day proceeds quietly around me, and somehow I wind up at the little bar with Charles that evening. “I might have found someone for you.”
Not that I am interested in this “friend” of Charles’s “someone,” but I ask, “And what’s my type?”
“Gorgeous. Likes baseball. He’s from Georgia, so he has the nicest way of speaking.” Charles taps the ashes of his cigarette in the light blue glass tray. “And he’s in construction.”
His smile spreads like it always does when he teases. The thing I like best about Charles is how undeniably happy he is. His life is filled with the same trials and tribulations as other people— probably even more than most—but through everything, he maintains a peaceful joy that he is excited to share with others.
“Don’t be coy with me, John.” Charles’s eyes narrow as he leans in close to me. His words are whispered now for dramatic effect. “I know you, and as much as you loathe to admit it, you want someone.”
“Don’t change the subject.” Charles pastes a bored look on his face as he makes a show of taking a drag from his cigarette. “You’re bad at it.”
He shakes his head. “I’m sure it had something to do with the beer you’re drinking or some ridiculous form of political rule somewhere in the South Pacific. Either way, it’s not on topic. You can’t fool me. I know you want someone. We all do. Who doesn’t want to have some strapping young man waiting for us when we get home, ready to ease away the day’s tension?”
“A construction worker can ease the day’s tension away?”
No matter what I say to Charles, there’s no denying it would be nice to have someone to share my life with. Coming home to someone who is always happy to see me would be pleasant. Having someone to discuss politics with at the dinner table would keep my mind sharp. It wouldn’t be bad to have someone like that in my life. Someone who cares when I wake up in the middle of the night screaming, drenched in sweat.
I finish my beer and push the bottle away from me, nodding to the bartender to indicate I’d like another. I can’t share my desires with my friend. He’s much too impulsive to handle it all delicately. I’d no sooner share my wish of having someone close to me, and he’d be off, finding the most beautiful men in California to come calling.
I don’t need beautiful men. I don’t
need
anyone at all, but I need least of all someone who would be more work than he is worth.
I decide to change the subject. “Did Liza say anything else about the German custodian?”
“Aha! Now we have the truth of it!”
I blink and draw my focus back on my redhaired friend. “Excuse me?”
The smile splits his face. He looks as he must have when he was a little boy on Christmas morning, but he refuses to answer me. When the nice-looking bartender brings me my bottle of beer, Charles proceeds to flirt with him, then buys two shots of whiskey. When the liquid is poured, my friend gives a parting smile to the man behind the bar and pushes one shot glass over to me.
“What’s this for?” I ask.
“Because now I know what to get you for Christmas” is his reply. I watch as he raises the small glass to me in a salute, then knocks back the amber liquid.
I touch the glass lightly and slowly rotate the shot. “And what’s that?”
“Your little German cleaning boy.” He stops when I give him a look. “Fine, the
man
who cleans the university.”
I look away and take my shot. The muscles in my face and throat tighten as it goes down. “And why would I want the German janitor for Christmas?”
Charles laughs loudly. It’s irritating, and I contemplate leaving. He must sense my mood because he quiets and places a light hand upon mine. His fingers pry mine off of the bottle of beer, and I realize how hard I’d been gripping it.
“We were talking about finding you someone to love, John, and then you spoke of him. You don’t see the connection?”
His gentle words and light touch do nothing to soothe the boiling emotions within me. Even when I think there is someone who understands, I find they truly do not. I pull my hand away and use it to bring the beer to my lips.
Charles seems to shrink beside me. I turn my focus onto my right hand, which is gripping the bottle of beer so tightly that I fear I may break it.
There is so much darkness in my mind; everything around me slips away into it. The night before we entered the camp is cold and dark. We know we are getting close to something big. The civilians around us are just odd. We’ve been seeing sickly people for days, but most of us think it’s due to heavy rationing. Some soldiers say they saw people in striped clothing, like that of prisoners, but I’ve seen none.
I can’t sleep. Over time, the body adapts to battle, sensing when something is coming up. Morning comes quick. I grip my M1 Garand tightly, the butt of the stock pressed against my hip. There are signs of the horrors to come, but I’m too anxious to do any more than notice them and move on.
Then the things I see make my stomach lurch. Bodies. No, not bodies. Just skeletons covered by skin.
Some of them move.
Now there are gunshots. Now there’s shouting. Now there are hands raised while my
finger squeezes tightly on the trigger. I’m not sure where my mind is, but my body is on autopilot. I see the uniform, and I shoot at it, regardless of who is wearing it and what they are doing.
Tears roll down my cheeks as my stomach clenches. What have I done?
When the firing stops—I’m unsure if I stop before or after the rest—the quiet overtakes me. I sit down in the dirt and filth. The men move around me.
I can no longer determine which ones are living and which ones are dead.
What have I done?
“John. John!” someone calls to my right. I turn to see five of my brothers helping prisoners who cannot stand. They are beckoning me over. They need me.
“John!”
I blink. When my eyes focus, Charles is in front of me. I’m in the little bar again.
I feel sick. I’m sweaty and can barely breathe. I take a look at the bar as I stand up. My beer is rocking back and forth. Charles’s hand grabs the bottle quickly to keep it upright. My jittery body rebels against my mind. I tell my body to calm down, to realize where I am, to allow me some form of dignity before everyone in the place begins to stare at me.
A cigarette will help. With shaky arms, I reach out and grab my pack of smokes. With nervous fingers, I am able to pluck out a cigarette and bring it between my lips, but I can’t seem to light it. I feel feeble when Charles stands up and takes my Zippo lighter from me, but I accept the help.
When I take the first full drag of the smoke, it does what I wanted it to do. I feel a little better.
I slap some money onto the polished wooden bar and stride quickly to the door. Charles is close behind. There is a certain kind of freedom that blooms within me as I step outside. My friend has brought the jacket I’d left in the place. I’m thankful to slip it on, as the temperature has begun to drop. It must be in the midforties now.
My combat unit was in Italy, where I found the weather very pleasant, but then we were in France and Germany, and it was not so pleasant. There were nights when we were bivouacked that I thought my fingers and toes would fall off from the cold.
Charles and I walk to my house, leaving my truck sitting fifty yards from the bar. We don’t speak the entire walk. When I step up, opening my screen door to my porch, Charles finally asks, “Do you want me to come in?”
I turn, looking him in the eyes. “No, thank you.”
“You look dreadful.”
I smile at him. “I feel better.”
“Liar.”
“I’m fine now, Charles. Go home or back to the bar and find someone young and fun.”
My friend gives me an expression of worry, then shifts his face into a friendly smile. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
When he leaves, I go inside, shrug off my jacket, grab a beer from the icebox, then sit down in my living room, staring at my weapons of war. I’d smuggled the Colt .45 home. Telling the officer I’d lost it in battle seemed to work almost too well. It came home in pieces stuffed all over my duffle bag and in the clothing I wore. Same with the Luger P08 I’d taken off of a dead German near Aschaffenburg.
I’d taken my bayonet as well, but I couldn’t smuggle the M1 Garand home. I bought one two years later, just to have the complete set. I wish I could have
my
rifle. The one that had saved me more times than I could count. The one I staked my existence on. The one I used to kiss on the front hand guard before heading out to the unknown each day.
The dream comes again tonight, just as I knew it would.
It’s different, but the same. I’m cold. It feels like the sun is shining on me, making me sweat under the heavy combat clothes I wear, but it’s overcast. The smell hits me before the visions do. No one in my company has to ask what it is. We all just know it’s sickness and death.
What we don’t know is that it’s all manmade.
My stomach lurches, and I cover my mouth with my hand when I see the first body. Nothing more than skin stretched over knobby bones. Dirty striped uniform lying on the ground next to a boxcar.
When the urge to expel what little breakfast I’d eaten subsides, I grip my M1 tighter and push forward with my brothers. We don’t speak, but I can tell all of those around me are thinking the same thing. Where there is one body….
Only a few feet later, we discover them. Piled inside, sprawled outside. Some in prisoner uniforms, some in nothing but the stretched skin that makes my insides churn. Tears escape. I look at my combat-worn friends and see that even the strongest of them has not been left unaffected.
David is not crying, he’s raging. His feet are carrying him fast, as they do in battle. His weapon is drawn. I call out to him, hoping to remind him of our orders, but he keeps going. I’m close behind. Before I can even process it, we’re inside.
David is screaming. My cheeks are cold as the wind whisks away the moisture leaked from my eyes. Everyone else is in shock. Maybe I’m in shock.
Some of us have weapons pointed at the German soldiers, whose hands are raised high above their heads. Others are staring, open mouthed, at the rotting corpses. There are too many to count. Some are piled high. Others are scattered, as if they just dropped dead as they walked.
Men in the same striped uniforms approach us. Many of us can speak German now. Even those who couldn’t can understand what they’re saying. There is a universal language of pain and suffering.
Firing starts. My lieutenant doesn’t stop it. I see him pushing Germans back toward the train. I feel like I should be doing something, but I stand here for a moment longer. Someone screaming, “No, no! I am—” in a German tongue causes me to swivel around. The man is dead before I finish turning.
As I see the striped skeletons moving, all those bodies on the ground are actually people. It dawns on me that these people were made to suffer in the worst ways before they were killed or left to die. No human could do this to another person.
I take aim. The smooth feel of the trigger beneath my finger calms my racing heart. I can make a difference. I pop one off. Then another. Then another.
And then there he is. On his knees. Hands laced behind his head. His pale blue eyes searching mine for something. Pity. Mercy. Kindness. Compassion.
But I have none. Entering this place has stripped me of my humanity and the only thing left is the primal urge to see these men bleed.
I take aim. My finger squeezes. He says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” in a voice I can barely hear. Something about the way he says it unfreezes my brain. I begin to think I shouldn’t kill him.
But my mind is too slow. My finger has already squeezed the trigger and the bullet flies out, hitting him with a thud in the middle of his forehead. Explosion of brain and blood, hair and flesh.
Then I move. Standing over him, I am struck with a chill that numbs my whole body. His blue eyes are open, staring at me. There’s a question upon his lips, but he’ll never ask it.
I squat down next to the soldier and rip open the jacket and shirt he is wearing. Buttons fly at me like bullets. There, on his chest is a triangle. Suddenly, a hand wraps around my forearm.
I sit up quickly, gagging. The bathroom seems a far distance tonight, and I can only make it to the sink before I vomit.
After cleaning up, I wrap myself in a warm wool blanket and drink coffee on my porch. Then I realize coffee won’t still my nerves. I take a shot of the whiskey Charles gave me on my last birthday, and I light cigarette after cigarette.
My friend telephones me in the late morning. I tell him I am fine and will be on campus today, as promised.
The whiskey is burned out of my system after a hot shower and a cold walk to my truck. I’m distracted during class, and at the library with Charles. We are supposed to be working independently on our projects, but my eyes keep a constant study of the entry way, and his keep a constant study of me.
After we’ve sat there for at least an hour, Charles finally opens his mouth and asks, “How do you know he’s a Nazi?”
Slowly, I turn to him. “I’m sorry, were you in Germany half a decade ago? Did you have hundreds of German soldiers in the sight of your rifle? Did you—”
“Enough,” he says quietly. “You know I didn’t, and I know you have no way of telling if that man is Nazi or not.”