Hunter Sniper

When he blinked again, his eyelids felt so heavy that he wanted to keep them shut. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to fall asleep right there behind the rifle.

He forced his eyes back open.

Where are you at?

Somebody had shot that runner, and then in turn had shot Alphabet, and Deke hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it.

That sniper was still out there, awaiting his next victim.

He glanced over at Danilo, motionless as a lizard behind his own rifle. But he hadn’t had any luck spotting the enemy sniper either.

That sniper was a slippery character, that was for damn sure.

But they couldn’t wait forever for him to show himself. There was a town to capture.

They had to get a move on.

The urgency to seize Ormoc before the Japanese could regroup or mount a counterattack reminded Deke of being a boy on the farm, rushing to put up hay before a summer storm. Still feverish, he was suddenly carried away by the memory into a kind of waking dream, so intense that he could almost smell the clean, fresh scent of newly mown hay.

The hay had been cut, drying on a perfect summer day before it could be raked and stowed in the hayloft. But perfect weather in the mountain country seldom lasted long. The heat had spawned dark clouds on the horizon, heralding a thunderstorm. If the cut hay in the field was rained upon, it would turn moldy and be ruined.

They counted on that hay to feed the stock when the high-country grass turned dry and stingy.

They had all rushed to get the hay put up — Deke and Sadie, Ma and Pa. Even Old Man McGlothlin from the next farm over had come by to lend a hand, same as they would have done for him.

Pa occasionally feuded with McGlothlin over property lines — Pa claimed the corner boundary was an ancient oak tree, but McGlothlin favored a large boulder that his own pappy had told him was the corner. Sometimes the older farmer’s hogs wandered onto their land and rooted up their fields.

In the mountains, shooting had started over less.

Grudges were often set aside when someone needed help. That was the way it had always been among the mountain people.

The wagon went around with Ma driving it, keeping the horse following the rows. Pa, Deke, and McGlothlin forked the dry hay onto the wagon. Sadie, being the most agile, climbed on top, stomping the hay down to fit more. When the wagon was loaded, they rushed to the barn and forked it up to the hayloft, Deke and Pa lifting it up with their forks, and Sadie and McGlothlin taking the load and pulling it into the loft.

It was backbreaking work, Deke forking hay until his arms trembled but not daring to take so much as a moment’s rest, not working alongside his pa. Even Old Man McGlothlin wasn’t a day under sixty, bald as a tom turkey, but he set a grueling pace.

There was no better feeling than those tired muscles after work that meant something.

Years later, Deke’s arms were still like iron bars from all those farm chores. Boot camp had been like a church picnic compared to his daily efforts on the farm. All that running and all those push-ups seemed like wasted energy to a farm boy. You might as well do something useful if you were going to sweat.

The clerk interrupted his trip down memory lane.

“Do you think the Japanese are gonna come for us tonight?”

“I don’t know, kid. Maybe just this once they’ll be as tired as we are.”

“You think?”

“Like I said, maybe. Just keep on your toes. If they do come, we’ll send them packing in a minute.”

As for the Japanese not coming at them tonight, he didn’t believe they wouldn’t, but he hoped it might reassure the clerk. It was like something Honcho would have said, just to give them some hope to hang on to.

Deke returned to his reverie. Revisiting those memories was a far more pleasant place to be than this war-torn town.

Once the wagon was empty, they rushed back to the field and did it all again. They got the last load into the barn just ahead of the storm, then watched from the shelter of the barn door as the rain and lightning swept in. Hail and sheets of windswept rain dissolved the woods and fields into a gray blur. After the heat of the hayloft, the sudden drop in temperature had chilled Deke to the bone, leaving him shivering.

No matter. They had gotten the hay in.

All that Pa had said to him and Sadie had been, “You two done good.”

He could remember it all clear as yesterday.

He reckoned that he had put those words in his pocket and saved them, all these years later.

“Hey, you all right?” the clerk asked.

“Never been better.”

* * *

The day had trudged toward nightfall following an exhausting pattern of street fighting. House by house, corner by corner, street by bloody street, the US forces advanced. The Japanese almost literally had to be dug out along the way, so firmly entrenched were they in their defensive positions.

Deke thought it was like rooting out gophers, or maybe turnips.

All the while, the heat and the sun bore down. Deke’s fever settled into a steady burn.