Upon This Waste

Chapter 10

There was yelling outside the barn. Isaiah heard struggling and then a gunshot, then another, and then all returned to silence except for Poe's barking. Lieutenant Locknell called them out before they had had the time to exit the barn, saying that it was safe and they filed out like prisoners into the night.

There was an older man on the ground in front of them clutching his leg. His hair was trimmed short and was gray and his beard was long and grizzled. His right hand was pressed hard against his thigh and blood ran from between his fingers down his pant leg and onto the ground. There was a shotgun laying near him in the brush and one of the soldiers who had went down the road earlier bent down to pick it up and carry it away from him. The old man was speaking, but Isaiah couldn't understand what he was saying. It was as if the words were getting choked in his throat or jumbled in his mouth.

"Dammit!" the Lieutenant roared. "Can anyone understand this bastard?" he asked the men who stood opened mouthed in the starlight.

"I probably could well enough if he calmed down a bit," David said stepping toward the old man.

David spoke to the man and Isaiah couldn't understand what he was saying and the man replied and he still understood nothing. It looked to Isaiah like none of the other soldiers understood the conversation any better than he did, for all of them were moving their eyes back and forth between David and the old man seemingly eyeing the words with unwavering ignorance as they floated between tongues.

David turned around and spoke, "He seems not to have been suspecting Americans. I think I've calmed him down enough though. He's nothing to lose sleep over, just a confused old man."

"Nothin' to lose sleep over!" Lieutenant Locknell burst out. "The hell he ain't. He took three of our men hostage, held them at gunpoint, and damn near killed me and who knows how many of you if I hadn't shot him!"

"With all due respect, Sir," David said, "he thought we were Germans."

David turned around again to speak with the old man and after talking for a minute turned back to speak further with the Lieutenant. "He says that he loves Americans, he greatly appreciates are help in the war, and that this never would have happened had he known. He also says that he had heard rumors that some Germans were in the area, and rouge soldiers were breaking into homes. He thought we'd come to loot his home and kill his family while they slept and he has three daughters living with him and he didn't know what we'd do with them."

"Is the old bastard a lunatic?" Lieutenant Locknell shouted. "Good God, couldn't he tell they were speakin' English? English, you son of a bitch!" he shouted, pointing at the old man. "And what the hell kind of plan did he come up with? It doesn't make any damn sense! Holding men at gunpoint! Marching them back to us! What the hell kind of crazy, out of his damn mind bastard is he?"

"Again, Sir, no disrespect here," David started, "but he says he doesn't know much English at all, he only heard it for a few seconds and thought it was German. And I don't think he really had a plan."

Every time David turned from the old man and spoke to the Lieutenant, the old man just nodded his head and muttered words that no one but David knew and occasionally clenched his fists together for a moment and shook his balled-up hands as if in excited prayer. During their conversation, a soldier went over to him and helped to wrap and bandage his wound, and though it must have hurt terribly, the old man just kept nodding and even smiling as they talked. He moved his eyes from one solider to the next shaking his clasped hands and nodding his grinning head and sputtering, "Merci! Merci! Américains! Merci!"