Ginny Foard

Issue 16

Flash Fiction

Willis wanted a box. He wanted to carry his box with him. Always. This thought kept him alive from one day to the next in the prisoner of war camp. It was his plan for after he was free again.

Each morning, he woke. He thought, today, I will survive to the end of the day. He often reflected on his state motto, While I breathe, I hope. He briefly imagined the food inside his box of the future. In the camp, his group had stopped sharing their food fantasies out loud. Instead, they carefully split the Red Cross’s food equally among them. This mutual sharing was deadly serious and bonded them together in an almost religious ritual. Then they ate the camp’s daily bread roll and gruel. As days turned into months, their bones protruded from the rags of their airmen’s uniforms.

Willis planned what food to keep in his box. He revised. Every few hours in the camp, he’d reconsider. He loved the dark, heavy German bread roll. He wasn’t sure he could do without it. He would find a place in the box for his mom’s bacon lard, a thing that in his childhood had been discarded. He thought of the chocolate bar that he’d not thought to eat while floating in his parachute down to enemy territory, after his plane was shot. He wished he’d eaten that candy bar before the German farmers took it from him, along with his gun, when he’d hit the ground. There was so much inside his box. 

Willis considered how he would keep the box by his side as he went through a normal American’s daily life. Maybe he would have to check his luggage when traveling for business. He wouldn’t let them take his box from him. His box would stay in his hand. Within reach. Thinking about how close he would keep his box, his thoughts again wandered inside it and explored the luscious foods that one day would be within fingertips’ reach.

Willis survived, thinly.

And Willis carried. He carried on, he carried forward, he carried the box.

Years later, at home in Sherman, Texas, Willis heard people excited about needing to carry a gun. He thought back to floating under his parachute over German territory, descending in a hail of artillery fire into probable hostile territory, spraining an ankle badly in a tricky landing. During the war, the airmen constantly debated whether to keep or to get rid of their guns if they were shot down. Some felt that having the gun would guarantee they’d be killed immediately when captured; others felt the gun might help them survive. For Willis’ captors, his gun didn’t matter. Their fierce readiness to kill him subsided only after they’d verified that he was not circumcised and they’d found a Saint Christopher’s medal attached to his dog tag. 

Willis thought of the gun he carried then, but mostly, he thought of that chocolate bar in his pocket. He imagined carrying that chocolate bar into those months after he’d been captured, inspected, interrogated and imprisoned. His mouth watered. He felt his waistline expand.

At age seventy, Willis wrote about his months imprisoned as a young man. He still carried his imaginary box. He never let it leave his reach. In it, an overload of memories. Willis put the happiest ones on top, adding more every day. He chose what to carry.