Song of Steam Lungs (Part 2)
by
D. D. H. Lee
Franz
You can get used to the mortars at night. You can get used to anything.
I could tell you about an uncle I had who once cowered every time he had to slaughter a cow. My da said the poor fellow couldn’t even hit the thing with that sledge because he couldn’t look at the cow while he did it. But after a few years’ practice, he can bash its head in without a thought.
That’s part of the problem about the newer soldiers. They think. They never bother looking because they think, and that’s why they always die.
Anyway, that reminded me of this Wesley fellow I dealt with. Part of Lasser’s unit, I think. I didn’t think much of him. I mean, who could trust a backstabbing sniper, right? But then I watched one of them perform a few trick shots with that fancy rifle of his, shooting cans and bottles out of the air, and he’d do it without a thought. The bottle or can would go up, and like magic, it would be shattered or
punctured by a single bullet. Sometimes the fellow barely glanced at the target. Someone would shout ‘Hoy!’; the target would rise into the air; the rifle would swing up and around, and flash, bang, the target would explode or spin away.
They were more like clowns than regular soldiers, able to do things with those rifles that we would normally have paid a few coins to watch at a carnival. Wesley was one of them, all right. I saw him do it with rats or stray dogs, get them right between the eyes and without much more sound than a click. Of course, not a lot of people thought much good about it, but I was not one of them. Fewer vermin made for an easier sleep without anything stolen from your pockets or your mess kits. He’d do such a good job that he even got paid for it, and he was kind enough to offer his winnings to us at the bar. I tagged along, of course.
Wesley was not too cold-blooded for one of his kind. He was actually a fun one with his stories. Between the mugs, he told us about one of his misadventures as a scrap iron scavenger when he was a little brat. I think anyone could remember it the way he told his tale.
“There was this one time,” he said in a voice like a drunken preacher, “mind you, a time when I was down on my luck. I hadn’t eaten in two days and my pop threatened to beat me if he didn’t see some bits from me today. So I got so desperate that I ended up begging by the street. I didn’t get anything, but there was this one nasty wench that walked down the street and gave me a real dirty look when she was approaching me and right there knocked me by the head with her bag before she walked off, like I deserved it just for being there.”
“I was thinking, ‘That cow!’ so I planned a way to get even with her. I found a rock and then flung the thing right at her. I missed, but it was enough to have her screaming for the police. Before I knew it, I was running down a street with an officer with a huge beard chasing me down on a bike, his beard trailing along like a comet’s tail. He would have had me in a minute – he was a large man on a bike, and I an underfed whelp -- so I took every twist and turn I could, and before I know it I was in an alley – a dead end! But I lucked out because there was this open sewer grate down there. I jumped down and as I was falling I could see the guy stare down after me, but he couldn’t see a thing so he just stood there. Right there I realized where I was and start to choke at the smell. I was floating in someone’s leftovers and there are roaches and... Hey, it wasn’t that bad. Oh, very well, it was. I remember spending two days afterwards trying to get the
smell out. At least you weren’t the one swimming through it, right?”
“Anyway, I was safe, right? But I was also neck high in this sludge that felt like moldy gravy and smelled ten times worse. I tried to struggle out of it, but all that did was splash it around and get it on my face, so I tried to walk through it while holding onto these crusty walls and feeling for something to climb up and out. It was kind of hard though, if you can’t tell, because my hands were all slick and the walls were slippery with chamber pot fillings, and my shoes barely touched the floor except when I almost tripped on a bottle by accident. I was going in, and I knew it, but then my foot snagged on something and the first thing I know, I was kissing what I’d been swimming in.” He laughs about it, like anyone would when they’ve been through something so terrifying that it makes a good story when you can look away from it all. Of course, everyone else seemed to be in awe and laughing with him.
After things quieted down a bit, someone asked him, “And then what happened?”
That’s the strangest part of it. He just stared into his mug and didn’t say anything. Of course, half of us were still snickering it up as a new round came to the tables and we couldn’t care nothing about it. That doesn’t mean we weren’t curious though. After all, here we were with one of those snipers that we all talked about here and there. Evil cursed men they are, but strange ones. Personally, I say it’s because of those rifles of theirs that they act so funny. I’ve seen them myself – he even let me hold his once. They don’t use bullets that we use, but something different. I say they run off of magic, and you would think so when you see them.
During their first trench raid I was next to their Sergeant, some man named Heinz. Never spoke in public around those trenches and was quieter than a stone along the line. Even though he was silent, he’d always finger those magic bullets in his hand like he was sharpening them or something. When the signal to leave went out, you should have seen the man. He moved through barbed wire as though it wasn’t even there, like it was moving around him. I couldn’t see much more because I was trying to dig under the stuff, but what I saw was that he was firing away in the darkness. You should have seen him, and the closest you would have seen of him was the flashpop of that rifle of his. Last time I saw him after that was after we took the line, when he was talking to his superior, that Lasser fellow, and he was on top of one of the Dermanki tanks, and I could see the look in his eyes was full of disgust. What do you expect though? The man sat on the thing like it was a trophy! Who could not explain the sort of jealousy you’d have when you could brag about taking down a tank? It must have been an everyday occurrence for those rifle-carriers, because none of them took in a promotion. It wouldn’t have surprised me if you told me they were demons in uniforms.
Lieutenant Glasford told me about how they were rotating the snipers around. Sounded silly, but Glasford said it was orders from the Major to make sure they were used to working around us. I think we’d all work better if we had their rifles. The Lieutenant laughed.
“You heard about Lasser? Stay away from his rifle.”
“Why’s that?” I asked him, and he then pointed to Wesley, who happened to be our current sniper. “Hey, sniper, come here and show us your rifle,” he commanded.
Wesley came up and handed the large beautiful thing over, grinning at us as he put the thing into Glasford’s hand because he was that sort of fellow. You should have seen the thing, glazed over some parts with specks of bronze and with a beautiful bronze scope attached. I wanted to hold it, but the Lieutenant just popped open the chamber and pointed it at me. I must have been right, because he was smiling along with
us with that sort of look that said he knew something which told me that he knew that his rifle was magical as well.
“See the needle in there?”
I looked, and could see it plain as day, a silver pin embedded in the empty chamber.
“Lasser’s is the only one that breaks. Their own Lieutenant seems to have the only one that seems to be junked all the time. I saw him do it once before they even made that sniper unit back when we were in the camps.” He handed the rifle back, but his other hand made a tiny explosion with his fingers and his mouth. “Pop! Every time he fired the thing snapped away without a thought. If I was him, I would have just switched rifles with one of his soldiers. He probably wants a soft life commanding behind a desk anyway.”
Wesley laughed at the remark with us, though he also seemed to laugh because of something else. He was fresh from the camp, so maybe he was thinking of something that neither of us knew. He lit smokes with the rest of us as though he was one and the same with us, though, so I did not care over it.
Around that time, we were waiting for any retaliation from the trenches as usual. This wasn’t that different from before. I could tell you of how often I have gone through the broken fields here and back between the lines as easily as I could tell you the driest place along the trench to sleep under, the best things to strip out of the corpses before you take their equipment, that sort of thing. Scavenging was not the best thing to do, but it was something to occupy us between the mortars. Not many died unless they were greedy enough to go for the bodies farther in the fields. It was a shame, since there were usually downed replacements in those fields and the newest soldiers were always the best ones to pick from, too, since they always had some gift or another from home, usually fresh food or a trinket from someone they knew. We never had snipers in these parts until recently, so I never had the chance to get one of those amazing rifles.
Sometimes during the night there would be the usual run of Dermanki. As they would run in, we would strike them from the safety of the trenches. Personally, I would rather if we were to strike them closer since it would mean more to scavenge. Snipers were meddlesome in this way. They were greedy enough to steal from us with their long-ranged firearms. Unlike the rest of us, who could strike only when the enemy would appear within a close enough distance to make a good search possible and easy. It’s a waste if you ask me, to see good equipment like that rot away like rations or a full flask of whiskey that would keep you warm on some of those cold nights.
My weapons could never do that. A good bead on a shot was worthless half of the time. Usually, I would end up hitting them in the shoulder or the leg because it was so terribly inaccurate. One of their arms would flail and bleed and they would scream sometimes and make such a pitiful racket that you would sometimes waste a few extra bullets just to make them die properly. A shot to the neck is always the best. It kills them properly and does not mess up their beautiful equipment except along the collars of their uniforms, which you always bury them in for some reason or another. It becomes such a trouble to have to go out of your way to even think of getting those wonderful supplies, so it was not long before I had to confront him about this issue during a wave of soldiers. His accuracy was flawless so I should have seen some blessing in that there were so many young ones that came in our direction. The rifle I had took down at least three and for the first time in the weeks before, I used a bayonet and saved bullets by goring them three times; belly, and twice in the neck. It is a wonder that no
one has ever invented a helmet that would protect such a valuable spot, but that made things easier.
“Hey, sniper.” I asked Wesley as I reloaded my empty rifle with a new clip. “Maybe you should learn to save your bullets once in a while.”
At this, he did not look at me, but he was smiling. Actually, he always smiled while he fired for some reason. It was his answer to everything, I guess. Snipers were strange men with stranger habits.
“Save my bullets?” He was listening, but his one eye never left the scope and his arms moved with machine quickness as he readied himself again for another shot. One would think he was mocking you if it was not for that sincerity in his tone that sounded like he understood. Even killers would listen at the right time.
“You know, it has been going around. We are getting less than the others out there because of your skill. It is not a bad thing because it is your job, but supplies can be useful and it’s hard to take advantage of anything when you handle these soldiers from so far away. It becomes inconsiderate how quickly you do these things.”
I couldn’t see his reaction then because I was saying this as I was whittling down a swarm that charged us and some of them had jumped in. There was no sound of his rifle, though, so it must have been him thinking about it while we knifed the stragglers.
“Okay.” He smiled when I looked back, still staring through that scope even as the rest of us cleaned our knives and dragged the carcasses away to be searched and buried before they would leave a mess in the trenches. I guess it worked though, since after he did not seem as active about taking them out. He listened, but it seemed silly at how much he wanted to be lazy about this. He never took any of the prized
possessions from the bodies, but it seemed ridiculous that after that he no longer bothered firing. Snipers really were a strange breed of men. But no one ever believed they were men, except for me. If Wesley was anything like those others (and I did see him share conversations with his other fellows, mind you), then they were as regular as the rest of us.
The only thing that determined their greatness to begin with was those weapons of theirs. I’ve seen it happen before, of course. People taking things that they aren’t normally supposed to and you watch them become something else so much afterwards that you can’t believe it’s the same person you’re seeing. You can see it everytime you see anyone above the lieutenants. The moment they get that extra bit of color
tacked to their shirts, they act like they own the military and push you about when before that they would have shared a drink a with you during breaks or while walking the trenches. Even the scrounging becomes dirty to their eyes. That’s the problem with things. It makes you forget what you want to forget. Wesley probably thought he was better than the rest of us, him and that rifle.
Days went by but the soldiers stopped coming. Every other day as I stood by the mouth of the trench wall and through the clouds of dirt clouds, and I could see nothing. It was a bit of a disappointment. About that time, we had taken a good collection of their rifles. Dougall picked up a silver pocketwatch from the last collections and he wouldn’t trade it even for three silk handkerchiefs or a fancy old knife I
found in a boot. The knife was still shiny and sharp too, but he clung to that watch like it was an heirloom passed down from his own father. Like I said, objects change people.
Now Wesley never really liked to pick up anything and he never changed. He always smiled, even though he never did much more than hold that rifle and look up at nothing, looking at the sky with the scope in the air, staring at something and keeping focus even though there was nothing to see up there that you hadn’t already seen for endless days. He did not do much else except tell old stories, or complain
about the food and drink from the mess halls. He was not too different from the rest of us, but he always seemed distant.
It was that rifle, I bet, because he always kept it with him. He probably knew there were people that would steal it from him given the chance. He always carried it because of that, except in the mess halls and the bars where it made him look like a mercenary and he knew that. He still took that pin out every time he had to set the rifle aside. Strange that it was, but when I asked him about it, he shrugged and kept that smile that said he knew something that he didn’t want to tell. He probably had a few stories that he wanted to keep hidden away for the right nights. The last time we shared drinks, he told me about some of the things he had learned about metal.
“I could tell you right now whether something is made out of bad iron or good stuff just by the sound.” He said this after he had finished his eighth bottle of ale. He was one of those men that could take his drink and get away with nothing more than a red face and a smell that made you take keep your distance. “Hey, another drink! Have you seen that watch Dougall picked up? Not that good at all. I’d give it a day
before you’d need to replace its guts.”
For fun, I showed him my knife. “What do you think about this then, huh? Is it good?”
“Hit it for me.” He said this right before a fat belch came out of his throat and made some of the others look at us with laughs. The mood was always childish here.
“Hit it?”
“Just a bang. Enough to make it go, ‘Tink!’. Right against what’s in my hand.”
He pushed me the empty bottle but there were a couple of my own, so I put one of my own up and tapped the bottle with the knife. Wesley was already drinking another bottle then. When he took the bottle of his lips, the first thing he tells me is.
“Knife’s good.”
“That’s it?”
“Do it enough times and you learn it easy. Don’t believe me?”
“That depends on if the next drink is on you.”
“Bah, don’t believe me then. It would not be like that knife couldn’t break your rifle barrel anyway.”
“Don’t brag about your rifle.” I did not think I would have ever have gotten him to admit it, a sniper of all the people. I still remembered how he never said anything while I had that demonstration with the Lieutenant.
His fingers tapped on the bar. “Hey, another round!”
I suppose it would have been enough for me to believe him for at least that night. So I let him humor me.
Wesley gave this smirk back at me because he knew that, but any sap cheated of beer money would have thought whatever it was necessary just to make themselves think they had the upper hand. He was quiet then, though. His expression was kind of playful but there was something hiding behind the smile. For the life of me, I couldn’t say what it reminded me of. You wouldn’t guess what he asked me then.
“Ever believe in fate?”
What a question! There was never something that soured a drink like philosophy, so even if it meant losing that drink, I told it to him straight. I said, “Soldiers were never meant to be philosophers, especially snipers.”
Of course, he gets it. Anyone would have taken this as a clue, but he sighed instead, like it meant something. I suppose I let him get to me, so I had to say something.
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s because you still wonder how that story ended, right?”
The beer came. He was still smiling as if there was a meaning to it all.
“Do you remember what happened?”
Thinking about it even now, I have to smirk. Telling us all a story for free beer but never explaining all of it. It would get to anyone. Of course I remembered, that bastard.
“So what happened afterwards?”
“I kept on wading through the muck, trying to find another way out, feeling for a ladder or hunting with my eyes for some light. I knew I had been walking for awhile, because the smell of rot and the quiet schlock of the filthy water and the feeling of wet walls crawling with things started to feel as normal as breathing. Hey, I said to stop making that face, it makes me uncomfortable. I wasn’t tired, though. My
dad raised me tough. Anyone that messed with me and looked me in the eyes had something to fear.”
He said this with such happiness that I was sure he was drunk too much, talking swill with a free mouth.
“I kept going, and then the farther I got, the brighter it started to get. Before I knew it, there was a walkway I could climb out. By then, the stench of the sewer completely drenched me, but walking on dry land was a relief alone. There was no ladder around then, but I kept trying to feel around in case I was hallucinating since it was so bright but I couldn’t see anything above me and the walls weren’t covered in roaches.
As I stepped up, I noticed a pile of rags along the walkway. But it wasn’t really, see, it was a figure sitting cross-legged against the walkway in old brown robes that must have been used for a long time because they reeked of something different from the sewers. Something even worse, if you could believe it! Me, I thought the fellow was dead and started to see if there was a way I could go over him, but that’s when the figure said something to me.
‘Bastion, it is time.’ But it wasn’t in our Gaud’s tongue, no, something like Old Paian. That stuff you hear your grandma muttering in when she doesn’t think the priests of the One God will hear. Another round here!” He pushed his full bottle at me, untouched by him except in his hands. I remember it still felt cold so it must have been served only minutes before.
“I understood. I never spoke no bits of it except when I heard a few of the old folk from the countryside talk in it, but I understood it. And then I knew what he meant, because I knew what it meant from the very beginning. You remember being told those stories since you were a brat about the cults of the god of death and how they stole children. They always say it was because they used them for sacrifices, but I
always knew the real reason, the secret kept by my dad’s or mom’s grandparents’ grandparents. The cults never sacrificed the children. They stole them to join the priesthood, the ones who were the judges of life and death back before the One God came to our lives and changed it all. They took the young because the young still were untouched with the need to abuse their power for their own needs unless they were taught that way from the beginning.
I don’t think I ever told anyone this though because it sounds like stupid kid’s stuff and you would have been beaten for it. So I held it in and tried not to care, but it was never something that I could avoid, kind of like how people like to keep killing each other because someone tells them to or tries to find some advantage out of it. Another round here!”
Of course, when he talked about being a kid, I never realized the problem behind that smile of his. It wasn’t something he was hiding, but it was something else, something that other people can’t see. That smile annoyed me because it reminded me of something I think I
remember doing as a child, but even now I can’t say what it was. I could only drink because he got me, but I had to say something.
“So you were put into priesthood by a god of death, huh? How are you so sure?”
Of course, he still smiled at me! Smiled like I knew nothing or that he knew I would ask ahead of time. A smile that looked down on me.
“Immortality. Priests of the god of death are immortal. They will live even while the world turns to dust as they take the lives of those that are worthy to eternal paradise instead of judgment. Death can only be given to them from a weapon blessed by a priest. Else, they end up like that man, living corpses, until their god finds the next priest to take their place. They ended up choosing me and I had to stab the half-dead thing with a shard of metal tied to my back that I always forgot to sell for bread.”
He reached for his pockets, then pulled out a large jagged piece of iron the size of a skeleton key with its teeth like fangs and all a tone of orange-red fire.
“Don’t know why I kept it. Not like I ever believed Heinz or those other snipers even though I seen them do it, but sometimes it feels good to have something that you’re close to even if it was something you used to do something absolutely vile. I don’t care if he went to a better world, it’s still a poor business you do no matter how much money they pay you for it. I don’t even like metal. That stupid rifle I carry always breaks whenever I use it anyway.”
“You know, a priest can read the minds of those that they choose as worthy. I aim for the new ones because they’re the least tainted from the hatred of war, because you know that they are more fit to be sent to paradise than the murderers.that find the war no different from breathing. I could have cared less about the guilt of who deserves to go without judgment, but you can’t stop hearing those thoughts of
emptiness and planned murder. I actually hate fighting, especially for people I don’t know involving people I could care none about, but I hate starving and draft gangs more. Another round!”
Wesley reached for a box of cigarettes from his pocket, but then left them on the table. He kept smiling a damn smile that made the beer taste funny. I took a cigarette and he watched me take it like he was expecting something out of me.
“Anyway, thought I’d share that. It’s late and I think I’m a little tired. You’re an interesting kind of person, you know. You reminded me of something I wanted to become.”
He then stood up and walked out. I should have realized what all this meant because I didn’t see him anytime after that, around the trenches or anywhere else. I should have known he was going to desert. The MP was as surprised as the others, although if I told them about how crazy he sounded that night, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But they never would have believed me anyway. How could you explain it to someone without sounding like you had drank one too many?
They didn’t seem to care that he left everything, either. His rifle, those strange rifle bullets, twenty-three marks in a wallet, knife, uniform, boots, helmet, and a locker filled with nothing but spare clothes and that ugly metal shard. He got away and no one knows where he went, and even though a good number of us walked the trenches looking for him, they stopped caring. He probably ran off enjoying his life of freedom, thinking he could trick me that night into believing something that sounded so childish. No, maybe he didn’t. He probably ran off into those trenches and died like every other poor sap that thought otherwise like every other person that thought too much. Too much of that thinking, personally. It doesn’t matter anyway. Besides, the first time I used it, his rifle broke.
THE END
© 2006 by D. D. H. Lee
Bio: D. D. H. Lee is a recent graduate of Rutgers University who hopes to embark on a financial career while continuing to work on his writing. His current project involves rewriting a manuscript that he hopes will bring a little more of the postmodern world into the fantasy genre. As the title suggests, this piece is a sequel of sorts to Song of Steam Lungs (Part 1) (Aphelion, May 2005).
E-mail: D. D. H. Lee
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