Free Drink for the Thirst to Come by Lawrence Santoro

dunno when, eh Bill? Remember that chantusey…”
    From dark by Welly’s side stepped a black fellow cloaked in canvas and dirt, all eyes and teeth. His paw took Welly by the shoulder and dragged him into the shadow of a side passage.
    “Oi!” Bill said. “My mate!” He stepped out of line following Welly and the wog.
    “Hsshhh.” The black man turned and took Bill and Welly together by their shirts, drew them together, spoke to their ears. “They above a little. Little-bit above.” He showed with his blistered fingers how far above was the enemy.
    “We’re 80, 90 feet down, mate,” Welly whispered. “Who’ll hear us, 90 feet of muck and war between?” he whispered.
    “Right, Sambo,” Bill said to the darkness. The detail had passed, still heading downward, forward, still toward the German lines.
    “Not soldier. Not above. Digger. Them diggers.” The African let go. When he did the tunnel was truly still. Their mates had passed them. Now the war was Welly, Bill, and the nig-nog sapper alone in the shade of the war, in the black, black earth and silence.
    “Hshh,” he said again.
    Then Bill heard: first, the wheeze and momentary stench of the pipe’s breath from above. Then the now and again rumble, a grumble on the chest, a tap upon the eardrum, the guns above, far, far away, too far to reach. After, there was stillness and the rich loamy smell of the quiet earth. Subtracting all of that, what remained was something else.
    “Whaa?” Welly’s breath in Bill’s ear momentarily erased the something. Then, a scratch. The smallest scrape, as of something soft moving above, ahead. A little ahead, not far above but insistent, a scratch and a small fall of sand and earth, like through an hourglass. Persisting.
    “German dead, they dig too,” the nig-nog whispered.
    “Whisss,” Welly...
     
    Later. Much later, after it all, November 11: There came a final volley from the 8-inchers in their rear at 10:59 Ack Emma and a little more. A round went over like a fast express, thudded somewhere beyond. Then all went silent. 11 Ack Emma, the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Along the lines, 800 miles of everything went still.
    Bill and Welly stared at each other. Rain drizzled as it had since… Since, God love it, 1914. Bill was shivers and shakes in the silence. Then his legs held him no more and he fell. Welly caught him. They stared at each other. Then a million men sighed. No joy, just noise.
    Others, below, did not shout.
    Bill and Welly were ordered back the way they’d come. They knew. They dashed. They rose from their lines and walked the way they’d come four years before, the churned earth and charnel world behind.
    “She fell,” Bill said to Welly as they passed through Albert. The Madonna of the steeple lay in the rubble that was the rest of the town.
    Finally, a train, the train to Calais: cattle cars for them—forty men per car, or ten horses (“Horses,” Welly laughed. “Horses!” He laughed and laughed and didn’t stop, Bill thought, until they boarded the boat).
    They waited and waited aboard until things were right, just right, for some officer or other. Welly smiled at the sea, the horizon. He wouldn’t look back, not at France, not at the ruin of Europe. No. He would not.
    Someone—many, actually—had a bottle or three. When they cast off for Blighty it was dark. The boat kept blackout. Regulation.
    “Oi!” a hundred shouted at the captain. “Give us some light ’ere, won’t ya! U-boats ain’t hunting no more!”
    The lights stayed black.
    “Some’them submarines down there may not have got the word, eh, Welly?” Bill said. He took a long pull on a bottle a mate had handed him out of the dark.
    “Down there, right!” Welly said. “Asleep in the deep, eh Bill,” and he took a long haul on the bottle. “All that down , down there, eh, Bill. All that below ! Holes in holes and what else in the holes?” He laughed and drank some more.
    “Home for Christmas,