Say the word, my treasure. I will come dig you up. I will sail away with you. I will open your locks, plunge my hands into all your precious gems and metals and let them rain down on my head. I will sew you under my skin, like a Hun’s tooth blown there by a grenade, and for the rest of my days, it will be your golden atoms in my blood and your silver beauty in my hands.

And we will be rich, Asta.

Fabulously, filthy, stinking rich.

Close as Any Man and Woman

Kennet closed the little notebook. He’d sharpened his pencil four times and it was down to about two inches in his cold, cramped fingers. He shook them out as he walked back to the hay mow.

He’d written all morning, looking up every now and again as half-tracks arrived, dropping off more soldiers to be billeted on the farm, wherever they could fit. Kennet guessed there’d be no more feasts around the sisters’ kitchen table. No more B.A.C.K baths or offers of laundry. The bartering of C-rations for bread, milk and eggs continued, but the newly-arrived soldiers cooked and ate over Coleman stoves and gathered to smoke and drink around small campfires in the barnyard.

At one point in his writing, Kennet was interrupted by a bloodcurdling yell. A war whoop that split the barnyard in half and made him drop his pencil. Schmitt was running across the muddy ground, yelling himself hoarse. Down from a half-track stepped Nichols, a bandage swathed around his head. He started running, too. A little slower and quieter, but no less intent. He jumped and wrapped arms and legs around Schmitt, who whirled him in two klutzy circles before they both toppled onto the ground.

“You sorry fucker,” Schmitt cried. “You cocksucking son of a bitch don’t you ever pull that shit on me again…”

Nichols just lay there in the dirt, laughing and pounding Schmitt’s back.

The hay mow now looked like a mini-barracks, with bedrolls placed with their head ends against the wall, boots at the foot, packs to the right, rifles to the left. Nobody mandated or suggested this arrangement. The well-trained men just did it, and piled the hay into insulating walls, making little rooms. Within the improvised quarters, pairings were kept sacrosanct. O’Hara still wasn’t speaking to Jock, but his bedroll was right next to Jock’s and he showed no intention of moving it. Likewise the Fish was still on the Hook, their kits close together under a small, square window, its frame stuffed tight with rags and straw to keep the drafts out.