Here is what I know.
I was wet—head to toe, submerged in the frigid spring waters. I felt slick bark on my fingertips and managed to pull my torso atop one undulating log until I became nauseated from the pressure against my gut. I found some sort of strength, some sort of urgency, that pulled me into a straddle position, and then I made the mistake of trying to stand. This lasted no discernible time because the balance of my memory is veiled by water and darkness and desperation. I’ve had a similar sensation when I drive beneath a bridge in a rainstorm. There is a brief void of silence, and then everything rushes in again. In this case, the void was when my head dipped below the water, suffocating my senses.
Logs were coming faster, and the pool was rimmed three, sometimes five, deep. To reach the bank I would have had to scramble over multiple rows of the hewed trees. I ducked beneath the surface as each new wave came, fearful that the next time I tried to emerge there would be no space for my body or that the space would be swallowed, crushing me. I couldn’t see a thing beneath the surface. The water reddened with clay and frayed bark. I was blind. Calling for help was a waste of time. The skeleton crew of men were stationed elsewhere. My survival was my own.
I forcefully pushed my legs downward, propelling my torso above the surface as far as I could, like a trout gasping in silted waters. I inhaled deep and sank just as quickly as I had risen.
And then I swam.
I swam as hard and as straight forward as I could manage, knowing that coming up for air was no longer an option. Logs loomed overhead, blanketing the surface and blocking the sunlight. I swam until my lungs no longer held and I expelled a burst of bubbles, what I felt was surely my last contribution to this earth. I waited for my body to rise and rest beneath the barrier of wood, having nothing left in me to breach it.
And just as my body began to rise, my fingertips sank into soft mud. I had reached an edge. I could stand.
I clawed my way up the receding bank until my face rested on grass, and air once again filled my lungs. I tried to blink my eyes open, but they were stung by the splinter remnants and fresh light. I am unsure how long I lay there, but it was Bud’s voice I heard first, followed shortly by other men’s. They were laughing; he was not. “Get up!” he roared, rolling me over with his boot and pointing the way to his truck. I never saw a dollar from that day and we didn’t speak again until I returned to his cabin one last time before leaving for Asheville. This was all I needed to assure me that if I stayed, if I became Bud’s dispensable errand boy, I would die young—if not physically, most assuredly spiritually. My father had not died for his country merely to have his son die for someone else’s pocket change.
Chapter Three
“Cowney! Be sure ’n’ kindle the fire ’fore you head out tonight. Blackberry winter’s settin’ in,” Bud rumbled, shaking me from daydream. Blackberry winter was an impossibility that time of the year. Bud loved to refer to the little winters—sarvis, dogwood, blackberry, locust, and so on—as much as possible, I think because he believed it made him sound wise.
Bud stoked a fire every night, seven nights a week, 365 nights a year. It did not matter whether it was blackberry winter or the Fourth of July. Bud was cold-blooded in that regard, probably in a few other regards as well. He’d mumble something about tradition when questioned by his buddies—saying a fire always had to burn in a real man’s home.
I swept the accumulated pile of wood shavings from under Bud’s rocking chair off the far side of the porch, selected a few twigs from the yard that had yet to be scavenged by Bud for his nightly inferno, and took the top three or four additions of old newspapers from the pile just inside the cabin. The twigs fit neatly into the fireplace like vertebrae, and I began to crumple the paper into tight balls of tinder. But something in the second layer gave me pause.
A bold headline warned of rumored brutalities occurring in Poland. I scanned the article enough to imagine a child caught up in the conflict, a child in a cage, or a child watching his parents being hauled away. My imagination folded into the stories I had been told about when my people had been removed from this land. I could see my own ancestors in pens or hiding in caves, while their neighbors and fellow clan members were marched out, prodded along by soldiers’ rifles. I pictured a child alone, scared, and probably no longer alive when the paper was printed. This was war’s game piece—a skeleton covered in the indistinguishable color of newspaper gray as if his skin was made of the broadsheet itself. Even back then, I remember feeling that if I stirred, or turned the page, the image, the picture would come to know the merging of stillness and velocity that I had known standing on the porch looking out into the forest. But this merging was much deadlier. The paper preserved the truth’s existence, and, as I held it in my hands, I believed crumpling the page or tossing it aside would erase it forever.
“I didn’t ask you to read the funny pages, boy. Get on with it,” Bud thundered.
I folded the paper, setting it aside until I could tuck it into my back pocket on the way out the door.
The fire was stoked to a moderate roar in no time. “You be sure and take the rest of those pintos with you to your Lishie tonight. I get awful tired of hearing her complain I don’t feed you enough while you’re here,” my uncle gargled.
“Yes, sir. You remember that I’m leaving in the morning for Asheville, right?”
“Ehh, shit. That tomorrow? Just make sure you get everything done here you need to before you take off again.” Bud stood from his ladder-back rocking chair and walked over to the table. “I been reading about this place you say you’re working at.”
“Reading about it? Where?”
“Hell, son. I ain’t illiterate. The goddamn newspaper that every other folk in the country reads.”
I wanted to know more, but knew it was best to try to ignore him when he appeared to be keen on a topic.
“The Grove Park Inn. That’s the place, sure nuff?”
“Yes, sir.” I hurriedly spooned the remaining beans from the castiron pot into a small blue bowl to take with me.
“Paper says they’ve got Krauts holed up there already. Gonna move in Japs soon, too. Best watch your step or they’re liable to lock you up with ’em. You probably look more like a foreigner than a soldier.”
“I’ll be careful, but I think they keep everyone pretty well separated. I’ll be doing outside work anyway. Doubt they let them outside much.”
“Ain’t no resort with sightseers now. Says they’re diplomats and foreign nationals. Shit, that means they’re high-class prisoners. ‘Fore the summer’s over, you’ll be serving them tea and rubbing their Nazi-lovin’ feet.”
“I think they pay other people for that,” I offered, grabbing the folded newspaper I had set aside, tucking it in my pants, and hurrying out the front door. “Night!” I called back.
Lishie was waiting at the kitchen table when I came in. “I thought you would’ve beat me home.” She smiled.
“I brought you home some beans.”
“Sgi, sweetheart. There’s a pan of cornbread on the stove if you’re hungry.”
“No, thanks, I still need to start packing for the week.”
“Well, okay. If you’re sure. I’ll make you some sandwiches to take with you. I put your momma’s old suitcase on your bed, too. You should use it. The lining still smells like her.” Lishie was tearing up, whether over Momma or me I couldn’t tell. Sometimes I think Lishie may have missed her daughter-in-law more than her own son. I would not have been surprised by either motivation for the tears. Lishie had two emotions: sternness and complete, utter compassion. There was no moderation.
I wouldn’t know if the suitcase smelled like my mother or not. I wish I knew. I only even knew what she looked like based on what features folks said I had of hers, what some of her cousins looked like, and one faded black-and-white photograph, taken by one of the