Free A Midnight Clear: A Novel by William Wharton

mad.
    When we lost half the squad, we also lost our only decks of cards. They were on Morrie, and he was back with the medics before he could pass them to any of us. We weren’t thinking much about bridge right then.
    He died in the field hospital. With his right hand gone and his face the way it was, I don’t think he tried hard to stay on. I wouldn’t. Gordon and I wrapped him; it looked as if his eyes were empty; the side of his head was spongy soft.
     
    We’re continually writing home for playing cards, candles, pencils and dictionaries but not one of us has gotten any. We get warm, hand-knit socks, too thick for our boots, or boxes of cookies mashed into crumbs. Corrollo used to get hot Italian peperone sausages and hard Italian cookies uncrushed. Corrollo also would steal sausage off dead Germans. He said it was good but not so good as he got from home.
    Father Mundy’s mother packs each of her cookies in a separate wrapping of waxed paper, then stuffs shredded newspaper tight around them. She’s been sending packages to relatives in Ireland for years, so she knows how.
    Father considers those cookies an act of love. They are. He’s the one guy we never hound for seconds but he passes them out anyway. It’s almost as if he’s giving communion; one at a time, carefully unwrapped and handed to you directly. They’re usually tollhouse, with lumps of real chocolate and deep in butter. One of Mundy’s mom’s cookies is something to be eaten slowly with much concentration, almost worth reconverting for.
    Maybe the folks back home are actually sending us dictionaries, pencils, candles and cards. Maybe the military considers these subversive objects and confiscates them. It could be Love has a whole duffel bag filled with bridge decks, dictionaries, pencils, pens, thesauri and bundles of candles, even blessed ones for Mundy.
    I work out four hands in standard bridge annotation on separate cards. I make these cards from the turned edges of my K ration boxes when I cut them off with my bayonet. We thought of making a deck with these pieces but Miller calculated fifty-two of them would be over three inches thick and they’d get battered in no time. I put the finished hands face down on top of the phone battery box; they’ll find them. It’ll be Gordon-Mundy versus Shutzer and an unwilling Wilkins, so I don’t have to think much; with that set of baroque minds, any distribution of cards becomes a drama. They can stretch out a single three no-trump bid to over half an hour.
    We’ve been playing this new way three weeks now; sometimes it seems like three years. Gordon invented the game; it’s titled “compact, cardless, replay duplicate bridge.” They’ll each choose a chunk of K box and that’s their hand. I’ve asked to assign hands but they don’t trust my impartiality. As Shutzer put it:
    “For Christ’s sake, Won’t, you’re already playing God; what else do you want!?”
    When playing a hand, they draw a line under each card as it’s played. Mel insists they all go through the motions of placing the phantom cards empty-handed on the table, dirt, blanket, mud or wherever they’re playing, calling out which card is being played. Miller complains this is one more stupid atavism, but goes along. What else? If Mel doesn’t play; no bridge, everybody down. By the way, Miller is one reason we need a dictionary. He also creates crossword puzzles which make The New York Times Sunday puzzles seem simple as tic-tac-toe.
    When a hand’s finally played out, the cards are given to me. At my discretion, I then, in the future (of which there sometimes doesn’t seem to be much), give back the cards with clockwise rotation for replay. My upper-left field jacket pocket is stuffed to bulging like Mae West on one side with these sets of bridge hands. Maybe someday a piece of shrapnel will bury itself in there and save my life the way Bibles always seem to save the lives of religious Protestants. I’ll be saved by