A Night in the Loft

by Luanne F. Oleas

One moment Jess was laughing beside a tree, the next he was racing through hell with the odor of death all around him. Chunks of frozen earth erupted from the ground and pelted him. Jess’ lungs and legs ached in the bitter cold as he dodged plumes of black smoke. His rucksack bumped wildly against him with every stride while his fingers held a white-knuckle grip on his rifle.

His unit has just arrived from the states, comprised of a portion of the United Nations medical relief convoy advancing toward Kosovo. Every vehicle at the rear of the convoy had just been destroyed and the forward vehicles remained under heavy shelling. E. & E., escape and evade Jess thought, as he left the outskirts of the village.

He headed across a field, crouched behind a long, low stone wall. Wearing winter white camouflage and a helmet of robin’s egg blue, he felt like a moving target in his peacekeeping uniform. Either side of the armed conflict could have been firing. The lumpy terrain of the open field exhausted him.

With the shelling finally in the distance, he dropped to his knees, gasping for air beside a barn. His wary blue eyes darted toward the field beyond. Mortar craters scarred freshly tilled land. He quickly stood again and slid along the cold stone wall of the structure. The smoking remains of a small house sat around the corner of the building.

He cautiously peered through the doors. Smaller and without the sound of livestock, it reminded Jess of his grandfather’s barn in Wisconsin. Against one wall, vacated stalls sat beneath a loft full of hay, and on the opposite wall, forsaken white feathers sprinkled the earthen floor near the empty coops. For an instant, he marveled that something so far from home could look and smell so familiar.

Bolting inside to the darkest corner of the barn, he silently hunkered down with his M-16 pointed outward. Jess fearfully scoured the structure’s desolate interior. The whites of his eyes looked pronounced against his young face, blackened by smoke and dirt. He strained to hear something other than his own breathing and the periodic shelling in the distance. It was nearly silent, and he had never felt so frightened in all of his nineteen years.

His eyes slowly adjusted to the muted gray light. From the open barn door, a triangle of pale sunlight revealed wisps of straw littering the floor. Dust danced in a square of light from the opening in the loft above him. He tried to think of something comforting, like the clean white socks, warm from the dryer, or a bowl of hot tomato soup and crackers, but he could only think of dying.

With his back to the wall and his weapon at the ready, he walked around the entire barn. He kept looking to the loft but there was no ladder. Feeling momentarily safe, Jess removed his blue helmet. His fair hair exposed, he wiped his damp face and neck. He replaced the helmet with the chinstrap hanging loose.

The longer he remained in the barn, the less he thought about dying. Now his challenge was to get back to safety. The barn door only revealed the shelled fields and rugged mountains; the loft offered a better view of the opposite direction.

Back home, his grandparents both insisted he stay away from the loft. His grandmother feared he would fall. His grandfather just said he would ruin the feed. They often hid the ladder when he came to visit. Just like at home, the wooden beams forming each vacant stall supported the loft and he scaled them with difficulty, carrying the extra weight of his rucksack and weapon.

Once in the loft, he listened intently before crawling on his hands and knees to the open loft door. One corner of the roofless farmhouse was still smoking while a red ball waited in the yard.

In the long valley beyond the house, troops moved in ragged formation down a distant road. He wondered which side they represented. Was it better to be found by one or the other? He searched the landscape in the fading sunlight for any sign of the peacekeepers. Seeing none, he sat down to keep watch. He cradled his weapon to his chest, feeling a chill as the sun set.

Within an hour, small campfires and smoldering ruins became the only lights in the valley, like diamonds thrown by the hand of God. He placed his canteen in the straw beside him after a long drink. When he reached for it again, it was moving. He jumped to his feet as the canteen disappeared beneath the pile of hay.

Jess stabbed the thick straw with the rifle barrel. When it hit something solid, he shouldered his weapon to fire. Before he could, the canteen mysteriously reappeared. Small fingers slipped away from the base of it and returned under the hay.

He pushed the rifle barrel into the hay again and heard a muffled whimper. Jess remembered the red ball outside the little farmhouse. He circled the mound of hay, poking it twice more before he stumbled over a ladder hidden by the straw. As he fell, a shot when through the roof of the barn. A wisp of humanity rose from the hay and scrambled toward the loft door. Jess jumped to his feet and took aim at the skirted silhouette in the moonlight.

“Freeze,” he yelled, unable to pull the trigger.

“Asha-a-a-d! Where are you?” she screamed in her native tongue.

Her hesitation before jumping gave Jess time to grab her arm. Her legs sailed out of the opening but the rest of her slight body remained inside. With his adrenaline pumping, he easily pulled her back into the loft and tossed her into a corner.

“Don’t make a sound,” he demanded, pointing his rifle at her.

“Ashaad,” she whimpered as she sank to her knees.

Her frightened stare hit Jess hard though he wouldn’t show it. Standing above her, pointing his rifle at her heart, he waited for her to make the slightest move. The young girl looked up through strands of tangled, dark hair at her white-suited attacker. She knew what would happen next but she wasn’t prepared. A girl of fifteen is never prepared to be raped.

Jess thought she was scrawny, with dirty clothes made from rough fabric. She crouched in the corner, her matted black hair full of straw. He watched her tears make white paths down her filthy cheeks.

“Don’t move,” he ordered.

Never taking his aim from her, Jess moved toward the loft door and closed it quietly. When she tried to crawl away from the corner, he placed on hand on her shoulder and pushed her back.

“Stay right there,” he commanded.

She cringed when he touched her. She shrank back into the corner, gasping from fear until she vomited.

“Oh, hell,” he said with a grimace. He located his handkerchief and tossed it at her. She refused to touch it.

“Use it,” he said nervously.

“What?” she asked in her only language, wondering what he said.

“Just keep quiet,” he said in a forceful voice. “If anyone finds me here, I’m dead meat and you’re going with me.”

She stared at him with dark eyes but didn’t respond. They remained like that for five minutes, watching each other and afraid to move.

“I’m going to sit down by the door,” he said, finally breaking the silence. He continued talking though there was no glimmer of understanding in her eyes. “Don’t move. Understand?”

“What are you going to do to me?” She wept timidly, speaking in words that were only gibberish to him.

“Of course you don’t understand me,” he said, whispering to himself. “Why should you? This whole fucking day has been a big a blunder as the rest of my military life. I didn’t want to join; my buddy did. I just went along for a laugh. He flunked the physical. How’s that for a laugh? And now I’m here, in this God forsaken country. And what for? I mean, who’s fighting who here? It’s not even big enough to be a country. It’s like New York declaring war on Rhode Island and New Jersey.”

“Are you going to kill me or what?” she asked, when he finally stopped raving.

He raised a finger to his lips and made a shushing sound. She stopped talking. He sat down gingerly. The night was deafeningly quiet.

“Is this your barn?” he wondered aloud.

“I wish Ashaad would come back,” she whispered.

“What is ‘Ash-head’ anyway? Is that your name?” He pointed to her. “Are you ‘Ash-head’?”

“I won’t tell you anything. You’re a man, a soldier, just like all the rest, waiting for someone to kill.”

“I’m Jess,” he said, pointing to himself. “Jess.”

“Yes,” she mimicked in a questioning tone.

“Not ‘yes.’ Jess,” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said again.

“Oh forget it,” he said, pausing for a moment. Then he pointed to here and asked, “Ash-head?”

“Marijtka,” she said quietly, placing her hand against her chest.

“Mareesha,” he tried.

“Marijtka,” she repeated.

“Look, you can call me ‘Yes’ if I can call you Mareeshka,” he said.

“Marijtka,” she corrected him again.

“Shit, we can’t even say each other’s names.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” she said in frustration.

“What did you say?” he asked.

They looked at each other in silence. She wasn’t even as old as he was; at least he didn’t think she was. He didn’t feel like putting himself in her shoes.

“Your house?” he asked, keeping his rifle trained on her as he nodded in the direction of the ruin outside. When she didn’t answer, he became more animated. “You, Mareeshka -”

“Marijtka,” she started but he continued.

“Mareeshka’s house,” he said, opening the loft door slightly and nodded toward it.

She hesitated, then pointed toward it and then to herself.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

She looked at him curiously when he used a soft voice. She started to say something when voices from outside interrupted her.

Jess lunged toward her, pressing his rifle barrel against her side and covering her mouth with his hand. To his surprise, she pulled a long kitchen knife from her skirt pocket and held it to his throat. They remained frozen with their weapons on each other, until the voices passed.

“Give me the knife,” he whispered once the voices faded completely. She kept a life-threatening grip on her weapon.

“For God’s sake, I’ve got an M-16. Give me the knife,” he said angrily, taking it from her forcefully as she was putting it back in her skirt pocket.

“Don’t touch me,” she said immediately.

“Give me the damn knife,” he said, grabbing for it and ripping her skirt in the process.

“Don’t touch my clothes. I won’t take them off,” she said, muffling her fear as her tears began. She ran to the corner and pulled herself into a ball as he continued to reach for the knife.

“Stop, stop,” she said, helplessly.

“There,” he said, pulling away from her with the knife. She looked up as he started to throw it out the loft door. At the last second, he changed his mind and dropped it into the long pocket along his thigh.

“You wanted the knife?” she asked in disbelief.

“I don’t have any idea what your saying,” he said, leaning again the wall of the barn but keeping his rifle on her. By her reaction to the voices, he could tell she didn’t want to be discovered any more than he did. They sat opposite each other in silence, his weapon still on her but relaxed.

“My grandfather had a barn like this,” he said, not expecting her to understand. He lifted a handful of straw to his nose and took a big whiff. “Same smell.”

“I hope Ashaad comes back soon,” she told him for no reason.

“I wasn’t supposed to go in the loft but I always did. How about you?” Jess asked.

“He should have been back by now. I don’t think he’s coming.”

“Mareeshka…” he said and she looked at him. “It’s kind of pretty. Mareeshka.” For no real reason, he smiled at her.

“Yes,” she said softly.

“I’m glad you agree,” he laughed.

“Yes,” she said, looking confused and pointing at him.

“Oh, that ‘yes.’ Hey, so you can’t say ‘Jess.’ It doesn’t matter now. Hey, are you hungry?” he asked, as if he expected her to answer.

“Yes,” she said again and again he laughed.

“Great,” he said, knowing she didn’t know what she said. Trying to hold his rifle steady, he fumbled for a candy bar in the side pocket of his rucksack. When he produced it, her dark eyes grew wide. He took a bite and offered her one. She nearly devoured the whole thing.

“Hey wait -” he objected. She looked up in fear and slowly handed it back.

“Keep it,” he said, pushing her hand away. “You must be starving.”

She watched his face closely. He lifted her hand, the one that held the candy bar, toward her mouth.

“Go on. Really.”

She took a small bite and watched his face. He smiled and nodded. She took another, then another. When it was gone, she began licking the wrapper.

“God, don’t eat the wrapper,” he said, and she stopped instantly. “I’ve got more.” Against his better judgment, Jess shed his rucksack awkwardly as he held his rifle on her. He unzipped the top compartment and pulled out a brown package, one of his field MREs with pork chops in white letters. He held between his knees and opened it with her knife. He handed her the square, dry entree.

“These taste like dog shit.”

To his surprise, she handed it back.

“Don’t you want it?” he asked, staring at the hunk of food in his hand. She started to move toward him and he lifted his rifle at her. She hesitated, then continued, slowly taking his hand, the one holding the food, and pushing it toward his mouth. He took a single bite and handed it back. She took one also, then tried to return it.

“No, no. It’s all yours,” he laughed, pushing her hand toward her. She devoured the whole thing, barely swallowing. He handed her the rest of the packaged meal. She ate it without hesitating. When she finished it, she opened the wrapper of the pre-moistened napkin and started to eat it as well. After the first taste, she stopped immediately.

“That’s the napkin, silly,” he said softly.

“This tastes worse than the candy wrapper,” she answered.

“It’s for this,” he said, dabbing the corners of his mouth with an imaginary napkin in a formal style.

She laughed at him and it sounded like music. She wiped her face and then her hands. With the three days of dirt removed, she wasn’t as ugly as he thought. In fact, she was almost pretty. She handed him the napkin and motioned for him to rub his own cheeks. He didn’t understand why she wanted him to do that and was surprised, when he did, to see the napkin turn nearly black.

For no real reason, he handed her the comb in his pocket. She looked embarrassed at first, then struggled to pull the comb through her hair. Jess looked for something to sit on. Finding nothing, he removed his helmet, put it on the floor near the wall, and sat. Her hair seemed to grow longer as she combed it. It took a while with his small comb but she finally finished. Her black hair reached the middle of her back.

She tried to return the comb. Jess ran his fingers over his short sandy hair and wouldn’t accept it. She tucked it into the ripped pocket of her skirt, looked up and him, as if trying to decide how to say thank you. She could only give him a shy smile.

For the first time, he took his finger off the trigger. He would have asked her for a date if she had understood. He blew warm air into his fists, one at a time, then fingered the trigger again. She pulled her knees under her long skirt, wrapped her arms around them, and shivered. She pulled some hay around her but it didn’t help much.

Jess wandered to the loft door and opened it a crack. He stared at the small fires in the long valley. It was too cold to stand there for long, not that he could see much in the darkness. He closed the door and walked back to her. She watched every move he made.

“I get the feeling you don’t trust me,” he told her.

“What are you expecting for the food and the comb?” she asked him.

“If I sit beside you we will both be warmer,” he said. To Jess, it seemed a peculiar request to make of someone you held at gunpoint. Still the whole day had been like that. He knelt down on one knee, then both, moving slowly toward her.

“Don’t try it,” she whispered, watching him intently.

He sat down slowly then scooted next to her. She moved away.

He waited, then slid next to her again. After they moved halfway across the loft that way, Jess began to chuckle. By this time, there was straw all over them. He picked up a handful and let it trickle on top of her hair. She brushed it off immediately. He did it again, smiling the whole time. She grabbed a handful and threw it at his face. He tossed some back at her. Gathering hay with both hands, she threw as much as she could at him. He did not intend to let go of his weapon but he held his own in his one-armed battle of straw tossing. She couldn’t help herself. She was laughing at him.

“Go ahead,” he offered, getting up on his knees and throwing out his chest. “Hit me.”

She picked up her biggest armful yet and bombarded him for all she was worth. He didn’t move.

“Hit me again,” he teased, pushed more straw toward her for ammunition.

She gathered a huge armful again, but instead of throwing it at him, she tossed it in the air. It came down on them both.

The battle was over. She sat back, exhausted, leaning against the barn’s stone wall. He moved beside her and propped himself against the wall as well.

“My grandpa would have swatted me for that,” he said with a laugh.

“You have a nice laugh,” she said.

He looked at her but she didn’t move away. He slowly, slowly put his arm around her shoulders. She was stiff at first but eventually allowed her body to conform to his. He touched her small hand and played with her pinkie finger. It felt good not to be alone.

“Who are you, Yes?” she asked in a small voice.

“I’m warmer. Are you?” he answered.

When she fell asleep, he felt her steady breathing as she slumped into his lap. He petted her hair and closed his eyes as well.

Voices awoke them both with a start. It was nearly dawn.

Jess put his hand over Marijtka’s mouth and readied his weapon. She listened intently for a moment, and then she covered his mouth. They weren’t her friends either. Marijtka looked down frantically, moving straw aside to reveal a knothole. They both lie down quietly on the loft floor to take turns peering at the enemy. When Marijtka first looked, there were six. When Jess looked there were ten. If he had been alone, he would have surrendered. With Marijtka, he was immediately put on a side, and from her reaction, not the right one.

With all he had heard about the atrocities of war, especially to women, he knew he had to defend them both. He suddenly began to pile straw over Marijtka. She resisted at first, then tried to help. At the last moment, he slid the kitchen knife under the pile to her. It disappeared from sight as Jess lay on his stomach and grappled for his helmet.

Jess watched through the knothole. The one in charge appeared to be the tall, dark man with three days’ growth of beard and a red kerchief at his neck. He tapped the three men closest to him, then pointed to the loft. They scaled the support beams, as Jess had, toward the loft. With Marijtka under the straw behind him and his weapon ready, Jess waited for their heads to appear. Jess shot the first one before he spotted them. A second head appeared momentarily, then dropped from sight. Jess let a round fly in the second soldier direction.

Before he could think, Jess was on his feet and blasting round after round down into the barn. In seconds that passed like hours, the men below at first considered returning fire, then opted for escape. Three lay on the barn floor, dying, while the others fled. Jess jumped to the loft window, hoping to see them flee but he didn’t. He held his breath, trying to watch down in the barn and out the loft window at the same time. In the quiet, he felt a sense of dread.

He got back on his stomach and crawled to the knothole. The three motionless bodies still lay on the floor of the barn.

The enemy vehicle, just outside the open barn doors, remained empty. Marijtka started to rise but he pushed her head down, recovering her with straw.

The silence gave way to a squeaking sound outside the loft door. Jess turned to see two men, hoisted by the others up the hay lift pulley rope, fly in the opening. Jess fired at the first, sending him back out the door. The second fired at Jess but missed. When Jess hit him, he fell on the pile of hay and Marijtka. He heard her muffled scream and turned as three more scaled the support beams into the loft. Jess was able to pick off the first two before the third one shot him.

Jess’s weapon flew from his arms as blood oozed, then flowed from his shoulder. As the soldier prepared to finish Jess off, Marijtka’s knife stabbed him through the calf. The soldier fell backwards in great pain, tripping over the ladder and careening out of the loft.

Jess was able to recover his rifle, and though dizzy, fired down into the barn to kill the soldier who shot him.

Marijtka shrieked as he did and when he looked at her, she was pointing toward the loft door. The leader and the last soldier were making their way into the loft. With a lousy aim, Jess fired and fired and fired and fired. Both soldiers leaped out the loft door to the ground. As they fled in their jeep, Jess keep up his volley until they were only a swirl of dust on the horizon.

Jess crept around the loft in a daze, trying to check both the barn, the area outside the barn doors, and then back to the loft door. After three checks of both, he dropped his weapon and fell unconscious on the floor of the loft.

“Yes?” Marijtka whispered from under the hay and the body of the dead intruder. She heard nothing.

“Yes?” she said again, pushing aside the hay and the body of the intruder above her.

She stared into his face but he didn’t respond, as the blood from his shoulder stained the floor of the loft and slipped through the slats in the floor to the barn below.

The first things Jess noticed when he woke were Marijtka’s tears on his hand and a burning pain in his shoulders. She had his canteen beside her, trying to keep him cool with the moistened fabric she ripped from her skirt.

“The rucksack,” he said, pointing to it sprawled open on the other side of the loft. She brought it to him. He tried three times to look in it, collapsing each time. Marijtka began removing items one by one and showing them to him. Each time he shook his head until she uncovered the box with the red cross on it. She poured antiseptic on his shoulder, which stung like hell. She covered his wounds with bandages, wrapping his shoulder over and over until the blood wasn’t quite so noticeable.

Just as she finished taping it into place, she froze. They both heard the sound of trucks pulling up outside. She crept to the loft door for a look. Jess attempted to follow her but the pain stopped him. She backed away from the opening in disbelief.

“What?” Jess tried to rise again, but was unable to do so. “Shit! How many?” he asked, showing her fingers. “Five? Ten? Fifteen?”

When she opened and closed both of her hands three times, he knew it was hopeless. She picked up his helmet, pointed to it, then pointed outside. He looked at her curiously.

She pointed to the helmet again and pointed individually to the each soldier below.

“Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.” Then she pointed to him. “Yes.”

“Up here,” he yelled, then smiled at her. “We’re up here and we need help.”

Copyright © 1998-2008 Luanne F. Oleas
All rights reserved.

Author bio:

“Luanne F. Oleas aka LadyLu is the author of Wild Dancing and other novels. Her The Pirate and The Butterfly is one of The Blue Rose Bouquet’s most popular stories. In addition, she is an op on the #Authors Undernet chat channel (one of the Top 10 channels on the Undernet). This California writer’s work has appeared in Reader’s Digest and other publications.”

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