Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
Dan and I stayed in the 33rd and went through training together stateside, both at Camp Grant and Camp Logan. He had barely made weight when we joined, but by the time he got done training he was skinnier than me. We were on that reeking ship together all the way to Brest. In short, we were inseparable from fourth grade until the shelling at Nine Elms trench on the Somme, which was in July of 1918.
We were so goddamned eager to go.
We were so stupid.
I MADE THE river around two.
Unfortunately, the raft or ferry I had seen with Lester was nowhere in sight; I had wandered off of the crossing point. I looked upriver and then downriver, but couldn’t determine which was the right way to go.
Gordeau had said the river wasn’t very deep, but looking at it didn’t help; the surface just reflected the hazy brass sky above it while pieces of moss and sticks floated by. He had mentioned water moccasins, and I could see that the bunches of reeds and lichen-covered rocks on both banks would provide ample hiding places for such.
“To hell with it,” I said to nobody.
I put the camera down, removed my shoes, tucked my socks in them and waded out to test the depth of the river. The bed was mostly soft underfoot, but the mud and clay were punctuated with rocks that proved slippery; I nearly fell twice before I got to the middle and determined that it wasn’t likely to get worse than hipdeep. I returned to the bank and, deciding it was too far for me to throw my shoes across, I tied the strings together and hung them around my neck. I carried the camera up over my head and crossed; about mid-river I got a case of the giggles when I imagined I was Saint Christopher holding the Holy Babe aloft.
What’s your name, little fellow? My, but you are getting heavy. But I shall not drop you, for I am Holy.
Lester Gordeau’s instructions had included a landmark called Madge-Eye Rock, which was as far as he had claimed to have ever gone in this direction.
“When you git bout a mile an a half pass the river, keepin to the trail, you’ll come to a little spring called Madge-Eye Rock. Ain’t too big, but the water out of it is cold and good drinkin, sept that taste like it come out of a skillet. S’pose to be bad luck to drink out of it, or not to drink out of it, I cain’t recall. They’s all kind a stories bout them woods pass the river.”
“Magi,” I said when I saw it, “as in Three Magi.”
I had spent some time during my walk trying to puzzle out what a madge-eye could be, but now it was clear what the christener of the spring had seen; three separate but connected shelves of rock rose to chest level, each of them producing a small trickle of water that drained off into a sort of sink. Orange stains beneath the spigots and in the sink testified to large quantities of iron in the water, which I tasted when I cupped my hand beneath the central spigot and put it to my mouth.
Cold.
The source was deep.
I had tasted water from such a well, years before, in England, where I had convalesced after my injury in France. My dad had pulled strings so I got a good long leave overseas before I came home for decommissioning.
Everything in England was so tidy, though. America was the wild one now. The rock shelf wore a crown of ferns and moss, and, behind the spring, on the higher level, rocks jutting out from beneath the topsoil suggested a tail pointing deeper into the woods. It was pretty here.
I filled my canteen.
I pressed on another hundred yards. What I saw then did not precisely frighten me, but it made me uneasy. Pine trees had begun again to compete with their deciduous cousins, and two of them stood on opposite sides of the trail, like columns. Like some sort of gate.
They had both been gouged.
I mused that in colonial days the great pine forests of the South had been treasuries for resin, pitch, tar and turpentine, but that the British navy held American pitch in some
Dan and I stayed in the 33rd and went through training together stateside, both at Camp Grant and Camp Logan. He had barely made weight when we joined, but by the time he got done training he was skinnier than me. We were on that reeking ship together all the way to Brest. In short, we were inseparable from fourth grade until the shelling at Nine Elms trench on the Somme, which was in July of 1918.
We were so goddamned eager to go.
We were so stupid.
I MADE THE river around two.
Unfortunately, the raft or ferry I had seen with Lester was nowhere in sight; I had wandered off of the crossing point. I looked upriver and then downriver, but couldn’t determine which was the right way to go.
Gordeau had said the river wasn’t very deep, but looking at it didn’t help; the surface just reflected the hazy brass sky above it while pieces of moss and sticks floated by. He had mentioned water moccasins, and I could see that the bunches of reeds and lichen-covered rocks on both banks would provide ample hiding places for such.
“To hell with it,” I said to nobody.
I put the camera down, removed my shoes, tucked my socks in them and waded out to test the depth of the river. The bed was mostly soft underfoot, but the mud and clay were punctuated with rocks that proved slippery; I nearly fell twice before I got to the middle and determined that it wasn’t likely to get worse than hipdeep. I returned to the bank and, deciding it was too far for me to throw my shoes across, I tied the strings together and hung them around my neck. I carried the camera up over my head and crossed; about mid-river I got a case of the giggles when I imagined I was Saint Christopher holding the Holy Babe aloft.
What’s your name, little fellow? My, but you are getting heavy. But I shall not drop you, for I am Holy.
Lester Gordeau’s instructions had included a landmark called Madge-Eye Rock, which was as far as he had claimed to have ever gone in this direction.
“When you git bout a mile an a half pass the river, keepin to the trail, you’ll come to a little spring called Madge-Eye Rock. Ain’t too big, but the water out of it is cold and good drinkin, sept that taste like it come out of a skillet. S’pose to be bad luck to drink out of it, or not to drink out of it, I cain’t recall. They’s all kind a stories bout them woods pass the river.”
“Magi,” I said when I saw it, “as in Three Magi.”
I had spent some time during my walk trying to puzzle out what a madge-eye could be, but now it was clear what the christener of the spring had seen; three separate but connected shelves of rock rose to chest level, each of them producing a small trickle of water that drained off into a sort of sink. Orange stains beneath the spigots and in the sink testified to large quantities of iron in the water, which I tasted when I cupped my hand beneath the central spigot and put it to my mouth.
Cold.
The source was deep.
I had tasted water from such a well, years before, in England, where I had convalesced after my injury in France. My dad had pulled strings so I got a good long leave overseas before I came home for decommissioning.
Everything in England was so tidy, though. America was the wild one now. The rock shelf wore a crown of ferns and moss, and, behind the spring, on the higher level, rocks jutting out from beneath the topsoil suggested a tail pointing deeper into the woods. It was pretty here.
I filled my canteen.
I pressed on another hundred yards. What I saw then did not precisely frighten me, but it made me uneasy. Pine trees had begun again to compete with their deciduous cousins, and two of them stood on opposite sides of the trail, like columns. Like some sort of gate.
They had both been gouged.
I mused that in colonial days the great pine forests of the South had been treasuries for resin, pitch, tar and turpentine, but that the British navy held American pitch in some
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