SHORT STORY
2009 THIRD PLACE

Josef's Story
Liz Davison
16 years old, California

When Josef woke up, he could tell the sun was high in the sky, although no bright rays broke through the blanket of dry gray clouds.  The refugees around him were sleeping in their holes, waiting for nightfall when the colorless world became black and they crawled along the parched, stale earth toward the distant dream of safety on the horizon.  He snuggled deeper into his makeshift den, against the protective warmth of his older brother.  A chill, dry wind rattled through the brittle stalks of grass, drained of life and desperate for water.  Dehydrated and starving, like the whole country.  Perhaps like the whole world.

The bombings and attacks on villages had been scarring the miserable earth for years, 7ripping wounds that would take centuries to fully heal.  Josef had once thought that the perpetual terror of past years would drive him mad, but then he had never experienced the ravenous desperation of a perpetually empty stomach.

Clouds always covered the sky, but not a drop had fallen for an endless string of gray days; maybe a new enemy offensive advance or perhaps the earth’s way of retaliating against the harm done to her.  The bombardments were fewer now, with more frightened anticipation in between.  Josef contemplated the dirt-smudged faces of his sleeping companions; without the permanent worry line etched into their foreheads, their countenances would be almost peaceful.  From his innermost pocket, he extricated a small book.  The pages were tattered from use, though he tried to be careful with it.  Once vivid illustrations had lost much of their color, but he could remember the distinct hues as if they were still bright as new.  It was a simple story about a little boy who had planted a tree in his backyard, watched it grow and cared for it.  Josef knew the shapes of every letter and could trace the outlines of the pictures with his eyes shut.  In the bleak unhappy world this book had become his personal landscape.

If anyone had asked, he would have shared his serene colorful landscape with them.  But the other refugees had no time for stories and dreams; they spent all of it tramping through the dust and rubble or desperately searching for any scrap of surviving vegetation.  Josef should have been sleeping.  He would be exhausted during the march, but he wanted to feel the comforting familiarity of his book, every routine crease and wrinkle exactly where they should be.  And so he read, building himself a dream out of the hopelessness and ruin around him.  Maybe someday there would be an and to the fighting and he could live in a little white house with blue trim and plant trees in his backyard.

For as long as one person, even a child, kept dreaming and reading and hoping, the world would not be completely lost to war and chaos.  It would rain again.