This Is What Tyrants Do, Part 1 of 2

(In December 1851, Napoleon III, nephew of the great Bonaparte, staged a coup d'etat in Paris.) The child was dead. Two bullets in the head. The room was decent, humble, honest, clean. An Easter palm was pinned to some old print. A grandmother wept quietly in one corner. In silence, we took off the little boy's clothes. His bloodless mouth gaped open, and one eye stared wild, surprised, unseeing, drowned in death. His arms appeared to ask us, as they flopped, for help; one pocket held a wooden top. You could have put a finger in each hole. I don't know if you've ever seen a hedge with over-ripened blackberries; that's how the darkened clots appeared. His broken skull reminded me of firewood, split in two. The old grandmother watched us as we worked, saying, "How pale he is! Come near the lamp. Oh, God! His poor hair's sticking to his head!" Once we were done, she held him in her lap. The night was ugly. Shots were ringing still along the street. Others were being killed. "The boy has to be buried," someone said. A walnut cabinet gave up a sheet, but grandma wasn't ready. Not for that.