Free Shorecliff by Ursula Deyoung

blond hair was all spiked up and covered in snow. His face was white too because it was so cold, and there was snow in his eyebrows. He didn’t have a light at all, poor devil. He’d been staggering along in complete darkness. But he was holding his gun out, aimed in front of him, so that when he came up to me the barrel almost touched my chest. Then I felt yet another type of fear. I guess I experienced all the colors in the fear rainbow that night, Richard. This was the gut-wrenching terror you feel when you know your life depends on another man’s nerve. I could hear him panting—his breathing was ragged and hoarse, as if he’d been sprinting for miles—and I could tell he was scared practically out of his wits. That meant at any moment he might panic and pull the trigger. So I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, looking into his big eyes. My stomach felt as if it were slithering out of me. I wanted to throw up my hands and shout, ‘Stop, stop, I can’t take it anymore!’ But I didn’t say a word.
    “The German was getting more and more worked up. He was breathing faster, and his shoulders were heaving up and down. That’s how scared men get in these types of situations, Richard. It’s not the sort of thing you ever want to see. Finally he jerked the gun a little—making me jump, I can tell you—and he said, ‘I’ll shoot!’ He didn’t have a very strong accent.
    “When he said that, I should have been even more scared. He was threatening me, after all. But for some reason it calmed me down. I think it was because I knew then what sort of scared he was—he was filled with the fear that’s so paralyzing you can’t do anything except shake. So I didn’t panic. I raised my arms slowly, away from my gun to show that I wasn’t going to attack him, and I asked, ‘Where are the other American soldiers?’ I figured he would at least understand the word ‘American.’
    “As it turns out, I think he must have known a lot of English because he pointed behind him and said, ‘They’re over there, not very far from here.’ He turned back to face me, stared for a second with his eyes even wider, and then burst into tears. Yes, Richard, he just started sobbing right there, with the tears rolling down through the melted snow on his cheeks. He kept clutching his gun so that it pointed at me in a wobbly sort of way, but I wasn’t scared of him at all anymore. I stepped to one side. That poor bastard—I felt the most god-awful pity for him then. German or not, enemy or not, he was a pathetic sight. I think he was younger than I was, and so frightened to be there facing me that he was about to lose his mind. And then, the shame of telling me what I wanted to know—I could tell that was the last straw. Being in that position and losing his nerve and giving the enemy information, the last scrap of his manliness thrown away… Richard, my boy, one of the worst things about war is the way it makes men feel about themselves. If he lived through it, I’ll bet you a hundred bucks the memory of that moment still makes him shudder with self-loathing. Poor bastard.
    “I wanted to say thank you. I even wanted to tell him everything would be all right. But anything I said would have made it worse. So I moved down alongside the barrel of his gun until I was standing next to him, met his eyes once more, and walked past him into the woods. I thought he might shoot me in the back just to get back his self-respect. But he didn’t. I walked on for a little bit, and then I heard a thump. I looked back. As far as I could make out from the light of my lantern, he’d fallen onto his knees. Kneeling there…I wish I hadn’t seen that.”
    Unexpectedly, Uncle Kurt stopped talking. He looked out the window and said nothing for a few moments.
    “And then what happened?” I asked at last, unable to restrain myself.
    “Well, then I found Hennessey and the others, and we dragged ourselves along until morning, and by that