Halex
02-20-2003, 11:22 PM
This is a story that I read in my book for Canadian Literature class today. With this war about to go on in Iraq, I wanted to share it.
"Emma's War" by Bruce Rice
Emma watches the Gulf war, sips her Glenfiddich, and hits the remote. The war follows her everywhere these days and she has seen it all before- V1s, V2s, alien-looking duds, each one lies, a motionless caterpillar waiting for a secret clock to tell it when to moult in the schoolyard. She carries a fifty-year war with her- ciphers, the Ops room, then ten months on ack-ack- an all-woman battery waiting for bombers to come lumbering straight up the Thames, one night a Messerschmitt caught in the lights flies straight down her gun, the girl beside her ripped open just before the plane explodes and the hillside shakes. Emma takes another drink. Her left arm, sore from a fracture, rests at her side. One day doctors will find a way to mend all this breaking, but Emma gets lighter each year- the "Osteo", all those births. Each one wants more, and they're still not done wanting. But, that's the way it is with children, they are always stealing their parents' bones. Emma sleeps on the couch, snores loudly while her husband retreats upstairs. She hears the tap dripping in the kitchen, but can't hear the phone beside her. "Gunners ears," she says. Late in the morning she will rise, don her ten-year-old coat, take her aluminum cane from the back of the door and go to the peace rally. But, tonight she sleeps, the track of her dreams all will-power and mathematics as her clear eyes search the illuminated clouds and the cross of a gunsight moves over her, the unseen pilot pressed back in his seat as the plane screams toward earth, and she's almost grateful. This is her job. Fire she says. Fire leaps at the sky.
"Emma's War" by Bruce Rice
Emma watches the Gulf war, sips her Glenfiddich, and hits the remote. The war follows her everywhere these days and she has seen it all before- V1s, V2s, alien-looking duds, each one lies, a motionless caterpillar waiting for a secret clock to tell it when to moult in the schoolyard. She carries a fifty-year war with her- ciphers, the Ops room, then ten months on ack-ack- an all-woman battery waiting for bombers to come lumbering straight up the Thames, one night a Messerschmitt caught in the lights flies straight down her gun, the girl beside her ripped open just before the plane explodes and the hillside shakes. Emma takes another drink. Her left arm, sore from a fracture, rests at her side. One day doctors will find a way to mend all this breaking, but Emma gets lighter each year- the "Osteo", all those births. Each one wants more, and they're still not done wanting. But, that's the way it is with children, they are always stealing their parents' bones. Emma sleeps on the couch, snores loudly while her husband retreats upstairs. She hears the tap dripping in the kitchen, but can't hear the phone beside her. "Gunners ears," she says. Late in the morning she will rise, don her ten-year-old coat, take her aluminum cane from the back of the door and go to the peace rally. But, tonight she sleeps, the track of her dreams all will-power and mathematics as her clear eyes search the illuminated clouds and the cross of a gunsight moves over her, the unseen pilot pressed back in his seat as the plane screams toward earth, and she's almost grateful. This is her job. Fire she says. Fire leaps at the sky.