Running for the Fence by Donna Volkenannt Lafayette gripped his chair with fingers, brown and twisted. Those same fingers that picked cotton near his Southern Missouri home from the time he was seven until he shipped off to fight the Nazis, could barely hold a newspaper today. His legs, once so strong and swift they outran a machine gun, were now limp as milk-soaked bread. He squinted at the clock. He sighed and turned toward the black-and-white TV mounted on the faded green wall. What’s taking that nurse so long? He tapped his feet and fidgeted with the blanket on his lap. After Vanna turned her last letter and Pat wished the audience goodnight, Lafayette clicked off the TV and wheeled himself to the elevator down the hall. While he waited, he chatted with the other vets heading downstairs for their last smoke before lights out. Just before the elevator arrived, Lafayette turned and saw Tamika standing outside his room waving a white blanket. She put a hand on her hip and shouted, “Mr. Lafayette, now where do you think you’re going without me?” “To the patio,” he answered, with a voice that crackled like fallen leaves. “It’s already dark outside.” Tamika swished towards him and wedged herself behind his chair. “Sorry I’m late, Sugar. Damned paperwork don’t give me a minute’s rest.” As soon as the door opened, she wheeled him inside, elbowing the other vets out of the way. “It’s fixing to turn cold tonight.” She patted his hand. “Gonna need something extra to keep you warm.” She leaned forward and draped a blanket across his shoulders, smoothing out the edges; he got a whiff of coffee, rubbing alcohol, and the perfume his wife Erma used to wear. One vet winked at him. Another looked at Tamika’s backside and grinned. When Tamika wasn’t around, the other vets teased him that she was his girlfriend because of the way she fussed over him. They were nothing but ugly-minded fools. Lafayette knew the truth about Tamika, but he never told a soul. The first night she came to his room, she cried so hard she couldn't give him his shot. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him he reminded her of her grandfather who passed away the year she left for nursing school. Lafayette patted her hand and told her she was doing fine and her grandfather would be proud. After that, Tamika treated him like he was her only patient. On the crowded patio, Lafayette crushed out his second Kool. The wind picked up, slicing through the tall pines that ran along the hospital fence. Dark clouds rolled across the pewter sky; large snowflakes began to fall by the time Tamika returned to wheel him back to his room. “Time to scoot, Mr. Lafayette,” Tamika said. She pulled the blanket over his head. “Don’t want you catching pneumonia. You liked to died last time.” Inside the lobby, Lafayette caught his reflection in the hallway mirror. With the blanket over his head, he looked like that ET character in the bicycle basket, trying to get home. But for Lafayette, the VA hospital in St. Louis was home. It had been his home since the day he broke his hip and couldn’t care for himself and found out his pension from the Ford plant couldn’t cover his medical bills. Back in his room, Tamika touched his forehead before helping him from his wheelchair. “You’re feeling a touch warm tonight,” she said. She cranked his bed down flat and fluffed his pillow. “Get some rest. I’ll be back as soon as I finish my rounds.” While he waited for Tamika to return, the machine next to his bed groaned and chirped like a bullfrog in a pond, and he fell into a fitful sleep. He dreamed about the snowy afternoon in a Belgian field when he and his brother Adrian got separated from their platoon. Through the thick forest they wandered, cold and lost and afraid. Mortar shells shrieked across the oatmeal sky. One shell landed close to where they stood. The rat-tat-tat of a machine gun erupted down the road. Adrian dashed toward a crumbling split rail fence on the edge of the forest; Lafayette ducked behind an oak tree. A sniffling noise behind Lafayette caused him to spin around. For the first time since the war began, he saw a real-life Nazi soldier. This one looked nothing like the tall, broad-shouldered men in black the army showed in filmstrips during training camp. The Nazi stood so close, Lafayette could see his eyes. They were blue as a Missouri sky on a cloudless day in June; the soldier’s face too young to know a razor. The boy’s cheeks were red and raw. Snot touched his upper lip. With ungloved and trembling hands, he held a rifle. Lafayette raised his own rifle and pointed back. On the frozen field, the two soldiers stood, staring at one another, both men frozen in fear. A sharp wind swirled the snow and a rabbit darted from beneath a brush pile. The young soldier flinched and his rifle barrel shifted. Without thinking, Lafayette pulled his trigger, as he’d been trained to do. Those same hands that caressed his wife on their wedding night and held their baby daughter Rose’s hand the day she died of scarlet fever had, that snowy afternoon, shot another man. Lafayette saw the look of surprise on the soldier’s face and watched him grab his chest before collapsing on the ground. Blood from the young man’s wound flowed into the snow, turning it a bitter pink. On the ground, Lafayette knelt and closed the young man’s eyes. He cradled the soldier’s head and wept. “God, please forgive me.” Across the road, Adrian called, “Lafayette, are you all right?” Gunfire erupted nearby. Lafayette turned in the direction of his brother’s voice. Across the field Lafayette ran, bullets zinging past his ears. He paused when he heard his brother call. “Lafayette, I got your back. Run for the fence.” Lafayette took one step and saw a ball of fire, where a minute before, his beloved brother Adrian had called his name. Tanks crunching over gray snow drowned out Lafayette’s howl as he watched his brother’s body tossed into the angry sky like a matchstick in the wind. *** “Mr. Lafayette.” Tamika squeezed his shoulder. “You were screaming something fierce. You having another bad dream?” She took his temperature and shook her head. “You’re burning up, Sugar. Let me get you some ice chips and a cold rag.” While she fussed over him like a little boy with a new puppy, he took a coughing fit. He coughed and wheezed so hard, he couldn’t catch his breath. From a place far away, he heard Tamika call, “Code Blue. Get the crash cart!” He felt rough hands rip open his nightshirt. A pinprick light shined into his eyes. Someone with a deep voice tapped his face. “Mr. Marchand, can you hear me?” “His pressure is falling,” Tamika said. “I can’t get a pulse.” Voices that sounded like mud daubers nipped and pecked to get inside his brain, and he tried to shush them from his head. He drifted back to his boyhood home next to the cotton fields, to the fishing hole where he and Adrian swam on lazy summer days. But today the water was icy cold. It trickled down his chest, and the mud daubers buzzed louder than before. “CLEAR!” With a jolt, his body rose toward his heavenly home and fell back to earth. Why won’t they let me be? He squeezed his eyes and held his breath until the mud daubers flew away. In their place, he heard other voices: faint at first then growing loud and clear. A misty fog lifted, and he saw his beloved Erma holding their baby daughter Rose. Behind them stood Adrian and the blue-eyed German soldier from the snowy field. They were calling his name, urging him on. A smile stretched across Lafayette’s face. He raised a hand and waved, with fingers, long and strong and straight. He felt the wind scrape against his skin and watched the sun glisten off the Mississippi River of his boyhood home. He took a deep breath and ran, with legs, sure and swift, for the other side of the fence. Donna Duly Volkenannt lives in St. Peters with her husband and their two grandchildren, who give her great joy. She is a member of Saturday Writers, Ozarks Writers League, Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc, and past president of the Missouri Writers' Guild. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including: A Cup of Comfort for Women, A Cup of Comfort for Christmas, Mysteries of the Ozarks (Vol I); Murder, Mystery, Madness, Magic, and Mayhem (Vol I), Echoes of the Ozarks, ByLine, Storyteller, Sauce magazine, Mid Rivers Review, Taj Mahal Review, Cuivre River Anthology, and other publications. Her work has won numerous awards, including the Dan Saults Award and honorable mention in the National Steinbeck Center’s Fourth Annual Short Story Competition. Copyright © 2006. Do not reproduce without permission. Home Contents