Corner of the Dead

Chapter 4

[ 15 ] C H A P T E R 4 T H E R E W E R E three more villages that day. Then a month of villages. Rolff made lists. Arye wrote down phone numbers and passed them to Marta. Marta spent the evenings making calls. I used the camera to block my view. We drove by blackened fields, past animals with rigid legs facing upwards. In the distance clothing smoldered in the ditches. There were abandoned houses, singed landscapes, the threat of human remains or no people at all. And in the ground, gaping holes that could have held entire bodies. Blood, I learned, leaves a film of scum across dust. The groan of an animal tethered to a post sounded like a child crying. The villagers would have been rushing to grab a poncho or one last thing. A single shoe, a filthy hair tie was all that held their place. I wanted the clothing that had been left out to dry to fill with warm bodies, to see the faces of the people who had lived here, not their remains. ...