Little Soldier

Jake Morris
Soldier
3.30.2008 – Draft 2


**Prologue**
         Josef loved riding in father’s Cadillac Fleetwood.  The plush black leather rolled luxuriously out across the spacious back seat where he sat.  A wide space separated Josef from his sister Anne, who was staring contentedly out the shiny glass window.  Fall leaves collaborated to turn the street-sides into quaint piles of red and brown.  A cloudy blue sky fluttered calmly over Stuttgart, Germany.  It was September, 1940. 
“Mom! Make Josef stop.  He’s picking on me!”  Anne cried to the front seat as Josef playfully shoved her up against the car door.
“Am not.  She is just being a baby.  Little baby.”
“Stop bickering.  Both of you!”  Josef’s mother turned around and scolded the two kids in the back seat.  Her brown hair was rolled into curls in preparation for the night’s concert.  Kurt was in the driver’s seat, two hands on the steering wheel.  He looked up into the rearview mirror at his children.
“Listen to your mother.”  Josef glanced over toward his sister, a smirk on his face.  I won.  She mustered up enough twelve year old demeanor to shoot him back an icy stare. 
         As the car slowed, Josef looked up out the front wind shield.  Ahead, something blocked the winding road.  He watched his mother put a hand on Kurt’s knee as she sat up in her seat.  A tall German in a woolen green trench coat approached with a gun slung over his shoulder.  A red band clutched his bicep.  He gestured at them frantically, and Josef’s heart began to beat as he noticed the three trucks that blocked their way.
“! Jetzt! Verlassen Sie Ihre Dinge!” Out! Now! Leave your things!  Anne grabbed onto Josef’s arm in fright as Kurt tried to put the car in reverse.
BANG
         The German fired a shot into the air and Kurt held his hands up in surrender.  He would not risk them shooting his family.  The door was wrenched open and the bearded German threw Kurt forcefully to the dirt.  A cloud of dust billowed.  Anne screamed and tried to reach over to the seat to her mother.  All this time Josef watched, horrified.  Another burly man approached Anne’s door but before he got there Josef pulled up on the door lock next to the window.
“Mother, MOTHER, why are they doing this! Why!”  Anne wailed frantically as she pulled her knees up beneath her chin. 
         With the help of a third armed German the family was out of the car, and the three car doors sat open.  One guard wrestled with Josef as the boy clawed at his woolen coat.  The family was drug toward the side of the road.  Leaves crackled underfoot.  Flanking the military trucks were four cattle cars resting on railroad tracks.  Josef saw his wailing sister and mother be carried off toward a different car from over the German’s shoulder.
“Josee!” Kurt yelled.  His wife turned back, pain screaming from her eyes as she was thrown into the car.  Kurt fought against the two men pulling him.  That was the last image Josef had before collapsing into a pile of moving limbs in the smothering darkness of the car.
BANG
         The iron door was slammed shut behind him.

**Two Years Later**
Josef kicked at the cold ground as he waited in line for food.  Two packed inches coated the grounds of the concentration camp, and the midday sunshine did little to warm the barely dressed Jews and Poles.  Slowly the line ahead of Josef crept forward until he found himself standing inside of the ramshackle building that served as the kitchen.  Josef ran a hand through his black hair and stared up at the pale creature that handed each prisoner a slice of bread and a square of butter.  This man, a Jew working for the Germans, was named Salem.  His thin body seemed to slither up from his shoes and ended in a pointed nose that jutted pretentiously out toward the line of Jews. 
         Josef hated Salem.  Josef watched his father Kurt take a crusty piece of wheat bread and start to head out.  Chin up, Josef glared into the mercury black eyes of Salem and stuck out his hand forcefully.  Salem held out the piece of bread tauntingly,
“Not yet, boy.  I need water.  Go back to the kitchen and fetch me some.”  Salem nodded his head toward a hallway and added, “Be fast about it.”
Josef stepped around the counter and walked down the hallway.  He did not know where the kitchen was, but a guard stared hatefully at him, took his shoulder, and pushed him into a swinging door.  Josef found himself inside a small kitchen and grabbed a dirty cup from beside the sink.  No one else was in the room, and he glared longingly at the food stacked haphazardly along a back cupboard.  He knew that only an idiot or someone bent on self destruction would dare take anything. 
He spit in the cup, and filled it up with water from the hot faucet.  He swung back out into the hallway and looked into the white face of the German guard.  The guard stood as if his big mass felt a heightened sense of gravity.  Josef managed to catch a glimpse of a door near the end of the hall.  Sunlight seeped in through the cracks around the door frame.
Josef stepped back out into the common area, where several guards lounged and regarded the Jews with disdain.  Josef walked to the front of the line.  As Salem looked up Josef thrust the cup into his hand and grabbed his food before the startled man could voice complaint.  Hot water sloshed over the cup’s edge.
Kurt was waiting back outside, and looked up at him lovingly.  “Are you okay?  You’re looking a little thin.”  His father gave a short, wheezing laugh.
“No, it’s okay dad.  I’m okay.”  Josef tried to reassure his father as Kurt tore the crusty bread in half.
“Nonsense.  I’m an old man, and you’re a growing boy.”  Josef hesitated as he looked at the places where Kurt’s ribs poked out beneath his shirt.  He knew it would do no good to argue with his father.  He shoveled the bread into his mouth and swallowed.

**Six Hours Later**
         From outside, raucous laughter seeped through the thin white-washed wooden door.  Loud cries of drunken joviality caused Josef to look up from the small worn book he held in his hands.  Looks like the guards are having a good night. He thought.           
         Josef shivered, and covered his mouth as he let out a panting cough.  His thirteen year old, underfed body seemed to sag beneath the weight of the white gown he wore, and his jaundiced cheeks rested slack below two shining brown eyes.  These eyes were fixed intently on the door.  Josef rose to his knees and glanced over his shoulder.  Kurt was sitting a ways back in the small space between the many rows of beds that lined each wall.  Josef walked to the door and made sure his Kurt’s gaze had not found him.  He did not want his father to know what he was up to.  He stepped out into the night.
         Cold air buffeted his thin gown and another shiver wracked through Josef, unnoticed.  Josef ran slowly around the back of the barn-like barracks.  He did not taste the rancid smell of defecation or oblige the smattering of oblivious stars that shone in the black skies above Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Josef was on a mission. 
Separating the men’s and woman’s camps was a four track railway guarded on either side by a tall fence.  Josef was in front of this fence now.  A fresh layer of snow had settled on the barbed wire and gave it the deceiving appearance of white lace.  Josef ignored the December cold as he passed a large smoking building, unaware of the implications of the heavy gray cloud.  He ran a hand along the outside of the building and crouched down as he rounded the corner.
         Up ahead a beaten path led to a door between two lit windows.  Josef could hear the commotion inside.  He stayed on the outskirts of the shadows and went around the left to the back of the building.  The snow crunched lightly underfoot as he crawled beneath the windowsill.  On the backside of the building two stairs led to another door.  Looking up at it in the night, it looked to Josef like a huge, yawning mouth.  He thought this was the back entrance to the kitchen he had seen earlier.  He placed a tentative hand on the door handle and turned.  It clicked.
The door swung open into a small, dark room.  Laughter rang from further inside the complex.  Josef was scared now.  He quickly realized this was different than a tale by The Brothers Grimm.  He imagined what would happen if he were caught.
I’m already this far… Josef took a slow, deep breath and tried to acquaint himself.  He stepped out into the dark hall and walked lightly past two more doors.  The wooden floor-boards groaned angrily with each step, and Josef nearly cried out as sharp ringing laughter filled the dark hall.  It was from an adjacent room, and he quickly scampered past the last door, and swung into the kitchen.  He found himself bathed in light.
His first glance froze him rigid in his shoes.  A bulky figure in a green trench coat slumped against the stove in the center of the kitchen.  Josef was facing this slumbering behemoth, and the beating of his little heart exploded like flak in the night sky.  Josef walked slowly toward the brawly German guard.  His black helmet sat like an upright turtle beside him, and his arms were splayed open as if ready to capture Josef in a hug.  His right hand clutched a bottle of alcohol, and as Josef walked slowly closer the smell of sulfurous-liquor laden breath poured from his partially opened mouth.  Then, Josef noticed his gun, the shining black Luger pistol, and the little satchel on his belt that protected his keys.  Torn with indecision, fear, and a racing mind, Josef first walked over to the cupboards, and frantically gathered two loaves of bread and a jar of marmalade.
A grunt made Josef spin around in fright.  Josef looked silently at the bulbous man whose eyes were still closed.  He tiptoed back toward him and set his bread on the floor.  A thin stream of drool poked curiously from the side of the guard’s mouth.  Josef went to one knee and reached slowly toward the man’s belt, which had the arduous task of containing his bulging belly.  Josef clicked open his key pouch and winced as the metal keys jangled.  He then popped open his holster.  The man’s arm weighed down on the weapon and Josef had to take care to maneuver the weapon from his pouch.  The pistol was heavy in his hands.  He gathered the bread and stood up.
Back outside, he sprinted carefully towards the barracks.  The snow had partially filled his set of footprints, but they were easy enough to follow with the light from the nearly full moon and stars above. 
The door to the barracks teetered open and Josef poked his head through.  A sea of similar bodies, old men, young men, little boys, moved lethargically within.  He was paid little heed.  He poked his head around the edge of the door frame and yelled to his father, who was still sitting in the same spot, playing absentmindedly with a worn deck of cards.
“Kurt… Father!  Come here!”  The name brought recognition and soon his father was out in the night with him.  Josef revealed the stolen food that had been awkwardly stuffed inside his shirt.
“Where did you get this?” Concern played wrinkles on his wearied face and the gray cloud of scruff on his cheeks seemed to become even paler.
         “Don’t be mad father.  Please.  It was from the kitchen.  You haven’t eaten…”
         “We can’t be seen with this!  Wait… what is that?”  Kurt pulled out the sinister black Luger, grasped its contoured handle, and nearly dropped it, horrified. 
         “How…” Bewilderment flooded into his eyes.
         “I found it on a drunken guard.  He didn’t wake up.  I have keys too!  We can get out of here together father!  And rescue Anne and Mother!”  Kurt opened his mouth, but speech did not find him.  He paused, silently.  What should he do?  He knew he was in no condition to leave.
         “Josef…”  He hugged his boy, and his eyes twinkled as he thought of being with Josee and his little angel daughter.

Soon, father and son came to the chain-locked fence that blocked the railway.  The railway that usually carted frightened prisoners in cattle cars would now send one child back in the other direction.  Keys were tested in the thick padlock, and it finally fell limp with a click. 
“Be brave, Josef.  And fast, just like the winter wolf.  Follow the rail to the far entrance of the women’s compound.  If it is too risky, flee to the forest north of here and wait in town.  I love you, you make me proud.”  With this he placed the heavy pistol into Josef’s small hand.  The bread was tucked beneath Josef’s left arm.  Tears froze in Josef’s eyes, two pools that bathed in the moon’s light. 
“Will I see you again father?”
“Of course.  It won’t be long before I am well enough to get out of here.  This will all be over soon, and the four of us will go home together.”  Kurt gave Josef a smile, and hoped he could not see through his hopeful promises.  The little boy was embraced for a moment, and for the last time father and son were together.  Josef ran through the fence, and headed down the dark tracks.  Kurt watched as every so often a guard lamp would reveal his boy passing from shadow to shadow, smaller each time.  Kurt knew that he would not see his son again, and that tomorrow the guards would line everyone up for count—that they would find the count one short.  He knew that this marked his final night in this terrible camp.  He knew that going with Josef would only put him in more danger, and that his frail body could not withstand the night.  He cried out that by some chance his family might not end up in ash, in the dark billowing gray cloud.
Collapsing to his knees in the cold snow, Kurt’s frail body heaved in dry sobs.  Hands were clasped in prayer.  His heart cried out to the distant lights that filled the black sky, as he pleaded for the life of his son.  And for Anne and his love Josee.  For the first time, Kurt felt a tiny kernel of hope.  Hope that maybe Josef could escape this endless winter.  Hope that maybe his wife and precious daughter would soon be safe somewhere. After hours, numb from the cold, barely able to move, Kurt stood to his feet.  He walked back to the barracks, back to the salted sea, to the memories of another time.  Outside, gray smoke and ash spewed ominously from a brick chimney.  Yet, for the first time, the light from the stars pierced the fading cloud and made it thin.