Blog #93; the Award-Winning Short Story in the Most Recent VA Creative Writing Contest

 The excerpt below is from A CONTRITE SPIRIT, an epic novel I have been working on for four plus years.  Please give me any feedback you like.  Thank you!

“The Ghost of Provo Canyon”

Hyrum hated days like today. They reminded him too much of those October days in the forest

in France. The chill, so frosty to the marrow. Each flash of lightening he saw gun shots aimed at

him. When the thunder boomed, he jumped. Water dripped off of his porch roof and it was

slow spinning and maddening. He could not imagine ever feeling whole again. “Captain!” He

called out. “Rainsford!” He looked into the murk across the street. “Sergeant Horne, take that

damn trench!” His voice was hoarse and squeaky from shouting. “Silence those Hun guns.”

An older man holding an umbrella and walking a Great Dane stopped on the sidewalk in

front of Hyrum. Looked at him quizzically. “Can I help you, son?”

“You can reinforce that trench across the way, soldier. More reinforcements should be

coming in anytime. Ask Horne. He’ll direct you.”

The old man crossed the street, shaking his head. And Hyrum wondered who the

strange soldier was with the dog. He wasn’t with Hyrum’s unit. Just then a powerful

thunderclap and a bright flash ignited almost simultaneously. “Retreat, men,” Hyrum said and

ran into the house, went up the stairs. He hid under his marriage bed, where Leigh came to

find him an hour later. She looked under the bed, and found her husband shaking, in tears.

“Oh, dear.” She stroked the back of his neck. “Were the Germans after you?”

“They over-ran the perimeter. We had to retreat.”

She tried to help him up, but he wouldn’t budge. “No, dear,” she said. “We are in Utah.

At home. The war is over. You are safe here with me.”

That night Hyrum was back in the trenches of France, fighting Germans, killing people in a

storm of slaughter that disgusted him even as it overtook his emotions. In the distance always

was the cry of a baby, and he was fighting to save the infant. His child. The Germans would kill

the infant if they found him. Hyrum had heard reports out of Belgium of the German baby-

killers. And he knew instinctively it was his baby, and that Leigh counted on him to protect the

child and the air got very chill but Hyrum was sweating as he fired his rifle, stabbed the enemy

with his bayonet, all the time trying to work closer and closer to the baby’s crying. He shivered

and sweated as he searched the empty German trenches, until he found the child in a stroller

unharmed and suddenly quiet. Mist swirled around them and then Hyrum woke up.

A few days later, Hyrum took off on his own to go fishing in Provo Canyon. It was early autumn

now and the leaves on the trees were beginning to color. Yellow, orange. Bright red. He

found himself a comfortable spot beside the Provo River and cast out his line. He waited for a

while, jerked his bait a bit around in the river, but he was not having much success with the fish

that day. He was in a particularly bleak mood. It was getting close to the anniversary of the

battle, and that always scared him. He worried one of these anniversaries he would flat-out

lose his mind. He was surprised when another fisherman with a pole came down the trail

leading to the river.

The man was thin, specter-like, gaunt and pale, with wire-rimmed glasses. But he

smiled, and had a kind countenance. “Any fish biting today,” he said with a European accent.

“Nope. You’re welcome to try your luck though. And I could use the company.”

“Thanks to you,” he said. Hyrum could place the accent now, it was Germanic. “I’m

Hyrum,” the American said. “Hyrum Fratelli. And you are?”

“My name ist Wilhelm von Geist. You can call me Willie.”

The two shook hands. They regarded each other. There was something vaguely

familiar about this strange man. “You in the war, Willie?”

“Yes. And I got captured. That was what took me to Utah. I was in a prisoner of war

camp not far from here. When the war ended, I had no friends or family left at home, so I

figured I’d try to make a try in the New World.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“It could have been worse. I went through a bad battle in the Argonne Forest. I gave

up and the Americans took me.”

Hyrum was amazed. “I fought in that battle. That hellhole…” He stopped himself. If

he talked, it brought back the flood of unspeakable monsters, and he was sure his new-found

German friend didn’t want to be reminded either. “I think if we used fly bait we’ll do better.”

Hyrum shared his flies with Willie.

They sat in silence for a long time. Hyrum felt a tranquil energy coming from the

German, something calming and stable. He had not felt that for a long time.

Willie almost glowed in the autumn afternoon sunlight. More like shimmered. He was

in a white shirt and tan pants. “What did you do before the war, Hyrum?”

“I went to school. At BYU. Did some ranch work for my pa. I want to go back to school,

and study biology.”

“Why biology?”

“It’s the study of life. All life. Plants, animals, humans. I’ll probably never be employed

as a teacher, I’m such a nervous wreck, but maybe I could volunteer.”

“I understand. After all that death, to focus on the living. We should all focus on the

living. Besides you, I haven’t talked to anybody out here for the last month. I live in a little

cabin just south of here, on one of the streams that feeds the river. You’re welcome to visit

sometime.” Oddly, Hyrum wasn’t alarmed. The thought of going to an isolated cabin out in the

wilderness with an obvious German combat vet would have frightened most people in that

time and place. This German didn’t frighten him. They could forge a special kind of friendship.