June 1940

Nelson Byrd took only a few steps away from the stone fence marking his front lawn before he turned to smile at his wife, Elizabeth, for the last time. From the road, where their gravel driveway merged with sturdier stone, Nelson saw her hand drop from an enthusiastic wave. She smiled, turned, and walked from the open curtains out of sight into the shade of their second floor bedroom.

His pace remained brisk until the erratic sputtering of an engine approached through the trees which bridged the road. Puzzled that no cars or tractors came into view, he paused in a patch of sunshine between leaves and limbs to look up.

In a gap between branches, near treetop level, a bullet-riddled Nazi bomber Nelson could not identify drifted into view clattering for air as its pilot attempted multiple restarts. Nelson, in shock, followed the bomber’s smoking track overhead, ducking under branches and limbs to gauge where it might come to earth.

The plane's left wing, perforated from flak and bullet holes, peeled up and away, tearing free just as it passed over Nelson's stone fence. An unreleased bomb flopped between its landing gear. Following two silent cartwheels above Nelson's yard, the plane, its dangling bomb and briefly visible pilot, slammed into the second floor window. The black and white cross on its tail sliced into roofing shingles. With Elizabeth still inside, the house exploded.

The shock-wave burst the ceiling and walls of his home open. Mortar, stone, furniture, paintings, clothes, flatware and books erupted into the air. Nelson, tangled in the debris of his life, flew back on the road, his jacket ripped from his shoulders, his leather satchel shredded open. He landed in shrubs, his glasses cracked, his left shoe missing. Around him, flaming books from his library, chunks of stone from his bedroom wall, and shards of wood from his attic floor pelted the ground.

For minutes, Nelson lay unconscious in the bushes as the sediment of his life resettled over him and several acres dropping from a its plume in the sky. The corner of a child's painting, its edge singed, fluttered onto his cheek and pressed his eyelashes waking him.

He stood wobbling, his ears ringing, his nose bleeding and recognized through the cracks in his eyeglasses his wife's silver tea server at his feet as the smoke churned, obscuring his view of the remains of his house.  

"Elizabeth, our tea set is on the road."

He struggled to find the road in the falling dust, stepping over plaster he was unable to recognize. Then, a towel rod with ripped cloth snared in its splinters, dropped from the sky in front of him.

"Our towels? Elizabeth?"

Grabbing a tree trunk to keep from stumbling, he wiped blood from his upper lip and stared for several seconds at the crimson pattern it left in the grooves of his fingerprint.

"How?"

The cracks in his glasses kaleidoscoped the stain. He squinted through it and beyond his fingertips at the fog of dust and smoke. He steadied himself and moved up the road to his yard, encountering more of his belongings. He picked them up; a chair leg, a door knob, the spool from his fly fishing tackle, his wife's night gown. Cradling as much as he could carry, he ambled on.

"Not to worry, I'll clean this up and put it in its proper place."

Without realizing it, he stepped over the remains of his stone fence and entered his yard. His arms fell, spilling his charred belongings, when he finally recognized the burning timbers and strewn stone that that were where he and his wife lived for more than four decades.

"Elizabeth?"

He crawled through the debris looking for her, over turning boards, throwing up curtains, shoving aside kitchen shelving, shouting as he went.