Free Famished Lover by Alan Cumyn Page A

but my limbs are in a ragged retreat from the cold. “There is mail, apparently, but we must earn the right to see it. If we can all stay still and silent — ”
    â€œOh, Jesus Christ!” Witherspoon kicks at the dirt two rows ahead of me. Others turn their heads and mutter.
    â€œShh! Quiet!” Collins pleads. “The more fuss we make, the longer we’ll have to stay out here. I was told — ”
    He is such a small man, and his cheeks have fallen in from the hunger of this winter, from that and worse, what the guards have done to him, but his eyes are in a desperate dance like the last candles on a Christmas tree.
    â€œWhy the fuck aren’t Agony and Blasphemy standing with us, then?” someone challenges. I crane to see who it is: Napier, a new arrival who stands half a head taller than even Witherspoon. It’s a wonder either of them survived the trenches.
    â€œThey want us to think about our conduct,” Collins says, pronouncing the words carefully. “Now, we can stay out hereand freeze or we can get our mail fairly quickly, I imagine, and go back inside to read it. Which would you rather do? Let’s pick our battles, gents.”
    The moaning and muttering dies down. It’s impossible to stand still, though, in such a wind. We have to shuffle our feet to keep from freezing, slap ourselves and shove our hands into pockets. Our ranks close slowly, unconsciously, as we become one organism against the cold, one man’s heat reaching out to another’s, a wall of backs sheltering those behind.
    With Collins standing bent and alone out front. I don’t know how he stays upright. Even the Russians have gone inside to get away from this chill, and they’re so desperate they usually stand through anything just to watch us get our mail and parcels. Someone always slips them something.
    A man collapses in our front rank — Lennox, who is pulled to his feet again but can barely manage to keep standing. Collins orders Williams to shift places with him, and some of the others help him back to the relative protection of the inner ranks.
    â€œThere better be bloody good mail,” Williams mutters, and the rest of us take it as an excuse to begin talking again, to openly stamp up and down, to slap our arms and blow breath on our freezing fingers.
    â€œLads! Calm now,” Collins says in alarm, almost ready to shout. “I’m sure it won’t be too much longer.”
    It is long. It’s as long as the war, as any of our lives. The dull excuse for a sun crawls its way across the painful sky, and our teeth clank together, our blood abandons all but the core of our most vital organs. In one of the windows of the administrative building across the compound, tucked safely behind barbed wire, we spot the two tiny figures, Agony andBlasphemy, who appear from time to time to look out at us.
    We call. We yell. We scream our lungs out and jump and wave our hands.
    â€œLads, lads,” Collins says again in a failing voice. “We’ve been out here this long. I’m sure they’ll come. A few more minutes!”
    â€œWho gives a shit about mail?” Sherwood says.
    â€œThere probably isn’t any after all,” someone else calls.
    â€œThey threw it away. If I know those —”
    Two grey-clad figures appear in the distance, slowly marching towards us. The larger one, Blasphemy, has a sack over his shoulder.
    â€œSteady up, lads!” Collins says.
    The closer they get the slower they walk and the colder the wind seems to blow. Collins salutes just over Agony’s shoulder, straight to the lamppost, and reports in his fractured German. Blasphemy lets the mail sack slip onto the ground. Then Agony begins one of his standard harangues, pausing occasionally to let Collins provide a minimal translation.
    â€œIt’s all about obedience, boys,” Collins says. “Discipline. A modern army is based on discipline and