Bury This by Andrea Portes Read Free Book Online Page B

delirious.”
    â€œHe’ll be fine. Keep an eye on him.”
    And the sound of the matching white coats moving away, moving away now to another sucker lying on his back, mummified. Resentful, betrayed somehow, to hear, “Private Reiter. Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?”
    Same shtick. Same shtick, different sucker.
    And then the blanket of sleep, a gauze of days, hours, weeks spent flat-back hearing the whispers echoing off the walls, from far away an occasional scream, a few times, late night, the sound of a grown man crying. Muddled sobs in the moonlight, muttering retreats, buried in the pillow. Shh.
    The second time waking, more substantial, a stronger visit.
    â€œCan you hear me? Can you hear my voice?”
    Eyes blinking, a different nurse. This one, a brunette with a face like a pie, a sweetheart face. Maybe this is heaven. Ah, is there anything better than bleeding out on a death-walk tide and waking up to a pie-face cherub of a girl in a cotton starch hat? A system contrived to melt your heart into goop. For you, I’ll do anything. You saved me. You saved me from that death-waltz shore.
    Stirring, trying to get up. “Where am I? Where is this?”
    â€œDon’t get up, please, Lt. Colonel. There. That’s better. This is Charterhouse Military Hospital. Recovery Ward.”
    The name a homing device, a passkey, a map.
    â€œYou’re healing. That’s your job now. Getting strong again. Let’s don’t rush it.”
    The brunette hair a shade darker than mouse but lighter than chestnut. An English kind of hair, no dyes. An English face, no button nose, but a funny shape anyway. A drastic shape, cut off too early.
    â€œWhat’s your name, nurse? I want to tell my friends back home about the pretty nurses they have over here.”
    â€œOh, now.” Straightening his pillow above his head, leaning forward, placing his blanket just so.
    â€œLucy. My name’s Lucy.”
    â€œWell, then. I’ll tell the folks back in the States that the best-looking Lucys come from England. It’s the only place for Lucys.”
    â€œOh, come now. You rest.”
    And then, back into the painkiller gauze, back into the cobweb dreams in a place made of stone, chalk sheets, and 3 AM sobbing.
    Getting out a month later, he seemed taken over by a death drive, a gulping, grabbing, smoking endless void to fill with only one thing. Girls.
    Girls were the answer to that stretch of grim reaper sand and that ratatat-tat he heard nightly, sometimes waking him from sleep. Blonde girls. Brown girls. Redheaded girls. Tall girls. Short girls. Girls with nothing to ’em. Girls with big tits and red-painted lips. Girls with black hair. Girls with platinum blonde hair. Girls with honey-colored Rita Hayworth tresses in tight-fitting sweaters and peach silk dresses.
    There was no amount of girls to quench this death thirst, not that he didn’t try. Oh, did he ever. Sometimes two girls in one night. One for dinner. One for drinks. It was easy, in that save-the-world uniform, with that save-the-day story, the troops spreading out over France, pushing the bastard Krauts back. And Patton, well, you gotta love the guy, one thing about that reckless son of a bitch, he knew how to win a war, that’s for sure. Trouncing the Germans, trampling them into the fields, outsmarting those sneaky fuckers. We’ll show you how it’s done. Bastards.
    And the reports, coming back from the front, horror-eyed clips about stick figures in stripes, camps of bodies, ovens. Ovens! It was inconceivable. It couldn’t be true. Could it? Everyone asking everyone, have you heard, have you heard? Sick fucks. Good thing we have Patton.
    Girls cure it! Girls make it go away. Late night or early night or any time of day, really. Drawn-on pantyhose, don’t have to draw them off. A parade of buckles and hooks and clasps, blood-red lipstick, hot roller curls, cascading down, transparent