The Soldier - S.R. Jones Page 0,1

a witch.

Grandma would play along and pretend to cast spells on us. Now she doesn’t. Now she mostly sits and hums and stares at nothing. I think she’s lost her mind, or most of it.

Some weeks we struggle to feed ourselves. Not this week, though, because Father shot a deer.

Mother serves me some warm bread to go with the soup as it is thin and watery. Thanks to father though, tonight we will eat venison stew.

Her rounded belly bumps my shoulder as she leans over me. I have a brother or sister in there. I don’t know how I feel about it. Neither does Father. I know because I heard him talking about it the other night when he’d had too much vodka. He was talking to his friend from the village, Yanis. Father said that with the collapse of communism things were meant to get better, but instead, no one could eat. The government didn’t care, and instead of being like America, we were more like Germany after the war. He was angry, bitter. Said we’d been defeated without a shot being fired.

Soon, he said, there’ll be another mouth to feed.

I eat my soup and try not to worry. Sometimes I worry a lot. About Mother mostly. Father can be horrible to her. He shouts at her, talks to her like she’s stupid, and sometimes, he even hits her. I’m getting bigger every month now, and one day I will hit him right back.

After lunch, I ask if I can go out again. Mother says yes, and Father ignores me. I think he’d be happy if I didn’t come back, then there’d only be the new baby to feed when it comes.

Thankful to be out of the stifling atmosphere in our house, I breathe in the spring air. It’s still cold enough to hurt your lungs a little during the first few breaths, but not cold enough to freeze your piss like in January.

Picking up a stick, I head up the hill to meet my friends. We’re playing soldiers in the woods, and this stick will be my gun.

At thirteen, Father says I should be done with childish things like this, but life is shit here, and there’s not money for much else. Maybe one of my friends will have smuggled some vodka and we can drink too, warm ourselves up.

As I cross the field, I see a lonely figure, a girl in a long wool skirt, and a coat far too big for her. Yulia. She’s the best friend I have, but today, I can’t spend time with her. She used to play with us, but in the last year or two some of the boys started to get too handsy with her, and it scares her. To be honest, it scares me. I don’t want anyone to hurt her. Yulia and me … we get on. We like the same books, the same films. We both love Silence of the Lambs and watch it repeatedly on a video machine her father got when he did some work for some rich guy, freaking ourselves out and scaring one another.

In many ways, she’s the person I’m closest to in this world, but today, I need to get rid of some of the aggression boiling inside me. Not watch a movie and talk about my dreams; dreams I know will never come true. I wave at Yulia, but then turn away and head to the trees.

I reach the edge of the woods and listen. Voices drift to me from my right, and I head in that direction. Reaching the group of boys after a few minutes, my stomach sinks when I see Igor there. He’s fifteen and huge, and he’s a bully. Mostly, he ignores me, but he picks on my best friend, Maxim.

Maxim is small, skinny, and wears thick glasses. He’s also scary smart. Maxim will be a great scientist one day, I predict. Unlike me. I fuck up in class all the time. Mostly, I mess up because I’m bored. I should focus but as Father said to Yanis last night, there are no jobs, so what’s the point?

Igor takes the lead, of course, and divides us into two teams. Reds and whites. We play this a lot based on the history classes we have in school. I’m on the red team with Maxim. We’re the communists, and the white team is our enemies.

“We will fight them to the death,” Maxim whispers seriously in my ear, making me