Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 10

co-belligerents will want to perform their own investigation."
    His voice is so light for handing down such an order, as if he isn't making a threat at all. It's disconcertingly anti-climactic.
    "I understand," says Joseph. He seems taller now, more solid. His eyes are twisted, but it's just a few frozen tears he can't quite manage to blink away.
    The Finns escort them all back to the farmhouse. Three bodies remain to be buried by the snow. This is no climate for grave digging.
    One of the Russians whispers to Joseph along the way. "Thank you, comrade." I wonder, now that he has been spared, is there another like me, walking this earth, tethered to a life that should not be? Instabilities, multiplying and contagious. Untenable.
    Joseph and I leave Death behind.
    ****
    Joseph's hands still shake. It has been three days. Three days without gunshots, without blood, without even the lingering cold of death or winter. Three days ensconced in the safety of the fortifying heat of his flat's kitchen stove and endless cups of coffee.
    I don't think he quite believes he's won his life, his freedom.
    With no more news to write now that the POW story has gone out, he's taken to writing letters home instead. Many, many letters, more than he's written in the last two years put together. They're rambling, filled with bits and pieces of political philosophy and poetry and memoirs and rants and regrets.
    He hasn't mailed them. He's going to walk them home.
    He folds the last one into his notebook, tucks the notebook into a leather satchel, and puts the satchel inside his suitcase. I imagine his mother in Brooklyn unpacking them for him, setting his clothes into empty childhood drawers. His room, which she kept for him, waiting for him to come home. And now he will.
    Away from all this. Safe. As of last week and the news of Pearl Harbor, America is no longer the remote sanctuary it once was; it has been permanently altered, the world fracturing once again. But it's better than here. Joseph, with his cane, will not return to Europe, nor will he be sent across the Pacific, and that will have to be comfort enough. He can fulfill the duty he yearns towards in other ways—with writing, with translation, with all of the skills of his mind and the compassion of his heart.
    "Let me help you with that," says Markku, approaching from behind. He reaches around Joseph's body, brushing fingers over Joseph's on his way to fastening the suitcase's clasp. Joseph's hand darts back, curling protectively against his chest. Markku smiles. "I wish you weren't leaving, Joe. Don't you think you should at least wait until Spring? Cold as a nun's tits out today. Well, there's no helping it I guess. You want me to walk you to the port? I could carry your case." He gestures to Joseph's cane, as if to remind him of his own disability. "Least I can do."
    Strange, how regret can turn goodbyes into reconciliations.
    "Sure. That's swell. Do you want me to carry anything back for your folks?"
    "They're all the way in Minnesota. Don't bother." Markku lifts the suitcase and leads the way out of their apartment. The mention of home seems to have disturbed him, knocked him back into taciturn glowering.
    Joseph shrugs and follows.
    The streets of Helsinki are swept nearly free of snow. The early afternoon twilight is descending, but there's a clear view to the Baltic Sea. It's brilliantly white, frozen solid, snowed over. The ferries to Stockholm are all harbored for the winter, but Joseph will be joining a truck convoy from a port depot.
    Markku increases his pace until Joseph has to skip ungracefully to make up some of the distance.
    "Wait!" calls Joseph, careful not to reveal his gasps of exertion. "That's not the way."
    Marrku sets down the suitcase and turns. He's in a narrow gap between two bombed-out buildings. Wreckage has been piled high on either side of the street. I feel like we're back in the forest, crowded in by the somber firs. The sound of soft drumming. The hellish sights of the Winter War, bodies stacked like cordwood, faces frozen into inhuman leers, arms randomly spiking upward to the sky.
    Turn back. Please, don't follow.
    Joseph doesn't hear me anymore. A rage fills me. My life is his, my soul, my face . I want nothing for myself, everything for him. And still he closes himself against me.
    Let me in. Listen to me. Turn back.
    Markku has one hand in his coat pocket and a rage to match my own burning in his eyes. "Why did you do it. Why did you have