Camp 30 (7 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

“
DO YOU HEAR
the phone?” I asked.

“I don't hear anything except you talking,” my brother said.

We were lying on the grass in our new backyard, in the shade of a big maple tree. We'd been goofing off all day— Mom was at work, we'd left our paper route back in Whitby, and school wasn't due to start for a few weeks.

“There it is again,” I said. “Don't you hear it?”

“I hear it. It's probably coming from somebody else's house.”

“I don't think so,” I said, sitting up and turning my head to better capture the sound.

“Who'd be calling us?” Jack asked. “Who even knows our phone number?”

“Could be a wrong number,” I suggested.

“And if it's a wrong number, why would I want to answer it?”

“Maybe it's Mom,” I said.

“Why would Mom be calling?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“Only one way to find out. You go and answer it because I'm not moving. And you'd better hurry or whoever it is will hang up.”

I jumped to my feet, ran across the lawn and bounded in through the back door. The phone rang again—no doubt now it was ours. I raced across the kitchen and grabbed it mid-ring.

“Hello!” I practically yelled.

“Is that you, George?”

It was Mom. “It's me.”

“You sound all out of breath.”

“I am,” I puffed. “I ran in from the backyard …”

“I need you and your brother to do something.”

“Sure,” I said, although now I felt like kicking myself for answering the phone in the first place. What chore was she going to give me? We were pretty bored, but lying on the grass beat the heck out of having to cut it.

“I need you and your brother to go down to Main Street, to the post office.”

“Is there something there from Dad?” I asked hopefully.

“Not that I know. I need you to bring some mail up to the camp. We'll call to give authorization for you to pick it up. Can you do that?”

“Of course. We can take our bikes.”

“Good. And you'd better bring along your old newspaper bags. Do you know where they are?”

“I'm pretty sure. But why do we need them?”

“You're going to be getting all the mail for the prisoners.”

“You want us to do that?” It wasn't the kind of chore I'd been expecting.

“We need you to. The person who was supposed to bring it up called in sick, and then one thing led to another and the mail was never picked up. It has to be up here as soon as possible, so I need you to hurry.”

“We'll get there on the double.”

“Come straight to my office—and remember, the sooner the better!”

We pedalled along the dirt road out of town as quickly as we could, weighed down with our bags. They were stuffed full with letters and packages, and the corners of some of the boxes were poking into my side. A couple of letters fluttered out of my bag and fell to the ground as we rode. I saw them out of the corner of my eye and skidded to a stop to retrieve them. It would be awful to lose somebody's mail—their connection to their family. What would it be like for Dad not to get one of our letters?

I was sure nothing else had dropped out …
pretty
sure. I shifted the bag to the front. It was harder to ride with
it slung around me that way, but it let me keep one eye on the road and the other on the mail.

“I thought we were supposed to hurry!” Jack called over his shoulder from ahead of me. The cast on his arm wasn't slowing him down at all. I just wished he had a cast on his mouth!

I dug down a little harder on the pedals. It wasn't that much farther now. I could see the outline of the first tower poking over a grove of trees in the distance.

As we approached, Jack came to a stop ahead of me. I skidded to a stop beside him and realized why he wasn't moving.

There was a lot of action within the compound. Men, hundreds of men, were milling around in the open courtyard between the buildings. It looked like every man in the whole camp had to be out there. What were they up to … what were they doing? Were they planning on charging the gates, trying some sort of mass breakout?

Then I was startled by a series of shrill whistles, and the men began to assemble. Quickly they created four long lines, each line segmented into groups of five prisoners.

“What are they doing?” I asked Jack.

“How should I know?”

We were in a hurry, but our curiosity was greater than our need for speed.

The inside pair of the two double gates at the entrance opened and four soldiers—four guards—entered the compound. They marched in stiff military fashion until they faced the assembled prisoners, who stood silently and stiffly at attention.

One of the guards began shouting names. As each name was read, a man's voice called back in answer from the ranks of the prisoners.

“They're taking roll call,” Jack said, “seeing if all the prisoners are still present.”

“But what's to stop somebody from calling back more than once?” I asked.

“Good question.”

As we continued to watch the proceedings, we noticed that two of the guards were walking through the prisoners' ranks.

“I think they're counting them,” Jack said. That certainly looked like what was going on as one guard moved a hand up and down as he passed each man in turn.

“We'd better get going,” Jack said, and we started off again.

We circled the camp, and when we came to the administration buildings we popped our bikes onto their kickstands and hurried into the office. Doris greeted us at the door and shepherded us to our mother's desk. Colonel Armstrong was standing right beside her.

“Excellent!” he said. “That was almost perfect timing.”

“We came as fast as we could,” I said, not mentioning the stop to watch the roll call.

“Now if you could just go one step farther. Could you please take the mail to the front gates and pass it on? The prisoners are already assembled for roll call, and mail call takes place right after that.”

“Sure, we can do that,” I said.

“But don't you have to check it first?” Jack asked. “Check it?” Colonel Armstrong asked.

“To make sure there aren't secret codes in the letters

or guns hidden in the packages.”

“That won't be necessary. All of this mail has already been thoroughly investigated, even before it arrived at the local post office,” Colonel Armstrong explained. “Although I'm suitably impressed that you would think through that possibility.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jack said, standing a little straighter because of the compliment.

“We'll get it straight to the guards,” I said.

We started off.

“Boys,” Colonel Armstrong called, and we stopped and turned around. “Your mother was mentioning that you delivered papers in Whitby.”

“It was Jack's route. I just helped,” I said.

“Will you be looking for employment here?” he asked.

“I hadn't really thought about it,” Jack said. “Do you know somebody who works at the newspaper?”

“I wasn't thinking about the newspaper. I was thinking about here.”

“Here at the camp?” I asked.

“It would actually involve doing what you did today, delivering the mail.”

“Sure, we could do that!” I exclaimed, and then I thought things through a little bit further. “At least we could do that until school starts.”

“What time does your school day end?” Colonel Armstrong asked.

I didn't know. Jack shook his head and shrugged.

“I was speaking to one of our neighbours about that very thing,” our mother said, “because I was wondering how long you'd be alone at home after school before I got back from work. I was asking if she'd mind poking her head in just to see if you two were okay.”

“We don't need to be babysat!” I protested.

“I wasn't suggesting a babysitter, just a friendly neighbour keeping an eye open and—”

“We don't need that either,” I said. “Jack is old enough and smart enough to take care of us.”

“That's so nice of you to say that about your brother. Regardless, getting back to the original question, she said that school ends at three o'clock.”

“So if we went straight to the post office from school and then right here, we could arrive by three-thirty or three-forty at the latest,” I said.

“So are you boys interested?”

“Really interested,” Jack said.

“And until school starts, I might even have some other odd jobs you two can do. Nothing too important or fancy, but there are always things that need to be done.”

“We'll do anything you want us to do,” I said.

“Excellent. So your first assignment is to get back to your original task and take the mail over so it can be distributed to the prisoners.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I had to fight the urge to give him a salute.

Jack and I left the building and hurried down the driveway and across the dirt road to the gate. There were two ancient-looking guards standing at the first gate and two more manning the inner gate.

“We've got the mail,” Jack said.

“Colonel Armstrong told us to bring it,” I added.

“Whatever the colonel wants. Go in,” one of the guards said, and the second one started to open the gate.

“Go in? But I thought we were supposed to just—”

“He didn't tell us
where
we were supposed to take it …

when we get inside,” Jack said, cutting me off with his words and a quick elbow in the side. Why had he done
that, and what did he mean,
inside
? We were just supposed to bring the mail to the guards … weren't we?

“See that big building in the centre, just beyond the parade grounds?”

I looked to where he was pointing. It was directly behind the assembled men.

“That's the place,” he continued.

Jack and I slipped in through the first gate, which was

now open.

“Jack, are you sure about this? Aren't we supposed to just take the mail to the guards?” I asked quietly so the guards couldn't hear.

“And the guards told us to take it in. Now shut up so you don't ruin everything,” he hissed under his breath.

I heard the gate behind us close as the inner gate opened.

“You look a little scared,” one of the guards at the second gate said, looking at me.

“He always looks that way,” Jack said.

“Nothing to be ascared about,” the second guard said.

“Those prisoners aren't gonna bother you.”

“And if they did, we'd be here,” said the first, patting his rifle.

“Don't go scaring him any more than he already is,” the second responded. “There's never been a need for anybody to fire a single shot at anybody. Proceed,” he said, and we slipped in through the gate.

My first step into the compound sent a tingling up my spine. I knew from what everybody had said that we were safe, but it certainly didn't feel safe. Besides, what was Colonel Armstrong going to say when he found out what we'd done?

“Nobody had us sign in,” Jack said. “These guys can't get anything right.”

“And you think bringing the mail into the compound is right?” I challenged.

“We're just following orders,” Jack said.

“What are you talking about? Colonel Armstrong didn't tell us to come in here.”

“The
guard's
orders. He told us to bring the mail in.” “We shouldn't be doing this. We could get into big trouble,” I said.

“How can we get into trouble by following orders? Besides, if we're wrong, it's an honest mistake. We were confused … we're just a couple of kids.” He paused. “And didn't you want to come inside here too?”

I didn't answer because he was right. Part of me was excited to be here. But the other part was too worried to really enjoy the adventure completely.

“Wasn't the whole point of moving to Bowmanville to keep us away from Germans?”

“From German
spies,
” Jack shot back. “These guys aren't spies. They aren't even Nazis. And it's not like it's dangerous. The colonel wouldn't have brought us here
yesterday for lunch if it wasn't safe. You heard what the guard just said. There's nothing to be worried about.”

I hardly bothered listening to him. My attention was captured by the lines of men, prisoners, German prisoners, stretched out before us. We slowly circled the parade grounds and listened as the roll continued to be called. Name after name—Lieutenant Krug … Lieutenant Konig … Captain Peterson—and after each name a voice yelled out in response.

The four guards conducting the roll call didn't seem to notice us. Most of the prisoners stood at attention, eyes straight ahead, oblivious. A few seemed to be following us with their eyes, and a couple turned their heads slightly to watch us as we passed. I guess the sight of two boys carrying newspaper bags must have been as strange to them as the sight of them was to us.

We went all the way around until we were directly behind the last line of prisoners. Everybody was facing forward, away from us. From back there I couldn't see the guards at the gate, so I assumed they couldn't see us either, which gave me a chill. I felt better when I looked around and realized I could see three different guard towers.

We walked up the front steps of the building the guard had pointed out to us. Jack pulled open one of the heavy wooden doors, holding it so I could walk in. It was cooler inside, and as the door shut behind us the sounds of roll call became muffled.

“Where do we go now?” I asked.

“How would I know?”

Jack moved slowly down the corridor. His footfalls echoed off the walls. I tried to make no sound as I trailed behind him.