The war would rage on, mere feet from his cot, and Trapper would think, for a moment, that it was crazy, the whole world was crazy. How anyone expected him to sleep in such a death trap, to relax and rest with death beside him, was incomprehensible. Sleep was nothing more than an illusion, these days, and to achieve such a rare and precious gift was nothing short of insanity. Crazy was the world -- the word -- and crazy would it be.
Beside him, in the dark and musty tent (what had he called it, that man with the drawl of Maine, a swamp?), snores would float into the air, taunting him, tainting him, and it was times like these that Trapper could hardly distinguish insanity from sanity, reality from fantasy. Beneath his pillow pressed and hidden from view, lay the crisp photo of a young woman and even younger children. A comfort, he would think, to slip his hand into the cool darkness under the pillow and feel the rough corners of the photo, to feel something sturdy and real within his hands.
Crickets were silent here, silent to the sounds of distant bombs and Trapper would insist (though no one would listen) he could hear the steady dripping of blood in the next building over, the sound of blood and the cry of boys in pain. Funny, he would say to the lanky stranger in the next cot over, that they treat pain, eliminate pain, but truly never know what it is. Grimly, the man would smile, and tell Trapper that pain had all shapes and forms and he, for one, truly knew what it was.
In an empty cot, surrounded by the rattling breath of death and the lingering sounds of snores, Trapper would think that perhaps he could begin to understand pain.
Sleep would escape him, always out of reach, dancing before him like a taunting mistress -- wanting more, more, more. He worried, briefly, what to do once he ran out of more, ran out of less, ran out, but the man with the raven hair swore to take his place. To protect him were he to run out. And Trapper believed, though still sleep was nothing more than a distant dream.
A murmur would sound, of a stifled nightmare, from the tent across the room. Trapper would think, raised to be neighborly and bright, to comfort the source of the sound but the man (what was it he claimed to be? A doctor, a person, a ferret?) drowned in pride, refusing to succumb to the early desire for comfort.
He hears, beside his head, the steady ticking of his wrist watch (engraved for JM with love from LM). With each passing tick -- each passing moment -- the sounds intensify, magnify, and the watch is no longer a simple timepiece, but a bomb, wanting for him to sleep to strike. Trapper knows this, thinks this (crazy world, this war we fight), and still, he cannot capture sleep.
He works to block out the image of blood and gut and the feel a his bare hands working to stuff a man's organs into him while a nurse struggles to prep the patient and doctor. It is here, that the light snores begin to mingle with his own.
Trapper swears the nights awake are torture, listening to the hours of war for all hours to see. But when the morning light begins to peek in and about, inside and out, Trapper blinks to life slowly and wonders if, perhaps, sleeping through a war is much worse.