There was something about being an only child that Christian had always found civilized. His closest friend growing up in River Hills, Baxter Novak, had seven brothers and sisters, each louder and rowdier than the next. And though their house with six bedrooms should have been big enough to contain them all, it felt to Christian that there was always a child about to drown in a bathtub or break their leg bounding off the furniture. At night, the few times Christian had agreed to sleep over, it was never so silent you could hear your own heartbeat, like at his house. With ten Novaks in the house, plus him, someone was always awake. There was even a sibling who sleepwalked, plodding straight down the stairs every night.
“Her subconscious probably just wants out of that crowded house,” Christian had told his mother one night after he’d sworn to himself that he’d never sleep there again. He was helping Helene make dinner and was washing the salad until it squeaked. “She’s probably heading for the front door every time, but all their belongings get in her way.”
“Growing up in Germany, I always believed that the rich had few children and the poor had many,” Helene had replied. “Or at least that’s how it always seemed, and maybe part of the reason why they were richer.”
“The Novaks are Catholic,” Christian had reminded her, and they’d gone back to preparing dinner, the only noise in the house their knives on the cutting boards and at one point, the sound of his mother giving him a kiss on the cheek, as she was prone to do.
Suddenly, he ached for that peace and quiet and for the assurance of parental love. He let himself turn from his back to his right side so he could take in the room and groaned at the pressure on his already strained bladder. He was thinking desperately about relieving it when he felt a shoe hit his cheek.
“You awake, Adolf?” asked someone with a too-loud voice.
Christian weighed his response before answering: “I would be, wouldn’t I? I was just hit in the face by a shoe.” He sat up in bed, the mattress barely doing a thing to keep the coils of the bed from digging into his flesh, and felt sweat inside the waistband of his pants. The shoe had fallen next to him in bed and he picked it up and examined it—light brown leather, with the sole worn deeply on the inside.
“That’s my shoe. Bring it back here now, kraut. Right away,” said the boy, who Christian could tell was significantly smaller than he was, judging by the size of the worn-out Oxford shoe and the short, stocky frame just sticking out of the bedcover halfway across the room.
Because things were already dismal, Christian got out of bed and brought the boy his shoe. He should have thrown it back at him, but he was smart enough to know that he was currently in need of friends. He dropped the shoe on the white iron framed bed, but it bounced off when it hit the shoe thrower’s leg. Both of them watched it fall to the floor and neither moved to pick it up.
“And why have you joined us at such an advanced age?” asked the shoe thrower, looking up at his morning’s entertainment.
“Not exactly sure,” said Christian, shrugging. His bladder was starting to hurt terribly.
“I’m exactly sure,” said the shoe thrower, loudly. “You’re here because your parents are Nazis. There’s one other kraut kid here. A lot younger than you. Sickly looking. Her parents are Nazis, too. Big-time Nazis. Sprinkle baby Jew parts in their cereal.”
“Sure they do,” said Christian.
“They do. Poor kid. But she’s just a pawn in all of this. Like you. ’Course you’re older, so who knows? You could be involved in the krauts’ plot to take over America. But not her. She cries constantly. Like a starving dog.”
The shoe thrower was making no move to get out of bed, even though the boys around them were all standing up and heading out of the bare white room, adorned with nothing but a cross, in the direction of what Christian assumed were the toilets and showers. He wanted badly to follow them, but the shoe thrower was still engaged.
“Want to know what brought me here?” he asked, putting his hands behind his head as if he were lying in a beach chair instead of in the boys’ cottage at a children’s home.
“Sure, why not?”
“My parents died. Both of them. I’ve been here for ten years.”
“Ten years? Jesus Christ. I’m sorry,” Christian said, his eyes still following the other boys.
“Don’t lament on my behalf, sauerkraut. I’m almost eighteen, so I’ll be getting out of here soon. My birthday is in ten months, five days and—” He turned his head and looked at the black plastic clock on his pine bedside table, identical to the others in the room. “And twenty-three minutes.” Behind him snow was falling in large flakes, too wet to turn the ground white, but pretty to watch. Christian could see the small bare trees of an apple orchard beyond their dorm and half-frozen horses with blankets on their backs in another field.
The shoe thrower tossed back his covers and stretched his muscular legs. “Bring any liquor in with you?” he asked with a grin.
“Me?” said Christian, looking at his brown leather bag across the room. The floors were tiled, big and rust colored, and freezing against his feet. “I barely brought a thing with me. Definitely not liquor.”
“Then you’re useless. Get lost.”
Christian felt a burning in his groin and backed away from the shoe thrower suddenly. “I have to . . .” he said.
“You got to use the can? Back there. Hurry up, don’t piss near my bed, kraut.” He motioned Christian away and watched as he struggled to make it to the restroom.
Two days later, Christian opened his eyes and saw a low, gray sky, the color of freshly poured concrete. He watched the clouds move across it as fast as airplanes. He couldn’t remember why he was on the ground, or where this ground was, but his mind felt pleasantly fuzzy. Then he saw Jack Walter’s face come into view, leaning down until his fat pink ear was almost on Christian’s nose. Suddenly he remembered exactly where he was. He was at the Milwaukee Children’s Home, and Jack Walter, the shoe thrower, had just knocked him out with one punch. But it was a sucker punch, so it didn’t count. Where he was from, people didn’t walk up to you with a smile and then deck you with all of their weight behind their right fist.
Christian held his breath, sure that Jack was checking whether he was dead or not, and then when he saw the look of panic spreading on Jack’s face, he lunged up and bit his ear.
“You feral son of a bitch!” Jack screamed, losing his balance and falling onto the frozen ground himself. “You bit off my ear!”
“Me?” said Christian, standing up and trying to ignore the cloudy pain in his skull. “You just punched me for no reason. Is that what you do around here? You just punch people in the face and then place bets to see if they have a concussion or not?”
“No, but that’s a good idea,” said Jack, holding his bloody ear. “You’ll be dead soon enough, kraut. Just like your parents. I’m just trying to speed things along.”
“This is Wisconsin. My parents aren’t getting beaten in some cell till they bleed out.”