You don’t want to be here, yet here you are. A shortish man in a black suit sweeps his hand dramatically across the crowd assembled before him. A breeze ruffles his thinning white hair as he describes the funerary practices of the ancient Athenians. It is a pleasant day for mid-November and while the last songbirds of autumn trill across the hillside, the trees have lost their leaves and the landscape you remember from last summer seems aged and tired. Your wool collar itches and as you twist your neck the pain in your left shoulder sears across your back and the folding wooden chair you are sitting in creaks uneasily on the grass. You look to your right and recognize a small rise in the hill, the spot where just a few months ago you watched a horse collapse in a tangle of leather harness, the cannon it pulled, wrenched at a right angle to the now-squealing animal. Inexplicably, the horse’s left front leg has disappeared, replaced with a thick ribbon of impossibly red blood. Three powerful legs flail the air as a quick-thinking corporal, eyes wide in horror, draws a pistol and ends the animal’s misery.
“…to pay the last tribute of respect to the brave men, who, in the hard fought battles of the first, second and third days of July last, laid down their lives for the country on these hill sides and the plains before us, and whose remains have been gathered into the Cemetery which we consecrate this day. As my eye ranges over the fields whose sods were so lately moistened by the blood of gallant and loyal men, I feel, as never before, how truly it was said of old, that ‘it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country.’"
“That’s a damned lie.” Your words hang quietly in the air before you even realize you thought them. A pinched-faced man in a straw hat turns around to frown at you. You lower your eyes and find yourself back behind the stone wall. The cloud of yellow-grey smoke slowly dissipates and a glint of shiny metal pierces the haze. For nearly a mile to your right, a line of men emerges from the treeline at the bottom of the hill and begins to walk the couple of hundred yards to where you cower behind the stones. “Oh, fuck! Oh, dear! Oh, fuck! Oh, dear!” a man to your left begins methodically whispering to himself. You’ve watched him load at least three balls into his musket and fear what might happen if he ever actually fires the damn thing. Flags flapping, now, bayonettes glinting, the ragged men actually dress their lines as they march toward you, as if joining some hideous parade. Then they all begin to scream, a high-pitched wail. Then they are running toward you.
You see the boy at probably 40 yards. He stares straight at you, nowhere else. Others fall about him but onward he comes. He holds his musket across his chest. You can see that it is an old hunting rifle, some sort of antique compared to the still oily rifle you clench with already aching hands. His lips curl back as he cries, every muscle in his face yanked taught in hate and fear. Your fingers are sweating and feel disconnected from your hands. The rifle is neither hot nor cold against your face as your finger slides down the trigger, depressing it.
Now the boy is nearly alone in his insane dash for the wall.
His left cheek explodes and a spray of red blossoms behind his ear. His head flips backward as his chest heaves forward. His right leg, pitched ahead of his body, wobbles, as the left leg catches up with it and both knees fold under him. His head and torso swivel to the left as the weight of his rifle pulls his hands backwards and into his chest. As he bounces on his hips, his chin juts forward and, for a second, both of his eyes stare straight into yours. His left eye now flies out of the side of his head as his torso follows forward. He plants his forehead firmly into the soil and plows a short furrow with it as his body crumples behind it.
You stand up slowly, oblivious to the screaming men on all sides of you. Spinning to your right, your shoulder feels as if it has been set afire. Your feet seem far away as your face hits the ground, your body feels unnaturally massive as your shoulder cushions its fall. You twist your face to the left and taste soil and your blood. You smell the hot grass that presses against your face as you hear…
The tall man in the plug hat say “…a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” You lift your eyes from the tuft of grass between the folding chairs and gaze at the man on the speakers’ platform. The conclusion of his speech is met with a tired silence. Then, slowly, grudgingly, the audience responds with a tepid smattering of applause. The man sitting next to you covers his eyes with his hand and squeezes his face tightly. You stand stiffly, a dull pain in your shoulder, and move politely toward the refreshment table.
by: M. Fox