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“Hey, have any of you guys seen Doc Roe?”
“I fold.” Malarkey threw his cards down on the table in disgust and pushed himself back from the table in his chair as if to physically distance himself from his cards.
“Me too.” Ramirez tossed his cards away with a dirty look at Johnny Martin and Bull. “What kinda game are you guys runnin’ here?”
“A real clean one.” Johnny answered with feigned sweetness and a glare for Ramirez. He looked narrowly at Bull next to him. Bull gave him a steely look over his cigar, steadily exhaling a mouthful of smoke. Johnny pushed two cigarettes forwards into the pile in the centre of the table. “I call.” He turned expectantly to Bull.
“Read ‘em and weep, boys.” Bull rumbled proudly as he laid his cards down on the table, the other men around the table groaning as he swept up the pot.
“Doc?” Babe reminded the men at the table, running a hand through his short hair in impatience.
“We ain’t seen him since he came by makin’ sure Lip was the only one with pneumonia.” Johnny told him, patting his pockets for more goods to gamble.
“How’s Lip doing?” Malarkey asked, tugging his hat lower over his ears. The action made Babe realize how chilly it was in the airy building they were in and pulled his scarf closer around his neck.
“Better, I think. He’s supposed to be sleepin’.”
“When we seem him wanderin’ around, we’ll let him know.” Johnny assured him, giving Babe a half smile before finding a quarter of a Hershey bar in one of his pockets and the smile became a real one.
Babe moved out into the hallway, ducking under the remains of a door and into a smaller room across the way.
“Shit!” Luz inspected his smarting finger, cigarette dangling out of his mouth, eyebrows drawn together in irritation. “Here, get that one, Frank.” He tilted the radio he was holding towards Perconte and Frank squinted as he manipulated the screwdriver until he pulled out a screw and Luz took back the radio.
“Christ, why would the Army give us these fuckin’ pieces of shit to carry around and not teach us how to fix ‘em when they broke?” Luz complained, twisting his hand inside the radio’s box. Babe saw that the back plate had been momentarily discarded beside them.
“I have a theory.” Frank told Luz, trying to peer inside the contraption past Luz’s hand.
“Of course you do, Frank.” Luz sounded tired. “Let’s hear it.”
“It’s the army’s way of keepin’ us on our toes. If all the shit they gave us never broke, we wouldn’t have dropped into Normandy without guns. We might’ve been on equal footing with the Krauts surrounding us, and when we killed their sorry asses it wouldn’t have been as impressive.” Frank removed another screw that Luz pointed out to him. “If we have to keep fixin’ the radios, we’ll be more alert and not just sit back and assume they work.”
“Instead we get to sit back and puzzle out crazy-ass Army tech.” Luz frowned around his cigarette. “I can fix radios at home, no problem. Take it apart and put it back together, bam! But this thing?” Luz poked at some wires. “I have no idea.”
“Has Doc Roe been through here lately?” Babe asked, glad he was not responsible for any technology except his M1.
“Not since he found us this baby.” Frank held the screwdriver aloft reverently. “Who knows where he got it, but he did.”
“Put even Frank’s scrounging abilities to shame.” Luz agreed, looking up at Babe. “Thank him again for us if you see him, yeah?”
“Sure.” Babe nodded, slipping out the back door and winding around to the front, where jeeps rumbled through the debris-strewn streets and everything seemed a dull and damp grey.
Nixon was on the front steps of the building, leaning against the railing and staring intently at the papers he held in his hands.
"...Humblement demandez et exigez..." Nixon mumbled, forhead furrowed in concenration. "...companie à déplacer sur..." He brought the paper down and tucked a smoke between his lips, flicking open his lighter to move to light it.
“Captain?” Babe asked, still a bit nervous at addressing an officer. “Have you seen Doc Roe around by any chance, Sir?”
Nixon shook his head, and Babe nodded his thanks and started to move up the steps to go back into the building.
“Heffron,” Nixon called after him, and Babe turned from the top of the steps. “When you find him, send him my way.” He gestured at the papers he was holding with his cigarette. “My French’s gotten a little rusty; I could use his help with the translation.”
“Yes Sir.” Babe smiled, thinking of the fluid way Gene could switch from Cajun-accented English to Bayou French.
He breathed a sigh of relief once he was out of the biting cold and back inside the only slightly warmer building. Christenson passed him on his way outdoors and Babe paused in the hallway.
“Hey, you seen Doc?”
“Doc Roe?” Christenson asked, twisting to face Babe and walking backwards towards the door.
“Yeah, you know where he is?” Babe asked hopefully, glad he was finally making some headway on the finding Doc front.
“Last I saw he was with going over the new medical supplies with Spina in the basement.”
“Thank you Christenson!” Babe grinned as he switched gears and headed to the other side of the building, just catching the smile Christenson sent his way.
The wooden stairs were lit by gas lights, the wires thick and newly mounted on the wall. Babe jogged down the stairs, careful of the warped banister, and found the temporary Aid Station bustling with activity. Babe was reminded of the time he had kicked an ant nest, just a small hole in the dirt, and found it swarming just under the surface. Babe picked his way through the stretchers and boxes, finding Spina off to the side talking to a young-looking medic.
“No! Leave the bandages in the individual boxes, they’ll stay clean longer that way. Look, you’re gunna have to put all these back in, but first take this box of plasma over to Markam.” Spina lifted the box into the other medic’s arms, watching as he winded his way over. “Gently!” Spina called after him, looking harried.
Seeing Babe, he sighed and leaned back on his heels, pushing his soft hat higher up on his forehead.
“Jesus, you should see some of these replacement medics. We had one puke yesterday after a guy got in a fistfight with a local and had a broken nose and bloody teeth.” Spina rubbed his temple, giving Babe a sideways look. “Gene gave him a piece of his mind. The soldier, not the medic. Managed to make him look ashamed, can you believe that?”
Babe laughed; very able to believe such an occurrence could happen. When Gene got mad, he got livid, a startling contrast to his usually quiet demeanour. Babe had long ago supposed that Gene did everything with an amazing intensity, including righteous anger.
“Winters came and got him; said one of the brass was having stomach pains and he wanted Gene to come and talk to him, make sure it was nothing serious.” Spina watched as the new medic, devoid of the box of plasma, made his way back through the crowded room, knocking over a pile of dirty bandages in the process and standing there, stunned, unsure whether to pick up the bloody things or to leave them there.
“Christ.” Spina commented as the medic bent and awkwardly started picking the discarded bandages up. “Where did they find these guys? The new ones are terrified of me, God knows why, especially when Gene’s apparently the one that rails at ne’er-do-wells.”
“Why’d Winters get Gene, and not a real doctor?” Babe asked, curious. This close to what was passing for an Aid Station, there had to be one or two around.
“One got hit by a sniper last night; the other was in surgery trying to get the bullet out.” Spina replied, shaking his head. Babe gave a low whistle. “And Winters trusts Gene. For a medic, he’s sure picked up a lot of real medical knowledge.”
Babe wondered how much Gene had learned from watching his grandmother be a Traiteur. Spina had told him what Gene had said the night before when they had woken up in the foxhole, memories of Julien and chocolate fresh on both their minds. If there was anyone in Babe’s mind who came closest to being a faith healer, it was Gene.
“No – don’t touch the clean ones yet!” Spina lunged out to pull the box of clean yet unwrapped bandages out of the young medic’s reach. “Shit, did you listen at all to what they told you in training?” The young medic, who Babe noted with some amusement was still wearing his helmet while in a basement, looked at the blood smeared on his fingers from the dirty bandages in surprise. “Oh, for the love of…” Spina’s irritation was tangible.
Babe gave another laugh and waved at Spina as he headed back towards the stairs. Spina gave him a distracted wave in return, crossing his arms and glowering at the new medic.
What Winters was currently using as an office had probably been some wealthy man’s study in earlier days. There was a solid mahogany desk and a high-backed chair, both of which Winters seemed to be making good use of as he scrawled with single-minded intensity on a piece of paper. The door was wide open, but Babe knocked on it anyway, suddenly hesitant.
Winters looked up, blinking as his concentration shifted from whatever it was that he had been working on, and put his pen down on the table.
“Is there something I can help you with, Private?” Winters asked, a slight smile on his face as Babe hovered in the doorway. Embarrassed, Babe stepped inside the room.
“I’m looking for Doc Roe, Sir. I heard he was with you?” Babe chanced a quick glance around the small room, but unless Gene was hiding behind the curtains or under the desk, he was nowhere to be found.
“He was. Turns out that the stomach-aches that Major Weston has been ignoring for two days were actually his appendix’s way of saying that it wanted out.” Winters picked up his pen and passed it from hand to hand idly. “Roe immediately insisted we evacuate him to a hospital further away from the line, since the surgery he needed was urgent and the one surgeon we have here is too overworked. Last I saw Doc, he was organizing the transport, but I think it was a medic from the Major’s own company that was going to evacuate with him.”
“Thank you Sir.” Babe felt as if finding Gene was quickly becoming an impossible task.
“I’d check out back, if I were you. That’s where the jeep would come for the Major.” Winters had a kind yet slightly amused expression on his face as he watched Babe.
“I’ll remember that, Sir.” Babe, although appreciative of the help in what was starting to look like an epic undertaking, was now decidedly embarrassed.
He went down the stairs two at a time, ducking under the broken door and passing Frank and Luz, still hard at work on the radio.
“Hey, you find Doc?” Luz asked, curious, as he passed.
“Not yet,” Babe admitted, determined. “But I will!”
Frank sent him a mock salute, and Luz laughed. Babe tugged his scarf tighter and went outside.
“What do you fuckin’ know about it?”
“Just as much as you do!”
“Oh, right, I forgot they taught courses about it in Harvard. Right between Philosophy and Advanced Housekeeping.”
“You know what, fuck you!”
Gene was not there. Babe sat beside Skinny, Grant and Talbert on what remained of a garden wall and watched as Leibgott and Webster stood a foot away from each other and shouted.
“What the hell are they arguing about?” Babe asked his fellow spectators conversationally.
“Who knows?” Skinny shrugged.
“I don’t think they know, either.” Talbert pointed out.
“Was Doc Roe out here a minute ago?” Babe asked, watching as Webster started gesturing emphatically, his hands coming mere inches from whacking Leibgott in the nose. Leibgott responded by doing some gesturing of his own, especially making use of his middle finger.
“Yeah, he was out here shipping off that Major to the hospital.” Grant answered, sounding a bit distracted as he watched the two men arguing.
“Hey Babe, you want to get in on this? We got some smokes ridin’ on the outcome.” Skinny’s eyebrows rose as Leibgott raised his voice to an even higher decibel.
“Who bet on Webster winning?” Babe asked in disbelief, turning his eyes away from the spectacle towards the men beside him.
Talbert gave a quick laugh. “No one. The bet’s on how long it takes Leibgott to make Webster storm off.”
“What’dya think we are, stupid?” Grant grinned, and the expression grew even wider as Webster’s scowl deepened.
“Did you see where Doc went after he left here?” Babe asked, hopeful.
“Nope, this started up while he was waiting for the jeep.” Skinny answered, dashing Babe’s hopes. Skinny looked delighted as Webster faltered for a moment, but then he rallied back with renewed vitriol.
Babe groaned, letting his face fall into his hands. He had looked everywhere, and now he had no new leads. Where the hell could Gene have gone? It was like being on a wild goose chase. Gene always seemed to be needed somewhere, constantly moving, never staying in one spot long enough for Babe to catch him.
Scrubbing at his cold cheeks, Babe leaned his elbows on his knees and tilted his face to the sky. Grey, everything in this town seemed to be a constant grey. The sky, the stone streets, the buildings, the uniforms… Even things that seemed to have colour before now seemed to have had it bled out of them, leaving them that same, listless, dull grey.
Babe watched as the clouds congregated in the sky above them, promising rain, promising continuous cover from the sun and stars. The clouds were only a shade lighter than the dark grey of the stone building –
And that is when Babe saw them.
Almost indiscriminate from the dark grey of the bricks, two black paratrooper boots dangling over the roof of the building, attached to the bland grey-brown of an Army uniform.
Babe hopped off the wall, digging through his pockets and pulling out his dilapidated box of Lucky Strikes. He knocked out six, and handed them to Skinny.
“Put those on Webster coming out ahead.” Babe grinned at the incredulous looks he received from the three on the wall. “Don’t you guys know you’re always supposed to bet on the underdog?”
He jogged around to the front of building, passing Nixon who was still sitting on the front steps, smoking and reading the papers he held. Through the doors, up four flights of stairs, through the heavy door leading to the roof, and then there was cold air brushing his face and the spread of the roof before him.
Only a strip of the roof was flat, in between where it slanted up and down in twin shingle-covered peaks. Babe could see a man sitting on the ridge at the edge of the flat roof, helmet on the ground at his side, back to him, white shoulder band with a red cross on his left arm.
“Hey Gene.” Babe said, his voice not needing to be very loud to be heard in the windy air. Gene turned, his mouth curling around a cigarette into a smile for Babe.
“You’re a hard man to find.” Babe commented wryly as he walked towards Gene, between the two halves of the sloping roof.
Gene plucked the smoke from his mouth and drove the burning end into the stone at his side. “Have you been lookin’ for me?” His eyes met Babe’s, smiling.
Babe ran a hand through his hair, flustered. “You’re a busy guy.”
Gene laughed, the sound low and soft. “You’re tellin’ me.”
Babe flushed, looking down, but he could feel Gene still watching him.
“That’s why I came up here.” Gene looked over the expanse of war-torn landscape around him. “It’s nice and quiet.” And it was; Babe could hear the angry argument carried on by Leibgott and Webster below, but it seemed remote from up here. There was the distant sound of artillery, but it was not close enough to seem an actual threat.
Babe made a noise of disbelief, his eyebrows rising. “That’s because there’s snipers and artillery around. They put the Aid Station in the basement to protect it from shells. And here you are, playin’ around on the roof.”
“They got the sniper who shot the doctor last night.” Gene assured him, and looked pointedly down to where Leibgott, Webster, Skinny, Talbert and Grant were all out in the open. “It’s not completely safe, but…” Gene stared out at the scattered horizon. “It’s better than a foxhole.”
The ‘in Bastogne’ remained left off the end, but they both heard it there, echoing between them.
Babe thought about what Gene said for a moment, letting the peace and quiet sweep over him.
“Wait, you wanted to be alone.” Babe could have smacked himself in the head, and knew he was flushing again. “I’ll just go then…”
“You don’t have to.” Gene answered easily, voice light, slightly amused, but giving him an easy exit if he chose to take it. Babe grasped on to the unspoken encouragement to stay like a lifeline.
“How do you do it?” Babe found himself saying, even before the thought had processed itself in his brain.
“Do what?” Gene turned himself away from the edge so that he was sitting on the ledge facing Babe.
“Hell, you checked the guys for pneumonia, found the Tech Sergeants a screwdriver, helped with medical supplies inventory, told off out of line soldiers, and knew the difference between indigestion and appendicitis, all just since I’ve been looking for you.” Babe saw his hands moving in front of him, thought of Webster and Liebgott, and let them fall uselessly to his sides. “And Nixon wants your help with a French translation.” He felt a bit put out, just from reciting that list.
Gene just looked at him, looking down for a moment in thought, and then let his eyes flick back up to Babe. “I guess it has been a busy day, huh.”
Babe just stood there, exhausted from just following around in Gene’s footsteps. Then, the swirling dark grey clouds above that had been threatening them all day with a good pour opened up and let it out.
Babe tilted his face up to the rain, ignoring the cold and the way every drop felt like a speck of ice striking his skin. He felt it pelt his face and soak into his scarf and drip down his back and did not care. His eyes were closed, letting nature run its course, letting it drench him as he knew it would. He was not in a forest any longer, not confined to a hole in the ground for shelter, he now had the option of escaping the downpour and hiding inside. He chose – and that was the important thing – to stay out in the open, in the rain, and to just let it be.
He almost did not notice when the fingers first brushed over his skin. The gentle press of a fingertip seemed unnoticeable when compared to the sharp bite of a frigid raindrop. But the fingers stayed, drifting over his cheek, slipping their way over wet skin. Babe opened his eyes, and there was Gene standing in front of him, all pale skin and black hair and dark eyes, lips, nose and cheeks tinged with pink. Colour in a grey world.
Babe would never really be able to be sure of what came next. One moment, he was staring across at Gene’s big, dark eyes, feeling Gene’s thumb drift across his cheekbone and his fingers gently brushing against the soft, damp skin behind his ear, and the next he had his lips pressed against Gene’s, and was kissing him like he meant it.
He did not feel the cold, the wind, the rain, but instead basked in the sensation of clutching Gene to him and having himself be dragged closer in return. One of Gene’s hands was in his hair, the other was stroking his hip, his legs were in between Babe’s, his mouth was doing dirty, dirty things to Babe’s and for the love of all that was good and holy Babe did not want him to stop.
Babe pressed himself closer to Gene, wanting nothing more than to have this warm, burning feeling inside him last forever. He knew his body was betraying his want and just did not care; he knew for a fact that Gene felt the same way that he did, he could feel evidence.
Babe’s lips slipped from Gene’s mouth to the side of his neck, kissing the wet skin he found there and avidly listening to the breathy sounds Gene was making into the rain. Gene tugged him back up to his mouth, and Babe was given a strange moment of clarity to consider that Gene really was passionate in everything he put his mind to.
When they finally broke apart in the mutual understanding that there was only so much you could do on a rooftop in the middle of a war before public decency was called into question, they stood there awkwardly. Their eyes kept getting drawn back to each others.
Then, something strange happened. The shouted argument that had been a constant in the background since Babe had come outside had suddenly silenced. It took a moment for Babe to realize what had transpired, but then he grabbed Gene’s hand and dragged him to the edge of the rooftop. They peered down together, just in time to see a drenched Webster standing, victorious, with his arms crossed as an equally drenched Leibgott marched angrily away from him.
“That’s my boy, Web!” Babe cheered, to Gene’s general confusion.
“So,” Gene said after a moment. “Why were you looking for me today?”
“I can’t remember.” Babe answered, perplexed, and he couldn’t.
-
“All our lives we search for someone who makes us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance the song of heartbreak and hope all the while, wondering if somewhere, somehow there is someone searching for us”
-Anonymous