Chapter 33
At my feet more distinctly a soldier,
A mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death,
(he is shot in the abdomen,)
I stanch the blood temporarily,
(the youngster's face is white as a lily,)
.
—Walt Whitman, A March in the Ranks
.
MIKHAIL
A deep-throated horn shouts 'Warning! Warning! Warning!' The walls suddenly appear, as if the village hid, and then leaped up out of the fog to shout 'boo!'
I veer east to the place where the Sata'anic gunship took down four houses which normally perch along the riverbank. Most of the year, the cliff is so steep and unassailable that my pleas fell upon deaf ears when I begged the Chief to repair those houses. In the mud, Sata'anic combat boot prints point out. They obscure smaller goatskin pampootie tracks coming in, but then I spy anothe
