The stranger does not move. Someone throws a stone, and you could swear that it struck him squarely on the chest, but the stranger does not flinch, and the stone sails past to thud in the dirt.
I’ll take that as a refusal,” says the stranger. His voice is low and soft, yet you, at the back of the crowd, hear him as clearly as if he stood at your side. “Very well—if you will not send your children forth, then I will have to take the battle to them.” It is surely an impotent threat, and yet your skin crawls, and the urge to rush home and sweep your son into your arms is almost overwhelming.
The stranger tips his hat in a gesture at once courteous and menacing. Then he turns and melts away into the press of foot traffic, leaving you to blink and shake yourself, as if waking from a dream that is already fading from memory.
Early next morning, the wailing begins. In households scattered across the city, mothers and fathers arise from their beds to find their doors still firmly bolted, their windows still shut fast, the embers in their hearth fires still glowing, and their beloved children cold and still. A baker’s daughter, not yet ten years old, her skin mysteriously covered in a mass of pustules where none existed the day before. A wealthy merchant’s son, who had celebrated his fifth birthday the week before, his limbs twisted into impossible and agonising shapes. A farmer’s daughter on the cusp of adulthood, come to visit her city cousin, her corpse oddly deflated, as if she had been drained of her blood. A pauper’s son, still in swaddling, seemingly asleep in his mother’s arms, until the swaddling is unwrapped to reveal his belly sliced open and his innards rearranged. Your own child is unscathed, and for this you feel both profoundly grateful and obscurely guilty.
Some of the bereaved parents take to the streets, weeping and wailing in their sackcloth and ashes. You view these mourners out of the corner of your eye with a kind of superstitious dread, as if confronting them fully with your gaze were to invite the same fate upon you.
When the Foe returns to the gate, none dare cast another stone.
“Send me your children,” he repeats. “The war has begun, and will be waged whether you choose to or not.”
“We will not, sir,” pronounces the mayor. Her voice shakes, yet she stands resolute, her hands clenched in fists at her side. Her own child, a pretty little thing with coppery skin and hair like midnight, clings to her skirts and gazes up at the Foe with wide, innocent eyes. “If you want war, then you shall have it, but it will be with us,”—she gestures at the adults gathered behind her—“not with our children.”
The Foe laughs. It is a sound redolent of agony and death, of festering battleground wounds and vicious back-alley diseases.
“Perhaps I will have you, one day,” he says with a nod, “after I have consumed your children.”
“Why?”
The crowd stirs and parts to reveal a small child in its midst. He steps forward fearlessly and looks up at the Foe, his little brow creased with confusion. “Why must we fight you?”
The Foe crouches down to bring himself eye to eye with the child. He traces a forefinger down the boy’s cheek in a parody of affection, leaving a livid scar in its wake.
“Just because, little one,” he says, “just because.”
***
Again the people refuse, and again a terrible blight ravages the children of the city. Again, your child survives. But your sister is not so fortunate; her youngest child lies lifeless. Where there had been a tiny graze on her chin the day before, ropy flesh has grown to cover her mouth, nose and eyes. It falls upon you to prepare the body for burial, as your sister is catatonic with grief. You brush your niece’s hair as gently as you can manage, yet still it pulls away from her scalp in clumps.
You remember the lively girl she used to be. Always singing, always dancing, her auburn curls bouncing and aglow in the sunlight. This grotesque corpse is not the last memory you want your sister to have. You bind it up in its shroud, wrapping layer upon layer tightly around the body until it gives only a suggestion of a human form beneath the white cloth.
When you return home, your son is dressing himself in a suit of paper, painted to look like a knight’s armour. He picks up a wooden sword and hefts it, turning it this way and that as if examining the keenness of its blade.
“What are you doing?” you ask, although you already know the answer; it sits unspoken deep in your belly.
“I’m preparing for battle,” he says. He takes up one of your old pots and puts it on his head, then looks up at you earnestly. The pot handles stick out past his ears. Another time it would be comical. “Do you think I am ready?”
No, no, no, you want to scream, you will never be ready, nobody could ever be ready for this. But instead you bend and kiss the tip of his nose.
“Yes,” you say. “You are ready.”
***
The children gather at dawn. They file through the city gates, woefully underprepared in their makeshift armour and toy weapons. They do not go forth into battle as adults do, marching with dour faces and heavy hearts in regimented lines. They skip and stumble, sing and chatter, in a joyous, ragtag mob. Along the walls, the parents stand in mute sentinel. This is not their battle, although every one of them wishes it were.
“So many?” You cannot say from this distance, but the Foe seems to smirk. “That would be an unfair fight. No, I shall choose your champions. You, you, you . . . ” He makes his choices with no discernible rhyme or reason; boy or girl, big or small, rich or poor, strong or weak, no one factor confers safety. His opponents selected, he sends the remainder back through the gates into the arms of their deliriously relieved parents.
Your son is one of the chosen. You hold yourself rigid and still, almost not daring to breathe, as if the slightest movement might tip the balance in the Foe’s favour.
It is still impossible to discern the Foe’s true form. He seems to multiply tenfold, one hundredfold, each of his avatars looming over an opponent in the child army. He is made of fangs, made of knives, made of poison, made of smoke, and your eyes water as you try to behold him.
As the sun rises over the horizon, the children’s costumes transform. No longer clad in paper and cloth, they stand resplendent in gleaming metal armour. Richly coloured plumes fly from their helmets, and their toy weapons are turned into lethal-looking daggers and swords.
With a roar, the Foe descends upon them, and the battle begins. It is like no other war you have ever seen; the children fight as if it is a game, their faces incongruously serene or oddly joyous. There are as many cries of laughter ringing out across the battlefield as there are of pain. And just like in a game, they commit themselves fully, body and soul, to the moment.
It is difficult to make out the details of the battle; every time a child’s weapon connects with the nebulous form of the Foe, the scene reverts, and for a blink of an eye the child stands once more in paper armour, waving a wooden sword at nothing. You lose sight of your son in the melee, then find him again; there, in the thick of the battle. He thrusts his sword into the Foe, who shudders and momentarily disappears. But the Foe soon recovers and strikes back with a vicious blow that sends your child sprawling in the dust.
You dare not scream, dare not show your fear when below you, the children fight with such strength and courage. All you can do is clamp your fist at your mouth to stifle your cries, and watch.
The battle wages on until sunset. Only then may the adults venture forth and gather up the bodies of the fallen. Your son still stands, but barely; his skin is pale and clammy and his breathing is laboured. In the days that follow, he eats little, sleeps a lot, and is often found gazing off into the distance, lost in the memories of the war that is not yet over.
Day after day the Foe returns, with no respite. And day after day, the children go to war.
One day, your son does not return.
You lift the battered old pot from his head and caress his sweat-dampened curls before carrying him home. Unlike so many other casualties, he looks unmarred, as if he is merely sleep
ing. You sing his favourite lullaby as you bathe him and wrap him in his shroud, but as the moment comes to cover his face, it suddenly hits you, as if the Foe’s sword has pierced your heart and twisted—
Your son is dead.
You are suddenly blinded by tears. Where once you were fearful of them, now you take your place alongside the other bereft mothers and fathers in a perverse fellowship. You sob, you wail, you mourn, and you wish that your tears were your lifeblood, for then surely this agony would come to an end.
And the war wages on.
THE ADDITION
Bentley Little
Bentley Little is an inmate of San Quentin serving a double life sentence. His only contact with the outside world is through his stories.
The sound of the Today show was suddenly drowned out by machinery.
Cindy looked up from the kitchen table, startled. The noise was loud. And close. The Hendersons down the street were supposed to have their house fumigated sometime this week, but the raucous din outside did not sound like it had anything to do with fumigation, and it was nearer than the Hendersons’. In fact, it seemed to be coming from the backyard.
She stood, instinctively pulling her bathrobe tighter. Jim had left over an hour ago for Chicago and, as she usually did when he was off on one of his business trips, Cindy had decided to give herself a vacation. Instead of instantly clearing the breakfast dishes and cleaning the house, she’d let everything go and remained here in the kitchen, leisurely reading the newspaper, sipping her coffee and watching TV.
She looked toward the closed drapes covering the sliding glass door in the living room.
Now she heard voices, men’s voices, and the sound of something heavy being dropped onto the patio.
She hesitated for a moment. If she’d been dressed and working about the house, she would have had no qualms about going outside to see what was happening. But right now she did not feel ready for confrontation. The fact that she was in her nightie and bathrobe made her vulnerable, and she found herself intimidated by the noise outside, afraid to look and see what was going on. Her privacy had been invaded, and the intrusion had bullied her into inaction.
From the other side of the drapes, the other side of the glass, came a low mechanical grinding.
She tiptoed quietly across the living room, pulled open the side of the curtain, peeked out.
There was a cement mixer in her backyard.
She blinked.
It was on and it was mixing, and there was a pile of sand and rock piled on a piece of plyboard next to it, with several large wooden beams lying on the lawn, one of them squashing her rose bush. Three young, heavily muscled construction workers were pushing wheelbarrows filled with cinderblocks around the side of the house.
She quickly closed the curtain, her heart pounding.
What was going on here?
She rushed back to the bedroom, put on a shirt, pulled on a sweater, slipped into some jeans and a pair of sandals. She didn’t want to open the sliding doors, didn’t want the construction workers to see into her home, so she went out the front door instead, hurrying around the side of the around to the back.
There were five workers now. Three muscled young white guys, one older Mexican man and a tan, smug-looking yuppie in a business suit, talking on a cell phone. The yuppie was holding a clipboard and appeared to be in charge, so she walked directly up to him. He saw her, smiled, nodded, and quickly finished up his phone call. “Hello,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to know what you’re doing in my backyard.”
He looked at his watch. “Oh, is it too early? We were told that anytime after eight was acceptable.”
“There’s been a big mistake here. You obviously have the wrong house. My husband and I are not having any work done—” She looked at the bricks and boards. “—or anything built. So I’m afraid you’re going to have to stop and clear out.”
The man frowned, looked down at his clipboard. “This is one-two-one Allen Street, right?”
Cindy nodded, taken aback. “Yes.”
“And you’re Mrs. Whiting? Mrs. Cindy Whiting?”
She felt suddenly ill at ease, though she did not know why. “Yes.”
He smiled, looked up at her. “Then everything’s in order.”
“Nothing’s in order! I don’t know what you’re talking about! We never hired you. We—”
“Maybe your husband hired us. I don’t know. All I know is that we got this work order, prepaid, and we’re to construct a one-room addition. Blueprints have been approved, city licenses have been issued, the project’s a go.”
Was it possible? Could Jim have hired these men without telling her? She went over it in her mind and decided that no, it was not possible. There was no way he would have decided on his own to have an extra room added on to their house without letting her know. It was simply not something he would do.
The thought occurred to her that maybe he was having some sort of mental breakdown or was in the first stages of Alzheimer’s. That would explain such an action.
But he would have had to make arrangements, phone calls. In other words, it would have taken a concerted organized effort. That pretty much ruled out an isolated act of lunacy.
She didn’t want to say anything more in front of this man, in front of these workers, and she held up a hand. “Just stop what you’re doing and let me call my husband. Take a break or something. I need to get this all straightened out.”
The young man smiled insincerely. “I’m afraid we can’t do that, Mrs. Whiting. The men get a bonus if this project is finished early.”
“Who’s offering the bonus?”
“Wilton Construction. Our firm. It’s company policy.”
She took a deep breath. “Someone paid for this. That means you have a check or a Visa bill or a signature or . . . something. I need to see that, to find out who authorized this work, because I assure you, it wasn’t my husband or myself.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to divulge financial information. That’s confidential.”
“Confidential! This is my house! Don’t you think I have a right to know what the hell’s going on here?”
“By law, ma’am, all we are required to do is inform you that we are beginning construction. I have done so. Now I’m afraid we’re going to need you to stay clear of this site. We have a lot of work to do.”
He turned away, dismissing her, and Cindy had the sudden urge to pick up one of the long beams from the lawn and smack his head.
She didn’t, though. Instead, she went inside, got out the phonebook, found the number for Wilton Construction and called. She talked to a secretary. Then a supervisor. Then another secretary. Then the owner, John P. Wilton, himself.
She might as well have been talking to the yuppie in the yard. None of the people to whom she spoke offered any help or assistance, and Wilton was downright hostile, apparently angry over being disturbed, informing her in a cold disdainful voice that her name was on the work order only as a contact but that she had no authority to stop or delay the project since she was not the person paying for it.
“Who is?” she demanded. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“I’m sorry. I cannot help you.”
The line went dead.
She stayed there for a moment, unmoving, the receiver still in her hand, a dial tone buzzing in her ear, shocked by the rudeness and discourtesy she’d encountered.
Not knowing what to do next, she called the police, explaining patiently that there was an unwanted construction crew at her home preparing to tear apart the house without her permission. The men were bullying and threatening, and she wanted someone to come out and make them stop. They were trespassing, and she wanted them off her property.
Twenty minutes later, a patrol car pulled up in front of the curb, and she watched as a uniformed officer emerged from the vehicle. She met him on the front lawn and quickly explained the sequence of events: how she
’d heard the noise, talked to the foreman or whoever he was, then called the owner of the construction company.
“They’re still here,” she said, pointing down the side of the house to the backyard.
The policeman looked at the two trucks parked in the driveway, then nodded and hitched up his belt. “Would you like to come back with me so we can all discuss this and get to the bottom of it?”
She shook her head, feeling inexplicably afraid, not wanting to confront the yuppie again. “No, no. Couldn’t you just handle it? I mean, I’ve already talked to . . .” She suddenly realized that she didn’t even know the man’s name. “I just want them gone,” she said.
“I’ll see what I can do, ma’am.”
Cindy watched him walk down the cement path that led to the backyard and stop before the business-suited foreman. The policeman spoke for several moments, then gestured toward the front yard where she stood. The man from the construction company looked over at her, and she hurried into the house, heart pounding. She did not want to be seen, but she realized even as she shut the front door behind her that it was an irrational impulse. Obviously, she was the one who had called the police, and even if the cop didn’t tell the foreman who had made the complaint—which of course he had to do—the man would still know because the policeman would be repeating the exact same things she had said only fifteen minutes before.
So why was she so afraid? Why didn’t she march out there and get in on the action, make her case while the cop was there to back her up?
She didn’t know, but she couldn’t do that. Apprehensively, she peeked out the back curtains.
The two men were laughing together, the amused camaraderie of compatible guys sharing a joke, and she was suddenly sure that they were laughing at her, that they were both having a hearty chuckle at her expense, the frightened jittery woman who had called the police to solve a nonexistent problem. The work was continuing unabated, no one was making any effort to pack up and leave, there was no acknowledgment that Wilton Construction was doing anything wrong.
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