I awoke suddenly. Before I could open my eyes, I became aware of the sounds around me. I realized I was outside, in the forest. I registered the smell of decaying logs and the scent of earth moistened by just-melted snow. I allowed my eyes to open. I found myself staring up at a distant canopy of tree branches. I noticed tiny leaves. The warmth of spring must just have coaxed them from late winter’s swollen buds. The trees’ architecture—the distinctive elephant-skin beeches and the twiggy, symmetrically-branched maples—reminded me of childhood and of home. I was reminded of the existence of places, and while I didn’t know where I was, I remembered that some places are more pleasant than others.
I was reminded that years earlier I had been a child. The memory of childhood reminded me that I am someone. The maples’ tender, chartreuse leaves reminded me of springtime. The new growth above me indicated that springtime was happening now.
Instinctively, I raised my left arm over my head. I brought the top of my wrist above my eyes; I wanted to see my watch. It was just after seven-thirty, and it must have been morning. I didn’t know the day or the month, though from the foliage above I guessed that it must have been sometime between March and May.
When I witnessed my right hand brushing back my left sleeve to expose my watch, I remembered who I was. The cotton duck-cloth on my sleeves, olive in color, reminded me that I was—or that until recently I had been—a soldier. That I had been marching. That I had fallen out of formation. That I’d been left behind: alone, on the ground, with nothing but awareness. Awareness of the passing of time and awareness of the timelessness of the forest around me.
Our march had begun a few days before. Our village—Shilepu—had been at war with neighboring Toropia for some time. We had been warned that a battalion of Toropians were fifteen or so miles away. The Toropians were slowly making their way down the valley and toward our village, my hometown. The Toropians needed to be stopped before they could reach our beautiful Shilepu—before they could damage our homes and corrupt our families. My agemates and I, we were young and eager. We agreed to don fatigues. We would go out to vanquish the enemy.
The border to Toropia lay beyond the horizon, just behind the last swathe of hills that was visible from our native Shilepu. Toropians did not look different from us, but they were indeed very different people. The Toropians had different customs, a different religion, a different language. In fact, the Toropian language lacked the ‘sh’ sound of shush and shore and sure-as-shootin’. And Toropians lacked the ability to make that shushy sound. Their only sibilant was the slippery, hissy ‘s’: the sound we speak when we say sissy, sanctity, sinistral, straight, and so-so.
The name of our town, Shilepu, was unpronounceable by our enemy. A Toropian might disguise himself as a Shilepian, but when asked where he came from, his identity would immediately be revealed.
“Seelepu,” he’d respond, telling and exposing a falsehood in a single word. The truth revealed, he’d be threatened and then sent to traverse the forest, alone, back to Toropia. As a child, I’d seen this excommunicative ritual more than once.
And now, as I awoke on the forest floor, I remembered that three days ago I had stood in a shed with five other Shilepians. We changed into fatigues. We left our civilian clothing behind us, hanging from the hooks and bent nails we found driven into the shed’s back wall. We knew we’d be back within a week. We’d pick up our clothes just as we’d get on with our lives. We knew we’d find everything hanging in hiatus just how and where we’d left it.
Before we set off, we divided the trek’s tasks among us. Eric, with his excellent sense of direction, had been entrusted with a map and a compass. Marlo, the strongest, would carry a hatchet and collect firewood. And I, slight-framed and detail-oriented, would cook. I would carry the eggs and our dented, sooty pan. I would make and serve our morning coffee.
On the trek’s second morning, I awoke to the sound of splitting firewood. I heard a whoosh and a grunt as Marlo swung his hatchet down. I heard the metal hit and divide the wood. My ears rang during a millisecond of silence, and then I heard two new, small logs thudding to the ground. I heard the plunk of wood on wood as Marlo tossed the freshly split logs on top of each other and into a small pile near the three rocks over which it would soon be my job to brew a pot of gritty, unfiltered coffee.
“Coffee ready?” Marlo asked, as soon as he noticed my open eyes. This was not a question, but a sarcastic indication that he’d prefer I get out of my sleeping bag and behind a small pile of burning kindling, where I would attend to my responsibilities, much as he’d already begun to attend to his.
“I’m on it,” I said. I pulled my legs out of the bag and put them one by one into the pantlegs of my fatigues. I resuscitated the fire. I set the coffeepot on a metal grate that rested on the three stones. I went to wash my face.
By the time I returned, the water had begun to boil. I tossed three spoons of ground coffee into the metal can and watched as the grounds darkened and flavored the water. Five minutes later, I would serve it.
I gathered three metal cups. I handed one to Eric, another to Marlo. I poured the coffee.
“Milk?” I asked, enquiring whether I should pour into their cups a swig of the milk I’d brought. As soon as they nodded, I added a glug to each cup.
“Want it sweet?” I asked, holding up a metal can of sugar. I plunged a spoon into the sugar and raised it up again, hoping the gesture would assist in conveying the meaning of my question.
“Are you asking if I’d like sugar?” Marlo asked. He squinted and wrinkled his forehead.
“Yes,” I said.
“Sugar?” he repeated.
“Yes,” I said. “So would you like some?”
“Say it,” Marlo ordered. “What’s that stuff called?” Marlo pointed to the metal tin in my hand.
I was nervous now. I knew I needed to avoid this word, or any word like it. I was not a Toropian. I had never been to Toropia. I was not descended from Toropians, and I had no sympathy for those people, for that people. But I had trouble speaking. I had never been able to pronounce the name of our town, nor could I say a host of other common, mushy-shushy words.
My mother had understood this. She had tried to teach the young boy I used to be. She pursed her lips, pulled her cheeks in against her teeth, and passed air over her tongue. She brought my hands to her cheeks so I could feel how this sound should be made. But I had never managed to learn. Should and shine and shove and shave—such words were all impossible for me. When I realized that these were words I would never learn to speak, I learned instead never to speak them. To be unable to speak as a Shilepian would identify me as an enemy, ensuring my excommunication and banishment.
I described shoes as either sneakers or boots. All sheep, to me, were lambs. Every should was an ought and any shrine a temple. Any shed, shack, or shanty was nothing but a hut. But there was no substitute for sugar, and here in the woods, my secret and I would soon be found out.
“What’s this stuff called?” Marlo asked again, pointing to the metal tin of grainy cane. He was bullying me now. Eric looked up as he refolded a map.
I knew I had to try, though I was certain I would fail.
“Thugar,” I said.
“What?” Marlo asked. Eric grinned.
“Soogar,” I tried again.
“Say sugar,” Marlo demanded.
And then I lost control. “Guys,” I said, “I’m sorry, it’s just that I’ve never been able—”
“He’s a filthy Tuup,” Marlo said, invoking the derogatory term for a Toropian.
“I’m not!” I said, “But I’ve never been able to speak like we ought to.”
“To speak like we should, you mean?” Eric corrected, with exaggerated enunciation.
By now the other troops approached us. They encircled me.
“You’re not a Tuup?” they asked. “Are you sure?”
“I’m certain,” I said, unable to pronounce my sureness.
“Filthy Tuup,” they said again.
And then, convinced that my mortal inabilities were a measure of my tribal affiliation, they came with sticks and stones. They took the sugar from my hand, pushed me away from the fire, and beat me with switches of witch hazel they’d harvested from the forest’s underbrush.
“You know what they call a bunch of twigs, don’t you?” Marlo asked.
I knew but didn’t answer.
“A faggot,” Marlo clarified, as he whipped the twigs across my face.
Francis pulled a bottle of liquor from his bag. “If you’re Shilepean like us, you’ll behave like us. You’ll speak like us. And you’ll drink like us.” Francis took the metal cup from Eric’s hand. He flung the last dregs of coffee into the fire. He filled the mug with the hooch he’d brought and ordered me to drink.
There were too many guys with too many sticks; I had no choice but to comply. I took a sip.
“Finish it,” Francis ordered. I obeyed.
“Repeat after me,” Marlo said. “Shoes slung over my shrugging shoulders, surely I shove the ship ashore. My shivering shins shall shuffle along the shelly floor.”
I had often heard these words, though I’d always managed to avoid speaking them. I knew I could not replicate his sounds. I had never been able to.
“I can’t,” I said.
The other men laughed. I began to cry, which only made them laugh harder. “He’s not one of us,” Eric said. “He can’t be.”
The alcohol began to cloud my thinking. My memories of the rest of the morning are unclear. The men kicked me, they punched me, they rolled me into the bush and whipped me with the branches, yelling ‘faggot’ each time the twigs connected with my body and my clothing.
“He’s not one of us,” they said. “Filthy, God-forsaken Tuup.”
“I’m one of you,” I said. “See how I’ve made the coffee. See how we’ve hiked together. See how your cause is my cause, your goals my goals, your people have always been my people. Your enemy is my enemy, too. We’re the same,” I said, “and I’m one of you.”
“No,” they said. “You are our enemy. Go back to Tupilandia where you and your kind belong.”
But I knew that the Toropians were not my people, either. The Toropians would be at least as unwelcoming to me as my own tribe had now become. “Those aren’t my people,” I said. “Let me stay, let me fight, let me belong.”
“If you belonged to us, you’d behave like us,” Marlo said from behind me; I lay face-down now.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” I said. “I’m just not able to.”
“Faggot,” I heard, as I felt a bunch of twigs lash the back of my head and the tops of my ears.
I remember nothing else.
And now I’m awake, staring at the canopy of maples and beeches overhead. I pull my sleeve down over my watch. I allow my arms to rest beside me. I hear the rhythmic crunching of a soldier’s footsteps. My view of the forest’s canopy is pierced by the silhouette of a rifle. I can’t see who is standing over me. I can’t tell whether he’s a Shilepian or a Toropian. But I know it doesn’t matter. Either way, this is the end. Either way, I will die.
I accept my fate as I console myself with the realization that I matter. Insignificant, powerless creatures are left to die alone in the woods. But not me. I matter enough that someone has come for me, if only to get rid of me.
I look up at the soldier. For a moment, we lock eyes. We are equally determined, but he has the sword. All I have is spirit. I notice the pair of thin, quivering lips that surround the open mouth through which the soldier breathes. Nearby, a dozen grains of sugar cling to his beard. I know I’ll die soon. I stare into the soldier’s eyes, knowing at least that I won’t die alone.
Thank you, Daniel, for this vivid and heartbreaking picture of the pain and injustice the Church has inflicted on LGBTQ+ people over the ages. May it be used to lead many to confession, repentance, and reformation.