Fast Fiction: Stonebreakers
There were four men in the stonebreaking gang supervised by Stappe - and Stappe was a hated man. In this taut short story Richard Mallinson tells of the result of that hatred.
There were four of us in that group. Our useless task was to carry stones from one side of the field to the other and then break them up.
We had begun at six in the morning and it was now nine.
‘We must have a rest’ I said - but Stappe, who was in charge of us, growled, ‘Not until I say so.’
It was about eleven before he allowed us to sit down and have our cold tea and bread and cheese.
He sat apart from us, neither eating nor drinking but smoking small cigars. He hated us because we were the ‘intellectual types’ - inside for challenging the party line.
‘You are scum,’ he snarled, ‘and now get back to work.’
‘I would like to get to work on him,’ said Grepp, an editor.
‘Why don’t we sort him out?’ asked Hanning, a lawyer.
‘No talking there,’ yelled Stappe.
Henky, a tiny retired official, said, ‘Please let us avoid trouble.’
‘Didn’t I tell you to shut up?’ cried Stappe, pointing his revolver at Henky, who raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
At that moment Grepp got behind Stappe and smashed him on the back of the head with one of the larger stones.
Stappe went down.
No waiting to see if he was alive or dead we piled stones on him and then we went to the other side of the field.
From time to time we glanced across at the motionless heap.
We idled until the sun faded and the van came to collect us.
‘Where’s Stappe?’ asked the driver.
‘He got stoned,’ I said.
