Souvenir Read Free

rock. He moved slowly, coming up to just below where Clay’s head was. Clay motioned with his hand, and Jake moved his head up as Clay leaned to the left. Their heads joined, one right eye and one left eye each with a clear view.
    Scritch.
    An oak leaf. A big one, from one of the giant oaks across the field. Brown and curled, its sharp lobes turned downward so it looked like a prehistoric insect, teetering on its pointed tips, stem straight out like a tail. The wind pushed it along the top of the crusted snow, its protesting sound unnaturally loud in the silence.
    Then it was gone. Jake blinked, thinking he had lost sight of it. Clay raised his head just an inch, tilting it back to get a better angle on the field. Jake looked at him, saw his eyes widen. Then he saw it too. A line of footprints, almost obscured by the drifting snow, but still deep enough to capture the oak leaves blown across the field. They both raised their heads as high as they safely could, and from this added vantage they saw little clusters of brown leaves, partially covered in snow, caught in a clear trail of footprints that led along their edge of the woods, right in front of them, and curved right, heading across the field, to a spot where the woods jutted out onto a small rise. Perfect spot for a machine gun. Both men eased their heads back behind the cover of the rock. Jake shivered.
    “Fuck,” whispered Clay as he drew out binoculars from his field jacket. They were German, taken off an SS officer Clay had dropped with a single shot from two hundred yards. The binoculars were the main reason Red had chosen them for this job, and now Clay blessed them with his curse. First chance he got, he’d sell them to some rear area slob who wouldn’t have to worry about taking them on a walk in the woods.
    Observing the rise was going to be a problem. It was on their right, and slightly above them. So if he went to the right of the rock, he’d have a good view and so would any alert Jerry, or even a half-awake one with his own binoculars. If he went left, he’d have good cover from the rise, but be exposed to the rest of the tree line to his left. Fuck.
    Clay wished he had his helmet on, and was sitting so he could hold his M1, butt to the ground, and tap it on his helmet two or three times. Three times would be good. But the helmet was on the ground, there was no reason to pick up the rifle, and nowhere to go but up. Fuck fuck fuck. Clay could hear his daddy say it clear as day. Fuck this tractor, ain’t worth shit. Fuck this engine, and fuck Henry Ford, too. Fuck that banker man.
    Clay felt his stomach in a knot, like he always had when his daddy swore like that, at least when he was a little kid. Then there was a brief period of confusion when he learned what the word actually meant, and he wondered how a tractor could have that done to it, and who was supposed to do it to Mr. Blasdale down at the bank? But then he understood his daddy never, ever used it in that way. When he said it, it was to mean, I ain’t got nothing left but this awful, terrible swear word, and by god you ain’t taking that from me. And that’s just how Clay used it, never to mean something dirty, but to show his daddy, wherever he was, that he too still had something left when he stood at the end of the road.
    Clay turned his wool cap around so the visor wouldn’t get in the way of the binoculars, pulling it down to his eyebrows so his skin wouldn’t show. He gave a curt nod to Jake, who gave it back. No expression. That meant, if I get my head blown off, it was good to know you, buddy. Didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye. He didn’t put the binoculars right on top of the rock, but below the top, so the bottom half of what he saw was a blur. The top half was enough. In the tree line, past where the sugar beet field turned to brush and pine seedlings, he could see logs, stacked up about three feet, with cut pine branches strewn around them to soften the straight