Nothing in the World Read Online Free Page B

they’d been hiding in the ditch.
    - Half an hour or so, said the third. How can we move?
    - And where is the sniper?
    The first soldier pointed across the canyon to a sharp peak.
    - You can stay here with us if you want, said the second. There’s no point in making a run for it until dark. What happened to your head?
    Joško smiled, rooted through his rucksack, and pulled out his three bars of chocolate. They were nearly melted, and he apologized as he handed one
     to each of the men. Then he got to his feet and ran back uphill.
    - Where are you going? called the third soldier.
    Joško didn’t answer. He crossed the ridge and followed it north for a thousand meters or so, came back across and ran for the valley floor.
     He headed up the opposite side, crawled not quite to the top, made his way back south a few hundred meters, and stopped to catch his breath and remove
     his boots.
    He stayed low in the brush until he reached the side of the peak to which the soldier had pointed, then threaded his way up through the tall grass.
     Near the top, he slowed and became a shadow. Stone to stone, invisible now. A step at a time. Above him, the sky was fading to the blue-gray he’d
     always loved.
    He crawled over the crest, and found a large boulder split in two. Between its halves the grass was pressed flat. He looked down the slope beyond and
     up the following hillside, and there was a flicker of movement at the skyline.
    Joško ran down into the draw and pushed up the far side, down the next slope and up again, quietly over the top, and three hundred meters below
     him was a soldier in a strange gray uniform hunched beneath a twisted oak. Joško waited, and when the man stood Joško shot him twice in the
     back.
    The man fell. Joško watched for a moment before walking down the hill. Twenty meters away he stopped to watch again. The man did not move.
     Joško closed in slowly, saw the man’s hand twitch, flipped him over and closed his thumbs across the man’s throat. He held on until
     the convulsions stopped, then remembered what he had meant to ask.
    - Are you Hadžihafizbegović?
    The corpse did not respond. Joško glanced at where his thumbs had been, and their outlines were clear in the man’s dark flesh. Like two
     trains passing each other late at night, he thought. Lovely. He looked at the oak, and wondered what would be made from her when she was cut down.
     Farther down the hill stood another oak, his branches bare and trembling, and Joško started to cry. He was still crying when he noticed the thick
     gold ring in the sniper’s left ear.
    I could melt it down, Joško thought, and make something for the girl, something beautiful. He pulled at the earring, but it held as though welded
     on. He wiped his tears away and punched the corpse in the face, then thought of a very funny joke he could play at some point. He laughed, lifted the
     head of the soldier who might or might not have been Hadžihafizbegović, and pulled out his knife.
    * * *
    - It’s all taken care of, Joško shouted through the dusk.
    His voice limped back to him from all sides, scraped hollow by the distance.
    - What happened? one of the soldiers shouted back.
    - Nothing. Everything’s fine.
    Silhouettes came into view on the ridgeline.
    - Are you sure? yelled another.
    - I told you, I took care of everything. There’s nothing to worry about. Go home.
    - You killed him? You killed Hadžihafizbegović?
    - Are you sure that’s who it was?
    - Of course! Who else could it have been?
    Joško had no answer, and was getting a little tired of all the shouting. He waved, and one short arm waved back. Then he headed down the ridge to
     find his boots and pick the burrs out of his socks before it got any darker.
    * * *
    The girl’s voice was back, not quite as distant as before but less distinct, and she was no longer singing. Instead she was telling a story that
     Joško had trouble following—something about scorpions, and something about men