Ashes (11 page)

And the men who rolled the body into the
fires wouldn't stop to check the sex of the corpse. Why should they
care whether the label said "Virginia Marie Wadell" or "James
Rothrock Hampton"? To the corpse-burners, dead was dead and ashes
were ashes. And a job was a job.

They had no respect. Unlike Gaines.

He had handled Mother's funeral arrangements
himself, insisting that the Wadells were a family and always took
care of their own. Everyone understood. Why shouldn't a son give
his mother a last loving farewell? Gaines performed his magic, and
the funeral was beautiful. Over two hundred attended, and all of
them wiped away tears.

Except Gaines. He never cried at a service.
He had kept his head bowed in perfect reverence. He solemnly shook
the hands of the mourners. Though he was a firm believer in burial,
he would follow mother's wishes and have her remains cremated. At
least that's what he told the family friends.

But now they were gone, the last condolences
bestowed, and Gaines had the parlor all to himself again.

He turned on the light in the back room. The
work table gleamed with antiseptic purity, a chrome altar. His
tools and blades and brushes were lined to one side, awaiting his
masterful touch. A small shiver wended through his gut, a thrill of
ownership, a rush of pride.

He trembled as he opened the refrigerator. A
fog of condensation surrounded him as he stepped into the cool air
of the vault. He went to the shelf where he kept the flesh he had
peeled from Father's face. Underneath the shelf was a three-gallon
container nearly full of blood. He lifted it onto the gurney and
rolled it out into the light.

He lifted the sheet. Her eyes were gone,
those eyes that had no Wadell in them. He had probably overlooked
some tiny shred of her damaged heart when he had removed it.
Perhaps some scrap of intestine had escaped his scalpel. He would
open her up again to check, before he drained the embalming fluid
and replaced it with Father's blood.

He would make her proud. He would make her a
Wadell. He would not rest until she was fit for rest herself. If
not tonight, he had tomorrow and forever.

And when she was finally perfect, then he
would allow himself to weep.

###

THE NIGHT IS AN ALLY

It was July 12, 1942, and the sky over
Jozefow had broken with high clouds under a sun the color of a
blood blister.

First Lieutenant Heinz
Wolfram exited the train at Sternschanze station as the cattle
doors wheeled open with a dozen rusty shrieks, allowing the reserve
policemen to exit from the same stinking cars that had transported
Jews to Berkinau and Belzec. The effort to make Lublin
judenfrei
had taken over
a
month and had sapped the energy of
Reserve Police Battalion 101. His men of Third Company were
haggard, tired, and their bellies probably grumbling like his.
Officers might have slightly better rations, but barely two years
into the war, shortages were a staple of every rank.

“
Herr
Oberleutnant
,” said a guard on the warped
wooden platform, raising his arm with a brisk stamp of his boot
heel.

Wolfram nodded to acknowledge the salute.
Rear guards hadn’t yet lost the crispness of their routines.
“Cigarette?”

The guard smiled and Wolfram shook one from
the pouch in the breast pocket of his gray tunic. He lit the
guard’s and then one for himself. The tobacco was Turkish, dark and
sinister like the people who had cultivated it.

“
Shipping
juden
?” Wolfram
asked.

The guard smiled from his pale moon face.
“Two thousand, maybe. Three. What’s the difference? The trains are
slow.”

“
Two trains per week.
Globocnik’s orders.”

The guard looked around,
comfortable in his post, the real war three hundred miles to the
east. “Globocnik? I see no Globocnik.” He leaned close,
conspiratorially, as if they were two friends in a beer hall. “I
don’t even know if Globocnik is real,
ja
?”

Globocnik, an SS police
leader, was rumored to have had personal correspondence with the
Fuhrer
himself. Globocnik, who had career
ambitions and sought a place on Himmler’s staff, had stepped up
relocation efforts after a German officer had been killed during a
police action against the Jews. The officer in question had died in
a drunken motorcycle accident, but the German leadership had never
troubled itself over accuracy when a larger purpose was served.
Martyrs were cheap, Wolfram well knew.

“
So it’s quiet here?”
Wolfram asked.

The guard shrugged. “I sleep. No one here has
guns.”

“
Good.” Wolfram drew on his
cigarette as the guard sauntered to the shade of the station’s long
platform.

“
Rest for now,” Wolfram
shouted at the policemen who had debarked the trains, busily wiping
their brows and sipping from steel canteens. They were mostly older
men, those not fit for combat but who had been pressed into some
sort of duty for the Reich. Though unfit for combat, Wolfram’s
platoon was organized, obedient, and well-trained.

Some, like Scherr there, the fat one, were
all joviality and bluster, full of the nonsense that came from
believing happy lies. Kleinschmidt, a sausage maker, complained
bitterly about his boots and the poor quality of the field
kitchen’s pork. Wassen had been a journalist and spent his evenings
writing letters to his family. Few of the men in Wolfram’s First
Company platoon thought beyond the immediate soldier’s concerns of
a soft bunk and dry socks.

At age 32, Wolfram had no career ambitions
himself; he thought only of his wife, Frieda, in the Hamburg
apartment with their four-year-old son Karl. Wolfram had headed a
small family lumber business and benefited from the initial lead-up
to war. When certain high-level officers began hinting that a man
like Wolfram was needed by the Fatherland, he enlisted in the
Reserve Police.

During 1941, Reserve Police Battalion 101 had
been largely concerned with stamping out partisan uprisings and
rounding up communist Russians in Czechoslovakia. Later in the
year, Jews were targeted as well. Wolfram had heard reports of
entire Jewish sections of cities being burned to the ground, and
truckloads of Jews occasionally disappeared. But such reports were
like the wind, and Wolfram had filed enough of them to know that
only a fool or a zealot dared speak the truth.

Scherr, his First Sergeant, approached
Wolfram as the train engine let out a long sigh of steam. The smell
of coal smoke briefly obliterated the cloying animal stench that
came from the cattle cars.

“
Shall I issue the orders?”
Scherr said all too eagerly.

“
Gather the men,” Wolfram
said.

Scherr obeyed, no doubt promising the men a
night in the barracks and the eventual arrival of rations. As the
forty reservists gathered around, Wolfram looked into their faces.
He was younger than most, and a good deal healthier. Less than a
third were Nazi Party members, and most were from the lower orders
of society: laborers, clerks, and street merchants. Some were as
old as Wolfram’s father, and one, Drukker, reminded Wolfram of his
own youth as he looked into the hard blue eyes.

“
We have been selected for
an unpleasant task,” Wolfram began, attempting to mimic the words
of Captain Herrmansbiel, his immediate superior. “The Jews here
have been involved with the partisans. Further, their discontent
has led to the
Amerikanner
boycott of Germany’s goods
and services. There’s even talk”—Wolfram wasn’t sure how to add the
next part without risking damage to morale—“that the Americans will
join England and Russia as allies.”

“
Mein
gott
,” came a voice from the rear ranks.
“
Fick der juden
.”

“
The Jews are confined to
the ghetto, and per standing orders, any attempting to escape will
be shot. We are to round up all the Jews and gather them in the
marketplace for processing. Healthy males of working age are to be
loaded onto trucks and transported to Lublin. Those who resist or
are too frail to march will be summarily executed.”

Scherr licked his lips. He’d already shown an
appetite for killing Jews and was always quick to volunteer when
there was the possibility of an organized firing squad. Wolfram
found him distasteful, but such men made the entire operation
easier to manage, and also required less of Wolfram’s presence
during the most brutal actions.

“
This duty is necessary, and
we must be strong,” Wolfram said. “I don’t want to see any cowards.
However, any man who doesn’t feel up to the task may step forward
now and be reassigned.”

Some of the men exchanged glances while
others stared at the ground. Someone coughed. The train engine
clanged. After a moment, Drukker stepped forward, shoulders
sagging.

“
Anyone else?” Wolfram
asked. Only Drukker met his gaze.

“
Very well,” Wolfram said.
“Drukker, you will help guard the train. The rest of you men,
proceed to the marketplace in the center of town. Scherr, give them
their orders there.”

Scherr grinned, saluted, called the men to
attention and led the platoon away. Wolfram lit another cigarette.
“Drukker, you will be happy later on. You might be the only one.
Before this Jewish business is over, the German nation will be
shamed in the eyes of God.”

“
Yes, sir,” Drukker said,
subordinate despite being nearly twenty years older than his
lieutenant.

Wolfram knew, as an officer, he shouldn’t
speak on equal terms with the men, especially on matters of
philosophy. After all, the truth could be construed as treason.
“Resettlement is a question of military efficiency, Drukker.”

“
Yes, sir.”

Wolfram tossed his cigarette off the platform
and checked his watch. He glanced at the forest that covered the
rise of land above the village. “We will be efficient.”

He walked into Jozefow. The village was
quiet, many of the Poles still sleeping under the thatched straw
roofs. Curling pillars of sleepy smoke rose from a few chimneys.
The men of Second Company had already fanned out to surround the
village, as per Hermmansbiels’s orders.

Already the shouts and cries
could be heard inside the narrow white houses of the Jewish
section. Scherr had posted four guards in the market
square
,
where the
Jews were to be collected. The other men conducted door-to-door
searches, and from a small stone house came a woman carrying an
infant. Hermmansbiel specifically stipulated that the infants were
to be shot along with the elderly. Gunfire erupted along the next
block, sending more cries into the morning sky.

Worker Jews were driven at bayonet point,
most with beards and thin faces, wearing long, filthy robes. They
had already suffered plenty of hardship, but nothing like what they
would see today, Wolfram thought. He saw Scherr lead a small
squadron of men into a long, low building that could have been a
hospital or an old people’s home. Automatic gunfire erupted like
popcorn kernels over a fire. Minutes later, Scherr and the other
reservists exited the smoky portal that led into the building. No
Jews accompanied them.

Nearby, Wassen stood leaning against a stone
wall. At his feet was a woman, a blossom of blood on the back of
her dress. Wassen dropped his rifle and knelt, vomiting. Wolfram
looked around to see if anyone noticed them. An old Jew, who might
have been a rabbi, gave a grim nod. Wolfram turned away and stood
over Wassen.

“
We have orders,” Wolfram
said gently.

“
I can no longer shoot,”
Wassen said, wiping his nose on his uniform and leaving a long,
greasy smear.

“
Are you out of
ammunition?”

“
I can no longer
shoot.”

Wolfram looked at the rabbi and the other
Jews huddled around him on the rough, pebbled street. “Join Drukker
on guard duty at the station.”

“
Thank you,
Herr Oberleutnant
.”

“
Efficiency,” Wolfram said.
“A man who can’t shoot is more useful somewhere else.”

More shots rang out. The men had been given
extra ammunition before the train rolled into the station. They
must have known this action was to be unusual. They must all have
suspected what was coming.

Scherr jogged up, breathless, his cheeks
flushed despite the heat. He appeared rejuvenated, years younger.
Blood dotted his boots. “We have about three hundred workers to
transfer,” he said. “And the others are ready.”

“
March the workers to the
station,” Wolfram said. “Are Second and Third platoons in
place?”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Continue the action.
Captain Hermmansbiel said this should take less than a
day.”

It was a job, a mission. Hermmansbiel had
delivered the order, probably doing the same thing Wolfram was
doing, the same as Scherr. Passing a command down the ranks. No
single man was responsible.

The worker Jews rose on command, flanked by
guards, and moved down the street. How accepting they are, Wolfram
thought. How dignified.

Then their sheepishness made him angry. He
had known a German Jew in Hamburg, an engineer who built parts for
milling machines. A fine craftsman who had shared some of his
people’s strange beliefs. Wolfram, a Lutheran, wondered if the
engineer had been relocated out of Germany with all the others. He
might even be among this crowd, being shuttled once again. If he
were still able to walk.