Читать книгу Bury This - Andrea Portes - Страница 12

THREE

Omaha Beach was almost a pigfuck. Near sacrilege to say, but something Lt. Colonel Charles Krause ran over again and again in his head, trying to get it right. The sheer randomness of it all, or had it, in fact, been perfectly right. Divinely right.

Heading on a bobbing cork into that squall, next to him Private First Class Dwyer puking into the chop-chop sea. Jesus, could they have picked a better day? On the other side, Private First Class Solano praying quietly, solemnly, you wouldn’t even know he was praying . . . just whispering to himself really. Then ahead. That stretch of beach. Low tide. Christ. Whose idea was that?

But it was all thought out. Half an hour before the B-17s had flown over and bombed the fuck out of the Germans. So they were told. When they got there, they would stroll along that low-tide beach, meet each other in the grass above and, who knows, maybe kill a few straggling Germans, vicious fucks. Isn’t as if they don’t deserve it. The motherland. What a crock.

But the metal bobbing cork, halfway between the sip and the shore, is witnessing no strolling, no meeting. No, no such luck.

It’s a fucking shooting gallery.

Three hundred yards of beach and it’s a fucking shooting gallery. Sitting ducks. The air strikes missed.

A half hour.

A half hour for these sick fuck Germans to wake up and drink their whatever the fuck they drink and wait for us, US, like sitting ducks on the low-tide beach.

Better jump off the side now, better jump off the side of the bobbing metal cork—Jesus, they are mowing ’em down in front like a firing squad. Might as well be back in the American Revolution over here.

Jesus.

Ratatat-tat.

“Jump!”

“But that’s not the—”

“Jump, goddammit!”

Now it’s motherfucking ice cold, all the way up to the chest, this pack, these boots, this gun, this fucking thing is never gonna fire. If I make it.

Now bullets through the water. Pshew pshew pshew. Jesus. There and there and over there, too. Now blood, Jesus. Seeping out everywhere—how strange it goes, little tentacles, clusters. It’s not my blood. It’s not my blood yet.

Now is the worst part. The waters ending. Now the shore. The shore. Oh, Christ. How many men? It’s crowded. This is a fucking crowded party, my friends. And these are my friends, indeed.

Stay down. Stay down.

OK.

You can do this. Just a stretch of beach, just a stretch of beach. Bulletproof. I am bulletproof. I’m an American and this is how I save the world.

When you look at the aerial shots of Omaha Beach on this day, you will get confused. There ocean. Yes, familiar. There’s sand. Yes, that seems right. There is the grass above and the bunkers. Yes, I understand.

But then, below, where the ocean meets the shore, there are all these skinny rectangles, one, two, three, even four skinny rectangles parallel to the beach. All along the length of the beach. Hundreds of them.

And then, above, one, two, three, even four above of the skinny rectangles, perpendicular to the beach, up a ways, on the shore. The length of the beach, as well.

This is, say, one hundred yards of beach. Not much. It’s a big goddamn beach, you could only get so much in one goddamn photo.

And the skinny rectangles?

Make the skinny rectangles parallel to the beach, floating willy-nilly but more or less beached by the ebb and flow of the tide . . . make them the ones dead in the water. Private First Class Dwyer, who had been vomiting in the metal cork. Private First Class Solano, who had whispered to himself a prayer. Did he whisper it there in the water, too, did he whisper it to the sand and the blood in the tentacle pattern ebbing to and fro, to and fro?

And perpendicular? Make those rectangles injured and hidden up against the dunes. Make those the ones that got grabbed and dragged and hauled and left. Make them live. Most of them.

Make one of them a man named Charles Krause. A man who, seeing his feet below him and the skinny rectangles floating in the water ten yards down, would think now, would always think, he was not a man for getting injured. He was not a man to be torn to pieces by bullets, but the bullets begged to differ, bleeding him out into the brine. Leveled. He should’ve been up there fighting. He should’ve made it up the sand. It was a guilt he carried with him from that day to the next day to the next year and to the rest of his days, back in Michigan, Muskegon, Michigan—where he would never tell a soul. No one. Not even his wife.