Beneath the Weight of the Sun
Johnny Martin/Bull Randleman, R

{ i }

Despite everything that came after, Johnny was always fond of Eindhoven.

Initially the thought of a daylight drop had made him nervous – made him curse Monty and his doomed plan and the idiot who had given it the okay – but in the end, the jump turned out to be a breeze compared to Normandy. What with no artillery blazing and no tracer bullets flying and everyone actually making the DZ.

There were flowers in the tall grass – yellow and purple like the kind that grew wild in abandoned lots back home – and as second platoon traversed the open fields outside of Eindhoven, Johnny could already see figures beginning to gather in the windows and doorways. All hovering and expectant. Waiting to be free.

Liberation quickly turned into celebration once the people began to pour out into the streets with their flags and their songs – brilliant orange badges pinned to their chests. The women were generous and beautiful, with their high cheekbones and sharp noses, and as Johnny made his slow and steady way through the heavy crowd, they pressed their lips to Johnny’s cheeks and mouth, embracing him giddily as he inhaled the perfume of their hair. And then the children, with their bright eyes and laughter; every time a little girl threw her thankful, tiny arms around Johnny’s neck, he would lift her above the people to watch the colorful banners flutter against a cloudless sky.

It was almost like a Homecoming, Johnny thought, to be welcomed with such warmth and enthusiasm, and everywhere the soldiers went, old men shook their hands and clapped their backs like proud fathers. The people of Eindhoven sang and rejoiced in their newfound freedom and the men of Easy Company each found a small comfort in the noisy streets that day – whether it was in food, in revelry, or in happy company.

It took Johnny a while to find Bull, who stood by himself beneath one of the lampposts, lighting the stub of one of his cigars as he carefully surveyed the crowd. Somewhere along the way someone had thrust a bottle into Johnny’s hands; its contents were dark and curiously strong, and Johnny offered it to Bull with a wide grin as he approached.

“One hell of a party,” Johnny shouted, to which Bull replied simply, “You could say that.”

The dry heat of Bull’s palm moved across the back of Johnny’s hand when he finally took the bottle from him. A sharp weight of sudden heat dropped into Johnny’s belly like too much whiskey, as he watched Bull take a heavy swallow, wincing only slightly at the taste. Bull’s eyes stayed on Johnny the entire time – genuine affection and a secret amusement hidden behind them – and perhaps it was the noise or the alcohol or the dizzying blur of people around them, but all of a sudden Bull’s hands were on Johnny’s sleeve, pulling him closer. Close enough for Johnny to smell the wine on his breath, the heavy smoke on his lips. It made Johnny’s entire body blush beneath his uniform, the blood rushing to just below his skin, warming him.

And it was there, in the crowded streets of Eindhoven, lost in a sea of brightly dancing flags, that Bull kissed Johnny Martin from Ohio. Just the once – short and earnest and chaste on the mouth – with Bull’s hand pressed firmly against Johnny’s side, holding him fast against his body, even long after the kiss was broken.

...

The barn they held up in for the night was sparse and wide, populated by a few unraveling bails of hay and old farm equipment. There was a long wooden table tucked away in one of the corners but no benches, just some large coils of rope and disused tractor tires, stacked high one on top of the other to serve as makeshift chairs. Instead of sitting, Johnny lay back on the dirt floor in the middle of the room and studied the support beams overhead as the others settled in around him. Luz was there, along with Bill and Babe, Muck and Penkala as well as some of replacements from Bull’s squad – the ones Johnny had given such a hard time to in England and whose names he hadn’t bothered yet to learn.

There were a few rough blankets and a couple of lumpy pillows up for grabs, but Johnny passed. Eindhoven had put him in a good mood and, as a result, had filled him with a surprising sense of charity. He knew he’d regret it in the morning, when everything ached and he felt his age again, but at the moment, Johnny wanted to feel the hard-packed earth beneath him. He enjoyed the dark, sweet smell of it, the solid line of it flush against his spine. It made him think of Bull and the sudden rush of being kissed beneath a bright grey sky – the steady pressure of Bull’s hand pressed firmly against his side, steadying him.

“I don’t know why we don’t just stay here.” Babe, who had traded his chocolate for a few bottles of the local brew in town, had managed to acquire ‘the penthouse’ by forfeiting his spoils to the group. He chuckled smugly as he climbed the rickety ladder, and after a moment, his voice drifted down from the rafters as he asked for what seemed to be the hundredth time that day: “Sure as hell beats England, right, Sarge?”

“Sure as hell does,” Bill replied triumphantly as he dropped down onto a sagging stack of old tires. There was a bottle in his right hand, a smoke in his left, and Bill raised his both in greeting with a loud hoot when Bull stepped in through the barn door – his face bright and flushed, a few lipstick kisses from the afternoon still visible along his jaw. “Here he is, the man himself! You put up a good fight ‘gainst the ladies there, Bull?”

Bull bowed his head shyly when Johnny sat up. He scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand until nothing was left but a faint pink smudge on his chin. “They took a shinin’ t’me,” he eventually said, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“You’d think they’d never seen a hick before,” Johnny announced. A few of the others snickered in agreement. “Least not one his size.”

Pulling the helmet from his head, Bull finally looked at Johnny and grinned lazily – all southern warmth and red cheeks. It made heat thrum through Johnny’s body all over again, spreading slowly from his stomach until all of his nerves sang and his groin ached. “Nah,” Bull said lowly, still watching, “they’re just none too fond of city boys. Nothin’ but fancy talk…” His eyes flickered up to the top of Johnny’s head and then back down again. “…And shiny hair.”

“Is that right?” Bill asked, his voice and face both suspect. He paused to reach down and swipe an apple from Penkala, who protested and moaned and quickly swiped back. When Bill finally continued, his mouth was full of half-eaten fruit. “Listen, Bull, I ain’t one to doubt your home-grown southern wisdom and all, but I think you should go tell that to Floyd. He had skirts on him the entire time, the bastard, and last time I checked, his hair was shinier than a Lulu’s open for business.”

Bull bowed his head again, now nodding as the men welcomed him with good-hearted laughter and an invitation him to sit. Johnny laughed along with them and then lay back down on the ground with his eyes shut, arms pillowed beneath his head and rifle sleeping against his side. The quiet murmur of conversation died down into gentle eddies around him until finally he recognized the sound of Bull coming to sit beside him, that familiar cigar smell stirring the air between them. They sat together that way in silence for a good long while before Johnny eventually asked, “Good day?”

His eyes remained closed but he could still see the wolfish smile crawl onto Bull’s face when he answered, a quiet chuckle rumbling deep in his chest with amused and affectionate complicity.

“Yeah, Johnny,” Bull said, and nudged Johnny’s side with the toe of his boot, “I s’pose you could call it that.”

...

During the war Johnny dreamt of places of the past, but never of home. Images of Ohio – of his family and those city streets he’d known all his life – they seemed to fade with each passing day, and the deeper Johnny traveled into Europe – first across the Atlantic and then into France – the more he believed those memories to be just hand-me-downs inherited from some ancient ancestor. Stories of a way of life so distant and removed that he did no longer recalled he was a part of it, as if he was born beneath the Georgian sun and had no past beyond it.

Even after so many months away, his memories of Toccoa remained recent, and while asleep in a farmhouse outside Eindhoven, Johnny recalled how it felt to stand in the shadow of Currahee, the once epic and insurmountable silhouette that rose a solid three miles up, three miles down over the camp.

That night, he dreamt himself into an early evening in Georgia, when the sun hung low and fat in the brassy sky and the barracks were at their most quiet. Long rows of cots stood empty and still, waiting for their occupants to return from formations and fill the room with life, noisily stripping the uniforms from their aching, glowing bodies. Twenty men to a space – all sleeping and living and breathing together – left a residue in the swollen air that Johnny could taste, pungent and familiar. That distinctive soldier smell of summer: soap and sweat and pine and shoe polish; it filled the mouth and trumped the senses in a way Johnny almost enjoyed.

He made it a point to dream of Bull as well, Bull whose kiss still lingered fresh in his mind and on his mouth. He had strong arms and broad shoulders, and where most men had corded ropes of sinew and bone, Bull had a solid mass of muscle – thick and dense beneath the skin, where it refused to give way no matter how deeply Johnny dug his fingers into it.

“Goddamn, Johnny,” Bull whispered beneath gritted teeth whenever Johnny touched him. He dreamt that they sat entangled on the edge of a cot, Johnny’s legs spread wide across Bull’s thighs as he straddled his lap, one hand fumbling in the small space between them to push down the waistband of Bull’s shorts.

These were the memories and dreams Johnny liked to visit best, the ones that burned slow, with an almost lazy kind of fervor.

Bull’s head rested on Johnny’s bare shoulder, strange patterns of breath coming in small hitches against his collarbone. Johnny concentrated now, listening to the tiny stops and starts of Bull’s body, along with the broad sweeping gestures of his moans.

They sat suspended in a moment without firefights or ditches or rain, in a world that was just him and Bull and the sweet Georgia summer.

Here, in Johnny’s dreams, the sun shone brightest, and it illuminated all the dark places of his life until they shone.

Ohio was nothing more than a memory of white.

{ ii }

The sun was shining.

The sun was shining and the men were shouting and once the goddamn British had advanced their tanks blindly down the street, Johnny had known that they were in for trouble, and here it was.

It was a Tiger in the open, demolishing the town around them, removing every bit of cover for the men to fall back to.

And it was the British armored withdrawing, already down two tanks and forced to retreat – guns aimed in the defensive, their advantage gone.

And it was Bull Randleman from Arkansas, alone and separated from his squad, pinned down by a rooftop gunner who quickly hammered off every route to Easy as Johnny watched and shouted and tried to hammer back.

If he had had the choice he would have stayed there, trapped across the street from Bull, throwing everything he had at that goddamn German advance. But Johnny didn’t have that choice – what with his squad still there, holding its position around him, and Babe Heffron at his side, shouting, “What’re we gonna do, Sarge? They’re fucking everywhere.”

Nausea pulled at Johnny’s stomach. Because there was a tank and a ditch but suddenly no Bull – just him and his boys and a swift wall of Kraut infantry.

“Sarge?” Babe asked again. His voice was high and urgent.

There was nothing Johnny could do except say, “Fall back.”

{ iii }

The Germans had known that they were coming all along.

This was the conclusion Johnny Martin came to once Easy Company had pulled back to a reasonable position and the men had been ordered to dig in for the night. While some of the soldiers nursed their wounds and others shared a meal of bread and silence, Johnny walked between the scattered groups, searching for news on Bull. As he went, he wrung his hands in the hopes that it would make him calm.

He had seen Webster do the same thing earlier that day after the retreat. There had been blood on his hands and underneath his neatly trimmed Harvard nails, and Johnny had watched silently as he tried to wipe his fingers clean on his ODs. When that didn’t work, he tried the grass instead, ripping it up in great handfuls to scrub at the webbing between his fingers. He did it until his skin was red and irritated, but still the blood remained – a dull, resilient brown staining his wrists and palms.

In the end, Johnny offered some of the water from his canteen, pouring it carefully into the outstretched cup of Webster’s trembling hands as he cleaned them, turning them one over the other, over and over again.

“Thank you,” Web had said quietly, “thank you, Sarge, thank you.”

Long after the blood was gone, Webster remained where Johnny had left him, wringing his hands in the newly fallen darkness like a nervous and frightened old man.

...

That evening, Johnny found a tree on the crest of a hill and sat beneath it in obstinate silence. Every so often, one of the men would come round, offering him cigarettes and awkward attempts at chitchat, but Johnny refused to indulge any of them.

Not now, he would think as another came up beside him. Not here and not now. Not tonight.

Fear and anger churned hot and slow in his belly and Johnny knew one misplaced word would cause it to rise suddenly to the surface, where it could do the most damage to everyone involved. He blamed the world for Bull’s disappearance – blamed Monty and the Germans and the officers and himself – and Johnny knew he would take it out on the first person stubborn enough to stay by his side.

You’ll thank me later, Johnny thought as they each left him – some of them angry and others frustrated by his sudden muteness, none of them aware that it was just a wall he held up around himself to protect them.

Down below and off in the distance, the Germans began to bomb Eindhoven. Johnny watched explosions fill the far off streets with light and noise as shells threw streamers of smoke across the night sky. Buildings cracked and houses burned, and everywhere the city was illuminated from within by fire – a wild orange blur dancing on the indigo Dutch landscape. It made Johnny think of the ribbons the women had worn in their hair the day before, as they danced and sang through the jostling crowds. In his memory, their faces were still bright with laugher and hope and their curls were still dark and sweet-smelling.

“Hey, Johnny.”

Quiet footfall rustled through the grass behind him, but Johnny didn’t turn to acknowledge the sound or the familiar voice that approached with it.

“No word on the Bull yet.”

He hadn’t expected any.

“Some of his boys are going back to find him.” Bill Guarnere sat down heavily onto the ground beside him, nursing the last of his cigarettes. Johnny stopped him before he could say anything else.

“Don’t tell me not to worry, Bill. There’s no easy way around this, so don’t ask me to pretend like there is.”

“I ain’t saying there is, Johnny, but we gotta do what we can.”

Johnny choked back a laugh. He had expected small words from the others, but not from Bill. Bill, who had lost Henry at Monte Casino and had taken it out on the whole of the German advance, killing every Kraut that came his way without hesitation or apology. He had even shot their horses.

“What, we’re gonna do what we can by sending out a couple of goddamn replacements to get him?” A dangerous look began spread across Bill’s face as Johnny spat out words he immediately regretted. “What? Did you think up that plan all by yourself, Bill, or did you have to get one of your boys to figure it out for you?” Bill sneered at Johnny in the waning light.

“I wasn’t raised in no fucking barn, Johnny,” Bill said. “I know what’s going on here and it ain’t gonna work on me.” His voice was hard and dangerous, but the anger in it was restrained. Held back and tempered in a way that Johnny had never seen in Bill before, and the sudden change took him by surprise as Bill leaned forward in the dark, his eyes black with shadow and pupil. “You got Bull figured out better than the rest of us. So you should know by now that man is as hard as fucking nails.” He nodded at Johnny once, then touched him again on his shoulder. Johnny let him. “If there’s a job needs doin’, he’s the one who’ll get it done.”

Bill was close now – closer than all the years of friendship had ever brought him before – close enough for Johnny to feel the warmth of his breath as he exhaled tobacco and smoke into the night air. It cast strange blue shadows across his face, hiding whatever expression he now wore as he studied Johnny’s eyes carefully before looking away.

“Listen, there’s still a couple of hours left,” Bill said after a moment’s silence. “You should get some fucking rest.” The curtain of anger had dropped away completely from his voice, leaving only the words behind – tired and rough but earnest.

Johnny watched as Bill got up to leave and waited until he was near the foot of the hill before calling out to him.

“Bill?” he said, his voice carrying thinly on the air. Bill paused. “Thanks.”

“Eh,” Bill shrugged. “Thank me tomorrow when Bull’s back and I’m right.” He turned on his heel and went, stopping only to extinguish his cigarette underfoot before dissolving into the darkness of the valley below.

...

That night as he tried to sleep, Johnny dreamt of Nuenen burning. It sat small and flickering on the afternoon horizon, wide plumes of smoke rising from its collapsed and broken buildings. No matter how hard he tried to move towards it, it remained fixed in the distance – looking as far and as hopeless as it did from the back of the truck, when Easy had finally withdrawn its advance and Bull was no where among the living or the wounded or the dead.

The path in his dream was wide and lined with women from the road – the ones they had seen that morning scattered across the Dutch landscape, haunting every crossroad from Eindhoven to Nuenen. They stood silently, watching him as he walked – each of them barefoot and shorn and stripped of sexuality, some of them still wearing the smudged shadow of the bent cross on their foreheads.

A few of them cradled babies, while others just cradled themselves – shrinking beneath the bright, flat sun above as if it were the eye of God itself.

They were ghosts of the living – these women – left behind by the Germans, little more than raw skin and sorrow under torn silk. Victims of their own desire, made spectacles for their infidelity.

None of the women said anything as he passed. Instead, they bled from their cuts and wept into their hands and Johnny Martin wondered if all of the tears they shed were for their dead lovers or their betrayed country, or for themselves.

{ iv }

He woke to the sun on his face.

It was early still and a slight chill still hung in the air from the night before, but Johnny’s neck and cheeks were warm. For a good long while, he lay unmoving beneath his tree, listening to a slight breeze rustle the branches overhead. The shadows they cast danced across Johnny’s face – making the backs of his eyes flicker – the lights brilliant and red like gunfire.

He lay there until he began to hear the stirring of other soldiers in the valley below him. The day was waiting for him to begin and despite how uncertain things were, Johnny knew he would have to begin soon.

When he finally rose, his muscles ached as he brushed the dirt from his legs and back. Before starting for the OP, he paused to close his eyes one last time, raising his face like an offering to the sky and hoping that the new morning would bring word.

...

He hadn’t seen the jeep coming from Nuenen; he hadn’t heard the sound of its engine rumbling towards the encampment either. All he had for a warning was the expression that dawned slowly across Dukeman’s face as he motioned over Johnny’s shoulder back towards the town – towards there.

“Johnny, look,” Dukeman had said, and when he did, there it was: that familiar silhouette, approaching backlit against the morning sky. Bull Randleman, alive, and returning to Easy Company.

“Hey, Johnny,” Bull said when he eventually he hopped from the jeep. He kept his arm close to his body, a sure indication of injury, but all that seemed to matter now was this greeting and their reunion.

“You get a little lost?” Johnny asked, a warmth returning to his voice and his body. He offered his hand to Bull, who took gratefully, the strong fingers enclosing Johnny’s in a meaningful grip.

“Something like that,” Bull said and nodded with a crooked smirk.

Being this close to Bull again made Johnny’s legs and back weak with relief, and looking into the man’s eyes, he could already taste their eventual kiss – the one that would come later when the other soldiers were elsewhere and all of the truths of the night before had been shared with looks and words and silence.

Memories worth carrying would come from that moment, Johnny could feel it the as soon as Bull smiled at him, and he knew that the dreams would follow close after.

Johnny wondered what they would be like.