Aunt Holly smiled. “Hating her already, Lib? Well, let me ask you this … do you hate me?”
Libby got this confused look on her face and she shook her head. “Of course I don’t hate you.”
“Then you won’t hate Harper either. I’m sorry, kid, but that’s the way it works. You’ll find out soon enough.” She turned back to the sink, washing the leftovers from lunch off the dishes, saying, “She’s with Uncle Jasper down near the river.”
Libby rolled her eyes and left. I was about to follow her when Aunt Holly stopped me.
“Kale, just a minute.” I paused a step away from the door. Waiting for her to finish drying her hands on the towel.
“Are you going to tell me I won’t hate her either?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that,” she said.
I remember being confused. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Aunt Holly shook her head, not answering, and led me out the door with one hand on my shoulder. We stopped on the back porch. I could hear Uncle Jasper’s truck revving down the hill, out of sight. After a big rain, he would sometimes take it down to the low part of the field, right next to the river where it would come over the banks during the night.
I wanted nothing more than to run down there. I hated missing the fun I could’ve been having.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” I wanted her to start talking so I could go.
I could feel her smiling above me and she said, “Harper.”
I sighed. “I already know I’m supposed to be nice to her.”
“I know, but I also wanted to say that you two might have more in common than you think.”
I made a weird face. “You aren’t making any sense.”
“I know. Maybe you’ll find out in one year or ten, but I wanted to tell before …well,” she paused and glanced down the field, where the sounds of his truck became louder. “I wanted to tell you, in case I forget or something.”
“Okay.” I always remembered Aunt Holly not making a whole lot of sense when I was younger. It was something I was used to.
And I didn’t think about it anymore, because Uncle Jasper’s truck came into view and pulled around to the backyard where he always washed off the mud with the hose. Libby was riding shotgun, but my eyes went to the third person in the bed of the truck.
It was a girl with her hair pulled back in a long braid, wearing overalls over a T-shirt. When the truck came to stop, she jumped down from the bed and smiled at Aunt Holly.
“I think I fell,” she said, laughing.
Mud was splattered on one half of her body, including her face and hair. And she was smiling. That’s what got me. Libby wouldn’t stand less than five feet from her, and I knew right then she wasn’t just any girl.
She walked up to the bottom step and held out her mud-covered hand. “I’m Harper.”
I thought it was weird, because what eight-year-old kids shook hands when they met? I took it regardless. “Kale.”
“It looks like we have something in common.”
“What?” I went to glance back at Aunt Holly, but she shrugged.
“We both have weird names,” Harper said, giving me another smile.
I didn’t really think her name was too weird at all. But I couldn’t tell her otherwise.
“Yeah, I guess we do have something in common,” I said, smiling back.
To this day, I still wonder if Aunt Holly somehow knew things would turn out the way they did.
I like to think so.
I walk through the quiet town with my helmet in my hand and my rifle strap digging into my shoulder. This gun is a bit heavier than my last one, but I already like the feel of it.
Snow falls from the dark sky. Small flakes at first that grow into something more. Not a heavy snow, just one that leaves a white dusting on everything exposed. Half the buildings in this town have turned to rubble. Piles of brick and ash, covered in white to look like snowdrifts instead of memories. All painted over to mask the look of death.
But I was here when they fell.
And I was here to witness the screams.
The town is still. Echoing a silence that has never been known in this place until now.
Smoke drifts from the houses where the others have settled in for the night. The officers are in a bigger house toward the middle of town, and the rest of us get to choose between houses with caved-in roofs or crumbling walls. The townspeople are long gone—they were gone once the Germans came last week, expecting something worse ahead. Something even they saw coming.
The sky is black overhead. My hands yearn for the warmth of a fire, and my eyes itch with sleep.
But I’m not ready yet.
I take a cigarette from my pocket, where I have a few stashed away. I’m about it bring it to my lips when someone appears beside me and I flinch, trying to salute without dropping the cigarette.
“Captain Price,” I say.
“Private Jackson.” I take my hand down when he touches his forehead. “You wouldn’t have an extra one of those would you?” he asks.
“Sir?”
He nods down to my hand, still holding the unlit cigarette.
“Oh, right.”
I dig into my pocket and hand him one. After I find my lighter, I light his before my own. The first drag is always the best. I exhale slowly, my head slightly tilted toward the sky. Snowflakes brush against my cheeks.
Captain Price asks, “Were you always a smoker?”
I shake my head. “I’m still not.”
I show a smile with teeth.
Standing here under an unlit sky, with a captain who would rather spend his time out here with me instead of by a warm fire, and the fact that I don’t go home until a few days from now, almost has me happy. Sometimes, even if it’s for a fleeting moment, it’s like I belong here. Like I have a place. A purpose.
At home, I’m nothing.
“Yeah, I get that,” he says, taking off his helmet and putting it under his arm. Pulling his fingers through his hair with the cigarette still between them. “I was able to go a year without smoking.”
“A year?” I ask. “I barely made it a month.”
His chest vibrates with a laugh. “I was hit in the arm. Just a flesh wound, but it scared the shit out of me. And this guy, Williams, comes up to me while I was lying on the stretcher and holds out a cigarette and says, ‘What about now, Price?’” He smiles to himself and keeps his gaze down the empty street. “I didn’t even realize my hands were shaking until I took it from him.”
I take another drag, and then roll it back and forth between my forefinger and thumb to keep them from becoming too frozen.
He speaks again, and for some reason it doesn’t bother me. Usually I would rather be away from idle conversations and laughs that don’t belong. But tonight I feel different. Better. “Where are you from, Jackson?”
“Iowa.”
“Never been.”
“Not missing much.”
He snorts a laugh. “Is your family still there?”