Salerno

Flash fiction

Photo by Marco Savastano on Unsplash

Mickey Plass is an old man. He has a limp when he walks and he wears hearing aids, but his memory is sharper than the busted glass by the street corner. Mickey holds a black-and-white photo of a soldier on a half-blown-up bridge. The young man’s legs dangle off the side.

“This way,” he says to his wife, Penny, as they take in the city of Salerno, Italy. She grasps his hand.

It’s been over fifty years since Mickey last visited Salerno. The last time life brought him this way he wore a helmet on his head and held a rifle in his hands. That was back in 1943. He had lost his good friends Dominic and Jeremy here.

Sometimes he still sees their blood on his hands and hears the screaming bullets. Even now he feels the rumble—the thunder of heavy shelling and artillery—in the pit of his stomach.

And sometimes in the dead of night, he wakes with a start, hearing the call of “Medic!” from somewhere beyond the grave. Maybe it’s dozens of his brothers checking in on him.

Mickey halts: a pedestrian bridge looms in the distance. The photograph begins to tremble in his hand.

“Is that it?” Penny asks, her voice a breath above a whisper.

Mickey stands in silence, for his mind has gone somewhere else.

“Make it out of this thing, okay?” Dom had gurgled through a mouthful of blood as bullets rained all around them. “Live a good life for me. . . you hear me, dammit?”

Tears roll down Mickey’s cheeks. “I did, Dom. I came back to tell you I did.”

“What’s that?” Penny says—quieter, somehow.

Mickey pulls her close as the two gaze at the bridge. “Oh. . . it’s nothing, dear.”

---

Six months later, Jeremy Plass holds a picture frame in his hands as his father is lowered into the ground and the flag is raised.

There are two photographs in the frame. The first—on the left—shows a young soldier on a bridge, feet crossed, a small smile on his face as his eyes squint against the sun. The second photograph shows an old man on the same bridge, legs also dangling. His smile stretches a mile wide. Perhaps he is laughing. And his eyes. . . his eyes twinkle in a magical brilliance, somehow transcending time, place, and memory itself.

I wrote “Salerno” almost two years ago on the dot and shared it here at Along the Hudson. After some revision, I figured it was an appropriate time to dig it out from the archives and let it see some sun.

Thank you so much for reading today. I hope you enjoyed my story. More importantly, thank you to all service members who have fought and died to protect freedom and democracy both here and around the world.

And Happy Memorial Day to my American readers!

Please note: there will be no Fifties by the Fire this week. If you’d like to read the excellent fifty-word stories from our last get-together, please click here. We’ll resume as normal in two weeks.

Take care.