Dying Fire

He stands alone in the wing, back slumped against the door. One hand grips his trumpet, the other, a piece of paper. Behind him an orchestra begins to tune as men and women shuffle to their seats, ready to forget the outside world and all of its trouble for a night. Yet here he stands, eyes swollen and watering, wanting nothing more than a grieving moment. A broken soul dressed to the nines.

Somewhere, many miles from here, his brother is dead. Struck through the heart with an errant musket ball.

Burying the letter in his cummerbund, he reaches for a handkerchief and mops up the tears which have pooled in his beard. He pushes harder than he needs, grinding the coarse bristle into his skin. The pain is slight but necessary. Anything to distract him. A few more deep inhalations and he opens the door, making his way back to the pit just in time for the lights to dim.

Perhaps, he thinks, the darkness will mask the red of his eyes, but a loss of sight only quickens his memory. He tries to think of anything except his brother, but a mind full of grief is a wild and writhing thing. After a moment, he can fight it no more.

In his mind, the dark of the theater is a forest, and its high flung ceiling is star- speckled velvet. The noise of the shifting crowd is like a warm breeze sifting through black trees, and carrying the meadow scent of heather. His brother is there, just on the other side of the dying fire.

“I want to fight,” his brother says, “so one day you’ll be proud of me.”

The lights come up and music begins. Strings hum to life, lifting and flitting as fireflies around steady, twining woodwinds.

“You don’t need me to be proud of you,” he says, “you need only be proud of yourself.”

Timpani rolls in like thunder.

“But I want to be good at something, like you.”

A chorus of voices wrap themselves in the building brass. He lifts the trumpet

to his lips.

“Go to sleep,” he puffs, “you’ll just end up in the ground.”

There is a sudden silence. His brother is gone, but the sour note he has played

echoes through the hall. The opulent crowd is a mass of furrowed brows and sideways glances. The conductor taps madly at on the stand, trying to restore order to the pit. Several of his peers look down the barrels of their instruments, appalled at his performance.

There is no need to hide his grief now. He is visible, the center of viscous attention. Standing, he bows as courteously as he can and exits the opera house.

The night is spent in drink. As is the next day, and the next. He tries to drown out the memory of his brother, tries to burn it away with the taste of whiskey. But, even in stupor, his brother is there. That face, on the other side of the flames, burned into the backs of his eyelids. He is drowning in fire. Drowning, drowning.

He is drowning. Water floods nose and mouth as lungs kick violently against the unwelcome flood. He thrashes, straining desperately for air. A strong hand releases the pressure on the back of his head and he whips it above the surface, coughing, spitting, sucking in the stale, familiar air of his apartment.

The two cups of black coffee and dry toast do nothing to settle his stomach. News has spread of his unemployment and the enlistment men have come to call.

“But I don’t want to fight,” he says. “I would never make a good soldier.”

“You don’t need to fight,” they reply. “You’re being given the honor of serving your country. You should be proud.”

One of the men picks something up and places it on the table. Through bleary and bloodshot eyes, he tries to comprehend why his trumpet will be necessary. Slowly, sickeningly, he comes to understand the goal of his new vocation. His instrument, which once soothed and awed, is now to send young men to their graves. The pounding in his head will soon be keeping time to the beat of a different drum.

A fortnight finds him muddied and exhausted, clutching a blanket tight around his shoulders and huddling at the fire of his new compatriots. He sits among them for the warmth, but his mind wanders as far as possible. These soldiers, workmen once and laborers all, belie the grace and class of his former life. Champagne and educated conversation, nothing but brown water and superstition. Swinging crystal and marble floors, now are torches and trampled earth. They may have heard or read, if they can, of the luxuries he once knew, but these men have lived hard. And his bones of class do not easily harden.

Once he is close to sufficiently warm, he decides to move to another campfire. He tells them half of the truth, that he wants to walk before his legs are too sore to move. What he wants is some peace and a slightly less odiferous breathing space.

A frost has formed on the half-frozen mud. His footsteps crunch as he makes his way through rows of dark tents. Passing fire after crowded fire, he finally reaches the end of the camp and looks up at the stars. He puffs out a curse. The cold is creeping back into his bones.

“Need a place to warm yourself?”

A young man sits off the path, tending a fire all his own. It is small, but with heat enough for another body.

“Mighty grateful,” he says, making his way into the light of the fire.

“A fire’s always better with company,” the young man says.

But, he is no man at all. It is a boy, surely no more than thirteen or fourteen

years of age. He reaches into a leather bag at his feet from which he pulls a small knife, a rag, and a bottle of polish into the flickering light.

“Aren’t you a mite too young to fight?” the older man asks.

“It wouldn’t be polite,” the boy says, not looking up, “to find fault with the person who offers you a seat at his fire.”

The man raises one hand, being careful not to lose his grip on the blanket, to accept this observation. He sits.

The boy reaches into his bag a second time. Now, he draws out a familiar object. It is caked with dry mud and in desperate need of attention, but even in the firelight, the shape of it is clear. A bugle. He carefully chips away dry mud with the knife. Once it's gone, he takes to the metal with the rag and polish. In a few minutes, he produces the instrument. It is old and battered but could have been a beautiful piece once. The boy puts the mouthpiece to his lips and lets out a silver-plated trill.

A few grumbles and calls to keep quiet echo from the tents and fireplaces around the camp.

“That’s a nice the instrument you have there,” the man says, bemused. “And you seem to handle it well.”

“I’d better,” the boy says. “Me and this here cornet, well, we send a lotta bodies into battle. So, I better know my notes."

The man feels the weight of his own trumpet at his hip.

“I wanted to fight,” the boy continues. “Figured my Pa might be proud of me then. But they said I weren’t old enough so, instead they give me with this. I may not be able to fight but, don’t mean I ain’t responsible for some of the killin.’”

“Is that what you want?”

“Well, I thought it was. You know, collect some scalps, go home with a scar, somethin’ to be proud of. Now, I know there’s nothing worth what I seen. Sendin’ those boys to the ground, and all. So, I just do what they tell me and pray it’s over soon.”

“Aren’t you afraid of getting hurt?”

“A’course I am. I’d have to be right simple not to.” The boy lifts his instrument. Streaks of red light flow across its surface. “But, no one ever sees the bugler. ‘Less’n you're one mean piece of devil-fire.”

The man drops a hand to his hip and grips cold metal. Lifting the trumpet from the folds of his blanket, he shows the boy the instrument of his former profession. The young man’s eyes go wide.

“Is that the real thing?” he asks, unashamed of his enthusiasm. The man nods.

"Golly, I seen a few real cornets in person but, none quite as pretty or clean as this here. Wait, say, mister, how many battles you seen?"

His stomach twists. “Haven’t seen one yet. Tomorrow’s will be my first.”

“Then I best learn you the calls. They teach you how we send ‘em in and bring ‘em back? No? Then we best get to it. I tell you what,” the boy puts his tools and bugle back in his sack. “You stick with me tomorrow and I’ll tell you how we do. And when we get out of this, you show me how to play some of them proper tunes, right? We have a deal?”

“We have a deal,” he says, grasping the young man’s outstretched hand. Across the light of the dying fire, the boy seems so much like his brother.

“Thank ya, mister. I just always wanted to be good at something. Fightin’s one thing but, to play something beautiful, you know, well that’s something to be proud of.”

The battle wrecks him. All he knows of humanity goes to hell with the force of a cannon blast. Never could he have imagined the chaos, the river of live bodies surging onto the field only to trickling back in pieces, and such fewer numbers. In those moments when the smoke clears, what once was a field of battle is now a field of bodies, fluids pouring and bones protruding from orifices both God and man-made. He is sick often.

His young compatriot, however, has been well-conditioned. He runs from officer to officer, passing commands and sounding his bugle with very little acknowledgment of the violence surrounding him. Within the first quarter-hour, the man is unable to keep pace and loses sight of the boy.

The first day passes, a deafening blur of smoke, blood, and bodies. He does not believe he can survive another day, but the boy was right. No one sees the bugler. And nightfall finds him again at the boy’s fire, the fire which refuses to let his memory rest. The boy’s voice and mannerisms are now so similar to that of his beloved kin that his heart nearly breaks. It is a strange thing, he thinks, he abhors the wound, but he keeps it open for as long as he can. Even proximity to a resemblance is better than nothing at all.

Another blood sun rises, another blood bath ensues. Today, however, the man keeps up with the boy. He’s becoming accustomed to the disorientation of battle. Within the week, he is taking commands and sounding his horn without thought. He begins to feel as if he has always been here. And then it’s over. Time to march on. If a goal was achieved, he cannot imagine how the wreckage of life left to rot on this fetid ground could ever be misconstrued as victory.

Over the next horizon, another enemy emerges. Though the terrain is unfamiliar, the sounds, the smells, and screams are always the same. But in the waning hours of battle, he feels that something is different. He looks to the boy on his left and their commander beyond. Ahead, the backs of the infantry block

his view of the enemy, but something is clearly wrong. They are not marching forward, no, they are falling back.

Without a word from command, the men begin to splinter. The line breaks and they scatter like insects before the fire. They swarm over each other, trying vainly to reach safety. Many fall and are trampled. Those that try to climb over the growing heap are shot from behind, blood pouring from their chests and faces. They crumble, weighing down those still alive beneath. The field has become a writhing mass of the dead and the dying.

The man looks on, dumb with horror. As the smoke begins to clear, over the crest of the death heap comes the enemy. They do not slow. The man feels a new twisting in his gut. His body has locked up and his trousers are dark with urine. He does not notice. The enemy surges ever forward.

His commander is shouting something, but he is so distant, so outside the realm of importance, that comprehension is impossible. Then, a peel of silver music splits through his brain, breaking away the stupor. From behind him comes a roar of voices and a sudden rush of fresh bodies. The next wave has begun to charge. They clash with the enemy, crunching bones and slicing flesh, a frenzy of bullets and blades and fresh blood.

Again, the young boy begins to sound a command as the next wave prepares to charge. Perhaps, the man hopes, the day will be theirs after all. But that silver tone is cut short. He looks to the boy. Through the smoke, he sees the body of his companion crumple to the ground. In his place stands an enemy, bloodied knife in hand.

The ground is moving fast beneath him before he realizes he is rushing the boy’s killer. He has no gun, no blade, no weapon of war. He has no idea what he is doing. Perhaps, he thinks, perhaps death is what he wants after all and now he is rushing toward it.

Yet, without thought, a silver object flies from his peripheral, carried in the arc of a swinging arm. The bell of the trumpet connects with the face of the enemy, slashing a grizzled cheek wide open. The killer stumbles back trying to right himself, wild eyes rolling. A bloody hand claps to the wound as the other tries to ready the knife, but there is no time. The trumpet sings, pummeling and crushing an eye socket. The enemy falls to the ground and the trumpeter pounces.

He is feral. This body beneath him is crushed by a mountain of rage. Not until every drop of anger has been wrung from his soul will the beating cease. Again and again, the instrument bludgeons the face of the boy's killer. Surely, this devastated mass of flesh once had a name but it is not the person he cares about. It has become the embodiment of all which has done him wrong. This thing killed his friend, this thing killed my brother! He screams. Tears pour down his face, made pink with spattered blood.

Strong arms wrap around his shoulders, dragging him from the gory scene. No longer recognizable, the trumpet drops from his bloody and swollen hands.

He has no more will to fight and allows himself to be drug along. He is dropped next to the body of his young friend. Through the deafening haze, he sees an officer shouting and pointing to the ground. He cannot hear, but he looks. There, still clutched in the fingers of his dead companion, is a silver bugle.

He lifts the instrument. Streaks of red blood flow across its surface. Had this piece used valves like his trumpet, it would be useless. He stands and faces the charnel slaughter. Sons and fathers, friends and brothers, gnashing, firing, breaking, slashing.

He turns away and walks to the crest of a hill. Stars glimmer through the velvet of a darkening sky. He stands in an ocean of gently rolling heather. Fireflies glow, rising from the fragrant earth.

Again, he faces the chaos of shuffling bodies and puts the bugle to his lips. He puffs silver notes that swim through the night air. Not the notes of command, but a song. A tune each ear below knows. Beautiful and melancholy, a song of the living for the dead. The song he has longed to play for his brother, and now for his friend.

The roiling violence comes slowly to a standstill, as each soul below looks to the music.

He is visible, alone, the center of awestruck attention.

It does not matter from which musket the errant ball came, but as he falls to the

ground, the last notes of his bugle echo like a warm breeze sifting through black trees. And his brother is there, just on the other side of the dying fire.