What Saved Them
by Lawrence Doctors

The boy looked down the barrel of his rifle. Three soldiers were staring back at him with worried looks. They were of his age, his platoon.

"Drop the gun!" he heard for the second time now. With his finger he kept the pressure on the trigger. His eyes were still on the three with whom he had been marching only moments earlier.

To treat a woman like that was unthinkable, inexcusable. Powerless as she was, they treated her like an animal. They shouted at her and pushed her around. They scared her: he could see the fear in her eyes as she screamed that she didn't know, she didn't know and covered her face with her arms.

She cried and hid and crawled away, but they had come after her. "Where is he?" the captain had shouted at her, kicking her in the chest. "You bitch, you tell us where your husband is or we kill you." He spat in her face.

Indignation is not the word. Lack of choice is more like it, inevitability. If you have lived your whole life this way, it comes naturally. There is no alternative and you know that your kin will support you. This is the way of the land.

The rifle felt heavy in his arms. The captain, his captain, ordered him to lower his rifle. So many times he had heard his orders. So many times had he observed how he and his kinsmen had abused his people. They had told us they would help us, he thought.

It all became clear in an instance: what was he doing, hesitating whether to protect the woman? One bullet cut through the knee. Whose interests was he protecting here? Another through the chest. His mate dropped on the ground, lifeless. Loud voices panicking reached his ears as he kept the bullets coming and another of his mates hit the dust.

A crowd carrying you on its hands feels like thousands of little ants scurrying along your back. When your people pull you in its embrace to protect you from danger, the sensation is more like that of a hurricane pulling you in all directions. You are forced to trust unfamiliar faces, voices urging you one way, then another. You, you are blind.

This is the law of the land: take care of your kin and your kin takes care of you. No questions asked - not by them or by you. The woman he saved had as little knowledge of who saved her as he had about those who were now doing the same to him. In the end, what saved them was the law of the land.

The woman and the boy were finally home.