Chapter 7: What Harran Was

Meredith's POV

He didn't answer me at the gas station.

Floyd said, "Ask me later, Mer," and he got Grandpa back into the Buick, and he drove us home with both hands on the wheel.

The man in the army jacket had stood at the pump with his hand still up when we pulled out.

I sat in my room until midnight with my laptop on my knees.

I typed in the one word I had.

The first page was nothing. The second page was a forum thread about an old war, and in the fourth reply somebody wrote about a bridge at Harran.

I clicked.

A column of civilians had been trapped at the river, four hundred and twelve of them, with women, old people and children.

A company of armed men had been coming up the road behind them.

The bridge had been wired to drop at dawn.

The post said one American stayed behind on the east end when his unit pulled out, and he held it for eleven hours.

The writer didn't know his name.

A liaison officer who watched it from the hill had radioed in the morning and called him Kijin.

It was a Japanese word. I looked it up.

It meant demon.

I closed the laptop, and my hands were cold.

Then I remembered the tow driver who had never raised his voice in five years.

He had sat at my father's table and let my brother pat his face.

He had eaten roast beef while my aunt asked if he had brought his own wrench.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My In-Laws Mocked the Tow Driver, Until They Learned I Was Kijin from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.