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But Andra also told me about the dysentry. How no-one
was reporting sick. If you did that, they wouldn’t let you on
the train. No-one wanted to stay on that continent any
longer than he had to. You were so desperate to get home
that you’d shit in overflowing buckets for three days and
nights. That was the only hint that something had
happened inside the minds of all these men in tin hats. Not
just those with a story like my own father’s – his escape
from a tank. An armoured vehicle that had been mobile,
just seconds before, became a steel coffin. A smouldering
target. A hatch clanged shut for the last time and he was
outside of it. By a whisker.
We kept hens for a while. Out the back. The daughter,
Anna and me had fun, building the housie with the nesting
box on the side and the run out front. Long before that, I
remembered my granny just lifting a corner of the coop and
grabbing a black one. She disappeared into the shed with it
and we got it to take home in a bag. It might not be worth
roasting but there would be good soup there.
I killed hens after making sure Anna really was somewhere
out of the way. First I listened to advice then I did the twist
thing just as I’d been told, so I thought. But you might as
well have been doing the other kind of twist, chasing it
round the garden when it came back to life. So I put an
edge on the hatchet after that. They still quivered and
moved more than you could think possible but you knew
they were dead in most senses.