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He has this little doubt in the back of his mind that they are never going to jump.

Of course, it is largely unfounded – which is something he tells himself all the time, but the nature of Toccoa is slow and gradual, and change does not happen rapidly at all.

It’s all so sluggish, he thinks, as the midsummer days pass by quickly and slowly at the same time. The sun is blinding and then fades to cold at the end of the day, leaving the ground and the billets warm like greenhouses, and at least in Astoria, there was the Columbia river and the ocean that swept some of the heat away. They are golden days, hazy and borderless, and after a while of marching and running and shoveling down food in the mess hall and always waiting for some shout from their CO with baited breath, Malarkey wonders if this is what he signed up for.

Of course it is, he thinks, standing alone in a field of tall grass, one more day of training over and done with, just another in a series of long, dragging days that seem to lead everywhere and nowhere at all. The Georgian climate is more sticky and humid than that of Oregon, where the moisture is cool and the air is blue and green and there are different types of frogs and crickets in the summer months. Toccoa has its own variety of wildlife, all the way across the stretch of the United States, and it’s something Malarkey hadn’t considered before coming here – although in hindsight, of course the plants and animals would be different.

It’s not unpleasant, but it adds to the sense of foreignness in the way that he is simply away from home for the first time in his entire life. And sometimes it seems wrong to have these doubts: it’s un-patriotic, in a sense. Something in his mind tells him that he’s betraying the trust of the country by doubting his place in the war. And how un-American would that be?

The sun is setting, and the redness of the sun rusts the tops of the swaying grasses, shining through the green tissue with a golden-orange glare. Mayflies drag heavily through the air, wings stirring pollen and dust in miniscule vortexes that catch the light of the sun. At this hour of the day, things seem to slow down, just for a few minutes, and he sits in the midst of the grass, simply watching the living things creep and crawl and fly.

A small beetle meanders its way through the air and settles on his sleeve, and instead of shaking it off, he watches it for a moment. Its small barbed legs skitter across the army-issue olive. It has a brown carapace and a familiar red-orange head, like a fat, unlit match. It’s a firefly, Malarkey realizes. Almost the same as home. It twitches and flies off with a barely-perceptible buzz of paper-thin wings.

The air shifts and the sun is almost below the horizon. This is one of those moments where time stands still, and Malarkey knows the feeling very well. He’s felt it before against a wall of flames and smoke rising in the distance; staring into the depths of the deep blue river the first time he was out on the open water; both times when he was denied entrance into corps and the one time they let him in.

It’s not good, it’s not bad. It’s just a feeling. It just is.

He sits in the grasses until the sky pulls back and the moon starts to rise, painting its corner of the sky with a luminescent corona. The chirp of nighttime insects rises and falls like a wave, and Malarkey stands up, stretches – invisible against the black backdrop of the universe – and starts to walk back to camp, drowning in the ebb and flow of the calls of crickets and cicadas.

~ ✼ ~

The first time they meet, he is laughing. Malarkey doesn’t remember at what, or if he even heard the original joke – probably some awful one-liner from Perconte, intended to be witty but coming out dumb – but he is laughing and Malarkey instantly finds it the most personable thing about him.

“Malarkey,” says Malarkey later when there’s room to introduce himself.

“Skip Muck,” says Skip. “Nice to meet ya.”

He’s magnetic, and everyone in the company gravitates towards him. Skip is all-American, blonde, green-eyed. He’s well-liked – later, Malarkey would confidently say well-loved – and he meshes with every single other man in the company; every small subgroup.

Which is why Malarkey is slightly mystified – but takes it in simple stride – when he, Skip, and Alex become something of a triadic unit.

They’re both breathing hard, Skip and him, at the tip of Currahee, looking down at the dark rank-and-file orderliness of the camp spread out before them, tarpaper and plywood, nestled in a patchwork sea of green brush and dry forest. Maybe in the late winter and early spring, the greenery will be brighter and darker.

It’s a late Saturday afternoon, and a welcome respite from the exhaustion of the week.

“Where ya from, Skip?” says Malarkey, still catching his breath and breathing the dust and sap scented air. He’s pretty sure he’s never asked, and seeing all of Toccoa laid out like this, in a fairly relaxed setting – away from the chaos of the morning runs, where Sobel is ringing in all of their ears – is making him think. Of course he can’t help but compare it to Astoria. Malarkey is well aware that this is called homesickness, and it’s an odd feeling that hums in the periphery, as if he has a dull headache that is barely noticeable – but always there. He wonders if Skip thinks Georgia is familiar or subtly, pervasively foreign, like he does.

“Tonawanda,” says Skip with something like fondness, and he’s clearly proud of the place. “New York.”

“New York,” says Malarkey. “Never been there.”

“Where are your people?” asks Skip in exchange, stretching out the muscles in his leg. A gust of wind hits the ridge, and Malarkey watches a white, round-winged butterfly get caught in the stream. It rights itself and flutters away, down into the tall pines.

“Astoria,” says Malarkey. “It’s pretty different from Toccoa.”

“My place, too,” says Skip. “It’s less… uh, empty, for one.”

“Hmm,” says Malarkey absently. “There’s a river nearby, and the ocean.”

Somehow, out here in the wilds and wastes of the Toccoa acres, unfettered by rivers or the sounds of boat horns, cars, and businesses, it’s as if they’re in a different realm. Obviously the military bought or appropriated the Toccoa land to build the airfield and the training grounds, but Malarkey can’t shake the feeling that purposeful immersion in a completely different world is preparing them for the utter chaos that awaits them after they finish their training, if – or when – it comes.

“We got a river too,” says Skip. “It’s–”

“Niagara, I know,” says Malarkey. “You’ve only said it a thousand times.”

Skip laughs. “That’s not possible. We’ve been here for what, a month?”

“Give or take,” says Malarkey, shrugging loosely.

They breathe the breeze, which alternates between warm and cool.

“If you could go anywhere, where would you go?” asked Skip suddenly.

Malarkey turns the question over in his mind. “What do you mean? Like, where do I want to be deployed?”

“No, no,” says Skip, waving a hand in the air. “I guess, yeah... if you want to go to Italy or something. I meant, like, if there was no war at all.”

No war. What a concept. Malarkey can’t even think a month in advance, or imagine what the Army has in mind for the regiment, let alone the months or years required to visualize the distant future, on the other side of the gaping canyon of time.

“Hitler’s… mansion. Palace. Whatever,” says Malarkey. Skip snorts. “Slap the moustache off his shitty face.”

“You think we’re dropping into Europe?” asks Skip. “We might get to.”

Malarkey laughs. “No idea.”

“Yeah, no one’s got any shittin’ idea about anything around here. Brass keeps it to themselves,” says Skip, without any venom. “It’s not like Lieutenant Winters is going to tell us anything. The intel goes upriver or something. It’s kinda like how shit–”

“–rolls downhill,” they both finish.

“If only promotions rolled downhill,” mutters Malarkey. He stretches out his arm, tucking it behind his neck and pulling with his other hand. “Where do you wanna go?”

Skip takes a moment to think, and it doesn’t seem like he had any answer prepared beforehand; he was just asking Malarkey out of interest. “I dunno, we can both go to Hitler’s house together.”

“Yeah?” says Malarkey, humoring the ridiculousness of it all. It’s kind of like a theoretical joke, because he still can’t throw off the feeling they might not get to even fight before the war ends, even though it’s sorta ridiculous – according to people like Nixon. But it’s not like Skip knows how Malarkey feels anyway, so it’s best to just try and ignore his doubt. Maybe if he believes hard enough, trains hard enough, and runs hard enough, jump day will come.

Anyway, it’s not like his statement about Hitler was wrong. If teleportation was possible, he’d go right to Hitler and shoot him point-blank in the head. And he’s sure every single other man in Easy would take the same opportunity.

Germany, thinks Malarkey. He doesn’t know much about the place, other than Nazis, sauerkraut, facism, and World War I. Maybe one day they’ll end up there, among spoils of war. It’s a dream. He won’t consider the alternative.

“Should we go back now?” says Skip, peering down the trail.

“Sure,” says Malarkey, looking away from the blurry sky and back to the mountain, rolling his shoulders and cracking his knuckles. “Race ya to the bottom?”

“Obviously,” says Skip, and he takes off down the trail like a rabbit without giving Malarkey a warning.

He rolls his eyes and starts after Skip, and in a moment, the top of the mountain is empty save for the birds, shrubs, bees, and a cloud of dust rising from where boots skidded in the ground, dissipating in the blue sky.

~ ✼ ~

“Could you believe it?” says a loud voice, accompanied by the squeal of the billet door on badly oiled hinges, and the hollow impact when it hits the wall. A few pairs of striding footsteps sound on the planks, and Malarkey looks up from the disassembled parts of his rifle to have his field of vision taken up by Skip’s legs, which begin to pace the length of his cot.

“It’s not like we’re even being a distraction,” complains Skip loudly, although his voice isn’t much louder than the din of general conversation that bounces off the walls of the barracks. “I don’t think he’s done this to anyone else.” He crosses his arms and glares into the distance.

“I don’t like it any more than you do, Skip,” says Malarkey, putting down his rag instead of mindlessly going over the safety piece another ten times. Obviously his mind’s not in it, and he begins to reassemble the M-1, giving his hands something to do while he thinks of what to say. He doesn’t want to be disrespectful of Winters, per se, but he agrees with Skip. “I can… kind of see why he did it,” he says.

Skip blows a frustrated sigh out of his nose. “Obviously I know why,” he trails off. “It just seems… I dunno, like he’s singling us out.”

Malarkey snaps pieces together, misses a slot three times in a row, and then gives up altogether, putting it all down on the bedding and sitting back, watching Skip pace.

“Stop pacing,” he says. “I can’t think.”

Skip rolls his eyes and stops, and then sits down on the opposite cot. He digs around in his shirt pocket and produces a pair of cigarettes, pinched between two fingers. He leans over the gap and offers one to Malarkey, and he gratefully accepts, tucking the cigarette into his mouth while he pats himself down for a lighter. Skip produces one before he can, and lights both of their cigarettes.

“Want me to smoke it for you, too?” mumbles Skip around his cigarette.

“Shut up,” says Malarkey, and Skip’s small laugh-sigh comes out in a plume of smoke.

“You know,” says a nearby voice. Malarkey jumps at the sudden nearness and whips around.

“Wear a bell, would ya?” says Malarkey when he sees Liebgott standing right behind him. Or, over him, more like.

Liebgott ignores him and takes a puff of his cigarette.

“Quit droppin’ ashes on my head,” says Malarkey, and Liebgott moves back fractionally, running a hand through his obnoxiously long hair.

“Ease up, Malarkey,” Liebgott says. “What I was gonna say is that it makes sense, ya know? One’a y’all gets pinged–” he makes a gun with his fingers and makes a popping sound, “you guys are too close and the other melts into a little puddle of sadness. That or if you’re always hanging around each other, ya both get shelled and die at the same time. Ya know?”

Skip squints at Liebgott and looks at Malarkey with a dubious expression. “I think puddle is pushing it,” he starts.

“Nah, you know what I mean. Shell shock ‘n all that, and it can’t be easy on a fella seeing his best friend die. ‘Sides,” Liebgott says, taking another drag on his cigarette, “Everyone knows you guys are close. Like this.” He holds up a pair of crossed fingers and then saunters away, signature pointless smirk on his face.

Malarkey watches him go. Despite the fact Liebgott is supremely stupid, he makes a salient point about… death. He’s not sure how Liebgott would be concerned, even a little, about shell shock, of all things, let alone know anything about it.

Skip just raises an eyebrow. Malarkey shrugs.

“Wanna get some fresh air?” Malarkey says.

“Sure.”

It’s already night, and the dim glow of the streetlamps above illuminate the world with warped colors. Whites become yellow, and browns become red, and both of their eyes reflect the artificial-sunset hue of the bulbs and glass. A mosquito floats around in the air, and Skip lunges forward with a sudden clap. The buzzing stops. He hums satisfactorily.

The tip of Skip’s cigarette glows red and orange, like a small burning star against the deep, featureless dark.

“I think–” Malarkey starts, then stops.

Skip waits patiently. Malarkey can’t see his eyes clearly, so he doesn’t know if he’s looking at him or just vaguely into space.

“I think, um,” he tries again. “It’s okay.”

“Okay,” says Skip, almost uncertainly.

“I mean, Lieutenant Winters. He clearly cares.”

“Yeah, and I do… understand why they’d want to separate us,” says Skip. “You don’t need to convince me.”

They both stand in silence, smoking. Skip throws his cigarette to the ground, grinding a heel into it, and the embers glow as if clinging onto life for the few seconds they remain red-hot on the black soil.

“It’s shitty, is all,” says Malarkey.

Skip laughs, because of course he does. Malarkey spits out a laugh and it’s not brittle or anything, just a little bit resigned. “It’s shitty.”

“You and me though, we don’t have to be in the same platoon, you know.”

It’s an unspoken thing, but they both hear the open implication, hanging in the smoke-flavored air.

We don’t have to be in the same platoon for what?

Malarkey feels as if the answer to the question doesn’t really matter. As long as they are both okay.

“Don’t go dying on me, huh?” says Skip, as if he’s thinking the exact same thing.

“Never,” says Malarkey with a laugh, and he drops the cigarette onto the ground and stamps it out. The embers burn and die and join the remnants of Skip’s cigarette ashes. He feels as if there should be some more gravity to the statement, because they’re essentially promising each other they’re not going to die as they enter a conflict that relies on the death of men, but Malarkey means what he says, to the extent he understands.

“Never,” Skip repeats.

“You and me, we’re going to Hitler’s place,” Malarkey says, and it doesn’t sound as shallow this time, because something in his heart settles when he envisions that part of the future.

“Maybe before Toye gets to him,” says Skip. “Or Liebgott. I’m sure Guarnere wants to take some shots too.”

“Hmm,” says Malarkey. “Good thing we have practice. We’ll just have to race to the top.”

~ ✼ ~

The packed bar swells all around them, drowning them out and closing them in at the same time. This one in Aldbourne serves warm beer, which Malarkey has been told is the norm, and it’s kind of strange. The feel of the mug is weird, but it’s still alcohol, which is generally a good thing.

“And the sap was like…” trails off Skip, wiggling his shoulders and adjusting his posture to exaggerate his impression. “Crikey,” says Skip, and Malarkey and Penkala start to laugh, both at the unexpectedness of the phrase out of Skip’s mouth, and at the slightly exaggerated pronunciation. Toye makes a face and buries his nose in his mug.

“Ain’t that how they talk, yeah?” Skip continues. “Blimey, mate.” He pauses, perfectly in the deadpan now, somewhere beyond sardonicism and closer to genuine delight. “Some bloody good ale ‘ere, innit?”

Malarkey is feeling the laughter come on too quickly for him to handle, so eventually he just collapses onto the table facedown in his arms, shaking with uncontrolled waves of mirth. It’s so unlike Skip and at the same time, perfectly within his persona. The contradiction makes it even more ridiculous.

He feels tears gather at the corners of his eyes. He swipes a hand across his face and looks up in time to see Toye finally crack a smile.

“It’s funny,” says Penkala between laughs, to Toye. “Admit it.”

Toye grudgingly nods. “It’s funny.”

“Ah, see?” says Skip. “The American bloke here–”

Toye rubs at his eyes. “Leave the impressions to Luz,” he says with clearly contrived exacerbation, because he’s still smiling. He shakes his head.

Malarkey has calmed to the point of reasonable composure and raises an eyebrow at Skip. Skip shrugs in good humor. “The lad–”

“Okay, that’s it,” says Toye, pushing back his chair, laughing. “I can’t handle any more.”

“There is nothing you can’t handle, son!” says a booming voice through the crowd, and Luz emerges behind Toye, holding two glasses above the crowd. “You, the American paratrooper, have been trained–”

“FDR, really?” says Toye, following Luz into the fray, towards the back half of the room and towards the dart board. They are both swallowed in the voices and heat and floating cigarette smoke, of which the room is growing thick and hazy with.

“He liked it,” says Skip smugly. “Obviously.”

“Maybe you could dial down the slang a little bit,” says Malarkey. “Other than that–”

“Yeah, right,” says Skip. “It was ace.”

Later, as the soldiers trickle out of the bar slowly, Malarkey and Skip are left sitting by the jukebox. Skip has a cigarette balanced on a finger, and Malarkey is staring off into the vagueness of the wall opposite their side, distantly remembering the fact that they have to wake up early the next day for early-morning drills.

“I have a new one,” says Skip suddenly.

It takes Malarkey a moment, but he looks over at Skip, who is intently staring at the cigarette. “A new what?”

“New place,” says Skip. “I want to visit Paris.”

Neither Malarkey nor Skip are drunk – not that they don’t get drunk, because this night happens to be somewhat of an exception. But the Paris thing makes Malarkey sober up – figuratively, emotionally – and he turns to fully face Skip.

“The same one that’s currently crawling with Nazis?” says Malarkey.

“Yes, obviously, you rube,” says Skip. “The same one. You know any other Parises, genius?”

Malarkey thinks for a minute. “I think there’s one in the South. Texas, maybe–”

“That is not what I meant, Don.”

“What did you mean?”

“I mean, like…” Skip searches for an option. “After the occupation is over. When Paris is free again. Or maybe we can put it on our liberation list so we can personally go and… and…”

“Kill…” supplies Malarkey.

“Yes, kill…” trails off Skip. “Who’s in charge over there?”

“I dunno,” says Malarky with a tone of resignation. Anyway, what brought this on?” he says, tapping his fingers soundlessly against the wood table.

“I dunno, it just came to me,” says Skip. “Not that I don’t want to go to Hitler’s house with you.”

“It’s fine. We can go after,” says Malarkey.

“Yeah, sure,” says Skip with a laugh. “Afterwards. Or, before. Because if we take down Hitler, Paris might. Uh, be free.”

“Sure thing,” says Malarkey. “Toppling the Third Reich is still at the top of the list.”

“Isn’t it required… for the war to generally be over so we can go wherever we want…?” says Skip. “Actually, wait.”

“Didn’t you tell me this question was if there was no war?” says Malarkey. “No need to make it complicated.”

“You’re right,” says Skip. “After all, all we gotta do is survive and then we can visit for real.”

~ ✼ ~

“What in hell,” says Skip, screwing up his face and then ducking back out of the truck, and he disappears behind the tarp which falls closed. The passengers burst out in laughter, because it’s virtually a replay of Winters. The trap is pulled aside once again and Skip leans into the truckbed. “What is going on in here?” he says, squinting through the steam. If it is the smell itself making Skip’s eyes water, he does not clarify.

“It’s called cooking,” says Malarkey. “It’s when you make food. ”

“Did ya find anything else?” Guarnere yells from the back of the truck.

“Dumbass,” says Skip to Malarkey. “And no,” he directs to Guarnere. “Didn’t know I was running a supply depot!”

“You got lost on the way to rendezvous, a location on a map we have been studying for months,” says Malarkey. “You are the true dumbass here.”

“Oh, man,” says Buck. Lipton gives a whistle.

Skip just stands there. Malarkey looks at him sidelong, waiting for him to produce a comeback he clearly has.

“First of all, I dropped where no one else was, so you had an advantage,” says Skip. He seems to rush over that part, but he wants to say it anyways, because it’s important. Something occurs to Malarkey, but it dissolves when he continues. But I heard,” says Skip, “you ran under enemy fire to get a Luger. But it wasn’t a Luger. And the whole time, they were calling you back.”

“It’s not dumbassery. It’s badassery,” says Malarkey, putting down the mess tin.

“I don’t think that exists,” says Skip, with his usual playful bluster.

Malarkey scoffs, with false pretentiousness. “You just don’t understand the importance of trophies of war.”

Skip shrugs. It rubs Malarkey the wrong way somehow – not Skip, but the action, because it’s not like him to just not respond. He brushes it off. It’s fatigue. They’re all tired.

“You know, a few years ago I would have said this is the worst thing I’ve ever smelled,” comments Skip, standing on his tiptoes to try and peer inside the mess kit that Malarkey is holding over the fire. He’s obviously not tall enough because of the elevated truckbed and Buck extends a hand to help Skip up into the truck. “But I have smelled worse things in our years at jump school.”

“Mhmm,” agrees Lipton, somewhat vehemently. “Worse things. Remember when we were drenched in animal–”

“–guts, yes,” agrees Toye. “Great Thanksgiving.”

“What is in there?” says Skip eventually after a lull in conversation. “Literal shit?”

“Rations,” says Guarnere. “An’ stuff we found.”

“What… stuff?”

“Eh, the works,” says Guarnere, and Skip doesn’t ask any more. The men fall into quietness. Malarkey guesses that they each have their own mental images that are replaying from earlier in the day, on loop.

The fellow in the Wehrmacht uniform, particularly, keeps resurfacing for Malarkey, even though he tells himself there is nothing to be done and maybe even no wrongdoing. Command did tell them they didn’t have the time nor manpower to take prisoners. The paratroopers are light, stealthy, and elite. There is no room to be dragged down by prisoners of war.

Malarkey is warring with himself – whether or not to just call him a German: a kraut, a scumbag, a German soldier. A traitor. Or if he’s still American because he was born on American soil.

If that soldier is American, what are the limits of the definition? Are there any?

No, Malarkey is disgusted he even considered it. He was a German, he sold his soul for facism. The staccato drone of the submachine gun Speirs used is tattooed into his mind, playing like a rhythm in his subconscious. He can’t get rid of it, no matter how hard he tries.

And Skip. He must have been scared to death. For several hours, by himself. Malarkey realizes this almost in a jolt and feels like the world’s shittiest friend for not thinking about it earlier.

One day passes before they really have time to talk at all, and they end up both lying in the grass, dead tired and on a brief break before they’re supposed to get up and continue to the next area. In Malarkey’s opinion, they’ve executed their objective, but since Normandy was such a success, they’re just sweeping up the small amounts of remaining resistance.

The sky is almost offensively blue and innocuous. The sun is bright and the cloud cover is picturesque, and all Malarkey can think of is the sheer amounts of dear, death, and blood that was shed in the past few days, all below the same sky.

How normal the world looks if you invert your perspective. When Malarkey looks up, there are flocks of birds, occasional insects, and scattering dust. Planes cut through the skies though – their loud engines break the immersion like a snake through still waters. Bombers, transports, recon, and warplanes alike are in the skies, no doubt enjoying the absence of anti-aircraft fire. Malarkey feels a small prick of pride that his platoon was able to disarm three of them at Brecourt, before the memory is marred by the sounds, the sights, and the deaths. Halls. Half of the time they called him cowboy.

Malarkey stares mutely at the sky. He wasn’t even from Easy Company. He played basketball. He was young, like them.

And what of Meehan? There hasn’t been any word from the entirety of his stick. Conflicting reports circulate that their plane was hit, exploded, or simply badly scattered. As much as Malarkey regarded Sergeant Evans with unenthusiasm, he was still an important part of HQ. And a human.

That dead paratrooper they found the day of the drop, hanging off his parachute, hung high in the air like a resting marionette. That was the first dead body he saw. And somehow it didn’t come back to him until now. He still had his gloves, even. The musette bag. His Garand. Sightless eyes and a broken body.

Could’ve been Skip.

Could’ve been Winters. Buck. Penkala. Anyone else who dropped that night, among the chaos of the sky.

Malarkey closes his eyes, but it makes the circling image cycle worse, and red, green, and blue tracers shine as tiny beacons of deadly light against his eyelids. He opens them again, staring hard at the blue of the sky until his vision becomes hazy around the edges.

“Skip,” finally says Malarkey.

Skip gives a grunt. Malarkey figures he’s awake enough and continues.

“What happened after you dropped?”

He feels Skip tense up beside him, even though they’re not touching, and the feeling in the air is sharper. It’s something he’s never felt with Skip before, and Malarkey concernedly turns his head on the grass to look at Skip.

Skip is staring at the sky. There is a formation of fighters that make their way across his field of view, but his eyes don’t track the planes. He’s staring vaguely into the atmosphere.

“I dropped fast,” says Skip, tightly. “Tracers and bullets ripping through my parachute. It deployed like it was supposed to. Landed on a farm roof. No one around. I walked to rendezvous.”

Malarkey gives it a moment, because he knows there are a lot of things going on at once, and it’s not like he knows how to go about this, but it’s happening to him, too, and he just wants Skip to know it. Malarkey doesn’t want to treat him like it never happened because these things can be… traumatizing.

Is that the right word? Did Malarkey go through trauma? Seems undeserving and strange to award himself that term, so he leaves it alone and tries to stop thinking, which, of course, never works. Talking helps, apparently. That’s what some of the doctors say, or something.

He doesn’t want to press, or else Skip might not–

“I can hear you thinking, Don,” Skip says. “Stop thinking so loud.” It’s gentler than his previous tone, but still halting.

“Sorry,” says Malarkey without even attempting a biting comment in retribution. He doesn’t know what, exactly to do.

He decides to voice it in a moment of odd judgement, and the moment “I don’t know what to ask you, or what to say” comes out, Malarkey shuts it and lies there in silence, regretting the awfully un-nuanced phrase that had just came out of his mouth.

Skip doesn’t laugh or anything, and Malarkey sure as hell doesn’t expect him to.

“I know you,” says Malarkey in a tone barely louder than a whisper. “I’m your best friend.” Yeah, he is his best friend. That he can say with utter confidence.

“Yeah,” says Skip quietly.

There is stillness in the air, and the breeze stops flowing for a second or two.

“It’s okay, Don,” says Skip, as if he knows that Malarkey is feeling like shit about not paying attention to the awful things his friend experienced earlier. “I’m okay.”

There is another pause.

“Okay,” says Malarkey, uncertain.

“You know, when I was dropping there, in the night,” Skip says, unprompted, “it was like the Fourth, except we were being dropped in the middle of a fireworks show. I know a lotta guys say that.” He clears his throat. “But. The colors and the sounds were just so overwhelming I felt like I was in some other world. The booming, the flak, the planes. It was just so much. And I don’t understand how I got the parachute out and I landed without breaking anything, even though it was a roof.

Malarkey stays silent, and Skip takes a deep breath. “And then it was so dark, down there. I could hardly see. It was like those training exercises, you know the ones.”

Malarkey grunts in acknowledgement.

“But it wasn’t training. And in that moment as I crashed into the roof, I was thinking I could die.”

“You didn’t,” says Malarkey. “You walked all the way back to rendezvous by yourself.”

“I don’t know why it came to me in that moment,” says Skip. “Or how I did that.”

This is the most humorless Malarkey has seen him, and it’s almost frightening.

“I was just thinking I could die. You know, all throughout the darkness in the nighttime. And sometimes I thought of home. And I haven’t thought of home in a week because of all the preparations.”

Skip turns his head to face Malarkey.

“I don’t know why. There were no Germans in that part of the forest. I was maybe in the safest place. I don’t know. Something about the night and the missed dropzone.”

Malarkey looks into his eyes and then stares up at the sky again because the sustained eye contact is pouring so much guilt and remembrance into his soul he feels like drowning.

Malarkey remembers the deadening night, the hardness of the ground as he dropped from the sky onto grass that hardly cushioned his fall. It was instantly different. It came up through his nostrils, the smell of the air, and deeply, at its core, it was unlike the States or even Aldbourne, although England was a little closer to the feeling. Foreign country, hostile forces. Different insect noises, rising from the bushes, although the constant sounds of rifle fire, artillery, the drone of C-47s, and anti-aircraft noises would have dampened the ambiance. Even the grass itself. It was just different.

And what if he’d dropped alone? And had all the time in the world to meditate on that foreignness and the fear wasn’t shared among other men to take a share off of his back?

Skip hadn’t had others. He did it all on his own.

“I’m sorry,” says Malarkey, up to the clouds.

Skip snorts, and it brings a small measure of relief to Malarkey. “For what? Your role wasn’t to find me.”

“I’m sorry you had to do that. All on your own.”

There’s a beat of silence, and they both breathe.

“Nothing could have been done,” says Skip finally. “Besides,” he continues, “we’re the goddamn airborne infantry.”

“What about the zim-zam–”

“Don’t,” says Skip, cutting Malarkey off with a wave of his hand in the air. “We do not speak of the man.”

Malarkey laughs, and he looks back at Skip, because maybe this time it’ll be a little more bearable.

Skip smiles, and Malarkey knows it’s genuine. He’s never known him to fake one, anyway.

“Wanna tell me about Brecourt?”

Malarkey sighs. “I feel like everything’s already been rehashed.”

“Just in case,” Skip says. “Tell it to me again. With feeling this time.”

Malarkey laughs, and Skip does too. “With feeling?”

“Mhmm. From the top.”

~ ✼ ~

“We gotta think bigger.”

The train’s doors close and they step away from the platform slightly. It leaves the station and they all watch, even though there are countless train cars and it is noisy, ear-piercingly so. Malarkey watches the other side of the station through the rapidly passing windows until, with an abrupt end, the last car speeds past and the tracks are empty. The train gives a whistle that recedes in the air, and it leaves a lingering arc of smoke that dissipates gradually.

“Bigger?” he says, turning to Skip. “What do you mean?”

“Paris,” says Skip, crossing his arms. “Obviously this list is not very ambitious.”

Malarkey looks out over the station, and the irony of Skip’s statement is far from lost. All four of them look around to acknowledge that Paris, starting with the train station, is at least a little bit impressive. It has a military flavor, as all European cities these days do. Most of the inhabitants, at least visibly, are American GIs, with some other allied soldiers sprinked in. The station is huge, almost akin to an airplane hangar instead of something made for a train. It has a lot of glass and a lot of iron. Arched ribs hold up the roof, as if it had been built on the skeleton of a giant creature made of metal. Penkala is apparently trying to take in the scale of the place, with his head craned back to take in the height of the enclosure.

“You guys have a list?” says Buck. “Why was I not included in this?” It’s joking, not threatening. “Where are you going next? The Colosseum?”

“Shut up,” says Skip. “Colosseum my ass.”

Malarkey is not sure what Skip was going for, but the words sound and feel like a witty retort. He snorts. Buck rolls his eyes.

“I don’t even know where that is,” says Penkala, staring off into space, trying to catch a look at what is outside the grand, arched terminal.

“It’s in Rome, dumbass.”

Malarkey can feel Buck gearing up for a history lecture, as if he’s a professor and Skip, him, and Penkala are simply captives to the information.

“Ah, time for ancient Rome,” says Skip. “Sounds like College Boy has something to say.”

“Careful,” says Malarkey. “Don’t put him with me.”

“Ah right, our fellow academic,” says Penkala.

“Alex and me,” says Skip, throwing an arm around his shoulders, “are yet lowly, uneducated peasants.”

“Aw, shut up,” says Buck.

To some people, it would look disrespectful the way they are addressing their lieutenant. It’s three enlisted men exchanging jabs with an officer. Malarkey isn’t too sure about the way other units approach formality, but he gets the feeling that most of the Normandy veterans are accustomed enough to their superiors by now – and vice versa – to allow a large margin of relaxation. Malarkey doesn’t think it undermines the chain of command at all. If anything, it creates trust and friendliness, which he knows isn’t the priority, because Winters doesn’t prefer the way Buck carried on with the NCOs and riflemen.

Right now, Winters is nowhere nearby. Paris represents an odd feeling of sudden liberation, at least for this one day, as a reprise from waiting, training, and being conscripted by the understaffed kitchen to peel potatoes. Their only chaperone of any kind is Buck, and it’s not like he’s going to stop them from raising a little hell.

“Hey, Skip.”

“What is it?” he says, turning around.

After all this pain and fighting, they deserve a day pass to Paris, at least.

“Let’s make the best of our first stop on the list.”

He looks up at the overcast white sky, and the bright disk of sun that shines through. Paris is a city of possibilities despite the pain – beauty despite the destruction. Most of the Nazi stuff has been torn down, leaving the architecture and barren flagpoles to stand unadorned in the square. The city now belongs to no one and everyone – no one evil, that is, and everyone that desires liberation.

Culture, art, and spirit are all good things that Malarkey can mostly only approach from an abstract perspective, but freedom is something tangible. It’s been a while since they’ve traveled outwards from England to some place that is free.

Paris is one of them, and now that Malarkey thinks about, the only one.

The group has stopped to look at the Paris skyline and figure out where and what to visit. None of them have been to Paris before, and there is something someone says about a map.

It might be slightly out of order, but they’ve gotten to Paris first, of all places. Malarkey isn’t sure why Skip exactly wanted to come here. Maybe it was more of an idea born out of idealism than practicality or desire, but it was a good choice.

Paris is what they might see Europe become. Help it become.

Skip and him – they deserve the break. As does everyone.

“Where to first?”

~ ✼ ~

“New York,” says Malarkey.

“Aw, man, you scared the shit outta me,” says Skip, jerking and raising the muzzle of his rifle when Malarkey emerges from the room behind.

“If I could go anywhere, I wanna go see New York,” says Malarkey.

“Where’s the rest of your platoon?” says Skip, leaning around a pockmarked, bullet-holed column to look out into the street.

“We finished clearing. You’re about done around here, too, right?” says Malarkey. Their feet crunch on the broken glass, and it all crumbles into gritty, sharp dust. It coats the interior floor and the objects that sit on the ground with a glimmering, fine sand of silvery-white powder where it’s crunched to bits. They are strewn there by some unknown, passed force. Maybe panic, when the shopowners fled as the Germans advanced across the Netherlands, maybe even to this town in particular. Maybe it was when the Germans swept through, causing destruction and disarray with no regard for the people who used to inhabit this city.

“Yeah, basically,” says Skip absently, poking around the next room with his rifle.

It looks like it used to be a nice place before the Wehrmacht swept through; Malarkey can imagine the glass all replaced in the windowpanes, broken wood and splinters put back into the furniture and walls, the bullet craters removed and grime and dirt swept away. He can tell there’s a faded, dust-covered rug lying below the debris. He sweeps away some greenish glass chips and spent shell casings with his boot, and it jangles together almost musically, like a box of ornaments. The rug is actually red, not the brown color the dirt has made it out to be.

There’s a creak of wood and the sound of small objects being stirred around. “New York?” says Skip as he looks through a box. “We already went.”

Malarkey finds Skip leaning over a jewelry box in the backroom, looking through the contents. “Yeah, to get on the ship…” he trails off. “What’s in there?”

“Looks like the krauts missed some things,” says Skip. “Take a look at this.”

He hooks a finger under a strand, and lifts it in the air to catch a ray of light, where the gems catch the watery light flowing in between windblown curtains.

“Whoah,” says Malarkey, watching the jewelry sparkle. “Is that a necklace?”

“I guess,” says Skip. It has a silver chain and pearls and a champagne-colored crystal in the center.

“Think it’s diamond?” asks Malarkey, leaning in.

“No idea,” says Skip. They both stare at the jewelry.

Malarkey recalls his mother’s brooch that disappeared shortly after he started high school. To a lot of working families, food was more important than a couple of shiny rocks. If people still kept their family heirlooms, Malarkey hadn’t seen many around recently. Besides, it wouldn’t be tasteful to wear them out, anyway, in the midst of the economic collapse.

He wonders who held onto such a necklace. If they struggled, or if they were alright, if the owners of the shop debated selling the jewelry, which obviously has some sort of sentimental value. If they fled and left it behind, forgotten, or if it is remembered and they will come back eventually. If Holland also collapsed, because of a stock market collapse from across the ocean.

That wasn’t fair at all.

Well, nothing about the whole war was fair.

Skip puts it gently back into the box and shuts the lid with a solid thump of wood against wood, and turns to go up the stairwell, the sound of his boots growing slightly faint as he travels away from Malarkey.

“Okay, so why New York?” says Skip, voice echoing off the walls of the upper rooms and coming down the narrow stairs.

Malarkey shuffles around in the glass.

“I dunno, the way you talk about it, you make it seem real nice.” He takes stock of the rest of the room. The wallpaper is faded, and probably has been only for a short amount of time. The war has aged this place, as if in one or two years, the dereliction of central and northern Europe accelerated at a strange and ugly rate. The amount of dust and dirt caking the places they find, abandoned or recently vacated, always signals a type of sterility and stillness that comes across in muted gray, desaturated colors.

“Tonawanda?”

“Yeah,” says Malarkey. “Sounds almost like Astoria, except maybe not as good.”

“You wish,” says Skip, boots coming back down the stairs, causing the wood to creak and groan under his weight. He lands on the floor with a resounding thump and a light cloud of unsettled debris, having jumped the last three steps. “Nothing better than upstate.”

“Do you have a beach?” says Malarkey, leading the way out the door of the store. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t need a beach when you got world-renowned waterfalls,” says Skip. “Besides, what am I gonna do with that anyway? Catch fish?”

“Sure,” says Malarkey. “I worked a fishing crew in high school. It’s good money.”

“Good money,” says Skip. He ruminates on this while both of them step back outside, where other troopers are emerging from the other buildings, and starting to set up camp along the cobblestone street and in some of the abandoned storefronts. The sun is shining much brighter than when they originally went inside. It makes the destruction of the town much more stark, with shadows appearing twice as black, and illumination twice as bright. Chips, craters, and dents are deepened by the angle of the sun.

“Maybe I’ll try it sometime,” says Skip.

Someone across the street yells to Malarkey about HQ and mortars or something.

“Gotta go,” he says, seeing Tab waving him over to a pile of supply crates. “See you later.”

“Bye,” says Skip. “Should probably check in with my platoon anyway.”

Maybe Skip can come over for a few months after the war. It would be nice, Malarkey thinks. Maybe he’ll even reconsider that old purse seiner job, for a summer at least, before he goes back to college.

A day and a half later, they’ve been loaded onto trucks and they’re all sitting in the jolting transports, on the hard benches, watching the green landscape crawl by. Apparently they’re going back. It’s a disappointment for everyone. Market Garden is a failure, and there is a collection of reasons to blame, at least in Malarkey’s opinion. He wonders what the commanders are thinking as they sit in their offices in clean uniforms, sipping whiskey and shooting the shit. If they’re sorry, or if it’s just like they’ll try again later. They’ve got replacements – there are a lot of men in America champing at the bit. Malarkey has no idea how England is doing, but they seem to be sustaining a lot of losses.

The sun is setting, and the sky turns a warm lavender color, painting fringes of flame-colored lace along the bottom edges of the clouds. The blackened silhouettes of trees and utility poles pass in a blur. The hills of the country undulate up and down. Between islands of human development, Holland is a sea of grasses, unfettered by city, concrete, or rubbish. Sometimes there are canals, and silver-blue water gleams in between stone walls, peeking up in the gaps between tufts of grasses and weeds. They’re called dikes, and Malarkey wonders if someone can swim all the way out to sea just by taking a route through the mazelike lanes of water that cut so carefully through the fields.

A few of the men rotate by walking for a turn, and both Malarkey and Skip are trailing alongside the caravan. A part of Malarkey thinks it’s maybe a bad idea to have two sergeants in the same place instead of being evenly distributed among the others, but he’s already scanned the men and taken a mental attendance of his platoon at least twice – even though he’s only a squad leader – and no staff sergeants are complaining, and there doesn’t seem to be imminent danger, so he just leaves it and decides to walk in peace with Skip for as long as he has to be off the truck.

They’re going to stop for the day soon, but there is one more mile or two to cover before they can bed down for the night, under the stars. He is suddenly struck by a memory – and he doesn’t know why it is now, exactly, because they’ve marched and walked all over Europe on foot – but it resurfaces with vivid detail.

“Hey, Skip,” says Malarkey.

“Mhmm?”

“Remember when we marched to Atlanta?”

Skip is silent for a moment. “How could I forget?” he responds. “Longest march of my damn life. You,” he says, motioning to Malarkey, “couldn’t even get up to go to mess.”

“How could I forget,” grumbles Malarkey. “My legs were gonna fall right off.”

“Colonel Sink,” says Skip. “Really had it in for us.”

“You know, I can kind of forgive him,” says Malarkey. “On account of the Japanese.”

“There was that,” agrees Skip. “No one else could have beat the record. Other than us.”

Their boots crunch on the gravel of the road, where it transitions from asphalt to grass. The trucks provide a steady background puttering. Malarkey clears his throat.

“I think it’s better now. Easier,” he says. “Marching and all. Since we have places to be.”

“Oh, like a goal?” says Skip, summoning the energy to kick a rock down the road. “Like, the faster we get back to England, the faster we can sleep in a bed and have some warm food?”

“Yeah, maybe,” says Malarkey. “When you’re just walking on and on… it just feels like crap. But now it kind of feels like we’re walking home.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” says Skip. “Like walking home.” He kicks the rock again, and it clatters along the road. “We got a couple thousand miles to home, though.” He smiles, not looking at Malarkey but off into the distance.

Malarkey unbuttons a pocket on his uniform and fishes around for his cigarette carton. It’s down to the last two cigarettes, but he pulls both out anyway, and offers one to Skip. He takes it, tucks it between his lips, and whips out a lighter faster than Malarkey can find his and produce it.

“Beat ya to it,” says Skip around the cigarette with a small laugh. He flicks the wheel and holds the sputtering flame to Malarkey’s cigarette, then his own, and Malarkey sighs as he breathes in the smoke, feeling the fine particles fill his lungs.

“In those days, during training,” says Malarkey hesitantly, “Sometimes I felt like there wasn’t going to be an end.” Malarkey is divorced from that era of life by what seems like a lifetime, but the doubt is strange and fragile when he speaks it into existence, as if the source of the feeling is recent.

“We trained for two years, Don,” says Skip, holding his rifle strap on his shoulder with one hand, and brandishing the cigarette with the other. “Of course you felt like that.”

Malarkey feels an immediate wash of relief come over him, as if this long-held secret is something more than he thinks it is. “Did you?”

“Mm-hmm,” says Skip. “All the time. It took long enough to earn our jump wings. Took even longer to leave the States.”

“Remember when we were just in Aldbourne, doing practice drops and missions?” says Malarkey, his mind grasping for more shared memories to solidify the solace. “Even then…”

They both let the words settle in the air and dissipate on the breeze. The caravan halts and a command moves down the line, and suddenly they’re taking a rest for the night. Malarkey starts to move away, with a small shift of his weight that’s reigned back by an almost imperceptible falter, and he’s glad he does, because he hears Skip’s answer.

“Even then.” Skip says, stubbing out the cigarette. “It was so far away, wasn’t it? Like the edge of a cliff, but we were never gonna take the plunge.”

Malarkey looks back at Skip. It’s the perfect way to put it, and he wouldn’t have been able to describe it otherwise. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

In the night, barely visible, but illuminated by only the light of the moon, Skip and Malarkey catch a glimpse of a flock of starlings, collectively moving in an undulating, singular entity of collective consciousness. It makes Malarkey wonder how they manage to organize so well, swooping and chirping and swerving as one black mass in the night sky. Easy has a CO, lieutenants, sergeants, and regulations. Starlings only just rely on instinct. Maybe this is evolution, perfected – harmony in individual instinct, aligned as a whole.

Maybe the US Army is also evolving with the times. It, too, must also act as a whole: consume as a whole, fight as a whole, kill as one, too.

~ ✼ ~

Malarkey would like to say he’s never seen this much snow in his entire life, but that would be misrepresenting the situation. The truth is, it’s a different world, full of muffled silences, stretches of cold white, and thin, sticklike trees that jut out of the ground and grow tall far above, leafless and barren. The sky is paler, the sun is icy. And the mortar attacks are like starfire raining down, spraying splinters into them as if they themselves were fired from the barrel of a gun. This is the worst part.

Illumination flares shoot up in the dark like pale, glowing crystals, leaving trails of light that make the night into a white, shadow-striped day. They quietly expand at their apex, sometimes above the company and sometimes farther away, sputtering and sparking and whining as if it is a dying firework. The moving shadows are the strangest part, where the straight, thin trunks of trees cast bold shadows that collectively revolve with the path of the flare. It hits the ground, maybe a quarter-mile away. Malarkey shrinks further into himself, the wind blustering against anything that comes up above ground level, stirring icy snow particles into sandy eddies that blow into their uniforms, into their foxholes, and into their eyes.

“Heya,” whispers a voice, familiar to Malarkey and entirely welcome.

He turns around. “Skip?”

“Yeah, you bet. What’s going on?”

Skip looks like he’s freezing. All of them are, of course, and Skip doesn’t look too worse for wear once Malarkey is done with his quick once-over. Fortunately, Skip seems to have obtained a winter overcoat — same as Malarkey, the ones the NCOs have — and he’s stamping his feet in the snow, as if that’ll work.

Malarkey knows it doesn’t work because when he makes his rounds, he’s tried the exact same thing. It just feels like you’re pounding cold feet deeper into colder snow, wasting all that heat to just shuffle around fruitlessly. Skip stops stomping about a moment later, and crouches at the lip of Malarkey’s foxhole, as a mirror image of what Malarkey’s doing at the bottom of his.

“Nice scruff you got going there,” says Skip, pointing to his own. “Keeping you warm?”

“Not in the slightest,” says Malarkey. Both of them laugh, half out of tiredness and half genuine.

“Gotta wait a little,” says Skip. “You seen Bill?”

“No,” says Malarkey, trying to picture Wild Bill unshaven. “What does he look like?”

“It’s a lot,” says Skip. “It’s kinda weird seeing everyone suddenly grow beards. Never seen ‘em like that.”

“Yeah,” Malarkey agrees. “Don’t understand how some of ‘em keep on shaving though, in this weather.”

They watch each other for a little while, and Malarkey just enjoys the proximity of company since he’s been in a single foxhole for a day or two. He should find someone to warm up with, otherwise the end of this campaign is going to see him frozen stiff. No more flares go up; the Germans seem to have tired of shooting firecrackers into the dark morning.

“Wanna come inside?” says Malarkey. “Got a pot on the stove and cookies in the oven.”

Skip laughs, and the action blows a little bit of snow off the top of his collar, which is pulled up around his ears and bunches up higher as he perches on the edge. “Can't stay long. I’m just here to talk to Lip about some things and then I gotta go back to Second.”

Malarkey’s not that disappointed, but there’s a little twinge of regret that he feels. He’s reminded of the time when Winters split them up, a long time ago, and he now sees, more clearly, the reasoning behind such an action. Winters was wise to separate him and Skip, he concludes. They would have been too close, in more ways than one. Out here in the frosty wastes of Belgium, Malarkey would not begin to fathom the likelihood that two friends in the same foxhole would die together, because they’d be more likely to form a group in the first place.

On second thought, maybe it’s a mercy, and Malarkey wonders if it’s better to just avoid the pain and disappear in a pile of ash and a scattering of bodily debris. Images of the remains of what used to be his friends start to flash through his mind, more frequently since the backdrop of whiteness for many of those recent deaths is too similar to what he sees in every direction. He tries to drop it, especially since he’s in the middle of a conversation with Skip and he doesn’t want to just zone out into the middle.

“Anything interesting happen around here?” Skip asks, looking around even though it all probably looks relatively similar from his area.

“Nope,” says Malarkey. “Shelling. And more shelling. And–”

“More shelling,” Skip finishes, flicking snow off of his fingers. “Eventually they gotta run out, don’t you think?”

“Not likely,” says a deep, unfamiliar voice.

Malarkey’s heart drops, and Skip slowly lifts his head to fully take in whoever had begun to stand behind Malarkey, managing to arrive there completely soundlessly, without the sound of boots crunching or snow creaking under his weight.

“Lieutenant,” says Skip, starting to unfold himself from his birdlike pose. Alarm bells go off in Malarkey’s mind. He whips his head around and cranes his head, and whatever he and Skip had been talking about prior leaves his mind in an instant.

There stands 1st Lieutenant Speirs, and he’s looking straight down, down at Malarkey.

“Sir,” says Malarkey, but before he can stand up, Speirs waves a hand.

“As you were.”

Malarkey relaxes, at least bodily so, and looks quickly at Skip, who risks a slight widening of his eyes, directed at Malarkey, for a second, before looking back up at Speirs.

“Good morning, sir,” says Skip, with what looks like a painfully contrived neutral expression.

“Wonderful morning, isn’t it?” says Speirs flatly with a tone that would have conveyed the opposite if any other phrase was spoken. Malarkey looks around for a moment. It’s mostly typical, for Bastogne, if not a little darker. Malarkey can barely see the early-morning moon peeking through the trees, halfway melting into the dusty blackish blue sky. A moody gray cloud manages to obscure it a moment later, and a rough wind sweeps through the area, almost knocking Skip over, who puts out a hand to steady himself. Speirs remains unmoved, his hair moving and not much else.

“Yes, it is, sir,” says Malarkey.

“A wonderful morning for some shelling,” says Speirs tonelessly. “Carry on.”

Neither Skip nor Malarkey have any time to blithely agree that the day for shelling is wonderful before Speirs turns around and pads silently in his paratrooper boots back from where he came, receding into the pale dense air and leaving only a trail of footsteps darkened violet with shadow.

“Was that really…” Skip trails off, squinting into the forest.

“Yes,” says Malarkey immediately. Skip raises his eyebrows. “He’s right on the border where Dog meets Easy.”

“How are you so sure?” Skip untucks his other hand from his coat to dust the two together, shaking watery snow off of them before shoving both back into his pockets, into the folds of his coat.

Malarkey snorts. “Actually, he walked into the 1st area a little while ago. He walked in on Christenson and Perconte. Mid-conversation.”

“So, like he silently creeps up on everyone like that?”

“I guess. Get this,” says Malarkey, leaning forward as much as the foxhole will allow. “They were talking about him.”

“No,” says Skip, in horrified awe. “What happened?”

“He also,” says Malarkey in a lower tone, “offered them cigarettes.”

“Like the–”

“The POWs, yeah.” Malarkey leaves the detail unspoken, but Skip knows full well about that guy from Astoria.

“Damn,” says Skip, sitting back on his heels and adjusting the strap of his rifle, pushing it up higher on his shoulder. “What the hell?”

“What the hell is right,” says Malarkey. “He’s like a phantom, I swear.”

In the Bois Jacques, food is a minor cause for celebration, a little because it breaks monotony, and mostly because it allows Malarkey to see people he knows. Between bouts of artillery bursts and closer encounters that involve rifles and actual verbal exchanges with the krauts – falling in their foxholes, even – the food is hot, at least, and draws a brief crowd.

Today it’s beans, again.

“Hey, buddy.”

It’s sudden and right next to his ear, and Malarkey almost jumps away, but manages to only turn around abruptly. Penkala is standing there, laughing.

Malarkey fixes him with a tired, amused look, and it’s all he can do while chewing. “Hi, Alex.”

“Hey, Don,” says Penkala, jabbing at his formless beans with a spoon. “Lookin’ a little worse for wear, huh?”

“Shut up,” says Malarkey, dropping his spoon into his now-empty mess tray to reach over and knock on Penkala’s helmet.

“Ah, stop,” says Penkala, pushing his hand away. “I’m so frozen you’re gonna crack me open.”

It’s so unexpected for Penkala to say, yet so accurate that Malarkey has to laugh.

“Hey, boys,” says a very tired voice, and a second later, Malarkey turns around to find Lipton jogging into the clearing with hands shoved in his pocket, nose red and breath puffing out in dense vapor. “Know where I can find–”

“Dike?” all the other men in line chorus as one.

“... yeah,” says Lipton, who seems to finally be allowing some of the frustration to seep into his voice.

“I think I saw him go south yesterday,” shouts Grant over the crowd of men between him and Lipton. “Towards HQ.”

“HQ, that’s the only place Dike is ever at,” says a voice at Malarkey’s shoulder, and he actually does jump this time because he’s been intently trying to concentrate on the last time he saw Dike. In fact, the only instance that immediately comes to mind is when they exchanged short, impersonal introductions a week or two ago, and that isn’t a good sign at all.

“Jeez, Skip,” says Malarkey. “Where’d you come from?”

“My foxhole,” says Skip matter-of-factly.

Malarkey shoots him an unimpressed look. “And I came from your mom’s–”

Skip raises an eyebrow. Malarkey doesn’t finish his sentence. He just scrapes up the rest of his beans.

“That’s what I thought,” says Skip smugly. He skitters off towards the food a moment later, and Malarkey sighs heavily, taking his last bite.

Lipton is apparently finished gathering the paltry intel he can squeeze out of the lunch rotation. “Thanks, everyone,” he says, sounding positively miserable, and he takes off approximately southeast, in the direction of Bastogne, headlong against the wind.

“Is he gonna to run all the way to Bastogne?” mutters Babe, his scarf wrapped around his face and neck under his helmet.

“No idea,” says Guarnere. “Dike better show the hell up.”

Skip comes up behind Malarkey, having obtained his food. “He’s being overworked,” he comments. “Everyone can see it.”

Penkala looks out in the direction Lipton disappeared to. “Has he eaten? Is he eating?”

“Dunno, but he spends most of his time running the company,” says Guarnere with a considerable portion of exhausted cynicism. “Now that we don’t have damn CO.”

Malarkey wants to tell Guarnere to watch his mouth, otherwise he might get in trouble, but Guarnere can handle himself. They’re both NCOs, and Malarkey would feel out of line correcting someone who is equal in rank. He decides to leave it alone.

“I hope he’s eating,” says Shifty from beside Penkala, looking in the same direction. “Reckon someone should save some for him.”

There’s the sound of metal on metal, as men shove the last bits of beans into their mouths, and the whistling of the wind. Low conversation travels between them, but there is no sound of birds nor bugs or any other sign of life, and despite the tempestuous winds, the organic stillness of the place gnaws at Malarkey.

“I can stay for a few minutes, see if Lip gets back,” says Skip, scraping at his tray.

Penkala nods. “See you back at the foxhole. Someone’s gotta keep watch, sergeant.”

“It’s only a couple of minutes, Penk,” says Skip, hitting him on the arm as he walks away.

“Uh-huh,” says Penkala, drawn-out and echoing off the thin trees and the vast white snow. “Only a couple.” He disappears without a second glance into the pale air and rows of trunks, dark form fading away until the opaqueness of the day overtakes him, and Skip and Malarkey can’t see him anymore. They both stand and watch the place where Penkala used to be, between vertical stripes of trunks, just for a few moments.

“You know, he’s right,” says Malarkey. “We’re running low on, you know,” he lowers his voice. “Good officers.”

Skip nods, tapping his kit gently with his spoon in an absent rhythm. Malarkey walks with him when he starts to head to the makeshift kitchen again, boots falling on packed-down snow from the warmth of the cooking fire and the foot traffic in front of the crates.

“If we’re going to New York,” says Skip without prelude, “then we’re going to have to visit Oregon.”

Something about the name Oregon communicates warmth, and Malarkey smiles through the chill, even though it’s just a memorial flash of greenery and oceanic breeze. “Yeah, looks like you’re going to have to visit me,” he says. “It’s only fair.”

“It’s for Lip,” says Skip quickly to the cook. “I mean,” he says, getting the second serving, “the way you talk about that place? How could I not like it? Sounds like the literal garden of Eden.”

“I do not talk about Astoria like that,” says Malarkey.

“Besides,” says Skip, now crunching through the snow to get a little bit aways from the latent midday stragglers still looking for food, “I wanna go fishing.”

“Don’t you go fishing where you live, anyway?” says Malarkey dubiously, packing away his mess kit. “Rivers.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Skip. “Gotta experience the Oregon way.” He holds the now-full kit of beans in one hand, and leans back against a trunk. Another gust of wind blows through, reaching its fingers into Malarkey’s innermost layers. Skip knits his eyebrows together, as if something has just occurred to him. “Hey, do you think there’ll be a lotta jobs back there? After we go home?”

Malarkey finishes folding away the kit, and he tucks it under his arm. “You know, there might be,” he says.” He thinks more for a moment. “Probably.”

As distant as Oregon is, he can imagine, vividly, working a job on the river with the sunset reflecting gold on the surface of the waters. Terns. Long days and going to bed tired – not tired like here, when they’re constantly awakened by bursting mortars. Tired after a day of work. Satisfied, in a more solid and immediate sense. Warmth, most of all.

“Yeah, probably,” he says again.

“Sounds good,” says Skip, into the wild stillness.

It’s not a commitment, or anything else of the kind, but his response puts a feeling of assurance deep in Malarkey. In his heart, maybe, is where he feels it.

“I think I should go now,” says Malarkey, checking his watch. He’s overstayed his break, and it’s time to head back and watch his section of line. He can’t leave it unattended for too long, and he’s got to make his rounds in a little while. “See you later,” he says.

“See ya,” says Skip. “Hopefully Lipton comes back around.”

“He will,” says Malarkey, with all honest assurance.

He disappears into the cold, clinging air, beginning the short but barren stretch back to his own foxhole.

And that’s when he hears the whistle of a mortar in the air. An echoing, muted yell from somewhere deeper in the forest. And hell breaks loose in the sky, once again.

~ ✼ ~

“Holy shit.”

They are both standing there, in The Eagle’s Nest.

“I know.”

The windows in the room — walls of stone and an arched ceiling, overlooking the hills of Austria below — opening out into the overwhelmingly green lands of Zell Am See. Something about the victory — the feeling that they’ve earned it somehow — makes the sky bluer and the grass greener, as if there is a transcendent joy that sits like an overlay across the entirely of the place, despite its history and the nature of its construction, which is mired in evil and darkness. Without its original inhabitants, the darkness lifts, at least for Malarkey, as long as he doesn’t let his eyes linger too long on the all-too-common swastikas and Nazi iconography. The photo album that sat on the table is long gone, snatched by some discerning Easy soldier, and Malarkey couldn’t care less.

They both take a minute to gaze out into the light: the calm, the countryside, which is covered in ripping grasses, unending foliage, and flocking birds, white and tiny against the swath of sky that is endless in either direction. The landscape beyond the town seems untouched by humanity, unlike any other place in the United States Malarkey has ever seen.

“We finally got here,” says Skip.

There’s a quiet shift and thump as Malarkey takes off his rifle and leans it against the wall. He exhales, and looks out into the face of the forested, mountainous country, and then back at Skip.

“Finally?”

Malarkey remembers what they said on the top of Currahee, on that day that buzzing with the deadening energy of a hot Georgia afternoon, in a place where they were still, by all means, practically home. By train, either of them could have gone back to their states of origin, but then, Toccoa had felt like a gargantuan leap into the unknown. A shot in the dark. A state of perpetual waiting, and waiting and waiting for something to happen. These places at the inception of their training had seemed different, but they still contained the same types of deer — the same butterflies, the same trees, although much was different. Out in Europe, the foreignness is something he’s become so used to that a hearkening back to that older memory is glazed over with the feeling of nostalgia.

He looks over at Skip, and he can swear he is thinking the same thing. Skip’s eyes reflect the light of the windows as he stares hard through the glass, not outwardly perceptive but focused on something from within. A memory. Currahee.

“Finally,” Skip says. “I never thought we’d make it.”

Malarkey isn’t caught off guard by that, because every man will contemplate their own passing at least once a week in the service. He did, many times. It’s not a surprise that Skip did. But it’s kind of wrenching to hear that from Skip.

Did he think that all the way starting from Normandy? Malarkey remembers when Skip told him he thought he was going to die, all alone behind the German front lines, on the coast of France, never found by another. Presumed dead. Left in a forest somewhere, shot or blown up by a mortar.

Malarkey has also frequently thought of Penkala, their

brother they lost to the stark whiteness of the Bois Jacques. He does not know if he’d have been able to bear it if Skip had been in the same foxhole at the same time. It’s a selfish thing to wonder, because in this reality Skip had to deal with Alex’s passing, same as him. In death, he’d have rested for eternity. It would have been unbearable.

Malarkey doesn’t know how he would have lived if someone handed him a part of a rosary chain, singed by fire, and gently whispered that both Skip and Penkala were gone in a blaze of fire and a swell of smoke.

“You never thought?” says Malarkey. “What do you mean, never?”

Skip tears his eyes away from the scenery and looks at the ground before looking at Malarkey. “Dunno, somehow it felt like the universe was tellin’ me no.”

Malarkey can only stand there.

“Like we weren’t going to survive. Like I wasn’t going to make it to the end.” Skip is whispering, almost like it’s shameful and he’s afraid someone else will hear. “How would I survive when Alex didn’t?”

It’s guilt, is what it is. Too much death. It becomes guilt, rearing it’s head into some monstrous, pale presence that gnaws at every iniquity and every memory. It wraps itself between a soldier’s bones, worming under their ribs and squeezing every time another one falls.

What about you?

Malarkey has felt it every day.

“Skip,” he says.

Skip looks at him, and Malarkey sees many things in his eyes, too many to comprehend and to understand, although he knows he understands some of it very well.

“It’s okay,” says Malarkey, and it’s his turn now to say it. “You’re okay.”

Skip steps forward uncertainly, but Malarkey is the one who throws his arms around Skip with abandon. He feels Skip’s arms come up around him too, and he feels Skip let out a deep breath.

“We made it,” says Skip, right next to Malarkey’s ear.

And there is nothing else to do except to agree, as they stand in the empty mansion that Hitler left, surrounded by the life of grassy fields, quietness unbroken by artillery, and rest.

“Yeah, we did,” says Malarkey. “We did.”

“And it’s only the first one. On the list, I mean.”

Malarkey’s not about to remind Skip of their Paris escapade, because correcting him doesn’t seem appropriate in the moment, but Skip speaks again.

“And I know we did Paris first—“

Malarkey laughs.

“—but it doesn’t count. We weren’t planning on it being liberated.” Skip extricates himself and Malarkey lets go. Skip smiles. “Next place,” he says.

“New York?”

“I’ll take you there when we go home.” Skip laughs, and Malarkey smiles at that because throughout the entire war, Skip’s laugh has stayed exactly the same, and it’s the same as his memory of their first meeting, all the way back in Toccoa.

“Promise?”

Malarkey would like to see those tall trees, the waterfalls Skip loves. He wants to see the rivers and the town: the place that raised his best friend. And most of all, Skip will be there, and that makes any place at all acceptable to Malarkey.

“Promise.”

There is stillness, and it’s broken a moment later with the sounds of boots running through the mansion’s echoing halls and victorious shouts of the rest of the company.

Today is not a day for sorrow or regrets, nor for memory — it is for celebration.

“Think they found more booze?” says Malarkey.

“No way they’re leaving all the shitty stuff for us,” says Skip.

“Race ya?” says Malarkey.

Skip snorts. “That wouldn’t be fair to you.” But he dashes off, disappearing through the doorway in a moment without saying go.

Malarkey takes off after him, and two pairs of boots echo down the corridor, one after the other, until they fade away into the wild static of the Austrian air.

The room is vacated of soldiers.

All is quiet, at least in this moment.

The photo album is never returned.

And nothing is left of their presence in the room other than a singular rifle, abandoned and forgotten against the wall.