Christian thought of the tiny body inside his mother bursting with life. He imagined the growing organs, the heartbeat, the developing brain and he felt sorry for it. He wished it could be born far from loaded guns and barbed wire. At least it would have love, he thought, looking at his mother’s joyful face.
Helene kissed her son’s hand and walked off, letting him catch up to the other boys who were making their way from the school to the German mess hall, where they worked prepping the next day’s milk delivery. Internees in the camp woke up to a bottle of fresh milk on their stoop every day, one of the measures that the camp’s warden took to show that he was going well beyond the laws of the Geneva Conventions. The camp, it was whispered among the internees, was one President Roosevelt took great pride in, and the guards didn’t want any suicides or fence jumpers to ruin his vision. “They want happy prisoners,” his father had told him. “So just remember, it could be much worse.”
For Christian, sharing seven hundred square feet with another family and sleeping on floors with scorpions did not make for a happy prisoner. The view of miles of barbed-wire fencing him in did not help, either. The orphanage had changed him—he felt it in his newfound patience. Even gentleness. The way he felt toward Inge, had guarded her on the train, he was sure the old Christian would not have been as kind. But it didn’t mean he was elated about his circumstances.
Then there was the camp’s segregation. In two days, Christian had learned how bad it was. Though he had seen the large group of Japanese internees when he came in, invisible lines kept them apart inside. The Germans and Japanese, despite being allies in the war, occupied separate sections of the camp, ate in separate facilities, worked different jobs, and played different sports. The only places where they mixed were the hospital—as illness never discriminated—and the swimming pool. The few Italians were sprinkled among the Germans, but they kept to themselves, too.
Work would help keep Christian’s mind off things. That’s what Franz Lange had said when he explained that he was working in the camp’s central utility building. A classmate named Kurt Schneider had told Christian he should volunteer for the milk prep job before he was given a much more painful assignment than washing and filling milk bottles. In the camp, all the men and older boys had their jobs assigned by Joseph O’Rourke, the camp commander. Kurt said that if he told O’Rourke that he was already a milk slinger, he’d let him remain a milk slinger.
“You caught up fast,” said Kurt as soon as Christian was next to him again. They spoke English, as Kurt’s German was so poor that he was only in the fourth-grade class in the German school despite being seventeen years old.
“So your Deutsch is good enough to put you in twelfth?” asked Kurt, taking long strides to keep up with Christian’s.
“Yeah, I grew up speaking German at home. I’m decent. My writing’s not, but I’ll survive.”
“Lucky you. You might have teachers who aren’t completely stupid. My teacher is a pig farmer. And the tenth-grade history teacher is an electrician. Only teaches the history of the lightbulb. Most of the German teachers didn’t even go to school. I heard the kindergarten teacher used to be in prison.” Kurt grinned at a passing group of girls and whistled. Christian stopped walking and Kurt shrugged. “You got to try with all of them, then maybe it will work with one of them. I don’t look like you, Hollywood. All tall and blond. I need a different approach.”
“Working the odds,” said Christian, moving again. “I respect that.”
“Anything to keep your mind occupied in this place. You don’t want to get fence sickness. You’ll be in the hospital for something while you’re here. Everyone is. Just don’t make it for fence sickness.” He stopped in front of the mess hall and looked down the road to where a group of mothers was standing. “Was that your mother you were talking to before?” he asked. “She’s a—”
“Don’t elaborate or I’ll have to knock your teeth out,” said Christian. He had no desire to knock anyone’s teeth out; he just felt it was obligatory to say it, especially given his mother’s current state. The thought of a fight made him think of Jack Walter the shoe thrower and he wished he were still in his room at the Home instead of fenced in in Texas.
“Come on, Tarzan,” said Kurt. “I’ll introduce you to Herr Beringer, who can put that aggression to work moving dairy products.”
As soon as Beringer saw Christian’s size, he was very happy to enlist him into his milk prep ranks.
“You’re lucky you came to me first or you could have gotten one of those piss-crap after-school jobs that O’Rourke has been handing around like gumballs since the Wisconsin train came in,” he said. “They might have put you out working the crops with the Japanese. Big kid like you. And it’s only getting hotter. You want to till soil in a hundred and twenty degrees with mountain lions and black widow spiders lurking around you? Trust me, you don’t. Lucky you found the milkman before that happened.”
Christian started to thank him, but Beringer shoved a crate of empty milk bottles into his hands instead. “Wash these until you can see yourself in ’em. They’ll be refilled and delivered by the men tomorrow morning. You boys can’t work the first shift—you’ve got school. So just wash ’em and put ’em over there.” He pointed to a corner of the room that was filled floor to ceiling with empty, crated milk bottles.
“We get paid for this?” Christian asked Kurt as the two started washing in four large metal sinks. “I thought you couldn’t use money in camp.”
“Paid? I guess we get paid,” said Kurt. “If you call ten cents an hour getting paid. We barely use money in the camp. Instead they issue us fuzzy green fake coins, about five bucks’ worth a month. You can buy some junk with them in the store. Cigarettes. And drinks in the beer garden.”
“As in beer?” asked Christian, filling the first sink with soap and the second with cold water.
“Definitely. This is prison. The old men feel sorry for us. They’ll pour you as many as you can pay for. And then if they’re drunk enough, which they always are, they’ll slip them to you for free, as long as you’ll listen to them talk about the war. Germany’s going to win, in case you didn’t know.”
Christian was on his tenth set of a dozen bottles, soaping them and scrubbing them with a sparse bottlebrush, when he heard a high-pitched scream. Kurt let his already clean bottle bob in the soap as they listened. It was followed by a louder scream, and then another, before everything went quiet. The screams had come from somewhere outside the mess hall. Beringer dropped the milk bottle he was holding, which smashed on the floor. He jumped up and ran out the closest door, followed by the boys.
Christian went out last, as he was by the farthest sink and was the least comfortable around Beringer. When he got outside, he could see everyone gathered in a circle around something.
“What is it?” Christian asked a younger boy who was also hanging back.
“Someone got hit,” he replied.