. “Never trust a survivor ‘til ye know what they did to survive.” She had said. That was a true word. He had not realized how true it was when she said it, but in retrospect he knew it to be true.

A vague but vivid memory flashed through his mind. He sat rocking back and forth in the swing on his porch, with a heart that was beating quicker and quicker by the minute. He held his steaming cup of coffee and sighed. There was a time, many years ago, when he had fought. Before he came to the states, he was a soldier for one of the warring factions in Africa; he couldn’t have been older than seven, perhaps, when he was recruited. The details were blurry. He did not wish to dwell on the time he spent in the service. But there were things that flashed through his mind, whether he preferred it or not. Always they were there. When he was awake or asleep; at work or at leisure; still those instances plagued him. The smell of death and decay lingered in his nose, always a foul stench that he could never be rid of. The smell of metal was unbearable as well. It reminded him of—

No. He would not think of it. He sighed. The coffee rose to his head. All of a sudden the world seemed dull. Looking over at the barren trees in his yard, dulled further by the gray overcast in the sky, he thought how quiet it was. How unbearably silent.

A memory flashed through his mind. Suddenly he was not there. He was far in the African wastelands; in the broken down bazaars and the dirt-floor huts that would soon burn. He was in his oversized helmet, sweating like the devil and shooting his rifle that, at the time, felt as if he were trying to reign a bull. He thought of one time when he shot a woman with her baby. When she fell on the dusty ground the sand was kicked up and with a thud her baby fell. The boy did not have time to consider what happened at the time. He was in a rage and a fear, that sort of feeling when the stomach churns and when a scream is always lingering in the throat, but there is never time enough to think or cry. After the battle, when his group was searching the dead, he saw the woman again. He saw her baby. The mother was a black woman with long, coarse and dirty hair. The baby was just starting to grow hair. They were cold, emaciated. Both of them were dirty with a fresh layer of sand over their bodies. He did not know why, but he always hated that. They were innocent, he thought. And after all their suffering, after all the toil they went through to keep from starving, they died a slow, metallic death.