The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu Read Free Book Online Page B

hear this sound each time, the sound of a new bullet pressing into the chamber.”
    “What does it matter what I do after I already shot the bullet?” Boris asks.
    It matters for tricking his brain. If he knows he has to wait after each bullet, he is less likely to jump the trigger and bend out of form. I don’t tell him that, though. By now I know people only need to know what they need to know to do well.
    “It matters because I said so, and you should do as you are told.”
    This time, he hits four out of five, three to the heart and one at the edge of the head.

    D URING MY guarding shift, it starts as an idea, then it is a thought, soon a feeling, and then it is so real I can almost see it in front of my eyes, except I cannot; something is terribly off. Missing.
    I reach the top of the hill overlooking the ammunition bunker, light my flashlight, and stare at the entire base below. Crickets bay away and close. I blink, then open my eyes.
    It is the most ludicrous, charming thing I have ever seen.
    The fence around the base, by the ammunition bunker; it is gone. Not there anymore. Vanished.
    Those boys. Those devil boys. They have stolen it.
    The metal buyer of their village could be melting it in these very moments.
    This shift, like all others, is eight hours long, but the seconds and minutes and hours glide by like a child on a slide. I don’t think of my boyfriend, or nature, or time, or boys even. All I can do is think:
    The fence
.
    The fence
.
    They took. The fence
.
    Every few minutes, without planning, I find myself saying it out loud, and then, my laughter echoes, across mountains I cannot see in the dark.

    A T NIGHT , back in the caravan, after eight hours of laughter alone and staring, I call Moshe. I call him from under the cover of a military blanket.
    “You can’t keep doing only the things I tell you to do,” I say.
    “But you told me to,” he says. “I thought this was what you wanted.”
    “Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”
    “I don’t know what you want anymore,” he says. “How come we only speak in code?”
    Once, he was fourteen and I was twelve. Once, I was afraid. He was not. He climbed right up to the top of the German widow’s apple tree and threw a shower of red apples on my head so fast and steady I thought I’d drown. All I could see between my winces was his crooked teeth between the highest branches, and all I could hear was him shouting: “Here’s more, more, more, more, more.”
    “I don’t want anymore!” I shouted from the ground.
    “But this is fun!” he shouted back, and for a second I could catch his eyes as he reached for another apple; for a second I saw in them wanting, really wanting, nothing but that very thing.
    “I am waiting for you to tell me what you want,” I say now. “There is no code.”
    “Does this mean we are back together again?” he asks.
    “What do you think?” I ask back, and I wait for a voice I still can’t believe is long gone.

    I SIT on top of Boris’s back as I explain to him what Situation Zero is.
    “Breathe in,” I say, and I can feel his lungs swelling below me. “Now empty your lungs completely.”
    I explain about the things we can know for certain and the things we cannot. I explain that when you breathe, there is no way for you to know how much air is in your lungs. The only thing we can re-create is the situation in which our lungs are completely empty. In order for all of your bullets to hit at exactly the same spot, you must close your eyes before each shot and empty your lungs completely. This is how you know you are on target, right back where you were with the earlier bullet. Situation Zero.
    His lungs rise up, then down, then up as I explain.
    “I didn’t say that you could breathe again, young lady,” I say.
    He stops, and even without looking I can tell that his mouthful of teeth is showing, that he is smiling.
    “Do I look like a blender?” I ask.
    “No,” he says.
    “Then why are you mixing things