April 27, 1945
Everything about this patrol felt wrong.
He wasn't even supposed to be here, but he was; clutching an M50 in his sweaty hands, the smell of gunmetal and wet ash in his nostrils. Colonel Sink had recommended he go (You're too valuable to rot here at Regiment, he had said with a gruff smile and a firm squeeze to the shoulder, and 2nd Battalion needs you more than me, son). Polite lies. Nixon knew Sink wanted him gone, so he was kicked out like an unwanted dog to comb the streets with the noncoms and their officers. Familiar faces flanked both sides of him: Shifty, Lip, Martin, Talbert, Perc, Welsh, Babe, Toye—
Toye? Didn't he lose a leg at Bastogne?
Nixon found that his mind had turned to mud. He could feel it slopping around inside his skull with every step he took down this darkened, deserted boulevard.
What's Toye doing here? And Muck, he died in a foxhole with Penkala. When did Buck get back? Where'd they all . . .
Nixon suddenly grew sleepy, disconnected from reality. It didn't matter that he was walking with dead men. The patrol. They had to finish it. But it was going to finish them, oh yes, and nobody knew but Nix. He knew because he was the intelligence officer. It was his job to know things, like where they were going, what they would find there, why his wife divorced him, where the danger lay.
The danger wasn't lurking in those black-mouth doorways or empty-eye-socket windows of the scorched structures around them, but was there, in that thing at the end of the street. What was it? A cave? A hive? Some kind of hellish, ungodly Death's Love-Nest is what it was, but Nixon's eyes couldn't seem to focus. He could see it clearly in his mucky mud-mind, though. He opened his mouth to shout a warning to the advancing men, but whiskey rushed from his throat in a torrent and his words were drowned out with a gurgle of burning alcohol.
Nixon dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, making no sound. It was as if he were a ghost himself. He clutched his throat and tried to suck in a breath to scream, but the booze kept pouring out like an endless gush of vomit. He recognized the taste. (Nothing but the finest for Mrs Nixon's baby boy.) He screwed his eyes shut and struck the ground with his fists.
I'm such a goddamn failure. I can't do anything right, not even the things that are supposed to come naturally. Like living. What a waste of resources. What a waste of flesh.
He began searching for his M50—where was it? It had fallen somewhere to his left—and then he lifted his head to see Winters walk past him, dutifully leading the patrol toward the doom they didn't know about.
"Dick, stop! Wait! Don't go in there!" Nixon spurted, but his tongue floundered uselessly in the river of alcohol escaping his body. He threw himself forward and nearly caught Winters by the ankle; his fingernails scraped against the dull leather heel and then slipped away. There was a sound like a petrol can being hurled through the storefront window of a bottle shop in Stürzelberg, and that was when Lew knew he had lost Dick forever. The man hadn't even looked behind him to see who had scratched at his boot.
(You're an alcoholic, Nix. That's why. You worthless insect. You revolting glutton.)
Nixon scrambled over the uneven ground, churning up mounds of gravel as he fought against an unknown force that was holding him by the shoulders.
(It's Death, Lew. And after it gets your friends, it's gonna get you.)
I'm here! Somebody please look at me! Dick! Harry! Lip! You're all gonna die, don't you see! It's gonna get you, it's gonna—
And then that hellish, ungodly love-nest exploded like a thousand land mines going off at once. The ground heaved and churned. The men lost their balance and fell, clinging to the shuddering earth. When Nixon finally got the courage to raise his head from the dust and rubble, he saw a massive black swarm of German infantry—all faceless, featureless agents of evil—roiling down the street toward Easy. A vile poison being purged from the planet's festering core.
Fall back! Fall back! Nixon waved his arms wildly, helplessly, and watched the company clamber into crouches like the brave soldiers they were and fire their weapons into the cloud of oncoming destruction.
No, no! You can't kill them! You're all gonna die! For Chrissakes, can anyone hear me! You're all—
And then, like reaching a familiar story's inexorable conflict, the men of E Company began to fall. David Webster—the writer, the kid from Harvard—was the first to go; a cluster of angry bullets thudded through his chest like darts, sending up a misty red nebula of blood. Who'll write his letters now? thought Nixon numbly.
George Luz was next, his body severed at the torso by a .50 caliber machine gun blast. (None of us will ever laugh again.) Bull Randleman was killed by a shot to the head. He fell back onto the road and bled a dark red pool from the hole in his skull. (There goes the best soldier in Easy.) Frank Perconte was obliterated by a grenade. Donald Malarkey folded in half over a German bayonet. Carwood Lipton was overtaken by a mob of Krauts and trampled to death under their heavy black boots. And Ron Speirs—the immortal, the infamous captain who feared nothing—caught a piece of jagged shrapnel in his neck that nearly took his head off. His body remained standing, still alive and not knowing it was dead, until it was bowled over by the advancing enemy.
It happened slowly, this ghastly, unutterable horror that assaulted Lewis Nixon's astonished eyes, and there was enough time to mentally compose the obituaries of every single fatality. It was sickeningly cruel, the sounds of splattering gore and bullets ripping through flesh and . . .
Make it stop, God, make it stop, please.
"Fall back! Easy Company, fall back!"
It wasn't God.
It was Richard Winters, and he was calling for retreat.
There he was, just up the street a few dozen yards, every bit the hero even when ordering his men to flee. Holding his ground, sweeping his arm as he ushered the troops behind him, spraying the enemy with automatic fire between shouted orders. The man was an avenging angel set against the legions of infernal Hell, and he spat fearlessly into the face of Satan himself.
Nixon's heart lurched against his ribs. He thought he would be sick with relief. Finally, this was all going to end! Hurry, Dick! Let's get them home! I'd shout with you but I can't speak for the liquor (it speaks for me now)—but you can do it! You're a major for Pete's sake! Good Old Dick, I always knew we could count on—
A shadow passed across the sky, darkening the street. Nixon's joy drained out of him and he knew. He could feel it, and oh God please, you can't be serious. You couldn't. Why would you do that to one of your own—
"Dick!" He retched, gasped, and suddenly there was air in his lungs again. "Dick, run! Look out!"
Winters turned at the sound of a familiar voice. Death finally let go of Nixon's shoulders and he stumbled toward his unsuspecting friend. (Run, little Lewie. Save him if you can.) Only if he got to him would he be safe. His mind would protect them both, muddy as it was. His mind could keep them alive, keep the Philistines at bay. They could hold them off together with their slingshots and their pebbles . . .
"RUN, DICK!" He couldn't scream loud enough. The air felt glorious in his lungs. "RUN!"
And then everything froze. Froze? No. There was movement. Slow, slow movement. Millimeter by millimeter, a world moving through glass. Nixon for the first time saw his surroundings in all their sharpness and rich, deep color: the red blood staining the rubble; the white skin of dead bodies; the shocking blue of Dick's eyes; the deep purple of the night sky; the orange sparks from the 75mm mortar round suspended in the air behind Dick's shoulder.
Oh God. How could you punish me this way?
Nixon closed his eyes and felt himself break free as time resumed its normal flow. He felt the ground rise up and slam into his face. He felt his eardrums rupture from the explosion. He felt a wave of fiery heat roll over his back. His heart liquefied with dread.
Dick. Jesus Christ, Dick.
He pushed himself to his hands and knees and peered through the cloud of sooty ash. It stung his eyes, acrid and thick. He coughed dryly. He was so thirsty . . .
Dick Winters slowly emerged from the curtain of smoke, shuffling forward weakly, unsteadily. Nixon leaped to his feet with a shout and ran to him.
"Dick! How in the hell did you survi—"
Dick fell forward and was caught at the last second by Nixon, his legs buckling and dragging them both to the ground.
"Dick! Dick, what's wrong? What's . . ." Nixon trailed off as he looked over his friend's shoulder. Nausea surged through his stomach. "Oh, Jesus Christ," he uttered.
Half of him was missing. Great big pieces of Dick Winters, gone. Nixon could see the yellow-white bone of his shattered spine poking up from tangled masses of pulpy red flesh. Grayish-blue coils of intestines dangling freely from his missing back. Kidneys, liver, stomach—
(put 'em back in, put 'em back in, put him back together)
—all vital, all irreplaceable, all belonging to Dick. There was a slimy shimmer of movement visible behind the broken cage of exposed ribs.
Lungs, oh Christ, he's still breathing.
"Dick?" Nixon gently pulled the man off his chest and stared.
Winters' face was pristine, groomed, his hair parted neatly and combed back. Still beautifully whole and unspoiled. His eyes hung half-open in that peaceful, listless way Nixon remembered seeing so many times in an attic in Holland. They still sparkled with life, though there was no life in him anymore. His lips were set in a faint, barely-noticeable smile. Nixon knew that smile. That was his smile, the just-poured-piss-on-your-face-and-by-the-way-good-morning smile. The yeah-we'll-see-if-you-take-me-to-Chicago-someday smile. The you're-a-good-man-Lew smile. The you're-my-best-friend-and-I-love-you smile.
The wail that had been building in Nixon's chest burst out in a howl that echoed across the face of the earth and rocked the foundation of Heaven. A heavy mass was ripped from his body's core, and now the empty hole filled with blood and tears and a degree of anguish so jagged that it sawed into his soul like a serrated knife. Nixon felt his upper body start caving in, and he became suddenly, painfully aware of how much Dick had been a part of him; and when he had died, he'd taken everything that belonged to him: every word, every sound. Every heart.
That was why, in this moment of abject despair, Nixon felt like nothing more than a hollow shell of dried skin. Gone with the next whisper of breeze, never to be seen again.
It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, it wasn't supposed to end like this. Why, Dick, why?
Nixon buried his face into Winters' collar and cried against the cooling freckled skin of his neck, onto the oak leaves of the rank he would be buried with, great wracking sobs of grief that no mortal had known before this cursed day. No last words of apology. No goodbyes. Just a dead soldier in his arms. He sat down and held the corpse of Dick Winters against himself, rocking the body gently, like a sleeping child.
Wake up, Dick. Don't leave me here alone. I need you, I miss you, please come back, come back . . .
Heavy footfalls sounded, then the tall black forms of German soldiers strode out from the noxious cloud of smoke. Their faces were rigid and devoid of humanity, their strides calculated and unnatural. Machines, Nixon thought hatefully. They're just fucking machines and they killed my best friend and they don't even have the goddamn ability to feel remorse or pride . . .
The machine-men gathered around Nixon and wordlessly pried Winters' body from his arms.
"Hey! No! Let go of him, you sonsabitches!"
Nixon sprang up like a wild dog and lunged at the men carrying Dick away. He grappled at their arms, beat their shoulders with his fists, but it was to no avail; these living gargoyles were still made of stone.
"You can't do this! Give him back! You can't take him from me, you bastards, he's mine! Give him back to me!"
The futility of his efforts brought tears of shame to his eyes. He was so weak, so powerless against these forces of evil. He couldn't even save his best friend. How pathetic does a man have to be to reach this depth of impotence? How could he have allowed this to happen to himself?
Fury rose within Nixon and he bent down, scraping up handfuls of gravel and hurling them at his foes. They bounced painlessly off of their coats. He swore. He cursed. He wept. And then he watched with horror as the Germans pulled out their gleaming swords and proceeded to hack Dick Winters to pieces.
Feathers filled the air. A chorus of young Belgian girls sang mournful hymns through the candlelight. And Lewis Nixon had never wanted to die so badly.
"NO!" he screamed in agony, his mind at last shattering in a burst of green glass. "NO NO—"
"Nix! Nix, for the lovva Christ, would ya wake up!"
Harry Welsh let out a startled yelp as Nixon bolted upright from his cot, panting for breath. He was wild-eyed, disoriented, soaked with sweat. His skin was almost yellow-green, and for a moment Welsh was terrified by his comrade's appearance. He barely had time to say, "Jesus, buddy, what's—" before Nixon leaned over the side of his cot and vomited hard.
Welsh darted back to avoid the splatter of brown bile and stomach acid, disgusted and stunned. Nixon retched again, his back arching from the force of his nausea, but nothing came up. He continued to heave dryly until his body could take no more; he sank weakly down onto his chest, half-hanging off the cot. At first Welsh thought he was coughing, but the rhythm was all wrong—those were sobs he was hearing.
"Lew? Hey, are you okay?" Carefully avoiding the puddle on the floor, Welsh leaned close and lifted Nixon's head in his hands.
Tears ran in hot salty rivulets from the captain's dark, bloody-spiderweb eyes. He looked right through Welsh, his cracked lips trembling and trailing silver strings of spittle.
"Lewis, God Almighty . . ."
"What's all the racket in here?" Lipton appeared in the doorway, still in his PT-style pajamas. He narrowed his eyes at the wretched sight of Captain Nixon and caught his breath.
Welsh looked up, his face blanched. "You better get Doc in here."
The two of them loitered outside Nixon's door, glancing in as Eugene Roe shined a light into Nixon's eyes and spoke to him in a low Louisiana murmur.
"Somethin's wrong."
Lipton turned.
Welsh stared back at him gravely, cigarette wedged between his lips. "I dunno what it is, but it's getting worse. You seen him these last few weeks? Guy's a fuckin' wreck."
"I know."
"Doesn't talk to anyone unless he's reporting, doesn't take care of himself, doesn't . . ." He trailed off. "He doesn't care anymore. What happened to him? I mean, I heard his wife divorced him, but I never saw him wear a wedding ring before, either. Hell, I figured him a single man the way he acted, but this is ridiculous. It wasn't his woman he was crying over just now, that's for sure."
Lipton found himself searching for excuses. He didn't know why. "He had a bad jump during Varsity. Most of his stick died before they even got outta the plane."
"Yeah, I heard about that. Shame. Y' think that's what's eatin' him?"
Lipton gazed into the room. Roe was sermonizing the importance of food, water and sleep to the human body, but Nixon sat in front of him and stared into space, as deaf as a post. Lip was no medic, but he knew what shell shock looked like.
He also knew it had been almost a month since he had last seen Winters and Nixon in the same place at the same time.
"Must be nerves," Lipton murmured, the standard catch-all to mystery ailments. "He'll snap out of it once we're on the move again."
"Hope so," Welsh grunted, grinding his cigarette butt on the door frame. "I hate this fuckin' place."
"Yeah," Lipton sighed, unable to free his eyes from Nixon's sad, hunched form. "Me too."
The world was a palette of wet grays. The buildings. The trees. The muddy roads. As if some awful leech had dug its way under the earth's skin and sucked all the color out of it. The bleak April sky hung low over the Allied-occupied town of Mindelheim, sweating monochromatic curtains of drizzle onto the empty streets and sleeping transport trucks. No man was willing to step outside if he could help it, so activity aside from sentry duty and patrol was minimal. The dreary weather wore heavily on a man. Perhaps none so heavily as Winters.
He stood at the window of his billet, cupping in his hands a mug of tea that had long since gone cold. He stared out through the cracked panes like a lifeless mannequin, his face locked in the wide-eyed expression of one who was deeply lost in thought. He was a million miles away—and he'd been there all morning.
He was so far removed from the present that he didn't hear the soft rap at his door, and Lipton had to call to him twice before he finally came back to the realm of the living. "Sir."
Winters blinked and turned, surprised. "Yes?" he answered distantly.
Lipton shut the door behind him. "How're you holding up?"
"Good, good. What's up, Lip?" He set his cold mug on his desk. It was cluttered and untidy, Lip noticed. Winters was not an untidy man.
Lipton's large brown eyes fell shyly to the floor for a moment. "I wanted to talk to you about Nixon, sir."
Dick felt his heart lodge in his throat. He tried to gulp it down. "What about him?" he asked evenly.
"Well . . . he's in a real bad way lately. I dunno if you've noticed."
Winters barely nodded. "Yeah. I've noticed."
"We're all starting to get worried. Doc says he looks anemic. He's not eating much, and he's not sleeping that well, either. Harry—" Lip's words poured out in a nervous rush. He anxiously scratched the back of his head. "This morning Nix woke him up. Rolling around, making these noises . . . Harry got him up and then he got sick all over the place, started crying. That's when we called in Doc to check him out. We don't know . . ." He trailed off.
Winters hesitated to ask—he was certain he didn't want to know. "Crying?"
"Yeah." Lipton glanced up sheepishly. "He's not talking to us anymore."
"Probably just a bad hangover," Winters said. "Cup of coffee and a cold shower'll fix him right up."
"I dunno. This . . . it's not a hangover. If it was, Doc woulda said something." Lip fidgeted. "He's really bad off, Dick. I don't think we've got anything that'll fix him. He's . . . he's in a lot of pain. In here." He tapped his shoulder, about the place where his heart would be.
Winters gazed at Lipton, his face blank but his eyes turbulent with emotion.
"I know it's none of my business, but I can't help feeling things aren't right between the two of you."
Panic sent a wave of adrenaline coursing through Dick's body. He knew an issue this snarled and ugly was bound to come up sooner or later, but he never expected it to happen this quickly, much less bare itself on such a personal, forward level. So Lipton was aware of it. Welsh was probably in on it too, being that he worked so closely with Nix. God only knows who else had noticed by now—probably the whole company. And this was no place to start breaking apart because of personal grievances or fallings-out.
Winters drew in a long breath and leaned against his desk with his gaze fixed to the floor. "I'm not a meddler, Lip. Nix didn't want to be helped, so . . ." He sighed, a short frustrated puff.
Lipton stood quietly for a few moments. "So that's it? You've just given up on him?"
"He gave up on me first."
There was a pause, then: "It was his drinking, wasn't it?"
Winters nodded. "Yeah. I tried, Lip. Harder than I think anyone else has. God knows I didn't wanna lose him, but it's inevitable. I figure the sooner I detach myself, the easier it'll be for . . . to get on with my life."
Lipton stared, incredulous. "This isn't like you, Dick."
"I know."
"He's your friend. You, I mean you two've been inseparable since before Toccoa."
"I know."
Lipton took a step forward. "You should go see him," he said softly. "Talk to him. If there was ever a time when he needed a friend, it's now. You're not just gonna let him fall by the wayside, are you?"
Winters lifted his head to stare emphatically at Lip. "There's nothing I can do about it. I've washed my hands of him."
Lipton's worried expression hardened suddenly. "No, you haven't. I can see him all around you. In your eyes. Under your skin. He's haunting you."
Winters went stock still, perhaps amazed by his second lieutenant's uncharacteristic flash of indignation.
Lipton scowled, though his eyes were heavy with sadness. "And with all due respect, sir, I hope he does it for the rest of your life." He straightened and gave a quick salute.
Winters' body subconsciously returned gesture, even though his mind had walked out of the room with Lipton. Military programming at its finest. Once the footsteps had faded, the major sank heavily into his desk chair, gripping the thin wooden arms in a white-knuckled grasp. He breathed slowly and deeply, trying to calm his pounding heart. Trying to work it through, trying to solve it with his mind. It wasn't working this time. He couldn't focus. He couldn't think. His brain, his greatest asset, was rendered suddenly and woefully useless to him.
For crying out loud, get a hold of yourself, he scolded himself. You've gotta snap out of it. Don't let it consume you like—
Echoes of Stürzelberg flashed unbidden through his head. Images of a back seat and Nixon's brooding, sullen face. Comforting words bouncing off of a steel exterior like a child's rubber ball. Winters had been the child then, Nixon the impenetrable stronghold. But now the roles had been reversed. Winters had thrown in the towel, just like Nixon, and now there was nothing left to do but take his hands off the controls and let the airplane of his existence tailspin into the sea.
Winters pressed a hand to his cheek numbly, obscuring half of his face with his trembling fingers. It was an unconscious attempt to hide his eyes from the truth unveiling before them. It was a cruel, ugly and unimaginably painful truth, but he was beginning to understand its purpose now. He was beginning to see that sometimes it was easier to start anew than to try to fix something that was broken beyond repair. Count your losses, save yourself, damn the consequences.
Lewis Nixon was suffering because he wanted to. He could have faced reality—faced his addiction—and fought it tooth and nail, but he decided to lay down and let it kick him to death instead. He had chosen to suffer.
A flash of heat rose to Winters' face, along with the pressure in his sinuses and the burning in his eyes that signaled the onset of a fearsome burst of tears. Why, Nix? Why wouldn't you just let me help you? If you had just taken my hand, I—
And then, almost as if a ghost had leaned down and whispered in his ear, there came the answer in the form of a question: Why wouldn't you just let Lip help you?
Winters sat in his chair, spine rigid, face wan, mouth open. Because Nix was punishing himself. He was punishing himself for being an alcoholic, for being too weak to say no. And now I'm punishing myself for being too weak to help him.
"God," he breathed, and a tear from each eye spilled over his golden-red eyelashes and slipped down his cheeks. "I'm just like him."
Remorse crash-landed into his body like a mortar round, stripping him of his strength and vigor, and suddenly he was weakened to the point of limpness, shaking as badly as he had shook in the frozen forest of Bastogne. (When only Nix had been there to keep me warm. Oh God, Lew, I've let you down. I'm so sorry . . . )
Winters bowed his head, pressing his fingertips to his brow, and wept.
The mercilessness of the truth knows no limit.
And it almost always comes too late.