MOTA Whumpfest: Rain, "Gimme a minute" @mota-collab
Freezing rain pours down on them in thick slats. It stays liquid long enough to drench their clothes, bite at exposed cheeks, rivulets running like cold fingers down their necks. But at their feet, in the mess of trodden snow that gives way to mud, it quickly turns to ice.
The forced march slows to a forced crawl. Murphy shrugs further into his longcoat, eyes locked on the shuffling feet ahead of him. Hambone's shoulders are slumped, his whole body turned inward. He's tucked between Brady and Crank, who tear their eyes away from the volatile path periodically to check that he's still with them. He'd started coming down with something a few days before, and his teeth hadn't stopped chattering since he'd fallen into the snow to throw up earlier.
Crank had taken off his balaclava to wrap it around Hambone's head, ignoring the weak protests he'd made in response. "Don't be difficult," he'd said, voice stern like an older brother as he'd pulled the scarf up over Ham's red nose.
They march in a column, not very tight, but still close enough to each other to conserve heat. Close enough that when someone up ahead in the column stumbles and falls, in sets off a ripple effect down the rest of the line. They react like bad dominoes; arms reaching out to grab arms, feet skidding on the slick ground as the person in front of them stops suddenly, elbows knocking and clothes tearing as curses of every kind get flung out.
No one reacts quickly enough, minds long since gone numb to everything except what it takes to put one foot in front of the other. Brady gets his legs knocked out from under him by a stray foot, and he clips into Ham's side on the way down.
"Son of a bitch," Brady mutters, rubbing the hip that took most of his fall. Murphy feels someone run into his back, tilting him forward. He slips a little, trying to avoid tripping over Hambone's legs, having landed squarely on his front in the kerfuffle. Crank catches him by the arm, setting him to rights. "All good?" Murph nods, adjusting his hat. Hambone still hasn't gotten up yet. He hasn't moved at all.
Murphy's heart leaps into his throat. "Hammy?"
No response.
His knees give a twinge as they slam onto the ice. The cold bites through his gloves, sharp edges of snow and ice catching in the wool. But it's the sight that greets him as he kneels down to Ham's eye level that freezes his blood.
His mouth is open against the ground, soundless. His head jerks minutely, as if—as if he's choking. Or, no, more like a fish twitching on land. He isn't breathing. "Help me-!" Murph pleads, shoving frantically at Ham's side to turn him over onto his back.
Crank helps him push, and once they get him on his back, his whole body starts to tremble. Murphy paws through his layers, panic making his head fuzzy. No blood--he takes Ham's face in his hands, heart clenching at the fear in his eyes.
"Ham, hey, look at me. Good--listen, you feel where my hands are?" A frantic nod. "Good, focus on my hands." He runs his hands down below Ham's chest, squeezing the sides of his ribs through the rough fabric. "Can you feel that? You got the wind knocked outta you, your lungs are in shock, okay? But you can breathe. Focus on where my hands are, focus on that muscle.."
The first ragged breath Ham takes is music to his ears. He keeps his hands where they are for a few moments more, feels the contraction and expansion under his hands, reassures himself he won't just slip away if he lets go. Around them, the formation starts moving again, bruised bodies dusting off snow and pulling coats tighter.
Murph helps Ham sit up, but he can't stand just yet. "Gimme a minute," he wheezes, leaning heavily against Murphy's side.
"Sure." He'd give him a thousand minutes if they had any to spare. As it is, the goons are already beginning to close in, drifting vaguely in their direction, rifles out but not yet pointed.
"How's it doin', Hammy? Think we better get up now." The cold has started to seep through his pants, and Murphy tries to contain a shiver so as to not jostle Ham.
Ham takes a deep breath, shaky but solid. "I can't keep going, Murph. I'm so damn tired." Ham lolls his head against Murph's shoulder, eyes closing. His cheeks are too gaunt, the shadows under his eyes too dark, and for the thousandth time he wonders if God can truly hear them, lost as they are. The blue of Crank's scarf stands out in sharp contrast against the sickly pallor of Ham's skin, seeming impossibly bright in a way that makes Murphy's stomach churn.
"We're all tired, and I know you're sick, but we'll help you. Me and the guys will help you, okay?"
Ham shakes his head, and a pit of dread opens within Murph. "I don't want to keep going, Frank. I don't want to. I'm tired in a way I've never been before."
"I know," he says, though he doesn't really. But there's panic rising in his chest, at the thought that he won't be able to get Ham to walk with them, that he could become another corpse in the snow. "But you swore to me. Remember? We make it back. You said so."
It'd been New Year's Eve, 1943. Ham'd had enough of the kriegie swill to get loose lipped, making him all sorts of promises between liquor-sweet kisses. We'll go somewhere warm. Florida, maybe. You can teach me how to play piano. And it'll be sunny, so sunny we won't even remember alla this. It'll be like a dream.
Like a dream.
Georgia, 2005
Murphy wakes to the smell of bluebells and phlox, and a persistent hand shaking his arm. For a moment he's confused, expecting snow and rain and the icy grip of fear. But beneath him are the smooth blue sheets he picked out with Ham, almost twenty years ago now, when they got a new mattress. The face floating next to him isn't twenty-one and deathly pale, but worn with age and laugh lines and filled in. His heart slows from its racing pace, only to pick up again when that gold-flecked grin stretches out.
"Time to get up, old man, day's a wasting." Murphy smiles. He's only a couple years older than Ham, though lately he's been feeling each one of those years like a freight train. He'd quit smoking long before Ham did, but most things these days leave him breathless no matter what.
"S'it rainin'?" He asks, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
"No," Ham says, eyes creasing, "Your shoulder hurtin'?"
"No, no. Just thought I'd heard patterin' on the roof, s'all." He almost tells Ham about the dream. Almost. But it's been so long since either of them have had dreams about that time, he doesn't want to pop the bubble. It'd taken decades before Ham stopped sleepwalking, stopped screaming in the dead of night. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.
It wasn't really a nightmare, anyway. Just…a memory.
"Need to get those ears looked at, I think. Thought I heard you playin' some sour notes yesterday," Ham says, taking Murph's hands to help him up.
"You did not."
"I did too!" Ham says emphatically, eyes wide and exaggerated behind his thick glasses. He tugs Murphy against his chest, "Think it went like.." He starts humming a random melody, spinning them slowly about their bedroom.
Murphy laughs despite himself. "That's not even how it went."
"Nah, 'cause you were playin' it like," and he begins a stream of ridiculous sounds, hawing and trilling and snorting.
Murph laughs so hard the air in his lungs stops halfway, and he keels over into a coughing fit. Ham keeps him steady til it passes.
They make their way to the kitchen, and Ham lets the dog out, brings the newspaper in for Murphy to read to him over breakfast. Aside from the unexpected dream, it's a normal morning.
"You know," Ham says suddenly, as brews a pot of coffee, Murph moving to sit in his comfy chair. "You never did teach me piano."
"You wouldn't sit still long enough to let me!"
Sleep starts tugging at his eyes, though they only just got up not too long ago. But everything makes him tired, these days. Ham pokes his head around the corner.
"Come out onto the porch. Sun'll do you some good."
Murph yawns, though the coffee smells nice. "In a minute, Hammy. I'm just a little tired." He leans further into the chair, content to doze for a moment, before something deep and primal pulls him back up. "I love you," he says, because even after seventy years of I-love-yous, it seems vitally important to say in this moment.
Ham grins, "I'll see you in a minute, old man."
"See you in a minute." Murphy falls asleep, the words of a promise echoing in his head. He doesn't wake up again.
