Far From Home-

**************

Foil paper, ribbons, the smell of warm cookies fresh from the oven
and the sound of his nieces mixed with carolers outside. He leans against the window pane and looks out through the frosted glass. Snow falls gracefully to the ground coating everything like delicate powered sugar. He smiles, thinking about his
nieces faces when they see the dolls that he's
carefully wrapped for each of them.

"Caparzo! Wake your ass up!" came a shout beside him.
Shaking himself back to the present, Adrian Caparzo
began to shiver again, feeling the full impact of the
harsh French night, crouched in a slush filled ditch.
His mind had sought refuge in the last Christmas he'd
spent with family, the last Christmas he'd seen home.
December 24th, the same night, but a far different
place.

"Drift off like that again and I'll shoot you myself.
Got it, Caparzo, fuckin guinea?" the sargent snarled,
hatred thick in his voice as he crawled through the
frozen sludge down the line of soldiers.

"Got it," he growled, letting the offensive term roll
off him hearing the distant rumble down the hard
packed road.

"Hey...Hey...." He was being tapped on the shoulder.
"You Caparzo?"

"Yeah, that's me. What'd ya want?" He turned to the
soldier that had taken the sargent's place.

"I think you dropped this." Caparzo looked down at the
folded piece of paper, perfectly dry even in the
falling sleet. His eyes jerked up to meet deep blue
orbs that looked far to young, pale and shivering just
like him the soldier smiled. "Don't think so."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's yours." The soldier turned
the paper over and Caparzo stared. His name was
scrawled in child like script. Grabbing the letter, he
unfolded it and began to read.

Uncle Adrian,

We miss you. Are you ok? Can you come home soon? Mama
says santa can find you where ever you are. Is that
true?...........

Caparzo glanced up from his reading as the rumbling
along the road grew louder, the vibration sending the
slush around him shuttering.

.......Here to read to me. I'm doing good in school. My
teacher says I'm the best reader in the class........

He read on until he reached the drawings at the
bottom, Christmas trees and stars, both his neices'
names printed neatly at the bottom. Carefully folding
the letter he stared down at it again thinking how odd
that it was, no envelope. He couldn't remember it
arriving with other mail at mail call.

"Thanks, man....."

"William Trent. I'm with the 106th Infantry," the
soldier supplied, smiling as if he didn't have a care
in the world, as if he wasn't freezing to death along
side Caparzo. "Home seems too damn far away on nights
like this," he commented, pinning Adrian with a clear
and understanding gaze.

"Yeah, it does," he mutttered. "Where you from Trent?"
 

"Stillwater Oklahoma," the other man said with pride
filling his voice. "Folks gotta farm there. Guess that
seems a hell of along way from Ozone park, huh
Adrian?"

"How you know where I was from?"

The Trent shrugged. "Better get moving. Sarg said for
you to move down with the 69th."

"Hell NO. He didn't say anything......" Caparzo
argued.

"Get moving!" Trent barked, pointing down the road to
where the tanks were rolling out of the inky blackness
of the night. "Move!" He shouted above the roar from
the tanks mechainzed gearing, the trill of the metalic
tracks.

There was a moment of indecision, something deep
inside screamed he should be grateful, that he should
get as far away from the spot as fast as he could. The
other part of him, the soldier part, refused to leave
he post, leave the spot he had been told to occupy,
sure the other man was lying for some unknown reason.

"Please, Adrian Caparzo, you have to go now." Trent's
voice changed, grew hollow and haunted. Caparzo began
crawling through the muck, limbs painfully stiff from
the cold that was bone deep but he kept moving, kept
moving until there was a deafening explosion and a
bright flare of light that lit the night around him
like day. He turned onto his back and looked back to
where he had crouched for so long. There was nothing
there but a crater, smoke drifting upwards from the
perimeter.

"TRENT!" he yelled and of course there was no answer,
he hadn't really expected one, the man was dead. He
turned and began to crawl toward the muzzle blast he
saw from the other soldier's guns.

"Caparzo! Caparzo! Man, you okay?" It was Wade, the
medic he'd met just the morning before.

"Yeah. I'm good." He nodded, his breath coming in
harsh gasps.

"Thought you were gone for good, man." Wade patted him
on the shoulder, both turning their attention to the
fire fight around them. The battle waged on into the
glowing hour just before the sun rose off the horizon.
Tanks destroyed and men lay dead or dying on a crisp
French Christmas morning.

Adrian stood with Wade at the edge of the ditch
surveying one of the many shell impacts from the
tanks. "I don't know how you survived it without a
mark to show for it but you're one lucky man." Wade
shook his head, throughly baffled.

"One of the boys from the 106th came down and told me
I had been shuffled over to the 69th." Adrian
shrugged, feeling sick that the other man had taken
his place in death, that he had lived to see another
day. Guilt coarsed thick through him nearly choking in
it's intensity.

"The 106 huh?" Wade's brows drew together as he
starred at the other man. "What was the grunts name?"

"William Trent." He patted the front of his jacket and
then shoved his hand inside, retrieving the letter the
soldier had said he dropped. "Gave me this." Adrian
handed it to Wade, hesitant to release it.

"Carpy, that ain't possible." Wade smiled. "Think you
took more of that hit than you think."

"Why?"

"William Trent's been dead for a week. Died at
Grandmenil from snipper fire. Seen him myself." Wade's eyes narrowed
watching Caparzo's face turn ashen.

"That's what he said his name was," Adrian insisted,
running a hand across his shorn head the appendiage
shaking like a fall leaf.

"Well, I don't know what the hell is goin on but like
I said, you're a lucky man." Clapping Adrian on the
arm he handed the letter back to its owner, stepping
around him. He looked back to the crater as a light
snow began to fall. Questions thick in his head, he
glanced down at the letter in his hand and smiled.
Turning he walked away, walked away from what could
have been.

"Lucky man." He sighed.