Eyes that Move

Moments before they attacked us, everything seemed to shudder: the white lips of everyone in the barn, the stands of bodies with nowhere to go, the acrid rise of perspiration. We had hidden here, hoping they’d take what they wanted from our houses and move on. Now, we knew we were wrong, oh, so wrong, to trap ourselves here. I thought I heard a collective pounding, a single, terrified heartbeat. They weren’t coming for us anymore.

They were here.

Seconds before the door broke, I saw, through a storm-specked window, my neighbor Ginny dart from the cover of a tree with her two little ones. I watched her dress billow out like a gray storm cloud as she dragged the children along, their flimsy legs flying up in their unbuckled boots, till they fell, all of them, Ginny first, among the frozen needle-like weeds. I clutched my son to me, hard, as my heart wrenched with cruel hope when it looked like Ginny’s boy had just fallen, till I saw the pink-red star on the back of his shirt, blooming …

Like a carnation.

Now, the barn sounded like it was being broken apart as the doors were splintered. I crouched with a frantic whisper into his ear, “Stay close,” until a shout pulled my words away and, with despair, our wet hands slipped and were wrung apart. The first shots blasted and someone fell upon me, pitching me facedown onto the dirt floor. I heard my nose crack but felt nothing as another body came down and another, like felled trees or a game of pick up sticks. The air roared with the furious cut-off shouts from men and the horrified shrieks from women.

Then, they were gone. I was overlaid with death, trapped by those above me, and their broken limbs collapsed against me as I freed myself. I saw the face of my neighbor’s son, his mouth drawn open in a silent curse. The sunlight illuminated his features with an absurd gentleness and I thought it bizarre that the sun should glow at all, unbothered except for the dust that twisted in its path. I picked my way across, searching for open floor, a series of involuntary chokes shuddering from me as I staggered past the bodies of my friends and neighbors, half-envious of their morbid peace, yet ready to take my baby any way I found him—any way, if only he was alive.

Finally, I saw it: a blue plaid sleeve peeking from under a man’s shoulder. I touched it and gently turned the tiny knob-like shoulders to look upon that placid face and know that image would be my last when finally death released me. The eyes were open. Blue, flecked with gray, vacant with the impossibility of the last moment.