Woolgathering

The Colonel's regiment was marching. It was marching against an enemy no one would remember, in a time no one would remember, in a place that would be beyond recall or desire once its mines were depleted. Yet still the regiment was marching. Not together, because this was guerilla warfare— a term that had long since ceased to bring images of banal natives and exotic jungles to mind and come, instead, to mean there were two kinds of men: careful and dead. They were lucky about as often as struck by lightning.

  Thus was the regiment split into tip-toeing battalions creeping toward their destination. This was for the best. Grumbling was what soldiers did best, and splitting them up meant the Colonel didn't have to hear all of them at it at once.

  Since when, they wondered, did the Colonel roll over for his superiors? Since when did the laconic, ponderous man agree to missions like this: slaughtering and razing a village of rebels?

  They bitched and they moaned and they cussed at the devil that had gotten into their leader. They were miserable. The only comfort they'd had in this gods-be-damned territory was that their regiment had this unique code of honor, like. They'd hung it over their companions for months.

  And now it would be wafting to the heavens with the smoke from the funeral pyres. Every step the men took toward the doomed village ahead left them increasingly certain that they, too, would die on its wickered streets.

  Which was why their jaws dropped when at last they arrived.

  The Colonel was already there, standing in the midst of a ghost town. He rarely curled those dark features of his in a smile, but now he graced them with one positively boyish, brooding gorilla that he was.

  "It appears, men," he spoke wryly, enigmatically as he gestured to the abandoned huts, "That God has cleared the village of natives himself. All that is left to us is to burn the place. Be quick about it. I want to get back to camp before dusk. We'll feast to our blessing when we arrive."

  A cheer went up.

  But the Lt. Colonel and his Captain didn't smile.

  Blessings never came free.

  II.