Cossacks and Bandits

I grew up in a village built on coal and labor. An outhouse on a dirt road by a water pump glared at the whitewashed fences of uniformed yards that gaped like broken teeth in the mouths of miners. All summer we played Cossacks and Bandits, shot our symbolic rifles and revolvers and when killed would crush a wild cherry in the breast pocket, the spot where the heart stopped. Who started it? The red spreading over white satin never to be washed away completely, “I killed you! I killed you!” I screamed as he fell down. Men found him three years later in the abandoned mine after an explosion, his clothes covered with coal dust and blood. Women howled like wolves. “It’s nothing, he’ll get up,” I thought, “it’s just that stupid wild cherry on his shirt.”