Tide King Read Online Free Page A

So I always know it’s a Kraut in the burned-out house I’m about to fire into and not you.”
    â€œJesus Lord Christ,” Stanley grunted from his side of the trench.
    â€œThat’s not a good one, Polensky. Too many guys already know it.”
    â€œScrew you. Christ…I ain’t going to wear this again, that’s for sure.”
    â€œJust clean it out with some snow. You may not need to protect that empty head of yours, but where are you going to store your socks and corsage?”
    â€œUp your ass.”
    â€œWell, I know for sure that hasn’t seen any action.” Johnson aimed his rifle toward a flutter by the trees on his right. Geese? Squirrels? “How about metalanthium lamp?”
    â€œThat’s your word?”
    â€œPretty good, huh?”
    Suddenly, movement rocketed upward from the same trees. Mine? Mortar? Geese, definitely geese. The feathers and pulp floated to earth, shot by two others in the company. In response, the Kraut line lit up like flashbulbs. Polensky fell into position next to Johnson, his helmet, an overturned latrine, unstrapped on his chin. Around them, the snow spit bullets, feathers from feather pillows. For a second, Johnson closed his eyes, thought he would let himself get hit. To feel the cool, light fabric of a pillow, a flat one, a hard one, a moldy one, it didn’t matter. His head whipped to the right, and he thought he’d gotten his wish. But it was only Stanley, punching him with an open palm.
    â€œWake up, dummy,” he shouted at him above the soft explosions. “What the fuck are you doing?”
    â€œNothing,” Johnson grunted, but he realized he was smiling. He liked this Stanley. He fired off a round. “Shithead.”
    â€œGo fuck yourself,” Stanley answered, firing off his own. Johnson could see he was smiling, too.

    The brass said the Hürtgen Forest was 50 square miles. It seemed to stretch to 100, then 200, then 300, as late October became early November and late November became early December. Stanley did not understand how they could not see the Germans and yet the Germans could see them.
    â€œThey know these forests. They’re stuffed in bunkers while we walk right by them,” Johnson said, coughing. Johnson had developed a cough-snore-shiver in his sleep. Perhaps Stanley could boil the herb for tea, soothe Johnson’s deathly rattle. I still have the root , Stanley wrote to his mother. Although I suspect I will have no reason to use it. You never even told me how. Should I put it under my lip, in a wound, perhaps? His right foot smelled. There was no time to unlace the boot and find out whether his toes had rotted. We are warm and fat and happy. Save me some Chinina .
    â€œDuck blood soup,” Johnson laughed later, when Stanley described Christmas dinner at home. “You eat everything, don’t you, Pole? Makes me want to come to your house to dinner after the war.”
    â€œRight now, I would eat anything,” Stanley shivered. He shivered when he was awake and he shivered when he was dreaming. His breath was staccatoed with shivers. He shivered when he peed and he shivered when he shat and he shivered when he shivered. Stanley would eat his shivers, if he could, but they would probably give him diarrhea, he thought, like everything else.

    They were still in the Hürtgen Forest, pissed as hell about it. Stanley and Johnson had taken turns moving out ahead, little by little, looking for mines and trying to clear brush for a path out. The visibility was ten feet, at best, and the soldier, with his back to Stanley, appeared from the foliage like a mirage. It had to be one of their men, so close by. Stanley tapped him on the shoulder just as he realized the man looked wrong, the uniform, the helmet. As the man turned, Stanley pulled out his revolver and plugged him in the right cheek. The man fell, the wound cratering inward in his face like a black hole before