Thomas wakes with his heart pounding from a dream already fading. A bent-neck glance at the clock shows five-something. His pulse is too fast to focus properly.
The sheets are wrapped tight over him, he still can’t get the air he wants. Better to lie still and focus on deep breaths, watch the seconds hand tick as he shakes.
He can’t breathe in for a 10-count, the air shudders out of him at four. He tries again. It was the gas dream, though the electric horror of it has long since faded. Now it just grinds him down in between waking hours. The faces floating in green fog, the whistle-shriek of gas shells, the mad ecstasy to get the mask on.
Thomas inhales fresh air through his nose. He makes it to six before exhaling, his pulse starting to slow a little. He might still be able to go back to sleep if he can stop the shaking. The haze in the air is just the pre-dawn light through dusty windows. Stephen sleeps sound beside him, most of the blankets draped around his shoulders, pulling the sheets taut across the bed. Thomas watches the soft rise and fall of his ribs as he tries to hold a breath for six, and then eight.
It could have been worse. He didn’t wake up flailing. Not like during the war, and he’s better at it, since even before the Armistice, since the hospital. Thomas rolls slowly to his side, taking what blanket he can. The way the light hits on the white wall, he’s almost back in that corner room, the cold weather threatening its way into spring, far from the front line. If he turns his head he’ll see the sweet cherry though the window budding a brilliant green, and David perched at the desk, alive and chattering on about something. Thomas breathes in, holds six, seven, eight, nine, ten, out. And again. There’s nothing out the window except cold sky. The weight settles into his chest like it always does as he shivers, watching the grey dawn slowly ache its way into morning.
The sun is just starting to drip gold down the wall when Stephen stirs next to him, finally wakes. He rolls, unraveling the blankets as he pulls closer. Stephen’s fingers ghost the edge of Thomas’ ribs as he tucks an arm over his waist, and even through the shirt he can’t help shuddering. His whole body feels like a raw burn. Stephen notices, stills.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just bad dreams,” Thomas mutters, and that’ll be the end of it.
“Just bad dreams,” Stephen repeats into his hair, the hum of his voice fading into a long silence. Then: “Do you want to tell me about it?”
He doesn’t want to tell Stephen about it. He’s avoided as much talk and thought of the war as possible in daylight hours. Stephen knows any bad dreams are about the war and he doesn’t need to know any more than that.
“Don’t- worry over it,” he says in response, and he really does mean to end it there, get out of bed and out of this whole thing, but the words insist on spilling out before he even knows they’re in his mouth. “It’s just faces.”
“Oh. Your friends?”
“Just one,” he corrects. “And it’s not- it wasn’t—” the words are jumbling up in his mouth, jamming into his teeth. “He didn’t die from gas, so.” Had he told Stephen about the gas before? He’d mentioned it, surely. He thinks about it often enough. Even though his eyes are open, Thomas can still feel the green of it, or the green of the trees in April, before they’d been sent back out from the hospital. David had woken him from a dream like this one, catching his swinging arms, pulling him out of the dream and back into being. “Tell me about it, then,” David had said, and while getting the words out was like pulling teeth and Thomas shook the whole time, he’d slept a little easier, the familiar choking faces blurred. When he woke in the middle of the night David was still there slumped in the chair by his bed.
“How did he die, then?” Stephen is asking. Thomas can feel him holding back a swarm of questions against his neck. He’d had to find out from David’s brother, months after the end of it all. The letter is still tucked in the inside cover of the book David gave him, that he hasn’t looked at since the end of the war. He shrugs.
“Machine gun. In September.”
Thomas had no clue how David had gotten his hands on the book, poetry of all things. He’d shoved it into his hands on the train platform, and Thomas had watched the shadow of him be swallowed up by the steam. He’d thought of David every day, from the moment they’d left and then for such a long time that he hadn’t immediately realized when it stopped. Now the oddest things trip him up when he least expects it. The clatter of silverware, and David’s bright cackle about something over dinner. Evening light through a group of trees, and he can feel the steady press of David’s arm tucked in his, when he didn’t let go until they were back in sight of the hospital. Sometimes there’s a split second where Stephen smiles mid-sentence, and it’s not the tone of his voice, exactly, but there’s something about it that dredges David and guilt up from the mud. There was a time he’d half-brace himself walking into any crowded room, waiting to hear David calling him over.
Couldn’t be rid of him then, even if he’d wanted to. Still can’t quite be rid of him.
“A good friend, then?” Stephen’s voice is edged with a smile. Thomas starts, sits up, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed. He hadn’t meant to say the last one out loud. “Sorry.” Stephen pushes himself up, reaching out for Thomas, drops his hand to the sheet instead. “Sorry. I just thought talking about it would help you sleep. You don’t have to if you don’t want.”
Thomas sighs, glances back at Stephen. The shaking is long gone but it’s worn him through. He should tell him. He likes Stephen, and maybe it would help. But it would be strange if Thomas tried to explain it, even to Stephen. The best way he’s managed to think of it is like missing a limb, almost, except he’s got nothing to show for it. David just seemed to understand something about him, but not same thing that Stephen understands about him. Not the same way at least. He can’t settle on where to start. Starting might bring it all out, and then he’d have nothing of it left for himself.
“If I tell you…” he turned back to studying the wall. “I think I’ll lose his face.” The truth is that the details are already slipping away, stone smoothed down by constant touch. He knows that someday all of it will fade completely, and David will be truly dead at last. But for a little longer- just the other day at the train station, when Thomas was standing alone on the platform. The shrill of a whistle, steam and a swarm of people billowing from the train. He was searching for David’s face among them, inexplicably, before he even knew what he was looking for.
The title of this piece comes from the first stanza of The Last Meeting, by Siegfried Sassoon: “Because the night was falling warm and still/upon a golden day at April’s end/I thought; I will go up the hill once more/To find the face of him that I have lost“. The rest of this piece is also inspired by Sassoon himself, and his relationship with fellow WWI poet Wilfred Owen. Owen and Sassoon met in 1917 at Craiglockhart, a hospital treating soldiers for “shell shock” (symptoms we now recognize as PTSD). The two became close friends, and Sassoon encouraged Owen’s own poetry about the war. Owen was killed a week before the Armistice, and Sassoon called his death “an unhealed wound”. Both men were gay, and while there’s no proof that they were ever in a romantic relationship (nor do I necessarily think they were), the dynamic of that relationship deeply interested me. None of the characters in this story are meant to stand in for Owen or Sassoon. In fact, the book of poetry given to Thomas is meant to be a copy of Sassoon’s book of poetry published in 1917, titled The Old Huntsman, so the men who inspired this story very much have their own place within it. In this piece, I wanted to explore the ramifications of war, the unfinished nature of sudden death, and the ways we process grief.
Words of C. Hunsaker 