“I do? Do you know where my parents are, then? Where have they been?” Christian asked, letting the emotion he had been repressing for seven weeks rise up in his throat, making him croak out his words. He had thought of them without pause, but he’d barely talked about it. Except for Jack, the boys his age didn’t bother to make friends with someone whose time at the Home was limited. And with Jack, he didn’t feel it was right to dwell on his sad story, since Jack’s circumstances had been much harder. So all of Christian’s worry had stayed coiled inside his gut.
“Your parents, I am told, were both questioned, tried, and then sent from Milwaukee to a prison in Stringtown, Oklahoma.” Braque spoke as he continued to clear his desk and chairs, placing his reading materials on the ground, as the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were already overflowing. The room was barely bigger than a bathroom, and with all the files on the children housed there, too, it could barely accommodate Braque and one visitor. “If you’re bad in pairs they have to yell at you in the cafeteria,” Jack had told Christian when they had indeed been yelled at together for fighting.
“A prison? So they were found guilty? Why would they send them so far away?” Christian asked, following Braque with his eyes as he bobbed around the small room.
“The prison, from what I was told, is no longer a prison but a housing center for people like your parents. But they are not staying in Oklahoma much longer. They’re going to South Texas, and you’ll be leaving us tomorrow to join them.” He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief and dusted the crucifix on the wall before turning around to gauge Christian’s reaction.
“Texas?” asked Christian, trying to hold himself together. He stood up, his foot slipping on a newspaper that, like all of them, had a headline about the war. “Why would I need to go there?”
“You’re being sent to a place called Crystal City,” Braque said. “They told me it’s an internment camp, but a family internment camp, where children and their parents can be together.”
“We’re being interned?” asked Christian, addressing Braque, who had finally sat down. “Like the Japanese?”
Braque let Christian have a moment and then cleared his throat and continued. “It’s important to note that you will be going to Crystal City as a voluntary internee. Your parents were forced to go there, but technically you are volunteering to go there. Or more precisely, your parents are volunteering you. But you don’t have the option to say no, unfortunately, because you are still a minor. So once you are inside the camp, you can’t leave again until they release you. You’re essentially a prisoner. From what I know, based on other camps, they’re not too much better than a prison. Of course there are nicer accommodations and fresh air, but there are barbed-wire fences, watchtowers, men patrolling with guns.”
“Guns? Like they’re going to shoot me?”
“No, they’re not going to—”
“Why would my parents subject me to that?” Christian interrupted. “Why won’t they let me stay here until I turn eighteen?”
“I’m not sure,” said Braque, looking at Christian’s desperate face. He handed him the handkerchief that he had just dusted the crucifix with. “But I can think of one good reason why.”
“I can’t,” said Christian, thinking that, all of a sudden, getting shoes thrown at him in Milwaukee sounded like a vacation.
“Well, I imagine,” said Braque, “it’s because they love you.”
*
The only person who saw Christian off from the Children’s Home was Jack. And he wasn’t seeing just Christian off, but Inge, too. She was also headed to Crystal City, and Christian had been tasked with making sure she got there safely. They hadn’t left the Home yet and her hand was already in his, holding on tighter than a child on a roller coaster.
“This is for you,” said Jack, giving Christian his shoe as they stood outside the boys’ cottage, their faces red from the cold. “You can hit yourself in the face with it at night to remind yourself of the good times.”
“Your shoe?” said Christian. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can. I may be a sad orphan, but I’m due to get another pair. My big toes can’t breathe in those, and Braque owes me at least that for babysitting you.”
Christian took the shoe from Jack, tying a knot at the end of the frayed lace, and put it in his traveling bag. “I’ll take it if you promise me one thing. You’ll like it, I swear.”
“Try me.”
“When you’re out of here, can you go to my house and see if there’s anything left? If there is, maybe change the locks?” He reached into his coat and handed Jack Walter his house key. “Nine thousand River Road.”
“There’s not going to be anything left in your house.”
“Maybe not, but check for me, okay? Sleep there if you want, while you sort out your non–Children’s Home life.”
Jack nodded and took the key. “If you haven’t been looted, then I’m the man for the job. I’ll sleep right in your parents’ bed, pretend I’m the mayor.”
“’Course you will,” said Christian. “And will you write to me in that awful place? Something like, ‘Hey kraut, you’re probably going to die soon.’?”
Jack laughed his good-natured laugh and agreed. “Yes. But only because I have absolutely nothing else to do but count down the days until my eighteenth birthday and punch anyone new who comes into my room.”
Jack gave Christian a fake, slow punch to the jaw and waved goodbye. It was the kind of stiff wave a boy who was always being left was used to giving: devoid of emotion but jovial enough to show that he wasn’t being tortured at the Children’s Home.
It wasn’t until Christian was at the station with the Home’s assistant headmaster, Mr. Klimek, that he was told anything about his trip. Maybe Braque had not wanted to scare him with details, but Klimek had no such qualms. He was the least liked person at the Home, and all the students made sure he knew it. It wasn’t that he had ever done anything truly menacing; he just didn’t have the right personality for children, especially children desperate for standin parents.
“Crystal City, Texas,” said Klimek, leaning against the station wall, his right leg up and slightly bent, the way they always described detectives posing in the radio shows. “Braque told me about it. Little shit town near Mexico with scorpions on every block. How much did he tell you?”
Christian squinted at him and said, “Nothing.”
“Wanted to spare you the truth. I don’t see it that way. I think you should know what you’re getting into. Mexicans everywhere. They hate whites down there. Especially German ones. But don’t worry too much, son, your parents will be there, too, so you won’t suffer alone.”
Christian looked down at Inge to see if she was listening. Her hand was still attached to his, but her mind seemed to be elsewhere and her eyes, usually big as a doll’s, were closed.
“I almost forgot. You have to wear this,” said Klimek, taking an identification tag out of his pocket and giving it to Christian. He gave him Inge’s, as well, and stood back as Christian inspected them and put hers in her hand.
“It’s got to be around your necks on a piece of string,” he corrected him, pointing at Christian’s collar.
Christian stared at him. “You got string?” he asked.
“Why would I have string?”