Camp 30 (11 page)

Jack and I grabbed two chairs, dragged them over and sat down beside the man.

“First, we must have manners. You are George and Jack.”

“Yeah, how did you know?” I asked.

“There are not too many young boys wandering the camp. Who is George?”

“That's me,” I said, holding up my hand slightly.

“Well, George, I am Wolfgang—my friends call me Wolfie—and these men are Karl, Peter and another Peter.” Each man nodded his head as he was introduced.

“Skat is the national card game of Germany,” Wolfie began. “It was invented in 1810 in the little town of
Altenburg, which is about twenty-five miles south of—”

“Are you giving them a history lesson or teaching cards?” Karl asked.

“Just giving some background. It is a game played by three players.”

“But there are four of you here,” I said.

“Only one of the Peters is playing this hand,” Wolfie explained. “We do not use the whole deck, only the numbered cards up from seven—so, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king and the ace.”

“That's like euchre,” Jack said, “except you use from nine up.”

“I do not know that game,” Wolfie said.

“I know it,” Karl piped up. “It has many things that are the same. Both use trump cards, and the jacks are most important.”

“
Ja, ja,
that is the same. How about if we play a hand and you watch?”

Peter gathered up the cards that were on the table. He shuffled and then began dealing, three cards to each player. He then put two cards face down in the middle, nestled among the money that was lying there. I did a quick count. There were three five-dollar bills and at least twice that many ones.

He then proceeded to deal again until each man was holding ten cards. The man to his left, Peter, said
something in German—was it a number? Then Karl said something, then Wolfie. Around and around it went. Maybe it would have made more sense if they'd been speaking English.

Wolfie set down a card, the ace of hearts. Karl played a nine of hearts, and Peter put down a queen. Wolfie laughed and then took all three cards, stacking them in a little pile to his left. I wasn't exactly sure what had just happened, but it seemed to please Wolfie and displease the other two. Hand after hand they put down cards. Whatever player cleared the three cards away led off the next round.

“Wait a second … this is starting to look familiar,” I said, more to myself than to anybody else.

“Opa used to play this.”

Wolfie looked over at Jack. “Opa? Your grandfather, was he German?”

“He was Canadian but he was born in Germany,” I answered, in case Jack was tempted to say something rude.

“Good for him! Let's raise a glass to your grandfather!”

All four men at the table picked up their glasses, clinking them together, and then drank, emptying them. The Peter who wasn't playing grabbed a bottle and refilled the glasses for all four. My nostrils told me what they were drinking was alcohol of some sort, but the bottle was plain and not labelled.

They continued to play, down to the last three cards. Wolfie yelped in delight and jumped up from his chair. This time he didn't just grab the cards, he pulled all the money toward him and squealed with delight.

“My first win of the day!” he exclaimed. “All I needed was my good-luck charms to be here! You two have brought me good fortune! Here, here, both of you should take some of the pot!” He held out two one-dollar bills.

“We can't take your money,” I said. “You won it, not us.”

“But I would not have won it without the two of you being here. Please, please take it!”

Reluctantly, Jack reached out and took the bills.

“Now, you must stay while we play again,” Wolfie said.

“I am afraid that is not possible.” It was Captain Kretschmer. “They have too much ice cream to eat.” He was carrying a tray with three bowls on it—three bowls brimming over with ice cream! “Come, boys.”

He walked through a swinging door that took us out of the kitchen and into the main dining hall. He led us over to the head table, the only one set with a tablecloth, plates and utensils. He gestured for us to sit and then placed a bowl in front of each of us. He set the third bowl on the table and then sat down himself.

“You will have to excuse the cooks,” he said.

“Excuse them? Why?”

“It is a little early to be drinking,” he said. “The kitchen staff use peelings from vegetables and fruit to make alcohol.”

“I didn't know you could do that,” I said.

“Apparently it is not a difficult task. Colonel Armstrong has made orders against it, and the guards try to find the stills, but not always successfully.”

I didn't want to talk about alcohol. I wanted to eat ice cream. “Can we dig in now?” I asked.

“Dig in? That is one of those things I do not understand. It means?”

“Eat. You know, dig our spoons into the ice cream,” I said, picking up the spoon to demonstrate.

“Of course! Enjoy!”

I sank my spoon into the mound of ice cream, dug out a huge heap and stuffed it in my mouth. It tasted wonderful! We hadn't had ice cream since we'd left the farm. Mom used to make it for us with the milk from our own dairy cows. But now, with sugar rationed, it was a treat that was hard to come by. Spoonful after spoonful I shovelled into my face. Jack was doing the same, although I thought I was getting to the bottom of my bowl faster than he was. I picked up the bowl with one hand and scraped the last bit out, licking the spoon when I was done.

“That was really good,” I said, realizing that the words were a little distorted by my frozen tongue.

“I enjoyed it too,” Captain Kretschmer said.

“But you've hardly touched yours,” I said. His bowl was still almost full.

“I enjoyed watching you two
dig
your ice cream. I thought about how much my children would love to have some.” He paused. “Hans probably should not have discussed it, but he was telling the truth. Things are very limited for our families in Germany. Food is limited. Basic necessities of life are in short supply.”

“That must be hard,” I said.

“It is. Sometimes I feel guilty for all that we are given here. It is a gilded cage.”

“Now I don't understand what
you
mean,” I said.

“Gilded. It means fancy, ornate, pretty. We are in a jail where our needs are well met, but it is still a cage.”

“Is that why people try to escape?” Jack asked.

“It is our duty to try.”

“I guess you'd have a lot of trouble in a tunnel,” Jack said.

“I do not understand,” the captain said.

“If you don't like closed places, it would be hard for you to escape in a tunnel—that's how P.O.W.s try to escape sometimes,” he explained. “That's how Allied prisoners escape from Nazi camps.”

“I had not heard that. Tunnels … hmmm … maybe we should start digging tonight. If you gentlemen are finished with your spoons, perhaps we could use them.” He smiled, and I started to chuckle.

“Or perhaps you would be interested in using your spoons for another bowl of ice cream. I think I could persuade our head cook to give up a little bit of the chocolate syrup he has that he doesn't know I know about.”

“That would be great,” I said.

“We'd better get going,” Jack said, and he started to stand up.

I reached over and grabbed him by the arm. “Another couple of minutes aren't going to matter. Besides, I know you like chocolate syrup even more than I do.”

Jack resisted for just a split second and then let me pull him back down to his seat.

“I guess we can stay a little longer,” he said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I ROLLED OVER IN BED
, awakened by the sound of a phone ringing. I sat up. It was bright, so it had to be morning, but I had no idea what time it was. The phone rang again. I jumped out of bed and ran along the hall, then down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. I hit the bottom, almost tumbling over as my feet skidded for traction on the slippery wooden floors. The phone rang again as I raced into the kitchen and grabbed it.

“Hello!” I said, panting for breath.

“Good morning.”

I knew the voice instantly. “Bill.”

“Did I wake you up?”

“No … well, yeah, you did.”

“About time. Is your brother still sleeping?”

“I think so. What time is it?” I asked.

“It's after seven-thirty. Your mother just left for work.”

“Then Jack is definitely still sleeping. He sleeps a lot these days,” I said.

“Go and wake him up. You two have to be out and on the highway within fifteen minutes. You have an appointment.”

“An appointment?”

“Yes. On the highway in fifteen minutes.”

“Meeting who, and—?” Suddenly there was just a dial tone on the other end of the line. I dropped the phone into its cradle.

“Jack!” I screamed as I raced out of the kitchen. “Jack! Get up, Jack!”

“So we have an appointment, but you don't know with who, and it's out on the highway, but you're really not sure where on the highway … right?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, that's about it.”

Another car whooshed by us, causing a few little cinders to skip up into my face in the trailing breeze it created.

“And you didn't think that maybe you should have asked for a few more details?”

“I tried to but the phone went dead,” I explained to him again. “If we keep walking, whoever it is will find us.”

“But you do think it's Bill, right?” Jack asked.

“He was the one who called, but somehow I didn't get the feeling it was him we were going to be meeting. Either way, I'm more worried about what's going to be said than who's going to say it.”

“I don't follow you.”

“Are we going to be told we have to stop delivering the mail, and that we have to get ourselves fired to do that?” I explained.

“Mom wouldn't like that,” Jack said. “But if that's the worst thing that happens, that's not so bad.”

“That's not the worst thing,” I said. Jack stopped walking and I turned around to face him. “I've been thinking about it.”

“You think too much!” Jack snapped.

“Maybe it's just that you don't think enough,” I countered.

“At least I think enough not to annoy somebody who might box my ears,” he threatened as he balled his hands into fists.

“I was thinking that they might tell us we have to move again,” I said in a hurry.

“What?”

“If we had to move the first time because of something we did that put us in danger, maybe we've done it again. Doesn't that make sense?”

Jack didn't answer. Not disagreeing was usually the closest he came to agreeing with me.

“I don't know,” Jack said. “All we've really done is deliver the mail a few times.”

“It's been almost two weeks,” I said, “and lately we've been doing more than just delivering the mail.”

 
Now, after delivering the mail, we always stayed behind for a while. Sometimes we went back to the kitchen for more ice cream and to watch the cooks play skat. They even let Jack play a couple of hands, and he won three dollars! The cooks said he was a natural.

Other times we watched men playing soccer on the field or basketball in the gym. We even wandered into the hall where they put on their plays—they were rehearsing something from Shakespeare.

No matter where we went or what we were doing, I knew what Jack was really up to. He was keeping his eyes and ears open. He was being a spy. I wasn't sure what secrets he thought the prisoners had, but he was caught up in the game of trying to find out.

“I think we'd better keep walking,” Jack said. “We're probably too close to town for them to pick us up here.”

Looking behind me, I could still see some houses on the outskirts, so I figured what Jack said was true. Up ahead, the road curved hard to the right and then was blocked from view by a grove of trees. If I were picking somebody up, that's where I'd do it.

No sooner had that thought formed in my head than a car pulled off the road directly in front of us. It had barely come to a stop when the back door opened and Bill jumped out.

“Hurry up!” he yelled.

We ran for the car.

“Get in!”

I jumped in and Jack barrelled in behind me, shoving me clear across the seat and into the door on the far side. Before I could react I heard the door slam and I was thrown against the back of the seat as the car took off and swung back onto the road.

“Both of you onto the floor,” Bill ordered.

We both slipped off the seat.

Suddenly I felt all hot and a flush came over me. My stomach turned, a shiver went right up my spine and my heart began beating very fast … why was it so hot and why couldn't I get any air into my lungs? I felt panicky, like something bad was going to happen or—

“George, are you all right?” Bill asked.

I looked up at him but couldn't seem to speak.

“You're as white as a sheet. You don't look well.”

“I … I don't feel very good.”

“Come up here onto the seat, both of you,” Bill said. “We're well out of town now.”

I climbed onto the seat. “Can I roll down the window? I need some fresh air.”

“Certainly.”

I gulped down a deep lungful of the fresh air flowing in the window. It felt good. I took a second big breath and then another.

“Some people need to see where they're going or they get carsick like that,” Bill said sympathetically.

“That isn't it,” Jack told him. “It reminded him of being on the floor of somebody else's car.”

“Mr. Krum,” I said. “It was like being in Mr. Krum's car.” Mr. Krum had kidnapped us at gunpoint and made us sit on the floor of his car the same way so we wouldn't be seen.