The Butcher

Lawrence had tumbled, end over end, falling for what seemed like eternity. Then, as if by magic, he felt as he had never felt before: at peace with the world. He forgave himself and, in doing so, was able to let go as he hit the pavement.
The funeral took place on a Minnesota winter’s day, the stinging wind and snow slowly numbed the bodies of the guests, and all twelve of them huddled for a reprieve, envying the dead Lawrence. They lowered the coffin. Of the twelve attendees, only one was directly related to Lawrence. He stood on a hill, overlooking the cemetery in an ill-fitting black coat, and looked to all the world like an immense, awkward raven fluttering in the wind. His name was Harold.
The youngest of seven children, Harold had only heard stories about how terrible the Minnesota weather had been, back in ’29, but ten years later, he had known why Mom and Dad moved away from this barren, white, hellscape.
Six years later, in 1945, all of these memories played on a loop in Harold’s head, distracting him from the task at hand. “They are not human,” he told himself, to get back on task “They killed our boys and now we have to kill theirs” but thin=is couldn’t convince him. Even though everyone told him it was right, told him it felt good, told him any number of lies about it, he knew it was wrong. 
The invasion of pacific islands was dirty work for the marines, and everyone knew it. What not everybody knew was that there was still another branch, even more brutal. The Army Air Corps were always portrayed as clean and glorious, flying high above the carnage and death that was quickly defining the Second World War. But Harold knew better. He had seen when they started those low level firebombing raids. People had be out raged by 40,000 dead at Dresden, because even though they were Nazis, they were still people. But he had helped to kill 400,000 at Tokyo, and no body cared, because the Japs weren’t people, just animals. But try as he might, leaving the air corps was simply not an option. He was one of the best bombardiers they had, simply because he tried not to hit civilians, only industrial targets. It was his guilt that drove him, not some nonsense about loving his country. But precision and minimizing casualties became an afterthought when low level firebombing started, and Harold was sent on fewer and fewer missions, each of little overall importance.
This mission was different. The other men on board were civilians, scientists, he thought, and this was a three-bomber raid. He had no idea what they were doing; all his job was to drop the bomb. But Harold knew something was up He saw how the plane, loaded to its stomach’s full capacity took off reluctantly, as if it didn’t want to go on this mission. Or maybe that was just Him.
As they approached the drop point, he began adjusting the sinister Norden bombsight, all the while hating that evil machine that had caused him to kill so many. He corrected himself, realizing that the device had only helped to kill those people. The real blame rested on him. Harold was knocked back into the present by some turbulence. A minute later, he counted down into the mike, “Five, four, three, two, one, bomb away.” Before he could finish, here was a blinding flash of light, and then the plane shook with the force of a thousand pummeling fists. “None of those hands have as much blood on them as mine”, he thought.
The bomb had fallen as his father had fallen, but unlike Lawrence, it caused more than one funeral. He knew what had happened when he read about it in the papers back home. While his father died at peace, Harold was a broken man for the rest of his life, forever tortured by the deaths he had caused. When he died, he went not gently, but screaming, reluctant to dine in the same halls as his victims. It was a long fall 

By JTS