Hans Larwin, "Soldat und Tod" 1917
“Next,” [ the spindly man] said, no humor in his voice at all.
“Who are you anyway?” Lew said.
“Somebody who needs proof,” the spindly man said.
“Of what?” Lew said.
“The intangible,” the spindly man over-enunciated. “You know.”
“I don’t have to tell you,” Lew said. “I never even told my wife.”
“Of course, of course,” the spindly man said, all manners now. “Just leave Marcy running home through the darkness all alone.”
Lew looked from the spindly man to Marcy. Then to me.
“So maybe I saw something once,” he said.
Just to have control again, I nodded for him to continue.
The spindly man shifted his chair in anticipation.
“We were at . . . well, it doesn’t matter,” Lew started off. “Way past the DMZ. Deep, no support. Somebody was shooting at us from a fortified position. So we ventilated his little roost, and he stopped shooting like you have to. Because you’re dead.”
“Exactly,” the spindly man said. “The dead don’t shoot, of course they don’t. What is this, television?”
Lew wasn’t listening to him anymore, though.
“Only, once we broke cover, that dead sniper, he came back up over the lip of his little parapet. Except—I was the only one to see it—he was still dead. And there was another man up there with him. Moving that dead sniper’s arms like a puppet. Putting his finger on the trigger. We lost three more men that day.”
“And you made it home,” the spindly man said. “Good for you. You’re living, breathing proof of the intangible. You saw it, respected it, and were given your life in return. Who else, now?”
* * *
"The Spindly Man" (2014) by Stephen Graham Jones is an uncanny heart-breaker. I first read it in 2017, and its unremitting emotional intensities and atmosphere of vastation often come to mind.
Today, I scrolled past a post of Larwin's painting "Soldat und Tod" and "The Spindly Man" was right there before I realized it.
Jay
17 November 2022
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