Free This Is How I'd Love You by Hazel Woods Page B

their throats closing. Dying from the inside out. Whatever short, joyous life they lived to that point matters none.”
    “Agreed.” Charles nods. When he told Rogerson about the horse, his entrails hanging, slick, from his belly, Rogerson only served himself another scoop of potatoes. Rogerson had grown up on a farm, seen all kids of livestock butchered and euthanized. It didn’t faze him. But Charles had been unable to sleep, remembering the weight of the horse’s head once the bullet pierced it. The heat draining out and its flesh sagging almost immediately. The clap of the gun seemed to reverberate in him, making his fingers numb and useless. He’d wanted to feel his effect on the world and now he had. “But it’s hard to know. I mean, what the universe might have planned. I hate to get in the way of God.”
    Rogerson laughs and drags deeply on his cigarette, letting the cherry crackle and burn persuasively. “God knows good and well that there is no cure for chlorine gas, Reid.”
    “Sure. But what about the suffering? Could it mean something? Maybe the end, painful as it was, allowed one of those boys to find a peace he hadn’t had before.”
    Rogerson lets the ashes hang precariously over his own lap. “You’re talking fairy tales now. Or a kind of devotion to God that I don’t have. Nor does he, Reid. He doesn’t really give a shit about us. Isn’t that part abundantly clear? We are not his first priority. Who knows what is? But you took more care with that horse than God has ever taken with one of us.” The ashes fall just then, singeing the seat. “God does not take care of us. We take care of each other.”
    Charles turns this over in his mind. He thinks of Mr. Dench and how closely his atheism resembles Rogerson’s belief. “What good is it to believe in God if you don’t think he can protect you?”
    “Despair. I can’t tolerate the meaninglessness of nothing. God exists so that I can sleep at night.”
    “This mess,” Charles says, pointing at the relay post that has just come into view, boys spilling out its doorway, limping and bloody, “makes it all seem meaningless. Or full of meaning. I can’t decide.”
    “Well, while you’re walking the philosophical highway, I want to urge you not to be seduced by the idea of suffering. We’ve all got the right to happiness. Regardless of who made us or who’s in control, life means nothing if it’s dull and dreary. Drug addicts and boozers believe in suffering.”
    “What do you believe in, then?”
    “Bullets, heaven, and pretty girls,” Rogerson says, offering Charles the last drag of his cigarette.
    Charles smiles, letting the smoke linger at the back of his throat. Exhaling finally in one long breath, he says, “Get to Rome and tell it to the pope. A finer edict has never been spoken.” Laughing, they unload the first stretcher from the back of the King George.
    For a reason he cannot explain, Charles once again thinks of the girl. He will not say it aloud, he can barely articulate the thought, but in this moment he has stumbled upon the idea that perhaps her few simple sentences have cracked the code. Perhaps everything he’s done, everything he’s doing, has all been meant only to lead him to Miss H. Dench.

T oday as she looks up the hill, Hensley is still thinking about Mr. Reid’s latest letter to her father. There is something different about this one. It strikes a tone of intimacy and wonder that Hennie does not recognize. It is written in fading pencil, the gray words looking more and more ephemeral as the letter progresses.
My next move is my king’s knight to KB3. I’ve spent parts of entire days imagining which vowels and consonants might govern the plans for the pieces with which you entice me. How strange that I can almost hear one of your gentle pawn’s voice in my head, unsure of everything but its pale coloring. Your words, however, have created a self that has kept me occupied through the days and nights that