Are You Haunted (part fifty-six)

Are You Haunted

(part fifty-six)

What he felt was a lack of, an end of, all sensation. No hammer at the back of his head, only cold. A cold inertia, with no shivering. His body seemed riveted to the floor. Some part of Powell’s memory understood he was not in the cellar, not in his childhood hiding place in Little Rock…

He was not in Liège, he had never returned there.

He was not in the Drybrook house, he was someplace else. He felt crowded, jostled. They were riding packed in the truck, Miller able to be excited, backslapping him along the way. “Kenzie, this is it, real combat!”

And if he told the story to himself, a flood of noise, affecting his right temple, would not allow him to concentrate. The picture returned, and the story started again.

He felt a weight that scared him, the way Breedman’s body had, when Powell had known he would be unable to free himself. But they’d never told him if Breedman was alive or dead. No one seemed to care.

Snow falling most of the day.

He was cold for that reason.

“You know, I kept running procedure through my head. They didn’t give me enough information. There was a lot of smoke down below, and Em was with me…”

Miller could not be saying this. Powell tried to stir, to see. Miller’s idea was a battle wound, avenue to a discharge. “Keep low, but you know…ordnance coming down. Craters. Nobody’s got time to look. Can you fall maybe ten, twenty feet? Think about it.”

Miller was keeping Powell out of Breedman’s way, covering for his tendency to wander off. But Powell wasn’t wandering. He had trouble keeping his thoughts from circling in the same pattern, but the pattern was of course a directive. He had a job to do before he could feel at peace.

“I made a mistake,” Powell told himself. “I have to go back and fix things.”

He had gathered what he needed, no one seemed to care. He took a flashlight. He took a wrench…not a pipe wrench, but workable to the purpose. He took a screwdriver, a piece of wire.

Another private, using this to clean his boots: “Sure, idiot. Have that.”

Breedman had seen him slip under the truck and roll out the other side. Standing lost in the middle of the street, Powell had heard…a low thud.

No, he heard someone running behind him. The artillery barrage ceased. The silence meant Panzers. That was what Powell saw, fire shoot from a turret gun’s muzzle, just before Breedman fell over him and didn’t move.

Everyone had a job to do.

“Maybe you also had a job to do,” he told Drybrook. “I can’t stay here. I have to go back.”

55

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part fifty-seven)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)