“ After dessert and coffee, they sat in the living room where Claude had fires blazing, lamps and candles lit. Lena's angora, curled on a floor cushion, was fast asleep. Orville stroked him and he rolled over and yawned and stretched: upstairs a door slammed. The mantel clock chimed delicately: rain was making slow sounds.
Orville sat close to Jeannette on the sofa and the warmth of her body, the warmth of her hands and the fires made him shut his eyes: nothing was wrong; then she asked her disturbing question, that old question, as though in great pain.
"Why do we have to die?" ”

“ Dennison jazzed the bus down a wide street and townspeople fled ... ten or twelve on one side, bunched together, men and women, their clothing white and blue; their turbans white. Landel swung his machine gun to kill them: several dropped, a youngster, a boy, stumbled into the gutter, and lay there.
Spitting on the tank wall, Landel cursed them:
You goddamn sons of bitches ... why the hell are you out in the street ... don't you know no better?
Even with all the ports open the air inside the cab writhed. Gun powder stung their eyes and throats. The crewmen's faces were haunted. ”

“ Behind the shack rose a tangle of rusty machinery from an irrigation pump, the machinery snarled over a cannon-sized conduit, the pipe's mouth toward the sky. The stars seemed closer because of the junked pipes and gears: the sky, utterly cloudless, was defiant: in a few hours its sun would be hammering, leading on and on, sand gobbling sand, dunes blurring into hills: heat and flies would move it together, thirst would be everywhere.
A G.I. scuffed by, coughing and spitting.
"Raub's here," he called, noticing Dennison and his cigarette. "We're ready to eat!" ”

“ With another glance at the base of the clock tower, Dennison leaned against his tank and witnessed the destruction as wave after wave of bombers dropped from a mackerel sky. He was architect enough to gauge the losses and realize how costly it would be to reconstruct after such bombings.
And the guys in those houses ... had they been born for that kind of death? Where was man's dignity? His sanity? Landel had a broad grin on his face: it said let the whole lousy German country blow up like this! ”

“ Dennison felt himself roll with pain.
So the shelling had gotten his arm!
It was lying there beside him, and he was powerless to move it: smashed bones, shredded flesh, stinking flesh ... that's how it was! Still he wanted to see his arm and attempted to turn his head, his mind at loose ends: but he was being wheeled on the gurney; he sank into his pillow, moaning.
"I can't go through life without an arm," he said to the nurse as he rolled through a hallway. "I can't..."
Back in his room, he called Sister Blanche to his side. ”

“ Chuck's gunfire tore open the Panther's armor plate and ripped off a tread and port gun--gapping the machine.
The infantrymen, with their Brens, froze: they still expected help from their smashed tank: they signalled each other and began to fan out as Dennison stared, his bus motionless. The sun was beating down: the smoke was clearing: dust was rolling up from somewhere: pigeons flew low: like a Hollywood prop the antenna mast on the Panther bent, and then collapsed onto the cobbles. ”

“ Landel reappeared.
"Go on ... I'm awake!" he shouted. "See you at the chuck wagon."
"We've got to eat quick ... we've a hell of a lot to do," Landel screamed, his head in the doorway. He zoomed his flashlight into Dennison's eyes, like a warning, and walked off.
Angry, Dennison rubbed his hands over his bearded face, slumped down onto the floor again.
Through the doorway he caught glimpses of the flashlights and lanterns of men headed for the kitchen: legs and lights passed with metronome jerkiness across the sand: dust came up from beneath boots. ”

“ Then a long pause.
"Sleep well."
"See you."
To reach home, Orville followed a short-cut that bypassed the Petit Lac and its island; the path was weed choked: burdock, thistle, artichoke, and mustard. All were rain wet, fog wet. From a rock wall fence he took in the spires of the Ronde place, fog crawling over them, the fog in the pines and chestnut and elm toward the château, now fogged out. Crossing a bridge over the Nonette he found the fog thicker, smokier, on the bridge itself it seemed stuffed into the cracks of the 13th century masonry. ”

“ Stopping at a barricaded intersection, where trees had fallen under bombing, where heaps of rubble smoked, the radio announced the official take-over of Gex.
They were radio-ordered to park with other machines under trees fringing a town garden: roses and shell holes, benches and crushed benches, paths that stopped suddenly: a small bronze figure was still upright under branches: the three men crawled from their cab and sat on a low stone wall, faces black, clothes grease-caked, bloody.
Zinc showed Dennison a gashed hand. ”

“ A man's love for a woman, a woman's for a man, a child's love for his parents? Life was not much at cherishing love: it had lost that gift if it ever had that gift for any length of time. Now, for love to endure very long it had to mount a machine gun.
A switch clicked in his brain: a small gate opened: a Sherman tank roared through the opening: a farm was burning. ”

“ Landel was occupied with his map, his phone wobbling against his Adam's apple, black, cancerous: his bald skull teetered stiffly, pencil between his fingers.
Directly in front of 58, a tank rolled along, another M4, grey, lobbing up dust.
Dennison contrasted its size with the immensity of the desert.
The M4 climbed out of a bomb crater, flicked its fantail, ducked, disappeared.
Dennison realized that the men inside were as lonely as he: men riding inside nothingness, gaping at dunes and flats of sand. ”

“ Dennison heard Zinc's words faintly: it would be hours before the tank deafness wore off.
More crewmen milled around, jostling, swearing. A fat guy pounded Landel on his back as though he had won the war: he had seen Landel's bus knock out the Nazi machine. Landel pointed overhead. Planes roared by; low on the horizon, a dozen Fortresses crawled through a dusty sky. ”

“ For now, he had had enough of Jeannette: what help was she? Nobody was gifted at helping: the world was not geared to helping: sleep might help: it was possible to drown in sleep, under illusion and disillusion, head pillowed on hate, saying to hell with khaki, away with GI slop, the stink of another man's piss.
When the waiter tried to talk, Orville shook him off. ”

“ Maybe the war was ending ... maybe it would end while he was home; certainly it was the right place. Yet assurances were missing.
Shall I go upstairs, to my room?
He closed his eyes as he sensed the firelight.
Claude woke him to say that supper was ready.
Colonel Ronde's meticulous oil portrait dominated the wall alongside the dining table: the gold fame was heavy and ornate: the Colonel was wearing his 1918 captain's uniform, a trench helmet and a pistol, and a pair of grey gloves lay on a table beside him: he appeared to be a reticent, egocentric, stupid man. ”

“ Fred Landel had his palms palmed over his eyes, his brain shut out; Chuck had thrown his shirt around his shoulders, knotted the sleeves around his neck.
Dennison jockeyed the engine, thinking:
If I could go to Bizerte and lie in bed and sleep ... could write a letter ... I should ...
He felt the treads digging in; they tossed sand to the rear; the bus rolled through a wadi, climbed into the sun that was burning ahead. Something in the rocking motion, the rise and fall, made him feel that he was driving over the bodies of wounded men. ”

“ Flies were everywhere: they were inside the tanks; they were outside on the treads, guns and turrets--on weeds, rocks, sand. They zoomed into food the crews tried to eat. They crept over hands and faces and necks as men tried to work. They bit. Singly and by the dozens, they came from below, from above, left, right, and flew into eyes, ears, mouth. Men slapped at them, swore at them, shouted at them.
They crawled over K-rations.
Dennison and Zinc, sharing rations, sprawled below the cliff, troubled by the flies. Zinc poured cold coffee from a thermos. ”

“ Yellow light crept up the slope and bounced off the scarred steel of the field kitchen. Steam gushed from pots at the rear of the stove; the air smelled of coffee and hash.
His flashlight in his pocket, Dennison worked his way through sixty or eighty men, brushing sand out of a mess kit with a dirty handkerchief and the palm of his hand. It seemed to him that he had done this many times.
"Hi," he greeted one of the Corps.
"Hi, Dennison ... Hi. Goddamn desert, cold. Freeze off your ass." The man drained his coffee and then blew into the bottom of his cup. "Coffee's good," he said. ”

“ Someone was jabbering on the phone; the radio was wheezing instructions; Landel was yelling ...
The quiet was uncanny, no motor running, no shellfire: Dennison knew that he dozed: he glanced at his wristwatch nervously; he glanced through his slit across the desert, across slab after slab of unfamiliar ground where yellow light exposed columns of dust: tanks or trucks were there, rolling north: dust, sand, heat, rolling heat, rolling sand and dust.
Zinc was talking to Chuck on the phone.
"There's our signal!" Landel yelled. ”

“ I am an old guy from Ithaca: "giver of pain."
Orville realized that his aunt was sobbing but he could not put his hand on hers. She must endure alone.
Alone.
Here I am alone, with no brother or neighbor, or friend or society but myself: isn't that the gist of the first part of Rousseau's Reveries!
My personal discoveries would startle you because they are un-French, un-American. They are discoveries that must have been made a hundred or five hundred thousand years ago: survival!
Yesterday, Jeannette and I fished in the Nonette, each of us catching one. ”

“ Orville covered his face with his hand and hid from Jeannette.
Jean bit her lips: death on the battlefield, death at home: these things were driving him farther and farther inside himself: they were taking him farther away. Unable to think of anything more to say about Lena, she thought of her own problems at the hospital, daily chores, the endless rounds--patients who required special care.
"Get Bichain to start a fire in the fireplaces," he said after a while. "I have to wash ... have to change ... must go now." ”

“ Chuck was sobbing. Dennison thought every step was getting them nowhere; yet Landel appeared out of a wall of smoke, his head plastered with dirt. He slid an arm under Chuck and the three carried him into a thorn thicket out of the wadi and laid him on the sand.
"I'm blind!" Chuck cried. "I'm blind! Help me!"
Another bomb geysered sand: it left a fog of sand, everyone coughing and spitting. Men tied rags or handkerchiefs or shirts over their face. So, it was sand, not flies. The heat sweated the sand into the flesh. ”

“ Dennison squinted at the stars, wondering how many more miles they had to travel before the war ended. Three stars burned in a ragged triangle: gradually, the upper star assumed a greenish pallor. While digging out Robinson's body a star had glittered above the cliff ...
Dennison felt the expanse of the desert around him, felt its thousands of square miles. Pulling the tarp over his head he imagined himself in a grotto, Atala's grotto: ah, that pitiful story: beauty obliterated by superstition, by folly: lovely Atala had been his companion in Ermenonville, as boy, she and her Chactas ... ”

“ As Dennison dragged Chuck under the tarp he realized he would never see again: he tried to shield his wounded face, the man sobbing, breathing in gasps, his blond, pallid face distorted.
He won't play billiards again, Dennison thought, remembering Chuck's stories about billiard games at the University of Wisconsin.
A bomb crashed and a tank exploded: it seemed to leap into the air--the whole Sherman--fell into ensheathing fire. It was visible to everyone under the tarp. Sand fountained. Ignited gas and oil spouted: machine gun bullets began to ricochet. Metal whizzed past. ”

“ With a half turn, Dennison rolled over the gun crew and crushed men and gun.
A shell burst beside 9.
Another detonation, and they were in the midst of a barrage, explosive forces yanking at the treads, hammering at the armor plate, slugging mud and gravel against the turret, smoke and acid penetrating inside.
The tank rocking, Dennison stopped until the smoke cleared: they stripped to the waist and dumped their shirts on seats and floor. The sky crackled. The sky flamed. Dennison let the engine idle--he felt the pressure of shellfire on his skull, outside and inside his skull. ”

“ Dennison hunched his legs, unzippered his trousers, and picked lice from among his hairs. He searched with the help of his flash. On his belly the engine scar seemed to have a thicker scab; he tested the scab and scratched it soothingly.
He wanted to masturbate but something prevented him, perhaps the eye of the compass. He swayed, let himself sag, when he shoved back against the cushion the bent spring bothered him.
Apple cores floated on the water.
Change, that was it: war was change, if nothing else, the slap of rain, slug of wind, whistle of death. Fear had its changes too. ”

“ Dennison yelled. "Larry Robinson ... it could have been me!"
"Fuck you," said Landel, picking himself up, remembering a corner of the Argonne, where men's bodies had been blown about like chips. Glaring at Chuck's bloody eyes he felt no pity for him: he felt they should save themselves for their machines and the job of fighting: let scabs go to hell!
But remembering his job as captain he ordered Dennison to take Chuck to Corporal Willits ...
"He's over there ... he's Red Cross ... take him, then let's get our bus rolling. He's not been hit. Not bad!" ”

“ Instantly, he spotted a Nazi gun, mounted on a dune-rise, a silhouette of men and gun, the flare exploding behind the gunners. He shouted at Landel but a shell blew up beside the Sherman and hurled it half around. Dennison toppled from his seat--the air knocked out of his lungs. He thought: We're hit ... we'll catch on fire! Back at his controls, he cut the racing motor and wobbled out of the line of fire, Landel babbling incoherently over the intercom. ”