The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig Read Free Book Online Page B

mine. They had to amputate."
    A grunt came from the grandfather, as dismal a sound as Ben had ever heard. Quickly he reached to his jacket pocket. "I don't know if it helps, but I brought you a letter from Vic."
    The old man held the pale blue sheet of paper at arm's length to read it. Watching this, Ben felt uncomfortably responsible for its contents, whatever those were. He'd had to move military heaven and earth—Tepee Weepy, which amounted to the same thing—to get word to Vic and then speed the resulting letter through top channels. The courier, a sleek young Pentagon officer exuding importance, had stepped off the plane at East Base disdainfully looking over Ben's head for the almighty TPWP officer in charge. "I'm him," Ben had announced, and the courier's expression only grew worse when the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist was unlocked to produce a single slim envelope that looked like ordinary mail. Ben wished him a nice flight back to Washington and tucked the letter in his jacket. Now Toussaint lowered the piece of paper and refolded it carefully.
    "Vic writes he can't get a new leg. All the things they can do these days, they can't get him a new leg?"
    Ben shook his head.
    Neither man spoke for a while, Toussaint still creasing the letter, until at last he asked the question his visitor had been dreading most:
    "Why don't they send him home to me?"
    Ben hoped it wasn't because a one-legged hero did not fit with TPWP plans. He could hear the strain in his voice as he tried to put the secretive hospital in the English countryside in the best light. "There's a facility—a place there where they help people pull through something like this. It's an estate." It was for depression victims. Mangled Royal Air Force pilots. Commandoes wrecked in body and mind from the disastrous Dieppe raid. And, Tepee Weepy had seen to it, a Supreme Team running back with an empty pantleg.
    He left all that last part out; from the look on the man who had raised Victor Rennie, bringing the letter maybe was bad enough. After a bit Toussaint said absently: "Vic says it's awful green there. Hedges."
    "Toussaint, you better know. I'm supposed to write something about Vic. It's my job."
    "Funny kind of job, Ben, ain't it?"
    You don't know the half of it, Toussaint, not even you.
He tried to explain the ongoing articles about the team, the obligation—if it was that—to tell people what had happened to Vic while he was fighting in the service of his country.
    "Country." Toussaint picked up that word and seemed to consider it. He gestured in the direction of Great Falls. "Hill 57," he let out as if Ben had asked for an unsavory address. "You know about that." Something like a snort came from him, making Ben more uneasy yet. After a long moment, he held up the letter. "Here's what's left of Vic, that I know of." He handed it over. "Take down what it says."
    Nonplussed, Ben unfolded the piece of stationery and read it through. He chewed the inside of his mouth, trying to decide. It had been offered and he couldn't turn it down. "You're sure?"
    Toussaint shrugged as if surety was hard to come by.
    Ben took out his notepad and jotted steadily. When done, he handed the letter back and put a hand on the rough shoulder of the mackinaw. "I'll get word to you when they give Vic the okay to come home, I promise." Drawing a last deep breath of sweetgrass, he started to get up. "You know how to put on the miles. I have to get back to Gros Ventre yet tonight."
    Toussaint nodded. "Say hello. Your father is good people."
    "
Ask a hard question when you have one foot out the door,
" that father schooled into every cub reporter, including his son, who passed through the
Gleaner
office. "
A person turns into an answering fool to get rid of you.
" Ben hesitated. Toussaint Rennie was never going to be an answering fool or any other kind.
    The question did not wait for him to reason it out. "Help me with something if you can," he blurted, turning back to the