Instantly, the weapon roared to life. White smoke filled his vision just beyond the barrel as the burned powder discharged out the end. Standing on both sides of him, a loud cheer was sounded.
“That’s remarkable shootin’ there, Private,” Sgt. Cooper shouted loudly. “If that were a Yank, ya would’ve kilt ‘im.”
“Yes Sir, Sgt. Cooper,” Geoff replied proudly.
“You have a regular sharp shooter here, Sarge,” one of the privates commented.
“I’ll say we have. Dang son, ya might be useful after all.”
Geoff grinned ear to ear, proud of his new found skill. As several of the other soldiers slapped his back in praise, he looked over at David to see his reaction. David stood with his arms crossed and his face had lost all expression.
“I’m a sharp shooter. Cool, huh?” Geoff yelled over to David, now standing back from the crowd.
David stared back at Geoff. With obvious disgust, he uttered one word:
“Swell.”
-----*-----*-----*-----
With training complete for the day, the two marched slowly back to their tent. David was strangely quiet as Geoff chatted away.
“Man, I wish my dad could’ve seen me today. I was on fire. He taught me how to shoot, you know,” he said, glancing over to David briefly, then continuing. “He used to take my brother and me shooting all the time, although we used to shoot clay pigeons and not with a black powder gun. We used shotguns.”
He looked to David for a moment. As David walked, he winced slightly from his wound, but remained quiet. Geoff continued with his story.
“I wonder if they have shotguns. They must have shotguns. I wonder why they don’t use ‘em,” he said in quick succession.
He glanced again at David, then continued, “Man, I can’t wait to shoot again. Wasn’t today a lot of fun?”
“Swell… just swell.”
Geoff stopped a moment and stared at David, quietly making a protest. David ignored the teen and kept limping along the road between the rows of tents.
“Dude, what’s the deal with you? Why are you acting like such a baby?” Geoff blurted in frustration.
David stopped. He took a deep breath and winced again. As Geoff caught up beside him, he stared back in mild anger.
“What’s your problem, man? Ever since I showed you up at the shooting range, you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder. What are you, jealous because I’m doing better than you or something?”
David shook his head in disgust.
“Well Dude, I’d say you did a great job today at complicating our task.”
“What do you mean?” Geoff asked, his expression instantly changing from antagonistic to surprise.
“What the hell were you thinking out there today? Sharp Shooter? Holy crap man, could you have proved yourself anymore useful to these guys today? Maybe you should have told the sergeant you’d wipe his ass for him too. You’d be his favorite. Hell, he’d never forget you then.”
David paused and let his message sink in. As Geoff began to realize his mistake, David continued:
“We’re trying to keep a low profile and stay out of the line of fire, remember? You just made things a lot more difficult. Let me ask you this… when it comes to fighting, who do you think is more valuable: a sharp shooter or a common soldier?”
“A sharp shooter,” Geoff responded dryly.
“Yeah… so now you’re part of a small and elite group… one that’s easy to keep track of. You’ve now made the task of developing and carrying out a secret plan just that much harder. Geoff, I know it’s a thrill being good at something, but this is definitely NOT the time to prove that skill.”
Geoff’s face lost expression. He felt embarrassed and stupid.
“Sorry man, I guess I just wasn’t thinking. Maybe I can just pretend it was all just a fluke… that I just got lucky out there today and shoot really bad tomorrow.”
“No way… they won’t buy it for one second. If you start missing, they’ll know you’re up to something,” David countered. “No, you’re going to have to keep putting in the same performance.”
“So what do we do now?” he asked, considering the impact on his plan to save Bobby.
“I don’t know yet. We’re just going to have to watch and see how this all plays out,” David responded. “But from this time forward, keep a low profile.”
Geoff acknowledged his message with a nod. As the two continued on toward their tent, Geoff spoke:
“So, what did you think of my shooting?”
“You were amazing,” David said with a smirk.
-----*-----*-----*-----
For the next two weeks, David and Geoff trained as soldiers, drilling for hours in battle procedures and commands. From marching and formations, to care of weapons, no time was wasted preparing the new recruits for battle. Although David’s wound slowed his progress at first, by the end of the second week, he barely took notice of the pain.
Each night, as the day came to a close, the two huddled around their campfire, ate their meager rations and sipped their coffee. Even before the bugler sounded out evening Taps, exhaustion forced them both early to bed…
David stared into the glow of the crackling fire and yawned. Looking into his tin, he swirled his coffee several times and contemplated drinking the remaining contents. Holding the metal cup out in front of him, he carefully came to a standing position. With another great yawn, he stretched out his arms, accidentally spilling the contents on the ground.
“Well, I guess that struggle is over,” he said.
“What struggle,” Geoff asked, his own concentration now broken from the fire.
“I was struggling over whether or not I should toss that load of swill.”
Geoff smiled blandly and replied, “It sure ain’t Starbucks.”
“I’m not sure if I’d even classify it as coffee. What the hell did they make this stuff out of, Acorns?” he joked.
“I just figured they scraped the crud off a bunch of shoes, dumped it in a sack and called it coffee,” Geoff continued with the humorous line.
David yawned again, then stretched his hands out over the fire. He looked around the sea of white canvas tents and noted the same activity taking place at the other sites.
“You know, at times, I kind of missed this,” he said fondly.
“Missed what?” Geoff asked, barely paying attention.
“This…,” David responded. He stretched out his arm and pointed all around him. “…the cool nights, the warm fires, the smell of burning wood.”
Geoff cocked his head to one side and noted the fires burning up the line.
“Actually, it reminds me of camping with my dad and Bobby.”
“Did you do a lot with them?”
“Yeah, quite a bit,” Geoff responded. He thought a moment, then continued, “Once a year, my dad would take us on a hunting trip. Sometimes we hunted here in Tennessee, other times he’d take us to places like Colorado and Montana.”
“I’ve never been much of a hunter, but it sounds like fun, especially for a couple of boys growing up,” David responded sincerely.
“It was amazing. Before the trip, Bobby and I would practice shooting for weeks with my dad. That was really exciting,” Geoff said. He took a sip of his coffee and continued. “When we were younger, we would get home from school, find some sticks and pretended to be stalking bears and antelope. Then, a few days before we left, we’d lay all our stuff out at the edge of our beds. It drove our mom crazy… she’s a neat freak, so seeing the clothes lying around really caused some problems.”
David smiled at Geoff’s enthusiasm.
“Did you guy’s ever shoot anything?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. Sometimes we brought home deer. Other times it was cool stuff like a bear or wild boar,” Geoff answered energetically.
“Wow, a bear. I’m betting that’d make a mighty fine rug,” David joked.
“Nah, no rugs, but we did eat him.”
&n
bsp; “Really? Bear meat?” David asked with surprise.
“Of course, we ate everything we shot. Nothing went to waste. My dad made sure of that,” he responded proudly. “One time, my dad made bear tongue stew.”
“YUCK!” David exclaimed, his face grimacing.
“Yeah, it really wasn’t that good… but Bobby liked it,” he replied, then added, “Funny, he was always the experimental kind. No matter what it was, he’d try it. One time when we were kids, I dared him to eat an inchworm. Like it was a candy or something, he just snapped it right up and ate it. Boy, he made me laugh.”
“I had a friend who was like that once… daring. We all borrowed our mom’s umbrellas and pretended they were parachutes. We ran around jumping off things, seeing if they really would slow us down. Our friend Al, decided it would be fun to jump off his mom’s porch balcony.”
“I can see this one coming a mile away,” Geoff laughed.
“Yup, you guessed it. He climbed out a bedroom window, onto the porch. With that stupid little umbrella in his hand, fearless Al jumped.”
“So what happened?”
“The umbrella folded up like an accordion.”
“Duh… I figured that, but what happened to Al?”
“Well, shortly thereafter, he developed welts on his butt.”
“Oh man, he landed on his ass?” Geoff asked, laughing.
“Nope. He landed on his feet,” David responded with a straight face.
“I don’t get it. How’d he get the welts?”
“Well, when he landed, he rolled perfectly, which pretty much absorbed all the impact. He stood up without a scratch.”
“No way,” Geoff responded with surprise. “Wait, so how’d he get the welts?”
David paused a moment for effect, then said, “His mother whipped his butt for breaking her new umbrella.”
Geoff shook his head and smiled.
“Funny… the guy escapes without a scratch only to get his butt whipped by his mom. Man, that sucks. Kind of reminds me of the time Bobby took an awful whopping for setting the woods on fire near our house.”
“Really? He set a forest fire?” David asked, curiously.
“Sort of… I guess,” Geoff responded cryptically.
“What do you mean, sort of? This sounds like a good story. Don’t hold back, man. Let’s hear it,” David joked.
Geoff took another sip of his coffee, grimaced at the foul taste, then continued. “Let’s see. Where do I start? Well… we found a load of stick matches in the garage. At nine and ten years old, that was a tremendous find.”
“Bobby’s older, right?”
“Yeah… by a year,” he responded with a nod. “So Bobby lights one of these matches in the garage and causes this awful stench. We knew if our mom or dad suddenly came in and smelled that, we’d be in big trouble. So, Bobby suggested we head out to the woods were we couldn’t get caught.”
“Now it’s me who can see this one coming,” David joked.
Geoff nodded simply and continued. “So we go to the forest across from our house and build up this small pile of leaves. Bobby’s all careful and stuff, clearing out a small area in the grass, making sure the pile of leaves was isolated enough so that nothing else would catch on fire once we got it going.”
“Good thinking. Pretty smart for a ten year old,” David replied.
“Yeah, except for one problem. He had to take a pee and left a nine year old with the matches. Not a smart thing to do.”
“YOU set the fire?” David asked incredulously, now beginning to grin.
“Oh Yeah, did I ever,” he retorted, rolling his eyes. “While Bobby’s back was turned, I lit a match, watched it burn for a second or two then tossed it on the pile. The leaves instantly started to burn. Unfortunately, not fast enough for me. Only one side of the four-foot pile was burning. So I lit another, only this time I let the match burn down way too far and the flame started to burn my fingers. It hurt so bad, I didn’t care where I threw it. I just needed to lose that freakin’ thing and FAST.”
“Oh god!” David responded simply, feigning disgust.
“Out of pure reflex, I flicked the match over my head and it landed behind me, still on fire. As I was sucking on my fingers, trying to stop the pain, I turned around to see where the damn match had landed. To my shock, it landed on some really dry grass and just started to spread like crazy. I ran over to it and tried to stomp some of it out but my pant leg caught on fire.”
“Holy crap! Your pant leg? Man, that really could have been serious,” David said, his eyes widening.
“Yeah, no kidding,” he replied with an assuring nod. “Anyway, I guess Bobby must have heard me scream like a little girl, ‘cuz the next thing I knew, he knocked me on the ground and began slapping out the fire on my pant leg.”
“Oh my god… did you get burned?”
“No, it didn’t even char the cloth for some reason… but when we stood up, the ground all around us was on fire. It was a windy day that day, and those flames spread like a firehose shooting gasoline. It was just awful.”
“So what did you guys do, run?” David guessed.
“Yeah, it was the only thing two little boys could do.”
“So what happened to the fire? Did you call the fire department?”
“Well, not quite. Bobby and I ran home and pretended like nothing was wrong. I kind of think we were hoping the fire would somehow just disappear.”
“And it didn’t,” David said, more as a statement than a question.
“No man, it sure didn’t. By the time we crossed the street, the flames were already high in the trees. We could actually hear them as we ran,” Geoff said, shaking his head as he remembered.
“Wow, that’s so awful,” David replied, nodding.
“As we ran up the driveway to our house, our mom was standing at the front door, already on the phone to the fire department. I can still see the look on her face,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment.
“Fear, huh?” David guessed again.
“No way, man… anger. She knew right away who did it.”
“Must have been the guilty looks on your faces,” David said, chuckling to himself as he envisioned the two boys.
“I guess,” he responded matter-of-factly.
“So what happened next?”
“Like I said before, Bobby got a terrible whooping,” he continued.
“Bobby? But you set the fire. You were part of it. You didn’t get in trouble at all?”
“Nope,” he responded, simply.
“But why? You both were responsible and your mother only punishes Bobby? That’s not really fair. That’s not really fair at all?” David said, now confused.
Geoff paused a moment to think of an answer.
“The reason Bobby was the only one who got punished is because he took all the blame.”
“What do you mean, all the blame?”
“Just that: he took all the blame. He told my mom he set the fire and I had nothing to do with it.”
David paused a moment, baffled by the logic.
“But why, why would he do that? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Bobby was my older brother. Since I can remember, he always protected me. If someone messed with me, they messed with Bobby. I guess he felt he got me into it and felt he needed to protect me from getting punished.”
“Holy Crap! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything like that before. What a brother,” David complimented.
“He was the best,” he said, nodding, then continued. “He wasn’t just my brother, he also was my best friend… and I’d die for him.”
David stared in silence, the gravity of Geoff’s last words finally registering. With a simple nod of understanding, he responded softly, “I’m so sorry for your loss Geoff.”
With the mood turning suddenly somber, Geoff didn’t answer. Sitting quietly, he stared into the flame. David watched a moment, then heard a sniffle. In the faint light from the fire, he watc
hed a glistening tear roll down the teen’s cheek. Geoff brought his hand up to his face and wiped away a tear.
Prisoner in Time (Time travel) Page 16