The Dealer and the Dead

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They were right, and he knew it… but he could not admit it to them.

Petar’s boy had started, had nagged at it, then Tomislav’s son had taken it up, and now it was Andrija’s cousin who voiced the obvious. ‘We are here too long, sir… We should have been well gone… Sir, we have to accept it. It is in our faces and an idiot could see it.’

The respect they showed him waned with each minute they stayed huddled and bent low, trying to find some minimal shelter from the rain. The corn, which had ripened two months before and had not, of course, been harvested, offered no refuge from the cold and wet that engulfed them. They respected him because he had taught them basic lessons at the village’s school, adding and subtracting, writing and reading, with a degree of discipline. He sensed that their respect had almost run its course – but he would not admit to them that they were right and he was wrong.

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