First of all, I'd like to give special thanks to Skittles for her help with these two difficult and heartwrenching chapters--God knows we had a hard time writing them. To Simon and Garfunkel for their inspiration with the song "Sound of Silence" who's lyrics are scattered into these two chapters. I hope you guys enjoy, and remember, that all life is precious, and that no death should go unnoticed.
Glimmer Conlon O'Leary
Chapters 4 and 5 -Sound of Silence
As she slipped into a deep slumber, Katie knew that this time, it would be as different as God could make it.
And so, as she slept, she dreamed, and as she dreamed, she dreaded the coming prophecy she knew the dream would bring in its wake.
(Hello darkness my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping.)
The Civil War. The people in the house talked of it non-stop. All Katherine knew was that he would leave, leave to fight for the North against the South.
And as the day came, Katherine shook with the trepidation of the coming doom that would fall upon her life.
At the train station she stood, surrounded by women waiting for their men to pass by on his way to the battles. Most wept, some merely stared, their eyes hard, their expression blank.
As the men approached, the shaking sobs of the women rose to a heartbreaking level of grief.
As they walked, many of the men stared at the ground, or straight ahead, unblinking. They kissed their wives and loved ones goodbye, their eyes open wide in mind-boggling fear.
Two young men Katherine knew passed by, and, on impulse, she reached out to them, pulling them to her one at a time, wondering if it would be the last she would see of them. As she pulled them into her warm embrace, she felt their strong bodies, pressed up against hers, shaking uncontrollably at the fate that lay before them.
It was a suicide mission, they all knew. Most would not come back alive.
Finally, after the two tembling men were gone and on the train, he came. His hair, pefectly combed as usual, his toned muscles visible even through the shirt he wore. Still, he had no face that she could see. Yet the aura around him, the love she felt reverberating off his body and into her soul let Katherine know that this man was he.
As he advanced on her, his strides gliding with a confidence that nearly every other man was lacking, Katherine's heart pounded, her pulse raced, and her already clammy hands broke into a sweat that only he could procure.
As he stopped in front of her, Katherine, before she could contain herself as the other women had, threw herself upon him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him as close as she could get him, as if in doing so, she could hold him there for all time.
He finally broke away, his breathing as uneven as Katherine's own. He kissed her firmly on the lips, his mouth burning into her with a passion she had never felt before, in real life or in a dream.
As Katie woke, she only lay awake long enough to understand why this one had been different. A different time, different ages, a different world. The only real, and true reason was because times, and their world, had changed. And no one would ever be the same.
As Katie fell into what she was certain would be the conclusion of her dream, she stirred on the couch. Her body felt a happiness, mixed with an incomparable sadness that chilled her body as she waited at that same train station, this day a complete opposite form the day the men had left. The rain fell on this day, wetting Katherine's clothing and hair as she waited, unprotected, the same as many other women hoping, and begging God to let their men come home alive.
The train, wet and silver, pulled up to the station. Katherine bit the inside of her cheek in anticipation. The first man, bedraggled and dirty, stepped off the train. A woman to Katherine's left shrieked in joy as she ran to her husband. His face, scarred with the horrors he had witnessed, lit only slightly as he swept his wife into his arms.
As more and more men stepped off the train, more and more women cried out in thanks to God, and more and more faces fell as the chances of their men coming home slipped away.
At long last, after Katherine was sure that there couldn't possibly be many more men on that train, a final man stepped from the railcar.
The women still remaining tensed visibly. Their eyes widened, their hands drew themselved to their mouths.
He stepped from the darkness. He, in all his glory. In all his wonderful, beautiful, amazing glory.
The Devil himself couldn't have stopped Katherine from running to him, wet hair flying, drenched skirts and petticoat sticking to her legs.
As she ran, she heard his voice ring out her name, as if church bells rang just for her.
Entering his arms, Katherine felt safe, relieved; felt phenomenally glorified and rejuvinated for the first time since he had left nearly four years before.
All that time she had waited. After waiting lifetimes for him, Katherine had known that when he returned, the wait would have been well worthwhile.
And at that Katie awoke a final time, pausing in her happiness only long enough to know that the two men she had embraced had not returned.
An omen. She shuddered to think what it meant.
A pounding on the lodging house door woke Scots and Mugger from the sleeps they had fallen into.
(And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.)
Scots walked to the door, glancing back at Mugger and Katie, all three of them expecting the worst.
As she opened it, a dark skinned boy of around eight stumbled into the House, out of breath and panting.
"He...Stabbed...Arm..And--Help!" He wheezed out, bent in half, struggling to catch his breath.
Boots could barely believe the things he'd seen. He'd been kept off to the side, not in the fight, not outisde of it, just there, as a runner in case anyone got wounded. But the things he'd seen were horrors beyond anything that he would ever see in his long life. Beyond anything anyone present would ever see again.
In an instant, Katie, Mugger, and Scots were out the door and flying into the Newsgirls' Lodging House, waking Mrs. Pan; a widower whose late husband had been a doctor with a gambling problem, murdered by the bookies who had taken everything they owned. Everythng except Mrs. Pan's knowledge of medicine, obtained by her husband.
In a flurry of hair, arms, and skirts, the four women scurried about, boiling water as ordered, tearing towels into thick strips and soaking them in the boiling water.
"If there's severe bleeding girls, we're going to have to sew it up, and if there's..." She went on and on, recalling all stab wounds she'd ever heard tell of.
Mrs. Pan sent Mugger back to the Boys' House to fetch whiskey as disinfectant, and to wait for them to come.
When at last everything was ready, the needle sterilized and the thread handy just in case, the girls ran back to the House, as Mrs. Pan carried a pot of boiling water through the accumulating snow.
It suddenly occurred to her that the boiling water would scald the poor boy to tears, if he wasn't already in them, and she set the pot in the snow, sending up a gale of steam so thick she couldn't see through it.
Through the hiss of the heat meeting snow, Mrs. Pan heard crunching footsteps, and abated breathing.
Three boys, one carried by the other two, stepped through the steam into view, like knights after battle.
The sight, magnificent in its own way, mesmerized old Mrs. Pan. the contrast between the strength of the two boys compared to the evident weakness of the third was so startling and yet so magically powerful it took her breath away.
She gazed at the boys for mere seconds before something clicked in her mind and she beckoned to the boys, lifting the pot off the ground.
As they entered the House, the two strong boys carrying the third with such ease and willingness that it melted her heart, Mrs. Pan called to Scots, Mugger, and Katie. The three girls hurried into the lobby, stopping short when they saw him.
"Skittery," Scots breathed, her eyes wide in unabashed shock and terror.
The boy in the middle raised his head slightly, and locked eyes with Scots, his eyes so full of pain and utter defeat that it wrenched her heart and soul.
As the group knocked themselves out of their stupor, they carried Skittery to the common room, placing him on a clean sheet laid over a wooden table.
He looked away from his arm, where a gash ran from just above his left elbow, entwining itself to the front of his shoulder. Blood seeped from the shirt wrapped tightly around it, in a feeble attempt to stop the blood.
The two boys stood unblinkingly in the doorway, where one, shirtless, rubbed his toned arms for warmth.
"Mush, sit near the fire," Mugger said, turning to look at him, "You too Pie."
And as the boys sat, they faced away from the warm glow to watch over their friend, who lay silently on the table.
As Mrs. Pan took a clean, dry washcloth from the small stack Katie held, she poured the well-searched for whiskey into it, and, hands shaking, lowered it toward Skittery's arm.
As soon as the cleansing alchohol touched the wound, the boy who hadn't made a peep the entire time yelped in such pain his friends winced and the girls all felt severe pangs of guilt.
As he gritted his teeth and sucked air through them, he squeezed his eyes shut, turning away.
"You're so brave, you're so brave," Mrs. Pan repeated the comforting phrase over and over, her voice moving with such emotion they all felt her compassion.
When at last she was through, she pressed yet another washcloth to the wound gently but firmly, managing to stop most of the bloodflow--yet the blood had already pooled onto the sheet and down the sides, dripping melodiosly onto the wooded floor.
"We're going to have to sew," Mrs. Pan said, looking at the girls, who glanced nervously at one another.
Scots retrieved the needle from the boiling water, taking no notice of her burning fingers as she stared into the handsome of the boy she had known for so long.
As soon as the needle and thread puctured the soft skin around the wound, Skittery's eyes widened in unbearable agony and he convulsed, his legs curling as his head came up.
In an instant, all three girls were on him, Mugger and Scots grabbing onto his legs and holding on for dear life as Katie pulled his head down and turned his face toward her own, bending to his level.
His face was pale as the sheet he lay on, and beads of feverish sweat soaked his brow and his waves of brown hair. His brown eyes were unfocused and slightly dazed.
Panicking, thinking he was about to pass out, Katie thought fast.
"Skittery, listen to me okay? Listen..." She had his attention, but was now at a loss for words. An idea breaking into the chaos that was her mind made her jerk her head up.
She beckoned to Pie, and he came over quicky.
"Talk to him." Katie demanded.
Pie simply nodded and uttered the words Katie could not. "Hey Skitts..You'se okay kid...Jus' a li'l scratch da's awl. Membah da time we played stickbawl las' April? Da snow wasn't awl gone, an' it was one a dem days when it was wintah in da mo'nin' an' spring in da aftahnoon. Membah Skitts?"
Skittery swallowed his lips together. Katie wiped his brow with another washcloth as Pie spoke reassuringly to him.
"Yeah," Skittery spoke, startling Katie. "An' I hit a homah right inta some ol' lady's ugly hat." As he spoke, his eyes brightened, but Katie felt him shiver from the sweaty wetness of his body.
Pie laughed, a sound so unu to Katie that it shocked her.
Skittery began to laugh, but in the middle, a tremor rocked his body and he ended up shaking furiously, and his brow, relatively dry only moments before, was once again soaked with sweat.
Mrs. Pan knotted the last stitch and began to wrap his arm quickly, tightly, in the strips of towel. When at last she was done, his arm was stiff and immobile, just as it needed to be.
Looking up, she finally took notice of Skittery lying on the table in his current fevered, trembling state.
"Up to bed with him. Carefully. Don't move that arm. He may be hot and unwanting of covers, but keep him bundled. He must be kept warm or fever will set in. Go now."
She ordered Mush and Pie away with Skittery, and once they were gone, she collapsed onto the couch seconds after cleaning her hands in the adjoining kitchen.
"How did he get stabbed, girls?" She asked sternly.
"We dunno," Mugger said, avoiding Mrs. Pan's eyes.
"I know you know girls. Tell me."
It was Katie who finally spoke, her voice hesitant and small.
"The boys went to war with Harlem," she whispered.
"War? Those boys have never seen war." After a long pause, she added, "Honestly," sounding quite exasperated. After a long silence, she got up off the couch, cleaned up the supplies, dumping them into the pot, carrying them into the kitchen.
"If you need these again, girls, boil more water," she said softly, resigned to acceptance. "If anyone else needs sewing, fetch me."
As she left, the girls knew that she understood what the War meant. This was no ordinary fight. In no way shape or form was this ordinary.
As Mush and Pie came back down, the girls bombarded them with questions of what in the world was going on.
The boys' vacant, dead eyes told them all they needed to know. It was a lose-lose situation; as is all war.
As a rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, the sky lit up with lightning so stark and bright it dazzled even those inside.
Glimmer Conlon O'Leary
Chapters 4 and 5 -Sound of Silence
As she slipped into a deep slumber, Katie knew that this time, it would be as different as God could make it.
And so, as she slept, she dreamed, and as she dreamed, she dreaded the coming prophecy she knew the dream would bring in its wake.
(Hello darkness my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping.)
The Civil War. The people in the house talked of it non-stop. All Katherine knew was that he would leave, leave to fight for the North against the South.
And as the day came, Katherine shook with the trepidation of the coming doom that would fall upon her life.
At the train station she stood, surrounded by women waiting for their men to pass by on his way to the battles. Most wept, some merely stared, their eyes hard, their expression blank.
As the men approached, the shaking sobs of the women rose to a heartbreaking level of grief.
As they walked, many of the men stared at the ground, or straight ahead, unblinking. They kissed their wives and loved ones goodbye, their eyes open wide in mind-boggling fear.
Two young men Katherine knew passed by, and, on impulse, she reached out to them, pulling them to her one at a time, wondering if it would be the last she would see of them. As she pulled them into her warm embrace, she felt their strong bodies, pressed up against hers, shaking uncontrollably at the fate that lay before them.
It was a suicide mission, they all knew. Most would not come back alive.
Finally, after the two tembling men were gone and on the train, he came. His hair, pefectly combed as usual, his toned muscles visible even through the shirt he wore. Still, he had no face that she could see. Yet the aura around him, the love she felt reverberating off his body and into her soul let Katherine know that this man was he.
As he advanced on her, his strides gliding with a confidence that nearly every other man was lacking, Katherine's heart pounded, her pulse raced, and her already clammy hands broke into a sweat that only he could procure.
As he stopped in front of her, Katherine, before she could contain herself as the other women had, threw herself upon him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him as close as she could get him, as if in doing so, she could hold him there for all time.
He finally broke away, his breathing as uneven as Katherine's own. He kissed her firmly on the lips, his mouth burning into her with a passion she had never felt before, in real life or in a dream.
As Katie woke, she only lay awake long enough to understand why this one had been different. A different time, different ages, a different world. The only real, and true reason was because times, and their world, had changed. And no one would ever be the same.
As Katie fell into what she was certain would be the conclusion of her dream, she stirred on the couch. Her body felt a happiness, mixed with an incomparable sadness that chilled her body as she waited at that same train station, this day a complete opposite form the day the men had left. The rain fell on this day, wetting Katherine's clothing and hair as she waited, unprotected, the same as many other women hoping, and begging God to let their men come home alive.
The train, wet and silver, pulled up to the station. Katherine bit the inside of her cheek in anticipation. The first man, bedraggled and dirty, stepped off the train. A woman to Katherine's left shrieked in joy as she ran to her husband. His face, scarred with the horrors he had witnessed, lit only slightly as he swept his wife into his arms.
As more and more men stepped off the train, more and more women cried out in thanks to God, and more and more faces fell as the chances of their men coming home slipped away.
At long last, after Katherine was sure that there couldn't possibly be many more men on that train, a final man stepped from the railcar.
The women still remaining tensed visibly. Their eyes widened, their hands drew themselved to their mouths.
He stepped from the darkness. He, in all his glory. In all his wonderful, beautiful, amazing glory.
The Devil himself couldn't have stopped Katherine from running to him, wet hair flying, drenched skirts and petticoat sticking to her legs.
As she ran, she heard his voice ring out her name, as if church bells rang just for her.
Entering his arms, Katherine felt safe, relieved; felt phenomenally glorified and rejuvinated for the first time since he had left nearly four years before.
All that time she had waited. After waiting lifetimes for him, Katherine had known that when he returned, the wait would have been well worthwhile.
And at that Katie awoke a final time, pausing in her happiness only long enough to know that the two men she had embraced had not returned.
An omen. She shuddered to think what it meant.
A pounding on the lodging house door woke Scots and Mugger from the sleeps they had fallen into.
(And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.)
Scots walked to the door, glancing back at Mugger and Katie, all three of them expecting the worst.
As she opened it, a dark skinned boy of around eight stumbled into the House, out of breath and panting.
"He...Stabbed...Arm..And--Help!" He wheezed out, bent in half, struggling to catch his breath.
Boots could barely believe the things he'd seen. He'd been kept off to the side, not in the fight, not outisde of it, just there, as a runner in case anyone got wounded. But the things he'd seen were horrors beyond anything that he would ever see in his long life. Beyond anything anyone present would ever see again.
In an instant, Katie, Mugger, and Scots were out the door and flying into the Newsgirls' Lodging House, waking Mrs. Pan; a widower whose late husband had been a doctor with a gambling problem, murdered by the bookies who had taken everything they owned. Everythng except Mrs. Pan's knowledge of medicine, obtained by her husband.
In a flurry of hair, arms, and skirts, the four women scurried about, boiling water as ordered, tearing towels into thick strips and soaking them in the boiling water.
"If there's severe bleeding girls, we're going to have to sew it up, and if there's..." She went on and on, recalling all stab wounds she'd ever heard tell of.
Mrs. Pan sent Mugger back to the Boys' House to fetch whiskey as disinfectant, and to wait for them to come.
When at last everything was ready, the needle sterilized and the thread handy just in case, the girls ran back to the House, as Mrs. Pan carried a pot of boiling water through the accumulating snow.
It suddenly occurred to her that the boiling water would scald the poor boy to tears, if he wasn't already in them, and she set the pot in the snow, sending up a gale of steam so thick she couldn't see through it.
Through the hiss of the heat meeting snow, Mrs. Pan heard crunching footsteps, and abated breathing.
Three boys, one carried by the other two, stepped through the steam into view, like knights after battle.
The sight, magnificent in its own way, mesmerized old Mrs. Pan. the contrast between the strength of the two boys compared to the evident weakness of the third was so startling and yet so magically powerful it took her breath away.
She gazed at the boys for mere seconds before something clicked in her mind and she beckoned to the boys, lifting the pot off the ground.
As they entered the House, the two strong boys carrying the third with such ease and willingness that it melted her heart, Mrs. Pan called to Scots, Mugger, and Katie. The three girls hurried into the lobby, stopping short when they saw him.
"Skittery," Scots breathed, her eyes wide in unabashed shock and terror.
The boy in the middle raised his head slightly, and locked eyes with Scots, his eyes so full of pain and utter defeat that it wrenched her heart and soul.
As the group knocked themselves out of their stupor, they carried Skittery to the common room, placing him on a clean sheet laid over a wooden table.
He looked away from his arm, where a gash ran from just above his left elbow, entwining itself to the front of his shoulder. Blood seeped from the shirt wrapped tightly around it, in a feeble attempt to stop the blood.
The two boys stood unblinkingly in the doorway, where one, shirtless, rubbed his toned arms for warmth.
"Mush, sit near the fire," Mugger said, turning to look at him, "You too Pie."
And as the boys sat, they faced away from the warm glow to watch over their friend, who lay silently on the table.
As Mrs. Pan took a clean, dry washcloth from the small stack Katie held, she poured the well-searched for whiskey into it, and, hands shaking, lowered it toward Skittery's arm.
As soon as the cleansing alchohol touched the wound, the boy who hadn't made a peep the entire time yelped in such pain his friends winced and the girls all felt severe pangs of guilt.
As he gritted his teeth and sucked air through them, he squeezed his eyes shut, turning away.
"You're so brave, you're so brave," Mrs. Pan repeated the comforting phrase over and over, her voice moving with such emotion they all felt her compassion.
When at last she was through, she pressed yet another washcloth to the wound gently but firmly, managing to stop most of the bloodflow--yet the blood had already pooled onto the sheet and down the sides, dripping melodiosly onto the wooded floor.
"We're going to have to sew," Mrs. Pan said, looking at the girls, who glanced nervously at one another.
Scots retrieved the needle from the boiling water, taking no notice of her burning fingers as she stared into the handsome of the boy she had known for so long.
As soon as the needle and thread puctured the soft skin around the wound, Skittery's eyes widened in unbearable agony and he convulsed, his legs curling as his head came up.
In an instant, all three girls were on him, Mugger and Scots grabbing onto his legs and holding on for dear life as Katie pulled his head down and turned his face toward her own, bending to his level.
His face was pale as the sheet he lay on, and beads of feverish sweat soaked his brow and his waves of brown hair. His brown eyes were unfocused and slightly dazed.
Panicking, thinking he was about to pass out, Katie thought fast.
"Skittery, listen to me okay? Listen..." She had his attention, but was now at a loss for words. An idea breaking into the chaos that was her mind made her jerk her head up.
She beckoned to Pie, and he came over quicky.
"Talk to him." Katie demanded.
Pie simply nodded and uttered the words Katie could not. "Hey Skitts..You'se okay kid...Jus' a li'l scratch da's awl. Membah da time we played stickbawl las' April? Da snow wasn't awl gone, an' it was one a dem days when it was wintah in da mo'nin' an' spring in da aftahnoon. Membah Skitts?"
Skittery swallowed his lips together. Katie wiped his brow with another washcloth as Pie spoke reassuringly to him.
"Yeah," Skittery spoke, startling Katie. "An' I hit a homah right inta some ol' lady's ugly hat." As he spoke, his eyes brightened, but Katie felt him shiver from the sweaty wetness of his body.
Pie laughed, a sound so unu to Katie that it shocked her.
Skittery began to laugh, but in the middle, a tremor rocked his body and he ended up shaking furiously, and his brow, relatively dry only moments before, was once again soaked with sweat.
Mrs. Pan knotted the last stitch and began to wrap his arm quickly, tightly, in the strips of towel. When at last she was done, his arm was stiff and immobile, just as it needed to be.
Looking up, she finally took notice of Skittery lying on the table in his current fevered, trembling state.
"Up to bed with him. Carefully. Don't move that arm. He may be hot and unwanting of covers, but keep him bundled. He must be kept warm or fever will set in. Go now."
She ordered Mush and Pie away with Skittery, and once they were gone, she collapsed onto the couch seconds after cleaning her hands in the adjoining kitchen.
"How did he get stabbed, girls?" She asked sternly.
"We dunno," Mugger said, avoiding Mrs. Pan's eyes.
"I know you know girls. Tell me."
It was Katie who finally spoke, her voice hesitant and small.
"The boys went to war with Harlem," she whispered.
"War? Those boys have never seen war." After a long pause, she added, "Honestly," sounding quite exasperated. After a long silence, she got up off the couch, cleaned up the supplies, dumping them into the pot, carrying them into the kitchen.
"If you need these again, girls, boil more water," she said softly, resigned to acceptance. "If anyone else needs sewing, fetch me."
As she left, the girls knew that she understood what the War meant. This was no ordinary fight. In no way shape or form was this ordinary.
As Mush and Pie came back down, the girls bombarded them with questions of what in the world was going on.
The boys' vacant, dead eyes told them all they needed to know. It was a lose-lose situation; as is all war.
As a rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, the sky lit up with lightning so stark and bright it dazzled even those inside.