(Note to reader: For a fuller context for this story, read the "Wolf Creek" novella series and "The Photograph 1: John" and "The Photograph 2: Jamie.")
Joe knew his unit shouldn't have entered the Scharzwald this close to dusk. The doughboys had been picked off one by one by the huns, hidden in the trees. But Joe knew someone must get through and warn the big brass. He was the last one alive. He had to press on; he could not fail. This could be the turning point. The Yanks and all of their loved ones across the sea who depended on them to prevail over Old Fritz could be saved if the warning of the impending German troop movements got to the American lines in time.
They saw each other at the same moment as Joe splashed out of a shallow creek; the German soldier was as surprised to see Joe as Joe was to see him. A moment of shock during which it registered with Joe that the German was just a boy, a young and scared boy. Could he possibly be an enemy? He was shaking like a leaf. Could Joe possibly take advantage of that? Was he sent here to hunt young, vulnerable boys? Could that ever be the right thing to do? In the moment of indecision, the boy raised his ancient two-barreled pistol and sent a bullet whizzing through the material of Joe's uniform sleeve.
An overload of sensations: surprise, slight pain from the bullet nicking his arm, the sound of the misfiring click of the second chamber of the youth's pistol, and a new, ominous sound—harsh snuffling and snorting and thrashing about in the underbrush beside the creek. A huge wolf, a magnificent creature, really, broke into the small clearing Joe had been caught in and stood, menacingly between the American doughboy and the young German hun, his great muzzle turning from one to the other, trying to decide which direction to pounce. With a little cry, the trembling German youth slipped from his precarious perch in the tree and fell to the ground. The wolf was upon him in a flash. Awakened from his paralysis by this new, more worthy, better-defined foe, Joe whipped a long-bladed knife from the sheath at his thigh and fell upon the wolf, slicing and stabbing the beast relentlessly—man against the natural elements, a suddenly clear-cut understanding of the point of the struggle of man.
The battle was furious but short, and once more man was triumphant. With a mighty heave, Joe thrust the carcass of the magnificent wolf aside. The German youth was gashed and his clothes lay on his bruised and trembling body in tatters—but he still breathed and his eyes were filled with panic and fear as they looked up at the panting American doughboy standing over him with raised and bloody knife. Joe . . .
"Jules! Jules! Jules Kincaid, where have you crept off to? Oh there you are. Come in this instant and go to your room. You can see what time it is."
Yeah, right, Jules thought. Time for one of those men to come and start playing hide the sausage with you. With a sigh, Jules left off writing his story, closed his tablet, and slid back into the shabby little Kincaid living room from the Chicago tenement fire escape. The fire escape and his stories were Jules's escape from the sordid world he and his mother had been propelled into by the death of his father the previous summer.
"Jules, hurry up now and go to your room. It's almost eight o'clock." Jessica Kincaid sounded more weary than angry. This wasn't the life she'd planned for either of them. At least Jules had his stories to escape into. All she had was her low-paying receptionist job by day and what she had to do by night to bring in enough to keep the two of them going. All because of Joe. All because of his bravado—and because he'd never learned how to swim.
"Step to, Jules. In your room now. And finish up your homework, or you'll never graduate with your class. Don't be spending all of your time on those adventure stories of yours, do ya' hear?"
Jules heard all right. He heard that hated name, Jules, pounding at him. He certainly heard that. The first thing he was going to do come July and his eighteenth birthday, in the year he'd had his eye on for a decade, 1917, was to get rid of that name, have it legally changed if he could. Reduce it to nothing more than an initial if he couldn't. But as far as hearing, he could do that better than his mother seemed to think. And he had two good eyes too. Who did she think she was fooling?
There wasn't a thing wrong with either his hearing or his eyesight an hour later, when, shortly after hearing the knock on the apartment door, he opened the door to his bedroom a crack and saw them doing it on the couch. His mother was on her butt on the sofa, sideways, with her back arched and her shoulders digging into the sofa arm. And her legs were splayed wide. And some big bruiser of a guy was kneeling between her legs with his knees buried in the sofa cushions and that big fat dick of his buried in Jules's mother. The guy was gruntin' and groanin', and Jules heard his mother making all sort of moaning sounds with her mouth. But from where he stood, he could see her eyes. And her eyes were dead and focused on someplace far, far away. This wouldn't have been happening if those Krauts hadn't swarmed over his dad—his war hero dad—and gotten the best of him finally after he'd killed hundreds of them. His dad would put a stop to this if he were here. Jules himself was almost eighteen, and he'd learned a thing or two about fighting, but he somehow knew that his mother didn't want him to intercede. She apparently was doing what she wanted to do. But she sure wouldn't be doing it if his father were still alive.
Jules's attention was arrested by the working of the man's dick inside his mother, the rhythm of the movement as it pushed in and pulled out in concert with the man's grunts and his mother's moans. It was almost poetic and was arousing—or would be if it weren't his own mother who was being worked. But then Jules had the most guilty feeling, and he saw now that his mother had seen him watching and that her eyes had become even more dead than before and were brimming over with tears as her mouth formed a silent, wounded scream.
The inevitable confrontation between mother and son the next morning didn't take the direction that either had envisioned.
Jules caused the floodgates to open by trying to deal with the tension between them—and the reason behind it—indirectly by extolling the war hero exploits and high moral character of his dead father—assuming his mother would get the message without forcing them to talk about what he'd seen. But Jessica was having none of that, although she took her reaction to a place she'd carefully never taken it before. And she surely would not have taken it now if her world hadn't been shattered by the undeniable truth of what her son had seen the previously night, a truth that had been there for some time but that she could, until now, pretend wasn't real because it wasn't acknowledged.
"God, will you stop this about your father, Jules. Joe wasn't a war hero. He didn't even make it to France. His ship sank and he drowned. We aren't still fighting because some quirk stopped him from saving the world. He died a useless death—and he left you and me with nothing."
"He loved and protected us and went to France to make the world safe for us," Jules responded stubbornly, refusing to hear the truth. "He . . ."
"The only one he loved was himself, Jules. He wanted me until he had me and then I was just another one of his possessions. And it was the same with you. He . . ." She couldn't go on; she recoiled in horror at what she'd said. She'd never spoken of her husband to her son like this. Even though she had spoken the truth. She might have said something before now, knowing that Jules was sinking ever deeper into his misconceptions, but Jules was growing up to be so much like his father. She didn't want to plant any more of Joe's self-possession and disregard for others in Jules's brain than was naturally there.
