“What about some aspirin?” but the doctor was already wrist deep into
a fat man’s chest three cots down.

Lowell handled his new regalia with an awkward displeasure, situating
the bible and flowers into the sore crests of his elbows and wrists,
stabbing his ribs and reawakening old bruises with the wooden
crucifix. Fresh, fourteen days at war, yet he’s never felt so out of
place.

The medical tent stank of baked flesh and the wasted effort of
sterility; bleach puddled dirt into mud while ammonia sat in open
buckets just feet away, its fumes warping the air. The suction of
each chemical step—heal, sink, toe, heal, sink, toe—failed to
drown the ambient moans of the dying. Lowell stepped past an
unconscious man, his sweat and blood boiling to the surface of his
skin in the trapped heat under the canvas tent. Outside too, the sun
tortured survivors.

“How about some water, Father?” The voice came from behind, buried
under a pile of blood-rusted sheets. “On the table, beside you.”

Lowell managed a light grip on the unmarked bottle, burdened already
by his armload of holy accessories. He slid next to the cot, sat on
an overturned bucket. “How do I—”

“—You’ll have to just pull the sheets down and pour.”

Lowell dropped his items to the ground, not invested in them enough to
care how much dirt and mud they fall into. He slides close to the
pile of blankets, grabs at the top hem…”so how’d you know I was a
priest?”…and pulls away from his head.

The man’s face was destroyed, shorn skin pocked with holes the size of
BBs, shrapnel blasted, Lowell and the other soldiers called it when
they saw it in the trenches. Lowell hushed his gasp, held the glass
of water over the man’s head, said, “ready,” waited for a nod, and
poured. The man smiled when the water hit, spilled from his mouth,
but he had no lips to lick clean. He barely had a tongue.

The man held his smile. “The only three types walking around here are
doctors, nurses, and priests. The medicals have a smell that priests
don’t have. Where’s your collar?”

“What?” Lowell had to focus on each syllable to understand the man.
His half-tongue compromised the obvious passion this man had for
speech.

“Your collar.” He lifts a shaking finger to his own neck.

Lowell set the bottle down. “Somewhere.” He nodded toward the
entrance of the tent. “I’ve been all over this morning.”

“What about the rosary?”

Lowell leaned close, waited for something more.

“The necklace,” the man said raising a bandaged hand to his neck.

“Yes, yes.” He lifted the necklace of roses from the ground, blew
most of the dirt away with a single heavy breath, and draped the item
over the man’s still-lifted hand. “The rosary.”

Two men in scrubs carrying bundled blankets approached the cot. The
shrapnel blasted man rolled to his side with no more provocation than
their simple presence. The two men worked quickly to redress the cot
with fresh “linens” they say, “blankets, just blankets,” the shrapnel
blasted man said to Lowell after they left. “Really, they’re just
hosed down with bleach water. Can’t ask for much more around here
though, I suppose.”

Lowell agreed, offering a shrug and a slow, compassionate nod.

“So, are you going to pray or what?”

“Right.” The bible dripped with mud, but Lowell handled the book,
unconcerned with aesthetics. He flipped though pages, stamping his
muddy fingerprints over random verses, hunting for something he might
remember. It’d been a while since he’d held a bible, even longer
since he’d been charged with finding solace in one. Sensing the eager
stare of the shrapnel blasted man Lowell said, “you have any favorite
verses?”

“No.” The man swings the rosary in hand as best his destroyed arm will allow.

“A favorite book at least?”

The shrapnel blasted man stretched the rimless pit he calls a mouth to
a feeble smile. “You pick one.”

This moment of hesitancy, panic burning muddy trails through pages of
verse, prompts from the shrapnel blasted man what Lowell believed to
be a laugh. When the man spoke, Lowell knew: “I knew you stole that
bible.” He coughed, dotting his gauzed hand in phlegm and spit.

Lowell closed the book. “I didn’t steal it. A doctor gave it to me.”

“Either way, you’re not helping anyone. But if you’re intent on
trying, get a rag and wipe that blood from your eyebrow. You look
like a shit-head.”

Lowell took the rosary from the shrapnel blasted man’s hand and
dragged it through his cut as he wiped away blood. The quick
movement, fueled by a building hostility toward the bed-ridden man,
split the forehead skin wider. Lowell wiped away a tear.

“You’re lucky I’m just a stubborn dead man,” the man says. “Anyone
else might loose more faith over you than they’d gain. I don’t have
any room for intangibles.”

“Maybe I am a priest, but I’m just terrible at it.”

The stubborn man pointed toward the bottle of water. “No. They don’t
let priests bleed around here. Soldiers, sure, but priests get
patched up quick like they’re the ones taking the goddamn bullets.”

Lowell tipped the bottle again over the man’s mouth. Neck veins
thickened as the man struggled to catch every drop. Lowell succumbed
to the battle wounded weakness in his arm, trembling, splashing water
to the stubborn man’s cheeks, his nose, into his eyes, and even a few
drops to his forehead. The water rode the creases in the man’s face,
sizzled on his open wounds.

The man shook the water from his head. “This isn’t a baptism.”

Lowell brought the stream back to the man’s mouth, let him nurse for a
full, silent minute before pulling the water back. “I’d be something
if it was, right?”

The man, like he did the first time, stretched his clipped tongue to
catch all the water still beading upon the dirt and sweat on his face.
“You ever believe in God?”

Lowell set the cup aside, his head throbbing. His ribs ached. Every
breath cracked open old wounds. “God never believed in me, I don’t
think.”

“But you believed in God?”

“Sure.” Lowell picked the bottle of water back up and took a swig for
himself, not catching the sting of diluted hydrogen peroxide before he
swallowed. It burnt his throat and tore at his nostrils when he
forced it back up.

“I used to,” the shrapnel blasted man said without so much as a wide
eye toward Lowell’s pain, “but what kind of god would let me drink
peroxide? What kind of god would let shit like that just sit around
on tables?”

Lowell hunted every bedside table for clean water, breathing deep to
clear his lungs and throat. He swore he could peel layers from the
roof of his mouth with his tongue.

He sweats acid. His heart pumps solvents and sanitizers, he can feel
the chemicals erupt from his pores. He jams his finger down his
throat and heaves noxious fumes.

Lowell escapes the stubborn man’s bed for fresh water, leaving his
rosary and bible in the mud below.

My fiction and non-fiction have most recently appeared in Flint Hills
Review, The Green Muse Review, Vestal Review, Bust Down the Door and
Eat All the Chickens, and online in Dogmatika, Thirdeye Magazine and
Word Riot. Visit me: www.calebjross.com