The morning sun is
just beginning to climb over the horizon lazily and its warm light
only trickles in on the soldiers waiting in the trench. Daniel can
already feel the warmth of the coming day though, even in the dimness
of the trench's shadows. On the morning breeze the comforting aroma
of smashed grapes wafts over him and nearly drains out the smells of
gunpowder, stale blood, and unwashed bodies.
The field in which
the rude fortifications lay was a vineyard in the not so recent past
and in the no man's land between the Italian loyalists and his own
trench there still lies the torn and twisted remains of a few
grapevines, ripped apart after being carefully tended for centuries.
Sounds of men
yawning and stretching, the rustling of gear and weaponry, all these
sounds float up from the trench as the sun rises and Daniel stands
with the others, gently placing his rifle against the trenches crude
wall. Pulling his hand away from the cool metal of the gun's barrel
he looks down at his it and notices the smoothness of the skin under
a thick layer of grime and dirt.
There are lines on
the smooth skin of his hands where the sweat has trickled down from
his arms and then made snake like patterns as if tracing the veins of
the arm beneath. Holding his hands out before him and staring at
them, turning them over again and again, rubbing them together he
sees callused fingertips and notes that they are steady and strong.
Pulling his helmet
from his head he sits it atop the point of the gun's barrel and
begins to take off his shirt, undoing one button at a time gently and
folding it delicately and neatly to lie on the ground by his mess
kit.
No one notices him
as he begins to walk to the ladder facing the no-man's land. The
scant few other soldiers in sight are busy going about their morning
ablutions. All sound dies away and to Daniel the world is silent as
he grasps the first handle. The recently and crudely fashioned
ladder's wood is rough on his still too soft palms as he climbs.
Nearing the edge he
stares straight ahead and thinks of Ester. He pictures her face as he
lifted her wedding veil seven years from now, the tears of happiness
running down her soft brown cheeks while her grin split her face in
half and melted his heart and matched his own.
Smiling at the
thought of that day he reaches the last step and stands on the very
edge of the trench, looking out on the torn land and the barbed wire
which begins maybe twenty feet away. The debris of the grapevines lie
around his feet and they crunch under his heavy boots as another
American notices him standing above the fire line and shouts, then
screams at him in words Daniel can no longer hear.
He walks forward
across the field one slow step at a time and his last thought is of
Ester walking through the door earlier in the day, still beautiful
despite so many years gone by, her eyes wrinkling as she smiles at
him there sketching and asks him to lunch. He smiles at her in his
mind as the sniper's bullet tears through his brain and paints the
ground red behind him.
As the body of
Daniel Christiansen, shirtless and alone on a broken field in
Southern Italy, falls backward onto the torn brown grape vines the
shouts from the trenches stop abruptly and the field is quiet once
again.
Far away, farther
away than even Daniel imagined, Mordechai watches the future change
and feels acidic tears run down his cheeks. The Watchers nod and look
away from him, already struggling to trace who the next architect
will be.
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