Hunter and the Trap

Hunter and the Trap by Howard Fast Page B

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Authors: Howard Fast
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didn’t happen twice as much. How the hell do you know, when you’re way up there and moving at that speed? How do you know which is which, when one and all are trying to cuddle into the ground? So it happened. There was an open farm shed, and one of my riflemen and I dived in there and took cover behind a woodpile. And that was where I found this little German kid, about three years old, frightened, almost catatonic with fear—and just a beautiful kid.”
    I must have stopped there. He prodded me, and pointed out that the war had drawn small distinction between children and adults, and even less distinction between more beautiful and less beautiful children.
    â€œWhat did you do?”
    â€œI tried to provide cover for the child,” I explained patiently. “I put her in my arms and held my body over her. A bomb hit the shed. I wasn’t hurt, but the rifleman there with me—his name was Ruckerman—he was killed. I came out into the open with the kid in my arms, warm and safe. Only the top of her head was gone. A freak hit. I suppose a bomb fragment sheared it clean off, and I stood there with the little girl’s brains dripping down on my shoulder. Then I was hit by the German machine-gun burst.”
    â€œI see,” the psychiatrist said.
    â€œYou have imagination then.”
    â€œYou tell it well,” he said. “Feel any better?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMind a few more questions, Felton? I am keeping my promise to take my ass off your back, so just say No, if you wish.”
    â€œYou’re very patient with me.”
    He was. He had put up with my surliness and depression for weeks. Never lost his temper, which was the principal reason why he irritated me so.
    â€œAll right. Question away.”
    â€œNow that you’ve told this to me, do you feel any different?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAny better?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThat’s good.”
    â€œWhy is it good?” I asked him.
    â€œWell, you see—the incident outraged you, but not in a traumatic sense. Apparently it doesn’t hurt or help very much to recall it.”
    â€œIt’s not blocked, if you mean that. I can think about it whenever I wish to. It disgusts me.”
    â€œCertainly. As I said, I believe your depression was entirely due to the condition of your legs. When you began to walk, the depression started to lift, and they tell me that in another few weeks your legs will be as good as ever. Well, not for mountain climbing—but short of that, good enough. Tell me, Felton, why were you so insistent upon remaining in England for your convalescence? You pulled a good many strings. You could have been flown home, and the care stateside is better than here. They have all sorts of things and conveniences that we don’t have.”
    â€œI like England.”
    â€œDo you? No girl awaited you here—what do you like about us?”
    â€œThere you go with your goddamn, nosey professional touch.”
    â€œYes, of course. But, you see, Captain, you made your indictment universal. Man is a bloody horror. Quite so. Here, too. Isn’t he?”
    â€œOh, do get off my back,” I said to him, and that ended the interview; but by putting it down, “he said,” “I said,” etc., I am able, my dear Jean, to convey the facts to you.
    You ask whether I want to come home. The answer is, No. Not now, not in the foreseeable future. Perhaps never, but never is a hairy word, and who can tell?
    You say that my share of mother’s estate brings me over a hundred dollars a week. I have no way to spend any of it, so let the lawyers piddle with it just as they have been doing. I have my own dole, my accumulated pay and a few hundred dollars I won playing bridge. Ample. As I said, I have nothing to spend it on.
    As to what I desire—very little indeed. I have no intentions of resuming the practice of corporate law. The first two years of it

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