The Surrendered

But over the last few weeks, with Sylvie gradually receding, the rest of the children began to warm to Ta

“Let’s raise up our knees,” Ta

Ta

Ta

The new photographs would get them all placed. A chair was set up against the external wall of Hector’s quarters, which was sided with rough-hewn clapboards that were in the worst condition in the compound-Ta

“For what?”

“You’ll know,” he said to Sylvie, who looked at him quizzically. “Just be ready.”

He caught the eye of the next child in the chair. Ta

Afterward, Sylvie again shrank from view for a few days, staying inside when she wasn’t teaching her class. Her mood had seemed to darken after the taking of the photographs and she wasn’t coming around with June to wherever Hector might be working, the aunties saying she had a bad cold. But he knew it was because she was helping herself too much to the needle, or else not enough. He’d seen it plenty back in the GI towns, former “old soldiers” barely older than he, gaunt and pale from their long weeks inside the dens, their expressions vacant, shattered; there was no worse loneliness than having to take mercy on oneself.

He felt a new loneliness, too, digging alone in the valley, and he found himself looking up every few minutes from his work, hoping to see her perched on the flattish rock on top of the hill, whether June was by her side or not. But she had ceased to show. A late-summer storm rolled in from the south and made the digging near impossible, its heavy rains undermining his footing; he kept slipping whenever he swung the pickax. So instead he decided to paint the would-be chapel, which he’d been putting off to make progress on the trenching. First he wiped down and dusted every surface, ru