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to calm him down.
    “ ’E’s gone now. Look, Foy. Look about, why don’t you? See? Little bugger’s gone. Everything’s fine. I’ll make you a sticking plaster of woad an’ you’ll be right as rain. Have some comfrey in me pack, but best not, seeing as how that’s a filthy bite from a filthy creature, and we don’t want it to go oozing and green.”
    Silver-tongued Sergeant Riddell. He set Foy to whimpering again.
    The rats are all over the trenches, Bobby. They are born and die behind the wattles. They leave their filth and rotting stench behind.
    By the time Foy finally shushed that evening, the rest of us were wide awake. Foy eyed us, one by one. He looked so silly with that steely gaze and that baby face and that weed-mulch plastered on his cheek. “Bullets and shells I can take brave as any. But it’s just them rats.”
    Lieutenant told us, “Settle it doon, now. Gi’ ye tae sleep,” and we buried ourselves under our blankets. In the light of the candle I watched Foy. He was sitting, rifle in hands, his eyes on the wattle wall. He was still sitting his lonely sentry when sleep took me.
    It takes me by surprise now, Bobby. One minute I’m wide-awake, thinking about home, maybe. Reciting Shelley in my head. The next instant I’m sucked into dark. Is this the way dying is to be? Shit. Please don’t tell me this stinking hole is a peek into the grave.
    While the others were snoring, I dreamed of home. I was somewhere near the Perdenales and the hill country’s muscular spring had come. The knolls were a velvet gray-green, the hollows dusty with bluebonnets. Limestone extruded like bones. The dream was so real and the place so damned familiar that it seemed more like a memory.
    I was standing, smelling deep of the cedar, when I noticed someone coming down the hill. They were too far away to recognize, too faint to put a name to, but I knew for certain that I was acquainted with this person, Bobby; had known ’em ever since I was a little kid. And as I watched the figure come down past the pecan trees, through lemony sunlight and mottled shade, I realized in a dream-sure way that the person was coming for me. Emotion came on me so strong that even thinking on it now sets me to shivering.
    About then Lieutenant snapped me out of sleep with his usual cheery call: “Five o’clock. If ye want yer breakfasts, it’ll be oop an’ off yer arses!”
    Anyway, it was a strange dream, Bobby. One chock full of passion. For the life of me, though, I don’t know what passion it was.
     
     
Love,
     
     
Travis Lee
     
     
    * * *
    MAY 3, THE FIELD HOSPITAL
     
     
    Dear Bobby,
     
     
    Don’t fret. I’m better. Just a shrapnel cut on my back, and it’s knitting. The fever’s gone, and I don’t see strange things anymore.
    It was the night after Foy’s rat, and we were still in the rear trenches. Most of the men were mending socks; and those who knew how to were writing letters home. So quiet a night that if you listened hard, you could hear the first shell coming in. The 8.5 had a soft voice, like an imaginary whisper.
    I knew I was hearing true when Corporal Dunleavy cocked his head. “Artillery.”
    The whisper grew to a howl and Sergeant’s eyes went white-rimmed. “Eight five! On us!”
    Even inside the dugout, we ducked. At the open door, night thundered. Somewhere down the trench, fire flashed and men cried out.
    The Boche had found our range and suddenly the whole world was screaming. Shells pounded the rabbit-hole where we hid. The earth danced. The explosions shook me down to my core and set my bones to jittering. Sergeant was yelling something. In the unsteady light of the candle Danny Boatman sobbed. Huge, hulking Charlie Furbush crouched next to me, his hands plastered to the sides of his head, his eyes squeezed shut and leaking tears.
    The shelling went on; as demented as Pa when he was drunk.
    You see? It wouldn’t stop, Bobby. The shelling just wouldn’t stop and the walls kept closing in