From the Indie Side Read Online Free

now
the audience is chattering audibly about the poor man and his
condition. Someone says, loudly, “Give the man some water,” and
another person says, “That’s unnatural. Someone should call an
ambulance.” Froestt hears the words overheated and pass
out , but he ignores them, and narrates his story aloud.
    “John Frost was a sniper of the highest
order,” he says. “He is known for taking all of his shots and not
missing one. Never even the hardest of them.”
    Someone groans softly.
    “His friend is Martin Jankel, and they have
been friends since the beginning,” Froestt continues, closing his
eyes. He feels his breathing even out, and the words soothe him.
His heart, pounding so hard moments before, calms to a patient thump-thump , and each pattern of beats further from the
beats before. “Jankel is the spotter in their sniper team, and
Frost is the sniper, and they are both quite good. Together and
apart, but mostly together.”
    Froestt’s clothing grows saturated with
water. It drips from his sleeves, from his dangling hands, from his
chin and nose and brow. The puddle around his feet spreads. It
leaps and dances with each falling drop from above.
    “I have to ask you to stop,” says the host,
who steps delicately through the widening pool of water and puts a
hand over the microphone. “Sir, are you—what is going on? Are you
all right?”
    “You look terrible,” says the girl. “Come,
sit down while we call an ambulance.”
    Froestt shakes his head. “I’m quite all
right,” he says. “Call an ambulance if you must, but please, let me
read until they arrive.”
    “Sir,” the man protests.
    Froestt leans back as far as he can, until he
can just glimpse the man’s eyes.
    “Please,” Froestt says. “I’ve truly waited a
lifetime for this.”
    The man looks at the girl, then back at
Froestt. Then he raises both of his hands, palms out, as if to say All right, it’s not my problem—I tried . He backs away, then
says, loudly, “Let’s continue.”
    Froestt nods and turns back to the
microphone.
    “On the day that it all happened, Frost and
Jankel were sent to the hills beyond an enemy post,” he reads.
“Their task was to assassinate a very evil general. He was the most
evil general there was, at least at that moment of the war. This
was World War Two.”
    Another groan from the audience.
    Froestt’s eyes close as he imagines the
words. Sixty years of words—millions of them, stacked carefully in
his apartment, unread, unpublished. He is old, he is tired, and he
supposes he intends to read here until his novel is finished. He
will ad-lib the ending if he must, but the ending cannot be told
until—until he knows what it is.
    The ambulance arrives at the front of the
shop, its turning lights washing the gallery and the shelves in
blue and red. Two uniformed men enter, carrying a collapsed
stretcher between them.
    Froestt doesn’t look up, but the host
approaches him again. “Okay, sir,” he says. “They’ve arrived. Why
don’t you come with me—”
    “My ending,” Froestt says. “Is this it?”
    The man says, “Yes, sir, it’s time for you to
go.”
    He puts his hand on the dais and reaches for
Froestt’s arm. Froestt recoils, just a bit, and leans on his cane
heavily. The twisted wood makes a cracking sound that reverberates
through the shop, and someone gasps, and then the cane shatters
like ice. Brown and black shards explode outward like little frozen
chips, and Froestt’s eyes widen, and he stumbles backward, away
from the host.
    “Whoa, there—” the host says, and in that
moment four people dash toward the dais: the host, the woman who
had brought Froestt his water, and the two emergency personnel who
have only just arrived, and who drop their stretcher as they run
for the old man.
    The girl is somehow quicker than them all,
and gets one hand behind Froestt as he tumbles, and she feels his
heavy wet wool coat go slack as he falls, and then she hears
someone