Pieces of You by J F Elferdink Read Free Book Online Page A

was good at expressing things in human terms. We agreed that his poem, ‘Death in Battle’, was a pretty fair explanation of the gateway to my current address.
    By the way, he sends his greetings and gratitude for being a loyal fan.”
    Mark knew that Lewis had died forty-five years before, on the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
    “How, how could….”
    “Just listen, Mark:
     
    ‘Open the gates for me!
    Sorely pressed have I been
    And driven and hurt beyond bearing this summer day,
    But the heat and the pain together suddenly fall away,
    All’s cool and green.
     
    But a moment agone,
    Among men cursing in fight and toiling, blinded I               fought,
    But the labour passed on a sudden, even as a passing thought,
    And now—alone!
    Ah, to be ever alone,
    In flowery valleys among the mountains and silent wastes untrod,
    In the dewy upland places, in the garden of God,
    This would atone!’
     
    “ This is what happened to me, Mark. Lewis had it right, except for being alone in the ‘garden of God.’ Zachri and Lewis are among my innumerable friends.”
    “Bob, I don’t understand this at all but it really seems to be you, although I never heard you quote C.S. Lewis before.
    “ Am I supposed to believe you conversed in heaven before you dropped in on me? Just when I was beginning to believe in Zachri! My imagination is much more powerful than I ever received credit for.”
    “My presence is as real as your last visit to your lady friend. You may even decide it’s just as significant.” Bob said with a mischievous grin.
    As Mark listened to Bob he was thinking: ‘Maybe now I’ll be able to erase the image of your body being blown apart. Hell could not be worse than that.
    You were gone, between one second and the next and I could only watch from where I lay, just a few feet away.’ He said:
    “So often I’ve wished for the chance to see you again, to tell you I tried to save you. I would have given my life in exchange for yours.”
    “I knew that, Mark. My spirit picked up your thoughts even as it left my body. I can assure you I’m in a better place, far better than humanly imaginable. Someday you’ll know.”
    “So, have you become an angel?”
    “No, Mark, humans don’t become angels and angels don’t become human … except in movies.
    Enough questions; it’s time to follow Zachri into the Vietnam that I left in July of ‘69.”
     
    ***
    The sounds were more reminiscent of a computer game than a war zone. In between the crack of sporadic gunfire and the screams of the wounded, the whirring of a helicopter’s rotor wings seemed out of place.
    Gun-shouldering Vietnamese soldiers could be seen marching, single file, on narrow humps of land protruding like the backs of alligators rising from the marshes.
    As Mark and two of his military buddies were moving through the higher grasses of the interior, parallel to the marching lines, they saw what the enemy soldiers could not: a single crawling body.
    It looked more like a rat than a man from their vantage point, a human rat, dragging something along with him. Taking binoculars from his backpack, Bob adjusted them so that Mark could clearly see the crawler’s face. The man’s features were too indistinct to deduce more than his nationality—Vietnamese.
    “What is he dragging, Bob?” The paramount but unspoken question was: ‘Are our guys in imminent danger? ‘
    “I can’t tell. The bundle is covered with leaves and dirt , ” Bob reported.
    “Let’s get him.”
    The shots rang out at Mark’s command and the crawler sprawled. Running to the place where he lay, Mark looked him over and then fell to his knees.
    Their target had been pulling some sort of homemade sled. From under the leafy covering poked the charred arms of a small child. A very faint whimper revealed that the dead man’s last trip had been a desperate trek to get help for the child.
    “How can we continue this obscene battling when we