Hunter and the Trap by Howard Fast Page A

aren’t you? Yet Sister Dorcas tells me you will not write a word to your family about what happened to you. Why not?”
    â€œMy family is my sister. I don’t want to worry her, and Sister Dorcas has a big mouth.”
    â€œI’ll tell her that.”
    â€œAnd I’ll kill you.”
    â€œAnd as far as worrying your sister—my dear fellow, we all know who your sister is. She is a great scientist and a woman of courage and character. Nothing you can tell her would worry her, but your silence does.”
    â€œShe thinks I’ve lost my marbles?”
    â€œYou Americans are delightful when you talk the way you imagine we think you talk. No, she doesn’t think you’re dotty. Also, I wrote to her a good many months ago, telling her that you had been raked by machine-gun fire across both legs and describing the nature of your injuries.”
    â€œThen there it is.”
    â€œOf course not. It is very important for you to be able to discuss what happened to you. You suffered trauma and great pain. So did many of us.”
    â€œI choose not to talk about it,” I said. “Also, you are beginning to bore me.”
    â€œGood. Irritation and boredom. What else?”
    â€œYou are a goddamn nosey Limey, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes, indeed.”
    â€œNever take No for an answer.”
    â€œI try not to.”
    â€œAll right, doc—it is as simple as this. I do not choose to talk about what happened to me because I have come to dislike my race.”
    â€œRace? How do you mean, Felton—Americans? White race? Or what?”
    â€œThe human race,” I said to him.
    â€œOh, really? Why?”
    â€œBecause they exist only to kill.”
    â€œCome on now—we do take a breather now and then.”
    â€œIntervals. The main purpose is killing.”
    â€œYou know, you are simply feeding me non sequiturs. I ask you why you will not discuss the incident of your being wounded, and you reply that you have come to dislike the human race. Now and then I myself have found the human race a little less than overwhelmingly attractive, but that’s surely beside the point.”
    â€œPerhaps. Perhaps not.”
    â€œWhy don’t you tell me what happened?”
    â€œWhy don’t you drop dead?” I asked him.
    â€œOr why don’t you and I occupy ourselves with a small pamphlet on Americanisms—if only to enlighten poor devils like myself who have to treat the ill among you who inhabit our rest homes?”
    â€œThe trouble is,” I said, “that you have become so bloody civilized that you have lost the ability to be properly nasty.”
    â€œOh, come off it, Felton, and stop asking for attention like a seven-year-old. Why don’t you just tell me what happened—because you know, it’s you who are becoming the bore.”
    â€œAll right,” I agreed. “Good. We’re getting to be honest with each other. I will tell you—properly and dramatically and then will you take your stinking psychiatric ass off my back?”
    â€œIf you wish.”
    â€œGood. Not that it’s any great hotshot story for the books—it simply is what it is to me. I had a good solid infantry company, New York boys mostly; some Jews, some Negroes, five Puerto Ricans, a nice set of Italians and Irish, and the rest white Protestants of English, Scotch, North of Ireland and German descent. I specify, because we were all on the holy mission of killing our fellow man. The boys were well trained and they did their best, and we worked our way into Germany with no more casualties or stupidities than the next company; and then one of those gross and inevitable stupidities occurred. We came under enemy fire and we called our planes for support, and they bombed and strafed the hell out of us.”
    â€œYour planes?”
    â€œThat’s right. It happened a lot more often than anyone gave out, and it was a wonder it