Still, it do some good. The cold seems to slow down the cooties, or maybe it just that my skin so ashy and frozen, they can’t get none of their devil-spawn teeth into it. My legs feel heavy as iron. I stretch, tryin’ to ease the kinks from them, and my shiftin’ ’bout in the slush make a cracklin’ sound, like a spoon breakin’ through a snowball cone. James jerks awake. The white of an eye as he stare at the parapet but ain’t nothin’ more to hear or see and he relax once more. A few others cuss sleepily at being woken. Karan pull that dressin’ robe of his tighter ’bout hisself, fussin’ with the ties. A right grand thing, that robe – all reds and golds, sunset-coloured. Come in a care package for him from London. Karan, he gone and found a bunch of rich old ladies in the newspapers, the sort who been placin’ advertisements ever since the war begun, ’bout wantin’ to sponsor a soldier. They were a little alarmed at first to find he ain’t a Christian, never mind English or French, but they find an excitement in it, writin’ to this dark-skinned foreigner so bravely fightin’ in France.
