Hero

by Glenn Kershaw

It was just a nail. Rusty, dark red, deep brown and bent as if pulled out of a plank, straightened and hammered back in, time after time. Its flat head was tilted, I thought, at a rakish angle. It had seen life, been hammered by “events”, but had come out the other side and now looked at the world with a benevolent, if slightly jaundiced, eye.

The body had been eaten away in the middle. To my left, lying on the sawhorse basking in the sun, were its brothers. Recalcitrant at first, I’d straightened them all out, such was my financial state, and laid them out ready for re-use, fodder for my hammer. But as I examined this one, though it had given up years of selfless service for us, I felt the bite of bitterness. How could I tell the jaunty little fellow that, like a returning soldier who’d lost a leg or whose wounds were invisible, it was no longer useful? How could I tell him that? So, despite the times I found myself in and the pressures burdening me, I tossed him into the recycling bag, where he lay on the bottom on his own, looking lonely. His red and brown corpse standing out amongst the white plastic.

But how could I, of all people, abandon a friend in need, I reached in, hearing the crinkle of the bag as I returned the nail to the light. I gave him the St Crispin’s Day speech, the one that’d gotten me all misty when I’d signed up. Then I worked on him, did my very best, as I always had done, right up to the loud, “crack” that had changed my future. I tried as best I could, as they had tried as best they could, to straighten it, make it fit for service.

And so, with my “troop” of nails in my hand left, I made the effort to get to the fence. One by one, they went home. Their bodies lying deep in the woody embrace of the old wood, and their silver heads looking like a fine row of medals. Each time I struck, the world went black momentarily, except for a flash of light. Over time, I came to my little friend. I placed him gently, carefully. Gave him a smile as I raised my arm. But it was my left, and I miss-hit. I caught him on the side, a silver snick amongst the brown. He broke in two, hung there, bent over by his guts. The hammer slipped through my fingers, striking the ground like a body striking the dirt. Tears poured, streamed from my eyes. He had failed. We had failed. They had all failed.

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Glenn Kershaw has a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing and his stories have been published in the New England Review, University of Technology Sydney’s Writers’ Anthology, Macquarie University’s student magazine - Grapeshot, twice in their literary magazine - The Quarry, Australian Reader, StylusLit, Antipodean SF and Bewildering Stories.