Fires Eternal Morning :

an allegorical novel by Johnes Ruta

2 Topography

Ten months earlier and at twelve miles altitude over the north coast of Spain, a green line dividing land from sea/ below me, of the vast Bay of Biscay… I had been looking out through the bushes, with still child eyes/ over silver-bird wing tips/ off the edge of my yard/ down through the stratosphere, over continuous ripples of steel-blue ocean stretching out miles, the west coast of France on the east horizon and the green east-west edge of land, coast ports below with jetties that extend out into water glimmering in the sun like tiny diamonds; towns nestled deeper in the hills of Cantabria; and other villages far off to the south...

Assigned with a U2 reconnaissance mission, on orders directly from General Simone, my attache' to NATO Air Command, we are just slowly floating, above sixty thousand feet in non-hostile airspace, where I have been monitoring the infrared sonar window to search for our B-52 that went down two days ago with live Hydrogen warheads, underwater with all hands.

Because of the danger, I had telegramed Pamela to delay her flight to meet me in Madrid; but my message had arrived too late, and though we hadn't talked in almost one week, she was already on her way across, trans-Atlantic. Somewhere, perhaps twenty-five thousand feet below this altitude, her airliner should be passing about now, and we would soon be running naked together on an isolated stretch of shining beach down on the Costa del Sol.

So long apart..

But still her plane didn't come.

Lost : At Madrid Airport, I waited in the terminal for her flight which would never arrive.

Now they had lost both the H-Bomb and the plane she as on. Our U2 Squadron motto, "Videmus Omnia"... keeps ringing in my head over and over, and to it I add, "Nihil Autem Gnoscimus! But-- We Know Nothing!" Why hadn't she told me sooner that she was coming?

-- given me more notice to expect her arrival? This was now the inevitable (and irrevocable)

waiting;

her plane and ours -- both on the bottom of the Bay of Biscay, somewhere off the north coast of Spain below me --- And there it was below, a submerged glowing-cobalt circle of total stillness in the wavy, deep blue ocean --- a zone that engulfed that dream into the depths, the depths of despair.

Waiting, to explode into sunlight, together......God, Love, where are you?

The fear hits me like a sudden bomb that something else has happened, and my plane bursts apart around me, the empty air pulling me toward the distant ground, plunging me down in free fall sixty thousand feet, tumbling down off the edge of the back-yard hillock through leafy branches of bushes --without parachute goggles...

In the busy harbor of Istanbul, he remembered the bay waters of the Golden Horn filled with ships and boats, horizon lined with domes and minarets, glimmering the surface with gold and morning sunlight from the Eastern world; the aroma of strange spices and sea salt mixed with the coarse smell of diesel, motor sounds and whistles with a muzzin’s cries of prayer from a city parapet. I have been assigned to observe a suspected courier contact in the indoor section of the old pier terminal of a ferry excursion to the Bosporus and Black Sea.

Pursuing a lead intercepted yesterday in a short-wave transmission, decoded by my British contact, Blackwell Hughes, a higher ranking operative, evidently between Turkish and Bulgarian agents, I am awaiting his arrival, readying to take up my position, certainly squeamish at being alone here. Was I alone at this critical contact point, or only informed to be alone, not to know who were the others in position? This narrow strait between Europe and all of Asia could be the bridge, the transfer point, of data on microfiche which could alter the balance of power, the very proliferation of advanced nuclear weapons in the world.

Here, the cavernous inside of the pier is crowded with tourists and travelers of different nationalities, Eastern and Western, all standing in roped-off queues which fill the rear section of the room... I notice that the berth for the ferry itself is a U-shaped dock, similar to the terminus of a railroad track, in the outer covered section of the pier, from which the ferry, yet to arrive, can be boarded from gang-ways on two sides. Presently, waves from the approaching ferry break up the peaceful reflections in the water and lap against its inner sides of the dock as in anticipation of the ripples of altered history.

Even with the crowds, I am fortunately standing in a position in the line from which I have an unobstructed view of the dock and the tiny streaks of gold and brown and silver ripples which begin to hypnotize me, and I watch as the ferry-boat comes closer to make its landing approach, and as it slides smoothly into its berth.

As the people in the lines begin to move by the ticket-takers and out onto the dock platform, I walk along with them as masses of people are disembarking and moving onboard, while I watch for the precise moment of a contact at a spot at the corner of the cabin on the deck of the ferry. Across the dock, I think that I see Hughes finally arriving.

I am approached by three men, two of whom are in Turkish police uniforms, who roughly order me to come along with them, and take me onboard just as the ferry is beginning to leave the pier and move out into the sunny harbor. I am unable to glimpse my Hughes again on the dock as I am taken along a narrow companionway to a tiny cabin. Not stopping to tell me why I have been seized, they shove me into the cabin, leaving me grateful that they have not struck me.

Climbing up from the floor, I find that the door has been locked, but another door to the right has been left ajar, and I cautiously open it, to where I find the crowded galley.

The galley hand, walking back and forth between his counters, is preparing various dishes, but as I come in he looks over at me and says something to me casually in Turkish, which I am unable to follow. I continue to move around the end of the counter, making a gesture of greeting to him, moving toward the door to the companion-way. But he looks up, pointing a small pistol and gesturing me to move away from the door and just sit and watch him while he watches me out of one eye. I playfully poke my head into the companionway, but I turn back only to find myself looking down the muzzle of his gun, so I sit myself up on the counter across from him...

The sideward roll of the boat, and my uncertainty, gradually churn my stomach, and I can only console myself that my partner is aware of my capture and might negotiate for my release...

Fifteen hours later, after making steadily eastward with no sight of land from my cabin porthole, I finally sense that the ferry is slowing into a docking approach.

I am by now completely mentally exhausted with the fearful prospect of my capture, my thoughts having raced into the state of blankness---

Guards come at last to lead me out onto deck, where six other captives are also being brought out. We are all quickly shackled together at the ankles, as the ferry thumps against the sides of another U-shaped dock to rest. After the passengers disembark, we are marshaled to move through the gate, awkwardly tripping over the chains as we go.

But now I startlingly realize that the pier is an exact mirror-opposite of the one from which we embarked; and across the dock, through the crowd, I see my partner casually walking to a waiting car and being driven off---

(Hope has been removed, and today I cannot remember their grueling interrogation, but only the name of someone in history named Xerxes, and a long walk inland from the Crimean shores into a Ukraine landscape -- thinking: Well, here I am as in the poem : with Tennyson's phrase echoing in my memory -- "Cannons to the right of us/ Cannons to the left," as I continued eastward over snowy roads, a helicopter gunship circling high overhead in the blue to my right, and another to my left...)

"Cannons to the right of us... Cannons to the left of us... We marched down into the Valley of Death..."

Through the woods of grass-blade shadows, of deep bush and trees, over forest trails of the Apennines Mountains, walking alone, but not aimlessly, from where I had shed my parachute and buried it away from where I had touched ground -- I still carried one weapon -- a small Italian Barretta tucked into my right boot -- and under my arm a small satchel containing the materials I will need.

From this altitude on the mountain trail, I could see over the distant hillsides of Umbria, quaint villages with pink stucco buildings, and the church steeple in the early morning angle of sunlight from the east.

I must climb over rough terrain to get across to the other side of a small ravine -- though I was unlucky enough in hitting the ground to twist my ankle, not the proper landing I was trained for, so that now I had to worry about the safety of my return to my Strategic Unit.

General Simone, Grandma’s nephew, had hand-picked me for this mission, since I knew all the dialects, north and south. like a real paisan, with Pop from Sicily, Moma from Farrara. "Uncle Simone" and Pop had enlisted together in the Italian Engineer Corps in ‘14, after little Hope before me and Grandma had died in the Austrian shelling of Ferrara. Knocking out this bridge would prove my competence and the worthiness of Simone recruiting me for Strategic Services.

Still, if I could get to the other side of the valley, walking where I would probably come close to peasant houses I’d be safer -- I had not before been in this province alone and so I must beware to not mistake recognizing my contact for someone else I might encounter, Fascisti instead of partisan. I hoped no one else suspected my presence.

I would normally be thinking in Italian, except for my fears, and I knew already what would happen if I faltered into English thinking in a conversation with a stranger -- they might rattle off an English phrase to trip you up into replying in English. Even accidentally holding your knife and fork the American way in a cantina would land you in a torture chamber and being stood up in front of a wall.

All I could think of about was just meeting up with my comrades to get back to the US lines to the south tonight -- a long walk already but much longer with my aching ankle. They would be specifically looking for me in two hours. Still there was no sign of my contact.

Two peasants were walking further along the path where I trod -- stocky tall men with dark hair and handlebar moustaches. Both carried beat-up looking Springfield rifles slung over their shoulders, inconclusive of who might have issued them, maybe leftovers from the Great

War. I decided to just watch them until they moved beyond my area, but not to completely lose sight of them.

The two stopped and sat on some large rocks near where I hid, their voices just within earshot, talking about the new Social Republic, and the news that Il Duce had just flown over to the Germans, but the sound of their words drifted partly to the other direction -- and I still couldn't make out their conversation clearly enough to be sure of their loyalties -- I would just sit quietly until they decided to continue along in the early morning light.

Finally, after more than a quarter of an hour, I was able to make my way deeper and deeper into the woods and began to try to locate my objective.-- The chart I had committed to memory seemed slightly different from the actual lay of the land itself...

But when I discovered my destination some time later, and looked at my small timepiece, I realized how much later I was now because it was necessary to stop to avoid these two peasants.--

The bridge over a gorge in the mountainside was wide enough and apparently strong enough to allow Panzer tanks and high half-tracks to pass over. Another road leading to Rome.

By the time I had installed the explosives under the second and third bridge supports I realized that the sun was higher in the sky than I hope it would be by now. The timepiece said 0810 hours --

I was just able to get the detonator wire stretched to a safe distance away when I began to hear the sounds of a mechanized unit approaching. They were ten minutes early! Shit!

Fucking stupid goose-steppers. Shit!

They were now already coming out onto the bridge -- This is not what I wanted to happen -- I could have just done the damned bridge and gotten the fuck out, with no danger to myself or having to kill anyone. -- But Simone’s orders were precise. -- And I was much more likely to get home than they were now.

Nazi infantry men were already at the middle of the crossing, two tanks rumbling up in line behind them, then a half-track already off the terra firma --

Why did they have to be so damned early ? What could I do now? This could only mean certain death to all these men and disaster to their wives waiting for them back home, as mine waited for me. I would be damned for this by God...just for touching the ends of these two wires to the poles of this little battery --

But fuck Hitler and his death camps. I knew the rumors were true after Simone showed me the secret aerial reconn photos: trains of cattlecars and railtracks leading to resettlement camps to which all the Jews of Europe were being brought, though the number of barracks stayed the same... Just a river of people being brought in every day, and no one gets out…

But, Oh, God, how could I get out of this? The rumbling of the engines vibrated the supports of the bridge, but not enough for them to give way by themselves.--

I had to shut my eyes tighter and tighter, wondering if I could do it with my eyes closed. Maybe not, as I felt the hot spark snap between my fingers. I will pray for you men about to pay the highest price -- Mother Maria, Forgive me my Soul! The dark velvet inside his eyes suddenly flared to deafening white-orange -- the horrendous blast of nitrate and the sounds of men and heavy vehicles falling forward into the chasm : soldiers’ utensils, helmets, rifles discharging, and terrified cries.--

"Keep down; if they see us up here, we're like ducks in a shooting-gallery."

Looking down, paying more attention, from a ridge in a rocky Italian mountain range, northward onto the town of Castle Franco on a flat highland plateau / Ants far in the distance around a large baroque fountain in the center square, with boulevards extending outward from the hub./ Guard towers with machine-gun pill-boxes standing over the walls, an elevated train line running out to the vanishing point on the eastern horizon and through another mountain pass into the west.

Our group, dressed like aristocrats on an outing in the hills, had managed to keep out of sight of city eyes, knowing no one should be outside those city walls, still in the hands of the Germans. The time for our rendezvous grew nearer, and we made it down to the cluster of rocks on the edge of palisades below us. The lookouts were positioned, our side hidden, theirs obvious.

I wedged my head between large rocks, not to be seen, but my ears were open --

A buzzing bee from the west became the whining drone of a small airplane. But nearing the city, the little corsair is suddenly hit by flack from one of the guard towers, an odd red flash. Without exploding, the plane goes gliding down, skirting the edge of the elevated railway, its wings tearing off -- to crash at the base of the trestle...

Ansgar looks at me in blank amazement, "Blast! .. I hope Xerxes wasn't on that plane."

"I thought he was still in Sofia," I reply guessing, trying to play my role, though I have only met Xerxes once, following my interrogation.

"Since Communications went down on their side nothing's secure..."

"...Um."

Opal Arfanovitch, whom I am surprised to find here, also summoned by Ansgar, looks slightly shocked by his vehemence. She and I had casually befriended two years ago in my high school: a fascinating, darkly beautiful, and intense young woman, creatively talented, the daughter of a Ukrainian family who came over before Lenin died. She was an art student and a poet with a funny accent when she read her work. She was warm and friendly but always somehow aloof, but seemed please to introduce me to her pretty girl friends, Pamela and Dayan. She turns to me, her brown eyes already big with another fear of tragedy, saying in her accent, "Can you be able to get in -- and get back?"

Bestowed with a warm hug to her bosom, I realize my peril and take my leave, stumbling down the opposite snowy southern slope of the mountain, passing the set of huge, parallel BILL-BOARDS of the Fascist Revolution facing the city, a memorial of history:

Invention of the Wheel

Romulus and Remus suckled by the She-Wolf

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle at the Academy

Christ and the Last Supper Eaters

Charlemagne at his Christmas Day Coronation

Marco Polo on the Old Silk Road caravan

Gutenberg setting his moveable type to print the Bible

Columbus in three ships crossing the bounding sea

Garabaldi and Vitore Emmanueli on horseback, hands clasped

Henry Ford at the Model-A production line

Leon Trotsky, hero of the Revolution

Burma Shave billboards down the highway

Bicycles in the Forbidden City

------a bicycle

I mount the one which had been left behind the bill-board for me, and coast down the hill, gingerly trying to keep my balance in the snow covering the ground, merely wondering how

I dream up these pictures, coasting down the foot-hills to the old iron gate.

Across the naked plain and into the city piazza on the bicycle, riding over bright new concrete pavement amidst green foliage, west beneath the elevated rail, along the line of a sidewalk, I come to the fountain at the center of the city hub, where people zipping by on a kind of moving mechanical sidewalk are transfigured out of a motley of images, dissolved with a clear orange-blue sky..

I had never seen anything like that conveyer sidewalk before, and wonder how it was done. Probably it was a Futurist invention, thought up and built by men who idolized the Lamborghini roadster but wanted to burn down the art museums.

Turning right to bicycle counterclockwise around the fountain, I recognize the contact person.

Next, I am surprised to find a line of run-down abandoned shop-fronts, dry-rotted old wood planks over ancient stonework. I stop the bicycle to marvel and wonder about its era, and its survival into this "future", when I quickly become conscious of a gendarme's curiosity, watching me from the other side of the street.

Another era could begin if we could accomplish this mission, the war would be ended sooner, and maybe a peaceful world would continue to evolve: Perhaps science could shrink our size so that we would need less room, less to eat, and less need to conquer our neighbor's place.

I start off again, knowing that if the gendarme tries to stop me I will have to use the stiletto sheathed in the handle-bars. I cannot even guess what is contained in the packet passed to me, but the cost to him would be sad; he appears suspicious but a non-menacing fellow.

But, making no eye contact with him, his curiosity seems to abate as I move off diagonally to his position. I continue, riding counterclockwise around the north edge of the fountain pool, past the many blank, regimented faces, unknowing..

ahead

the MAYOR

His face suddenly looks familiar, as though somehow known to me, and that he would immediately know me as well, were he to see me. He looks like he could be Simone’s brother.

I turn the bicycle aside to avoid him, and not invoke suspicion, turning the bicycle away from the fountain, taking the two next left turns through streets in a circle leading back along the fountain pool, far downsight of this Mayor..

But as I'm heading off, it occurs to me suddenly that the circumstances of our previous meeting make no sense, but represent the exact same images in my memory as this day, yet far away in place and time, an apprehensive dream within a dream which I can not access, an older fear of meeting the Mayor in another, ancient, mountain town, a certain meanness cloaked in pleasantry and personality, a secret bicycle mission in an older dream, decades, perhaps centuries past...

And as moving south and away from the fountain, where the sun is shining into my eyes (part of the world at the end of a long pipe of sight, the dancing forms of people all about me); but away eastward from the city, to be swallowed up by the southeast sun, closer... and then along the base of the wide black ribbon that is stretched over the green plains; the steep ridge looming closer in the west.

The bicycle pedaling itself over the narrow path, thinking I will not survive my fear, but I get through the guard post ahead, stopping...

And on, to the green plain beyond.

(Still in Stratford, I had wanted to spend the safer bright days wandering the paths in the woods beneath my childhood home, my old play territory, but there is something in the back of my mind that distracts me instead to go the other way, down-stream through the park, and the lower open field along the brook, through the swamp, then over the old burial grounds towards the town Center --

The first time out, I think that I see Frederick Pageant, my friend since kindergarten, there in the burial ground, crouching with his back to me, making charcoal rubbings of old tombstones onto large sheets of paper.

Calling from behind, I approach to talk to him, but he seems so quiet, compared to his more familiar personality of many zany characters.

"Hey, I want to show you some new changes," he tells me, and leads me further across the burial ground, across the railroad tracks, and in the direction of the rear of the store buildings of the Center.

"I'm afraid we'll be sighted," he suddenly says, when our only passage into the Center is under the six-lane Turnpike viaduct.

"By who?" I inquire.

Without answering my query, instead, we go back to the tracks and continue walking west, atop the damaged stonework of the raised railroad viaduct. Here there is the same uncertain stillness that we had experienced before.

We cross the railroad bridge over Main Street where it dips under the tracks and runs south under the Turnpike embankment, through Stratford Center, around the flag-pole, then at a kitty-corner angle southwest out of sight to the south end of town, past the commuter airport and to Lordship Seawall, miles away.

But we are startled by an electric gliding sound coming from the east, and turn around to see a silver monorail capsule slowing to a stop on a steel suspension rail we hadn't noticed before.

I become momentarily excited at this sign of life, though Frederick tries to restrain my enthusiasm. We are unable to see where the capsule is about to stop, so I quickly run down the grassy shoulder of the railroad viaduct and up the parallel embankment of the Turnpike Interstate, within view of the deserted toll barriers, to stand in the middle of the empty driving lanes so that I can see where the monorail station is situated on the roof of a modern block of stores done in the style of colonial brick now with iron commuter staircases coming down to the street level. Frederick becomes frantic, shouting at me to get out of sight. I watch as the capsule car slides into a stop at the station; its doors open and close, with no passengers in evidence, then begins to electrically accelerate moving west along its high rail.

I can see inside the car as it passes, the shadows of figures seated and those standing holding the upper handrails. Are they real, or promotional dummies?

(transpose)

Walking a further two miles west into the receding vanishing point of the viaduct tracks, Frederick and I come to a brand new railroad station, gleaming with enamel white paint,

Neo-Colonial style, a bronze sign fixture hanging above that reads HOLLAND HILL . . . .

"You're just in time : The train doesn't stop here very often," remarks the Station Master as we walk up to the train platform. "This area was a coal yard only weeks ago," he says indicating the sprawling lawns and stone buildings of a college campus adjacent to the station, young students walking to and fro their arms laden with books....

An old-fashioned steam locomotive is shunting its way into the station, from the east behind where we had just walked in from. I ponder the extent of reconstruction : Just two weeks ago, our unit had driven our jeeps through areas of Bridgeport built in its days of 19th Century Industrial affluence: Fairfield Avenue by the Klein Memorial Symphony Hall, through this city's Park Avenue of elegant mansions. We searched the porches and upstairs of Brooklawn Avenue's great three-family homes for any signs of life. Yet on Clinton Avenue, while the once rustic-ornate neighborhood of legal offices were now all lay in ruins, its myriad lane of churches, the great St.George Episcopal, and First United Church, and the domed St. Dimitry Orthodox, all somehow still stood upright, unscathed. The sun shining on ruins of the other yellow-brown rubble now became incongruous, like just another fine day. As we drove back through "downtown" parallel to the harbor, the long-gone line of meatpacking houses on Water Street, all built backed against the stone pediment of the railroad viaduct, seemed the more recent last scene, from days when the downtown side-walks bustled with the activity of boom business years, the tail-end of the Industrial Revolution.

Renewal...Urban into Academic, ruins overturned into de facto desolate green park land -- the barren tracts retrieved from stock yards, the upper railroad spur which went to the enormous buildings of the Bridgeport "Brass Shop"; then the clustered streets of six-family houses and brick apartment buildings, (looking like the run- down cities of the Old World), the old East Side, where own my family had come as immigrants in 1920; the dense population of factory working families, spilling over into tenements and crime-ridden housing projects.

But everything was irradiated when the mushroom clouds finally sprouted, here just as the affluent neighborhoods. All irradiated.

Perhaps anyone could attend these classes at this new school. Any zombie left behind,

I wondered cynically. Shock and paranoia, trying to carry on with life.

It seemed now as though some signs of life have returned to this area, though we have neither the inclination nor the tickets to board the train, merely able to watch the few students disembarking the old fashioned rail-carriages down the narrow steps at each end, as other silent young people board the train for points westward.

So the scene recaptures its aura of timelessness, as the engine releases a blast of steam over the platform, as it begins to pull the train off from the station, swirling eddies of mist.

Fred and I begin to lose tract of our destination, wandering off from the station, and through the walkways of lawns of the well-kempt campus, down to an older avenue I recognized, always neglecting to pass through, though I knew the outlet by the Cemetery, a road edged with older working class houses, leading under the over- pass of the train viaduct.

But as we walk along aimlessly like children, I am trying to walk, just for fun, and keep my balance on the edge of a low stone wall, along the sidewalk, when another train passes by us, this one moving east -- a long freight with many tank- and box-cars, grain hoppers, in mixed order, till we grow weary of the progression, but remain determined to see it to the end.

The caboose finally passes. The trainman is sitting in the upper window, indolently drinking from a tall paper cup. He sees us watching and waiting, sees me standing on the stone wall close enough to converse without shouting over the metallic sounds of the tracks and train vibrations, but only smiles and slowly waves his hand back and forth, vacantly... And then -- he sitting there, the caboose, and the long progress of freight cars are soon gone --

Walking further to the south, toward where we have seen a working traffic light in the distance ahead of us, changing back and forth from red to green to yellow as we approach, we know that this is the intersection with Stratford Avenue where the far side opposite is the vast tract of property of Saint Michael's Cemetery.

But as we draw towards the corner we find obstructing us a building on a hillock of land, which we must have overseen from the distance up the road: it is a lovely, Greek Revivalist stone structure, with a classic set of steps almost as wide as the building itself, leading to an open hall entry of inner columns.

In the airy space inside, with another wide entry to the rear, inhabited across the wide marble expanse of floor with a motley of figurative painted sculptures, of Adonis-like young men and genteel and fair young women, displayed in toga and draped tunics which barely cover their enchanting sexual charms, fine figures alike, in poses as though frozen in time in their movements, readying with bow or discus, or handling distaff, with alluring limbs poised upwards in the lightness of movements of dance...

Coming closer, I notice these sculpture's lack of standing bases, and the artisan's skill in depicting the sinews of feet upon marble, and indeed their supple life-like suspended features, yet the softness of skin, the warmth of the body to the touch, the liquid of tears within the eyes. And my realization of reality abruptly stalls in the motion of time, as I can no longer move my stony limbs, but only see them resume their elemental movements in the dance...

Peering out from my bedroom window to the east across the swamp and the woods below the houses where my street came to an end -- I watched and waited for signs of anything moving in the tall brush ... (This was not another bright day, but a view under dark afternoon clouds that covered the blue sky, from a room just like my own bedroom on the corner of our house back home, the windows facing in two directions, one along the east sky past its glow, the other to the empty sky of the south.) A line of cannons was already in place, set out formerly by vigilantes or the militia, out of sight behind the ridge, -- anyone out there was likely to be fired upon/ with machineguns well hidden in other abandoned houses surrounding the woods.

Someone had managed to set out a light blue flag on a pole, flapping with bullet-holes---but I had to try to make it down to
the edge of the stream, and through the swamp, bounding from one sandy ditch to the next, unseen yet by cannoneer or machinegunner.....

Through my binoculars, crouched to the sill, I spot two young men coming up from the other side of the woods, walking slowly and unsuspectingly into the line of fire. A shell explodes before them, on the edge of the stream. I can see their faces and remember them, two of the partisans from the Communications Complex raid, Westin and his friend. They scamper away from the shore, but Westin's friend is hit by something and falls to the ground, waving his arms. I run out of the house and down into the woods to reach them, but more shots are erupting.

Between the fire, I finally hit the dirt between tall swamp-grass stalks---making it to the dark lagoon, though I cannot find them...The water like a rug buckles and folds over to swallow whole the shore where I sit up gasping through engulfed bubbles of the bullet-holed flag on

the pole and

[text complete - chapter ends with conjunction]

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Fires Eternal Morning -- Chapter 1

Fires Eternal Morning -- Chapter 3