A Long December. Donald Harstad

       15 :26

      SLUGS RIPPED THROUGH THE BARN’S OLD BOARDS, showering us with dust and debris. I got even lower than I had been before, pressing my cheek against the sooty limestone foundation. I could see George hunker down along the thick support beam he’d found, and I heard Hester, who was off to my right in the gloom, say “Shit.” At first I thought she was just sort of venting, but then she kept going.

      “Shit, oh shit, shit, shit.”

      Hester’s no shrinking violet, but she’s not one to curse for the hell of it, either. I rose and turned to her, and noticed that she’d rolled away from her vantage point near the rotted ground-level boards, and was half sitting with her back against the foundation wall.

      “What? You okay?”

      “My face,” she said. She held the right side of her face with one hand while she struggled to reholster her sidearm with the other. I saw blood ooze between her fingers. “Shit, shit.” she repeated.

      George and I both got over to her as fast as we could crawl. “Let me see.”

      She reluctantly moved her hand from her face, and I saw blood and torn flesh. Not too much. It was hard to see in the shadows. I unsnapped my coat and daubed her face as gently as I could with the fleecy lining. It was all I had.

      “Ahhh!” She pushed my hand away.

      “Sorry, sorry, just a sec, just let me look.”

      “Don’t press.”

      “Yeah, yeah,” I said as I pulled off my gloves, fumbled under my sweater, and dipped into my shirt pocket for my reading glasses. I put ‘em on and looked again. Sticking out of her right cheek was about a half-inch stub of an old, rusty square nail, flattened, but about half as big around as a pencil. It had embedded back toward