To Save a Lopsided Sparrow (A short Novel, Sequel to "Cornfield Laughter")

Index of Names

(Uncorrected long version: see corrected 'Short Version' the Novelette, for revisions)

Shannon O’Day (Corporal French Army)
Leticia Dalasi (Mad woman)
Gus O’Day (Brother to Shannon)
Isaiah Christianson
Sally-Anne Como (Girlfriend, first Wife)
Jefferson Manning (Owner of the Gem)


Contents



Prelude

Part I. — The Lank Figure


Part II. — The Great War

Chapter One: Rain of Shells
Chapter Two: Streets of Paris
Chapter Three: The Village of Douaumont
Chapter Four: Drops of Sleep
Chapter Five: Death Reeks (Leticia’s Story)
Chapter Six: The First Time
Chapter Seven: The Beast Unhealed
and Edge of the Hamlet
Chapter Eight: Breakfast
Death in the Dark (a poem)


Part III. –Home Sweet Home

Chapter One: A Soldier Goes Home
Chapter Two: The Prison
Chapter Three: The Gem Bar
Chapter Four: Jobless Isaiah
Chapter Five: Death to Death

Poems:

Beauty with Dark Vines
Dead in the Dark
The Soul Talks (Deleted)

“If you haven’t seen Verdun, you haven’t seen anything of war (WWI)” Unknown Soldier 1914-1918

Prelude: The Battle of Verdun ended on 19 of December, 1916, 230,000 soldiers dead, 700,000-wounded; the Germans had taken the little village of Douaumont, in February, and held it until December, demolished it in the interim. All civilians were told to evacuate, all did but one woman. It was a 300-day battle, in a 2.27 square mile area; Shannon O’Day, was in that battle, fighting with the French, a corporal status, with a battery of men (or squad) of eleven men, not including himself. It would prove to be the bloodiest and intense battle of the Great War, also known as WWI. The story is fiction. Although the author’s grandfather served in the military during this time in this area, during the Great War, it is not to be taken as he was part of this battle or story though, and the author is war veteran himself, of Vietnam. If you were to go to Verdun today, you would see ‘The Trenches of Verdun’ they still cross the French countryside.


Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and … a nest for herself…”

Psalm 84

One Sparrow shall not fall on the ground without your Father knowing.
Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than the sparrow.

Matthew 10:29

Part One: The Lank Figure


(Shannon’s dream-vision) He was near a skeleton figure, lank, with only a thread deep of flesh over his frame, a dark figure, age—hard to define, with long black hair, irregular; rather long-drawn-out features. His chin and jawbone hung low, as if he were of some ancient subspecies of humans, perhaps of the Neanderthal civilization. He lurked consistently at a holy man, Shannon couldn’t make out if he was a priest, angel, minister of some organized church member, evangelist, or prophet, but the holy man kept distinctly skeptical, gazing eyes at the lank figure, he could not have gazed harder, had he been a statue.
The lank figure and the holy man were both particularly sensitive to each other’s voices. Shannon had learned he had severe injuries, had he not, the lank figure would not have bothered with him, he knew this intuitively. And so he watched the movements, gestures of the two figures in robs, their mouths, tongues, eyes, knees as their movements made their robs ruffle.
“He drinks and he smokes, and he is dying,” said the lank figure, said about Shannon O’ Day, “and he has killed, and killed, without a morsel of remorse, or so it would see,” there was the faintest suggestion of derision in his voice.
“If death can possible be avoided,” the holy man said.
“Whose loss shall it be?” said the lank figure,” For I have much to do!”
“I think it is possible to keep your honor and dignity, and vow,” said the holy man, “should you walk away from this lopsided sparrow?”

The holy man and the lank figure sat at a table both resting their arms upon it, and awaiting the next development of this unsatisfactory situation.
“Of course,” said the lank figure, as if he had deliberated the issue with himself, “you must have some sort of comfort, I understand that…. (The holy man nodded his head). It is easy enough to say as many do, leave this man or give me that man, or don’t stand over him or her, the truth is, you want them all full of God—and second chances, and you don’t even know if it is a good or bad thing, giving second chances, good for humanity, or bad for humanity, when they are due to die they should die, but you always try to get to them before me; whose to say what is good and what is bad?”
“I can’t for an instant tell you to leave, but I can stay by his side and pray against these uncertainties, for didn’t the Lord say in so many words: ‘…ye are of more value than the sparrow.’ And is not this sparrow irregular?”’
“Here I confess, we are like publishing a book before the final chapter has been completely written; but you must agree—this man is dying and is in a state of hallucination, he will not even notice the crossover, or pain.”
“But truth be told, essential truth that is, is hidden. It always is.”
“I follow you,” the lank figure said, “that is always so! Perhaps there maybe some violent link in all this, some contradictory fact, some accident or some subtle change to take place,” and death had a feeling, he paused. Even the holy man was reluctantly interested. It meant something, described something, the holy man admitted, he too had intuition, supernatural intuition.
“I never believe in concealing my own thoughts from an intellectual being, such as you,” he said with a quiet offensiveness, “I left that back in the Dark Ages. I will inform you of my guesses and suppositions. At the base of this all, is a man who is due death, as a matter of fact in time to come he may very well die of over drinking, he consumes more alcohol than air, so it would seem. I’ll make you a deal—contract. I’ll leave here for a day, twenty-four hours, and upon my return, you will leave for ten?”
The holy man nodded, and the deal was sealed.




Part Two: The Great War





Chapter One
Rain of Shells


In ill-fitting khakis and a bent helmet, looking like the most un-heroic figure of WWI, Shannon O’Day was in near staggering agony. He took on the look of death, as it was one of the paths his life was bound to take, although, strangely enough, his will, the fight or die, faction of his will, against all odds, its probability, was opposed to it—said no! Therefore it employed its endurance to survive, in this particular case, and death would have to wait—he would be no martyr for a war today. It was his will’s choice, had it been a horrible chance of mutilation, the will’s impulse, its intellectual act, to survive would have lost its strength, and the will’s weakness inseparable, entangled, would have given into other probability odds. Had he been killed or shot in the brain or blown apart and laying about in fragments, from high-explosives shells, the objectors in the will, his will, who in point of fact protested, would not have.

(To the poor fools, necessity gives them death.)

But this was no illusion. He saw his comrade’s, mass dead, dead into her tracks, as if at a rabbit shoot, dead is dead and he seen his comrades bloody. Now looking undetectable beasts and there was nothing unrealistic about it. Death, of course like a vulture, admits naught why it lurks and lingers, it simply waits, loiters about, specifically for you. If you live you live, with memories, if you die, it’s all settled for you. Memories intertwined into nightmares and dreams.
The men in front of you, or in the back of you, or along side of you, in trenches, in the open, traumatized and disemboweled, then shot; and after the numbness—if you are not shot— undeniable compassion of man for man, you have lived and learned. Then he forgets what he learned, and saw, the mind clicks, to the next notch, like a bicycle chain in motion. “No,” his will says, “I shall not be like that, not yet anyhow.” But it is.

(Narrator intercession: He had told an interviewer a month ago, for some New York magazine or newspaper, he couldn’t remember which, doing articles and dispatches on: ‘War and Peace’ he had said to the correspondent: “In war you kill on the side, and for the side you have chosen, then you do what is called ornamental killing—to show off, then you simple kill to kill, even if you don’t want to or need to, you have the skills, the trade, and you want to outwit the enemy, that is why so many soldiers go and become a hired gun after they get out of the military, you become good at it. I am no different than a Chicago Gunman, imported to do killings for Europe, for France, Russia, Bosnia, and England. That’s how I feel. You know what I mean; I become a weasel of death, sent to hunt for the bad guys. The big difference is the hired gunman gets $100 to $400 dollars per person per kill; I got a hot meal if I was lucky.”)

He looked around him in the long narrow trench it was all to quiet, he had passed out, awoke then he knew why it was quiet—the dead are always quiet, there is no quieter more stillness than in a dead body, even if their blood still be warm. One minute they were all laughing, smoking cigarettes, showing each other pictures, getting ready for battle (this was the last day of the battle, April 19, 1916; the battle had gone on for 300-days, 230,000 dead, 700,000 wounded) now empty of life, they were all, all nine of them starting to stiffen as like manikins. He looked at them, two were missing, out of the eleven; he was the twelfth of the squad (the battery). He must have been out for a while, flies had gathered around the bodies, and a stench of death filled the air, he had to leave the trench but which way? Who went were: referring to the Germans and the French?

One should not break from his company or platoon, but surely they thought he was dead, he sobbed, got his emotions out, he was only seventeen, in the night of iron darkness, alone. He filled his lungs with air, as he crawled over the edge of his trench; the battle had gone elsewhere he figured, at least for the moment. Or it had ended. He moved his belly in the direction of the village called Douaumont, and as he moved inch by inch he imagined the comforts of a beautiful woman. The sweet smells of her perfumes, the soft touch of her flesh; when he stopped thinking along those lines, he could hear the bugs moving along side of him, the crickets, the unnamed bugs, as if they were chewing on grass, saw the fireflies.
He didn’t care to be a corporal, he was too young he told the Captain; also he told him he was too young to be in charge of a squad, in charge of men twice his age, but he was in charge, and now injured, his soul sank into oblivion.


Chapter Two
Streets of Paris


(Before the Shelling)



When Shannon O’Day was in Paris, it was a different world to him, before he got sent to defend France, on French soil that was taken over by Germans in February of 1916, called “The Battle of Verdun” and to make his new home in trenches. He was from the Midwest of the Untied States, a somewhat country boy, from a conservative city, who on weekends visited his older brother—older by ten-years—Gus and they’d drink whiskey in the cornfields, as he’d help his brother plant and harvest. Paris was completely different, here people ate outside, on tables spread out, not indoors. Women sat on the church steps knitting with their babies, begging for food, or loose change. Horses pulled grand buggies by Notre Dame Cathedral, while men and women of prestige would disembark them. The Luxembourg Gardens was nearby, passersby looked at him as he’d walk through them, in his uniform, and clap their hands in applause as if to say thank you for coming. And if he could have read their lips, he’d had sworn they were saying, ‘Be patient soldier, the war will soon be over.’ The people even smiled heroically as if saying hurry up and win it for us, make it disappear like smoke. Tell America to send troops over, Shannon had joined the French Army, in fear he’d not be able to see action, and now he was hesitant about seeing the action he so much wanted to classify as adventure.
While in Paris he went to the theater, couldn’t make heads or tails out of it, could only understand a few words of it, it was in French. It was Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” All he could remember was Quasimodo, the disfigured hunchback, and his carrying a woman on his shoulders into the Cathedral. It really didn’t much matter to him, it occupied his time.
He noticed other soldiers having leisure time in Paris; the rest of the world in Paris appeared to be either on edge, busy or in a hurry.
A woman said, “We are pretty in red dressed, don’t you think so?”
She was for sale, and that night with Shannon, they drank some strong red wine, walked by the doors of Notre Dame de Paris, the Rue Saint Jacques, naked as two jaybirds, stopping traffic wherever they went, laughing like he used to do with his brother in the cornfields back home with a bottle of wine or rum or whisky (such other details I must leave out, for whoever has a liking for them, must at this point use his or her imagination).

·

It was not until he woke up, he put two and two together, that he was still alive, and in French dirt, but nearer to Douaumont, crawling inch by inch, that it dawned on him, he was dreaming of the few days he spent in Paris before he got his assignment for this great battle of battles. He was now reluctant to move. He must have crawled quite a distance since last he was conscious, he took as fact.

Chapter Three
The Village of Douaumont



He saw chimneys in the distance, roofs of houses, mostly delegated but a few could be seen erect; he had been in the village called Douaumont before, prior to the 300-day battle, it had about a dozen structures or more, not much more. A few two story buildings, mostly one building connecting to the next structure—wall to wall that is. Narrow doorways, a dirt road for a main street, wide and with embankments on the side, rubbish laying along side the adobe houses, and during its best day it was somewhat rundown, now after the 300-day battle it was completely destroyed, yet he saw roofs and chimneys, and smoke.
Shannon wanted a moment to rest. He wanted to lay hidden until his company found him, or he regained his nerve, or just plain died, the war was not unfinished, perhaps the ongoing battle was, that is all.

He told God he could use a friend now. And he laid there for hours, preoccupied with formless dreams, a brooding mind; remote and unstoppable reminiscing. He was out of the trench, out of the latrine like trench, now in a field of dirt, by a tree, behind a rock. He un-tightened his belt so he could breath better. He had been through it. He was like the enemy, a savage, and brute no better, why should God help him, if not the enemy. He could not hold anything new called humiliation. He had the worse gaunt and grubby appearance a human could have. He was nothing but a sad, pitiful primitive creature.
There he laid blood stained uniform, a scornful indifferent look. “Where’s my men?” he questioned, muttered in his under breath, his mind answered ‘Blown to bloody fragments in the trench!”

((Dozing off and on, dreaming: Was he not the Good Shepard? He questioned himself; if so he left his flock stiff and smelly and dead, he would have given his life for the sheep, his sheep, the ones he was in command of, yet they gave their life for his, so it appeared, and when the wolf came, they left, and then he left, so he felt, and now a voice in his haunting semi-sleep, was saying— ‘let the dead bury the dead’ although he didn’t really say that at the time, he now heard that in his head. His job was to tend to his flock, and he had two of his flock missing, and to the French Army, he was dead, and they said, must had said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead’ and they didn’t tend to their flock. They thought like soldiers, wounded or dead, we are the living, we are the ones that can fight, we are the ones that count, let the Germans have the wounded, they can care for them, we’ll give them medals when the war is over.)(After the war was over he’d be given for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty, by virtue of an act of Congress, to be approved 4 March 1921, the Medal of Honor. But he’d refuse it; saying “Give it to the two missing”; although in 1930, he would take the Croix du Combattant, for valor; feeling it more befitting.))

He talked to himself—anxiously, in a voice, unsteady and near breaking. He was hungry and the sun was coming up, bright like a shinny orange, near flawless, symmetrically round. His mind told him it was breakfast time, he felt in his coat pocket, a piece of old beef jerky, he had saved it from his rations while in the trenches; he pulled it out, unwrapped it, it was only two inches long, but it was enough, and he ate it, like a famished wolf, chewing it like rawhide, squeezing with his teeth every ounce of flavor out of it.



Chapter Four
Drops of Sleep



Corporal O’Day did not sleep, yet he did not feel like he was awake. Light was illuminating his youthful face. He was now the apotheosis of his own soul, he had reached the highest point man could, to the face of God, near death had done this. He had just tasted how the Germans made war. It was as if he had just seen a Great Battle at Troy, endured the bombardment of Troy’s great walls, in his trench, and he was overrun, like Troy was over run. The mystery of war all the chances of this adventure, its charms became real, in this long drawn out day after day battle, but the 19th of April was its epitome, its personification, the image that would be imprinted in his mind for all the days to come. He saw his youthful glorious destiny rising and sinking, all in twenty-four hours.

Could all this good action, to cleanse the world of evil, be a bad one? He questioned such things as he lay there, looking at smoke coming out of a chimney, in the supposedly, deserted village that wasn’t evidently, completely deserted, it was suppose to be, but there was smoke, his intuition was correct. There would be a new page in history written about today, or now it was yesterday, history would write about yesterday he muttered as if talking to the rock he was laying against, then in a generation or so, hidden if not erased with a whole new generation, and new wars, perhaps even greater than this one. It was now an era when each man had his won individual dream. Each one wanted to be all he could, a general, a president of a company, a great writer, a whatever, wherever. Nothing was good enough unless you had it all. Self-interest was the name of the game, the corner-stone to existence, a real existence. A clear hypothesis that would be called ‘The Jazz Age,’ yet to be coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald, with no obstacles, freedom to do as you wished was developing, circulating—America and Europe, to be fully indoctrinated a year after the Great War would have ended.




Chapter Five
Death Reeks (Leticia’s Story)



After the first days of the battle the mother of two children (Leticia Dalasi) was found wandering almost at haphazard among the rubble of the destroyed hamlet, of Douaumont, walking aimlessly, day and night looking for her children; this is indeed the history of her days, after the great bombardment, the battle for Verdun.
She ate little and rested little; she ate like the birds, and slept only because she had to. She had fallen down continuously, as if dead a hundred times, during these first weeks and months.
She had made her new abode, under some demolished ruins, a livable space, held by four crumbling walls, lopsided walls, open door, some straw above her head for a roof, held lightly together by broken beams she had slept on two straw covered rafters avoiding the rats, but had a bed of straw along side one of the walls under her she used when she had no strength to climb the rope ladder to the rafters.
She could nonetheless, feel the rats move above and beneath her, sleeping among the beams or beside the walls; in either case, she watch the heavens through an open space in the roof, a window of sorts.
She’d sleep then go look in the rubble for something that would remind her of her children, sleep again for several hours, and do the same thing over and over and over, day after day, week after week. Her life and death had been marked out for her. There was nobody to hear her murmurs, the names of her children. In the night she walked about half-asleep dreaming. She thought of the days of battle—she had now accepted them. As well as the death of her children, there were no more bargaining or submitting proposals to God. Yet she was half grateful for her shelter, and a morsel of bread. But let it be said, a mad woman is more dangerous than a mad man, more wretched, now it was the 301st day of her tragedy.
She had noticed the shelling had passed, she saw in the distance a curious figure, it had a youthful face, a slim frame, and “What is it?” she questioned.
“Whence does it come?” She murmured, hesitantly looking at him.
“Where was it going?” she murmured, hesitantly, looking out in the fields.
“Let it go where it will, avoid it, let it die,” her mind told her. It was as if death itself was warning her, as if her mind for a moment—woke up, and gave her a heavy jolt.

Leticia watched this mysterious figure wiggle about in its blood soaked cloths. They were just outside the hamlet. As she stared at this young American, dressed as a French soldier, she shivered without being able to tell what for. She felt human to be able to walk around this new discovery she made. She lost the fright and anxiety she had on her face, the drum beat in her heat ceased. She noticed a short of movement to this soldier.

Chapter Six
The First Time


(In a delirium, and half-sleep)



For Shannon O’Day, the victory of the Germans the day before was complete. His eleven men fought like a thousand, they deserved honor for the day, perhaps the two left, the un-killed two, had escaped or were captured, and he wished he knew their fate, but he did not. He had looked behind him as he had crawled throughout the night; it was strewn with dead and the dying. All the roots of resistance must be pulled out from the ground, and the Germans knew this, as did the French, and the English and the Russians.

He knew in his delirium, in his half-sleep, he had been severely wounded, yet he never did surrender; matter-of-fact, as he was thinking all this he knew, because his second self, his mind, like a hidden bug in his subconscious told him all, it said, “You are blood socked, all the way through your cloths. You have been silenced.”

Then he heard a woman’s voice, like an echo, it said, “What is your name?”
Shannon could not answer just hear, he was dying, the loss of blood was extreme, yet the voice, was near all his movement, “You are a brave boy,” this middle aged voice said, an attractive voice, soft voice “a very brave boy, you should be dead. I’m Leticia,” and then he raised one arm to let her know he was not yet dead. She stepped back, thought he was going to attack her, thus, she dealt him a blow at his head with a thick wooden stick, swift as a lioness. This was a woman unobserved by any one around her, and she had many sides to her.



Chapter Seven
The Beast Unhealed
And Edge of the Hamlet



Beauty with Dark Vines

There is strangeness in beauty
Yea! And my heart knows not why
Perhaps God has taken this memory
(forgotten by man)
Yea! Those are the secrets of time
Yea! Beauty with dark vines…

No: 2609 5-3-2009


A wound does not heal quickly: and so Shannon O’Day seriously wounded, was at the mercy of this female observer. She had discovered after a moment, she had miscalculated in what his intentions were; here was a man that had been shot more than once, she could see that plainly now. She looked into the fields: “He must have crawled a long ways to get here, she concluded at the edge of the Hamlet, he must have seen my smoke from the chimney. She dragged him by his feet down a slope into the lair she had fixed up as her home.

Shannon O’Day was even in a more critical condition than Leticia had believed. There was a wound in his shoulder blade, and one above the breast, his collarbone was cracked, but the bullets that whizzed by him none hit or penetrated, or punctuated his lungs, he could recover, Leticia thought.
She was a little nurse, a little sorcerer, and after she had dragged Corporal O’Day, to her lair, laid him upon a bed of straw, covered with a blanket, and treated his wounds with her own simples, or remedies, the collarbone knitted tightly back together, the wounds mended a little in the following days, with convalescent rest and leisure.
One evening, on the eleventh day of his recuperative period, he was able to walk out of the little lair, and seat himself on a large stone, he used for a chair alongside the liar.
“Don’t try to speed things up,” said Leticia. He could see in her eyes a flood of fleeting and mixed thoughts, confusion. And he saw those thoughts coming and going. She smiled with a strain. But this was the first evening, he was back to near normal strength. The evening was quiet.
The middle aged handsome lady, who had fixed her ratted hair, and put on some clean cloths, washed his and her cloths, watched him with delight, gave him a smile, another strained smile, she said to him: “Your wounds have healed, you can walk again, just take your time in talking.” Then there was a hesitation, “Where am I,” he asked.
“Who are you,” she asked.
“My squad, we all got shot up, I’m Corporal O’Day, French Army; but I’m an American.”
This of course brought on a whole world of thoughts. Since he could not talk much, he thought she must think he was still in a state of delirium, and it would last longer, and he’d have to stay with her longer, and she’d keep her ongoing observations of him.
It would seem, the healthier Shannon became, the less Leticia became in knowing what to say and do with the young man, like her children she had taken care of them, and now this man, who was going to leave him, once he was able to, if there was any similarity it might have been in she was to be left alone again; unable to care take, a natural instinct for a mother, and perhaps for many women in general. It was easy to tell a child what to do, where to go. But a soldier, a young man, all shot up, emptied out of war, “Nothing,” you can say “Nothing,” to a man like that, she conclude. She knew the beast in a man, in a soldier; they killed her children with this 300-day battle. She knew they were among the unfound corpses. She was as most women are, attracted to this soldier, whom was to be idealized for his bravery, no matter whose side he was on, and she knew a man loved with his heart, and perhaps she knew he could not give it willingly, she knew that now, not before.
She asked herself a host of questions, concerning this unfortunate soldier, but could answer none of them. She had witnessed him naked, a hard young body, handsome looks, and a man who did not willingly brag of the ordeal he had just been through. Yes indeed, for a young man he was odd, peculiar.
But now she saw peacefulness in his beauty, occupied with nature, plants and the birds that chipper about him…

(…as he walked about the landscape of the hamlet, looking at what the war had done to the town-let, it took on excessive contact, it must had been a noisy 300-days for the village—he concluded, days of bombardment, there was no reconstructing of this, the dirt road had been churned into soup by the German Armor. Old mud holes were filled in with bricks and tiles from smashed houses and chunks of cement and pieces of houses lay about from step to step. Leticia, had given him a highly alcoholic bottle of liqueur, she had taken it off a dead soldier, found by a dead soldier rather, who had been camping out at the edge of town with other soldiers, set fire to several artillery boxes, wooden boxes that held shells, and suddenly income shells from the French came.
She was as was Shannon, feeling the cool air of the afternoon, good smells of France for once. And Shannon was altogether happy for her. Shannon had several times looked out and beyond the edge of town, there was a dog, it had been staring at him, and now the dog had fallen to the ground, hit by a rock from a sling shot, and Leticia, was carrying it to her liar. He knew know where his soup was originating from, the meat in it anyhow.)

and her passiveness of him was becoming too obvious, as if there was another side to her, but she had harnessed it for the moment. Hence, it was that very night, she created a dread about him—inside her mind, she felt he could not see the other side of her face, although she didn’t see it herself completely. And he knew to a certain extent he was isolated, and her mannerisms had changed. But she didn’t ask many questions, and he gave only a few answers. And it was that night she’d wake up and climb down the rope ladder and lay with him, and she did just that, and who knows what was passing in their minds, they both for that evening clung to one another—like white on rice, but she woke up in the wee hours of the morning, screaming, “My Children!”
She cried with almost an accent of rage, “MY CHILDREN!”
Shannon dropped his head and shoulders gently back down into the bed, she had a revolver aimed at his temple.
He accounted for this to himself by saying, “Why then did you save me, if only to sacrifice me for the wrongs mankind has done to you and your children?”
It had seemed to Shannon, it was some kind of atonement, for not taking revenge.
And she answered his question, “Because it is man’s war, not mine.”
There she sat, on the edge of the bed, she remained doubtful on what to do for a time, the gun being lowered and brought back up, and lowered again, “If I had known,” she started to say, and went silent.
Evidently, and this is of course just a conjecture, when the soldier showed up, the whole past faded a little, she had found a preoccupation, something to take her mind off of her children, as survival did, and the battle did, and all these things had ended at once, and here was a soldier in the mist. She meditated dolorously.
“My good action is really a bad one, in that I spared the life of the wolf, to kill the sheep, I and my children are the sheep, and those yet you may very well kill.”
And like a strong vulture with overwhelming wings, he pulled up his arms from under the blanket, with unreasoning calmness, but swift, and in knowing it was just a matter of seconds before she pulled the trigger, he took her arm, and jerked it away, having confidence in his strength now, he turned the gun on her, and forced her finger to pull the trigger, and she didn’t have time to tell him what she wanted to tell him, so I shall tell you, “What am I without my children. A peasant has nothing but her children, men have war to contain them, brag about after it is all over with.” And so death got its warrant fulfilled.
Next there was that everlasting silence of the dead.




Chapter Eight
Breakfast, and
Dead in the Dark



Shannon O’Day stood up covered her body as she lay on the bed. It was all quite incredible he thought. He had managed to survive, and he was still hungry. He made himself a sandwich out of mushrooms, and one piece of bread, that was all that was in the house, covered up, so the ants and mice and rats and insects didn’t eat it. He took a bite, he started to chew it, and couldn’t. He wrapped it back up in the cloth it had been wrapped in, put it in his pocket for later.
He now proceeded to find his Battalion, and as he walked out of the hamlet, he thought of home, of his brother Gus: his mother had raised him and Gus, with the help of his grandfather, they both had passed on, the grandfather of a stroke, and the mother of old age, she had had him in her late forties, and his father had left before he was born, Gus and Shannon were half brothers, same mother different fathers. He remembered what he said, “We see old loved ones and friends pass away and we regard them no more than a lost platoon, or a pass season.” He hoped this was true because he didn’t want to remember anything of the past eleven days.





Dead in the Dark
(A poem by Shannon O’Day)

They’re dead, in the dark
These young rage bag soldiers
Like rats in the filthy trenches—
Shapeless bodies, flung feet apart
Blue, stiff bodies in the dark:
Victims of manmade wars,
By creatures that orbit the earth.
The rats are neutral, still as stars,
With corkscrew noses, and
Strange fury bones….
Dissolved now, like ashes in smoke—
By the creatures that orbit the earth.

No: 2608 (5-2-2009)




Part Three: Home Sweet Home




Chapter One
A Soldier Goes Home



Shannon O’Day, returned to the United States in the summer of 1919 twenty-years old now. He had spent free time along the Rhine with some French soldiers, and German girls before the corporal caught his ship back home; not beautiful, more plain than pretty. In the few pictures he took, you got just a glimpse of the Rhine. By the time Shannon O’Day returned home, all the celebrations had come and passed. He was too late, hysteria had filled the cities, now peace had set in, and reactions of the people were back to normal—just to be written for posterity’s sake. Shannon needed someone, anybody would do, to talk to, to have listened to him, so he could get it all out, unbolted.
As people listened to Shannon it appeared they wanted his stories to be more fictionalized, and he accommodated them, so they’d continue to listen, yet it was drowning him. He didn’t like being vulnerable, a side show, with his lies; unimportant lies to him, merely entertainment for the listeners.

During this time, fall had set into Minnesota, and deeply into the city of St. Paul. He slept long hours, eating at a bar and restaurant, called, “The Coney Island Bar,” on St. Peter’s Street, between 6th and 7th streets, it was a short walk from his apartment on Wabasha Street. In the evenings he’d fiddle on an old brown and black faded guitar, too small for him but he had purchased it at one of the many pawn shops along Wabasha.
When drunk, and drunk he was mostly during these months after his return from Europe, and when his bar friends were drunk, he was a hero to many, and sober, only to his brother Gus was he a hero, who had a little farm a short ways outside the city limits, heading towards Stillwater township.
A little ways away from the Coney Island Bar, that made delicious Coney Island Hot Dogs, made them with raw unions, and lots of hamburger with beans and an Italian sauce, and cheese, he’d head onto the Gem Bar, a more bar type bar, with cool reeking smells and moistness of a bar.
It was this one night after Shannon O’Day had been home, three months, near winter of 1919, when he went into the Gem Bar, she was a waitress, and she smoothed her apron out when she saw him.
“Do you want a beer?” Sally-Anne Como asked, then thought of what she said, “I, mean, what would you like sir?”
“Yeah!” said Shannon, with tired and bloodshot eyes, which scanned her as if he was in a robot.
“I know your brother Gus, he comes in her off and on, talks about you quite a lot, tells us girls here about your times in Germany, you know, the Great War?” She was completely fascinated with him.
“I’ll bet he does,” Shannon said with a chuckle.
“Yeah, he relay does,” remarked Sally-Anne.
“After work some day I’d like to take you over to the Coney Island Bar and buy you a Coney Island, okay?”
“Yeah,” commented Sally-Anne, then added, “Uncle Isaiah says he knows yaw!” Shannon looked at the big Blackman behind he bar, he looked familiar, “Yeah, I know him, all right,” said Shannon, “it’s been a while since I saw him, he was old when I knew him some years ago, and he looks old now, I guess, I’m surprised to see him still kicking.”
“Well, I suppose I better get back to work,” she said.
Shannon looked at her, he liked her, he liked her very much, and he looked at her for a long time, “Have you got the newspaper?” he asked.
She brought the paper over to him, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. And as he read it, he looked at Old Uncle Isaiah, remembering the first time he saw him, met it:

(Daydreaming) It was on Nigger Roe, that’s what we all called it; we all knew where it was, on Rondo, I had never walked that street alone, matter-of-fact, I had never walked that street at all, rode by it, down it, rode around it with a few friends, through its neighborhoods. And this one night, a weekend night, late after the bars closed, I met Hank Lowery, and Seven Lundberg, and Charley Lund we all went down to Nigger Town, to this after hours club. That was the night I met the man they called Uncle Isaiah, he had a crowbar lying on an old wooden table, alongside the door entrance to the after-hours joint. I presupposed he was the bouncer.
“Youall ole-enough to drink whitey?” he asked. He had already let my friends through, put an ink stamp on their hand.
“All right, all right,” he said “no reason to be afraid of this big black nigger, you ever been so close to one before?”
And I didn’t say a word, and to this day, I have never seen a man laugh so hard, laughing behind his laughing, until he had to take hold of his stomach, undo a few buttons on his shirt, or they’d pop off. I was all of fourteen-years old then. Gus was to catch up with us, but he hadn’t showed up yet.
“Jes’ call me Uncle Isaiah, this her’ crowbar aint fer you son, it fer those wild ones that is a-comin’, they jes’ is not her yet…! I knowen you aint no trouble maker, cuz you is too scared to be one, so, you go-on in dhere, and be my guest.”

After going to the after-hours joint several times Uncle Isaiah would say to me, chidingly, and then jokingly, “Youall’s goin’ in dhere to try and see dhe black girl’s behinds, pumping up and down inside those dresses until somebody stops dhem,” then he’d look at me again and say, “Yippee!”



“Sally-Anne,” yelled Shannon, and she come over and stood by him, “Sally-Anne, please don’t muss up the paper next time, no one can read it proper.”
She stood there a moment, watched him unfold the paper again, trying to iron out the wrinkles on the table with the palms his hands, he liked reading the paper.
“You are an odd one,” she said with a peculiar look on her face, “but I like heroes, I’ll meet you at the Coney Island Bar whenever you want!”
“Good,” said Shannon, “how old are you?”
“I’ll tell you, but you have to keep it hushed up, I’m seventeen-years old.”
“Yeah,” said Shannon, “I thought as much.”
“You bet.”
“Couldn’t you get in trouble for lying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you know. You can be my beau, okay?”
“Sure. I’m your girl now.”
“Sure you’re sure?” asked Shannon putting on a serious face.
“If you’re sure, I’m sure, and if you’re sure you love me, I can even be surer!”
“Uh, hah…maybe!”
“Will you love me forever?”
“Sure, why not!”
“You run along now, I got work to do,” said Sally-Anne, happy as a peacock, flapping its colorful wings.
She put his empty beer bottle on her try and brought it up to the bartender, Uncle Isaiah, and he dropped it back into a box, below him, and he started wiping down the counter, which he did quite often.



Chapter Two
The Prison


It was in 1921, Shannon O’Day was at the Gem Bar reading the paper, reading about two soldiers that had been captured the last day of the battle for Verdun, they had given their story to a magazine, and the newspapers picked up on it, nationally; when he read the names of the two soldiers, it was the very two Shannon had lost account of.

The extract read:


…two sentinels stood guard on duty before the closed door of the small prison…; in the late hours of the night a German soldier would come with a lantern in his hand, transverse the halls, from cell to cell, made himself known to all the sentries, and ordered all the guards to stand at attention for inspection. He then entered each prison’s cell, leaving the door ajar, to allow fresh air to enter. The dungeon was moist and dark, and silent. —it was gloom and shadows, mostly sleeping men; almost peaceful, until he’d show up. We’d had been laying on a bundle of straw, some men slept deeply, no one tried to escape.
The man they called captain, moved close to each one of us, standing tall by the frames of our prison doors, noiselessly standing. He’d press his clinched hands against our throats, his eyes gave a gesture of motionless terror—dots for pupils, he’d tell us to kneel and pray, he’d press his revolver to our lips, the whites of his eyes would open up wide, a dim light in them.
“Ah,” said he, “it is you tonight,” and he’d take one of us out of the cell, out and down the hallway, out through the metal doors of the prison, there beyond, never to return, or be seen, or heard of again. Then one day the doors opened and a French Officer, an American and English officer stood by and one of them said, and I can’t remember which one, said it, “Your free, what do you understand by that?”
I thought this at the time, but didn’t say it, but I’ll say it now what I thought, because now I fully understand it: each of us, and all owe to each, a whole life, in some kind of peaceful, social order, beyond this, simple law, there is nothing but war. No justice no equity to build for the future, no obligatory service to mankind. I want peace, that last word is what I told him, “We found peace!”


“What are you reading, you’re so intense?” asked Sally-Anne, Como, to Shannon.
“Nothing much, just a fling of manure, he throws the paper onto Sally-Anne’s tray, “it belongs in the sewer.”

Chapter Three
Gem Bar, Isaiah Christianson


It was old Isaiah Christianson, Uncle Isaiah to most folks he knew, fifteen-years he worked at the Gem Bar, Sally-Anne liked working there, it was slow during the day, and she had her nights free. The bar was cool but dim, as most bars are, but the Gem was dimmer, and Shannon O’Day liked the bar for that very reason also, a quiet kind of bar.
Dim perhaps because the owner—Jefferson Manning, never washed the windows. Isaiah would tell the customers, the owner liked it that way, and it kept out the young noisy, crowd. Isaiah would say, “Nobody can see in, and no body can see out, therefore, nobody knows anybody’s business, and that way nobody can get into trouble. And so he just had the old folks come in, mostly old folks, a few like Gus and Shannon O’Day, but very few. And Old Isaiah was getting very old, and slow, and he no longer worked at any after-hours joints, like he used to some years back, he needed his sleep. He’d even play cards and dice with the customer that is how slow it got. And to be frank, Old Isaiah couldn’t see that clear anymore, anyways, a thick yellowish gook surrounded his eyes.
Mr. Jefferson Manning, was a big man, weighted some 400-pounds. Wore small glasses, ate all day long, eggs and pickles, and fried hamburger, and fried chicken and watermelon, and cakes, and pies, and popcorn, then would go up to the Coney Island Bar, and eat a half dozen Coney Island hotdogs in a fat bun, with chili been sauce, and cheese, and raw onions. He’d sit by the big gas stove in the middle of the floor of the bar, and wash it all down with two or three beers, then return to his apartment on top of his Gem Bar, take a two hour nap, and start the routine all over again. But he was going broke; he needed more money, even though his bar was paid for, left to him by his parents. And he was thinking, when he came in after taking that two-hour nape one spring day, in 1922, and he looked at those dirty windows, and he looked and he looked, and he formed an idea.



Chapter Four
Jobless Isaiah


Old Isaiah Christianson was fired, Mr. Manning, the owner of the Gem Bar, had come down from a nap, looked at his windows, looked at Sally-Anne, never even looked at Isaiah, and said “Sally-Anne, you’re the new bartender,” Isaiah’s fired, “I hope you know his duties, and if you don’t I’m sure it will not take you all that long to figure them out, get to it.”
Isaiah was in shock, he didn’t say a word, he was just too dumbfounded, he was handed a check for the weeks pay, and $500-dollars in cash, for severance pay, saying “I got new plans Isaiah, and you’re not in them, you just don’t fit, sorry!”
So he himself, took a bucket of hot water, and soap, and several rages, and washed those windows clean, as clean and clear as the ice on the Mississippi River, a few blocks away. And he helped paint it, painted the whole bar, walls and all the woodwork, hired Shannon and Gus and Sally-Anne after hours, and they painted it in two days. Then he bought a big sign that read, “Live Music Nightly, Jazz!”
And the crowd started coming in, almost immediately, and in two months he was making more money, than he had made in the whole previous year.
Well, this didn’t sit well with Isaiah, not one bit; he took a disliking for it all, and rented an apartment across the street, by a new hamburger joint called “White Castle”. And he’d sit outside on a chair, a bottle of whiskey in his hands and these little hamburgers, eating one after he other, and he’d cuss all the customers that went into the bar, and he called Mr. Manning every fat name he could think of and made a few up.
Some days he’d sit on the curb, until Mr. Manning called the police, and got a court order for him to stop his monkey business, stop being a pain in the ass for everybody, to stop his nonsense. The judge warned him that they had places for mentally ill folk, although everyone knew it was anger that got Uncle Isaiah’s goat.
And every week, when one of the waitresses would clean the windows now, Isaiah would throw dirt at the window, he actually had a little supply of it in little white sacks, he pull one out of his coat, and it was fine sand, and he’d spat in it, to get it nice and gooey, then throw it at the window. He even told Shannon one day when he was about to enter the bar, “Youall tell um, I goin’ to hit him ef’in I ever sees him alone.”



Chapter Five
Death


After a while old Isaiah only came out of his apartment on occasions, lost 100-pounds, of his 190-pounds he had at one time. His eyes looked like cracked eggs, in deep sockets, skin and face unkempt, unshaven, warts and pimples all over him. I’m not saying he forgot about what he said concerning revenge on the fat man, he never did forget, he just never got around to doing it, and if he did, when he did, it was too late, because when he got to that point, Mr. Manning had died and left him holding the bag full of sand, which he never threw once he was six feet under, then three months after Jefferson Manning died, he died.
Manning died at fifty-three years old, a heart attack. Uncle Isaiah, at 73, of cancer; It would seem after he got fired he never recovered from the wound, worse than Shannon’s in combat, a deeper scare I’d say.
It wasn’t long after both their deaths, those windows got dirty again anyhow, and one of Manning’s relatives by the last name of Ingway, took over the Gem Bar, that was in 1923, they had closed the bar down for a spell I guess.