This Clumsy Living

War story

23 War story In the middle of the battlefield was a pie. Apple pie I believe, though some say key lime, some blueberry. There are a few, notably Durst of Harvard, who suspect it was not a pie at all, more likely crème brûlée and most certainly not the middle of the battlefield, perhaps not even within the bounds of bloodshed but just to the right and under a linden tree. Being a city lad, I’m no good at telling a linden tree from a Barry Linden tree, and dessert to me is but the reason for the far spoon, the lonely spoon that waits. I’ve often pictured this pie in moonlight, bloody men surrounding it with their hunger for food, for sex. When the opposing armies realized that between them they had no napkin, no little table on which to set the pie, no oven in which to heat the pie so it would melt the ice cream they also didn’t have, the engineers were called in. Who built a tent over the pie, requisitioned slide rules and women and cigarettes, who ate the pie but lied 24 and said the pie committed suicide. Does it matter what kind of dessert or how it gave its life? After this loss, whole divisions fed their guns to the mud and trudged sadly home. It’s said many held a hand before their face as if it were a plate and moved the other as if eating, that they passed like ghostly mimes. To which a feeling soul has no choice but to reply, isn’t “ghostly mimes” redundant? ...