Upon This Waste

Chapter 4

"Hey Preach, move over will you!" Mike grunted, covered in mud and stench.

"Alright, give me a minute," Sam's replied, still groggy from half-sleep.

Sam squirmed a bit in the trench bottom edging closer the wall. "You happy?" he called out over his shoulder.

"Sure am," Mike called back, chuckling softly to himself.

It had rained the night before, pulling down a coldness with the storm and blanketing the soldiers. The mud on the bottom of the reserve trench was thick. The walls on the sloppily dug earthen laceration were beginning to slouch. The soldiers were still soaking wet, as the sun was hiding far behind the clouds. Still early in the morning, the sky was deep gray, and while the scent of watered pastures should have been blowing in, it was something rotten.

The sky was flashing, incessant as the chime of a broken bell, flash after flash sparked and flamed. Like children begotten by thunder and lightning, the great long arms of artillery cannons sent with amazing power blazing shot into the sky. The crack and boom of firing and landing shells was magnificent and terrible. The explosions instilled in some a sense of wonder, some excitement, some an uncanny feeling that seemed to harbor long within their stomachs. It was a feeling akin to that experienced by a lonely traveler through a forest when seeing an unexpected and unexplainable shadow dart across the path in front of them.

Many men around Isaiah couldn't sleep. Many men had no trouble dozing off at all. Some got used to the explosions and the feelings that they brought. Some did not. A few young soldiers, not far at all from Isaiah, sat side by side chatting and slapping each other on the back and laughing. Isaiah knew that either these men had not seen anything, or far too much. He figured that he himself had seen much compared to many, though he still felt uneasy every time they began inching closer to the front trench. Yet, it was a strange uneasiness. It was not dread, nor was it eagerness. It was more like uncertainty, the terrible weight of the doom of uncertainty as opposed to the uncertainty of doom. A terrible shadow, looming over an uncertain blaze.

He could see it if he peered over the sandbags. He could see the land between the two trenches, more trenches, more mud. Nearer the front were horses crippled and dead, atrophic in the dust. Rotting and decaying, many of their bones were exposed. Some curving, alabaster ribcages showed themselves to the elements, like twisted marble sculptures crafted by one of the Italian masters of old. Isaiah had once seen a drawing of Michelangelo's Pieta, and the horses' ribcages reminded him of that. Flesh and bone together, melting into one. Sad and prolific, real and unreal.

Flies swarmed wherever there was death and decomposition. They covered the horses, until the brown hair of some appeared black and flashing. The dead men were like flies themselves, covering the front trench bottoms and no-man's-land; the bleak land of horrors beckoning and daring pompous sergeants and naïve soldiers.

Isaiah felt like they were worms whenever they were in the trenches. They were wiggling and writhing men. Men often thrown out into the field like bait for some unquenchably ravenous monster.

A machine gun started up and didn't stop. Isaiah had always hated loud noises, but he was slowly beginning to learn to drown them out. Or perhaps, really, all was becoming loud. He liked to picture something else when the machines roared, like a drum. He tried that, watching it beat repeatedly in a daydream, eyes glazed, reality bending. It wasn't working now, so he leaned over toward Sam. "Hey, Sam," he shouted above the crackling, deafening drone. "I'm just curious. Did you like having all of those brothers and sisters growing up?"

Sam hadn't been able to go back to sleep after Mike disturbed him, and he was looking up at the cloud cover when he heard Isaiah. "Brothers and sisters, huh?" started Sam. "I suppose we had our ups and downs, but all in all, yeah. I'm glad about it. Me and my oldest brother get along real well, and usually my sisters and I do too. My two youngest brothers are a different story. We usually just don't talk much." Sam looked over at Isaiah with intrigue on his face. "Why do you ask?"