Free When We Were Executioners by J. M Mcdermott

Sergeant’s orders.”
    Jona scowled. “I don’t get paid at home,” he said.
    Nicola rolled his eyes. He held the pass out further. “You don’t get paid if we kick you on account of disobeying,” said Calipari, “Get out of here, Corporal. Go home. Sleep. That’s an order.”
    Jona shrugged. He stretched his hands over his head as if he was tired.
    Jona signed his pass. He turned to the door. Nicola clicked his tongue at Jona’s back. Jona turned. A large bottle of red wine soared towards Jona’s hands. Jona caught the bottle. He read the label, and nodded at Nic. “Thanks, Nic,” said Jona.
    Calipari winked, and shooed Jona out the door.
    * * *
    And the engineers kept working. A new fellow found the mantle of Chief on his shoulders. He hid in the palace.
    Chief Mishle Leva’s funeral was lavish. Lady Sabachthani, in black, stood on the front row, gently weeping behind her thin, black veil.
    And down where the porters pulled crates from the ships and loaded them into the flatboats near the rivers and animals in crates rolled in from all over the world and passed through the slaughterhouses at the Pens and all the vendors walked barefoot in mud and ragpickers picked through the piles of trash and Jona and his boys walked about and Rachel lived and Djoss lived and thousands of people quietly tried to find their little piece of happiness—down there—no one batted an eye if they heard the news.
    Didn’t bother the Pens and Docks and Warehouses a bit if some fellow got rolled. People got rolled everyday.

CHAPTER XIV

    Jona took Calipari’s wine to Rachel’s apartment.
    He wanted to see if she was home alone. He had been to her apartment a couple times. Her lock was worthless. He shook the handle and lifted it up until the old gears fumbled loose. When he opened the door, he saw her dozing in her bed. She hadn’t even looked up at the door noise.
    Jona had never seen her brother, but he had seen the signs of the man. Bread, half-eaten, staled and molded on the counter. Huge, mud footprints led to his bed. His sour sweat smells spread across the room from his filthy bed on the other side of the apartment. Djoss wasn’t home now. He was rarely around in the daylight, unless he was sleeping.
    Jona placed the wine on the floor next to Rachel’s bed. He sat down in front of her. He watched her eyes moving behind her eyelids. She was dreaming.
    On the other side of the room’s wall, a young boy read aloud to an old woman. The old woman kept correcting the boy’s mistakes. Farther away in the building, a baby cried, a man snored, and even farther, women shouted gossip between windows while pulling in their wash. All around them, people were falling in and out of love, behaving lewdly, and everyone ought to be ashamed of themselves, because there was gossip about everyone.
    Jona couldn’t find a corkscrew in the kitchen. He couldn’t find wine glasses, either. All he found were little tea cups and a tea pot with no smoke stain on the bottom like every other tea pot in the world.
    He gave up. He pulled off his shirt. He slipped into bed next to her.
    She smelled him. She woke slightly. She nuzzled into his neck, and drifted off again.
    * * *
    What do you do when you’re alone and don’t know what to do with yourself?
    Nothing.
    When a Senta doesn’t know what to do, the Senta closes her eyes. The Senta tries to breathe carefully and continuously. Each breath must fill the lungs, burn a little, and then fall like liquid from the mouth in a steady, flowing breeze. To seek the Unity, first the Senta seeks to find the places inside that are unharmonious.
    Sounds like doing nothing to me, but I’m no Senta.
    Sit up straight, allow the blood to flow freely, and feel the breath seeping in through the body to each relaxed finger and toe. Close the ears next. Close the skin. Seek a heartbeat, and the swell and sink of the lungs like bellows. The Senta seeks to purify the being into Will alone. In a limitless