A Midnight Clear. William Wharton

all right: maybe it was only a bad moment, something to forget.

      ‘I’ll tell you, Wont. I feel exactly like a target being towed across a firing range.’

      ‘Don’t sweat it, Mother; pretend we’re going for a winter Christmas stay at the family château. Imagine yourself a member of the old European élite.’

      I look ahead, over Miller’s shoulder. The road’s tough, twisting, narrow. We’re winding along switchbacks now, working our way deeper into the forest.

      I’m just checking the map again to see if we’re on the right road, going the right way, when the world seems to explode. The jeep jumps so only Miller could’ve kept it from turning over. I think at first we’ve hit a mine but then realize it’s Mother firing off a long burst. He’s shooting past Miller’s left ear at something on that side of the road, so the jeep’s reared up on its two right wheels. I’m already clambering out before it gets settled back on four. Miller cuts the motor, grabs his M1 and dives, crawling under the jeep. Half our junk we’d piled in back, behind the gun, is spread along the road. I’m hunched in the middle of it.

      Jumping out, I banged a knee on that damned handhold and my stupid mind is more wrapped around this pain than on keeping me alive.

      Wilkins is still up behind the gun. He’s not firing but continues sighting down the barrel. I can barely get my voice together for a whisper. I’ve crept behind the right rear wheel, away from the direction Mother fired.

      ‘What is it, Wilkins? What’d you see?’

      There’s a moment before he answers. He stands up from his crouch behind the gun. He pushes his glasses farther up his nose and leans forward.

      ‘There was a German soldier standing behind a tree – there. I think I got him; he’s lying on the ground. I don’t see any others.’

      ‘You’re sure. Mother? And you can still see him?’

      Mother takes off his glasses, wipes the lenses with the leather fronts of his woolknit gloves and peers again.

      ‘Yeah, he’s there. You can see him yourself if you stand up.’

      This is not the kind of thing anybody who likes being alive does. But if it’s an ambush why aren’t they shooting Mother off the jeep?

      Bolstered by this slight bit of hasty logic, I scurry into trees beside the road. I look back and see everybody’s dispersed from the other jeep; the motor back there’s still running.

      God, I’m scared, I’m expecting the BBBrrrRRRppppPP of a burp gun any minute. I sling my rifle and take a grenade off my jacket. Anything close, I’m better off with a grenade than a rifle. I slide my finger in the ring and move up two, then three trees. It’s a German all right and he’s sure enough dead.

      About one minute later, after I’ve carefully snuck up in good infantry manual procedure on our ‘dead German,’ I look down on something I’ve seen in dreams at least a thousand times during the past thirty-seven years.

      He’s been dead a while and is frozen with one arm over his head and the other twisted across his stomach. He’s lying on his back but he died on his stomach with his head turned. One side of his face is iced and flaked so pieces of frozen flesh hang from the bones; this flesh is bluish green and there’s no sign of blood. I see where one of Mother’s fifty-caliber bullets went through his neck just below the chin, a perfect unbleeding fifty-caliber hole.

      I’ve seen the dead and the dying but I’ve never seen anyone dead, shot. They call a sharpshooter a dead shot, but this is a real one, shot while dead. It seems to me, then, like the final violation.

      Miller comes beside me.

      ‘Jammed dog tails! What happened?’

      ‘Somebody must’ve stood him against that tree, Bud. They hauled him from somewhere and propped him there.’

      I reach down and pick up a typical German bolt-action Mauser balanced beside him. There’s also a piece of white paper with holes in it, no writing or printing.

      ‘They maybe even had this rifle balanced on his hands, sticking out, leaning against the tree. That’s what Mother saw.’

      Except for Wilkins, the rest of the squad’s drifting over now. Boy, am I ever the great leader. ‘Come on, everybody, let’s bunch together so we can be mowed down easily.’ Wow!

      Father Mundy kneels by the German. He tries closing the one open eye with his thumb like a real priest, but it’s frozen open. The other eye is only goo, frozen goo. Father pulls off his glove, jams his thumb into the bolt of his M1 and rubs it around. Then he makes little crosses on what’s left of the German’s face: his forehead, his eye, his ear and his lips, then the backs of the stiff decaying hands. He’s mumbling prayers to himself in Latin. I kneel down on one knee beside him, as much to keep from keeling over as anything.

      ‘That isn’t Extreme Unction you’re doing there, is it, Mundy? I thought you had to be alive to get it and a priest to give it.’

      Mundy stands up slowly, still praying. He’s functioning, but he’s in almost as much shock as I am.

      ‘Right, Wont. But those were the best prayers I could think of. I asked the angels to help and the devils to leave. What else?’

      He pulls off his helmet and his head’s sweaty. We start moving back to the jeeps. Mother Wilkins, like the only good soldier in the pack, is still sitting up there behind the fifty caliber covering us. Mundy reaches into his helmet liner and pulls out a wad of toilet paper.

      ‘Is it all right, Wont, if I go off into the bushes for a minute? Something like this turns my insides out.’

      I wave everybody our private ‘piss call’ sign, and Father Mundy goes deeper into the woods. I move back to the jeep. Miller’s sitting in the driver’s seat, his legs hanging over the sides. He has his helmet off, and is pounding on his ears.

      ‘Look, Mother, could you give me just one second’s notice before you start that thing up again? I have a flock of mockingbirds doing a duet with a squeaking oil well in the middle of my head.’

      Miller turns to me.

      ‘Won’t, is it OK if I take a smoke while we’re waiting for Mundy?’

      ‘Sure, but I don’t approve. I have to live with Gordon, too, you know.’

      I look down the road at the other jeep; Shutzer and Gordon are leaning against it.

      Melvin Gordon is squad health nut; he intends to become a doctor if he lives through the war. (He actually does; both those things.) He’s taken on the personal responsibility (unasked) for the state of our bodies. Mundy works on our souls. In today’s terms, I guess Mother’s our ecologist, Miller’s our mechanic and poet, I’m the artist and Shutzer’s our business manager.

      Gordon has gotten all of us who smoked to stop, at least in front of him. It can be an enormous nuisance. Miller resists Gordon most, the way Shutzer resists Mundy.

      About then, Father Mundy comes dashing from the forest at half mast. He still has the toilet paper in one hand flapping along after him and he’s holding on to the belt of his pants with the other. His rifle has slipped down to the crook of his elbow so it’s swung in front and is thumping against his knees with every step.

      ‘Mother of God, save me!’

      He looks back over his shoulder. He feels for his head with his toilet paper hand and realizes he doesn’t have his helmet. He stops dead in his tracks.

      ‘No, Lord! Don’t make me go back!’

      Father Mundy’s trying to buckle and put himself together. He keeps tangling in the toilet paper. We’ve all sprawled in the snow again except Wilkins, who’s swung that fifty caliber so it’s aimed just over Father’s head.

      ‘What in the name of heaven is it, Mundy?’

      Mundy shambles