Free Flanders by Patricia Anthony Page B

that barbed wire. He sounded so lost, and the dark by the cypress is so deep, like the shade in the thicket where I used to take Imogene Blaylock so I could sweet-talk the drawers off her; a place so secretive that you felt you could hide from God.
    It was in the safe, bright morning of the reserve area when I asked O’Shaughnessy about my ruminations; and I was pure scandalized when, instead of answering, he took a cigarette out of his tunic pocket and lit up. He offered me one. They were expensive English smokes, smoother than the half-manure ones I’d gotten used to. The damned cigarette was so good that we just walked and smoked for a while.
    It was leafy summer in the reserve area, with everything that had been budding a month earlier in full flower now. Nature was pushy and prosperous. Larks circled, singing up the sun. My counseling time with O’Shaughnessy had got me out of a session of rifle cleaning and enforced sock mending. Having some time to myself without shells and bullets or busy work was pure glory.
    “Can one hide from God, I wonder,” O’Shaughnessy said. We passed under an ash’s cooling splash of shade. “Or does He come in to gather you up?”
    I thought of Pa and got a chill up my spine for my trouble.
    He must have caught sight of that. Come to find, nothing misses O’Shaughnessy’s eye, like nothing much misses Miller’s. “That disturbs you, then? The persistence of salvation?”
    “Just that you ought to be able to hide somewhere, Reverend.”
    “Ah. Ought one? And would you hide from forgiveness or from damnation? What terrible sins are you guilty of, my lad?”
    “Not my goddamned sins,” I said. It’s tough when you get took out from your hidey-hole; but maybe it’s worse to be lost in the place Trantham is. “I dream sometimes about Trantham, Reverend.”
    We passed a hedgerow where a troupe of acrobat stalks balanced flower heads like white plates.
    “I seen Boatman once, too.”
    “Do you think it’s ghosties you’re catching sight of?”
    Trantham’s lost-sounding call.
    “No shame nor terrors in it. I’ve seen them meself, lad. Ah! And what a reaction to confession! Can an Irishman not believe in ghosties?”
    “You can, I guess. I don’t know if I want any truck with them.”
    To one side, a velvet green pasture; to the other, a sleepy stagnant-looking bayou, the kind you’d go catfishing in. I wondered if they had channel cats, and then for a minute I imagined I could see old Charlie Whalen with one of his cane poles and that blue tick hound dog of his, and I got to missing home so bad that it felt like memory was burning me inside-out. I wanted to see a friendly black face, Bobby. I wanted to hear the music of Charlie’s kids’ laughter. It ain’t natural for a Texan to go off living someplace without coloreds and tortillas, catfish and tamales and cane poles.
    “Travis. What is it you’re afraid of?”
    “I’m in a damned war, sir. Jesus God almighty. Isn’t that enough? And, look. Thanks for getting me out of cleaning duty, but with all due respect, don’t go pretending there’s something between us just to get up next to me. I don’t plan to tell you much of nothing. Next thing I know, you and Captain Miller would be making more fun.”
    He looked utterly stricken. “Ah, lad. Was it our laughing at your shoes, then?”
    There were spotted milk cows in the pasture and a calf with buds for horns. I thought of the innocence of white-faced Herefords; the rambunctiousness of Ma’s fancy goats.
    “Come now. I’ll be giving you my sincere apology. Mea culpa. There. Is that enough? Now I’ve a mind for a bit of conversation, Travis, and Captain says you’re quite the philosopher. Would he be lying, then?”
    “Look. I don’t know.”
    He whispered sadly, “Whose sin is it, Travis? What terrible thing are you hiding from?”
    I was anxious all of a sudden; memory itching at me bad. “I don’t know.”
    I started back fast.
    Behind me came