"Andy Duncan - Fortitude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Andy)

the man in the next cot could catch it, in a desperate rush to speak
before my voice gave out, I breathed into his ear:
"You worthless, Godless, pitiful, no-dicked bastard, in another lifetime I
slapped the living shit out of you, you disgraceful excuse for a soldier.
And I'd like to do it again, rather than let you sit here pissing on all
these good brave men around you. This time, though, I'm going to walk away
from you, the way I'd walk away from a turd I left hot in a ditch, and
maybe my life will be the better for it. I don't know. But whatever
happens to me, you wretched stinking traitor, I hope what you get is
worse."
I kissed his ear, let go of him and jerked to a standing position, wiped
my mouth with the back of my hand. He sat there as before, still
trembling, but not crying any more. As far as anyone else in the ward
knew, I had spoken words of private encouragement -- and by God, I had!
Sure I had. More than he deserved. I turned to go. A few inches' movement,
but so, so hard. I felt the cords in my neck pull taut, resisting. The
pain wasn't the worst of it. Turning my back on that soldier was like
turning my back on myself.
"I just can't," he murmured.
Where the South Carolinian had been, lying in the bed in front of me, was
my granduncle, Col. Walter Tazewell Patton, a bloody bandage over most of
his head but his good eye shining. His Confederate grays were spattered
with red and with orange clay. Sitting beside him in a canvas chair,
likewise staring at me, was my gray-clad grandfather, George Smith Patton,
bandaged hand on the hilt of his saber, splinted leg sticking into the
aisle so that I'd have to step over it to reach the door. Across the
aisle, with tubes feeding into his arm, lay a centurion, free hand
drumming a pursuit rhythm against his breastplate, eyes intent on me
beneath the crest of his legion. Beside him lay a huge man in a horned
helmet, beard wild and matted around his strapped-on oxygen mask, his
great chest rising and falling alarmingly but his face still and sure.
All around the ward were men in chain mail, redcoats, bearskins, tricorne
hats, all writhing or gasping or clutching their wounds, all staring at
me. The nurses were gone. In the doorway where the doctor had stood was my
father, in his suitcoat and plaid vest, his pants a bit baggy. He wore a
stethoscope and held a clipboard under his arm. His lips were pursed, his
eyeglasses low on his nose. It was the expression he used when withholding
judgment.
"Not again," I murmured. I closed my eyes and tried to restrain my
shudder.
"General? General. Are you all right?"
I opened my eyes. The doctor was back, and the nurses, and the other
wounded men of the U.S. Seventh Army. They looked less real than the
phantoms had been. They had less life in them, even the ones who weren't
wounded. They were frozen like a medical-school tableau, a closed-down
waxwork, waiting on me to do something to get their lives, the war,
history, moving again.
I felt nearer death than any of them.
Behind me the yellow bastard sobbed. Bennett. His name was Bennett.
I muttered, "Ah, the hell with it," whirled and slapped the living shit