hand-to-hand combat after he’d been captured, he overwhelmed the enemy and escaped – all that crap. It could make a fairly nice bronze star citation.
The Kraut looks at me as if I’m nuts. He probably figures we should be past all that. He’s right. I try to relax, let my mind wander, think about other things, because there’s nothing I can possibly do concerning what’s actually happening now. I try to justify what’s going on, explain it to myself.
So far, I’ve found out there’s a big difference between recklessness, fearlessness and bravery. The first is to be avoided, except as something from afar, say in a movie or a story. The second is also something to be avoided. If you are fearless, you probably lack some critical aspect of imagination. If you’re near someone who is fearless, chances are you’ll get sucked into the vortex of fearless madness and get hurt yourself, no matter how careful you are. I’d already discovered the truth of this second one before the crazy war, but have had it verified too often over the past few months.
Bravery is doing what has to be done even though you’re afraid. Most brave people I’ve known have done what they did very cautiously. They were scared, but for survival reasons, either of self or others they valued, did something that normally would require fearlessness or recklessness. But they don’t do it fearlessly or recklessly. They only do what has to be done and they do it with an absolute minimum of bravado.
Then, there’s another category. I could call it pragmatic sensibility. It’s when one does the obviously intelligent thing, which can easily be confused with bravery, that is, if you don’t look carefully. My reaching out for the rifle and cuddling it to myself fits in here somewhere.
But I don’t have long to cogitate all these minor variations in human behavior. I keep telling myself that anything I can hear or feel probably isn’t going to kill me. I’ve gotten through a few other bombardments with this specious rationale, but then the one I didn’t feel or hear must have come. I don’t know how close it was, but it was close enough to just fold that hole right in on top of us. Everything stops for me.
When I come to, I’m covered with mud, dirt and blood. I can’t move. I can barely see. My ears are ringing. My feet and arms are numb. I feel strangely warm and comfortable. I consider the idea that I am dead.
In front of me, stretched out on my dirt-covered lap, is the Kraut. His eyes are open and looking right at me, but he isn’t seeing. His neck looks twisted the wrong way. I figure he’s dead, too, and if he’s seeing anything, he’s seeing me dying. We’re on the inside of a mass grave for two.
If I’m dead, then there’s nothing to do but wait and find out what happens next. If I’m not dead, then I’m probably dying. I’m astounded at how easy it is, how I’m not as scared as I thought I’d be.
I can see enough to know, or think, that it’s full daylight. Some considerable time must have passed. I feel the way you feel when somebody buries you deep in sand at the beach, or when, in a hospital, they give you an ether anesthetic, or I should say, the way I felt when they gave me an ether anesthetic to take out my tonsils and adenoids at the orphanage when I was eight years old.
I know I’m crying, but I can’t hear myself. When you’ve been under a one-five-five artillery bombardment, you don’t hear much of anything for a while.
I’m not sure how long we lie there like that. Nobody comes to check us, neither GI nor Kraut. The war seems to have passed us by. That’s not too disappointing.
I drift in and out. I’m just beginning to feel some pain. Maybe I am alive, more or less. I try moving a few fingers but nothing happens. I can’t even lift my head to look up over the edge of the hole, and that’s when I’m conscious. When I’m passed out, we must just look like a couple of prime candidates for the grave-registrar bunch, and they won’t be along till much later. Everybody’s too damned busy fighting the crappy war to pay much attention to us for now. We’re sort of obsolete.
It’s getting to be night again when I hear a small scurrying sound. That wakes me! I’m sure it’s rats come for a free nibble. We had rats in the night at the orphanage. I wonder, if I try, if I can make a noise like a cat. I try making a noise and two things happen. The ‘dead’ Kraut starts to moan; muddy tears come out of his eyes, puddle with his muddy sweat. The other thing is I can hear myself as well as hear his moan. Of course, I’d also heard the scurrying, so my ears must be working. I try to turn my head a little, but it hurts, hard, down deep in my back, under all the dirt. My arms, hands, legs and feet begin feeling cold – not so much cold as dead. I’m starting to wish all of me could feel as dead as they seem. At least they don’t hurt.
I look around for the rats, but there aren’t any. It’s a fox! It’s a beautiful fox standing on two legs! He comes close and begins carefully, with small fine almost handlike paws, scraping dirt off the Kraut and me.
I watch, not knowing what’s happening or what to do. Then the fox looks me in the eyes and says in a clear, calm voice:
‘Stay perfectly still, William. I’ll have you out of here very soon.’
Now I’m sure I’m dead or crazy, or both, but there’s nothing I can do. He slowly lifts off the Kraut’s helmet and gently slides his head off my chest. He works slowly, carefully, pulling dirt from the both of us until we’re completely uncovered. Then this little fox stares down and at me again.
‘Now you do just as I say, William, and everything will be all right.’
I’m sure I’m dead now, but how is it nobody ever figured out God was a fox? The Kraut moans again, and the fox touches him all over with his light, tender, moving paws. He speaks to him in another language. I’m not sure, but it sounds like German. In either language, his voice is a strong modulated whisper, warm and comforting, still loud enough so I hear it easily through the mud and dirt packed in my ears.
He turns back to me. His eyes are an incredible yellowish amber.
‘William, you shall both die unless you do exactly what I tell you.’
I’m numb, dumb with shock and fear. His eyes peer intelligently at me over his reddish black muzzle.
‘Look deeply into my eyes. Try to relax. You will have a strange sensation, but it is the only way I can think right now to remove you from here and to a place where I can help you.’
I stare into his eyes and slowly seem to feel myself lifting out of my body. At the same time, I sense an intense enclosing concentration, a compaction of all I am. The closest thing I can think of is the way it would feel for loose snow to be squeezed into a snowball. I slowly become as nothing. The pain and numbness leave, then I lose consciousness.
4
The Warren
The next thing I know, Caroline, I’m in a large room. I’m stretched out on a bed. My entire body is in traction, with pulleys and weights hanging from rafters in a ceiling. The ceiling, rafters, walls and floors are made from wood, and they’re not painted. It seems like a strange kind of hospital. But I’m in a clean bed and it’s quiet. I don’t feel any pain if I lie still, not even a headache.
I try to remember what’s happened to me. I can move my hands, my arms, if I do it carefully, but it is painful. I turn my head slowly back and forth. In the bed beside me is the German soldier. He’s asleep and breathing
