The Normandy boys learned that day that Hell was neither hot nor cold. Their skin did not prick with rigor mortis chill nor bead with summer sweat. Wind did not tousle their hair. No sun cast their shadows. They lined up by the thousands— flagless, nameless — waiting, ignoring their bullet wounds and smithereened limbs, trying to pretend they didn’t want to be there.
The Devil watched them from His perch. This was no spectacle. Over and over again, they fought and killed, over and over again cried for their mothers and over and over again met only Him. He had seen this before. Seen sons not yet fathers line up before Him, thinking they were better than those who had graced His path before. Thinking they deserved honor. Thinking they were special.
In days, though, the Normandy Day population dent would smoothen. The numbers would be
only numbers. The Normandy boys did not matter.
They shuffled forth, heads bowed, eyes blank. They took with them shells of themselves, leaving behind them everything else: a marchtrail of gundust, guts, and memories. One son steered his attention toward the Devil. Rare for battlesons, their heads most often bent in shame of war. The Devil was used to being scrutinized with Christian doubt or feared with sinful knowing. This son did neither. He squinted like he didn’t quite believe what he saw and wanted more. Elder folk often gave Him that look. So did wide-eyed, toddling children. But rarely boys of this age, stubbled, schooled, unwrinkled. The Devil rarely looked at lives anymore — it got old, knowing — but the boy’s curiosity caught onto Him. What must it be like to still want to know? Perhaps it was worth His time. The Devil focused, channeling His once-mortality, and saw.
The mother lingered longest. The boy had been home a short while, but the army suit and cap beckoned his return.
“I’ll be fine, Ma,” he told her, pretending to believe it. “Medics never get any action.” He’d never been a medic, not really. It had been a temporary assignment. He was qualified for it. They needed him in the ranks more, though, and his mother’s heart was poor enough.
It had been easy to lie. She wished him safety and the best, then stayed until his train was no more than a smudge against the distant hills. Her boy waved all the while, convincing himself the silver streaks across his face were from the wind.
In the train car, he did not look at the faces around him. He never did. It was easier to see shrapnelled eyes and bullet-holed cheeks when he didn’t know what the faces should have looked like. The train, his new metal mother, rocked him to sleep.
He dreamed of the Devil. It was not a perfect likeness. Nothing ever was, but it was clear it was supposed to be Him.
The Devil would cackle, filling this false Hell with sound absent in His real home. He would condemn the boy for lying to his mother, for dying too young, for killing. The boy would not argue.
He woke and found himself alone. The others had left, or maybe they had never been there at all.
The boy cried. He cried for his mother and his future, his little brothers and little unborn daughters.
He cried for the places he would never visit, books he would never read, holidays he would never celebrate.
He cried for the rain on pavement that June withheld from him, the smell of fresh-baked cookies, cat fur on clothing.
The boy cried for the Devil.
He never made it to Normandy. They found him at the bottom of a dry ravine, the rail bridge stretching overhead. They said he’d lived through the initial fall but could not move. He died later, on the day of the battle.
The Devil met the son’s eyes. He knew the boy belonged here, perhaps more than the other battlesons. The boy’s mother would think that false, blame the Devil as they all did, and He would acquiesce. Acceptance of blame was easier than trying to get them to believe only they had control.
There was a certain safety that came with death. There was no crying, no pain, no feeling. Some may call it quiet, but to say “quiet” would say there had once been sound. To say “empty” would say it had once been full.
The Devil would cradle the battlesons as their mothers did. They would all pretend it wasn’t
better. Or maybe that it was. That it was anything at all.
The son turned away from the Devil as though he knew He saw him. As though they were
colorfully conscious, not gray imprints of life. The son’s curiosity had dissolved. He cared no longer about the Devil. He had something more important to think about: death. Which was nothing. ▲
