Stan Kitchen

 

                                                          Where The Baptized Drown

 

 

 

 

 

 

          He was a man by this point, and much to his mother’s dismay, out in the world enjoying his grand adventure. His heart longed to be back home in Germany with his family, and not a day passed without them in his thoughts. He dreamed of the day he might return, hug his mother’s neck, and take a place at his father’s side in the family pharmacy. The young man was respected and admired by all who had known him in his eighteen years. His beloved dog Rose, spent restless nights in his empty bed, which still held his scent deep in its fibers. Her tail often wagged in her sleep, as if possessed by the notion that her master might walk in at anytime. The young man’s name was whispered in secret circles by the teenaged girls of his village; who dreamed of a life they might share with him upon his heroic return. He was a lover of nature; often he could be found in the woods, watching the miracle of life move around him; but not as often as he could be found with bowed head, and folded hands, praying to the god that created it all. He was smart, strong, handsome, and talented, but once his skull collapsed into his brain, none of that mattered anymore.Elwood McCoy brought the spiked tips, of the brass knuckle guard to his trench knife, down over and over again to the side of the boys head; not with rage, but with the desperation of a man trying to survive. “Retreat! Gas! Gas!” screamed the voice, barely audible over the overwhelmingly loud barrage of gunfire. Elwood woke from his psychosis to the ghastly sight before him. With haste he reached down and pulled his rifle up out of the mud and blood in which it lie, and scrambled up the side of the trench into no mans land. His stomach forcefully ejected its contents into the air as he raced back to his trench. On wet, swollen feet Elwood tried desperately to put some distance between himself and his living nightmare. This was 1918, this was France, and this happened every day.

          The deafening sound of rain crashing into Elwood’s helmet suddenly ceased. Two days had passed since he had stormed the German line, and for two days the rain had fallen. Nothing, not even the relentless downpour of fat, cold water beads could wash the image of the young German from his mind. Elwood knew he was doomed to carry the image of that boy, and his crushed skull, around with him forever. He shut his eyes and watched himself bring his trench knife down, punching the boy’s skull repeatedly until it gave way. He could see the bones and brains, he could see the boys perfect white teeth scattered across the trench floor, he could see the blood and flesh that dripped from his shaking hand. Elwood opened his moist, bloodshot eyes and trembled as another shell screamed toward the ground. He held his breath and tried to curl himself up under his helmet. The screaming of the shell was silenced as it exploded inside the trench. Elwood was thankful that the shell had hit others and not him. His heart began to fill with guilt as his tense body succumbed to his overwhelming sense of relief. He desperately wanted to pray but had given up on god, for he was certain god had given up on him. Elwood nervously fumbled through the pocket of his overcoat, pulled out a tightly rolled cigarette and stuck it between his chapped lips. He struck a match, and relished the heat that radiated from its flame as he lit the end of his last smoke. He inhaled deeply and exhaled out of his nose, hoping the smoke would wash out the smells of dead flesh, gun powder, and raw sewage, which clung to his nostrils the same way the lice clung to his itching body. His eyes sat sunk in their blackened sockets, and shifted back and forth anxiously behind the warm ember of burning tobacco. He watched as the small stream of water that cut through the trench like a small river, ran over his mud covered boots. The water was red now, and carried with it chunks of what use to be men. He shifted his eyes up to the corpse that lay just in front of him. Deep in the open mouth of the rotted body glared back at him a large pair of rodent eyes. Slowly and methodically the large rat crawled from the doorway to his fleshy home, and climbed out of the trench. “It may be no mans land out there,” thought Elwood. “But it sure as hell belongs to the rats.” His thoughts about rats came to a sudden stop as a shell crashed into the ground just outside the trench. Elwood tilted his head down and drew a drag from his smoke, as the muddy earth returned to the ground- pelting him as it did. The faces of the men around him were long and blank. They were faces that seemed to be forged from leather, faces that looked eerily similar to the dead faces that stared up at him from the ground. Elwood wondered, but was for certain, that his looked the same. He filled his lungs once more with smoke, and came to the conclusion that it did not matter. Time, like his cigarette, had reached its end. Soon the whistle would cry out, and he and his brethren in arms would swarm out into no mans land like ants. He was beyond doubt now that by evening the rats would dine on their lifeless remains. Elwood flicked the last of his cigarette into the water at his feet and watched it disappear along with his hopes of ever smoking another. He shut his eyes and tried to let thoughts of home cleanse his mind of the grisly world in which he sat. The carnage that haunted him was slowly pushed away as images of his parents, and those of his wife and daughters, slipped in. He imagined himself sitting on a blanket in a freshly cut hay field, laughing with his wife as they watch their beautiful girls play. “Get ready boys!” A wave of shock and panic washed over Elwood’s filthy, tired body as the words echoed down the trench. The angelic faces of his daydream slipped away into obscurity as he opened his eyes. He wiped his moist sockets as his mind readjusted itself to the nightmare in which it lived. With trembling hands and shaking legs, Elwood grabbed his Springfield and stoop up on his rotten feet. The men piled up against the trench wall and tried, in a world infected with madness, to prepare themselves for their descent into hell. At the top of his ladder, wrapped in a shroud of fear, Elwood waited. He waited for his officer to bring the whistle to his lips and blow. He waited to drown in the sand that was rapidly piling up in the bottom of his hourglass. He waited for god to give him a sign that he had not given up on him. Elwood stood on his ladder, holding on to the seconds, teetering on the thin line that separates the hopeful from the damned.This was 1918, this was France, and this happened every day.