Settling Down

fiCTion

seTTlinG DoWn

by TrisTan Carr

In the midst of a cruel Christmas snow just outside of Great Falls, Montana, Arthur brought his axe down on the evening’s desperate firewood. Through the cold and the wind, even he couldn’t hear the shivering song as it approached his lips. Though like a wanderer, Weary and lone, Darkness comes over me,

My rest a stone

He had first heard those words when he arrived in the trenches at Bathelémont. Paces away, a boy barely older than himself had clutched a rifle to his chest as he sang with a voice as dull as his eyes.

Yet in my dreams I’d be Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee, Amen

The words faded and died as the boy went over the top, and his body tumbled into Arthur’s lap. Arthur remembered his face as he placed another log atop the stump. The cold eyes, closed lips. The face was just as dead as when he had started singing.

Arthur tossed the last pieces of wood on his rope catch, slung it over one shoulder and his axe over the other, and turned towards his little wooden block of a home. He remembered the feeling of his supply pack on his left shoulder and rifle on the other. The motion still felt so familiar. Arthur had not taken two steps before he noticed the barn door swung wide. The wind stung his face, and he thought fondly of the warm fireplace, wishing but never seriously considering, just ignoring it. With a sigh, he ran clumsily through the piling snow. Some respite finally found under the barn’s walls, Arthur hung his axe on a wall hook and set down his catch. “Betsy, you really shouldn’t be leaving the door open like that. Y’all are gonna catch a cold.” The cow eyed him placidly as her baby nursed beneath her. Betsy was at least as old as their little farm, which was not very old. She was the first thing he’d bought once they got their land, even before the wheat, thinking the milk would make them some money and meals. Unfortunately, Betsy was more a hateful piece of work than she was cattle, and she wasn’t too keen on sharing her milk. Though, she was awfully cute when you scratched her ears. She let him pet her only a second before shaking her head. “Yeah, yeah, a mama needs her privacy.” Wood once again over his shoulder, Arthur latched the barn door, tugging it twice to check, before turning once again to their house sitting atop their small hill. Looking up at it, their home was squat and stubby, full of splinters and creaky walls. Even still, Arthur swelled with pride. It was the first time he had ever built anything, and it had kept them safe and warm enough for nearly a year now. Although, he thought it was probably time to go a bit bigger. The baby was gonna need more space than a single-room building had to offer. With his burden over his shoulders and his feet slogging through the snow, Arthur felt the cold aching the old bullet wound in his shoulder. A constant reminder. Through the muddy oncefarmland of France he had marched up towards the “safety” of the army’s dugouts. Though the snow of central Montana was certainly easier than the slog of the Western Front, Arthur still felt his feet start to slow. He got heavy, the wood weighing him down more and more. His eyes darted side to side as if expecting shells to fall. The snow clinging to his pant legs began to melt and fill his boots with a familiar wetness. Through his socks, between his toes. Arthur began to shiver and sweat.

Gunshots surrounded Arthur as he pinned himself on the east wall of the trench. His ears rang, but he was too terrified to drop his gun to cover them. His commanding officer tried to order him up, only to catch a bullet in the neck mid-sentence. His boots filled with the wetness of urine and mud as shells came down and sent his friends to God’s kingdom. He had nearly come up on the porch; Arthur could see the light around the edges of the front door. Through the bullets and death, he had made his way home. Then he slipped, his face bouncing off the snowy hillside and the weight of the wood sending him backwards. Helplessly, he watched as that light tumbled away. He had tried to go up. He wasn’t a

coward. He had begged his dad to let him go—he wasn’t enlisted. He chose this. Why wouldn’t his legs move? Dozens, hundreds fell around him as he laid against the dirt. He had to, he had said. This was it. He was no coward: he chose this. He gathered his strength, pushed himself up with the butt of his gun, planted his foot down, and rose up. He slipped and broke his nose on a sandbag, falling back down against the wall of the trench.

Arthur lay in the snow as he had in the mud then, shaking, unable to breath. At the time, he had thought God had kept him from going—made him watch as the front was pushed back. He knew really he was just a coward. Nobody had noticed little Arthur, sixteen and terrified, not once firing his weapon. Months had passed. Other soldiers punched him in the stomach at night for the noise; he had righted his nose but would have a saw-blade snore for the rest of his life. Even sleep reminded him he was an embarrassment.

His regiment went north as the Germans pushed. More died, and again Arthur stayed hidden away. Eventually, he found the trigger of his gun, but by that point it was March of 1918, and the Germans had them pinned in Villers-Bretonneux. The city would fall, and Arthur thought of the people still living there. Those that couldn’t afford to leave, who had lived there their whole lives. He thought, this was the time. His time. With a scream, he mounted the top of the trench, gun up, eyes forward. He had expected to see soldiers. Instead he saw a distant line of heads poking out of the ground, much as he had done. In this brief moment of understanding, Arthur hesitated. The enemy was just a bunch of other kids in another ditch on the other side of a field. Suddenly, he wondered how they all got here. A bullet found its way through his right shoulder, the force tossing him back into the trench where he lay unconscious, thought dead. It wasn’t until they had come to collect the bodies that night they realized he was breathing.

Breathing. The shaking didn’t slow, but now Arthur felt it was from the cold and not himself. He shook his head and felt groggy, but he was here. He had lost his hat and felt his ears burning. Panicked, he grabbed at his chest and felt the rosary beneath his shirt, relief pushing the scare further away. The wood had scattered when he tumbled, so Arthur grabbed as much as he could find and bundled it back up. When he finally turned back towards the house, he found Jeanne rushing towards him in a coat and slip. “Mon amour, are you all right? Come, we must get inside, now, tu geles, allons-y!” Suddenly the war, only a year passed, seemed a lifetime away as she grabbed his left hand—

always aware of his old wound—and dragged him up the hill. Despite wearing half as many clothes, Jeanne hardly reacted to the snow. Her face was hard, determined. One might think her mean, until they saw her eyes when she looked back at Arthur. Jeanne was with the Red Cross in Villers-Bretonneux. She cleaned him, bandaged him. That was when she had given him her rosary and prayed for his health. A day in the trenches, wounded, without attention, brought him to the brink of death. Jeanne thought it a miracle of God, but Arthur saw only her work in it. Never had he seen such attentiveness, even in hospitals back home. His father had made sure he prayed every night, but the day he met her was the first time he did it out of thankfulness.

They were in love long before either of them realized, and it took a German push towards the city for it to set in. Bombs exploded yards away. Jeanne screamed. Still wounded and resting, Arthur dove over Jeanne, shielding her with his body. On the ground, certain they were going to die, they shared their first kiss. When the war ended months later, Jeanne followed Arthur back to America. “You are so stupid, bête. You better not have hurt yourself.” “I’m fine, Jen. Just tripped.” Arthur dropped his coat to the floor and pulled her close. They were both shivering now. Jeanne looked up at him and recognized the eyes, the glossy, distant stare. She knew what had sent him down the hill. It would do them no good if he went to sleep thinking such things. So, she pulled his head down to hers. Long moments passed before she pushed him away. Arthur grinned at her as she gently slapped his cheek. “Come, mon amour. Start the fire.” While Arthur tended to the wood, Jeanne cut the last of the vegetables for the stew. She had learned to cook as a girl and diced onions and chopped yams like any professional. Though, sometimes, when she saw the knife in her hand, she thought she saw blood there too. Suddenly, a potato reminded her of a leg, and she remembered the feeling of sinew tearing and bone giving way as she sawed off the limbs of people years her junior. Her face didn’t change when her mind went there; her body didn’t react the way Arthur’s did. But she felt it, the pain in her chest. She could hear their screams at night sometimes. But then, she remembered her relief when Arthur recovered. She had lain awake worrying over his fever, praying desperately for his recovery. At the time she wasn’t sure why she cared so much, after seeing so many die. When the fever finally broke, she knew it was His doing and promised endless thanks. She looked back as her Artur, got the flames up, and silently gave Him another thanks. It wasn’t long after the wood began to crackle at the licking flames when a soft whine came from the corner of their little home. Jeanne halted her dinner prep to go tend to the sound, only for Arthur to swoop in ahead of her. As he knelt over a simple wooden crib, Jeanne couldn’t help but smile. She thought back on that day when Arthur, injured and terrified, leapt to her safety. His face had changed at that moment. He had always looked sad and ashamed, yet when he protected her he was so strong, so certain. They didn’t know what was going on or that soon the battle would end and

all would be safe in Villers-Bretonneux. But the moment she embraced him, none of it seemed to matter anymore. Meanwhile, across the room, as Arthur looked down at his months-old son, Arthur recalled a much less pleasant memory. Two years ago, in the hospital in Paris he had been moved to, he was given a letter. Jeanne was there, though her name was not Jeanne Warden quite yet. He was recovering quickly, and they were happy. Then together they looked down, and the mood that had once been playful shifted into a quiet unlike any either had felt before. The Spanish Flu had taken Arthur’s father.

Arthur had left home, a dingy place in Boston, a year earlier. He had thought of his father’s last words to him every day since, and every day wished he had known that would be the last of it. After his death, that memory only grew stronger. “Arthur, you know you don’t have to prove anything. To anybody.” He had started to reply, “I know, Dad. It’s just—” He held up his hand. “Hush.” It wasn’t rude. It was just how John Warden spoke. “I know who you are, boy. Your mother knew, too.” Hearing John mention his mother shook Arthur. He hadn’t talked about her in six years. “The world is falling apart over there, and you’re rushing in to hold up your little piece of it. I get it, you know. I would too if I could still walk right.” They both knew even if his leg was still good the government wouldn’t let John Warden enlist at his age, but that didn’t matter much. There was a long pause before John went on. “I don’t want to lose you too, Arthur. So, just make sure you come back in one piece. And hey, while you’re there, maybe you’ll find some nice French girl to bring home with you, yeah? Get you one of those plots of land they keep talking about, get out of the city.” Arthur had laughed then and laughed now, shaking his head. “I couldn’t make it back in one piece, but I guess I did get some of that land, didn’t I?” Arthur picked up the wide-eyed baby, whose whining had subsided slightly when he caught sight of his dad. A little smile found its way onto his little cheeks. “Artur, le ragoût is ready. Take Leon. Sit.” They still had another year before the farm was truly theirs, and they had to work harder than imaginable to keep the government off their backs. The wheat was hard to manage with just the two of them, and Betsy wasn’t much help either. But as Arthur sat with his son and Jeanne slid a bowl in front of them, muttering about how he better not complain, he just smiled. “Don’t you worry, Jen. I’ve got nothing to complain about.”