Baby Breath revised, John Andrew Durler Sr. [best short books to read txt] 📗

probably because My wife and I cannot say enough good things about Adolph Hitler, and the boy probably wanted to study it. I promise you it will not be damaged, or written on."

After the headmaster left with a package of sausage and a bottle of schnapps, Esau's adoptive father walked over to Esau and battered his face. . "Thief! Jew lover! We raised you to be a good German. You will be a good German! I lied for you to not allow shame fall upon us." As blood rolled down his face from a split lip that was already swelling, Esau hung his head to hide his shame for his parents. His mother grabbed his face and pleaded. "You will get us sent to a camp if you keep behaving like a defender of those people. They took our neighbors' jobs and money! Hitler is right. They must be thrown out of Germany. If you do not believe that, you must leave the house after graduation. Please Esau. You are disgracing us and all of our friends with the way you behave. Be a good boy. Give the book back to the headmaster and apologize. He will not punish you if you tell him you took it because you admire Adolph Hitler so much you had to read the book."

Esau looked at his father and mother with shame. He tried to hide it but it was there under his bloody smile. His mother took it for shame of himself and hugged him, dabbing his lip with her apron. "Go now."

"Yes, Mama. I am sorry Papa. It is just that what is going on now is all so confusing. I will go, bring it back and plead for forgiveness." He went to his room, put his heavy coat on, took the little money he had saved, put the book under his arm, went back to the kitchen and said, "I will not be home for supper. We have a performance at the academy and I will be staying over Hans house. A group of us formed a study group. I must hurry to get this back."

His mother bid him good-bye until next afternoon, pushed an apple and some coins into his pocket, patted his head and said, "You are a good boy Esau, but you are easily led. I'm glad you are staying with Hans."

Esau walked into the business district away from the academy, found an alley, and took the copy of Mien Kamp out of his coat. He ripped the pages out one by one in an alley, crumbled them and threw them with the rest of the litter. When done, he took the cover, found a puddle, and dropped it in. He walked in long strides to the main road going toward the border of France and started to beg rides. He walked and rode with strangers on the way. On the last part of the trip, A big blackBOM35054 Civilian Version 1937 German Opel Olympia Car stopped in front of him. He ran to the open window, heard Yiddish and French carefully watching him for a reaction. He introduced himself in French, as a student. The woman beside him nursed a baby and introduced herself as Sharon. Nothing more was said. He stared out the window, or drooped his head as if to nap. . He could tell by the conversations of this good family, they feared the checkpoint. If they were turned back, they would be forced to leave the car and walk across. As they grew tense, speaking less, he sensed the border was close. Their voices, low, they spoke of an agency on Rue Doctora Zola in Le Pued that smuggled Jews into Switzerland. The man driving spoke of alternate available routes to arrive there with the least possibility of discovery. They stopped talking, and he presumed they were getting close to the border. He asked the driver to stop at a cross road where the sides of the roads were lined with hedgerows bordering forests of trees.

He got out, handed Sharon the apple, thanked them, and waited until they drove out of sight before spreading the hedges at a thin point, being careful to hide his entry into the forest. He walked a short way into the woods able to see the break in the trees where the road ran, he made his way parallel to it, keeping it to his left. Two hours later, exhausted, he stopped, crawled under a clump of bushes, and went to sleep. He was wakened by German voices and barking dogs. He lay still, hardly breathing. He heard screams and a series of gun shots. A half hour later he heard a car and a truck drive away. German voices laughed loudly, gradually faded. He carefully went back to the road and determined they were on the road headed toward the border between Germany and France. The moon was low in the sky, and the sun was just coming up over the horizon. As he walked toward the border, he saw a large low lying object. He ducked into the woods and waited. Silence. He made his way toward it. It appeared to be a pile of rags, or someone waiting in ambush.

He approached it from the woods, careful of each step he took until he was in reach. It was overcoats, linings ripped out and pockets torn. He poked with a stick. It gave under his poke. He reached over and grabbed a hand full and pulled. Sharon laid there, naked, a red hole in her forehead above her nose. The men were coatless, shot in the back of the head by the spine. He looked up and down the road, waited few minutes, and then searched their pockets. He found nothing, but when he pulled their socks off, he found wads of French franc's and four French passports taped to their soles. One was Sharon Fienstein. He stuffed the passports into his socks and the money in his briefs. He remembered the woman had a baby. He looked thoroughly for it, but could not find it. He walked back and forth on the road on both sides, went back to the rag pile and turned the bodies over one at a time. He still could not find it. He covered the corpses up, turned to go, and heard a vehicle coming from the border. He slipped under the pile and pulled as many corpses as he could over him. The vehicle stopped. A voice speaking German said, "There must be money and Jewels. No Jew was ever caught empty handed. The others are fools, giving the bodies a cursory search. What we find, we keep." A guttural agreement replied, "Ach."

Esau heard rustling, ripping, cussing, and then, "here, give me a hand, I want to see what this bastard swallowed."

Esau eased out from his hiding place, saw the car that brought him this far and two uniformed Germans helmets and rifles laying on the car close to where Esau watched. One butchered the corpse and the other held it, their backs to him. He eased himself over to the rifles, picked one up, examined it, slipped the safety off, and aimed it and shot four times. Their screams stopped as they fell. He listened to see if anyone heard the shots. In the silence he heard a baby cry. He followed it, and found the baby in the woods ten feet in, halfway buried in a mound of leaves. It must have been found and thrown here, or one of the passengers managed to get it here as the Germans approached. He picked it off, brushed leaves and twigs off it, and carried it back to the road. He wept at its pale bruised face. It whimpered. He picked it up and held its mouth to his, exhaled into the baby, then inhaled its sweet breath. It gave him a sense of euphoria. He exhaled and inhaled again, now worried about being responsible for a fragile child in need of more than what he could give. He started to put it down and felt the attachment he felt at the taste its breath. He picked it up again brought it to the pile,BOM35054 Civilian Version 1937 German Opel Olympia Car
picked a piece of a wool sweater out, wrapped the baby and placed her on the seat of the car. He went over to the dead Germans, pulled them off the corpse, and saw a bag with a draw string on the bloody ground. He picked it up, pulled the string and looked inside. It was full of jewels. He closed it, wiped it clean with German clothes he stripped them of. When searching their pockets he found two cigarette lighters and twenty German marks. It took him awhile to haul the Germans and put them under the pile of corpses. After he though it was poetic justice for them rot under Jewish corpses, perhaps blending with them.

He went to the car, took the baby, unbuttoned his coat, and placed it inside, so her face lay just under his scarf. He got in the car, dove it back two miles back from the border, drove in a clearing into clumps of heavy brush until it could go no further. He left it running, got out, and made his way back to the road away from the border then into the woods, crossed the road on the other side walked a half mile, then crossed again into woods 50 yards past the bodies, back into the woods deeper about two miles and slowly made his way toward the border. He stopped on the outskirts of a clearing and rested at dawn. He made a decision not to sleep. The baby was warm against his body. He had nothing to feed it with. He wondered if it would die before he found food. He did not even know exactly where he was, France or Germany.

The sun was high. He had fallen asleep. He was angry with himself. He heard French voices from the other side of the clearing. A rabbit hopped out, zigzagged across the field, and froze. A shot rang out. The rabbit took off again running toward Esau. Another shot. The rabbit jumped in the air and fell. Two men, one with a rifle walked over to it, and one talked about how well Pierre shot his rifle. Pierre laughed saying it was luck. "Merci, poor rabbit. A good stew he will make."

Esau decided to take a chance, because the man spoke English. "Excuse me." Esau said. half revealed behind a tree. "Am I in France?"

Pierre raised the gun. "Identify yourself, Englese."

Esau stepped out, hands raised. "I am lost. I've been wandering around for two days."

"You are lucky you are not in Germany. They are as close as your voice can carry. You are in France today. Tomorrow, who knows?" He lowered his rifle as he talked, and Esau made his way out of the forest into the clearing. He held his hand out to Pierre, "Bon' Jour, Pierre."

Pierre raised his bushy eyebrows and asked, "You speak our language?" he asked in French.

"Yes," said Esau, "I speak five languages. I was a student in Germany. I cannot live there. They are crazy. They want to kill everyone who is not German, so I ran away.

"How old are you," Pierre asked.

"Seventeen." He lied, then quickly said, "I want to go to Switzerland and then to America. My name is Esau." He held his hand out to Pierre's hunting partner who smiled a toothless grin. They both