The First of July(116)

When Benedict made no response, the soldier looked at him, uncomprehendingly at first and then, seeing his blood-soaked arm, said, with less certainty, “Are you all right, sir? I thought you’d want to come, you see.”

Benedict sat to pull on his boots with his good hand and the soldier added: “Seeing as it’s Captain Dawes-Holt, sir.”

He froze for a second.

“No,” he said. “No.” Theo shouldn’t be flying at all. “Captain Dawes-Holt? Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir. He was up first thing yesterday, saw them blow up the ridge. Said he was off to test the machine now, sir. Running ragged, he said, but told Sergeant Laughton he’d been too close to the mines when they blew them and the balance was off.”

Then he was up and pushing past the soldier, his tunic still unbuttoned. His clumsy steps turned into a run; he held his bad arm in his good one and stumbled on uneven ground. He ran on. A single shell whined and burst to his left; he heard its bright greenness edged with orange. He ran on without his usual instinctive ducking down. One of three soldiers saluted—he noticed they were dirty and one had a bandaged hand. His chest hurt. And then he saw it. Behind some broken trees. A mean stretch of what had once been meadowland. The plane was nose-down, almost comical with its tail up and one wing broken. But he saw this through fingers of smoke, which came and went. White smoke mostly, but as he drew closer he could see more ominous darker billows.

“We need a fire chain,” he said as the soldier caught up. “Tell the NCO.”

“We tried, sir. Shell’s broken the pipe. The sappers are at it now. We only got the stream and a bit of fire water. In the tank. Sar’nt says we’re not to go too close.”

He could hear shouting as well as crackling now. What the devil was the sergeant thinking of? Men were running up the bank with individual buckets, but it was going to be hopeless. They needed to get Theo out. He reached a small zinc cistern; buckets were almost thrown into it, clanging in sparks of pink and blue against the side, and the opaque water gathered up and spilled as each soldier ran to the flames. But it was too slow; almost worse in its pointlessness than nothing.

“Tonge thought he was moving, sir, a few minutes ago.” Hall was at his side. “Just for a minute when the smoke cleared enough to see him. He must have had a problem with the rig because he can only just have took off. He wasn’t hit,” he added, as if it were relevant. “He just went up high and came down like a bird as been shot. Clipped the trees.”

He almost pushed him away. Then he smelled more than smoke at exactly the second that the significance of Hall’s words hit home and he understood why the sergeant was holding them back. If he’d only just taken the plane up, it would be full of fuel.

Now that he was closer, he could feel the heat and see the thickening oily clouds and, on the ground, more debris and the flicker of small flames. Hall and the sergeant caught up with him as he hesitated.

“Where’s the bloody M.O.?” he said to the NCO.

“They’ve got thousands of casualties. They’re overwhelmed. We’re trying to find an orderly.”

“An orderly?” He could hear his own voice rise, its desperation. The smell was nauseating. He moved forward and was halted by the heat. He ducked, brushed a spark off his shoulder. Bits of burnt canvas blew in the air. A handful of soldiers, some with buckets, were standing back, hands raised to protect their eyes from the heat. There was a piercing purple haze of metallic crackling in his head. A noise: almost perfectly B minor.

He heard the sergeant say to Hall, quietly and all in a rush, “Sooner it all goes up, the better.”

When the sergeant realized he’d heard, he said “Sorry, sir. I know he’s your friend, sir, but it’s hopeless if he can’t get hisself out.”

The pain consumed him. He burned—he felt blisters and his scalp a halo of fire, his eyeballs sucked dry, he felt his flesh melt like candle wax, but looked down to see that he was untouched.

“Dear God, Theo… .”

And then he was moving and, feeling someone’s hand on his arm for a second, shook the man off and he understood it all. Said or read or thought Theo’s unspoken words, not Mendelssohn’s music, but the Psalm itself and all its truth.

My heart is sore pained within me and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me. And I said, O that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away, and be at rest.

He began to run; although he felt a tug on his arm, he shook it off.

“Don’t you understand—I love him,” he said, and then shouted “I love him,” and he could feel his eyes weep with the smoke. Then it was hotter than ever, as his feet pressed hard downward and fast and the rainbow of war colors and smells hurled around him and the everything was alight and the wreck wailed and he heard a shout, “Wait for me,” and perhaps it was Hall but then he knew it for his own transparent voice shouting. Wait. Theo. Wait. And he felt first a terrible pain and his body curled away instinctively, shoulder up, arm across his face to ward off the fire, but then he was through and going forward with ringing in his ears, a pounding, his face stiffening, somehow growing smaller while his chest seemed to balloon outward. He had a white-hot vision of his lungs, their delicacy perfectly illuminated, but then came surprise as the colors went out and then the sound died and he was for the first time free of it all and he was not running, he was flying and his legs were not his and he cried with sealed eyes and lips that would not move toward the heat and the heart. Fly away. Fly, Theo, fly. And he was carried forward—not alone—never alone—and his arms so wide and feathers from them now and he was in snow: white and black and very cold and shouting out I love you I love you I love you I love