Soul Harvest by Ron Ripley

Author:Ron Ripley [Ripley, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ScareStreet.com
Published: 2019-02-17T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27: Memories and Sadness

Marcus added another stave of wood to the cook stove and enjoyed the warmth that emanated from the metal. For the first time in days, he felt comfortable, as though the situation might not be as bad as he had thought.

Joyce limped in a moment later, trailed by Alex. They both sat down at the table and greeted Marcus.

“Good morning to you both,” he said, cracking eggs into a mixing bowl. He picked up his whisk and set about breaking the yolks. “Have you seen outside?”

Joyce nodded. “It’s beautiful.”

“Extremely,” Marcus said with a grin.

“And there’s a lot of snow,” Alex said. “A real lot. Like, I think it would be over my hips now.”

“I think you would be absolutely correct,” Marcus agreed. “Which brings me to the subject I wanted to discuss with you both.”

The woman and boy looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

“I had hoped we might be able to get out of the Village prior to any large storm,” Marcus said, placing the cast iron skillet on the stove top and adding butter to it. “However, it seems as though we were not fortunate enough to do that. Or, rather, perhaps it is fortunate that we were not able to do that.”

“Why fortunate?” Alex asked.

“The snow,” Joyce answered. “If we were out there, well, we would have had to build a place to wait out the storm pretty quickly. And that would have been difficult. Especially since I’m still gimpy with this knee.”

“Oh,” Alex said.

The butter sizzled in the pan, and Marcus quickly added the scrambled eggs to it. As the eggs hissed and bubbled, he picked up a spatula and flipped them.

“Marcus,” Alex said.

“Yes?” Marcus asked absently.

“I was thinking about all the snow and stuff,” Alex said hesitantly, “and I was thinking how much different it must have been in Vietnam.”

“How so?” Marcus asked.

“Surviving, you know,” Alex said.

Marcus glanced over at the boy and saw that both Alex and Joyce were observing him.

Marcus smiled.

“You want to know if surviving in the snow and the jungle require two different skills?” Marcus asked them.

His companions nodded. “Well, let me see if there was a time that they were more similar than dissimilar. Yes. Yes, I think I can tell you about another time with my friend Franz. It will help you see that in the end, there’s really no difference at all.”

Marcus drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then he smiled.

“Once, we were hungry. And for more than the standard rations that we received. Some items were simply unavailable to us, at least in the sense that we wanted more than what was given. For instance, we ate steaks, but not as the officers did. Far from it. Their steaks were a cut above ours, and no pun is intended. They simply received better fare. Well, one day, my friend Franz learned of a shipment that had recently arrived, and he had a plan to steal some of those steaks.”

“Steal?” Joyce asked, her eyebrow rising.

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