A Short Story from the Feral Mind of Newt Livesay
WHAT DAY IS THIS
by Newt Livesay
Gerhard stood beside the grassy cliff with his last cigarette pinched between fingers that would not quite hold still. Exhaustion had hollowed his face beneath the stubble. His eyes burned. Every time he blinked, the lids wanted to stay shut.
He drew the smoke deep, held it until his chest hurt, then let it escape from the corner of his mouth. When the ember reached the paper near his fingers, he crushed it against a stone and tucked the butt into his jacket pocket. No cigarette ends on the post. No evidence for some clean-shaven bastard with a notebook to find.
The morning sun warmed the back of his neck without doing a damned thing for the cold inside his coat. He had been staring into the darkness over the water since one o’clock. Now, with eight approaching, the sea lay exposed beneath a pale sky, blue-gray and restless. Waves broke against the beach below, fell back through the shingle, and came again. Salt filled his nostrils. Somewhere behind him, a loose piece of sheet metal knocked against concrete whenever the wind shifted.
He scanned the sector the way they had drilled it into him until it became automatic. Left flank first—the dark smear of the next bunker, the wire that ran down to the high-water mark, the open ground that any landing party would have to cross under fire. Then the beach itself. Then the waterline. Then the empty horizon. He did it again. And again. The rifle stayed light on his shoulder only because he no longer felt the weight of anything except the ache behind his eyes.
Two men worked along the beach, fifty yards apart. Their heads were down, their eyes searching the wet sand for disturbed ground, washed-up debris, anything that had not been there on the previous round. One stopped beside a dark object near the tide line. Gerhard lifted his rifle from the parapet and watched.
The man prodded it with his boot. A length of seaweed rolled over. He moved on.
Gerhard lowered the Mauser. His shoulder ached where the sling had rubbed through the skin. He shifted the weapon, felt the raw stripe pull, and settled it again. The pain was useful. It kept him awake.
A flock of gulls passed north over the water, wings scarcely moving. He followed them until they dwindled against the sky. He envied their freedom. Nothing stopped them at a railway platform. Nobody demanded papers or asked why they were leaving.
He thought of his wife and children. Were they up yet? Had the boys eaten? Was there anything left for breakfast besides bread shaved thin enough to see through? His older son used to complain about the crust. Gerhard wondered whether he still did.
It had been more than two weeks since the last letter. He had read it until the creases softened and one corner tore away. His wife had written that the baby was healthy. A daughter. Dark hair, a loud cry, and two brothers who argued over who would hold her first.
He had never laid eyes on her.
He pressed his fingers against the breast pocket beneath his coat. The letter was there, inside an envelope he had wrapped in a scrap of waxed paper. He could picture his wife at the kitchen table, bending over the page after the children were asleep. The single lamp. The cold floor. The way her handwriting grew smaller when she was tired. He could not picture the baby’s face. That was the part that worked at him when the guns were quiet.
Given leave, working trains, and a little luck, he might reach home in thirty-six hours. He had counted the connections so often that the station names came to him more readily than the words of the prayers his mother had taught him.
But there was no leave.
There was work, guard duty, and another order to make the defenses stronger. More wire. More concrete. More holes in the ground. He was tired of carrying things until his arms shook, tired of food that tasted of scorched cabbage and old grease, tired of thirty men breathing and coughing in quarters where the roaches came out as soon as the light went off. He had forgotten what it felt like to sleep without somebody’s boots inches from his face.
Sunday had taken eighteen hours out of him. Four and a half hours of broken sleep followed, then a hand on his shoulder and a voice telling him to get up. Back on watch at one. Still here at nearly eight. The hours had stopped meaning anything except the next order and the next stretch of concrete under his boots.
He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. For a moment, the beach tilted.
He caught the parapet and stood very still until it settled. The rifle stayed locked against his side. He forced his breathing slow and even, the way they taught men to do when the body started to fail the mind.
Tomorrow night, he told himself. Finish the watch. Wait until the men coming off duty had gone below. Slip through the rear service entrance before dawn on Wednesday and start east.
The plan had come to him in pieces over several sleepless nights. Now it occupied every spare corner of his mind. He knew how easily it could fall apart. A sentry might ask one question too many. A patrol might stop him before he reached the first village. His papers would tell them where he belonged. The wrong answer at the wrong checkpoint and the whole thing would end against a wall with a cigarette still unlit in his pocket.
If they caught him, they could put him against a wall. He had seen the notices. He had seen men reading them in silence, pretending the names meant nothing. He had watched one of those men later, standing very straight while the officer read the sentence, and then the man was gone and the wall was just a wall again.
© 2008–2026 Newt Livesay – All Rights Reserved.
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His stomach tightened. He swallowed and looked toward the inland road. The road was empty. It always was at this hour. That emptiness was the only thing that made the plan feel possible.
He had to see his family.
Boots sounded behind him, striking the concrete walkway in a tired, uneven rhythm. Gerhard straightened and brought his rifle against his side. Twelve men came around the bend, their equipment knocking against buckles and belt hooks. The corporal at their head looked him over without breaking stride.
“Anything?”
“Nothing to report.”
The corporal glanced toward the beach, then motioned the detail onward. One man stepped out beside Gerhard. The other eleven continued downhill toward the lower positions, their footsteps fading beneath the surf.
“Good morning, Gerhard.”
Gerhard nodded. “Günter.”
His friend set his rifle against the concrete long enough to tighten the strap on his helmet. He studied Gerhard’s face, then rested a hand on his shoulder.
“You seem exhausted.”
“I am.”
“You look worse than yesterday.”
“Then stop looking.”
Günter gave a short laugh, but his hand stayed on Gerhard’s shoulder. “Have you eaten?”
Gerhard shook his head.
“Go get something to eat. Then rest. I’ve got this.”
Gerhard pushed away from the parapet. His knees resisted the movement. For a second, he had to lean on the rifle.
“Easy,” Günter said.
“I’m standing.”
“That’s a generous description.”
Gerhard managed a weak smile. “Okay. By the way, do you have a cigarette?”
Günter searched one pocket, then another, and produced a crushed packet. He eased out a bent cigarette and tried to straighten it between his fingers.
“Best I can do, my friend.”
“It’ll burn.”
Gerhard took it carefully. He dared not tell Günter what he intended. His friend might try to stop him. Worse, he might understand. Then, when the questions started, Günter would have something to hide. Friendship was a liability once the field police started asking names.
“Thank you, Günter. You have been a good friend.”
Günter’s smile faded a little. “‘Have been’?” He tipped his head. “Are you going somewhere, Gerhard?”
Gerhard felt the blood rise beneath his collar.
“No. No. Just saying.”
Günter watched him for another moment. Down on the beach, one of the patrolmen called to the other. Both men turned toward the sound.
“Get some sleep,” Günter said at last. “You’re talking like a man who needs it.”
Gerhard nodded. His match snapped on the first strike. The second caught. He cupped the small flame against the wind and drew until the cigarette glowed.
Günter hoisted his Mauser onto his shoulder and faced the water. Gerhard started along the walkway, boots scraping where he could no longer lift his feet cleanly. At the bend, he looked back. His friend stood where he had stood all night, coat pulling against his legs, watching the empty sea.
“Gerhard?”
He stopped.
Günter turned sideways, squinting into the morning light. “What’s today’s date?”
Gerhard had to think. The shifts had run together. So had the days. He counted backward through the long Sunday, the short sleep, the hand shaking him awake.
“June fifth,” he said. “June 5, 1944.”
Günter grunted, as if the answer confirmed something he already knew, and turned back to the water. Gerhard waited a beat longer, then continued down the walkway. The concrete was cracked in places where frost and shell concussion had worked at it over the months. He placed his boots carefully, counting the steps the way a man counts ammunition when the belt is nearly empty. Each step took him farther from the cliff and closer to the only decision that still belonged to him.
At the rear service entrance he paused. Two sentries stood under the overhang, sharing a cigarette between them, their rifles leaned against the sandbags. One of them looked up, eyes narrowing against the sudden light from outside.
“You’re early off the cliff,” the man said.
“Günter relieved me.”
The sentry nodded and waved him through. The second man did not look up from the cigarette. Gerhard stepped into the relative dark of the corridor. The air changed at once—damp concrete, unwashed bodies, the faint metallic tang of gun oil and the sour smell of men who had not washed in days. He moved past the first set of bunks without looking at the faces. Most of the men were still sleeping or pretending to. Someone snored with a wet, broken rhythm. Someone else muttered a name in a dream. Boots and packs lay in the narrow aisle where men had dropped them without the energy to stack them properly.
He found his own narrow space, sat on the edge of the straw-filled mattress, and unfastened the rifle sling. The leather had left a raw stripe across his shoulder. He set the Mauser carefully against the wall, barrel up, the way they had been taught, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. The cigarette was already half gone. He smoked the rest of it in silence, staring at the concrete floor between his boots.
The letter pressed against his chest. He did not take it out. He knew every word. He could recite the station sequence in his sleep: the local train to the junction, the long wait on the platform with the smell of coal and wet wool, the express that would carry him east if the tracks were still open. Thirty-six hours if nothing went wrong. A lifetime if something did. He had mapped the checkpoints in his head, the places where papers were checked hard and the places where a tired corporal might wave a man through if the man looked like he belonged.
He closed his eyes. The beach tilted again behind the lids. Waves, shingle, the gulls disappearing north. The baby’s face he could not invent. The wall they would stand him against if the plan failed. He opened his eyes again and forced the images back into the dark.
A voice from the next bunk: “You look like death, Gerhard.”
He turned his head. The man was sitting up, rubbing sleep from his face with both hands. Keller. Young, still believing the war might end in something other than dirt.
“I’ve been on the cliff,” Gerhard said.
“Anything out there?”
“Water. Gulls. Two men walking the tide line.”
Keller nodded as if that were useful intelligence. “They say the weather’s turning. Storm coming in from the west. ”
Gerhard said nothing. He had heard the same talk before. Weather was always coming. Storms always threatened. The sea remained empty.
Keller swung his legs over the side of the bunk and reached for his boots. “You should eat something. There’s still some of that cabbage left if you can stand it.”
“Later.”
Keller shrugged and began lacing his boots. Gerhard lay back carefully, boots still on, and folded his hands across his chest. The letter crackled once under the pressure of his palm. He kept his eyes open a little longer, listening to the sounds of the billet, the low coughs, the scrape of metal on concrete, the distant knock of the sheet metal outside whenever the wind shifted.
Tomorrow night, he thought. The rear entrance. East. He would leave the rifle. He would take the letter. He would walk until the first train and look like a soldier who belonged wherever the train was going.
Outside, the sheet metal continued its irregular knocking against the concrete. The sea kept working the shingle. Somewhere far inland, trains still ran on tracks that might or might not be open by Wednesday. He did not pray. He simply held the date in his mind the way a man holds a last match in a high wind.
June 5, 1944.
He closed his eyes again and waited for the few hours of sleep that might still be left to him before the next hand shook his shoulder and the next voice told him to get up. The cold inside his coat did not leave. It never did.
Gerhard slept, if it could be called sleep, with one hand resting on the letter and the other curled loosely around the imaginary shape of a ticket he did not yet have.
He dreamed of his wife, and his children, as his mind faded towards sleep, and dreams of tomorrow.
THE END
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© 2008–2026 Newt Livesay – All Rights Reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents or products of the author’s, imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Please repost with full attribution to the author and copyright holder.”
