Longitude and Latitude

“When did you know you were lost?” he asked, once we’d made it some miles inland. The artillery had faded now, a distant thrumming like timpani in a stygian orchestra, accompanied by Mausers and Brownings for snares. I shook my head and felt the blood come loose from my ear.

“Have a seat, son,” the colonel said, bracing me at the shoulders and guiding me onto a crate. He produced a handkerchief and wiped the blood from my neck, turned my head from side to side and tracked the jagged movement of my eyes.

“The blast was close,” he said. “Lucky you didn’t lose an arm or a leg. Just sit a spell and get your bearings.”

My bearings, I thought, wildly. Longitude and latitude. If I’d had a map, how would I plot my coordinates? In two dimensions: Somewhere near Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, Normandy, France. In three: The surface of the planet Earth, some 93 million miles from the closest star and 25,000 light years from the galactic center. And in four? One infinitesimal sliver of time in the short history of life on Earth, that span itself flanked by 13.8 billion years to one side and an unknowable expanse of emptiness to the other.

“In the fifth grade,” I said at last, in answer to his earlier question. “That’s when I knew I was lost.”

The colonel made a face.

“Kid, I think you’re going screwy,” he said, and he came down to my level to look me square in the eye. He had a close-cropped gray beard and a face as ragged as the cliffs of Dover. His ears looked like two deflated rubber boats, enormous and drooping. “I asked when you knew you were lost. When you realized you’d missed your company.”

“Oh,” I said, and I thought back a bit. “Before the boats. Dorset, I think; before we even loaded in.”

The colonel sat back on his heels and nodded. I looked around.

We were in an old barn, somewhat slumped with age, here and there admitting pillars of slanted light through gaps in the slatting. The light was rusted. The sun was nearly down.

“Sorry about that stuff about the fifth grade, sir,” I said. “For a minute I thought—“

“It’s alright,” the colonel said. “The shock from that shell put you back about fifteen feet. I’d think it was weird if it didn’t knock a few things loose.”

He unfolded a map traced with contours of the French terrain and started marking it with a grease pencil. I shut my mouth and let him work, though just then my chest started to burn queer-like at the middle. Like an ant had burrowed through my back… then two, then five… until the whole nest was crawling around in the shelter of my ribs and turning my heart to jelly.

In the fifth grade, my best friend had been a girl named Lizzy. She’d had freckles over the bridge of her nose and eyes the color of the sky at first light. She would hold my hand as we walked back from school. Mix her days with mine in the heat of summer, fumbling through woods at dusk. Cry when I fell down. Kiss me and cry all at the same time.

For my birthday that year, she asked her mom how to make peach cobbler, then made it herself, and walked it the mile and a half to my house. We’d eaten it greedily on my front porch as the frogs sang and the stars came out.

I could feel it in my belly now, warm and oozing—hurting. Now it ran down my leg in gobs and I began to cry.

“Jesus Christ, kid!” the colonel shouted, and he shot to his feet. But then he looked at me and he got real quiet.

“Oh…” he said. “Oh, son…”

“In the fifth grade,” I said, “she moved away. Left without a word.”

I swayed on the crate and felt a pressure in my hand, a warm pressure, small and steady. I felt a soft heat on my cheek and tasted salt and wet. Heard a whimper.

“Now there’s only me to cry when I fall down.”

The lines slid off the colonel’s map, the spokes of rusted light wheeled. Sunset became nighttime, and nighttime faintly glowed.

Another week, another Speakeasy challenge! I played it pretty loose with the photo inspiration this time (said photo appearing at the top of this page), but I took France and the beach from it, so that’s enough, right?

I felt I got a little too saccharine with this one at the end, so I’m curious to hear your own thoughts on my story in the comments below. Let me know what worked and what didn’t!

When you’re all done with that, click the link, head on over to the Speakeasy, and read the other entries for the week. There’s always a little something for everyone!