Free Beneath Gray Skies by Hugh Ashton Page A

pitching were worse there, and David found it impossible to do any of the paperwork that kept coming his way.
     
    The Captain was sympathetic. “Davy-boy,” (he’d long ago stopped being “Slater” to the Captain) “don’t you worry your head about these things. Time enough to worry when this goddamned bucket of bolts quiets herself down some.”
     
    So David spent most of his time lying in his bunk, trying to keep his stomach from parting company from the rest of his body. He and most of the other occupants of the cabin spent the majority of their time lying flat on their backs, getting up only for morning and evening prayers, and to empty the buckets that stood beside their bunks. The thing that occupied David’s mind most was Brian as he’d seen him getting back into the train that evening they stopped somewhere in Georgia on their way to Savannah.
     
    -o-
     
    T hey’d pulled into the town, what was it called? Corleone or something? Cordele, that was it, a little before evening, and they’d been told they had two hours to go out and buy themselves a bit of whatever they fancied (large wink from the Major who told them this). The Captain had promised dire punishments for anyone under his command who was late back to the train for evening prayer, and then grabbed David’s shoulder.
    “Sorry to do this to you, Davy-boy. I have to get the returns on the victuals back to the regimental quartermaster this evening, and King’s gone sick on me again. I’ll make sure you get your liberty some time later, don’t worry.”
     
    So David had filled in the forms (500 cans of beans, 230 bags of flour, 12 pounds of salt …) and gone back to his place in the cattle-car which formed their transport for the journey. While he was dozing, head pillowed on his haversack, waiting for the rest of them to return, he saw Brian coming back to the train all alone, a little before the rest of the company. Obviously Brian, unslinging his rifle, hadn’t seen him in the dark corner. He’d noticed something was queer, but what was it? David asked himself. The answer had soon come to him. Brian’s bayonet was fixed, completely against regulations. They were never meant to fix bayonets, except when they were ordered. And he couldn’t be sure, but it had looked like a few drops of dried blood or something on the tip of the bayonet. And Brian had some more blood on his hands, it seemed. He had closed his eyes, not wanting to know more.
     
    When he had opened them again, Brian had left the car. His rifle was still there, but the bayonet was no longer fixed to it. He reached out to touch the rifle, but heard footsteps approaching, and shrank back into his corner. The footsteps had entered the car and come closer, and he had felt a hand shaking his shoulder.
     
    “I’ve brought you some corn bread,” Brian had said, smiling. “Best thing in that godforsaken hole that I could find to bring back for you, old man.”
     
    David had looked carefully through the gloom for blood on Brian’s hands, but saw nothing. He had smelled the sharp smell of Army carbolic soap, though.
     
    He was just about to ask Brian what the heck had been going on—it seemed to David that Brian had been acting kind of strange for some time now, and he wasn’t sure quite what he had been up to, even before they started out on their train journey—when the rest of the platoon clattered their way into the truck and stopped any possible chance of a quiet conversation.
     
    -o-
     
    D avid’s attention returned to the Lee , pitching and corkscrewing her way through the Atlantic. He’d asked one of the sailors how much longer they’d have to suffer, and the man, seemingly unaffected by the storm, had grinned “a few more weeks” back at him.
    Brian had said that was “rubbish”, and at worst, there’d only be a few more days of it. After all, they’d been at sea for nearly two weeks now. As he thought about how pleasant it would be to be able to keep