Free Bright's Passage: A Novel by Josh Ritter

burbled as if a flock of sparrows had made a nest deep in his chest. To their left the road led back into the little town square and, to their right, sixty or seventy more yards down the road, hunched a glowering stone farmhouse.
    “Why not take him over yonder?” Bert asked, motioning toward it.
    “That’s no good for us if someone comes in the night. They’ll check the buildings first. We’re better here.” He looked down at Carlson.
    “The hell we are!” Bert snapped. “And, anyway, like we got to be afraid of anything! You and I, we’re good old West Virginia boys!” He pulled the German pistol from the waistband of his trousers. It was silver and shiny and seemed to distill, like dew, all the light from the darkening gray sky, so that the sky itself grew darker as Bert rolled the gun first one way and then another in his hands. Its barrel looked as narrow as a knitting needle. Bert pointed it at Bright an uncomfortable second, then laughed. “Boy, didn’t I get you good?” He laughed again at the memory of frightening Bright with the gun as he’d come around the doorway of the deserted trench. “You ’bout shit your britches! You thought some big old Kraut had you dead by rights! Pow,” he said, puffing the air.
    Bright looked steadily at Bert and said nothing.
    “I killed that Kraut officer,” Bert said with petulance. “I know you all don’t think that’s so, but I did. He was gonna shoot me dead, but I shot him first.” He turned it around so that the handle was to Bright. “And, look at this.” He reached to light a match.
    “No matches,” Bright said.
    “I want to show you the carvings and what all that’s on the handle. They’re something devilish. Dang! It’s too dark to see ’em.” He made again to strike a match. “Here.”
    “No matches. No light.”
    “Fine,” Bert sighed. “Anyway, if you weren’t so scared, you could see it’s got a handle that’s pure gold or something and carved with all that crazy Kraut writing. And if you’d let me strike a match, I was gonna show you the dragon with the spear through its neck. So don’t you tell me that we got anything to worry about, ’cause if any Kraut Boche Fritzy decides he’s gonna scout that farmhouse over yonder while we’re in it, he’s gonna find out exactly what the last fella found out who thought he could outdraw me.” He tossed the gun in the air and caught it with surprising grace. “Now, Bright, let’s get the sergeant over to that farmhouse and not say anything more about it.”
    “We’re staying here.”
    Bert’s face fell in the purpling light. “Is that all?” he whined. “Here we are, so close to those stinkers we can smell the pickles, and we’re just going to hide out until we can sneak on back with our tails between our legs?” He poked the toe of Bright’s boot with the pistol barrel. “Hell! This is as close as we’re gonna get to them? What am I supposed to say when I get home? That I didn’t kill a German the whole time I was in France?”
    “I thought you did kill one.”
    Carlson coughed wetly then, expectorating blood. He raised his head and banged it against the wall several times like a man fluffing a pillow. There was a gravelly sound from his chest.
    Bert looked at the dying sergeant a moment and then back at Bright. He stood up. “Boy, I know you want to, boy,” he said to Bright as one might talk to a fire being stoked. “I know you want to go after them too! Ooooh, I can see it! I can see it in your eyes! You’re a good old West Virginia boy!”
    “All right,” Bright said finally. “You want to go over to that farmhouse, go on over there. Check to make sure it’s safe, and if it is, then we’ll all go over. If it isn’t, you just go ahead and kill as many Germans as you find in there.” He tossed his canteen up at Bert. Bert stood looking at it. “Sergeant’s thirsty too. You find any water, you bring plenty back for him.” Bright handed him Carlson’s