My Writing
In Peace At War
Hot breaths make vapor in the cold morning air. A light dusting of snow, recently fallen, crunches softly under heavy boots. The men were tired after a long night, yet their eyes stayed sharp as they wound their way around the trees, the field stretching open before them.
The light sky seemed twice as bright out from the shade of the trees, only a few clouds to block the sun from glaring off the snow. The men were cold and drained, but also close to their destination. They moved forward.
One of the men stopped, holding up his fist for silence, one ear tilted towards the sky. He was about to wave them on when a faint whistling grew piercing in the silence.
“INCOMING,” he yelled and the men all tried to run back to the trees, but it was hopeless. The ground erupted before them, sending chunks of dirt, metal and the soldier who had been standing there high into the air above them, before raining back down. Sudden dark shapes began appearing in the field where before there had been only snow. Triggers were pulled, bullets were fired, and the air around their bodies was sizzling with flying death.
The snow turned red as blood sprayed across its surface. Bodies were falling, glass was breaking, and men were laughing all around her.
Claire blinked, the bar coming into focus before her, upon which sat her full glass of red wine, a single dog tag and chain wrapped around its glass stem.
She looked around the room for the source of the noise when her eyes rested on a table of college boys sitting off in the corner. One of them had sloppily dropped his glass, where it promptly shattered over the tile floor. The other boys started guffawing in loud, booming barks, while slapping the first boy on the back and obnoxiously berating their friend for his clumsiness.
At the back of the table sat a boy who was not joining in on the drunken ruckus, who sat with his head down, taking small sips of his beer. The others didn’t seem to even know he was there, not until the biggest and loudest of them all noticed Claire looking at him.
“Hey, Bobby,” he said to the boy as he backhanded him hard across the shoulder, “looks like you got an admirer.”
Claire looked away at this point. Not because she was embarrassed by what he was saying, but to spare the boy Bobby any further ridicule. She was well used to the taunts and snide remarks from the local college boys who had had too much to drink. Two colleges and only one bar. The owner couldn’t be happier, but it became a real nuisance for the locals.
“Look at her over there in her dress and pearls. Probably wearing every nice thing she owns, and all for you. You like that, Bobby? You like old, wrinkled puss—” He went on like this for a while before the bartender took notice and told he boy to be quiet or to leave, but not nearly so kindly.
She had been coming to the same place every night for the last thirty-some years, before it had ever been a bar. The boy had been right, of course. Every night Claire came, dressed in her best, and sat at the same stool, ordered the same drink (which the bartender had stopped charging her for because she never drank it), wrapped the solitary dog tag and its chain around the stem of the glass, and waited. She never talked to anyone, save the bartender and the occasional wayward youth, and once saved someone who was choking, but went right back to sitting at her stool the moment he had coughed whatever it was back up.