In a Field Outside the Town

Three days later, Suljic was finally given a drink

of water and marched with a dozen other men

onto a small livery truck, one of two, fenced

along each side by wooden planks,

the back left open to give a clear shot

to the automatic weapon poking out the window

of the red sedan that followed, the squat nose

trained on them, ridiculously, as if they'd any thought

of hopping off a moving truck. Suljic peered

vacantly through the slats. He'd missed the yellow flowers

of Spring and by now saw a landscape taken over

by Summer, the grasses closing behind them as they veered

from the road and lurched across cow paths. They drove

to the center of a wide field and stopped. Old sweat,

without the breeze of movement, prickled in the heat.

A metal smell drifted, an untended apple grove

baked on a hill, and the weeds droned, motory with bees.

But Suljic noticed none of these, fixed instead

on the gaps in the field where bodies, all dead,

matted down the wild carrot and chicory, their khakis

splotched darkly, like a fawn's dappled haunches

obscuring them. The men clambered down into the tall grass

and lined up at gunpoint. Suljic was sure the last

good thing he'd ever see would be the apple branches

drooping with fruit, but the man beside him grabbed

his hand, and looked him in the face, as if

Suljic, just a bricklayer, had any assurances to give.

He squeezed the hand back, hard, and felt a scab

crossing the man's knuckles. He saw, too, a thin scar

worrying the arch of his left eyebrow, much older,

perhaps from a fall as a child from a ladder

picking fruit. His hand was like a clump of mortar,

and three nights without sleep had webbed his eyes red.

And Suljic suddenly stuttered to ask his name,

what town was he from, his job—anything—but there came

the crackle, like sometimes thunder, undecided

whether to begin, that starts, stalls, then trips

over itself, the sound crinkling from one

end of the sky to the other. The sound took possession

of his face until it, too, crinkled, his grip

pulsed, and he fell forward. Suljic winced

in the tackle of bodies, and splayed down in the dirt

flattening himself like a beetle, not hurt

in any new way, not yet convinced

he wasn't dead and didn't feel it. He heard the click

of fresh clips sliding into place, and shut

his eyes lightly, sure someone had seen he wasn't shot

and would come finish it. But no one came. Another truck

rolled up. The men climbed down, and lined up, docilely.

He recognized, solely by rhythm, a prayer, cut off

by the crackle, the hush of crickets, the soft

whump of bodies folding at the knees

and knocked by bullets shoulder first

into the grass. No one yelled. No one tried to run.

Another truck, another group, falling like a succession

of bricks sliding off a hod. Suljic finally pissed

where he lay, and blended in all the better

with the others. The noise stopped, and he cracked

his eyes enough to see, across the backs

like bleeding hills, a man strolling along the scatter

of bodies with a pistol, putting a slug

into the skull of anyone that still twitched

or mumbled. Then came the snort and low-pitched

rumble of diesel engines as two backhoes dug

a trench along the margin of all the collapsed

bodies. Impossibly, the crackling started anew,

and when darkness finally settled, the squads continued

in what light the backhoes' headlights threw. Perhaps

the shooting was over long before the sound

left him, the crackle to his eardrums

was like the rolling of a boat to his limbs

echoing long after he'd reached dry ground.

The soldiers left. Still he didn't move, but eased

his eyes full open. The moon above the orchard

was shrinking higher, its light glossing the awkward

pale forms that stubbled the dry weeds,

glinting off teeth and eyes. He scuttled from beneath

the arms and legs flopped sleepingly over

his own, as though by drunkards or lovers,

and rose like a foal to his numb feet,

seeing throughout the field no man not touched

by three dead others. He stood for a moment, trying

to guess, even roughly, their number, multiplying

bodies per square yard, but the math was too much,

the count too huge. He stared at the faces beside him

in the grass, like a man leaving something he knew

he would someday have to return to,

looking for the landmarks that would guide him—

the crooked teeth, the welted cheek, the pale eyes eclipsed

by half-shut lids, lolling upward, inward, swollen

as though with weeping, blood from an unseen hole

glistering down a chin line, crusting on lips.

How could he explain his life, what could he say

to those who weren't here to see, to the mothers and wives

who'd swear for years their men were still alive,

somewhere, the bodies never found, bulldozed into clay—

would he tell them how he tiptoed, unable to avoid

stepping on hands and ankles, or how the tears

like a secret he'd harbored through three years

of siege shook loose, and how he let them, no longer afraid

of being found out and cut down by gunfire,

or how he ran anyway, when he reached the open, quick

as his bum leg would let him, without a look

back at the faces turned like gourds in the dark mire.