The Feud

You look out over the city, a patina of dust covering the struggling life beneath, the green rolling hills to the east and south covered in dense foliage. You settle in a tattered lounge chair with the back legs broken off, binoculars raised on fingertips, watch your assigned hill. To your left your spotter uses a telescope once meant to observe the stars and planets, now used to find men with radios who direct artillery. You wait, watch, listen for the rush of the shells overhead.

From the top of the hill you scan directly down to be bottom, to the small hollow that was a popular trysting place before the war, now a popular observation post for the approaches to the city. You wiggle in the chair with its worn springs, rest your neck, watch as the sun shifts and the shadows on the hill change. The bright greens of some treetops change to a darker loam, the blue shadows gain in hue, new shadows appear, new greens light.

You ignore the known trails and clearings as you work your way up the hill knowing the observers avoid them, a Z search pattern now expanding, now contracting. You watch for a curve too severe and artificial, for a glare of polished steel, an unnatural wavering of the brush, for the straight stick of an antenna that may reveal a spotter.

You lower your binoculars, lean forward to flick a bit of rubble off the rifle stock. It too was meant for something else, but now it is used against men who call for destruction at great distances. You rest your arms.

You reach down to your pack on the floor, withdraw a bottle of warmish water, swallow quickly. Any targets you find may not wait long, so the luxury of drinking will have to wait. You scratch the itch, the persistent itch under your breast where it folds over your undershirt. The itch fades.

A dull rumble of artillery breaks your brief rest. Popping small arms marks a battle somewhere, on the northern perimeter, probably. A heavy burst nearby shakes your building, dust falls gently through the cracks in the ceiling.

Clack clack.

You straighten at the signal, raising your binoculars. Down twenty, left five, the spotter signals. You scan. Yes, yes I see. Yes, there. Movement near the north trail. Rhythmic rustling of brush moving up the slope. You make it perhaps three targets ten meters apart moving at a meter a second. You put down your binoculars but not your gaze, lower yourself to the table top, keep the rifle's forearm on the sandbags, plant the stock in your shoulder, move your head behind the rifle scope.

You see the crosshairs of the reticle first, then the hill comes into focus. You shift to the movement. At this range the drop about two body lengths. With the sun shifting westward they will be out of shadow completely in a few moments.

Carump! Carump!

Artillery walks through the city behind you, the stride of a blind giant crushing in its path. Before the war, before the courtyard, you had no idea that a city could take so much punishment. From the cinemas you understood that gunfire destroyed buildings in mere moments.

But now you know that the buildings, streets and sewers can absorb months of punishment. And now you know the people in the city can absorb even more.

You watch the movement on the hill with thoughts of a husband missing two years, of two brothers killed in the war, of elderly father and mother facing another winter without fuel. You track the movement, wait for a target worth expending a bullet and this fine perch in the abandoned luxury hotel. It shifts, cuts back, across, up the hill. Suddenly the leader breaks cover, a rifle across his back. A moment later the second, rounding the curve around the hill, and finally the last, a young man not much older than your daughter. They round the hill and are gone, another patrol. You set the rifle down, settle back in the chair, force your nerves to be still.

Wearily you look up at the ceiling, the dabs of adhesive symmetrical on the concrete where the wood paneling was stripped off for fuel, dust motes dancing in the sunlight. This room must have been lovely once, you decide. Wood paneled ceilings, magnificent moldings of oak or cherry, elegant wood furniture long since sacrificed.

You gaze casually at your spotter, a girl of twenty learning your trade. You watch her distractedly brush away an unruly wisp of hair. Pretty thing, you should be up on that wooded hillside with a young man instead of here. I should be home with my family. Once long ago I was pretty, too, and the world was full of possibilities, the feud brewing untended. When the city was magnificent and there was fuel and running water and shops had food and makeup and paper and linens and my baby son was alive before the mortars fell in the courtyard...

Clack clack.

You bolt upright in the chair, the signal clearing your mind, binoculars set on the hill. Down ten, right fifteen, ridgeback southern face. You search, pause at likely shadows and rustling, you freeze.

There!

There are three men in a clearing, two with tripods and a third with a telephone or radio. The two spotters train their periscopes and rangefinders on the city...

Carump...carump!

Get ready, you tell your spotter. Down behind the rifle, keep its weight on the sandbags, left eye relaxed and open but sightless, right watches the vignette at seven power, the riflescope's crosshairs rest on the leftmost spotter. Cheek on the stock, finger around the trigger, left hand steadies the rifle; right pulls the stock into the shoulder...

Two heights drop at this range...

You set the crosshairs on an imaginary point above the spotter's head, crank the riflescope's range setter. The crosshairs rest on his chest again.

Slack out of the trigger...carump!

You control your breathing, the moisture from your nose steaming the high-gloss rifle stock. My cheek should be next to a child not this rifle who is this I am about to destroy it doesn't matter why not it should shouldn't it...

Take a breath...carump!

The itch comes back that persistent itch if only I could get a bath more than once a week I wouldn't get that chafing right where my brassier used to be when there were brassieres...

Let the breath out...

Is this vengeance or justice what does it matter in a moment it won't make any difference why not what have I become what of my family my people what am I about to do what am I doing here the mortars in the courtyard and my little baby son with legs smashed and head torn off oh God what has happened to us...

Sudden silence and it's just you and the target...

BLAM...

The sound of the shot fills the room...cordite laces your nostrils...dust shakes off the barren walls...the rifle pushes you back...your ears ring...you work the bolt...the empty cartridge spins into the air...the bullet strikes, the spotter spins about and falls...the crosshairs settle...

BLAM...

The communicator drops his receiver...the first report reaches the hill...the second observer falls...the cordite less pungent...the bolt works...the recoil more punishing...the ringing in your ears...

BLAM...

The communicator grabs his chest and topples over...you cannot hear yourself shout... GO! ONE...TWO...THREE...

You and the spotter grab your packs up and bolt out of the room and down to the stairwell. You count aloud as you descend...if you hit forty you have escaped and their spotters didn't see your muzzle flash...

TWELVE...THIRTEEN...FOURTEEN...CARUMP...

You reach the ground floor in a cloud of dust, dash through the lobby...you run into the street and down the block putting as much distance as you can between you and the hotel and listen for sighing artillery or swishing mortars overhead that means they spotted you...

Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three...

Breathless you slow down, stop, and pant in the late summer heat. We've done it again, you smile at your spotter. Again we have beaten them. You walk slowly through the streets, breathing deeply of the wood cook fires, your sweat makes the dust cling and your undershirt is soaked with it...

People glance casually as you pass while they go on living in dignified squalor, trading what little there was to trade, working to stay alive, collecting firewood, queuing for water, that strange squatting run across open spaces, listening for the artillery that has suddenly stopped...

Your presence has become a part of their lives, and they go on living.

Now you must hand your rifle and spotting telescope to the night team. Tonight you dine on a joint of mutton with your spotter and friends. Tomorrow you visit your daughter working at the field hospital.

For you that has become living.

Somewhere deep in your mind your husband's voice, hollow and dim, says: It is neither justice nor vengeance nor murder nor self-defense, but it is war.

And, you add, as if talking to him, it is the feud.