Yeah, Al had liked the sky. They had talked about it. He liked the sun. Al had wanted to buy a farm, have some horses and a cow. Horses not cars. He had talked about horses at camp: they had been buddies at Camp Manley. Yeah, they had put in days together, fishing at a nearby pond, hiking through Texas fields ... bluebonnets....
Dennison observed other tanks: M3's and M4's, on a side street, the machines parked one behind the other, the crews still inside. A signal Corps flag appeared in the doorway of a two story building. A Corps flag wagged on a roof. Dennison drove his bus into a treeless square, and stopped, settled deeper into his seat, and asked Landel for the canteen.
As he drank, he read Landel's scrawl:
Stay!
In another section of Anadi, shells were gutting, lofting smoke, sand and dust.
The canteen water sent a chill through Dennison; a fleck of London hovered behind his eyes, streets with trees, fog, people waiting for a double-decker, kids leaning over a bridge rail, Big Ben, the grey Thames flowing ... he thought of Al again: Al had been twenty-three, a graduate of Western Reserve: the bullet had torn his ...
Landel checked the gas gauge.
Okay, gasoline.
Suddenly, they were off, a tank almost in front of Dennison, a tank toward the rear. At the first intersection, they separated, to mop up. A barricade had been erected on a street between low, white walls; there were trees to one side, delicate plumes of tamarisk, tamarisk in a row--trying to beat the desert and its heat.
Again every window was shuttered, even second floor windows. Grey shutters. Mauled shutters. Paintless.