Page 59 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Holt put up a hand over his eyes, squinting at the sky, at the glowing yellow ball bobbing overhead. A giant balloon, a balloon made of silk and air. The signal balloon. Damn them, damn them. Didn’t they know it was like sending up a flare to tell the Spanish they were there, that great, big yellow balloon bobbing along over them as they marched?

“Idiots. They’re marking our trail.” Holt staggered and would have fallen but for Paul’s arm around him. Any moment now, that balloon would pop. They’d shot at it, the Spaniards, and who could blame them, a tempting big target like that. And the two men in the basket, calling for help as they drifted, target practice for every Spaniard in Cuba. “Do you see it? Do you see the balloon?”

“That’s the sun, Holt, the sun. The balloon was yesterday. The battle was yesterday. Do you remember it? The battle?”

Running and falling, running and falling. Colonel Roosevelt, holding up an arm to show a red furrow on his wrist. See here, boys. I’ve got it too. Bucky O’Neill, blowing out rings of smoke from his cigarette, bragging, The Spanish bullet isn’t made that will kill me. It got him right through the mouth, that bullet. Right through the mouth. Sometimes the Fates had a sick sense of humor. They’d made him eat his words, and quick too.

Thede Miller, on the ground, at the crest of a hill, lying flat on his back, fighting for breath.

I’m going, Holt, but it’s in a good cause, isn’t it?

Dammit, Thede. Get up, get up.

“Get up, Holt. Get up.” He was on the ground again. On his back. Like Thede. How had he come to be on the ground? Paul was hovering over him, a very stubbly Paul, two Pauls, in fact, now apart, now blurring together again. “Try to drink something.”

“No water.” Holt’s tongue felt furry. There was no water in his canteen. They’d tried to stop, at the ford, fill their canteens up. A hundred degrees in the shade and getting hotter by the moment.

But Tom Hall had told them it was against orders. Keep marching. What did it matter if they were parched? The Spaniards were picking ’em off anyway. Might as well die thirsty. Die thirsty.

Like Tantalus. Holt was back in the schoolroom, that narrow room at the top of the house, hot in summer and cold in winter, translating the Odyssey from the Greek for the benefit of a tutor in a rusty black coat and a ruler that hit hard if he missed a word. It was summer; it was hot; he tugged at his collar to try to get some air. He was thirsty, so thirsty, but he couldn’t stop and drink, not until he finished his lines. Tantalus, standing in a pool, the water up to his chin, but when he tried to lap at it, the water would all drain away.

And wasn’t that always the way? Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink.

“Bother.” Water was trickling around Holt’s mouth. Someone was wiping ineffectually at it with a blue bandana. “We don’t have so much water we can waste it. Try to swallow, will you?”

Holt tried, but his lips didn’t seem to want to work properly.

“Holt!” It was Paul again, shaking him, slapping him lightly on the cheeks to wake him up. “Can you stand? I think you might have a fever. We have to get you to Siboney.”

Siboney. The word echoed around Holt’s skull. So bony. Bones. Nothing but bones, bones walking, bones dancing.

He could see them, wearing the tattered remains of brown uniforms, waving at him with hands made of bone. Holt dragged his weary bones along with them, down the Siboney road, stumbling and shivering.

How had it gotten so cold? Holt was shivering so hard his teeth clattered together. Maybe this was all a dream. Maybe he was back in his father’s house, hiding up a tree in the January cold, too scared to shiver, because if he shivered someone would find him.

He had to stop shivering.

“Holt.” Paul’s face was disturbingly close, going in and out of focus. “You can’t sit now. We’re almost there.”

“No. No sitting,” Holt agreed. They’d been sitting when a shell struck. On some hill or other. But Holt hadn’t. He’d gotten up because he saw something in the tangle of vines. Someone. Paul’s friend. That Miss Hayes. She’d beckoned to him and he’d followed and behind him men had been blown to bits. “Can’t sit.”

But his legs didn’t seem to want to hold him.

“It’s only a few more yards,” Paul pleaded.

And there she was again, that woman, that Miss Hayes, only this time she wasn’t clad in diaphanous white robes but in a none-too-clean white pinny over a blue dress with the Red Cross band on one sleeve.

In the twilight, she seemed to film over like hot breath on a cold window, shivering in and out of his vision, blurry around the edges, as if she were a ghost, as if she were that figure in the vines, warning, warning. . . .

“Look.” Holt tried to pull Paul’s arm, tried to point. “Look where she comes again.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Paul said, and dragged Holt forward toward the apparition. “It’s Betsy. Betsy! I’ve got a casualty for you!”

Siboney, Cuba

July 2, 1898

“Paul?” Betsy blinked in the twilight, hoping her tired eyes were playing tricks on her.