Ol' Walt

Two teenagers vehemently splattered every puddle they saw as they walked to school. The rain had let up an hour ago, but their pant legs didn’t show the difference. The one with the hood nudged the one with the sunglasses.

“Look at that old dude. Wonder if he’s psycho or something.”

“What’s he doing?”

Walt Jacobsen knew exactly what he was doing. In fact, he’d done it many times before today. Ever so delicately, because of his hands trembling under the toll of old age, he picked slowly writhing worms from the watery sidewalk and placed them in his other hand, which he intended to deposit in the planter box on his front porch. 

This was not like the times when he and Donny Clifford would collect nightcrawlers in an old soup can and jam them on fish hooks every Saturday morning. No shoes, no worries, and usually no fish, but then again, it wasn’t really about the fish. He and Donny became like brothers, which was great, because both of them only had sisters. 

No, this had been his routine after every downpour that resulted in the worms being strewn out on the sidewalk where just anyone could step on or roll over them.

Walt knew it wasn’t his fault; it was just dumb luck that he’d taken a Nazi slug to his thigh and Sarge wouldn’t take him back to the 47th. Donny would understand. They had made a pact that they’d enlist together, fight together, and come home together. Walt worked like a dog to get back his strength, and eventually got back to the unit in June of ‘44. 

So, while he never saw any action there, he did make it Normandy, but it was all over by then. Walt made it up the hill much easier than the soldiers he came to replace. Looking back down at the beach, he could see red patches where the fallen had bled out in the sand, and the sea was still tinged red. A hand on his shoulder turned out to be Sarge, who told him that one of those red patches had been where Donny–

And that’s why Walt picked worms off the sidewalk after the rains: so that there wouldn’t be any red patches.