Thousands of dead bodies are strewn across the ground like broken crayons in a child’s pencil case. Two figures, a wounded solider, using his musket and a shovel as a crutch, and a half dead child, knees leaning on each other for support, remain on the premises, the only two people who will ever truly know what happened here, before the press mangle it into a sin or a victory.
The little boy kneels, hands clasped together around a gun like a prayer.
“What the heck are you still doing out here boy?” The man calls.
No response.
Grasping his gun tighter, the man sighs. “I could kill you right here, right now. Doesn’t that scare you at all?”
The boy looks at him, eyes stain glassed with innocence, roaming the ground like a metal detector. “I’m searching for peace.”
The man laughs, canon smoke filling his lungs, “Then you’re in the wrong place. Look around you; peace was ripped into pieces, strewn about the battle ground like confetti, all the fruit it bared crunched between greedy jaws of man like candy; Peace is a piñata, colorful and beautiful until someone takes a mallet to its head, smashing it until Peace is dead. Only evil thrives in this atmosphere.” He tosses the shovel to the ground. “Keep thinking that way and I’ll have to make you a grave too.”
With a bloodied mouth, the boy smiles at him, and carefully spits out once white teeth like bland pieces of gum. “Don’t worry,” he says after watching the man’s eyes grow wide, “they’re only baby teeth.”
“Go home, kid. Your parents are probably looking for you.”
“Aren’t your friends looking for you?”
“Nah, they left me here with the rest of you—injured men can’t fight. “Son,” the man asks, “where’s your Momma?”
He points to the ground.
“And your Papa?”
He points to the ground.
There they are, laid on top of each other like a crucifix, holes etched into each hand, pain sewn into their foreheads like a crown of thorns. The mother looked down right frightened, her mouth hung open as if mid scream. The father, lying with his eyes open, had a strong jaw and a fearless face—he must’ve been a revolutionary—his hands were missing two fingers.
The man gestures to the pile of bodies, “Here’s your peace.”
The boy giggles, air wheezing through his mouth as though his lungs were laid off. Lips curling into a smile, dust jumping off his eyelashes, so that his golden brown eyes can be seen, he holds up two fingers, “Peace.”
The man shakes his head, “two fingers can’t support a fallen comrade, two fingers can’t freeze a bullet, two fingers won’t resurrect the dead, two fingers—”
“These two fingers,” the boy interrupts with all the seriousness a boy his age can muster, “were cut off both of my father’s hands.”
Only now did the man realize the specks of grey hairs sprinkled throughout the child’s head.
Noticing the man’s stare, the boy averts his eyes, focusing on kicking up a small storm of dust,
“Oh, you’ve noticed my halo. Is it showing already?” the boy asks, embarrassed.
“Your…halo?” the man asks, without a drop of sarcasm on his tongue.
“Well, yeah. My Momma told me that when we die our hair turns white, our skin turns gold, and if we’ve been good, wings shall sprout between our shoulder blades so that we can fly out of our bodies. You see, bodies,” the boy picks up a lump of blood stained dirt, “are made from nothing more than this. But souls, those are way different. Now, I haven’t been to school much, but I know something most other kids are to slow to catch,” the boy whispers the words as silently as the wind.
The man’s face softens, knowing that this boy doesn’t have much time left. “And what’s that, son?”
the boy lays his tethered hands on top of his heart, “I know that this flimsy muscle can’t possibly have enough room to carry both love and hate. Hate is what’s left when this old ragdoll has finally landed in the toy box. Love is all we need once we’ve grown our wings. Don’t you think that stress, death, and anger would just weigh us all down? That’s why humans can’t fly—I don’t need a scientist to tell me that.” Just as the words escape his mouth, labored coughs lock around the boy’s throat, splattering raindrops of blood as he collapses to the ground.
The man watches silently, knowing there’s nothing he could possibly do to help. “Please, son,” he chokes out, “doesn’t talk anymore.”
“Not talking would be awfully boring,” the boy calls, as he plucks the single violet flower from the ground. “Do you know what kind of flower this is?”
“You do realize that you’re going to—”
“I hear that in Hiroshima, that place that got blown up during World War Two, buds have started sprouting up from the cracks in the ground.”
“You should rest. You’re not—”
“But then again, people have a tendency to squash flowers.”
“Well that’s—”
Another round of coughs breaks through the air until silence covers its cries.
“Maybe I’m just a flower?” the boy whispers, tears streaming down his eyes, falling flat onto the soil, fingers balling into fists, forehead sweating with fear.
A breeze flies over the seen, and all is quiet.
The boy’s fists break back into upward palms, the sweat evaporates into the sun, and fear falls off his face, carrying his tears with it. The soldier smiles, drops his gun to the ground, ignores the pain battling for control of his leg; picks up his shovel, digs a whole deep enough for a child and then some, walks to the boy, kneels down, dips his fingers in the boy’s blood, makes the sign of the cross, and places the boy in the grave.
Just before he covered the boy with soil, he closes the boy’s eyes, makes the boy’s right hand into a fist, but then carefully raises two of his fingers. The deed done, he covers the boy’s grave and kisses the ground.
“Until you bloom again.”