The Sleeping Wall

The Sleeping Wall
In the picture, horses leap over hedges. Red coats, riding crops, black boots. A fox runs ahead of
the hounds. As a small child, the scene terrified him. His father teased him for his timidity. But
it wasn’t fear for the fox that frightened him. It was his recognition that the fox knew he was
running for his life.
His sisters build houses with cards, then knock them down. They whisper to each other.
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James is no longer separate. He is one of a stream of green uniforms flowing from the
jungle into an open field. A soldier inches forward, leaning his weight on a crooked tree
limb. Others limp and twitch, sleepwalkers yanked from the shadows of the jungle like
marionettes. The lifting of feet, the turning heads controlled by invisible hands. Grasses
trodden.
They burned the village. Cluster of houses, chickens, dogs. Old women and men
hiding. Children with bound mouths. Vines of burnt flowers.
The field fills with men until it seems the jungle cannot release more, but they keep coming,
some weeping, a few carried on dirty cloth stretchers. Odors of sweat and dried
blood cling to him.
An ambush avenged. A child’s head wrenched sideways.
A gray sun starts its descent. Rain falls straight down between the men. Between saplings
that rise straight up out of the earth and blades of thin grass. A warm rain that draws fine
black lines against the sky and slips between the wooden men with their wooden faces.
You can almost hear the small clicking sounds of teeth chattering in empty mouths. Their
eyes seem painted on their faces, their pupils black pinholes. They don’t look left or right,
but down at the ground.
Night sweats. Lotus dreams. Scorched earth. Red dusk.
He has left the jungle and cannot return.
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