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The simple motion calmed Richard.
Up, down, in, out - not unlike the Atlantic, only a few feet past the tree break.
If the ocean was supposed to be audible, he couldn't hear it. Not over his own dull ears; and the scrape of his shovel. With one flesh and blood eye and perpetually smudged glasses, the hole he stood waist- deep in swam like a stirred pond at midnight, wavering and bottomless.
He felt his glasses slip down his nose, popping the tin seal free. Richard sucked his mouth dry - A gravelly sound even without vocalizing, as he wiped his hands on his pants. He unhooked his glasses, supporting the mask itself and laid it beside Jimmy.
Jimmy‘s neck craned away from the hole, his hands piled over his vest. A mockery of sleep; almost peaceful, if he could ignore the utter stillness, the crooked angle of his hips.
Richard couldn't.
Sixty two. Sixty two times, Richard had done it himself. Sometimes face to face ( like with the D'Alessios), sometimes a half mile away.
Jimmy's empty eyes watched the treeline, as if the Germans could burst forward at any second.
Richard rubbed the right side of his own face with his sleeve, and clambered out of the hole, pulling himself up by the elbows. He sat beside Jimmy‘s corpse, even the evening insects offering him a moment‘s quiet.
Richard stood, has a shadow looming over jJmmy, blocking what little moonlight reached the ground. He knelt and reached into the suit pocket. His hand felt nothing but cold, wet, hardening skin- like a slaughtered pig not yet butchered.
He patted down the pants pocket then rolled up the pant cuff to check the boot. No standard, brass-knuckled hilt caught the rainy starlight- just bloodless flesh.
He drew Jimmy‘s corpse into his arms-just barely starting to stiffen. Jimmy's boots clapped as Richard hauled him (it?) into his chest, the wet lapel bitter cold against his worn-thin undershirt.
He slid, ungainly in the dark and mud into the hole, weighed down. He laid Jimmy's corpse down flat, empty eyes skyward. The shadows added to the pair of entry wounds- like burial pits themselves. Each six feet deep.
Richard resisted the urge to thumb over them as he bent down. He cleared the cheek wound (probably survivable, Thompson pulled) on his way to the eyes, painfully aware of how he angled his own face to see.
He shut the blue eyes with two fingers, lightly.
He sucked his mouth dry, scratching his throat. Richard hummed a little to warm his jagged voice- something that offended certain company. „Finally got one to match.“
His voice hung, off the humidity as Richard swallowed. He wiped his hands again, and reached for his mask. The cloudy filter of his lens for the blurred the hole, almost nothing more than a hazy day below.