosted by a tree today,” Babe says, M1 slung over his shoulder, walking just a beat behind Gene, eyes watching the treeline. After a shellacking that bad they shouldn’t be getting any artillery for a while. He hopes. Gene peers at him over his shoulder. He looks a bit like he wants to laugh but doesn’t remember how to.
“I’m fine,” Babe adds hastily. “Although the cover on my foxhole ain’t.”
“Lucky you,” Gene says quietly. He’s hunched over into his jacket, his steps heavy. He’s got this curl to his spine that’s worrisome. It’s not just the cold, it’s more than that. Eugene Roe is a bit like Atlas, carrying the whole weight of 145 souls in his hands. Babe can’t imagine how it must feel to be the one thing that stands in the way of a boy going home in a box or on a stretcher.
“Yeah sure,” Babe laughs bitterly. “I’m a regular good luck charm.”
Gene stops to look at him properly now, his brow furrowed.
“Julian ain’t your fault, and neither is Guarnere.”
Babe crosses his arms, kicks the soft-packed snow with one boot. A guy can’t help but start to feel superstitious after a while. You see enough of your buddies get taken out with barely a scratch on yourself and it starts to gnaw at you. Babe hopes he’s wrong, that bad luck ain’t following at his heels like a loyal hound. He wants to be wrong so desperately his guts are queasy with it.
“I still failed that poor kid,” is all he says by way of reply. It’s not the answer Gene was hoping for, his face twists up sad and a little frustrated. Their patience is wearing thin. No supplies, no end to the artillery, and with the aid station bombed out they’re more vulnerable than ever.
“You couldn’t have done anything,” he says and Babe hates that it’s true. He resents it. Julian’s body shouldn’t have been left for the fucking Germans to defile. The kid had most of his stuff on him, only a few letters left behind, and Babe keeps them tucked away with his own in the vague intention to maybe write to Mrs. Julian once they’re off the line. It’s not like he was so much older, but Babe feels a strange sort of responsibility for the kid. He understands now that he’s gonna take the weight of this to his grave.
“Doesn’t make it fair,” he shoots back, walking again.
Gene follows him mutely back to the hole he and Spina spend the most time in, at least when Dike isn’t around. Babe casts a furtive look to the eerily quiet forest around them, not finding their CO and not expecting to if he’s honest. Dike should just do them all a favor and either resign or step in the path of a grenade already. Kids like Julian dead and fucking Dike is still yawning his way to Battalion. Babe doesn’t get very angry, it’s just not in his nature, but there’s something mean and sharp growing inside him and he’s not sure when it started. He’s not ashamed of it, but he’s not comfortable with it either, not like some guys can be with their rage. Other men like Liebgott or Toye can use their anger to keep themselves going, a deep well they can pull from, but Babe just feels like he’s spinning his own wheels if he does that. There’s a lot of that around here, ugly things like grief and bone-deep terror, and nobody warned him how it will change you to crawl in the mud and guts of dead men and eat laughably insubstantial rations and barely sleep. It’s not changing him for the better, but then again none of them are.
Gene flops down into the icy hole, limbs stiff with more than just cold. Babe pulls the tarp closed as much as he can, wishing he had some half-assed coffee rations to share. Even coffee that’s mostly dirt would be an improvement. They need to keep warm. At least there’s some blankets they got from the Aid Station before it got goddamn blown up. Eugene doesn’t talk about it. There’s a lot of things they don’t talk about. It’s new for Babe, to have all these things crowding inside him and not say ‘em. He was never hesitant to speak, before the war. Now he fears he’ll scare everyone away.
He sits next to Gene, lined up hip to shoulder as they share a blanket. Gene takes out his rosary and prays quietly, reverently, fiercely. He’s a bit like those wild-eyed prophetic saints from Sunday school, their hands marked with stigmata, their mouths open with blood. It’s frightening. It’s magnetic. Babe sits next to him in silence and lets the clack of the rosary beads lull him into a kind of trance. It’s a familiar sound. His grandma and great auntie prayed the decades whenever there was a death or serious illness in the family.
Gene’s about halfway through when he sighs and tips his head back to rest against the wall of the foxhole. He looks almost fragile, washed out and exhausted. Babe digs out a part of a K-ration he was able to get off of Tab. It’s just crackers but that’s better than nothing.
“C’mon,” he says quietly, holding it out to Gene, who takes a cracker with only minor reluctance.
“Who had K-rations?”
“Tab. I got him to hand ‘em over after I promised to share it with you and Ralph.”
“He’s down at Battalion,” Gene says. He wipes at the mucus dripping from his nose absently. “Someone had to get things sorted for the wounded.”
“Then don’t tell Tab.” He knocks his shoulder against Gene’s gently. “More crackers for us.”
Gene grunts, but takes another cracker when Babe insists.
They eat in silence until Gene speaks again.
“I should go check on Malarkey,” he says.
“It’s almost dark,” Babe protests. The cold is so much worse when the sun fades. Gene isn’t ever swayed once he has decided on a course of action however, so Babe crawls out to follow him. The night is dark, the stars faint behind the cloud cover. Their breath is hot, steaming clouds as the temperature tries to freeze it in their mouths. Babe spits out a wad of phlegm as discreetly as he can. There’s a worrying rattle that’s starting to take up residence in his lungs, and he just needs it to not get worse before they get out of here. And maybe that’s wishful thinking, but if he doesn’t consider it a ‘when they’ll leave’ and not an ‘if they’ll leave’, he’ll go nuts. Gene’s not said anything about the cough, so maybe he’s getting away with it.
The group makes a sad tableau as they walk up. Lip, Luz, and Malarkey all standing around Compton, their faces haggard and worn.
Gene takes Lip by the arm and they stand to the side, talking quietly, quickly, Gene making a small, urgent gesture with one hand.
Babe stands next to Luz awkwardly, hoisting his rifle over one shoulder. The snow is starting to let up, more like a gentle blanket falling on them than the hard wind before. Luz is smoking, periodically cajoling Malark into taking a drag. Buck Compton sits, quiet and still as the grave.
“Has he been like this all day?” Babe asks in an undertone. Malark looks about five seconds away from a breakdown, but the blank expression on Lt. Compton is more unsettling.
“Yeah,” Luz replies absently, his attention moving between the grieving men and their first sergeant restlessly, as if he’s worried they’ll all disappear if he lets them out of his sight. Not an unprompted fear, look what happened to Bill the minute Babe wasn’t paying attention.
“Here, Malark, courtesy of Tab.” Babe holds out the last few crackers in their wrapper, gives it a small shake. Don looks up at him and it’s awful. He’s hollowed-eye in a way Babe didn’t know a man could get. “C’mon Donnie,” he urges softly, “you’ll feel better.” It’s something Babe’s ma always said to him when he was sick. And this is the kind of hurt not even a doctor could patch up, so it’s a poor offering, but it’s all he’s got, goddamn it. The forest has robbed them of everything; sleep and dignity and food and feeling clean. Reduced them down to base components, trapped like rats that scurry from shelter to shelter, their guns light and their stomachs even emptier.
After a worrying pause, Malark takes the food, eats it with painstaking slowness. Luz shoots Babe a grateful look. Babe claps Don on the shoulder, and wishes again that he had more to give. He wants them off the line, wants them all sleeping better and warm with food in reach. It aches, this desire, right under his heart, sharp as any cut.
“I’m going up to Battalion,” Gene says, coming back. “Sgt. Lipton thinks it would be best for Lt. Compton.” They nod in solemn agreement, even Malarkey.
“You ok? I heard about your close call,” Gene asks Luz, who stubs out his cigarette with a bitter laugh. Babe feels that foreboding feeling return. “He and Lip had a dud shell,” he tells Babe when George refuses to elaborate.
“Lucky St. Luz,” George offers up ruefully, his smile as brittle as cracked ice.
“Jesus, Georgie,” Babe says reflexively.
“Stay with them? Spina should be back soon,” Gene says to him directly, eyes shadowed with that strange intensity he gets at times. It’s a very direct gaze, piercing because Gene can’t let any small details slip past him. A small thing can mean a lot, out here.
“Yeah, yeah,” Babe says, patting Gene on the back lightly. “Go have fun at Battalion. Eat a hot meal for me, huh?”
“Sure, Heffron.” Gene doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a close thing. Babe ends up bullying Malark and Luz into a foxhole with him; Lipton’s disappeared, probably to discuss the state of things with Winters and Nixon. Dike is not around, as usual. The snow is letting up.
By silent mutual agreement George and Babe make sure Don is between them, partially for the warmth but mostly so they have an eye on him at all times. You hear stories about the things men do in Don Malarkey’s situation. Drastic things. The kind of things that get a telegram sent to your folks. If he can help it, Babe’s not letting that happen.
The convent in Rachamps is beautiful, even with the damage of the war evident on the outside. But it has standing walls and an intact ceiling, which is a miracle. Sitting in the pews, listening to the choir, Babe feels a kind of grace he hasn’t felt in an age. He made a point to go to Fr. Maloney’s services, especially in the Ardennes, but it had felt perfunctory. At times almost a distraction. A desperate gesture as the weeks dragged on and Lipton’s face grew stiff with worry, and their limbs grew heavy with exhaustion. Our father who art in heaven, hail Mary full of grace; Babe says the words probably a thousand times in that fucking forest, twice for good measure after Julian is gone and he’s sure he won’t scream if he opens his mouth. He’s not the best at prayer, which is why he asks Gene to do a rosary for Julian. It’s all he can do. It’s all he has.
He gets sick. Of course he does, half the company gets some type of flu on the way to Haguenau. Babe coughs so much he thinks he’s gonna spit up his lungs, and then he’ll actually have to go off the line, even if they have to bodily drag him.
“Lip’s stayin’,” Babe argues, shivering in his cot. It’s day three of his convalescence. Malarkey has everyone taking turns to make sure Babe’s eating and not sweating to death from his fever. Gene’s crouched by the bed, one hand cool on his forehead. Deliriously, Babe wants to ask him to keep it there.
“Lipton’s a sergeant, and his fever broke,” Gene argues back levelly.
“It’s gonna break,” Babe promises, pulling his blanket tighter. Maybe if he sweats it out he can stay. Gene sighs, brushing back the damp bangs that have fallen into Babe’s face.
“‘M gonna be ok,” he mumbles, letting his eyes drift closed. He’s so tired. Babe thought he understood exhaustion, in the woods. He is wrong.
“Are you making me a promise, Heffron?” Gene asks quietly.
Babe opens his eyes, says, “Yeah, Gene,” and the small smile he gets in return–equally fond and equally exasperated–could fuel him for a month. A real grin would probably get him through the rest of the war.
“Is he eating?” Gene asks someone, McClung probably, as he closes his eyes again. The answer is indistinct. His head is gently spinning. He shivers. He has to make it through. He promised.
Jackson’s dead. The patrol was this side of a suicide mission anyway. They all knew it. Winters knew it. Hell, even that greenhorn lieutenant had known. Fifteen men who were all exhausted to the bone, fifteen men who should have been sleeping, fifteen men and now it’s fucking fourteen, because Jackson’s dead.
Another baby-faced replacement, Eugene Jackson, who wrote to his sweetheart back home and still believed in things like unwarranted hope, just a little bit. They would find out in the morning that he had lied about his age, and that was the worst part of it all. He should have been home, writing essays and going to school dances. Babe hadn’t felt paternal about him like he had with John Julian, but it still breaks your heart to see a kid–one of your guys–die in agony in a dank basement in fucking France. He had asked for Gene to end it, before he had wailed one last time and died.
The basement is dead silent. Everyone is looking at Babe, who’s looking at Eugene, who shoves his helmet off, a gesture that betrays how fucking angry he is. Gene’s temper is usually very even. If he’s mad at you, it’s for a reason: ignoring his orders to rest, disobeying field medicine procedures, or being a damn fool idiot who got hurt for no good reason. Babe can practically feel the ambient rage rolling off him in waves as he stares right back. His eyes are dark and roiling in a way Babe’s never seen before.
The medics are hauling Jackson out. Someone else can fill out the death forms. Gene heaves a huge breath, lets it out. Babe jerks his head, a silent go outside, I’ll find you before spinning around. Thirteen pairs of eyes watch him. He doesn't have to say it.
“Fuck!” Martin is the first to speak, and then they all are, even the Germans are pitching in. The sound crawls to a horrible crescendo as Babe grabs his things, Gene’s helmet, and slips outside.
Gene is pacing in tight circles, his fists bunched at his sides. Babe doesn’t need a proper light to know there’s blood on them. He breathes in the frigid winter air. Gene doesn’t look at him, staring down at his boots as he walks back and forth.
Gene has hit his limit. Babe ain’t surprised. Ever since the Bois Jacques a small part of him has been waiting and watching. Wondering when Gene will hit that wall. Every man has his limit–Babe reached his after John Julian. Hit it again, softer that time, when Guarnere was taken off the line. All the while Gene’s been pushing and pushing; running headfirst into danger zones for the guys and now, with poor Jackson dead, his feet have been ripped right from under him.
“Gene,” he says very, very carefully. The night is eerily quiet due to light and noise discipline. Men scurry from building to building, and across the river there’s the faint shouts of German troops scouring their own half of the city for stray Amerikaner.
“It was his own–” Gene cuts himself off, makes an awful noise in the back of his throat.
“Let’s get out of the cold, huh?” Babe suggests. He prays their patrol hasn’t gotten the German commanders to get their snipers set up for some revenge-fueled salvo.
Gene stops. He’s not meeting Babe in the eye, but he looks up. Gene has always projected calm, confidence. Right now he looks lost and very young. It’s enough to break your heart.
“C’mon, you can bunk down with us,” Babe says, telegraphing his movements as he places a hand on Gene’s arm. Could be he’s a bit shell-shocked, but Gene lets Babe herd him to the building 2nd platoon is crashing in. Don and Lieb are in the middle of making some truly awful coffee for everyone.
“It’s Jackson,” Babe says to their wary faces, grabbing a bowl and hustling Gene to one of the rooms to the side so they have a modicum of privacy. Lieb swears at the news, low and vicious. Don lights a cigarette with finality. A mournful air is falling over the room. If only it wasn’t so damn familiar.
Babe fills the bowl with water and digs out the bar of soap he filched from the showers.
“Here, let’s get your hands clean,” he says, digging around for a rag.
“You don’t have to–”
“What? You’re my friend, Gene, Jesus Christ,” he replies absently, pulling out a scrap of blue cloth. Oh, he thinks, catching the expression on Gene’s face, which is unspeakably sad. It’s got a rusty stain on it from Babe’s own blood that he couldn’t get out no matter how hard he tried. They’ve been so busy, he kept forgetting to give it back.
“Well, can’t get it any more dirty,” he remarks, failing at sounding glib, guiding them so they’re sitting across from each other as he starts to gently clean Gene’s hands. His skin is cool, too cool considering the weather they’re in. He’s grown thinner, as they all have, since December. There’s blood on his cuffs, which Babe can’t do anything about. A new uniform after showering for the first time in months and it’s already soiled. The pulse in his wrist is strong, steady, just as his hands are. Babe’s never seen them shake in fear, only the freezing cold.
They sit with their heads bowed as they both watch Babe intently wash away the last signs of the living Eugene Jackson from this earth. It feels far more important than any Mass, any hymn or prayer. Jackson was real in a way the saints and martyrs never are. He slept in the bunk above Babe’s, he laughed at Ramirez’s bad jokes, and he liked to read Superman comics. He was alive, until he wasn’t. It’s always so fast . One minute your buddy is breathing next to you, and the next he’s laid out on the ground in his own blood and intestines, screamin’ and cryin’. Babe has not–and never will–get used to how quickly death takes a man.
“What are they going to tell his mother?” Gene whispers while Babe switches from one hand to the next. Gene’s skin is warming up, a line of color coming back to his cheeks.
“I dunno,” Babe allows, taking extra care to get as much out of the creases of Gene’s hands as he can. Gene’s fingers are long, his palms wide and strong, the lines of them sure and true. Hands that have saved so many of them, hands that are the last thing to cradle a dying boy.
“I guess what they always say,” Babe murmurs after considering the question. “That they’re sorry.”
“They ain’t sorry,” Gene says, his voice pitching up at once into an angry tone Babe’s never heard him use before. “They don’t give a shit about a private from Pennsylvania, or any of us.”
Babe clasps one hand around Gene’s wrist and says, in a voice part warning and part fearful plea, “Gene”.
“I’ve watched too many boys die,” Gene gasps out, curling in on himself, as if the words bring him great pain. “I can’t keep going, Babe. I can’t. I can’t.”
Babe places one hand on the back of Gene’s neck, the hair there soft, and guides him to rest his head in the safety of the crook of his neck, the skin there warm and smelling of human sweat and soap, miles away from the metallic sting of old blood. Gene takes great breaths that are not quite weeping, his shoulders heaving with uncertainty. Babe holds him tightly and does not say a word, because Gene doesn’t need an empty promise right now. Gene’s been told a thousand times that he’s done all that he could for kids like Jackson. He doesn’t need to hear it again.
They stay like that long enough that the rest of the patrol comes back, subdued and exhausted, most of them going to sleep right away. Webster sits at the table, drinking grimly with Cobb. Malarkey stands at the window and chain smokes.
Poor Eugene Jackson, his remains will be laid to rest thousands of miles from his mother, and that’s probably the cruelest part of it all. No body for his family, his bones resting in strange soil. Babe prays every night that if he does die, please don’t let it be here, Lord, in the purgatory of their winter sojourn.
Eventually exhaustion starts prodding at him so persistently that he has to stir. Gene has gone quiet, one hand clenched tightly in the body of Babe’s jacket.
“C’mon, Gene, I’m dead on my feet,” Babe says softly, untangling himself, immediately missing the heat of another body next to his.
“I should go,” Gene says, pulling back. If you knew Gene well enough, as he thought he did, you could see the walls going up as he stood.
“Are you nuts? No, you’re staying, it’s too goddamn cold outside,” Babe argues in a low voice, dumping out the rancid water and wringing out the handkerchief. “Ralph will kill me if anything happens to you, anyway.”
“It’s the middle of the night, no one's gonna shoot me.”
“We kicked up too much heat with the patrol.” Babe shakes his head. “It ain’t worth the risk, Gene.”
Eugene purses his lips, flexes his hands a few times before conceding the point.
“There’s no room,” he says in a last ditch effort.
“We’ll make room. It won’t be any worse than the foxholes.”
Gene sighs, a sure sign that Babe has won.
“Fine,” he grits out, but some of the tension in his shoulders eases.
Jackson’s bunk is empty. Babe steals the blanket off it, directs Gene to his own bunk. Gene rests with his back to the wall, seeming to try and curl himself up small, as if the war won’t reach him if it can’t find him. It’s the kind of thing you’d do as a kid, making it so the monsters under your bed don’t get you in the night. Babe forgets that Gene ain’t much older than him, and feels guilty every time he does.
Babe lays down next to him, curled up so they’re facing each other like parenthesis. Gene’s breath is warm on his cheek, one hand tentatively reaching out to rest on his hip. Babe holds himself still, as if Gene is a deer that will startle at the slightest movement.
“Tell me about home,” Gene whispers. Babe does. Talks about his siblings and his friends he’d play kick the can or baseball with; the stern nuns at the convent school; stealing loose change to go to the nickelodeon on weekends; anything and everything he remembers that isn’t touched by war, until Gene’s asleep. Babe stays up for a long time after watching him.
When they’re taken off the line, shuttled back to Mourmelon, their mail finally catches up with them. He’s got a letter from Bill, who’s alive and relatively fine, all things considered. He’s written a bunch of the guys, Babe and Ralph especially. Bill’s just like that. His letters convey that Toye is alright, which is another relief because Toye's a bit more reserved, and nobody’s gotten mail from him yet. Babe is so grateful for it, that after he reads the letter he has to go stand behind the barracks and breathe with his head between his knees, torn between crying or puking up his guts. Sometimes, this far into the war, relief feels no different than fear.
Austria is like a dream. Beautiful, to be sure, but with a disquieting undercurrent that sets Babe’s teeth on edge. The war feels a million miles away here, the landscape largely untouched by bombs or tanks, the roads smooth and empty. In Berchtesgaden the mountains reach up to heaven and it’s shocking, absurd even, to think of the horrors of Landsburg or Bastogne in a place so tranquil. Babe feels perpetually off-kilter, eyeing up the quiet, luxurious buildings with distaste and suspicion. They have things like real showers and real food, raided from Hitler’s larder. It’s a dream. One he wants to keep living in and wake up from in equal measure.
Often a group of them will go down to the lake when their duties are taken care of. They’ll spend the whole rest of the day like that–laughing and carefree for once. He never went to a summer camp, but Babe imagines it must be a bit like this; warm sun turning your nose pink, the clear water of the lake, and hearing your friends laugh. Sometimes, it’ll be just him and Gene and they’ll sit on the dock and let their feet rest in the water as they talk. They mostly talk about home.
“My ma isn’t gonna let me out of her sight for a month ,” Babe complains, but it has no bite to it. Gene splashes his shins with one foot idly.
“Your mother is happy you’re coming home,” he points out, because Gene’s practical to the end.
“I know, I know,” he replies, throwing up his hands in surrender before leaning back on them. The sun is starting to set, the world blurring into hazy orange and indigo.
“We’re the lucky ones,” Gene says. And they’re not, not really. They’ve got hurts nobody can see, and Babe’s not sure how he’s gonna make peace with them, because if he doesn’t he’s not gonna last a week back home. And yet. They are lucky for the simple fact they’re going back alive and not in a pine box.
“Yeah,” he agrees, voice hushed in the twilight. The world is wide and open, laid out before them. Babe is twenty-two and he’s got the rest of his life ahead of him. The world is small and barren. A part of Babe will be twenty-one and dead forever.
Gene sighs and lays his head on Babe’s shoulder. His hair is soft under Babe’s fingers, dark and gleaming wetly in the light. Babe rests his cheek against the crown of his head, breathing in the scent of army soap and antiseptic and something fainter, more musky, that is all Eugene Roe. He wishes he could keep this moment forever. Preserve it in amber, warm and golden-honeyed and bittersweetly content, stretching out from here to the end of time.
He wants to kiss Gene. It hits him out of nowhere, a brick to the back of the head–metaphorically speaking. He likes Gene of course: he’s dryly funny, observant, and kind but never condescending. He’s handsome to Babe, even if he has a pensive scrunch to his brow the majority of the time. This type of desire isn’t a stranger to him, but it’s nothing he expected to creep up on him in a war. There’s nowhere safe to kiss another man in a place like this. He must stiffen, because Gene pulls away, studies him intently before speaking.
“Babe?” His voice is cautious, one hand wrapping around his wrist. Gene’s hand is chilled, he always runs a bit cold. Babe had to warm his poor fingers more than once, back during the interminable winter they endured. “You alright?”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding vaguely. “Disappeared I guess.” He can see Gene suss out that he’s dodging the question, his mouth pressing into a stern line.
“You know I consider you a friend, right?” he says. Babe looks down at their hands. Gene’s not got blood under his nails for once. It makes Babe want to cry, for some reason. Only now are they putting back the color and weight that they shed in Bastogne. It all feels so fragile. Babe thinks they’re all a bit like his ma’s crystal-wear, hearty until they get hit in the wrong spot and then it’s glimmering shards all over the floor and a broken wineglass stem in one hand. He doesn’t want it to happen, but there’s a pit in his gut that’s been there for about a year and may even stay for the rest of his life.
“Yeah,” Babe says, after a slightly too long pause. Gene grips tighter, as if he can press whatever it is he’s feeling into Babe on sheer will alone. If anyone could, it would be Eugene Roe.
“Babe,” he repeats, more urgent this time. “I know I ain’t always the best company–”
“Gene,” Babe tries to protest but Gene’s moving closer and he’s holding Babe’s face in his palms and God, he wouldn’t need confession or penance if he could be here, with Gene, for the rest of his days. Let the water wash them both clean, let the erosion of time lap away the blood and the killing and all the nightmares until they were just two men who had never heard of war.
“I know I ain’t always easy to be around,” Gene continues. “But I’m glad you’re stubborn and that you stayed. I’m glad to have found you, Babe.” He grins, wide and infectious, a rare expression that Babe will tuck into his memory so he can run his fingers over it covetously for as long as he likes.
“Gene, I–” he swallows. All the words feel so inadequate, all the bullshit he says on a regular basis with the other guys isn’t right, isn’t true. “Gene, I’m glad I found you, too.” He’s probably smiling back like a loon, but he doesn’t care. It’s just them and the slow summer day and Gene starts to laugh, happy in a way Babe’s never really seen him before. It’s a wild thing, to know he can make Gene happy like this. It’s greedy and lovely and hurts all at once. Oh God, he thinks, starting to laugh himself, what I wouldn’t do to have him smile like this every day.
The world slowly slides into June. Maybe they will actually be home by Christmas this year. Maybe 1945 won’t end the same as 1944. It’s wishful thinking, the kind of thing he shouldn’t entertain this far into the war, but there’s just always going to be a part of Babe that clings to hope when it shouldn’t. And then Germany surrenders, and perhaps hope isn’t so dangerous after all.
The officers are indulgent, generous, letting the men have their run of Hitler’s wine and food, spilling into the streets as they sing off-key songs they remember from before their first jump, grins wide. Babe and the boys of 2nd platoon get their hands on some of the good stuff, and the world is certainly more forgiving when looked at from the other side of a bottle. They’re lounging in some rich fuck’s front garden when Ralph and Gene find them.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Grant says, slinging one arm over Ralph’s shoulders with a smile. “We missed ya!”
“Oh sorry, some of us have responsibilities,” Ralph shoots back.
Gene crouches next to Babe, who’s half flat on the ground anyway, staring up at the crisp blue sky. Babe pats Gene’s knee, a tad clumsy from the drink.
“You gotta catch up,” he says seriously. “It’s a fuckin’ celebration, Genie.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Gene says, tilting his head towards a group of enlisted men walking by who are singing or howling like dogs in turn. Lunatics.
“McClung get ‘em a drink!” Babe waves his hand urgently. Surely they haven’t drunk all the booze Grant had snuck away from the officer’s stash (Spiers was fond of him and had looked the other way, apparently).
“Your drink, sir,” McClung sniffs in a poor imitation of a British butler, handing over a bottle. Gene takes it gladly and toasts to Babe, who’s fully on the ground now. The grass here is so soft.
Gene chuckles, says, “Yeah it is, Babe,” and oh, he said that out loud. He laughs. All those awful things clawing at the walls of his brain are distant, nearly gone. There’s no death here, or misery.
They all proceed to drink themselves into a happy stupor, and Babe finds himself on a different patch of grass, with only Gene for company now as they stare up at the emerging stars.
“There’s never this many stars in Philly,” Babe says.
“Y’can see them every night in the bayou.”
“Yeah? That sounds nice,” Babe murmurs.
“I’d take you there,” Gene blurts out. Babe rolls onto his side so he’s got his head propped up one hand as he looks down at Gene.
“You would?”
“Sure,” Gene nods. “You’d like how peaceful it can be.”
“I’d take you home, too,” he says, the booze making him feel earnest and strangely reckless. He’d do a lot of things for Gene, and he wouldn’t even hafta ask. Babe would do it gladly, without thinking. He remembers the lake, the edges of the memory hazy with his drunkenness, and how in that moment he’d have taken on any burden, if it meant Gene would be happy.
“Give me the five cent tour, Babe?” Gene smiles, warm and loose, his usual careful demeanor softened. Babe could watch him all night, trace the smile lines that are starting to form on his face, the worry mark between his brows.
“Anything you want, Gene,” he promises, heart quick in his chest. Gene reaches up with one hand, brushing the back of his knuckles down the plane of Babe’s cheek. Babe goes still, watching him, waiting.
“Anything?”
He nods, doesn’t dare speak. Gene leans up and Babe tilts his head down and then their lips meet, a chaste, closed-mouth kiss. But then their mouths are open and it’s not hesitant, it’s not sweet. It’s a forest fire. Gene kisses with determination, right down to his worn out soul. Babe moves so he’s straddling him, Gene’s hand hot on his thigh, his chest solid beneath Babe’s hands. They kiss like that for a long time. Sloppy, thrilling, something Babe had thought about idly but never considered could be real. But it is. Gene’s kissing him and they have nearly died a thousand times but are impossibly, miraculously alive here and now in the warm Austrian night.
He feels woozy, giddy with drink and the taste of Eugene Roe.
Gene laughs into his mouth, and it’s better than any of Hilter’s goddamn champagne. It’s better than clean uniforms or fresh apples or fucking Hershey bars. Babe rests their foreheads together, breathes in the smell of wet, summer grass. There’s nobody else in the world that matters, not here in the warm circle of Gene’s arms. Gene, his mouth pink and wet, brushes a hand through Babe’s hair, fingers gentle and sure. He watches Babe like he always does, and Babe’s starting to realize that maybe Gene’s been thinking about this for a while.
“Oh,” he says, because it all comes to the forefront then, a headrush that isn’t exactly unpleasant, but it knocks him sideways.
“What?” Gene’s still got a hand in his hair, not scrutinizing his face closely for once.
“How long have you…?” he trails off, suddenly unsure. Gene catches his meaning instantly, pins those dark eyes on him. For the first time, Babe recognizes what the shiver in his gut at that gaze means.
“A long time,” is all he says in that particular enigmatic, clipped way he has, and it drives Babe crazy. He wants to hold Gene down and open him up, wants to prove that he cares, that he wants to understand. Imagines cradling the delicate parts of himself as if to say, don’t you see? I would hold you as precisely as this. Let me, please.
“You lug, you coulda been kissin’ me already,” Babe says instead of the thousand wanting things crowding his throat. Gene grins but he shakes his head.
“Babe, I think you woulda clocked me if I kissed you in Haguenau.” Babe laughs at that, giddy and delightfully shocked.
“Haguenau,” he repeats. “Well, I would’ve only been sore at you if ya did it when I had the fever.”
He kisses Gene again, licking into his mouth like a promise. It’s strange, the future is far more immediate than it has been in nearly a year, demanding at their heels. There’s going to be an after to all of this. They’re going to go home. Gene hooks his hands in Babe’s jacket, rolls them so now Babe’s resting against the damp ground, one leg in between his own. He is reminded, suddenly, of the feeling he got before his first jump. Jittery excitement, the whooping call of adrenaline between his teeth, bracing for impact when his feet hit the open air. Gene bites his neck, kisses with teeth and keen intent. As it turns out, being with Gene is a whole lot like jumping.
The summer sours as it marches on. Janovec run over, Shifty in a car accident before getting home, and Chuck shot and left in the road to die like a fucking animal. It’s childish to expect that death will no longer chase their heels. They should not feel so shocked, so upset, and yet they do, every time. Chuck being wounded feels like an insult especially, bringing to a head a type of restless, long simmering anger that’s been in them for a while. It doesn’t take very long to find the man that did it. Wasted out of his mind, the gun lost, and nobody knows if Chuck is gonna live through the night. Speirs apparently took him to find a doctor, but Captain Speirs is only one man and he’s not God. Not that Babe has a very high opinion of God, these days. God seems to relish spitting in their faces, if you asked him. Germany is a rotting apple, the core black and the flesh mealy. To eat will sicken them all. It’s turning into pulp in their hands, bitter and unsatisfying. Babe stands in that room and he ain’t proud of it. Maybe he understands rage, after all, he thinks. Maybe he is angry, after all he’s seen and done. He retreats by himself to a balcony to chain-smoke afterwards, the knuckles of one hand red and sore, weeping a sluggish red.
Gene finds him, which isn’t a surprise. They’re attuned to each other now, perhaps always will be, even after they go home. Babe meets his gaze. They don’t have to speak. The doctors did what they could for Chuck, but Gene wouldn’t be here if it was bad. He would be telling them all, properly, if Chuck Grant was dyin’. Gene stands with him, shoulder to shoulder as they share a cigarette, the end cherry-bright in the night. Inside men move around, still wired and mean from hunting down the replacement and handing him over to the MP’s. After a few minutes Gene stubbs out the cig and takes Babe’s hand in his. Red to red, both their skin stained. Babe stares at their entwined fingers and thinks, I wish we never had to witness such things. I wish I could’ve foreseen this, in order to spare us the hurt.
“You’ll write, yeah?” he says. It’s afternoon, golden-warm and they’re sitting on the front steps of a house in a town in Germany Babe has no idea how to pronounce. Gene’s got his head tipped back, eyes closed, basking in the sun like a cat. Someone found a hothouse full of orange trees earlier, and Babe’s peeling one open carefully. The rind is such a saturated hue it nearly stings to look at. A fine mist of juice had sprayed out when he pried it open, and he can just about taste the phantom of it on his lips.
“Yeah,” Gene says, not moving an inch. “I saved your address, remember?” Babe had written it down the other day, suddenly possessed with the importance of it. He doesn’t want Gene to just be another face he sees once every few years, a voice barely heard on the other line of the phone. “Better not have lost mine, Heffron,” he adds, cracking one eye open. Babe rolls his eyes, chucks the discarded peel into the dirt.
“Jesus, no, I haven’t,” he says. “And quit it with the ‘Heffron’, you sound like Sister Mary-Fitzpatrick.”
“You said she was your favorite teacher,” Gene points out. Babe breaks the sections apart, idly flicking off stray scraps of rind.
“Is this what I get to look forward to?” he asks a rhetorical audience, handing a few pieces over to Gene, who takes them gratefully. “Some wiseass bustin’ my chops all the way from Louisiana?”
“Gotta keep you in line somehow,” Gene remarks slyly, with a small smile that’s only for the two of them. He ducks his head, eats a few orange slices greedily as Gene watches him, smug.
“If I had known you were such a menace I wouldn’t have asked ya to write,” he gripes, but there’s no heat behind the words. Gene knocks his knee against Babe’s, closes his eyes once more to soak up the sun. Easy is milling about, sharing the liberated hothouse fruit. Moe and Lieb start up a rousing chorus of Oklahoma, much to Webster’s chagrin.
“When I visit,” Gene murmurs, low and pleased, “tell me about the places you’ll take me.” What a wonderful thing, Babe thinks, to see the future as a when and no longer an if. He finishes eating the last slice and starts to peel another orange. The skin parts easily, getting his fingers sticky from the juice.
“Okay,” Babe says, and tells him.