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Read Ebook: Forward Children! by Bartlett Paul Alexander
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Ebook has 2516 lines and 61967 words, and 51 pages
FORWARD, CHILDREN!
Paul Alexander Bartlett
Copyright 1998 Steven Bartlett. All rights reserved.
Printed and bound in Republic of Korea.
First Printing: March 10, 1998 ISBN 89-88034-03-1
His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published and internationally recognized poet, is the author of seventeen published books of poetry, more than one thousand individually published poems, numerous short stories and essays in leading literary quarterlies and anthologies, and, as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., served as the editor of a series of multi-language volumes of international poetry to honor the work of outstanding contemporary poets.
Orville Dennison was five feet eleven inches tall and weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. He had the body of an athlete, the body of a crewman and a tennis player.
His eyes were brown with flecks of grey in them. He had brown hair and combed it straight back and when it was long it bulged out on the sides and had waves that crossed from ear to ear, waves that were sun bleached on the top.
His nose was aquiline, his mouth was thin-lipped and rather small. He had large ears. His eyebrows were bushy and his lashes were long and thick. His forehead was broad but was not unusual except that it was very smooth while the skin of his face, which was rather florid, had enlarged pores here and there.
His hands were wide across the back and his fingers were strong; his shoulders and arms were muscular.
He walked quickly with a natural swing.
He had a ready smile and even teeth.
His voice was pleasant.
He was twenty-four.
One was struck by the sadness in his face, the careworn lines about his mouth and eyes.
Landel shook Dennison's shoulder.
"Whatcha want?" Dennison mumbled, raising himself on one elbow and unconsciously pushing aside his blanket.
"The supply trucks have come," Landel yelled.
"Who's come?"
"The trucks and tanks are here. Three trucks have brought supplies. We've got food. Are you awake? Hey, do you hear me?"
"What did you say? Sure, sure, I'm awake," Dennison replied hazily. He squinted and ducked as Landel shot the beam of his flashlight directly into his face.
Landel knelt down beside Dennison and fumbled about the floor of the abandoned plank and sandbag irrigation shack for his tank helmet. His tall body almost filled the place. His bald head looked repulsively bald to Dennison--something surgical.
"I let ya sleep a little longer than the other guys," Landel yelled. "Yeah, you needed sleep." He shifted his flashlight around the crude shack, over the mounds of blankets where their crewmates had been sleeping.
"Our kitchen's here! The trucks are here ... three of them," he repeated.
"We've got something hot to eat," he hollered. "Are you awake?" He pushed Dennison--shoved him against the floor. "Come on, get out of here!"
"What time is it?" Dennison asked.
"Nearly fifteen ... we've got to get moving," Landel crabbed. He found his helmet underneath a sandy, greasy blanket and stuck it on. "Raub's got here with his kitchen ... so, let's go ... okay? Now?" He was talking to himself, spitting out words, annoyed by the day's problems, war's problems. He rose from his knees and, stooping low to keep from cracking himself against the roof, edged, crab-fashion, toward the door.
"I'm leavin' ... I'm goin'," he cried.
"I'll be along in a minute," Dennison said, yawning and propping himself against the wall, legs and shoulders feeling stiff.
Landel reappeared.
"Go on ... I'm awake!" he shouted. "See you at the chuck wagon."
"We've got to eat quick ... we've a hell of a lot to do," Landel screamed, his head in the doorway. He zoomed his flashlight into Dennison's eyes, like a warning, and walked off.
Angry, Dennison rubbed his hands over his bearded face, slumped down onto the floor again.
Through the doorway he caught glimpses of the flashlights and lanterns of men headed for the kitchen: legs and lights passed with metronome jerkiness across the sand: dust came up from beneath boots. Shellfire rumbled in the distance, a sound that had in it all the vacuity of the African desert.
A jab of wind dribbled sand through the doorway and shook sand from the make-shift roof of the shelter where only yesterday gunners had been trapped emplacing a gun.
Dennison smelled the stench of gasoline and grease from the tanks and a tank dump nearby; he could smell the gas and grease on his clothes; it seemed to swirl around him.
The incoming air was chilly.
Shivering, he hauled a blanket around him and with his shoulders against a sandbag, lit a cigarette. As his lighter flared he noticed his squashed, grease-pocked helmet; sleepily, he reached for it and placed it across his lap, pressing it down, making it a part of him. One hand holding his pack of cigarettes, the other bringing a cigarette to his mouth, he tried to think.
It seemed to him that he had dreamed during the night.
The tip of the cigarette glowed encouragingly.
Yes, he had dreamed about the library tower, the chimes, the sounds travelling down the hill slopes, down toward Lake Cayuga, the tower and the sounds blurring. Kids were sitting in the library, at long tables, faces, faces. There seemed to be an elm tree at the far end of the reading room, snow, lake ...
He tried to remember the sound of those chimes.
Huddled against sandbags, he drowsed and as he drowsed he saw a campfire in the woods somewhere, students standing around the fire, some of them singing. A guy was playing his harmonica, muting his music by cupping both hands over the instrument ...
Dennison's arms and hands had fallen asleep.
Yesterday the pace across the desert had been formidable, the heat increasing, a shortage of water, the water warm and sickening, nothing at all to eat at noon ...
He shook his hands and arms to bring back the circulation, groaning, cold, the exhaust of a tank stinking and coughing nearby. The sound brought with it the sensation of violent pitching, the distress of gasoline and oil fumes, the threat of shellfire at close range.
Shoving his sweater inside his trouser, adjusting his belt, he knelt and fished about: his helmet had rolled heedlessly and bumped against the wall: recovering it, he strapped it on, tilting it over his forehead, aware of its grime.
Slipping on his leather jacket, yanking the zipper, he wormed about the blankets for his mess kit and stepped out into the open, feeling sand drop off his clothes.
Outdoors, his cigarette tasted better and he inhaled deeply to help wake up. The chilly air nipped his face and hands, as he stood motionless urinating.
Behind the shack rose a tangle of rusty machinery from an irrigation pump, the machinery snarled over a cannon-sized conduit, the pipe's mouth toward the sky. The stars seemed closer because of the junked pipes and gears: the sky, utterly cloudless, was defiant: in a few hours its sun would be hammering, leading on and on, sand gobbling sand, dunes blurring into hills: heat and flies would move it together, thirst would be everywhere.
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