“So, what’s your story, pal?”
He glanced over. Though in pain, the Marine smiled at him from the next bed. It was clear he was talking to him, but Albert Campbell was unsure whether to speak or remain silent. He’d been watching the infantryman all night, but now that the larger man was awake, he remembered he made a practice of avoiding soldiers like him, to shrink away from their brash, loud demeanor, their violence. Perhaps, it was better to remain unseen, unheard.
“Hello? Hey, yeah, I’m talking to you. What are you here for?”
No such luck.
“A mortar,” Albert replied haltingly. “It hit my regiment’s kitchen.”
He lifted the thin blanket to reveal his calf where he’d received a shrapnel wound.
Puny and not much use for military action, Albert had been cooking in the 2nd Infantry throughout his eighteen months of service back in the States and in France. The other cook he’d worked with that day — a tall and skinny boy with an extraordinary number of freckles — was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t had the benefit of an iron field stove standing between him and the blast, and Albert feared the worst.
At present, he found himself in a field hospital just south of Belleau Wood, about fifty miles east of Paris. He’d spent his first twenty-four hours writhing alone in a bed that smelled of horses and urine, sweat covering his thin frame.
“Ah, I’m sorry, pal,” the young Marine said. “Mortar nearly took my arm off. Burns like a bastard. Name’s Vito LaRosa.”
The thunder of German bombs announced the start of the day, rattling bottles next to his bed and shimmering dust from the roof timbers. The lantern light illuminated Albert's scared hazel eyes and wavy blond hair defiled by a recent tragic haircut in the trenches. Though he looked to be sixteen, he was nearly twenty years old and had already seen too much of the world.
“Pleased to meet you,” he replied. “I’m Campbell. Albert Campbell.”
He don’t remember last night, Albert thought.
***
Albert had awoken to the smell of burnt meat filling the darkness.
A terrible commotion accompanied the odor as medics brought in a wounded Marine to occupy the other bed in the small alcove, Albert’s lonely space now filled with a doctor, nurses, and the screams of the man laid next to him. The Marine’s arm had been burned and appeared broken or dislocated.
“My arm! My goddamn arm is burning!” The young infantryman screamed.
“Private, bite down on this.” The doctor lodged a bit of cloth in his mouth, which muffled but did not diminish the screams. “We’re working as best we can, son.”
The soldier turned his head on the pillow and looked at Albert with the eyes of a desperate wounded animal, terrified whelps through clenched teeth and tears running down a dirt-covered face. His good arm thrust out past the nurse towards Albert, who reached out and held his hand, tightly. Albert winced with pain but held his eyes steady on him.
“Be strong, pal.” Albert said, unwavering. “Come on now, I got you. You’re gon be alright.”
Morphine mercifully silenced the soldier’s screams. His grip on Albert loosened, but he didn’t let go. The Marine’s arm, slack and sweaty, rested heavy on Albert’s. The doctor and nurses continued cleaning the Marine and treating the burns. Eventually, the nurse took the soldier’s hand from Albert’s and placed it on the bed.
“Thanks for being a good friend to him, Private Campbell.”
“He’s alright, ain’t he?” He asked wide-eyed. “Y’all gon take care of him, right?”
“Soldier, he’s going to be fine.” The doctor interjected as he gathered himself and left. “You just worry about your own improvement.”
The nurse smiled at Albert with strained warmth and gave him a draught of something calming. Picking up the Marine’s medical chart, she muttered, “Vito LaRosa.” She brushed black curls back from his forehead smiling, “You’re quite handsome, Private.”
Albert wanted to tell the nurse to keep her hands to herself. He was shocked at how possessive he felt for a man he’d known only a few minutes.
But then, Vito LaRosa was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.
The young Marine had the prominent Italian brow and nose and curly hair one might see on a fresco in Pompeii. His arm was bandaged up to the shoulder, and his muscular frame laid bare in the hospital bed. His dark chest hair trailed down his abdomen to regions beneath the sheet laid across his waist. The overall effect was intoxicatingly gladiatorial. Young Albert was spellbound.
Vito’s agitations woke him three times during that night in the farmhouse. Each time, Albert sat up in bed, searching Vito’s face for distress by the lantern hung in the alcove’s archway. During a particularly troubling episode, he swung his legs over the side to get closer. Rising to his feet, Albert immediately bent over in pain and gasped as the nurse scraped her chair across the flagstone floor.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll get back into bed. Was just seein if he needed anything. I didn’t want to wake him or nothin. Please don’t tell the doctor.”
His hunched form crawled back onto his cot with a quiet creak of springs.
“You both need rest, dear.” She wiped his brow with a damp cloth and pulled the thin sheet up to his chin with a smile. “A sweet soul like you shouldn’t be in a terrible place like this.”
Once he heard the nurse settle back at her desk, Albert turned his head to face Vito and watched him breathe. He slept very little the first night they were together.
***
Clearly, Vito didn’t remember his dramatic introduction to Albert the next day.
“You talk funny, Al. Where’d you say you’re from?” Vito laid back on his pillow and rested his bandaged arm across his waist.
“Texas, mostly down by San Antonio and them parts.”
“Your folks still down there?”
“Well, I ain’t got folks. I’m an orphan, see. Moved through a few different places til I ran away at sixteen.”
A wince flashed across his face, whether from his shoulder or my story, Albert could not tell.
“Damn, I’m sorry to hear. I bet the road’s a hard place to grow up.”
How much do I tell him? Albert thought.
“I tramped here and there, got to see a good bit of the country. But there was some hard times, that’s for certain.”
Albert knew nobody really wanted to hear about the things done to you on the road when you were too young to be safe but old enough to know what was happening.
As the Marines made their assault against the Germans in the nearby forest, their farmhouse hospital filled with horrors. Boys brought in with missing limbs, abdomens ripped open, and much worse still. The pace for the medical staff grew more frenetic as casualties mounted and spirits broke.
Vito and Albert suffered the pain of their respective injuries, yet they existed at somewhat of a remove from the goings on around them. Their alcove by the fireplace provided a bit of shelter, and their relatively minor wounds allowed them to be somewhat forgotten by their attendants. During the day, Vito got out of bed to fetch water or rations for Albert, balancing their tin plates in one hand like a waiter at a fancy restaurant. At night, Albert offered to change Vito’s bandages and apply the paraffin salve on his burns. The exhausted staff were grateful for their assistance, and over time, their friendship grew, fragile and fretful of being trampled.
They were an unlikely pair.
Vito was tempestuous, frustrated by his injuries, and impatient to rejoin his brothers in the 5th Regiment. When he bumped his arm against the nightstand or pulled the sheet too tight across his shoulder, he slammed his fist against the iron bedstead with a rattling clang. He also tossed back his head when he laughed and flirted with the nurses.
Albert, on the other hand, could have spent the rest of the war cooking in a kitchen posted as far away from the front as possible. He had joined the army for three meals and a roof over his head. He did what he needed to survive, which often meant keeping his head down and avoiding conflict with any of the more aggressive - and quite often, larger - soldiers around him.
Like a dog who’d been beaten too often, Albert usually gave men like Vito a wide berth, but the Marine’s kindness drew him in.
Up in the farmhouse rafters, a window’s shutters had been left open to allow some of the midday heat to escape. Each afternoon, however, the sun angled in and bathed their two beds in light, setting the sheets ablaze and blinding them to some of the ravages brought into the main part of the house. This accident of architecture allowed Vito and Albert to manufacture a small space, a grotto into which they crawled away from the desolation around them. With his knees, Vito scraped his bed closer to Albert’s, just a bit, so they could play cards, go fish or six-card golf, mostly. When they tired of cards, they talked and tried to stay cool in the summer heat.
Worlds have been created with less.
Vito told Albert about his life growing up in Pittston, a hardscrabble coal town in northeastern Pennsylvania. Albert asked if he missed home: never having had a place to call home, others missing home was something of a fascination for him. Darkness clouded over Vito’s brow as he chewed on a hang nail and said no. His father had died in the mines a few years back, and his mother made do with sewing work for other ladies in town. He worried his sisters would drop out of school to get married, so he kept sending money home.
But no, he didn’t want to go back.
Vito stopped talking. The light from the window above set his hand ablaze. A ladybug, shiny and dark red, had landed on his ring finger. He chuckled as the little creature scuttled along the back of his hand.
Albert grinned. “Looks like you made a friend there, pal.”
“You too, Ally.” He nodded at another ladybug, more orange in color than Vito’s, crawling up Albert’s bedsheets along the ridge of his leg. Albert let his little friend crawl up onto his fingertip.
“You think mine might be looking for yours?” Vito asked.
Albert looked over at Vito with a smile. “Maybe so. Helluva place for the little man. Sure looks lonely, far as I can tell.”
Should I? Albert thought.
He moved his finger with its little passenger into the space between their cots. To his wonder, Vito did the same. They let their hands hover with the smallest gap between them, gravity pulling them towards each other.
Is his finger shaking? Albert thought, his breath shallow.
The two ladybugs moved towards each other on a fingertip bridge, red and orange finding each other in that wretched place. Without warning, the two took off together, flying in and out of the light, dancing amongst the dust motes, higher and higher up, until they caught a draft and floated out the window into the sun.
***
On their fourth day in the farmhouse, however, Vito developed a fever. Despite the steamed bandages, bleaching solution, salves, and all the doctors had at their disposal to protect him, something foreign and pestilential got into Vito’s wounds.
Albert was wracked with guilt. He wondered if he’d improperly dressed his shoulder. As the infection raged through Vito’s body, the nurses treated the pain as best they could, but he was one of tens of thousands whose injuries led them to an existential crossroads: the body either staved off infection or it did not. It could just as easily have been Albert.
Vito seemed to improve somewhat by end of day, but late in the night, Albert awoke to hear Vito chattering next to him in the darkness.
“You alright? Vito, can you hear me?”
With only a single lantern at the nurse’s desk casting thick amber shadows at the other end of the farmhouse, he could just make out the faint lump that was Vito a few feet away. He called Vito’s name again as the shaking rattled the springs in his cot with increasing violence.
“Ma’am? I think he needs some help over here.” Albert tried his best to whisper-shout into the void. “Nurse! Private LaRosa needs you.”
The only response he got was a few curses and groans from neighboring cots.
Albert felt Vito’s fever before he reached him. As he sat down on the bed frame next to Vito’s curled up body, he touched his shoulder and hissed at how hot it was. He found the small pail of water and rag left earlier by the nurse and pressed the damp towel to Vito’s neck.
Through chattering teeth, Vito mumbled about being cold and whispered something to his mother.
“Hey pal, it’s just me, Albert. Your mama ain’t here. We’re still in the farm near Belleau Wood. You’re just havin visions.”
“I’m scared, Ally.”
“You’re shakin something awful, Vito.”
“It’s so cold. Why am I so cold?”
Vito’s teeth chattered so violently, Albert feared they might break. He climbed onto the cot next to Vito and laid beside him, wrapping his thin arms around his body, careful to avoid his bandages. They were both shirtless, and Albert thought the heat coming off Vito’s back might peel his skin like paint. He tried his best to hold Vito’s shaking arms and pin him down with his one good leg, shushing him in his ear and retching from the foul smell coming off his shoulder. Little else could be done, but Albert thought if he could just hold him still, keep him from shaking, perhaps Vito could win against this beast.
If he were asked why he climbed into bed with him, Albert would say only that he had to, but in his heart, he knew if he could get Vito through his fever, then maybe, just maybe he might be redeemed for his past.
Hold fast, Albert thought, as the two of them burned through the night.
***
“Soldier, you need to get up.”
The nurse shook Albert’s shoulder, as her lantern shone down an oily yellow light. Confused and groggy, he realized all too quickly that he was still in Vito’s bed, his cool body resting peacefully in his arms. The station doctor stood behind the nurse, his dimly lit face twisted in a caricature of disgust. Tangled in the sweaty bedsheets, both soldiers were naked, their undershorts’ snaps having come undone in the night’s feverish struggles. The bed smelled of urine as Vito had relieved himself sometime in his thrashing.
Albert’s mind raced on two tracks: both thankful for Vito’s fever breaking in the night and embarrassed at their discovery. He peeled his chest away from Vito who had yet to stir and drew his arm slick with sweat out from under the other man’s torso, pulling up his shorts to cover his nakedness.
“I-I-I’m sorry, ma’am. I called out to you cause his fever was real bad, and I—”
“We’ll have none of that, soldier,” the doctor interrupted. “Get yourself decent and get back into your bed.”
“Sir, I didn’t mean no harm—”
The doctor stepped forward and pulled Albert up by the scruff of his neck with great force. His leg banged against the bedpost, and he yelped from the pain. The commotion caught the attention of some of the other patients in the farmhouse whose silhouettes rose like specters in the darkness.
Vito stirred in the bed.
The doctor swayed and snarled as he brought his face close to Albert, his breath smelling of whiskey and cigar. “You will shut your mouth, you filthy fairy. You may have a rod on for this soldier, but not here, not in this station you won’t.”
“What’s going on?” Vito sat up, wincing from his shoulder.
The nurse tried to lay him back down. “Go back to sleep, soldier. Doctor is just moving Private Campbell.”
“No, what’s happening? Why are you roughing up Albert?”
Albert turned to him, the doctor still gripping his neck. “They’re sayin we was dirty, Vito. Tell em you was sick with fever. Nobody came to help — none of y’all came to help him!”
“He’s right, sir. I was sick.”
“You were recovering,” the doctor retorted as he shook Albert like a rag doll. Albert heaved breaths and teared up, both from the pain in his leg and his own mortification. “What I see is two sweaty, naked soldiers in bed together.”
“Sir, you need to let go of Campbell’s neck.”
“You watch your mouth, Marine.”
Vito got up from his cot and filled the space left by the nurse who retreated with a gasp as he stood naked and unashamed. He walked up to the doctor, fists at his side, his bulk filling the alcove.
“I don’t mean to cause more trouble, sir, but I told you to let him go.”
“Who the hell do you think you are, boy?”
Vito’s good arm smacked the doctor’s off his friend’s neck like a whip, so fast no one present really saw it happen. The doctor’s hand was just gone, and he tumbled back a step. Vito peered up at the doctor, his head jutting forward like a bull ready to charge. Threat hung in the humid air between the three of them, and Albert grew lightheaded from the pain.
The doctor blinked first.
“Both of you get dressed. We’re going to deal with this situation at once. We will not have this kind of disorder here, no sir.”
He turned on his heel and headed to the front of the farmhouse, the nurse trailing behind him meek and mute. Their alcove vacated, Vito and Albert sat on their cots trembling.
“She knows we’re not lying,” Vito muttered. “I won’t be sent up the river for that drunk’s bullshit.”
Albert leaned forward whispering, “Leave it alone, or you’re gon be in a whole heap of trouble.”
“We’re already in trouble and for no good reason.”
“It’ll be worse if you keep hollerin, Vito!” He pleaded.
Silence grew between them as they wiped down with washcloths and got dressed. Vito helped Albert ease his pant leg over the bandages.
“Thanks for sticking up for me with the doctor,” Albert said as he lifted Vito’s shirt over him.
“You bet, pal. You stayed with me through my shakes. Seems I owe you my life.” He paused, his face hidden in shadows. “Sorry I pissed the bed.”
“It’s alright, I seen worse.” Which was true, he had.
Vito’s mood darkened again. “That nurse should’ve helped me, should’ve been here. Why ain’t she saying nothing? I was sick, goddamn it. She knows I was.”
The two men never learned why neither she nor the doctor had been in the farmhouse when Vito needed them. The doctor was drunk, of that they were sure, but the nurse had been kind and attentive. Perhaps she’d been called away, or she might have felt sick herself. Maybe she and the doctor took some time away from the farmhouse full of death to enjoy each other’s company in the barn. Despite the uncertainty they both faced, Albert wouldn’t have blamed her for finding comfort where she could.
At the front of the station, the nurse spoke to the doctor in hushed tones, as she attempted to assuage his furious pride. He sat in the warm pool of light writing notes for what would become their discharge papers.
Within a few weeks, Vito and Albert would be on a ship pulling into Philadelphia, a city upon which Albert had never laid eyes, and the farmhouse where they’d met would be reduced to rubble by German shelling.
The doctor would survive into old age. He would receive a commendation for valorous service and go on to have an illustrious career in Boston.
The sweet nurse who’d put a daisy next to Albert’s bed died there in France. She had a dimple when she smiled, just on her right cheek.
“So, what’s your story, pal?” He glanced over. Though in pain, the Marine smiled at him from the next bed. It was clear he was talking to him, but Albert Campbell was unsure whether to speak or remain silent. He’d been watching the infantryman all night, but now that the larger man was awake, he remembered he made a practice of avoiding soldiers like him, to shrink away from their brash, loud demeanor, their violence. Perhaps, it was better to remain unseen, unheard. “Hello? Hey, yeah, I’m talking to you. What are you here for?” No such luck. “A mortar,” Albert replied haltingly. “It hit my regiment’s kitchen.” He lifted the thin blanket to reveal his calf where he’d received a shrapnel wound. Puny and not much use for military action, Albert had been cooking in the 2nd Infantry throughout his eighteen months of service back in the States and in France. The other cook he’d worked with that day — a tall and skinny boy with an extraordinary number of freckles — was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t had the benefit of an iron field stove standing between him and the blast, and Albert feared the worst. At present, he found himself in a field hospital just south of Belleau Wood, about fifty miles east of Paris. He’d spent his first twenty-four hours writhing alone in a bed that smelled of horses and urine, sweat covering his thin frame. “Ah, I’m sorry, pal,” the young Marine said. “Mortar nearly took my arm off. Burns like a bastard. Name’s Vito LaRosa.” The thunder of German bombs announced the start of the day, rattling bottles next to his bed and shimmering dust from the roof timbers. The lantern light illuminated Albert's scared hazel eyes and wavy blond hair defiled by a recent tragic haircut in the trenches. Though he looked to be sixteen, he was nearly twenty years old and had already seen too much of the world. “Pleased to meet you,” he replied. “I’m Campbell. Albert Campbell.” He don’t remember last night, Albert thought. *** Albert had awoken to the smell of burnt meat filling the darkness. A terrible commotion accompanied the odor as medics brought in a wounded Marine to occupy the other bed in the small alcove, Albert’s lonely space now filled with a doctor, nurses, and the screams of the man laid next to him. The Marine’s arm had been burned and appeared broken or dislocated. “My arm! My goddamn arm is burning!” The young infantryman screamed. “Private, bite down on this.” The doctor lodged a bit of cloth in his mouth, which muffled but did not diminish the screams. “We’re working as best we can, son.” The soldier turned his head on the pillow and looked at Albert with the eyes of a desperate wounded animal, terrified whelps through clenched teeth and tears running down a dirt-covered face. His good arm thrust out past the nurse towards Albert, who reached out and held his hand, tightly. Albert winced with pain but held his eyes steady on him. “Be strong, pal.” Albert said, unwavering. “Come on now, I got you. You’re gon be alright.” Morphine mercifully silenced the soldier’s screams. His grip on Albert loosened, but he didn’t let go. The Marine’s arm, slack and sweaty, rested heavy on Albert’s. The doctor and nurses continued cleaning the Marine and treating the burns. Eventually, the nurse took the soldier’s hand from Albert’s and placed it on the bed. “Thanks for being a good friend to him, Private Campbell.” “He’s alright, ain’t he?” He asked wide-eyed. “Y’all gon take care of him, right?” “Soldier, he’s going to be fine.” The doctor interjected as he gathered himself and left. “You just worry about your own improvement.” The nurse smiled at Albert with strained warmth and gave him a draught of something calming. Picking up the Marine’s medical chart, she muttered, “Vito LaRosa.” She brushed black curls back from his forehead smiling, “You’re quite handsome, Private.” Albert wanted to tell the nurse to keep her hands to herself. He was shocked at how possessive he felt for a man he’d known only a few minutes. But then, Vito LaRosa was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen. The young Marine had the prominent Italian brow and nose and curly hair one might see on a fresco in Pompeii. His arm was bandaged up to the shoulder, and his muscular frame laid bare in the hospital bed. His dark chest hair trailed down his abdomen to regions beneath the sheet laid across his waist. The overall effect was intoxicatingly gladiatorial. Young Albert was spellbound. Vito’s agitations woke him three times during that night in the farmhouse. Each time, Albert sat up in bed, searching Vito’s face for distress by the lantern hung in the alcove’s archway. During a particularly troubling episode, he swung his legs over the side to get closer. Rising to his feet, Albert immediately bent over in pain and gasped as the nurse scraped her chair across the flagstone floor. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll get back into bed. Was just seein if he needed anything. I didn’t want to wake him or nothin. Please don’t tell the doctor.” His hunched form crawled back onto his cot with a quiet creak of springs. “You both need rest, dear.” She wiped his brow with a damp cloth and pulled the thin sheet up to his chin with a smile. “A sweet soul like you shouldn’t be in a terrible place like this.” Once he heard the nurse settle back at her desk, Albert turned his head to face Vito and watched him breathe. He slept very little the first night they were together. *** Clearly, Vito didn’t remember his dramatic introduction to Albert the next day. “You talk funny, Al. Where’d you say you’re from?” Vito laid back on his pillow and rested his bandaged arm across his waist. “Texas, mostly down by San Antonio and them parts.” “Your folks still down there?” “Well, I ain’t got folks. I’m an orphan, see. Moved through a few different places til I ran away at sixteen.” A wince flashed across his face, whether from his shoulder or my story, Albert could not tell. “Damn, I’m sorry to hear. I bet the road’s a hard place to grow up.” How much do I tell him? Albert thought. “I tramped here and there, got to see a good bit of the country. But there was some hard times, that’s for certain.” Albert knew nobody really wanted to hear about the things done to you on the road when you were too young to be safe but old enough to know what was happening. As the Marines made their assault against the Germans in the nearby forest, their farmhouse hospital filled with horrors. Boys brought in with missing limbs, abdomens ripped open, and much worse still. The pace for the medical staff grew more frenetic as casualties mounted and spirits broke. Vito and Albert suffered the pain of their respective injuries, yet they existed at somewhat of a remove from the goings on around them. Their alcove by the fireplace provided a bit of shelter, and their relatively minor wounds allowed them to be somewhat forgotten by their attendants. During the day, Vito got out of bed to fetch water or rations for Albert, balancing their tin plates in one hand like a waiter at a fancy restaurant. At night, Albert offered to change Vito’s bandages and apply the paraffin salve on his burns. The exhausted staff were grateful for their assistance, and over time, their friendship grew, fragile and fretful of being trampled. They were an unlikely pair. Vito was tempestuous, frustrated by his injuries, and impatient to rejoin his brothers in the 5th Regiment. When he bumped his arm against the nightstand or pulled the sheet too tight across his shoulder, he slammed his fist against the iron bedstead with a rattling clang. He also tossed back his head when he laughed and flirted with the nurses. Albert, on the other hand, could have spent the rest of the war cooking in a kitchen posted as far away from the front as possible. He had joined the army for three meals and a roof over his head. He did what he needed to survive, which often meant keeping his head down and avoiding conflict with any of the more aggressive - and quite often, larger - soldiers around him. Like a dog who’d been beaten too often, Albert usually gave men like Vito a wide berth, but the Marine’s kindness drew him in. Up in the farmhouse rafters, a window’s shutters had been left open to allow some of the midday heat to escape. Each afternoon, however, the sun angled in and bathed their two beds in light, setting the sheets ablaze and blinding them to some of the ravages brought into the main part of the house. This accident of architecture allowed Vito and Albert to manufacture a small space, a grotto into which they crawled away from the desolation around them. With his knees, Vito scraped his bed closer to Albert’s, just a bit, so they could play cards, go fish or six-card golf, mostly. When they tired of cards, they talked and tried to stay cool in the summer heat. Worlds have been created with less. Vito told Albert about his life growing up in Pittston, a hardscrabble coal town in northeastern Pennsylvania. Albert asked if he missed home: never having had a place to call home, others missing home was something of a fascination for him. Darkness clouded over Vito’s brow as he chewed on a hang nail and said no. His father had died in the mines a few years back, and his mother made do with sewing work for other ladies in town. He worried his sisters would drop out of school to get married, so he kept sending money home. But no, he didn’t want to go back. Vito stopped talking. The light from the window above set his hand ablaze. A ladybug, shiny and dark red, had landed on his ring finger. He chuckled as the little creature scuttled along the back of his hand. Albert grinned. “Looks like you made a friend there, pal.” “You too, Ally.” He nodded at another ladybug, more orange in color than Vito’s, crawling up Albert’s bedsheets along the ridge of his leg. Albert let his little friend crawl up onto his fingertip. “You think mine might be looking for yours?” Vito asked. Albert looked over at Vito with a smile. “Maybe so. Helluva place for the little man. Sure looks lonely, far as I can tell.” Should I? Albert thought. He moved his finger with its little passenger into the space between their cots. To his wonder, Vito did the same. They let their hands hover with the smallest gap between them, gravity pulling them towards each other. Is his finger shaking? Albert thought, his breath shallow. The two ladybugs moved towards each other on a fingertip bridge, red and orange finding each other in that wretched place. Without warning, the two took off together, flying in and out of the light, dancing amongst the dust motes, higher and higher up, until they caught a draft and floated out the window into the sun. *** On their fourth day in the farmhouse, however, Vito developed a fever. Despite the steamed bandages, bleaching solution, salves, and all the doctors had at their disposal to protect him, something foreign and pestilential got into Vito’s wounds. Albert was wracked with guilt. He wondered if he’d improperly dressed his shoulder. As the infection raged through Vito’s body, the nurses treated the pain as best they could, but he was one of tens of thousands whose injuries led them to an existential crossroads: the body either staved off infection or it did not. It could just as easily have been Albert. Vito seemed to improve somewhat by end of day, but late in the night, Albert awoke to hear Vito chattering next to him in the darkness. “You alright? Vito, can you hear me?” With only a single lantern at the nurse’s desk casting thick amber shadows at the other end of the farmhouse, he could just make out the faint lump that was Vito a few feet away. He called Vito’s name again as the shaking rattled the springs in his cot with increasing violence. “Ma’am? I think he needs some help over here.” Albert tried his best to whisper-shout into the void. “Nurse! Private LaRosa needs you.” The only response he got was a few curses and groans from neighboring cots. Albert felt Vito’s fever before he reached him. As he sat down on the bed frame next to Vito’s curled up body, he touched his shoulder and hissed at how hot it was. He found the small pail of water and rag left earlier by the nurse and pressed the damp towel to Vito’s neck. Through chattering teeth, Vito mumbled about being cold and whispered something to his mother. “Hey pal, it’s just me, Albert. Your mama ain’t here. We’re still in the farm near Belleau Wood. You’re just havin visions.” “I’m scared, Ally.” “You’re shakin something awful, Vito.” “It’s so cold. Why am I so cold?” Vito’s teeth chattered so violently, Albert feared they might break. He climbed onto the cot next to Vito and laid beside him, wrapping his thin arms around his body, careful to avoid his bandages. They were both shirtless, and Albert thought the heat coming off Vito’s back might peel his skin like paint. He tried his best to hold Vito’s shaking arms and pin him down with his one good leg, shushing him in his ear and retching from the foul smell coming off his shoulder. Little else could be done, but Albert thought if he could just hold him still, keep him from shaking, perhaps Vito could win against this beast. If he were asked why he climbed into bed with him, Albert would say only that he had to, but in his heart, he knew if he could get Vito through his fever, then maybe, just maybe he might be redeemed for his past. Hold fast, Albert thought, as the two of them burned through the night. *** “Soldier, you need to get up.” The nurse shook Albert’s shoulder, as her lantern shone down an oily yellow light. Confused and groggy, he realized all too quickly that he was still in Vito’s bed, his cool body resting peacefully in his arms. The station doctor stood behind the nurse, his dimly lit face twisted in a caricature of disgust. Tangled in the sweaty bedsheets, both soldiers were naked, their undershorts’ snaps having come undone in the night’s feverish struggles. The bed smelled of urine as Vito had relieved himself sometime in his thrashing. Albert’s mind raced on two tracks: both thankful for Vito’s fever breaking in the night and embarrassed at their discovery. He peeled his chest away from Vito who had yet to stir and drew his arm slick with sweat out from under the other man’s torso, pulling up his shorts to cover his nakedness. “I-I-I’m sorry, ma’am. I called out to you cause his fever was real bad, and I—” “We’ll have none of that, soldier,” the doctor interrupted. “Get yourself decent and get back into your bed.” “Sir, I didn’t mean no harm—” The doctor stepped forward and pulled Albert up by the scruff of his neck with great force. His leg banged against the bedpost, and he yelped from the pain. The commotion caught the attention of some of the other patients in the farmhouse whose silhouettes rose like specters in the darkness. Vito stirred in the bed. The doctor swayed and snarled as he brought his face close to Albert, his breath smelling of whiskey and cigar. “You will shut your mouth, you filthy fairy. You may have a rod on for this soldier, but not here, not in this station you won’t.” “What’s going on?” Vito sat up, wincing from his shoulder. The nurse tried to lay him back down. “Go back to sleep, soldier. Doctor is just moving Private Campbell.” “No, what’s happening? Why are you roughing up Albert?” Albert turned to him, the doctor still gripping his neck. “They’re sayin we was dirty, Vito. Tell em you was sick with fever. Nobody came to help — none of y’all came to help him!” “He’s right, sir. I was sick.” “You were recovering,” the doctor retorted as he shook Albert like a rag doll. Albert heaved breaths and teared up, both from the pain in his leg and his own mortification. “What I see is two sweaty, naked soldiers in bed together.” “Sir, you need to let go of Campbell’s neck.” “You watch your mouth, Marine.” Vito got up from his cot and filled the space left by the nurse who retreated with a gasp as he stood naked and unashamed. He walked up to the doctor, fists at his side, his bulk filling the alcove. “I don’t mean to cause more trouble, sir, but I told you to let him go.” “Who the hell do you think you are, boy?” Vito’s good arm smacked the doctor’s off his friend’s neck like a whip, so fast no one present really saw it happen. The doctor’s hand was just gone, and he tumbled back a step. Vito peered up at the doctor, his head jutting forward like a bull ready to charge. Threat hung in the humid air between the three of them, and Albert grew lightheaded from the pain. The doctor blinked first. “Both of you get dressed. We’re going to deal with this situation at once. We will not have this kind of disorder here, no sir.” He turned on his heel and headed to the front of the farmhouse, the nurse trailing behind him meek and mute. Their alcove vacated, Vito and Albert sat on their cots trembling. “She knows we’re not lying,” Vito muttered. “I won’t be sent up the river for that drunk’s bullshit.” Albert leaned forward whispering, “Leave it alone, or you’re gon be in a whole heap of trouble.” “We’re already in trouble and for no good reason.” “It’ll be worse if you keep hollerin, Vito!” He pleaded. Silence grew between them as they wiped down with washcloths and got dressed. Vito helped Albert ease his pant leg over the bandages. “Thanks for sticking up for me with the doctor,” Albert said as he lifted Vito’s shirt over him. “You bet, pal. You stayed with me through my shakes. Seems I owe you my life.” He paused, his face hidden in shadows. “Sorry I pissed the bed.” “It’s alright, I seen worse.” Which was true, he had. Vito’s mood darkened again. “That nurse should’ve helped me, should’ve been here. Why ain’t she saying nothing? I was sick, goddamn it. She knows I was.” The two men never learned why neither she nor the doctor had been in the farmhouse when Vito needed them. The doctor was drunk, of that they were sure, but the nurse had been kind and attentive. Perhaps she’d been called away, or she might have felt sick herself. Maybe she and the doctor took some time away from the farmhouse full of death to enjoy each other’s company in the barn. Despite the uncertainty they both faced, Albert wouldn’t have blamed her for finding comfort where she could. At the front of the station, the nurse spoke to the doctor in hushed tones, as she attempted to assuage his furious pride. He sat in the warm pool of light writing notes for what would become their discharge papers. Within a few weeks, Vito and Albert would be on a ship pulling into Philadelphia, a city upon which Albert had never laid eyes, and the farmhouse where they’d met would be reduced to rubble by German shelling. The doctor would survive into old age. He would receive a commendation for valorous service and go on to have an illustrious career in Boston. The sweet nurse who’d put a daisy next to Albert’s bed died there in France. She had a dimple when she smiled, just on her right cheek.