Based on a story
that was told to me as true. An English officer in the Anglo-Boer War is on a
mission of mercy in time for Christmas.
***
In all my life, I had never felt this inadequate. I followed
the hard-packed pathway between fluttering canvas tents by rote. Even now, when
the full moon only served to deepen the shadows cast by thousands of tents.
This camp was a stain on the dry winter surroundings. A
shadowy blot of sin and death no amount of moonlight could soften.
A woman wept nearby. Another mother who’d lost a child.
Definitely not the only one I’d be hearing on the way to my destination. I
clenched my jaw and kept walking, hoping to look resolute enough for any
officers spotting me to assume I was supposed to be here.
Today would be the day my family back in London would be
hunting for a tree, now all the rage thanks to Prince Albert. My little sister
would be making decorations and thinking of me, her dear brother missing her
and wishing he was anywhere but this god-forsaken piece of earth on the tip of
Africa.
I had been seduced into coming by a sense of adventure and
the dream of patriotism. Of claiming land that we were destined to belong to
us. It should have been easy. Our glorious
empire never saw a sunset because we knew how to get what we wanted, and
were willing to fight for what we had deemed to be ours.
We should have been satisfied with what we’d had. But then,
the Dutch farmers who had decided to risk their lives move into the interior to
escape our rule… They found gold.
Gold that we needed.
Gold that we were going to have even if it came to war.
Easy enough. And yet, the war had gone wrong. So wrong that
it was deemed necessary to burn farms and pack non-combatting citizens into
this camp and others like it. To turn it into a war of attrition we were sure
to win.
But the damage… The damage…
I glanced around me, trying to make my gaze penetrate the
tomblike shadows. Another woman wailed and I shivered. So much misery. And
there was nothing I could do about it.
All I had was a canteen filled with curds. It wasn’t even
sweetened.
I hunched my shoulders forward as I turned to the left,
following the footpath to the tent that was my destination. Inside was a little
girl. Hanna was her name. The first time I saw her, I was writing names into
the record book.
Like a butcher records lambs to the slaughter. I nearly
cried out when I looked up and found her before me. She looked so much like my
sister. The same flaxen hair. The same expressive blue eyes.
Seeing there shook me. It woke me to what we were doing.
We’d burned her house down to force her to come here and live in tents. At the
start, that was the worst I thought we’d subject them to. But then the diseases
came and the rations dwindled.
And now Hanna was going to die. Maybe it would be the
measles ravaging her, or maybe the steady onset of starvation. And all I had to
help… A stupid canteen filled with stupid, unsweetened curds.
I stopped in front of her tent. A timidness gripped me. What
was I doing? I had no right to intrude on this family’s despair. I was part of
the cause.
Yet my feet remained rooted where I stood. I couldn’t leave.
Not without giving this ridiculously small thing. It was all I had to give, and
I wanted to give it to Hanna.
The lump in my throat grew with every step forward I took.
Maybe I wouldn’t give the canteen to them personally. Maybe I should simply
leave it before the tent’s entrance and not look back. Yes, yes I could do
that.
But someone lit a lamp inside, barely diluting the shadows.
Then she stood right where I’d planned to place the canteen, peering at me. She
probably couldn’t make out who I was. Only that she hated me.
When I’d written her name in the records, she was a strong,
sturdy woman with pride in her posture. Now, only the stiff back remained. Her
hair had been shorn to protect against lice, but she stood with a queen’s
dignity. She’d break before she bent to our will, but I could see the cracks,
the grooves around her mouth.
“What?” she demanded.
Now or never. I took a few steps forward and held up the
canteen. “I…” My throat ached from the effort, but I cleared it and tried
again. “I heard you have a sick little girl.”
She took the canteen and opened the contents, sniffing it.
“I know it’s not much.” I held my tongue, bracing to the
impact, in case she decided to throw the canteen at me.
Instead, she carefully twisted the cap on once more.
And burst into tears.
She flew into my arms, hugging me tight, the canteen’s hard
edges biting into my shoulder as she embraced me. “Dankie,” she said. “Dankie.”
Thank you.
It was nothing. Curds without a thing to sweeten it, but one
would think I had brought her God’s own treasures for Christmas. Tears stinging
my ears, I backed away from her so she could return to her daughter.
Into the shadows I went, furtively making it to my own tent,
hoping she wouldn’t recognize me in the morning.
It was a stupid, stupid gift, after all.
***
Author Bio:
Misha Gerrick has been creating stories long before she could write and
is currently going after her dream of making a living as a writer.
If you’d like to see how that’s going, you can visit her on her blog, where she also discusses all things related
to writing and publishing.
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