The Last Time I Saw You

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Rebecca Brown. The Last Time I Saw You

The Last Time I Saw You

Acknowledgments:

Contents

The Trenches

An Augury

Other

Trying to Say

The Movie

Pulled Up

A Ventriloquist

The Last Time I Saw You

Aspects of the Novel

Enough

Consolation

The House

Отрывок из книги

by Rebecca Brown

City Lights Books

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On the other hand, we could also wrap, if there was anything left of them, our own ragged bloody sleeves or pants’ legs or socks or whatever around our bloody stumps.

In The Trenches the guys could only “amputate”—we loved that word too—with their own knives or bayonets, which were steak knives or bread knives, blunt and bloody or serrated, as opposed to doctors’ knives which would have been sterile and sharp, but we had to do it all without medicine or anything to put you under. Only, sometimes, if someone had saved some, you could have a swig or a slug of rum or whiskey. One time someone actually did bring a bottle from their father’s house, Scotch Malt Whiskey, and we all tried it, even the girl. Her brother held her mouth open while the boy who was a few grades ahead of us poured it in, almost all of which I watched although at the very last I closed my eyes which I hoped no one noticed. But then right after that I very quickly drank my slug myself.

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