"Home" by Claire Nist
Grant was tired of the mud. It only took a few weeks in the trench for it to cover his clothes like a second layer of camouflage, working its way into the fabric so well he wouldn’t be surprised if it was the only thing keeping his clothes together. It was caked permanently under his fingernails, no matter how many times he tried to pick it out with his knife. It just ended up all over the knife. The mud was tricky that way. It stuck to everything like sin, impossible to wash out. The only time it dried was when it got on your neck and face, and it still didn’t come off. Only cracked and itched. Once it got into your boots there was no going back. It squished between your toes and made itself at home. Even if you got new boots. So, yeah. He was tired of the mud.
He scraped some off of his boot and flicked it at James sitting next to him. James didn’t even flinch when it bounced off his cheek, just reached around and yanked hard on Grant’s ear without even turning. Grant swore and shoved his filthy hands against James’s face until he let go. He rubbed his ear and glared at the side of James’s head.
“Ass,” he bit out. James was smirking.
“Don’t start fights you can’t finish, pal, ain’t I told you that?”
“Yeah, yeah. I could take you.” That made James snort out a laugh. Finally. He didn’t laugh much these days. Grant remembered the two of them back home in New York, the day they got their orders telling them they’d be in the same unit. They’d been laughing like the bright-eyed idiots they were, James’s arm slung rough and warm around his shoulders, and smiling his lopsided smile. Not the sly smirk he used on the girls down at the dance halls, but the one that showed all of his teeth, the one that meant he was truly happy about something. It made him look younger, innocent, like a kid again.
“Shut it,” Grant mumbled, as James’s snickers died down. He heaved a sigh and let his face fall onto James’s shoulder. “Tired of the mud,” he grumbled. James glanced down at him.
“I know, pal,” he said quietly, before turning back to stare at the trench wall.
*****
The blast of artillery shells made earth fall into their eyes, and brought with it the sour, burning stench of fear. James’s ragged breaths were in his ear as they waited their turn to go up over the top. Grant found James’s arm and squeezed.
“You ready, Jimmy?” he asked. Another shell screamed above them, and someone down the line was yelling about gas in another section of the trench. James huffed a nervous laugh and adjusted his gas mask over his shoulder. He was merely a shadow with glinting eyes in the darkness.
“Sure, Slim,” he answered, jutting his chin out, “I was born ready”. His voice was full of false bravado, but his hand covered Grant’s where it rested on his arm. They pretended they both weren’t shaking.
The next second their C.O. was yelling for their Yankee arses to start climbing. They kept their hands clasped until the last second, and Grant was reminded absurdly of how they used to grip each other’s arms, playing at being knights when they were children. He would have laughed if he weren’t so terrified. There was certainly no shining armor out here. Grant let go of James and they crawled out of the trench like ants, and inched forward to hopefully gain a few yards of mud.
*****
“Ow!” Grant yelled, muffling his shout with the sleeve that wasn’t currently being torn off by James.
“Shush, Grant, you ain’t dying,” James said calmly, but his hands gentled as he tried not to jar Grant’s arm too much while getting the sleeve off. Grant focused on James’s calloused finger pads as he tried to avoid being sick.
He’d snagged his arm while crawling under some barbed wire to check the fence, and James had dragged him back into the trench as soon as he’d seen the blood. It should have just been an easy cut, but barbed wire was a bitch, and it was deeper and messier than he’d thought at first.
“Here, pal,” James said, handing him a wad of cloth. Grant grimaced and moaned, but put the wad between his teeth. Hands squeezed the back of his neck before moving to his arm to start on the stitches. He breathed through his nose and thought of home. Of concrete steaming on hot summer days, his mother’s lilting voice, and James’s lopsided smile next to him at the bar, dark hair backlit by the street lamps as they stumbled back to their apartment. New York streets were full of bloody fists, hawking newspaper boys, and stray mutts, but they’d grown up there, in the scorching summers and bitter winters. This never-ending drizzle and cold mud, the quietness of the men’s voices, and the impenetrable dark made him feel alone, isolated, and alien, even when he was shoulder to shoulder with a hundred other soldiers.
When James was finished he took the cloth from Grant’s mouth and gently pushed his hair back from his sweaty forehead. Grant opened his eyes, not remembering having closed them, and blinked blearily at him.
“How ya doin’ Slim?” James asked softly, keeping his hand on Grant’s forehead.
“Just brilliant buddy,” he panted out, “think I’ll get a cool scar?”
James let out a breath and chuckled. “Sure pal, you can show off to all the ladies. Proof of what a stupid son of a bitch you are. Don’t ask me why I keep pulling your dumb ass outta trouble, ‘cause I don’t know the answer.”
Grant tried to grin but it came out as more of a wince. “’S ‘cause you like the excitement,” he slurred, his head pitching forward to rest against James’s chest.
He could feel the vibrations of his voice as James murmured, “Could do with a little less excitement, pal,” against his temple before he passed out.
*****
They were finally out of the trenches. Their unit had taken some hits, and as a reprieve was sent to transport some of the big guns. So they’d been walking for days, and it was still mud a lot of the time, still grey skies and blisters on their feet, but he could feel the wind on his face and in his hair, and hear birds singing, and they were not in the trenches. When they stopped at night, he got to curl up on grass and not feel like he might be mistaken for dead and buried once he nodded off. He could breathe and not taste poison and mud and metal on the back of his tongue. And they were not in the trenches. So he should not be having nightmares. But he was. They were.
He dreamt of mud. Because, of course, he didn’t see enough of it during his waking hours. Didn’t feel it stick and hear it squelch, and smell and taste the foul stuff, and stare at it every fucking day. No, apparently he needed to dream about it too. He dreamt he was back home, in his bed, listening to James’s snoring in the next room, and all of a sudden he could smell it. The mud was in his room, sticking to his things, covering his floor. He rolled over and sat up, and then it was rising like high tide, and he hunched up in the middle of his bed and tried not to panic. It’s just mud, he told himself over and over, as it rose like some swamp monster from the stories the older kids used to tell to scare the younger ones. It reached the edge of his bed, and his breaths grew short and shallow as it stained his white sheets and crept towards him. His thoughts narrowed to a litany of I don’t want it touching me, I don’t want it touching me, Don’t touch me, Don’t, don’t, don’t, before it sucked at his feet and he was lost in it. He couldn’t move or breathe, and he couldn’t hear James snoring anymore, couldn’t hear anything but the horrifying squelch and gurgle of the mud. He tried to call out but it was blocking his throat and caking his lungs and he was gagging on it, drowning in it.
He woke gasping, back arched off the ground as he tried to force air into his lungs. He rolled over and heaved, spitting bile into the grass, tears stinging at his eyes. A hand settled on his back, and he flinched before relaxing at James’s whispered, “It’s me”. James started rubbing slow circles into his back, and his hand was light and warm and very much not mud. Soon he could breathe again, and flopped back onto the grass, still shaking and exhausted. James scooted up behind him and threw an arm over his waist. He took a cautious hold of James’s wrist. It would have been awkward if they hadn’t done the same thing in reverse a few nights ago, when James had been sweating and whimpering in his sleep, and almost socked Grant on the nose when he woke up. He let the last of the tension bleed out of him, and fell asleep with James’s breath on the back of his neck and his pulse under his thumb.
*****
The guns were needed behind lines at a trench about 60 miles away, so they had horses to pull them. It was two pairs to pull the four guns, and they were sad looking things, skinny and bedraggled, their hooves stinking from the constant wet. A man was assigned to walk by each of their heads, so Grant and James ended up leading the second pair. Grant’s was a dark bay, almost black, while James’s looked like it had been bright red at one point, but was now a dingy sort of copper color. James had always loved animals; his ma had had to yell at him every week when he was a kid for feeding a different stray. His horse seemed like a cheerful enough creature for its situation, and took to James immediately because he kept sneaking it spare bits of his ration. Grant had always been a bit warier of anything larger than a cat; he’d been bitten by a dog when he was younger, and horses just seemed like they were too big to be domesticated. But his horse seemed mostly intent on ignoring him, and he it, and he liked walking with it because it made him feel like he was actually doing something instead of walking to nowhere.
James was in a rare fine mood, his smile curving up to hint at the lopsided grins he used to hand out like party favors. He peeked over at Grant from under his horse’s neck, his eyes sparking mischievously.
“Guess what?” he said in a boyish voice Grant hadn’t heard in a while.
“Hmm?” Grant hummed in response, trying not to look too amused.
“I’ve decided to call him Slim, after you,” James said, grin growing slyer by the word, “since he’s so skinny and the two of you smell so much the same I can hardly tell you apart.” He ducked behind his horse’s nose, laughing under his breath, as Grant pointed a glare at him.
“Yeah, well I’ve decided to call mine Jim since his back end looks like your ugly mug,” he shot back, satisfied when James burst into giggles.
“Too bad yours is a girl horse. No wonder she doesn’t like you, she’s got a brain hasn’t she?”
Grant just shook his head, trying not to catch James’s laughter. “If you had half a brain, you’d shut your mouth, ya idiot,” he retorted, but there was too much affection in it, and he smiled to himself, listening to James dissolve into slightly hysterical giggles.
*****
The jingling of the harness, hoof beats, and the horses’ snorted breaths were soothing sounds now as they walked. They were due to be at their site later that day, where hopefully the guns would blow up enough people on the opposite side that they could go home.
Suddenly, Grant felt exhausted, even though they’d just woken up and he’d actually gotten a decent night’s sleep, free of nightmares. The futility of his personal quest to get home just slammed him in the gut all at once, shrinking him down so he was no more significant than a pebble caught in his horse’s shoe. And all of a sudden, walking next to that horse in the goddamned never ending mud, he could see centuries of past and future wars stretched out on either side of him. He saw himself die a thousand times over and it never made any difference. He would still end up walking next to this innocent animal, trying to pretend that he had any more choice in this than it. That they were any different. Sure, he’d signed up, but if he hadn’t he’d have been drafted, and he still would have ended up here, just without James. So he’d chosen the lesser of two evils. That’s all. And the horse did the same when it started pulling the guns before they had a chance to bring out the whip.
And he realized he knew exactly what was going to happen to this horse, to him. How many times, in the history of the world, had a soldier and a horse gone out to battle just like this? And how many times had they returned in one piece? He looked over at James, who was whistling quietly to his horse as it huffed labored breaths, and felt a thousand years old. They were just twenty, and yet he would never get the mud out of his lungs, and James would never smile his lopsided smile again. And even if the war did end before they got blown to bits, they would never be able to get back home.
*****
After they arrived at the site, they had to wait in the woods until it was dark, before dragging the guns to the top of a hill. So they rested a bit, stretched their legs out and leaned against the trees, James’s horse, which he insisted on calling Slim, nibbling grass on shaky legs next to them. Grant dozed, and when he woke up James had thrown one of his legs over his hip and tied their bootlaces together.
“Look, now we’re the Three-Legged Soldier!” he said playfully, “Winning the war with teamwork, unable to be pried apart by the jaws of death!” he cocked his head, grimy bangs falling into his eyes as they crinkled.
“More likely you trip and fall and bring me down with you” Grant replied drily, “And neither of us can manage to get up, ever.”
James shoved at his shoulder before tackling him in a bear hug and squeezing as hard as he could. “Come on, pal, don’t you wanna be stuck by my side forever?” he teased over Grant’s protests that he couldn’t breathe.
A minute later, their C.O. told them off, and shouted at all the men to fall in as dark was fast approaching. They untangled themselves and got their horses hitched back up, and prepared to move the guns.
Hauling them up the hill was hard on the horses. Grant winced at the strain in their breaths, and he could hear James whispering encouragingly to Slim. Once they were done, they unhitched the horses, ready to take them back down to the woods for the night, but on the way back down the hill, the scream of artillery fire rang out to rip a hole in the night.
Grant’s horse reared and bolted, but Slim followed James, him, and the rest of the soldiers down towards the trenches. Their C.O. was yelling at them to drop into the reserves, and Grant watched his unit drop one by one back into the mud. Gunfire. Another shell. More gunfire. They were at the edge of the trench.
And in no identifiable moment, James was hit. James was standing. Swaying. Gasping. Bleeding. James was falling. The trench was no more than ten feet deep, but he seemed to fall for miles. Grant froze. He did not want to look, he did not want to go into the trench, see James’s body, hold it and whisper his name and kiss his cooling forehead. No, his heart screamed. Don’t go, don’t go. Your smile is home. I can’t go home without you. Slim was letting out pathetic little cries of distress. Grant turned and tried to push the horse away, get him to run for cover, but he wouldn’t move. Just stood there on his gangly legs and wailed for the boy who was kind to him. So Grant turned to look at the burning sky, felt the acrid wind on his cheek. His whole being jerked away from the idea of going back into the ground, but the sky was raining fire and Slim was crying his horse’s tears, so he screwed up his courage and jumped after James into the mud and let the darkness of the trench swallow him up.
Grant was tired of the mud. It only took a few weeks in the trench for it to cover his clothes like a second layer of camouflage, working its way into the fabric so well he wouldn’t be surprised if it was the only thing keeping his clothes together. It was caked permanently under his fingernails, no matter how many times he tried to pick it out with his knife. It just ended up all over the knife. The mud was tricky that way. It stuck to everything like sin, impossible to wash out. The only time it dried was when it got on your neck and face, and it still didn’t come off. Only cracked and itched. Once it got into your boots there was no going back. It squished between your toes and made itself at home. Even if you got new boots. So, yeah. He was tired of the mud.
He scraped some off of his boot and flicked it at James sitting next to him. James didn’t even flinch when it bounced off his cheek, just reached around and yanked hard on Grant’s ear without even turning. Grant swore and shoved his filthy hands against James’s face until he let go. He rubbed his ear and glared at the side of James’s head.
“Ass,” he bit out. James was smirking.
“Don’t start fights you can’t finish, pal, ain’t I told you that?”
“Yeah, yeah. I could take you.” That made James snort out a laugh. Finally. He didn’t laugh much these days. Grant remembered the two of them back home in New York, the day they got their orders telling them they’d be in the same unit. They’d been laughing like the bright-eyed idiots they were, James’s arm slung rough and warm around his shoulders, and smiling his lopsided smile. Not the sly smirk he used on the girls down at the dance halls, but the one that showed all of his teeth, the one that meant he was truly happy about something. It made him look younger, innocent, like a kid again.
“Shut it,” Grant mumbled, as James’s snickers died down. He heaved a sigh and let his face fall onto James’s shoulder. “Tired of the mud,” he grumbled. James glanced down at him.
“I know, pal,” he said quietly, before turning back to stare at the trench wall.
*****
The blast of artillery shells made earth fall into their eyes, and brought with it the sour, burning stench of fear. James’s ragged breaths were in his ear as they waited their turn to go up over the top. Grant found James’s arm and squeezed.
“You ready, Jimmy?” he asked. Another shell screamed above them, and someone down the line was yelling about gas in another section of the trench. James huffed a nervous laugh and adjusted his gas mask over his shoulder. He was merely a shadow with glinting eyes in the darkness.
“Sure, Slim,” he answered, jutting his chin out, “I was born ready”. His voice was full of false bravado, but his hand covered Grant’s where it rested on his arm. They pretended they both weren’t shaking.
The next second their C.O. was yelling for their Yankee arses to start climbing. They kept their hands clasped until the last second, and Grant was reminded absurdly of how they used to grip each other’s arms, playing at being knights when they were children. He would have laughed if he weren’t so terrified. There was certainly no shining armor out here. Grant let go of James and they crawled out of the trench like ants, and inched forward to hopefully gain a few yards of mud.
*****
“Ow!” Grant yelled, muffling his shout with the sleeve that wasn’t currently being torn off by James.
“Shush, Grant, you ain’t dying,” James said calmly, but his hands gentled as he tried not to jar Grant’s arm too much while getting the sleeve off. Grant focused on James’s calloused finger pads as he tried to avoid being sick.
He’d snagged his arm while crawling under some barbed wire to check the fence, and James had dragged him back into the trench as soon as he’d seen the blood. It should have just been an easy cut, but barbed wire was a bitch, and it was deeper and messier than he’d thought at first.
“Here, pal,” James said, handing him a wad of cloth. Grant grimaced and moaned, but put the wad between his teeth. Hands squeezed the back of his neck before moving to his arm to start on the stitches. He breathed through his nose and thought of home. Of concrete steaming on hot summer days, his mother’s lilting voice, and James’s lopsided smile next to him at the bar, dark hair backlit by the street lamps as they stumbled back to their apartment. New York streets were full of bloody fists, hawking newspaper boys, and stray mutts, but they’d grown up there, in the scorching summers and bitter winters. This never-ending drizzle and cold mud, the quietness of the men’s voices, and the impenetrable dark made him feel alone, isolated, and alien, even when he was shoulder to shoulder with a hundred other soldiers.
When James was finished he took the cloth from Grant’s mouth and gently pushed his hair back from his sweaty forehead. Grant opened his eyes, not remembering having closed them, and blinked blearily at him.
“How ya doin’ Slim?” James asked softly, keeping his hand on Grant’s forehead.
“Just brilliant buddy,” he panted out, “think I’ll get a cool scar?”
James let out a breath and chuckled. “Sure pal, you can show off to all the ladies. Proof of what a stupid son of a bitch you are. Don’t ask me why I keep pulling your dumb ass outta trouble, ‘cause I don’t know the answer.”
Grant tried to grin but it came out as more of a wince. “’S ‘cause you like the excitement,” he slurred, his head pitching forward to rest against James’s chest.
He could feel the vibrations of his voice as James murmured, “Could do with a little less excitement, pal,” against his temple before he passed out.
*****
They were finally out of the trenches. Their unit had taken some hits, and as a reprieve was sent to transport some of the big guns. So they’d been walking for days, and it was still mud a lot of the time, still grey skies and blisters on their feet, but he could feel the wind on his face and in his hair, and hear birds singing, and they were not in the trenches. When they stopped at night, he got to curl up on grass and not feel like he might be mistaken for dead and buried once he nodded off. He could breathe and not taste poison and mud and metal on the back of his tongue. And they were not in the trenches. So he should not be having nightmares. But he was. They were.
He dreamt of mud. Because, of course, he didn’t see enough of it during his waking hours. Didn’t feel it stick and hear it squelch, and smell and taste the foul stuff, and stare at it every fucking day. No, apparently he needed to dream about it too. He dreamt he was back home, in his bed, listening to James’s snoring in the next room, and all of a sudden he could smell it. The mud was in his room, sticking to his things, covering his floor. He rolled over and sat up, and then it was rising like high tide, and he hunched up in the middle of his bed and tried not to panic. It’s just mud, he told himself over and over, as it rose like some swamp monster from the stories the older kids used to tell to scare the younger ones. It reached the edge of his bed, and his breaths grew short and shallow as it stained his white sheets and crept towards him. His thoughts narrowed to a litany of I don’t want it touching me, I don’t want it touching me, Don’t touch me, Don’t, don’t, don’t, before it sucked at his feet and he was lost in it. He couldn’t move or breathe, and he couldn’t hear James snoring anymore, couldn’t hear anything but the horrifying squelch and gurgle of the mud. He tried to call out but it was blocking his throat and caking his lungs and he was gagging on it, drowning in it.
He woke gasping, back arched off the ground as he tried to force air into his lungs. He rolled over and heaved, spitting bile into the grass, tears stinging at his eyes. A hand settled on his back, and he flinched before relaxing at James’s whispered, “It’s me”. James started rubbing slow circles into his back, and his hand was light and warm and very much not mud. Soon he could breathe again, and flopped back onto the grass, still shaking and exhausted. James scooted up behind him and threw an arm over his waist. He took a cautious hold of James’s wrist. It would have been awkward if they hadn’t done the same thing in reverse a few nights ago, when James had been sweating and whimpering in his sleep, and almost socked Grant on the nose when he woke up. He let the last of the tension bleed out of him, and fell asleep with James’s breath on the back of his neck and his pulse under his thumb.
*****
The guns were needed behind lines at a trench about 60 miles away, so they had horses to pull them. It was two pairs to pull the four guns, and they were sad looking things, skinny and bedraggled, their hooves stinking from the constant wet. A man was assigned to walk by each of their heads, so Grant and James ended up leading the second pair. Grant’s was a dark bay, almost black, while James’s looked like it had been bright red at one point, but was now a dingy sort of copper color. James had always loved animals; his ma had had to yell at him every week when he was a kid for feeding a different stray. His horse seemed like a cheerful enough creature for its situation, and took to James immediately because he kept sneaking it spare bits of his ration. Grant had always been a bit warier of anything larger than a cat; he’d been bitten by a dog when he was younger, and horses just seemed like they were too big to be domesticated. But his horse seemed mostly intent on ignoring him, and he it, and he liked walking with it because it made him feel like he was actually doing something instead of walking to nowhere.
James was in a rare fine mood, his smile curving up to hint at the lopsided grins he used to hand out like party favors. He peeked over at Grant from under his horse’s neck, his eyes sparking mischievously.
“Guess what?” he said in a boyish voice Grant hadn’t heard in a while.
“Hmm?” Grant hummed in response, trying not to look too amused.
“I’ve decided to call him Slim, after you,” James said, grin growing slyer by the word, “since he’s so skinny and the two of you smell so much the same I can hardly tell you apart.” He ducked behind his horse’s nose, laughing under his breath, as Grant pointed a glare at him.
“Yeah, well I’ve decided to call mine Jim since his back end looks like your ugly mug,” he shot back, satisfied when James burst into giggles.
“Too bad yours is a girl horse. No wonder she doesn’t like you, she’s got a brain hasn’t she?”
Grant just shook his head, trying not to catch James’s laughter. “If you had half a brain, you’d shut your mouth, ya idiot,” he retorted, but there was too much affection in it, and he smiled to himself, listening to James dissolve into slightly hysterical giggles.
*****
The jingling of the harness, hoof beats, and the horses’ snorted breaths were soothing sounds now as they walked. They were due to be at their site later that day, where hopefully the guns would blow up enough people on the opposite side that they could go home.
Suddenly, Grant felt exhausted, even though they’d just woken up and he’d actually gotten a decent night’s sleep, free of nightmares. The futility of his personal quest to get home just slammed him in the gut all at once, shrinking him down so he was no more significant than a pebble caught in his horse’s shoe. And all of a sudden, walking next to that horse in the goddamned never ending mud, he could see centuries of past and future wars stretched out on either side of him. He saw himself die a thousand times over and it never made any difference. He would still end up walking next to this innocent animal, trying to pretend that he had any more choice in this than it. That they were any different. Sure, he’d signed up, but if he hadn’t he’d have been drafted, and he still would have ended up here, just without James. So he’d chosen the lesser of two evils. That’s all. And the horse did the same when it started pulling the guns before they had a chance to bring out the whip.
And he realized he knew exactly what was going to happen to this horse, to him. How many times, in the history of the world, had a soldier and a horse gone out to battle just like this? And how many times had they returned in one piece? He looked over at James, who was whistling quietly to his horse as it huffed labored breaths, and felt a thousand years old. They were just twenty, and yet he would never get the mud out of his lungs, and James would never smile his lopsided smile again. And even if the war did end before they got blown to bits, they would never be able to get back home.
*****
After they arrived at the site, they had to wait in the woods until it was dark, before dragging the guns to the top of a hill. So they rested a bit, stretched their legs out and leaned against the trees, James’s horse, which he insisted on calling Slim, nibbling grass on shaky legs next to them. Grant dozed, and when he woke up James had thrown one of his legs over his hip and tied their bootlaces together.
“Look, now we’re the Three-Legged Soldier!” he said playfully, “Winning the war with teamwork, unable to be pried apart by the jaws of death!” he cocked his head, grimy bangs falling into his eyes as they crinkled.
“More likely you trip and fall and bring me down with you” Grant replied drily, “And neither of us can manage to get up, ever.”
James shoved at his shoulder before tackling him in a bear hug and squeezing as hard as he could. “Come on, pal, don’t you wanna be stuck by my side forever?” he teased over Grant’s protests that he couldn’t breathe.
A minute later, their C.O. told them off, and shouted at all the men to fall in as dark was fast approaching. They untangled themselves and got their horses hitched back up, and prepared to move the guns.
Hauling them up the hill was hard on the horses. Grant winced at the strain in their breaths, and he could hear James whispering encouragingly to Slim. Once they were done, they unhitched the horses, ready to take them back down to the woods for the night, but on the way back down the hill, the scream of artillery fire rang out to rip a hole in the night.
Grant’s horse reared and bolted, but Slim followed James, him, and the rest of the soldiers down towards the trenches. Their C.O. was yelling at them to drop into the reserves, and Grant watched his unit drop one by one back into the mud. Gunfire. Another shell. More gunfire. They were at the edge of the trench.
And in no identifiable moment, James was hit. James was standing. Swaying. Gasping. Bleeding. James was falling. The trench was no more than ten feet deep, but he seemed to fall for miles. Grant froze. He did not want to look, he did not want to go into the trench, see James’s body, hold it and whisper his name and kiss his cooling forehead. No, his heart screamed. Don’t go, don’t go. Your smile is home. I can’t go home without you. Slim was letting out pathetic little cries of distress. Grant turned and tried to push the horse away, get him to run for cover, but he wouldn’t move. Just stood there on his gangly legs and wailed for the boy who was kind to him. So Grant turned to look at the burning sky, felt the acrid wind on his cheek. His whole being jerked away from the idea of going back into the ground, but the sky was raining fire and Slim was crying his horse’s tears, so he screwed up his courage and jumped after James into the mud and let the darkness of the trench swallow him up.