Response 6

Billy tried to do as he was advised even after the war. He would wake up and shave his face, then look into the mirror to see if he still had good posture. It didn’t matter and he knew it. Billy would be shot in a few years regardless of what he did. Still, it made him feel better. Billy lathered his face and began to lightly stroke the razor to his cheek. The Tralfamadorians said that Billy, that everyone really, was a machine. Billy did indeed feel mechanical as he went through his morning routine without even having to think about what he was doing. A sharp prick brought Billy back to his human self. The froth on his face turned from white to red as a drop of blood landed on his outstretched hand.

Roland Weary was bleeding. One of the studs on the knuckles of his knife had cut into his leg when he tripped over the log. It was a good thing that the knuckles cut him and not the blade Weary thought. If the blade had cut him, it would have never healed and Weary would have died. So it goes. One of the scouts laughed at this. Apparently he didn’t realize what the shape of Weary’s knife could do. Billy sliced part of his sleeve off and wrapped it around Weary’s cut. It turned from white to red as a drop of blood landed on his outstretched hand. Out in the woods someone screamed.

Billy sat upright kicking the man sleeping like a spoon next to him. Someone was screaming in the back of the car. “What the hell was that for?” the man Billy kicked asked. “Someone is yelling,” Billy replied. “You should talk, you do it too,” the man Billy kicked grumbled.

Montana Wildhack yelled. Billy blinked, realizing that he wasn’t on the train anymore. She was getting closer to having the baby. Billy was an eye doctor, not a baby doctor and he wondered he could deliver a child. He also wondered if the Tralfamadorians would help. Would the Tralfamadorians know how to deliver a human child? Where did Tralfamadorian babies come out of? “Relax its not here yet,” Montana Wildhack assured Billy.

Billy Pilgrim watched as the prisoner paced from one end of the guard stand to the other, and then back again. “He is going to try to make a run for it isn’t he?” Edger Derby asked from beside Billy. They were painting today. Billy’s hands were speckled with grey-green paint. Billy pretended he didn’t hear Derby’s question and continued painting his wall. He knew the prisoner would not make it past the guards. The prisoner had stolen a revolver, the old kind that needed to be reloaded after every shot, but the prisoner did not know that. Billy watched out of the corner of his eye as the prisoner drew near the first guard, pulled the hammer back, and shot. He missed and dove behind an assortment of wooden boxes as the guards gathered themselves and returned fire. He crawled to the end and raised the revolver to fire again. Click. Nothing happened. Bang! The guard’s rifle worked just fine. The prisoner went limp. So it goes. Billy kept on painting. Billy wanted his wall to look pretty when the bombers came in three days.