Nick

by Michael Farris Smith

his name would give them all some strange purpose.

they shared the language of the expected.

She told him the regular boatsmen were all off fighting or dead in the war.

It’s not about who is the best shot or who is the strongest or who has some special skill for cutting a man’s throat. It’s about good luck or bad luck and that’s it.

But the habit eventually turned into a collage of memories that irritated him.

He fought to keep her clear and vivid in his mind though with each day she became a clouded image, in the way that the dead lose their clarity and slowly fall away because we know they will not return.

carrying the punishment of having survived.

If I need money

I’ll have it sent from my father. Judah gave him a long and blank stare and when Nick asked what was wrong, Judah said that’s the first time I’ve ever heard anybody say that.

“I only know what I see,”

You are twentyeight years old.

Behind the fence, a great brawl of starvation.

Only weeks before the crackdown on alcohol became official and despite the outcry and the predicted consequences of such legislation the politicians and lawmakers stood firm and ignored the possibility of extraordinary change that all others seemed to see so clearly.