The next hamlet looks much like all the rest, which is to say, it looks like nothing at all, just a series of beige smudges and eyes bigger than they should be. We won't be here long and I doubt we will remember much of this place as our vision narrows on the images of two men and a litter. An endless stream of arms and legs carrying broken bodies. There are eyes there too.Brakes, metal on metal, muffled shouting and movement. Always movement. Always somewhere to go, some thing to do as if in the doing we don't have to think. I jump from the back of the truck, all my belongings on my person. The ground here is as the ground elsewhere, a thin slice of slush over the bone hard ground. I feel the thud in my ankles. Thought is slurred. Images are not. Of other ankles floating in air. Taken from their owners. Casualties of winter.
It is impossible to feel that thud, to know you can walk, to feel that sweet pain, without also seeing the steel of a surgical saw. A grade-school sense of incongruity. Of things that don't match. We move with urgency. Running to or from is not allowed into consciousness. We just move as cold hands move to the fire. Of instinct. In the distance, that low rumble. The thunder of guns, our employer. Tethered we are to that sound. It pulls us along, never further than the ear, never more poignant than the bruised fruit of its harvest, carried by two, on a litter; and I think of that word and a bitterness grows.
18 comments:
Your words make my stomach ache with some kind of longing to touch who you really are (yes, I am still pondering that,)... and it leaves me speechless... as usual.
Athena, there is something very decadently delicious about the thought of an ache to be touched, beyond the skin, beyond the urge of alabaster arcs, beyond the wanton waterfall.
This is a good read, and I find myself wanting more.
Oh, this is a GREAT snapshot, Trée! Who hasn't - in times of stress or whatever - kept MOVING to keep from THINKING!
There was something different about this piece. You shot off wordpictures like bullets.
The feeling of the sentences completely matched the feeling I got, from standing behind this guys' eyes for a moment.
Blowing.... ;-)
Cat, nothing a writer wants to hear more, than more. Thank you. :-)
Thanks Grace. I feel my sailcloth tight and taut. Nothing but the pelagic ocean, a diamond sea, between us and the horizon. :-)
I find myself rereading your work -- loving it more and more.
I think Athena said it best.
Hugs,
Sue
Sue, your comment is like a hug. Thank you. And there is no charge for reading as much as you like. :-)
Incredible.
I'm awed, awed by the continual demonstration of staggering talent, of your extraordinary ability to create such authenticity, every post written as as though it were your most prevalent personal recollection, as though every sensory impression at the time was recorded, as though transported, writing as you live. Perhaps your response to such would be along the lines of visualizing, seeing before you, becoming in the moment, drawing upon memories (different in content, similar in 'mood'), upon imagination, but your mind is yours and the only one you know and so it falls to your readers to tell you just how profound and exclusive in quality your gift for doing so is, for describing in a manner that is so vivid and real that the reader apart, subsequently, lives the writing in vision, in emotion. A breathless read, paced and usettling, I'm still fidgeting, legs tapping, fingers tapping, chest aching, images simmering, thoughts rocketing. Tap, tap, alliteration, constant, more and the same, an endless stream, the constant movement, the constant demand, no time for normalcy, for entire thought, the urgency matched in the rhythm of the piece, subject in the melody and the pauses, oh gosh, There are eyes there too., chords struck that will resound unforgettably. Too awed to write. My own fault, for how to attempt to sit with these more than one at a time when one fills more than any can hold.
I dream of Bs even before As are done.:-D
Ms Storm, I do not know what to say to this jewel of a comment. For instead, I will give you the beginnings of a new post, which may not ever see the light of day. Consider it a behind the stage pass:
A new day. That's what I want. A day not like every other day. A day that does not add to the accumulation of those forlorn eyes. White and cold as fish belly. Then I think of the boys that arrive with none.
And still it is cold. The last two days have been officially documented as blizzard. Snow looks like sand as it huddles against our tents, as it gets in our shoes, as it makes even the slightest trip outside miserable.
I work with five other nurses. The 91st surgical field hospital having been spilt into thirds with the push in mid-december. We travel like gypsies following the army, living off what the war has discarded. We exist because it does. We have work because others sacrifice. This is what accumulation does. It changes you. Weighs you down. Until you have not the strength and you break. You say things you shouldn't say, which is only a pale reflection of what you've been thinking.
I'm so glad, that if you do not post this on the main page, that you posted it here. To know now having seen it that we might never have is a tragic thought. Hope to return a little later for this and for the below, x
Fish belly white; bottom lake cold.
Just thinking out loud. Trying to get the words in the right order, making sure I shouldn't fire one and hire another. They must sing and in the signing become more than they appear by eye. I don't know how to do this; I just know when it isn't done, so I try again until I don't have that feeling that it isn't done.
I write letters home but not as often as I should. I hate the lies. I hate that I am writing to an audience that no longer knows me, that the girl they said goodbye to no longer exists; yet, these falsified letters, is what I feed them and the riff grows. And I want to say things, write things they would not recognize. So I pretend. I say that I am fine; that everything is going according to plan, that we are winning this war. And in the saying, I am saying nothing at all. I have created this other self, this former self that I inhabit when I write to them. I wear it like a dress that no longer fits. From a distance, no one can tell.
There is a language in eyes not seen outside of war, not seen outside the OR. We arrive; and so do they. An odd choreography, them coming from one direction, us, the other. And there are always more of them than us. Dropped in their soaked litters, those oxblood stains, damp, sticky, a look and smell not unlike calf birth. Without the birth. They lie because they can't stand, can't walk and it hits you, the obvious, these teenaged boys, who should be running and jumping like deer, can't. Some never will. Many of them are handsome. Were handsome.
We fix what has been broken, but what has been broken, has been broken for us. Like ice in hot tea, our boys are consumed. There is pride at times and guilt. But mostly a vague disgust, a shimmering anger beyond the tongue to define. As if the eyes have rendered one mute, mute of diction for this carnage, of looking into the blue eyes of a young boy, wiping the sweat off his brow with one hand while holding his intestines in with the other, waiting for help, for his turn, telling him to . . . and then you realize those eyes are just staring. But they aren't seeing you anymore.
A new day. That's what I want. A day not like every other day. A day that does not add to the accumulation of those forlorn eyes. Fish belly white; bottom lake cold. Then I think of the boys that arrive with none. Of the children they will never see. And how must they cry, how can they cry, without eyes. . . .
And still it is cold. The last two days have been officially documented: blizzard. Snow looks like sand as it huddles against our tents, as it gets in our shoes, as it makes even the slightest trip outside miserable. The days are short of light, overcast. Everything appears darker than it is. And there is a heaviness to sound, a notch too much of bass. Wears on you. Grates on you. And you crave the one thing war can never give, yet gives too often: silence. The silence of closed eyes from the palm of a hand.
My word your writing is brilliance. This post also makes me want to run away from the pain as well as read more.
I am curious about the inspiration for your 1944 posts, besides the obvious historical events.
Jen, the original post in this series was based on my vague memory of a real life rendezvous between an airman and a nurse in the back of an ambulance in France in 1944. One night it struck me to "flesh" that out into a post with no intention that it would be anything other than the single post. It just kinda took off from there.
I did have a great uncle who died in France in 1944. His name was Jesse, and as a tip of the hat, I have a Jesse, actually two of them, in the story. What is interesting is, when I was home a few months ago, I read the original post to my mother. That is when she told me about Jesse. I had no idea before.
I can't tell you how nice it is to have you back and reading. As always, your kind words are most appreciated. Thanks Jen. :-)
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