When the War Is Over by Stephen Becker Page B

Lieutenant.”
    â€œHaller. How’s your nose?”
    â€œThat’s all right. I got a skin like leather anyway. It’s no worse than a bad bruise now. The worst was those headaches. That night and all the next day.”
    â€œWhat did Hooker talk about?” Catto felt excessively casual as he asked, like a spy perhaps.
    â€œMexico. And he wanted me to know why he done it to me.” Haller snorted, and cursed with no real anger. “He was just making himself feel better. Everybody’s papa.” He cursed more imaginatively.
    â€œDid he mention Silliman or me?”
    â€œNo. But never mind him. Now look here, Lieutenant.”
    â€œYeh. You need help. What is it now?”
    â€œGot a minute?”
    They walked together to the barracks and marched inside, and Godwinson shouted the men to attention, and Catto told them to carry on. He followed Haller down the aisle, past the stove, his heart sinking at this new trouble, it could be nothing else, and at Haller’s bunk the old private bent, grunting and wheezing as he dragged out that same chest. Haller flung it open and Catto saw several pounds of coffee, and several pounds of sugar, and some tea; twenty-two small candles, seventeen bars of yellow soap, and four pairs of brand-new boots size nine.
    â€œIt was nice of them,” Haller said, “but next time that son of a bitch will shoot me.”

V
    â€œI ain’t fooling,” the boy said. “It hurts terrible.” His face was chalky, the eyes like blue moons. As he doubled up Catto winced with him, gasped with him.
    â€œWe better do something. Jacob, go see if you can find Phelan.”
    Jacob fretted, wagging his head: “He been like this all day. Maybe this March thaw got him upset.”
    â€œYou go fetch the surgeon.”
    Jacob patted the boy in passing. “You trust in God, now.” Thomas tried to smile.
    â€œFor God’s sake, lie down,” Catto said. Thomas dragged himself to the cot and fell supine. Catto groaned wearily, hiked to the door and slammed it shut. “This damn door. This damn army. This damn winter.”
    â€œOh be quiet,” Silliman said. “Thomas, do you want a drink?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDo you know what it is, Ned? Any idea at all?”
    Silliman nodded. “Side pleurisy. An aunt of mine—an aunt of mine had it.”
    â€œDied of it,” he had been about to say, and Catto knew it. Catto had been depressed for some weeks, bored beyond endurance, and now he was trapped between fear for Thomas and a natural interest in whatever relieved the monotony. He woke with great reluctance these mornings, rising through layers of gum and bog toward an unnecessarily bright day, barking and swearing and spitting. He drank too much and Silliman worried.
    â€œShe had three attacks,” Silliman said.
    â€œI had this once before,” Thomas said slowly, dreamily. “About a year ago.”
    Catto fidgeted and remembered the good old days, the days of wrath and battle. He was tired now, sodden, red about the eyes, yellow about the teeth, staled by cigars, unbathed. Very different from this boy whose pale skin, unweathered, gleamed smooth and white. The fair hair, disheveled now, fell silky to the blanket; the boy’s ears were small, white, almost translucent; his nose was young, without character. Catto—thick-set, mustachioed, hair in his nostrils, a leader of men—grew sadly aware that his own boyhood was gone. Once, and not long ago, his face too had been bland and open and innocent. “Phelan will make you well,” he said gently. “Phelan is one of these professors. He knows everything. Willich will give you a week off.”
    â€œGen’l Willich.” There was rebuke in the boy’s exhausted voice, and Catto rather liked him for it; but in the next few seconds that rebuke drifted between them like a mist upon the waters, curling slowly about an unkempt