Rifle and Pg
Quotes 1. “Before leaving a corpse, Elijah tells me he has taken to opening each man’s eyes and staring into them, then closing them with his calloused right hand, letting a strange spark of warmth accumulate deep in his gut each time that he does it, noting the colour of the iris knowing that he, Elijah, is the last thing that each will see before being placed into the cold mud and water here. Before they go to their place.” (pg 200) 2. “He walks back to the dugout, his anger watered down by fear.” (pg 146) 3. “He stood and ran with the others, shooting from the hip, too close to use his scope, and joined the rest of the men around him in bayoneting the frightened Hun until the survivors ran from their trenches and down toward the Douai Plain, Elijah carefully and casually picking them off as they ran. It is as if I was not even there, as if I did not do as much as him in the attack.” (pg. 243) 4. “Those who aren’t collected we bury as best we’re able in the trench sides when they begin to stink and swell. I make sure to thank them for helping to strengthen the trench line, tell them that even in death they are still helping.” (pg 81) 5. “I fought like a lynx then, scratching at his eyes with my fingernails, biting him through his thick coat so that he screamed in shock and pain.” (pg. 92) 6. “”We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the one facing what we do to the enemy.” (pg 59) 7. “A rifle shot explodes and the child goes still, a red hole punched in her chest by the bullet.” (pg 283) 8. “To know that you have desecrated the ones you love, that you have done something so damning out of a greed for life that you have been exiled from your people forever is a hard meal to swallow, much harder to swallow than that first bite of human flesh” (pg 242). 9. “You have gone mad. There is no coming back from where you’ve traveled.” (pg 210) 10. “In the long hours of hunting Elijah tries to understand what is