Lifeless

Part Two

1991

There are two groups of men, four in each group. The differences between the two groups are strik ing, though the greatest differences are not the most immediate.

Four men are sitting and four standing. The men on the floor are spaced out on the ground, each several feet from the next. Not within touching distance.

They are all wearing drab, olive-colored clothing, though they’re not dressed identically: two have boots on their feet and two are wearing sandals; one has a hat but the other three are bareheaded. The black hair plastered to their skulls is all that can be seen of the men for the most part, until one of them raises his head and takes a bite from what looks like a chocolate bar. He chews mechanically.

The rain and the darkness make everything appear slightly blurred and hard to make out clearly. In contrast to the first group, the men who are standing are dressed identically. Nothing of these men’s faces can be seen beneath the goggles and the multicolored kerchiefs or shamags that cover their mouths. Two are standing together, one of them flicking through a sheaf of papers that flap noisily in the wind. The other pair are placed like bookends: one at either end of the row of men on the f l o o r. Each is pointing a pistol.

The man who is holding the papers waves them in the air, and shouts something across to the men on the floor. It is hard to make out all the words above the noise of the rain: “… are keeping… Do you understand?”

The man on the floor who is chewing looks up at him, then back to the men who are sitting next to him. They all look up, their faces wet. Two of the others are also eating, but none of them says anything. The rain is fat, and black. Sputtering and hissing as it drops onto heads and hands and bodies. The man with the papers shouts louder: “We are keeping these. Do you understand?” And the man who is chewing nods quickly, twice.

Nothing else is said for a while, and some time passes, though it is impossible to say how much. It is suddenly raining more heavily, and the dark hair and the olive clothes of the men on the ground are slick with it.

The men who are standing use their sleeves to wipe the water from their guns.

The light is even poorer than before, but the dull circle in the sky is most certainly the sun rather than the moon. It is dimmest, shittiest daytime, and now all the men with goggles are carrying pistols and pointing them.

It’s virtually impossible to tell the four men who are standing apart from one another. Their faces are hidden, but even if they weren’t, the light would make it hard to read their expressions clearly. Yet, despite all this, the difference between them and the group of men on the floor is suddenly blindingly obvious.

The men with guns are much more afraid.