The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [18]
"Vic writes he can't get a new leg. All the things they can do these days, they can't get him a new leg?"
Ben shook his head.
Neither man spoke for a while, Toussaint still creasing the letter, until at last he asked the question his visitor had been dreading most:
"Why don't they send him home to me?"
Ben hoped it wasn't because a one-legged hero did not fit with TPWP plans. He could hear the strain in his voice as he tried to put the secretive hospital in the English countryside in the best light. "There's a facility—a place there where they help people pull through something like this. It's an estate." It was for depression victims. Mangled Royal Air Force pilots. Commandoes wrecked in body and mind from the disastrous Dieppe raid. And, Tepee Weepy had seen to it, a Supreme Team running back with an empty pantleg.
He left all that last part out; from the look on the man who had raised Victor Rennie, bringing the letter maybe was bad enough. After a bit Toussaint said absently: "Vic says it's awful green there. Hedges."
"Toussaint, you better know. I'm supposed to write something about Vic. It's my job."
"Funny kind of job, Ben, ain't it?"
You don't know the half of it, Toussaint, not even you. He tried to explain the ongoing articles about the team, the obligation—if it was that—to tell people what had happened to Vic while he was fighting in the service of his country.
"Country." Toussaint picked up that word and seemed to consider it. He gestured in the direction of Great Falls. "Hill 57," he let out as if Ben had asked for an unsavory address. "You know about that." Something like a snort came from him, making Ben more uneasy yet. After a long moment, he held up the letter. "Here's what's left of Vic, that I know of." He handed it over. "Take down what it says."
Nonplussed, Ben unfolded the piece of stationery and read it through. He chewed the inside of his mouth, trying to decide. It had been offered and he couldn't turn it down. "You're sure?"
Toussaint shrugged as if surety was hard to come by.
Ben took out his notepad and jotted steadily. When done, he handed the letter back and put a hand on the rough shoulder of the mackinaw. "I'll get word to you when they give Vic the okay to come home, I promise." Drawing a last deep breath of sweetgrass, he started to get up. "You know how to put on the miles. I have to get back to Gros Ventre yet tonight."
Toussaint nodded. "Say hello. Your father is good people."
"Ask a hard question when you have one foot out the door," that father schooled into every cub reporter, including his son, who passed through the Gleaner office. "A person turns into an answering fool to get rid of you." Ben hesitated. Toussaint Rennie was never going to be an answering fool or any other kind.
The question did not wait for him to reason it out. "Help me with something if you can," he blurted, turning back to the seated figure. "Did Vic ever say anything about that kid on our team? Merle? You know the one I mean."
He watched the eyes encased within wrinkles; something registered there. "The one that died on that funny hill?" the voice came slowly. "With all the white rocks?"
"That's him."
"That one. Nobody ought to run that much." Now the old man scrutinized him in return. "Vic comes home, you can ask him."
"I want to. It's just that he's never brought it up."
"That's that, then." Toussaint glanced away, then back again. "Better look up that aunt of his."
Ben's hopes sagged. He had knocked on the door of that Hill 57 shack any number