Lineage(4)

“What are we doing, Mama?”

The boy’s mother swallowed painfully, and her stomach growled beneath her woolen shawls. She glanced at her husband and pursed her thin, waxy lips together into a tight line. When she looked down at the small white face of her son, her resolve almost broke. She had to resist the urge to grab him up in her arms and run as fast as she could away from the ditch in front of them. Away from the men with guns. Away from the smell in the air that never truly dissipated. And when she thought about what that smell was, what she was breathing into her lungs, it was almost too much to bear.

Instead she smiled her painful smile and blinked her still-beautiful eyes. They were brown, like her son’s, and even with all they had witnessed, they still held a glint of life and nearly forgotten dignity. “We’re going away, my baby.”

The boy seemed to consider this. The camp was all he had ever known. His very first memories were of the fences that surrounded it, the cold that never seemed to abate, and the uniforms the dark men wore.

“Away where?”

His mother again looked to his father imploringly. After a moment he nodded and turned toward his son before speaking.

“It’s a beautiful place. The sun shines each day, and there is so much food to eat, we’ll never be hungry again.” His father smiled once more and reached out to caress his son’s face, but his movements made several of the soldiers yell and pull up their weapons, training them on his back. With his brow pulled together and the smile still on his face, his father dropped his hand to his side and stepped back to face the ditch.

The boy knew better than to run to his father’s side; he had seen what the soldiers did to those who disobeyed them. So instead, he was content to hold his mother’s bony hand in his own and imagine the place that his father had described. It was nearly beyond his comprehension, but after a time he was able to see a valley bathed in golden light with tables, long and low, filled with food. It wasn’t the food that he ate here, not the gruel, strained through screens of boiled bones from animals he didn’t know. It was the food his mother had told him of, food he only knew existed by his faith in her words. Fresh bread and cheese, milk in tall glasses, and cookies, mounds and mounds of cookies. He had had a cookie only once; his father had bribed it from one of the soldiers after a meager dinner. It had been cold and hard, but it was the most wonderful thing he had ever eaten. He was still imagining the taste of it when he heard boot steps approaching through the snow and mud from behind the line of people.

The officer with the silver SS on his collar stopped a few yards from the ditch and the people that lined it, and then stood looking at their backs. He glanced to his left and nodded a quick approval to his Blockwart, who in turn dipped his head and stepped back several steps.

The officer’s heart was beginning to pump at a quickened pace, as it always did. It had been some time since he had allowed himself release. Only so much could be tolerated from a commanding officer, even in a place such as this. If too many rumors were to reach the wrong ears, the solidity of his command would be questioned. But now that the end was this close, why not? He could hear the storm that would soon sweep through the camp to the west, and when it did, none of this would matter. It was a deeper stain within an already-bloody wound.

He looked to his right and left, making eye contact with the soldiers standing there. He made sure they understood why they were positioned where they were, and then approached the first figure in the long line. It was a man with fairly wide shoulders and an upright posture. He stood with purpose, with dignity. The officer nodded to himself and looked down at the white snow beneath his feet, unblemished and pure.

The officer stopped several feet behind the first man and waited. He could tell the man had heard him approach. He knew the prisoner wasn’t one of the already-broken by the way the man’s hands were balled into fists. The officer’s eyes narrowed and his breathing slowed as the man before him turned his head slightly. The prisoner’s shoulders slumped somewhat and the officer heard him exhale. Good, the officer thought as his hands rested on the black handles at his waist, at least we’re on the same page.

In a clumsy swinging motion, the man at the head of the line turned and lunged at the officer behind him. His gaunt face was drawn tight in a grimace of hate, and the anticipated blow, either from a fist or a bullet. The officer took one step back, and there was a flash of silver in the winter light. The man who had rushed him stopped as if he had hit a wall and straightened, his hands flying suddenly to his throat in a gesture of surprise. The prisoner licked his lips and his eyebrows drew down in a scowl of concentration. He pulled one hand away from his neck, and then the other. He blinked several times, but when he licked his lips again, there was blood on them.