Utter Something

“After a day you’d think the blood would just leak all out, you know?” I say to the guy next to me in the gray-green uniform. I think he was from some tiny country no one remembers the name of.

“Naw,” he says when I ask him, “I’m from the US.”

“Really?” I say. “I’ve never heard of that. What’s the U stand for?”

The guy thinks for a while, coughs up a little more blood and says, “I don’t remember.”

“Utilitarian, you think?”

He shakes his head, but it’s a weak shake because he can’t lift it from the wall of the trench. Takes up too much energy and too much blood. “Naw, it was something shorter. I think it did have a T in it, though.”

“Utter?”

“Utter?” He barks out a laugh. I like him for his laugh. “What the hell kind of nation would be named Utter something.”

“Maybe that’s what it was. Utter Something.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he growls, lifting his hand from his stomach to peek at the festering wound. He grimaces and looks up at the sky. The sun’s setting, the sky’s all red. He swallows, and I watch his Adam’s apple jog up and down. “It feels cold tonight,” he mutters.

“What?” I ask.

“Cold,” he repeats. And then he looks over at me. “Hey, if I don’t make it tonight, tell the medics I held out as long as I could. It’ll make them feel bad for being so damn slow.”

Now I laugh. “That’s if I make it through.”

“Come on, now,” the US guy laughs. “You look healthier than me, what’s left of you.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I shoulda died yesterday.”

The guy makes a face and shakes his head again. He does look a little paler than usual, but I don’t say anything. The line between joking about death and actually coming to it is an entirely different thing.

“Yeah, you should have. Guess the fire kinda burned closed those wounds or something.”

“Damned if I can explain it. I should be in shock, too.”

“Feel any pain?” he asks me.

I think about it. “Nope. Back of my neck is a little itchy though. Damned mosquitoes and all.”

“We’ll get malaria wasting away out here,” he said, spitting into the mud. “Least they could do is bring us some kind of bug net.”

“Yeah,” I reply. Then the conversation falls quiet. I sit there for a long time, looking up at the stars, not thinking about much of anything at all.

Then the US guy says, “You know, I don’t remember why we’re all fighting. Do you?”

I think for a moment, but I can’t come up with anything either. “Who started it?”

“I think you started it,” he says. “I could be wrong though.”

“Damned politics,” I grumble. “They’re always so grayscale.”

“What the hell is grayscale?”

“It means there’s no black and white—you know, it’s all kinda the same so you can’t tell the difference.”

“That’s not grayscale, that’s equality.”

“You got that where you come from?”

“No, not really.” The Utter Something guy sighs and rolls his head to look at me. “Hey, I was only half serious about that ‘tell the medics’ thing. My brother’s a medic. He’s also prone to drinking when he’s down. Comment like that probably wouldn’t help.”

I nod. “Anything you do want me to say?”

He blinks and looks at the ground, thinking. “Final words should be pretty special, huh?”

“Yeah, they’re usually all deep and shit.”

He nods. “Well, I haven’t got anything deep to say. I guess my final words will just be…”

“Just be what?” I ask, looking at him. He’s still staring at the ground, thinking. “Well, don’t take all day about it,” I mutter, rolling my eyes. He’s still thinking, so I continue. “I guess my last words would be something reflecting this. Two guys, bummin’ around in a trench while they wait to be saved or wait to die—that can’t happen too often, eh?” I look over at him and frown. “Why don’t you just admit you don’t have any comment to leave behind, eh?” Nothing. I’d reach over and touch him, but every time I move I break a few more scabs free and start bleeding again. “Hey, Utter Something guy. You still breathing?” But he wasn’t, and I was alone.