Read Online Souvenir by James R. Benn - Free Book Online Page A

nothing, which he had every right to do. But when the cooks poured coffee with the last few pitiful remnants of steam swirling above the surface, and plopped oatmeal almost ready to congeal into the consistency of cement into his mess tin, he smiled and said thanks, buddy, and moved on.
    There was a lot about the Army Clay didn’t like, but it always fed him, and that was something he took with a seriousness that only someone who had gone without could muster.
    Gone without. Funny when you thought about it. Gone. He hadn’t gone anywhere, just stayed at home. Stayed after they’d buried his Mama, dead of consumption in the winter of 1936. Stayed with his older brother when his Dad told them there was enough food in the larder for two weeks, then walked down the road to get to Nashville somehow, where his cousin had promised him a job. He’d write, send for them. Teddy would have to get a job, whatever he could find, to keep them in beans until then. Dad never made it. The railroad police found him dead in an empty freight car on a sideline in Topeka. Rolled for two bits and his shoes, hit a little harder than the bindlestiff meant to, but that was that. Cops came to the door one day with the news, the bank came the next. Teddy couldn’t earn enough in a year to pay what they owed, even if he had found work. That was a bad winter, but then again, so was this one.
    Well, no mama, no poppa, no home, not even a big brother no more, with Teddy lost deep in the Pacific, off the Solomons, since his cruiser went down in ’43. Clay felt the losses rip through him, as he shook a couple of cigarettes loose, giving one to Jake, who lit his, then Clay’s, with his Zippo. The pain was fresh and new, as if right now he were standing over his Mama’s open grave, reading the telegram from the War Department as the Sheriff brought him the news from Topeka. The sudden realization. He was the last of them.
    “Fuck,” said Clay.
    “You said it, brother.”
    Jake inhaled and blew out blue smoke mixed with frosted breath. The trucks hadn’t brought only chow and ammo. They brought replacements, and Jake stared at the three who had been assigned to their squad. They looked the same, they all looked the same when they climbed down off the truck. Twenty of them, clean, scared, wide eyed, huddled together, their shiny new helmets impossibly huge on thin, freshly-shaven faces.
    Jake looked at Clay, Shorty, Tuck, Big Ned. They looked like hell, like something out of a monster movie. Filthy, unshaven, bristling with death. A dull, sullen stare, unfocused, the kind of stare you hoped didn’t land on you if you didn’t know the guy. Even Miller, a few paces behind Big Ned, burdened with ammo pouches bulging with BAR clips, was starting to look worn and mean. No wonder they looked so scared. They’d probably shit their pants when they saw the Krauts.
    “You guys,” Jake said, pointing at the three replacements, feeling like he was talking to children. “Don’t bunch up.”
    He watched as they split apart, and in a minute were back together, whispering, looking around at the men spread out on the road on either side of them, the thick fir trees towering above their heads. Jake felt pity for the poor bastards. They had been dumped off trucks after a night on the road and parceled off to squads in twos and threes, finding themselves in the company of wraiths; men festooned with grenades, knives, belts of machine gun ammo, caked in dirt, week-old beards obscuring faces, eyes darting out to the horizon, not lingering on human company. They looked like they came from a different army, a horde from the forest, acclimated to the terrain of death. Their helmets were battered, painted olive-drab with sawdust grit mixed in the take off that shiny glare. They smelled.
    Sharp thuds echoed from the rear and one of the replacements dove flat, his hands over his helmet. The other two stood silently, looking around at everyone else walking on, calmly. More