Cross the Line Prologue

Prologue

Bathed in warm candlelight, Bernie rested his head against papaw’s chest as they rocked. Shadows played across the muted walls, puppets to the candles’ flames stirring in the exhalation of a nearby heat register. A floorboard groaned softly as they rocked and the rhythmic sound relaxed him. The pull of sleep was getting stronger and he moved the photograph from his right to his left hand and rubbed his eyes. Papaw patted him on the head and placed his cigar in the ashtray.

“Sleepy?” papaw asked.

“No.” Bernie said quickly, lifting his head to show him he wasn’t. “I want to see more.”

Papaw smiled at him. He liked that. It made him want to smile too.

“Just one more. Then it’s off to bed for you comrade.”

Papaw Renke took another photograph from the shoebox and held it up.

“This one’s name was Junia.” he said, handing it to him.

He looked at the girl in the picture. Like most of the girls in papaw’s pictures she was naked. Bernie used to feel funny when papaw would show him his pictures but not anymore. He was a big boy now, almost seven, and papaw had said all big boys liked looking at pictures of naked girls.

A man wearing a uniform like the one papaw wore now stood next to the girl, one booted foot crossed in front of the other. Bernie had seen this man in some of the pictures before. Papaw had told him he was an old friend from back when it was a better world. He was holding a gun and had his arm around the girl’s shoulders, smiling to the camera.

Like all the girls, she was skinny. He could see ribs through her skin and her belly was sucked in. He wondered again what it would feel like to be that skinny. He once had stood in front of a mirror with his shirt off and tried to suck in his belly that far, but it didn’t look right because he could only suck in the front and not the sides. He pushed on his sides with his hands, but it started hurting too much and he had to stop before he could push them in very far. Bernie decided he was really glad he was a boy instead of a girl.

The girl’s small titties hung flat on her chest and he thought of the purple stocking cap hanging in his bedroom closet. He imagined the girl’s titties being that color, with a fuzzy white ball hanging from them, and he almost laughed. He was glad he didn’t though, papaw might not have liked that.

Behind the girl was a tall metal fence with a coiled wire that looked like a big stretched out Slinky on the top. Papaw had once told him that it was called razor wire and they used it to keep the bad people from getting away, the Jews and the others.

He couldn’t see her face very good because she was looking down. Her hair was short and he could see patches on her head where there wasn’t any hair at all, like it had been pulled out. It was dark gray in the picture, but Bernie knew it probably wasn’t really because papaw’s pictures didn’t have any other colors in them except gray and black. Not the pictures in this shoebox anyway. Papaw had promised him a few months ago that he could see his newer pictures, the color ones, on his birthday. He was excited because that was now only nine days away. He knew because he had a calendar and put an X on each passing day with a red marker every morning since papaw had told him this.

“What do you think?” Papaw asked.

Bernie stared at the picture a little longer before looking up at papaw. He was chewing on his cigar again, the silver whiskers on his chin moving up and down as he puffed. He liked the smell of papaw’s cigars but sometimes the smoke burned his eyes and they would get red and wet like he was crying. He didn’t like to cry. He was a big boy.

Papaw turned to him, still smiling.

"Isn’t she something?"

"Yes." Bernie said, knowing what that meant. "She's pretty."

"Isn’t she? She was one of my favorites. You wouldn't believe the fun I had with that one Bernie, just wouldn't believe it at all.”

Papaw was looking at the ceiling as he said this. Sometimes he did that for a real long time. After a while, papaw’s smile went away and Bernie decided this was going to be one of those times. He laid his head on papaw’s chest and closed his eyes, listening to the floorboard’s whispered lullaby as they rocked. He dreamed it was his birthday and he was blowing out the candles on his cake. Except instead of candles he saw they were slender gray bones, their tops splintered and painted yellow in an eternal, heatless flame.