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SOLILOQUY PRAYER. 00. / The Battle Of Greenpoint. August, 1927.
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Jacqueline's job was picker-upper of stones. Not pebbles, but rocks of heft and edges and sharp corners.
As the group of boys gathered in the field, she was bent-backed over the ground, digging missiles out of the damp earth with blackened fingernails. The sun was setting orange beneath a break in pewter clouds that had just begun to spit rain. A voice of reason whispered to her to hurry, to seek shelter against the approaching storm, but she had no pockets in which to store them.
Thence, from her skirts— the ends gripped in a tight fist — she made a bundle weighted down with poking treasures.
"Why are you picking up the heavy ones?" asked Edmund. "They are too pointy, you could put a gash in someone's head." He was ten and wanted everything to have a reason. "Birdie?"
"I dunno. You heard everything Armstrong said, same as I did. You tell me."
"All he said was, You have to collect a good pile. He never says why, you know that. Who are we going to fight?"
"He didn't tell me." The lie would surface eventually. They always did. Some sooner than later.
At William's outlying whistle, the others boys came padding over, a shuffling and uncertain army of which he was captain, being the eldest—thirteen—and tallest. From his mouth, a stem of wheat curved in a long arc like a single whisker. He looked out at the scorch of afternoon and stretched a leg, shaking a foot as if to wake it. Above them, a chilly wind exhaled, stirring a few hairs on every head. A stillness eased into the grass. One boy opens his mouth to yawn.
She showed William her collection, his head tilted in silent affirmation. As captain, he had the first pick of stones. Without any hesitation, he chose two of the largest stones for himself. Then, flicked his eyes in the direction of the rest of his boys. She went slowly, deliberately, down the line. What she distributed was not randomly given. Jacqueline examined each outstretched hand, assessing whether it was one accustomed to splinters, cuts, and scrapes, to dusty fights in yards and haystacks, or as yet uninitiated in the rites of boyish scuffles and hard labour.
You don't want to give a boy a rock that is bigger than his palm—that he cannot clutch in his fingers and throw with precision.
So, she gave her friends the square-shouldered rocks she thought suited them: stones blunt and heavy. For the smallest of this makeshift army, a boy she knew only by sight and by name, she saved the best. Aged ten years to her twelve and chewing the fingernails of one is his hand carefully, even thoughtfully, while the other dangled at his side. When she held out her prize, he did not take it, so she had to grip the hand that wasn't in his mouth and pressed the two rocks allotted to him into his palm. As far as rocks went, one was ordinary. But the other was smooth and narrow and easily held. Unlike the rest, it featured a jagged edge.
