John Stanley had a tear-off monthly calendar, the kind auto-repair shops give away. He’d taken off the cardboard backing or it had torn off, leaving a stack of paper the size of a business card stapled twice at the top. He kept it in his breast pocket.
When I learned the date, I felt better. Each time I picked out John’s shape, standing as though he had one leg short a few inches, I’d ask.
Even if I already knew. I did the math over and over.
The Chinese were clever. Endless. They’d swoop down the frigid night, clanging and hooting deafening, confusing, banging off the ice, cracking and whipping flares flaming, trailing, staining the center of our vision. We could barely aim. Didn’t know where to aim.
We thought of our deaths only when the first line topped the mountain ridge, bugles, horns, whistles blowing. By the fifth or sixth wave, they climbed over bodies three high. We didn’t think about death anymore. Just running.
“Shooting fish in a barrel,” someone said.
General Smith said, “Gentlemen, we’re not retreating. We’re just advancing in a different direction.”
Night temperatures negative-eighty wind chill. What negative eighty feels like, couldn’t say. That low, you can’t feel anything.
When we got there, we had different ideas. No doubts. We’d crushed enemies in two world wars—two fronts, the second. We’d do it again.
Then we met Korea. Fell back from jump.
This Patrick kid, though. Two weeks in Chosin, 10,000-plus forms slip-sliding down valleys past mountaintop encampments of Chinese with machine guns and mortars, longest retreat in American history, constant chaos, rarely saw the same guy, but this Patrick kid, always this Patrick kid. Somehow.
Dirt’d settled into hollows a face his age shouldn’t have had. In the dark, you couldn’t distinguish the blue of his irises, pupils holes in his skull.
He talked. Even in the fighting, he’d talk.
Then we’d return to pick up the dead, throw them on trucks. Half-naked bodies congealed midmotion, struggling to get up when turned to ice or pedaling feet and beating arms when their world froze. The Chinese would loot, then retrench. No appropriate clothing for the weather, either side.
And Patrick, he’d talk. About his eighth birthday party, say. The cake, a frog a neighbor’d whittled, his mom’s flowers.
Generic man in overcoat, hood, helmet: “Shut up, kid. Just shut up.”
Patrick said he’d meet the right girl in church, where his mom told him any boy’d do right finding a wife.
Generic guy—same one, different one, same time, different time—pressed his eyes closed, looking inside.
“Hey, Patrick,” I said. No one wanted talk about wives. “You know it’s December 20?”
Then he’d go back to birthdays, maybe, about one year his fell on Sunday, about how that year he’d had a joint birthday–first communion party.
Generic guy held himself on the edge of the truck: “Please.”
Stories passed how someone’s nose dropped off. I carried awhile a soldier with legs frozen to midcalf. Later, a whole town of men front and behind, one guy stood so still I thought we’d stopped and he’d kept moving. I peered into his eyes. “I can’t feel my face,” he said.
Patrick was talking about Christmas. Had been since I’d said it was Christmas Eve. Mom hung red glass globes. Dad bought flocked trees, the kind with powder snow.
The soldier said, “I can’t walk.”
We weren’t leaving the dead, so I grabbed him and had Patrick grab him. We got back in line.
Five minutes or two hours later, the Chinese again. We held the soldier like a hammock, tossed him behind rocks. Found him again after. The adrenaline had warmed our ears to throbbing, screaming. Grenade’d got him. Pieces strung the rocks.
Blood in the snow looks black until it fans, dilutes. Blood didn’t dilute much at Chosin. Froze first.
Two-three days later, a valley. Blinding vastness. We’d slithered for days through serried mountain crevasses, peaks blocking the sky. Here men and trucks had space. Here we huddled. Felt safer. Could see things coming, we figured.
The sun beamed but didn’t warm. The air breathed shallow. We had cold-thick skin, insensible limbs, fingers. Caravan halted to let laggers arrive, tighten the line. Some men talked. Most stared. We passed cigarettes, lighting them end-to-end.
Down a ways, John Stanley stood alone. I lumbered up. Asked the date. He didn’t extract the calendar. He squinted into the sun. “December 30,” he said.
His lips refolded around his lit cigarette; he held the index finger of one hand hooked over. The thumb rubbed the scarf snaking to his chin.
Sister’s birthday, December 30. Until she died, I’d sometimes stand alone at her parties. Everyone had conversations about it with their eyes.
John Stanley must have gotten my address from the Marines. He wrote how it’d been forty-five years and he couldn’t quit thinking about me. He didn’t mean me, meant “it.” Some people think talking pales ghosts away. Second paragraph, I dropped the letter behind my worktable.
December 30 in Chosin, I stood with John Stanley and watched men, trucks slide into the valley. Black beetles, white landscape.
Patrick stood catty-corner behind, talking about his past, or his family, or home.
Soon enough we had a circle, each man looking into his distance. We adjusted and readjusted scarves and helmets.
One man flung his rifle over his shoulder, hand gripping muzzle, stock pushing past neck. He had a dense brown moustache distinguishable from an unshaven face for its length, volume. The guy opposite me had his barrel in the snow; he leaned against the stock. This man said his feet hurt.
All our feet hurt. All our canteens belted our waists. All our duffels hung from our shoulders or lashed our backs. Groups of guys at a short distance, bundled, clustered, a murder of scarecrows. A horde of boys stacked three-high under matching overcoats. Lumpy. Synonymous.
My palm wrapped my hand guard, held the rifle against my hip. I moved to pass it across my shoulders, rest my wrists over the ends. Thumb looped the trigger.
Rustling through the masses.
I wondered at my firearm, the recoil in my wrist, elbow. Looked up. Out on one arm now, the guy who’d said his feet hurt.
Our circle observed for a slowed-down time. The point-blank dot on his olive overcoat grew into a black half dollar. His mouth worked, teeth red. His jaw parted, stretched a sticky crimson line.
Reaching fingers clutched the mustached man’s pant leg, one-arm wrenched up the torso, tumid eyes on a wobbly head seeking, needing, pupils vibrating. Scared.
The guts let go. The cold air fell back for the warm smell. A moment.
Then retrenched, shoved the remaining blood from his face. Snapped him to wax.
Patrick flumped in the snow, an unsteady toddler.
Stopped talking.
The men looked at me, the lips of their helmets curling, exposing their eyes.