The Boat Runner

“I have to do something,” my father said.

Then he stood up, took the small chair that was always set out for him to sit and tell stories to the children, and carried it down the main aisle of the church, up the altar steps, and sat it down next to the lectern.

“Maybe we’ll have story time at the front of church today,” he said. “Come on up, children, come on.” The bundled children came and sat on the floor around him.

“Where is Father Heard?” someone in front called out.

“He probably knows,” a woman named Anneke Gelen said and pointed to Uncle Martin.

“He probably took him,” Edward Fass said.

I wanted to step into the aisle between the congregation and my uncle, but Uncle Martin straightened his head up, and looked even more menacing in his long German overcoat. Something in him seemed to harden.

“Let me tell everyone a story about the old goat, her seven kids, and the wolf,” my father said. This time he spoke to everyone, and we all listened like his was the only voice in the world.

“The old goat went to the forest to get some food, so she called all seven of her kids and said, ‘Now, children, be on guard against the wolf. He often disguises himself, but you will know if it’s him by his rough voice and black feet. And remember that if he comes in here, he will devour you—skin, hair, and all.’

“It was not long after that a knock came at the door, and a voice said, ‘Open up, dear children, it is your mother, and I have a treat for each and every one of you.’

“But the kids said, ‘You are not our mother because your voice is too rough and we see your dark feet leaning against the window. We will not let you in.’

“So, the wolf went into town and bought a big lump of chalk and ate it and made his voice soft. Then he went to the baker and had him rub his feet in dough. Then the wolf went to the miller and said, ‘Put white meal over my feet for me.’ The miller thought the wolf was up to no good and trying to deceive someone so he said he would not help the wolf. But the wolf threatened to devour him. Then the miller was afraid and made the wolf’s paws white.”

My father paused there. He looked over the children’s heads and around the room and said, “Some men are like this.”

“So, the wolf went back to the kids’ house and tricked them into opening the door.

“Soon afterward, the old goat came home from the forest and saw that her house had been torn apart and her children were gone. She called each of them by name, but only the youngest child who was still hiding said, ‘Dear Mother, I am in the clock-case.’ When the mother found her child, she wept hysterically for her other lost children. In her grief, she wandered out of the house and her only remaining child followed her. That is how she came across the sleeping wolf in the meadow.

“She looked at the wolf and saw something struggling in his gorged belly. ‘Oh my heavens,’ she said, then she sent her youngest child home to get her scissors, a needle, and thread. The mother goat snuck up on the sleeping wolf and cut open its stomach. Then all six of her lost children sprang out, and each was still alive and had suffered no injury at all. In his greediness, the wolf had swallowed them whole.

“The mother goat sent them each off into the woods to get a large stone. When the children came back she placed all the stones inside the wolf’s open stomach while he was still sleeping, and then the mother sewed him up as fast as she could.

“The wolf woke up because the stones settling into his stomach made him very thirsty. So he stood up to go to the well for a drink, but when he began to move about, the stones in his stomach knocked against one another and rattled. Then he cried out,

‘What rumbles and tumbles

Against my poor bones?

I thought it six kids,

But naught it’s big stones.’

“And when the wolf stooped over at the well for a drink, the heavy stones made him fall in, and there was no one to help him from drowning miserably. When the seven children saw that, they came running to the spot and cried aloud, ‘The wolf is dead! The wolf is dead!’ and they danced for joy around the well with their mother because evil, in its most cruel form, no longer belonged to the world.”





8


By that March we’d gone through all the supplies in our larder, and it became my job to do the shopping as my mother still very rarely left the house. Bacon, sugar, tea, butter, and meat had already been rationed, and by the end of the month the ration on eggs was one per person per week. There were no more bananas. When shopping, there was little talk. We had to use our ration cards if we needed clothes as everything was directed to the war effort—everything. My mother made me darn my own socks and sew rags together into heavy blankets that we slept under at night. Paper, petrol, and washing powder were now limited, and only one bar of soap was allowed a month, so when we used a bar down to a nub, we squeezed it together in our fists with the previous month’s nub to get a few extra washes out of it.

On the night of April 20, despite the blackouts, several stores placed lit red wax candles beneath new oil paintings of Hitler’s face behind their windows, as they had the year before.

“Christ. Will you look at that,” my father whispered when he saw them in town.

When he told my mother, she took all her handmade red candles and tossed them in the trash.

Sometimes Uncle Martin showed up with a net of fish he caught by dropping a line off the edge of his boat as he ferried the Germans, and he had me trade the fish for extras.

Before Mass on Sunday, everyone in the congregation spoke of what supplies they had and what was going to arrive soon. If some new shipment was expected, I’d stop by that shop before reporting to the factory to see if anything had arrived, which was clear by whether or not people lined up out the door.

On Sunday, children huddled outside the main church doors before being called in. They showed one another shrapnel they collected from bombs or dogfights between planes that had fallen near their homes. They held each little jagged scrap up to the light and ran their tiny fingers along the uneven teeth of the edges. One little boy bit down on a charred hunk between his molars. The children swapped shrapnel like the adults traded ration cards inside the building.

Devin Murphy's books