In the late days of spring, the peaches ripen into beautiful husks of sweet nectar. Row after row of trees, arranged neatly in horizontal columns that line the full perimeter of the grove, belong to one Nigel Crimstock, former banker and owner of a surprisingly green thumb. Consistent rain and blinding sunlight, the kind that burrows into the iris’ and causes the young to squint like old misers, had made the foundations strong, the roots deep and wide. The branches groan gently, pulled ever more by relentless gravity, begging to be released from the weight of their fruit.
A man stands under one such tree. That man is Nigel, and it is his tree, such as it was his father’s tree once, and shall one day be his son’s. With careful hands and the help of a curved blade, he separates tender twigs from their mother branches and sends their bounty plummeting down into the blanket below. The fabric catches each peach, carefully set up above the ground and between two adjacent trees so as to prevent the fallen fruit from bruising. Before long, dozens of their kind lie there, covered in fuzz only barely hiding the delicious fruit inside.
“Charlie, stop fiddlin’ with your belt and get over ‘ere, I need you to replace the netting! Do you hear me, boy?”
“I’ll be right along, papa.”
A boy stands some distance away. His choppy hair, the color of the bark, surrounds him in all directions as it flutters in the breeze. Despite the neutral expression on his face, marred only by narrowed eyes buried in concentration, he likes it here. His birthday was just a month ago, back when the peach trees were in bloom. His mother, when she was still around, said that it was a prodigious sign. She didn’t live long enough to associate it with anything as the boy grew older, but her husband carried on that memory.
In his hands rests a sketchbook filled with the imagined dreams that haunt his fleeting memories. The sketch, currently somewhere midway between the finish line and the abyss, has been titled ‘Bunny Rabbit in the Underbrush,’ and contains an oddly detailed rendition of the aforementioned creature. Odd because Charlie had never seen a bunny in the flesh before, only in his picture books, and because Charlie had barely half a dozen years on him. Yet his father needed assistance from the young child, and so he had come. But the sketchbook came with him, as it often did.
“Charlie, you put that down right now, or I swear to God I will come down an’ wallop you hard, you understand?”
Charlie runs towards his father, the notebook falling to the grass. It wouldn’t stay there long. Several minutes later, once the netting had been replaced and fresh peaches began to fall from their citadels, Charlie had returned to sketching the rabbit of his dreams.
“Overactive imagination,” the doctor said, “Nothing to worry about.” There were bigger issues on the horizon anyway.
__________
“It’s a stingray, Charlie, an aquatic – no, no, don’t touch the film! It’s quite fragile. Just tell me if you want a closer look.”
“Okay, Mr. Crimstock.”
“Oh, please, no need for the formalities! It’s Uncle Jacob and nothing more.”
“May I please see the stingray better, Uncle Jacob?”
“You’re a well-behaved lad, Charlie. A credit to Nigel’s parenting. Yes, you may. Here…”
“May I get a closer look too, Mr. Crimstock?”
“Yes, yes, Philip, go right ahead. Just don’t crowd me too much or I may feel a sense of claustrophobia coming on. A jest, boys! Don’t mind me. Spot of humor from the Great War, you know how us old timers are.”
Longer legs, a tighter cut, and improvements in general musculature mark Charlie’s growth spurt at the age of fourteen, coupled with what seemed to be feelings he’d never experienced or expected to feel for someone so close to him.
Philip is another boy. A year older, an inch taller, and wearing his hair long over his shoulders as befitting someone whose interest is more in music and the manufacturing of instruments than fantastical imagery in Charlie’s mind. His dark hair smells like sea salt and the ocean breeze.
Charlie gulps, his eyes tearing away from his own childhood companion and instead, resting on the black-and-white photograph before them. A stingray, how odd! Its little tail appears to drag along behind it, flat against the sand dunes that rest at the bottom of the sea, its skin appearing like some washed-out leather stretched wide over its body, proportioned like a ridiculous kite. How could something like that exist? What semblance of sense did it make? He imagined it flying in the sky like a bird, not swimming through ocean rapids among trout and mackerel.
A low murmur of voices resounds in the hallway of Charlie’s home, an older manor where the oaken floorboards creaked, dust nested among spiraling staircases and upon the countless windowsills that lined wide, imposing hallways. But here, on this Christmas day, the house was full of life. The fireplace crackled, the candles illuminated the faces of family and friends alike, and the scent of roast pork was only compounded by the dull, tongue-burning odor of wine and vinegar.
“Charlie, you see how I’m holding this?” Jacob Crimstock says quietly to his nephew, glancing across the room towards his own younger brother.
“Yessir.”
“Good. Take these photos – just be careful, I doubt I have time to head back to the Caribbean anytime soon to take some new ones, eh?”
Charlie and Philip continue to stare at the prints before them, equally unnerved when they found one that depicted the underside of the stingray – and the unnatural, almost cartoonish face beneath.
At some point, they realize their hands are touching. They blush and move their fingers apart.
In the distance, they listen to their families speak words they did not know, adults mumbling and gossiping of events and places they had never heard before. Plenipotentiary. Danzig. Chamberlain. Non-Aggression Pact. Spheres of Influence. Molotov-Ribbentrop. Racial Ideology. Übermensch. Hitler. Words that mean little to boys whose interest in politics and the world around them was only beginning to seep through.
Words happened to become reality quicker than some might have hoped.
__________
Imagine a sky built by the hands of an architect without petty human limitations. One whose presence is not comprehensible, not even conceivable, and yet stands as a monument to those with the capacity to dream beyond the constraints imposed upon them by common reality. In this place, imagine a night sky bathed in the violet light of melancholia.
Charlie stood among a field of lilac flowers interspersed with bright bursts of orange and yellow that resembled electric roses. Peach trees lined the horizon on distant hills, some standing alone with their fruit shifting in the breeze, others in tight clusters where one could feast an eternity on the nectar that can be found there.
He looked up.
Above, stingrays eclipsed whatever light the moon, massive and oppressive, could have hoped to impart upon the earth. They flapped their resplendent wings as if swimming through an invisible sea of their own, tails swishing happily behind them. The glow of the stars seems to pass through the rays unaffected, giving a wonder-struck Charlie a perfect view of their inner workings. Their tiny, comical faces stared down at the boy. They smiled widely, without teeth.
He did not know that stingrays had no such wings, nor where their true optical organs lay within their bodies. He’d only seen the photos, after all. They passed from view, slipping into the bright, empty horizon and into the void.
Charlie looked down and saw before him something he’d never seen before in a dream such as this. There, some distance away, stood a dull, ashen gravestone bearing desperate scribbles in lieu of block lettering.
He crouched down, reading the name. He gasped, his hand reaching for his mouth and eyes struggling to hold back tears. He did not like this dream anymore.
Charlie awoke in a cold sweat.
__________
“I’ve already signed up. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“But what about everyone here? What… what about me? Phil, how could you be so selfish—”
“It isn’t about you or me or the town, it’s about everybody in this beautiful, open world—”
Philip stands in the peach grove, his back pressed against the bark of one such tree, his arms crossed over his chest. The sleeves of his white cotton shirt had been rolled up just below the elbows, and his trousers seemed just a bit too tight for his strong legs. His dark hair still falls around his shoulders without much coordination. His look is one that brooks no argument, his speech curt and to the point.
Charlie, sitting in his plaid shirt and washed-out jeans, could only keep his eyes buried in his own hands to avoid matching his friend’s stare, speaking under his breath rather than directly. He’d known for a while now that it’d come to this anyway. His dreams often manifested in reality, no matter how hard he wished it were not so. The peach grove was a place for good things, of life and of all the things one associates with the act of living. Not talk of soldiery, battlefields, and of course, death.
“Phil, they say this war is worse than the first one. Much worse.”
“I’ve heard the same. But the Nazi’s aren’t gonna go down without a fight, and there’s never too many men in a war.”
“But I… I can’t let you go alone…”
“Por favor Charlie, you’re 16. Too young.”
“I’ll lie. Peter did, didn’t he? And Klaus, and Deacon. Well, Deacon’s a few inches over six feet, but I’m not too far below. I could do it.”
“Charlie, please. Listen to yourself,” Philip says, with a softness bleeding into his voice that was uncharacteristic of the older boy, causing Charlie to nearly blush. “Your hobbies include gardening and sketching. Your whole life is helping your pa with the peach business. It’s honest work and all, but I’ve been doing runs for the last two months leading up to this, not to mention all that lifting at the docks. They’re not gonna go for a skinny kid like you, and you don’t know what they might do if they figure out you lied about your age.”
“I doubt they’d do much. Said so yourself, that there’s never enough men.”
“And if I told them why you wanted to go in the first place?”
“But y-you wouldn’t,” Charlie manages out, his red cheeks turning a sickly shade of chalk white, his eyes finally rising to meet that of his friend. His… well, he couldn’t very well call him anything more than that. Not without having those feelings reciprocated at the very least.
A peach fell from the tree. It is caught by Philip’s outstretched hand, turned over carefully to check for signs of infection or parasites. Neither could be found. A perfect peach crafted over the years by a family of skilled peach farmers.
“No… I wouldn’t. But your place is here. You belong here, where you’re safe. Can you please promise me that you won’t just throw your life away?”
Charlie remains silent, but he knows what he wishes to say. The words catch in his throat, however, and die there. Instead, different words come to mind.
“When we were kids, I thought we’d own a farm together,” Charlie said softly, “And in that farm, I’d draw sketches of the barn animals. You’d play the guitar. We’d be… happy.”
Philip took a bite out of his peach, brushing tangled strands of hair from the neck of his shirt. His attention was elsewhere, focused on birds flying in triangle formation above the grove. Leaving while they could.
“It’s never so simple. Kids playing have all kinds of dreams, you know, but eventually life catches up to you. The world hunts you down and forces you to grow up.” The half-eaten peach fell to the grove floor. Philip wiped his hands on his shirt.
“It’s either your dreams go, or you do.”
__________
Somewhere, out in this beautiful, open world, boys playing as soldiers will lose what’s left of their innocence. It will fade behind the hail of lead, and the drums, and the shock of distant artillery making craters in the veil of disbelief.
One such child is Charlie, and he will be 16. He would be 17 in a week and four days, at half-past noon, marking his birthday upon the calendar as a memory of when he was delivered into his late mother’s open arms on a bright April morning when the peach trees were in bloom. But, as it turns out, there is no reason to remember such things anymore.
This is the end. No more sketches, no more wondrous dark-lit prints from Uncle Jacob. No more dreams about this and that, and the things that could have been and might become, and what would never have happened no matter how much love one could pour into a single wound.
This is the end. A child is dying, warmed by the bloodstone earth; where rivers of men poured through the trench fighting and dying to claim dirt for one flag or another. Pain becomes a memory in the place between this and that, when the mind clings tightly to the mortal coil, fighting desperately against the subconscious desire to give up and give in to finality.
Fighting what feels like molten ashes pooling around his eyelids, Charlie will tear open his eyes. He will heave, air struggling through a throat dry like parchment paper, and stare up at the night sky. A sky filled with light, which seems to rain down upon the aether like diamonds falling from Jupiter’s orbit, catching the rays of the laughing moon.
In this moment, what is left of the conscious mind focuses on a shape that does not belong, one that moves irregularly against the midnight fabric of the horizon. He stares up at that strange creature, that monster of creation, and sees…
A stingray.
Its mass eclipses the moon. It baes its heavy bulk of iron and rust to the men below, screeching out through its mandibles. The wings, straight like planks of wood, protrude proudly from either side of the fuselage. It maneuvers to the side, flanked by two others of its ilk, who move in a triangular formation behind it and match the velocity of the first with perfect sync.
From the belly, their guts spill open, sending wave after wave of intestinal waste falling to the ground below.
As their heavy munitions fall and the bombers veer off into the night, Charlie watches his world burn. He stares at the men, dead or dying, on this side and that, and his lips form words he does not understand.
He tries to identify the uniforms. German, American, black, white… What did it matter? The dead were dead. Men looked so alike when their eyes could no longer see, and Death paints all faces with the same shades of red and grey.
The boy’s gaze travels past the bodies and out towards the treeline, where roots and branches burn with the cinders that have engulfed them. Peach trees, almost in bloom. Just another week and four days. So very close.
And between the bodies and the trees – a notebook.
Phil, I p-promise… promised y-you…
Charlie reaches out, his gloved hands gingerly churning through scorched earth. With every movement, his limbs scream, his stomach gurgles with pustulating groans, and he fights an urge to puke yet again at the terrifying pain of it all.
A moan of anguish passes his lips. No one hears it.
His hand reaches closer, closer. Nearly close enough, before his eyes catch up with his mental processes, and he realizes that he could never have reached it anyway – all his past strength is finally leaving his body. The ligaments begin to shut down. The wild twitch of his eyes slows to a crawl. Even the pain isn’t so bad anymore. In fact, it doesn’t feel like much at all.
The notebook lays there, taunting its master. Its pages flutter in the cold breeze, letting Charlie catch glimpses of his past, of his future – rabbits, stingrays, peach trees, cola, Philip, mother, father, life, death. What was once the work of a gifted student becomes fuel for the endless flame engulfing Europe, burning through the battlefield, and blinding Charlie Crimstock’s trembling eyes.
I’m cold, papa.
A child is dying.
__________
The cold black dredge of Coca Cola washed away the tension that had formed around Charlie’s shoulder blades, even as the night sky helped tend to red skin that had softened under the relentless heat of the sun, even while the bonfire they’d lit up in the middle of the field helped provide what warmth they needed in the evening chill.
Charlie raised a hand to his forehead, wiping away the grime that had accumulated after a hard day’s labor. He’d been volunteering far more time on the farm after his school days, and his physique has improved in tandem with every tree picked clean and fresh field seeded.
His father hadn’t even bothered to wonder why his son had bothered to begin building himself up. Old man Nigel, a veteran of a bygone war, left here through the importance of his other, seedier business knowledge and prior worth to the local economy through this very grove. And Charlie, not yet old enough to serve. He didn’t imagine either of them would be anywhere near that hellscape for at least another year or two if things went well.
His son had other plans.
“So tomorrow, then?” Charlie said, placing the cool glass of coke between his thighs and stifling a wince at the icy thrill passing through his inner thighs. His attention was focused towards Philip, who sat nearby with his hands warming to the heat of the coals. Licks of flame danced along the log enclosure they’d made to keep the fire safely secured within a jagged circle made with what rock and primordial stone they could find.
“Tomorrow, 7:00 in the morning and not a minute later. Gotta get on that bus and ship out to Camp Bluebrook to begin basic. Gonna have to shave myself into compliance with regulations, though.”
Philip’s features became angled like a hawk as he aged, adding a sort of refined intelligence to his already decidedly gorgeous appearance, Charlie thought to himself. It would be a shame for him to lose all that beautiful hair to the cut of a razor, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d likely look handsome anyway.
“Then what?”
“Then… well, training for a few months. Gotta learn how to use a rifle, some drills, basic first aid, and probably other crap along the way. After that we ship out, I suppose.”
“Where?”
“Dunno. France, maybe. Belgium.”
“Why Belgium?”
“Nazi’s there probably got fat on tarts and jam. Easy pickings.”
The boys laughed. The fire dancing across Philip’s face illuminated his features – he radiated with life, and an eagerness for living that could only be found in those that had made peace with their world and those they loved.
The Crimstock patriarch looked their way from his spot in the nearby hammock, his hands nursing a beer his stomach was loath to cash in but saying little. He had his suspicions, but they weren’t enough to risk inflicting wounds upon his son’s psyche that may never fully heal.
Even as their laughter subsided, Charlie had to look away. He couldn’t look too long, or the lie might slip through. His tongue might speak of secrets his mind had forbidden it to say. He might tell Philip of how he’d been working harder to obtain a healthier glow and exacerbated it by rubbing blood on his cheeks. He might tell of how he borrowed high-heeled boots from a friend and stuffed them with cotton to appear taller. He might even reveal what happened at a meeting with the recruitment office several days ago, and of how he’d successfully lied his way into the service. Suffice to say, Philip will have one more surprise waiting for him at Camp Bluebrook only a few short days after the older boy’s own arrival.
Charlie leaned back and brought the coke back to his lips but paused before taking a swig. His eyes trailed down to his notebook, resting nearby on a patch of verdant grass. It had opened to a drawing of a rabbit; one he’d made all those years ago on this very soil.
There were words hanging a thread in his mind, and he had to say them before it snapped entirely. He turned towards Philip with an expression composed of a locked jaw and hard, focused eyes, forcing the other boy to watch him with his own look of surprised awe.
“No matter how old I get, I never want to stop dreaming. Please make sure I never get so old that I lose my dreams. Promise me, Phil.”
Philip seemed to consider this a moment, running the words through his head, before nodding his understanding to the Crimstock boy. Or at least what he believed he understood.
“I promise, Charlie. If you promise never to let go of them.”
He leaned forward, grabbed another twig from their wood pile, and tossed it into the stone enclosure before them. It decomposed quickly, the blaze easily devouring the sacrifice that had been freely given. Fuel for the endless carnage that resided within that burning pit filled to the brim with soot, embers and coal.
Charlie and Philip watched the twig until it had turned to ash, then glanced at one another, before quickly turning back to the flame again. Whatever words they had wanted to exchange died in their throats. There was little more to say.
They sat on the grass, quietly and solemnly watching the fire grow.