SOUND

“Do you hear it son?” Samuel’s gravelly voice whispered to no one in particular. A youth next to him looked up from his drink and makes a non-committal grunt, and the sounds came rushing in all at once.

The bar was filled with people, the tables had been pushed to one side to create a huge dance-floor. Samuel sat at the bar with his back to them, but he could feel their energy and excitement. Not surprising, an end to a war is something to celebrate, especially this one. All you could hear were people cheering, champagne bottles popping and music from the juke-box blaring. The ground of the bar seemed alive; the wooden floors creaked and moaned as the people they supported beat rhythmically on top of them. The dusty windows reverberated as their loud voices broke free from the prison that their fear of the future had created. The atmosphere was finally calm, so people let their hair down for the first time in months. So proud. Like they had pulled the trigger that ended that man’s life. Like they had been responsible for coordinating invasions. Oh, but don’t even mention the failures. The botched assault, the weak defence lines, the gung-ho attitude of generals. Then it is the fault of the soldiers. Whenever they are triumphant it is, “We did it! We beat them!” but whenever there is a catastrophic failure it is, “You thrice-damned idiots, how could you fuck up this badly?” That’s just the way the world works, Samuel supposed.

 These thoughts and more zoomed around Samuel’s head as he drank the pain away. The whole night, total strangers had come to greet him like they were old friends, bought him drinks, said the famous obligatory words, “Thank you for your service,” and fucked off to join the people they truly cared about. The only people sitting at the bar was Lt. Colonel Samuel James Wilkins. Samuel was only twenty-nine, but looked like he had the better days of fifty behind him. The worry lines and wrinkles on his face made him look like he was carved from the world’s oldest oak tree and the calluses on his hands were so prominent his hand appeared swollen. His hair, once sandy brown, was now either grey or non-existent. The young man was next to him too, the lucky bastard had only just grown hair on his Johnson so he did not have to endure what Samuel endured. He sighed. Wasn’t that the point? To fight so that they would not have to? The smoke; the gunfire; the terrible, terrible screams...

The sounds welled up inside Samuel’s head again, so he downed his drink and ordered another. The boy next to him looked up, ordered one too, and leaned over to Samuel, “This one’s on me, sir.” Samuel grunted and nodded and waited for the barman to bring them their drinks. The stranger got up and moved a chair closer, leaving a respectful space in-between them. “How are you sir? My name’s Myron”. Samuel looked at Myron from the corner of his eye. He was a handsome black man – a bloody surprise that they allowed him in, but a grateful one – with great big eyes and neat hair. He was well-built, lean but muscular. His voice was soft, and the drawl when he spoke was hypnotic. We could’ve used someone with his build, Samuel thought. Another champagne bottle popped and ushered in a new chorus of cheers. Samuel winced. Myron looked over his shoulder and back at Samuel with worry in his innocent eyes. “Oh sir, don’t you pay them no nevermind. Theys just glad we won the war, that’s all.” Samuel scoffed and looked at the merriment behind them. “They didn’t win no war,” he muttered. “They won the right to stay at home with their families while we went off to some unknown to fight some unknown.” Samuel downed his neat whiskey again, Myron held up his hand for another. He looked nervous. They were both silent, Myron fiddled with his empty glass as he struggled to find something to say. “Were it terrible sir?” Myron asked eventually. Samuel laughed. It was the first time in the two weeks that he had been home that he had laughed. It didn’t sound right. It didn’t belong.

“Terrible doesn’t even begin to describe it, son,” Samuel says, accepting the new drink from the barkeep. The juke-box blares another song and the crowd roars their approval and a glass shatters somewhere in the crowd. Samuel winces so hard that he spills his drink. Myron gets up to go try and talk the celebrators down but Samuel grabs his arm. “Didn’t you just tell me to pay them no mind? It were just a glass, no need to cause a fuss.” Myron looked over his shoulder again, where some people had just gotten onto the table and started dancing. “It ain’t right,” he said. “That’s not how decent folk should act. ‘Specially with a vet here.” Samuel smiled at him with no warmth. “Sit down son,” he said to the youth. Myron looked over his shoulder again but sat down anyway. “Lemme tell you summin’,” Samuel began. He swished around his whiskey, apparently deep in thought. “These sounds,” he gestured across the bar. “These sounds don’t bother me. Laughing, celebrating, dancing. Where I was, if you heard those sounds it was because someone had finally cracked and were itching to taste a bullet. So, they weren’t common. But do you know what was common? Gunshots, sirens, airplanes, bombs, fire, screaming. Every day I would go to sleep with the sound of M2 Flamethrowers blasting their hellflames up above and wake up to the sound of panicked Luger shots and let me tell you if a Kraut switched to their Luger it was because they were out of options. And throughout the entire goddamned day, I would read reports of my friends dying ‘cross country.” Samuel sipped his drink again, Myron looking at him with wide eyes. Samuel sighed and looked at the dancing crowd. “Them’s decent folk,” he said, empty eyes staring through them. “Decent folk dance, decent folk laugh. What decent folks don’t do is torture another human being, treat them like animals.” 

Samuel squeezed his glass so tight it began to crack. “I found one of my men y’know,” he whispers so quietly that Myron had to lean in to hear what he had to say. The sounds came back to Samuel. The roar of airplanes over-head, gunshots in the distance, running feet in the narrow passage-ways outside; they made the rhythm of his very bones. “Private Gary Wayne. 18-years-old and enlisted. Wide-eyed and bushy-tailed son-of-a-bitch. He was eager to prove himself so I sent him on a small mission to deliver a message across the way. Two-hour job, there and back. I didn’t see him for three days. Eventually, I and a group of boys went looking for him. The wasteland we encountered was more hostile than any Kraut we could find. Mines long forgotten, hidden traps, trenches so deep it would take hours before you got out, if you got out. We searched and we searched until eventually, we heard crying. Not screams of pain, but cries o’ sorrow. I will never forget them. We followed them cries, past the trenches and into a stretch o’ wood that had somehow survived and there we find Gary lyin’ against the roots of a humongous tree, not a lick of skin left on him, ‘scept for his hands, but breathing. He lay there, in the dirt ‘n mud with all kinds of creep-crawlies on ‘im. He didn’t seem to notice. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I heard a poor fella retching behind me. Gary looked up at us, but I doubt he could see us an’ he whispered ‘Do you hear it son?’ an’ cryin’ all the way. I tried to help Gary up but when I grabbed his hands to lift him, his skin slid off like they was gloves and he fell back into the dirt like the roots pulled him back, eager for whatever nourishment he could provide. Maybe that’s how that stretch o’ wood survived; The Lord knows they had no lack o’ bodies. He died minutes later; God only knows how long he was like that.” Myron looked ill. Samuel finished his drink, looked Myron dead in the eye, and spoke again.

Half-an-hour later, Myron staggered out of the bar. Not drunk, for he was a pious man, but shocked and disgusted, eyes wider still and no longer innocent. Myron would carry Samuel’s last words with him until the day he died. He had said. “You see boy. These sounds don’t bother me. Gunshots, dancing, fire, shattering, screaming, singing. They all just loud noises to me. Every day I would drink to the sound of people dying and the sounds of flamethrowers. Do you know what flamethrowers sound like when they are scorching the living? I do, and I will never forget. I continue to drink because only then do I feel at home. Every day I hear those noises and Gary’s crying and I drink. It is not the loud noises that scare me Myron; it's the silence. Total and complete silence. That’s when I know I’m dead.”