We went across the river and into...

We went across the river and into the trees, and all the while the Austrian guns were going boom boom boom, boom boom boom, because Austrian guns always fire in waltz time, and then we went on through the trees and out into a field where strange white bulbs were drying on the ground.

Then the wind shifted and a smell hit me like a 120-mm shell with a time-delay fuse, a smell that was like cordite and buffalo chips and my mother’s Michigan blueberry preserves after they had fermented and gone bad, except stronger than all three of those put together, and then the earth moved and the sun dimmed and I woke up in a hospital in Milan with a plaster cast on my nose.

“Wha?” I said.

“Congratulations, Tenente Hemingway.” It was my good friend Lieutenant Cappuccino. “You have not had to say farewell to any of your arms or legs. And if you do not mind my saying so, your old nose was no great loss. Your new nose will give your face the rakish and unbalanced look of the boxer, and enhance your literary career.”

“Gas?” I asked.

“No, no! Garlic. Good Italian garlic.” Cappuccino laughed. “You American ambulance drivers are so refreshingly naive. But this is only the first Great War. In the Second War you will smell evil in unprecedented forms. In Korea you will smell kimchi and in Vietnam nuoc-mam, and in the Gulf the burning petroleum. Not to mention many political campaigns. By then your strength of nose will rival any in the Old World.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Your sentences are getting shorter,” said a nurse who had just come in. “A sign of increased testosterone.”

Her legs were as long and lean and lovely as the barrel of the elephant rifle I intended to own someday. My gaze snagged in her near stocking, which unraveled from thigh to ankle.

“Down, boy,” the nurse said. She slipped a needle into my arm. I dreamed.

I dreamed of the future, when, as Cappuccino said, even Americans would love garlic, and when, on the weekend of July 18-19, 1992, the ninth annual Los Angeles Garlic Festival would take place at the Federal Building in Westwood, sponsored by Captain Morgan Spiced Rum. From noon to 11 p.m. Saturday and noon to 10 p.m. Sunday, there would be cuisine from 30 restaurants, live music and a Garlic Boutique. Proceeds would go to American Legion Post No. 8, Heal the Bay and Phoenix House. Admission would be $5 in advance and $7 at the door. Information would be at (213) 939-9023.

I woke up again and rang the bell. The nurse came in. “Did you toll for me?”

“Thee,” I tried to say, but I had forgotten about the cast on my nose, and I only sneezed.

--M.H.