When I was sixteen folks took me for twenty-five, and one full-growed woman from the city swore I must be thirty. I was big all over—had whiskers like steel wool. I sure wanted to see something besides LuVerne, Indiana, and that ain’t saying Indianapolis would of held me, neither.
So I lied about my age, and I joined the Army of the World.
Didn’t nobody cry. There wasn’t no flags, there wasn’t no bands. It wasn’t like in olden times, where a young boy like me’d be going away to maybe get his head blowed off for democracy.
Wasn’t nobody there at the depot but Ma, and Ma was mad. She thought the Army of the World was just for bums who couldn’t find respectable work nowheres.
Seems like yesterday, but that was back in the year two thousand and thirty-seven.
“You keep away from them Zulus,” Ma said.
“There’s more’n just Zulus in the Army of the World, Ma,” I told her. “There’s folks from ever country there is.”
But anybody born outside of Floyd County is a Zulu to Ma. “Well, anyways,” she said, “I expect they’ll feed you good, with world taxes as high as they is. And, as long as you’re bound and determined to go off with them Zulus and all, I expect I ought to be glad there ain’t no other armies roaming around, trying to shoot you.”
“I’ll be keeping the peace, Ma,” I said. “Won’t never be no terrible wars no more, with just one army. Don’t that make you proud?”
“Makes me proud of what folks done done for peace,” Ma said. “That don’t make me love no army.”
“It’s a new, high-class kind of army, Ma,” I said. “You ain’t even allowed to curse. And if you don’t go to church regular, you don’t get no dessert.”
Ma shook her head. “You just remember one thing,” she said. “You just remember you was high-class.” She didn’t kiss me. She shook my hand. “As long as I had you,” she said, “you was.”
But when I sent Ma a shoulder patch from my first outfit after basic training, I heard she showed it around like it was a picture postcard from God. Wasn’t nothing but a piece of blue felt with a picture of a gold clock stitched in it, and green lightning was coming out of the clock.
I heard Ma was shooting off her bazoo to everbody about how her boy was in a time-screen company, just like she knowed what a time-screen company was, just like everbody knowed that was the grandest thing in the whole Army of the World.
Well, we was the first time-screen company and the last one, unless they gets the bugs out of time machines. What we was supposed to do was so secret, we couldn’t even find out what it was till it was too late to go over the hill.
Captain Poritsky was boss, and he wouldn’t tell us nothing except we should be very proud, since there was only two hundred men on the face of the earth entitled to wear them clocks.
He use to be a football player at Notre Dame, and he looked like a stack of cannonballs on a courthouse lawn. He use to like to feel hisself all over while he talked to us. He use to like to feel how hard all them cannonballs was.
He said he was real honored to be leading such a fine body of men on such a important mission. He said we’d find out what the mission was on maneuvers at a place called Château-Thierry in France.
Sometimes generals would come look at us like we was going to do something sad and beautiful, but didn’t nobody say boo about no time machine.
When we got to Château-Thierry, everbody was waiting for us. That’s when we found out we was supposed to be something extra-desperate. Everbody wanted to see the killers with the clocks on their sleeves, everbody wanted to see the big show we was going to put on.
If we looked wild when we got there, we got wilder as time went on. We still couldn’t find out what a time-screen company was supposed to do.
Wasn’t no use asking.
“Captain Poritsky, sir,” I said to him, just as respectful as I could be, “I hear we are going to demonstrate some new kind of attack tomorrow at dawn.”
“Smile like you was happy and proud, soldier!” he said to me. “It’s true!”
“Captain, sir,” I said, “our platoon done elected me to come ask you if we couldn’t find out now what we is supposed to do. We want to kind of get ready, sir.”
“Soldier,” Poritsky said, “ever man in that platoon got morale and esprit de corps and three grenades and a rifle and a bayonet and a hundred rounds of ammunition, don’t he?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Soldier,” Poritsky said, “that platoon is ready. And to show you how much faith I got in that platoon, it is going to lead the attack.” He raised his eyebrows. “Well,” he said, “ain’t you going to say, ‘Thank you, sir’?”
I done it.
“And to show how much faith I got in you, soldier,” he said, “you are going to be the first man in the first squad in the first platoon.” His eyebrows went up again. “Ain’t you going to say, ‘Thank you, sir’?”
I done it again.
“Just pray the scientists is as ready as you are, soldier,” Poritsky said.
“There’s scientists mixed up in it, sir?” I said.
“End of interview, soldier,” Poritsky said. “Come to attention, soldier.”
I done it.
“Salute,” Poritsky said.
I done it.
“For’d harch!” he said.
Off I went.
So there I was on the night before the big demonstration, ignorant, ascared, and homesick, on guard duty in a tunnel in France. I was on guard with a kid named Earl Sterling from Salt Lake.
“Scientists is going to help us, eh?” Earl said to me.
“That’s what he said,” I told him.
“I’d just as soon of not knowed that much,” Earl said.
Up above ground a big shell went off, and liked to bust our eardrums. There was a barrage going on up above, like giants walking around, kicking the world apart. They was shells from our guns, of course, playing like they was the enemy, playing like they was sore as hell about something. Everbody was down deep in tunnels, so wasn’t nobody going to get hurt.
But wasn’t nobody enjoying all that noise but Captain Poritsky, and he was crazy as a bedbug.
“Simulated this, simulated that,” Earl said. “Them ain’t simulated shells, and I ain’t simulating being ascared of them, neither.”
“Poritsky says it’s music,” I said.
“They say this is the way it really was, back in the real wars,” Earl said. “Don’t see how anybody stayed alive.”
“Holes gives a lot of protection,” I said.
“But back in the old days, didn’t hardly nobody but generals get down in holes this good,” Earl said. “The soldiers had shallow little things without no roof over ’em. And when the orders came, they had to get out of them holes, and orders like that was coming all the time.”
“I expect they’d keep close to the ground,” I said.
“How close can you get to the ground?” Earl wanted to know. “Some places up there the grass is cut down like somebody’d done used a lawn-mower. Ain’t a tree left standing. Big holes everwheres. How come the folks just didn’t go crazy in all them real wars—or quit?”
“Folks are funny,” I said.
“Sometimes I don’t think so,” Earl said.
Another big shell went off, then two little ones—real quick.
“You seen that Russian company’s collection?” Earl said.
“Heard about it,” I said.
“They got close to a hundred skulls,” Earl said. “Got ’em lined up on a shelf like honeydew melons.”
“Crazy,” I said.
“Yeah, collecting skulls like that,” Earl said. “But they can’t hardly help but collect ’em. I mean, they can’t hardly dig in any direction and not find skulls and all. Something big must of happened over there.”
“Something big happened all through here,” I told him.
“This here’s a very famous battlefield from the World War. This here’s where the Americans whipped the Germans. Poritsky told me.”
“Two of them skulls got shrapnel in ’em,” Earl said. “You seen them?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Shake ’em, and you can hear the shrapnel rattle around inside,” Earl said. “You can see the holes where the shrapnel went in.”
“You know what they should ought to do with them poor skulls?” I asked him. “They should ought to get a whole slew of chaplains from ever religion there is. They should ought to give them poor skulls a decent funeral, and bury them someplace where they won’t never be bothered again.”
“It ain’t like they was people any more,” Earl said.
“It ain’t like they wasn’t never people,” I said. “They gave up their lives so our fathers and our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers could live. The least we can do is treat their poor bones right.”
“Yeah, but wasn’t some of them trying to kill our great-great-grandfathers or whoever it was?” Earl said.
“The Germans thought they was improving things,” I said. “Everbody thought they was improving things. Their hearts was in the right place,” I said. “It’s the thought that counts.”
The canvas curtain at the top of the tunnel opened up, and Captain Poritsky come down from outside. He was taking his time, like there wasn’t nothing out there worse’n a warm drizzle.
“Ain’t it kind of dangerous, going out there, sir?” I asked him. He didn’t have to go out there. There was tunnels running from everwheres to everwheres, and wasn’t nobody supposed to go outside while the barrage was on.
“Ain’t this a rather dangerous profession we picked of our own free will, soldier?” he asked me. He put the back of his hand under my nose, and I seen there was a long cut across it. “Shrapnel!” he said. He grinned, and then he stuck the cut in his mouth and sucked it.
Then, after he’d drunk enough blood to hold hisself a while, he looked me and Earl up and down. “Soldier,” he said to me, “where’s your bayonet?”
I felt around my belt. I’d done forgot my bayonet.
“Soldier, what if the enemy was to all of a sudden drop in?” Poritsky done a dance like he was gathering nuts in May. “‘Sorry, fellows—you wait right here while I go get my bayonet.’ That what you’d say, soldier?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
“When the chips are down, a bayonet is a soldier’s best friend,” Poritsky said. “That’s when a professional soldier is happiest, on account of that’s when he gets to close with the enemy. Ain’t that so?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“You been collecting skulls, soldier?” Poritsky said.
“No, sir,” I said.
“Wouldn’t hurt you none to take it up,” Poritsky said.
“No, sir,” I said.
“There’s a reason why ever one of ’em died, soldier,” Poritsky said. “They wasn’t good soldiers! They wasn’t professionals! They made mistakes! They didn’t learn their lessons good enough!”
“Reckon not, sir,” I said.
“Maybe you think maneuvers is tough, soldier, but they ain’t near tough enough,” Poritsky said. “If I was in charge, everbody’d be out there taking that bombardment. Only way to get professional outfits is to get ’em blooded.”
“Blooded, sir?” I said.
“Get some men killed, so’s the rest can learn!” Poritsky said. “Hell—this ain’t no army! They got so many safety rules and doctors, I ain’t even seen a hangnail for six years. You ain’t going to turn out professionals that way.”
“No, sir,” I said.
“The professional has seen everthing, and ain’t surprised by nothing,” Poritsky said. “Well, tomorrow, soldier, you’re going to see real soldiering, the likes of which ain’t been seen for a hundred years. Gas! Rolling barrages! Fire fights! Bayonet duels! Hand-to-hand! Ain’t you glad, soldier?”
“Ain’t I what, sir?” I said.
“Ain’t you glad?” Poritsky said.
I looked at Earl, then back at the captain. “Oh, yes, sir,” I said. I shook my head real slow and heavy. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Yes, indeedy-do.”
When you’re in the Army of the World, with all the fancy new weapons they got, there ain’t but one thing to do. You got to believe what the officers tell you, even if it don’t make sense. And the officers, they got to believe what the scientists tell ’em.
Things has got that far beyond the common man, and maybe they always was. When a chaplain hollered at us enlisted men about how we got to have great faith that don’t ask no questions, he was carrying coals to Newcastle.
When Poritsky finally done told us we was going to attack with the help of a time machine, there wasn’t no intelligent ideas a ordinary soldier like me could have. I just set there like a bump on a log, and I looked at the bayonet stud on my rifle. I leaned over, so’s the front of my helmet rested on the muzzle, and I looked at that there bayonet stud like it was a wonder of the world.
All two hundred of us in the time-screen company was in a big dugout, listening to Poritsky. Wasn’t nobody looking at him. He was just too happy about what was going to happen, feeling hisself all over like he hoped he wasn’t dreaming.
“Men,” that crazy captain said, “at oh-five-hundred hours the artillery will lay down two lines of flares, two hundred yards apart. Them flares will mark the edges of the beam of the time machine. We will attack between them flares.”
“Men,” he said, “between them lines of flares it will be today and July eighteenth, nineteen-eighteen, both at the same time.”
I kissed that bayonet stud. I like the taste of oil and iron in small amounts, but that ain’t encouraging nobody to bottle it.
“Men,” Poritsky said, “you’re going to see some things out there that’d turn a civilian’s hair white. You’re going to see the Americans counter-attacking the Germans back in olden times at Château-Thierry.” My, he was happy. “Men,” he said, “it’s going to be a slaughterhouse in Hell.”
I moved my head up and down, so’s my helmet acted like a pump. It pumped air down over my forehead. At a time like that, little things can be extra-nice.
“Men,” Poritsky said, “I hate to tell soldiers not to be ascared. I hate to tell ’em there ain’t nothing to be ascared of. It’s an insult to ’em. But the scientists tell me nineteen-eighteen can’t do nothing to us, and we can’t do nothing to nineteen-eighteen. We’ll be ghosts to them, and they’ll be ghosts to us. We’ll be walking through them and they’ll be walking through us like we was all smoke.”
I blowed across the muzzle of my rifle. I didn’t get a tune out of it. Good thing I didn’t, because it would of broke up the meeting.
“Men,” Poritsky said, “I just wish you could take your chances back in nineteen-eighteen, take your chances with the worst they could throw at you. Them as lived through it would be soldiers in the finest sense of the word.”
Nobody argued with him.
“Men,” that great military scientist said, “I reckon you can imagine the effect on our enemy when he sees the battlefield crawling with all them ghosts from nineteen-eighteen. He ain’t going to know what to shoot at.” Poritsky busted out laughing, and it took him a while to pull hisself back together. “Men,” he said, “we’ll be creeping through them ghosts. When we reach the enemy, make him wish to God we was ghosts, too—make him sorry he was ever born.”
This enemy he was talking about wasn’t nothing but a line of bamboo poles with rags tied to ’em, about half a mile away. You wouldn’t believe a man could hate bamboo and rags the way Poritsky done.
“Men,” Poritsky said, “if anybody’s thinking of going A.W.O.L., here’s your golden opportunity. All you got to do is cross one of them lines of flares, go through the edge of the beam. You’ll disappear into nineteen-eighteen for real—won’t be nothing ghostly about it. And the M.P. ain’t been born who’s crazy enough to go after you, on account of can’t nobody who ever crosses over come back.”
I cleaned between my front teeth with my rifle sight. I figured out all by myself that a professional soldier was happiest when he could bite somebody. I knowed I wasn’t never going to reach them heights.
“Men,” Poritsky said, “the mission of this here time-screen company ain’t no different from the mission of ever company since time began. The mission of this here time-screen company is to kill! Any questions?”
We’d all done had the Articles of War read to us. We all knowed asking sensible questions was worse’n killing your own mother with a axe. So there wasn’t no questions. Don’t expect there ever has been.
“Lock and load,” Poritsky said.
We done it.
“Fix bayonets,” Poritsky said.
We done it.
“Shall we go, girls?” Poritsky said.
Oh, that man knowed his psychology backwards and forwards. I expect that’s the big difference between officers and enlisted men. Calling us girls instead of boys, when we was really boys, just made us so mad we couldn’t hardly see straight.
We was going out and tear up bamboo and rags till there wasn’t going to be no more fishpoles or crazy quilts for centuries.
Being in the beam of that there time machine was a cross between flu, wearing bifocals that was made for somebody else who couldn’t see good, and being inside a guitar. Until they improves it, it ain’t never going to be safe or popular.
We didn’t see no folks from nineteen-eighteen at first. All we seen was their holes and barbed-wire, where there wasn’t no holes and barbed-wire no more. We could walk over them holes like they had glass roofs over ’em. We could walk through that barbed-wire without getting our pants tore. They wasn’t ours—they was nineteen-eighteen’s.
There was thousands of soldiers watching us, folks from ever country there was.
The show we put on for ’em was just pitiful.
That time-machine beam made us sick to our stomachs and half blind. We was supposed to whoop it up and holler to show how professional we was. But we got out there between them flares, and didn’t hardly nobody let out a peep for fear they’d throw up. We was supposed to advance aggressively, only we couldn’t tell what belonged to us, and what was nineteen-eighteen’s. We’d walk around things that wasn’t there, and fall over things that was there.
If I had of been a observer, I would of said we was comical.
I was the first man in the first squad of the first platoon of that time-screen company, and wasn’t but one man in front of me. He was our noble captain.
He only hollered one thing at his fearless troops, and I thought he hollered that to make us even more bloodthirsty than we was. “So long, Boy Scouts!” he hollered. “Write your mothers regular, and wipe your noses when they runs!”
Then he bent over, and he run off across no man’s land as fast as he could go.
I done my best to stick with him, for the honor of the enlisted men. We was both falling down and getting up like a couple of drunks, just beating ourselves to pieces on that battlefield.
He never looked around to see how me and the rest was doing. I thought he didn’t want nobody to see how green he was. I kept trying to tell him we’d done left everbody way behind, but the race took ever bit of breath I had.
When he headed off to one side, towards a line of flares, I figured he wanted to get in the smoke where folks couldn’t see him, so he could get sick in private.
I had just fell into the smoke after him when a barrage from nineteen-eighteen hit.
That poor old world, she rocked and rolled, she spit and tore, she boiled and burned. Dirt and steel from nineteen-eighteen flew through Poritsky and me ever which way.
“Get up!” Poritsky hollered at me. “That’s nineteen-eighteen! Can’t hurt you none!”
“It would if it could!” I hollered back at him.
He made like he was going to kick me in the head. “Get up, soldier!” he said.
I done it.
“Get back with the rest of them Boy Scouts,” he said. He pointed through a hole in the smoke, pointed back to where we’d come from. I seen the rest of the company was showing them thousands of observers how experts laid down and quivered. “That’s where you belong,” Poritsky said. “This here’s my show, and it’s a solo.”
“Beg pardon?” I said. I turned my head to follow a nineteen-eighteen boulder that had just flew through both our heads.
“Look at me!” he hollered.
I done it.
“Here’s where we separates the men from the boys, soldier,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Can’t hardly nobody run as fast as you can.”
“I ain’t talking about running,” he said. “I’m talking about fighting!” Oh, it was a crazy conversation. Nineteen-eighteen tracers had started going through us.
I thought he was talking about fighting bamboo and rags. “Ain’t nobody feeling very good, Captain, but I expect we’ll win,” I said.
“I mean I’m going through these here flares to nineteen-eighteen!” he hollered. “Ain’t nobody else man enough to do that. Now, get the hell out of here!”
I seen he wasn’t fooling a bit. He really did think that’d be grand, if he could wave a flag and stop a bullet, even if it was in some war that’d been over for a hundred years or more. He wanted to get in his lick, even if the ink on the peace treaties was so faded you couldn’t hardly read them no more.
“Captain,” I said to him, “I ain’t nothing but a enlisted man, and enlisted men ain’t even supposed to hint. But Captain,” I said, “I don’t think that makes good sense.”
“I was born to fight!” he hollered. “I’m rusting out inside!”
“Captain,” I said, “everthing there is to fight for has already done been won. We got peace, we got freedom, everbody everwhere is like brothers, everbody got nice houses and chicken ever Sunday.”
He didn’t hear me. He was walking towards the line of flares, towards the edge of the time-machine beam, where the smoke from the flares was thickest.
He stopped just before he got into nineteen-eighteen forever. He looked down at something, and I thought maybe he’d done found a bird’s nest or a daisy in no man’s land.
What he’d found wasn’t neither. I went up to him and seen he was standing over a nineteen-eighteen shell hole, just like he was hanging in air.
There was two dead men in that sorry hole, two live ones, and mud. I knowed that two was dead, on account of one didn’t have no head, and the other was blowed in two.
If you got a heart, and you come on something like that in a thick smoke, ain’t nothing else in this universe going to be real. There wasn’t no more Army of the World; there wasn’t no more peace everlasting; there wasn’t no more LuVerne, Indiana; there wasn’t no more time machine.
There was just Poritsky and me and the hole.
If I was ever to have a child, this is what I’d tell it: “Child,” I’d say, “don’t never mess with time. Keep now now and then then. And if you ever get lost in thick smoke, child, set still till it clears. Set still till you can see where you are and where you been and where you’re going, child.”
I’d shake that child. “Child, you hear?” I’d say. “You listen to what your Daddy says. He know.”
Ain’t never going to see no sweet child of mine, I expect. But I aims to feel one, smell one, and hear one. Damn if I don’t.
You could see where the four poor nineteen-eighteen souls had been crawling around and around in that hole, like snails crawling around in a fishbowl. There was a track leading from each one—the live ones and the dead ones.
A shell lit in the hole and blowed up.
When the mud fell back down, there wasn’t but one man left alive.
He turned over from his belly to his back, and he let his arms flop out. It was like he was offering his soft parts to nineteen-eighteen, so it could kill him easy, if it wanted to kill him so bad.
And then he seen us.
He wasn’t surprised to see us hanging there in air over him. Wasn’t nothing could surprise him no more. Real slow and clumsy, he dug his rifle out of the mud and aimed it at us. He smiled like he knowed who we was, like he knowed he couldn’t hurt us none, like it was all a big joke.
There wasn’t no way a bullet could get through that rifle bore, it was so clogged with mud. The rifle blowed up.
That didn’t surprise him none, neither, didn’t even seem to hurt. That smile he give us, the smile about the joke, was still there when he laid back and died.
The nineteen-eighteen barrage stopped.
Somebody blowed a whistle from way far off.
“What you crying about, soldier?” Poritsky said.
“I didn’t know I was, Captain,” I said. My skin felt extra-tight, and my eyes was hot, but I didn’t know I was crying.
“You was and you are,” he said.
Then I really did cry. I knowed for sure I was just sixteen, knowed I wasn’t nothing but a over-growed baby. I set down, and I swore I wouldn’t get up again, even if the captain kicked my head off.
“There they go!” Poritsky hollered, real wild. “Look, soldier, look! Americans!” He fired his pistol off like it was the Fourth of July. “Look!”
I done it.
Looked like a million men crossing the beam of the time machine. They’d come from nothing on one side, melt away to nothing on the other. Their eyes was dead. They put one foot in front of the other like somebody’d wound ’em up.
All of a sudden, Captain Poritsky hauled me up like I didn’t weigh nothing. “Come on, soldier—we’re going with ’em!” he hollered.
That crazy man drug me right through that line of flares.
I screamed and I cried and I bit him. But it was too late.
There wasn’t no flares no more.
There wasn’t nothing but nineteen-eighteen all around.
I was in nineteen-eighteen for good.
And then another barrage hit. And it was steel and high-explosive, and I was flesh, and then was then, and steel and flesh was all balled up together.
I woke up here.
“What year is it?” I asked ’em.
“Nineteen-eighteen, soldier,” they said.
“Where am I?” I asked ’em.
They told me I was in a cathedral that’d been turned into a hospital. Wish I could see it. I can hear from the echoes how high and grand it is.
I ain’t no hero.
With heroes all around me here, I don’t embroider my record none. I never bayoneted or shot nobody, never throwed a grenade, never even seen a German, unless them was Germans in that terrible hole.
They should ought to have special hospitals for heroes, so heroes wouldn’t have to lay next to the likes of me.
When somebody new comes around to hear me talk, I always tell ’em right off I wasn’t in the war but ten seconds before I was hit. “I never done a thing to make the world safe for democracy,” I tell ’em. “When I got hit, I was crying like a baby and trying to kill my own captain. If a bullet hadn’t of killed him, I would of, and he was a fellow American.”
I would of, too.
And I tell ’em I’d desert back to the year two thousand and thirty-seven, too, if I got half a chance.
There’s two court-martial offenses right there.
But all these heroes here, they don’t seem to care. “That’s all right, Buddy,” they say, “you just go right on talking. If somebody tries to court-martial you, we’ll all swear we seen you killing Germans with your bare hands, and fire coming out of your ears.”
They likes to hear me talk.
So I lay here, blind as a bat, and I tell ’em how I got here. I tell ’em all the things I see so clear inside my head—the Army of the World, everbody like brothers everwhere, peace everlasting, nobody hungry, nobody ascared.
That’s how come I got my nickname. Don’t hardly nobody in the hospital know my real name. Don’t know who thought of it first, but everbody calls me Great Day.
