War

The oversized Collier’s Pictorial History of The European War waited on the end table next to the wing chair in the corner of the living room, by window that looked at the quince tree and Catalina Street. In the spring I would crank the window open and inhale the rust of the screen if a breeze moved west. After 100 pages of important generals and dignitaries, battleships, tanks, dirigibles, horse-drawn cannons, soldiers with their chests out, and refugees fleeing, there is a picture of the exact moment a mortar shell explodes, and the ghostly silhouette of the photographer, arms up, surrenders to death.