Forty Days at Kamas (2 page)

I swallowed hard, and then took Reineke's arm.

The shouting of the guards became even more frenzied, their grunts and howls making them sound more like victims than aggressors. As for the prisoners, we knew better than to cry out when hit because that only provoked the guards to beat us harder.

When we reached the car's exit, by some miracle no guards were on hand to harass us other than the dog handler stationed five yards back from the tracks. Roesemann jumped out and put his arms around Reineke's chest while I lowered myself to the ground holding the wounded man's legs.

At that moment a pair of guards looked our way from the edge of the blacktop and started toward us, clubs raised to strike. Roesemann and I put our heads down and rushed forward, prepared to meet their blows. But as fortune would have it, the guards were not after us but a shuffling graybeard just ahead.

Without a word, the two guards lit into the old man. They rained blows upon his distinguished bald pate until his scalp was awash with blood. He scrambled desperately to break free but a vicious kick in the gut promptly felled him. He lay motionless a few feet short of the blacktop, blood streaming in rivulets onto the thin layer of newly fallen snow. Then two other guards seized him by the feet and dragged him between the pylons, his bald head bouncing with sickening thuds across the frozen ground.

Throughout the beating, Roesemann and I kept lugging Reineke between us, evading all blows except for a few glancing kicks from a young guard who stopped pursuing us the moment we reached the pylons.

"Get down and link arms!" the uniformed youth threatened from a spot safely beyond reach.

Behind us a truck engine roared and I turned around to look. At that instant a rubber truncheon caught me behind the ear and sent my knit cap flying from my head. Though dazed, I tucked my chin into my chest to protect my throat. When none followed, I felt a murderous rage well up inside me, not only at the pain and humiliation of being struck, but at the absence of any warning. To the guards, we were not fellow humans but domestic animals for whom physical correction was always preferable to words.

We waited on the snow–covered blacktop until the guards were satisfied that no prisoners remained in or underneath the coaches and none had concealed themselves anywhere else in the rail yard. My lice stirred again, this time in my scalp and up and down my neck. I caught one and crushed it against my boot, but left the others alone. It was pointless— no matter how many I destroyed, more always appeared.

"Get up! De–link arms and form a single column four abreast!"

Having performed this operation many times, we succeeded in forming a workable column within seconds. Roesemann and I lifted Reineke and held him between us.

"Prisoners, prepare to march at my command!"

With guards flanking us on either side, we crossed the tracks and followed a deeply rutted path through a patchwork of open fields. We followed the path for fifteen or twenty minutes before it intersected a four–lane paved road that led toward town. By this time, carrying Reineke had depleted my last reserves of strength. The pain in my lower back had become unbearable.

"Keep to the road! One step to the right or left and I'll fire without warning!"

I spotted a line of six unmarked tractor–trailer rigs parked two hundred yards ahead along the shoulder and resolved to hold out until we reached them. When we closed to within a hundred yards of the nearest truck Reineke suddenly began to mutter and shuffle his feet. Roesemann and I looked at each other, unsure of what to do next, and in the split second that we hesitated, the man twisted out of our grip and broke away toward the fields.

Without thinking, I left the column and tackled him around the waist. Someone fired a warning shot and a half dozen guards swarmed after us. I lay still, anticipating a shower of blows. But to my amazement, the prisoners nearest to us closed in around us to form a protective screen. All Roesemann and I needed were a few seconds to pull the breathless fugitive onto his feet and we all managed to keep moving. Again the guards withdrew.

After the scuffle, I let go of Reineke for a moment to see whether he could walk without my support. It was only because of my odd position that I was able to see someone keeping pace with us among the trees. A moment later I spotted an old woman carrying a basket and a duffel and a young girl wearing a canvas backpack emerge from a thicket onto the road's shoulder.

At first the guards failed to see them. The woman made the sign of the cross, then calmly stepped into the road as if to pass through the column to the other side. By the time the two stepped among the prisoners and began handing out bread rolls it was too late to stop them. The half–starved men broke ranks and collided with each other to get their hands on a precious roll. Then the old woman removed the cloth covering from her basket and held it out to the prisoners while the girl pulled more rolls from her pockets.

The scramble for rolls was interrupted by a burst of submachine gunfire aimed over our heads. Dogs whined and barked, straining at their leashes to attack.

"Everybody on the ground! Sit! Link arms!"

The command to sit rang out again and again as prisoners dropped to the ground and stuffed precious bread into their clothing.

"You! Woman! Freeze!" screamed the enraged dog handler closest to the old woman. But the woman had already taken the girl's hand and was leading her back into the trees with remarkable speed and agility.

Without a moment's hesitation the handler reached down to unleash his dog. In a flash a black German shepherd was racing alongside the column in headlong pursuit. Having seen dogs like these maul prisoners many times, I shuddered at the thought of what would now happen to the unfortunate woman or her child. For an instant I considered stepping between the dog and its quarry but I lacked the nerve. The beast galloped past me at top speed.

Then I heard a high–pitched canine yelp followed by shouts and cries of animal pain. I turned my head in time to see a broad–shouldered prisoner sitting astride the black shepherd dog, one forearm locked firmly in the dog's jaws and the other pinning the dog's windpipe against the icy road. Guards converged upon the man and beat him senseless but the dog remained limp when they pulled it away from the prisoner's inert body. Angry murmurs spread among us but were soon suppressed by another burst of gunfire over our heads.

"Major Whiting! Sir! Request permission to track the women!"

A young dog handler stood at attention before the convoy leader, a lean, sinewy man of about forty who spoke quickly but with an Oklahoma twang.

"Stand down, Rogers. We have prisoners to deliver. Leave the women and help move these vermin onto the trucks."

Whiting watched with a vigilant eye as the column waited opposite the trucks. Then he strode back to where one of the guards was directing two prisoners to drag the dog slayer's body to the nearest tractor–trailer.

"Is he still alive?" Whiting asked the guard.

"He was a minute ago."

"Then tie his hands and feet. If he lives, send him to the isolator with Reineke."

"Yes, Sir!" the guard answered.

"And next time, son, when you open fire, don't waste your bullets firing into thin air. Hit somebody."

Roesemann and I looked at each other in mute fury. On command we hoisted Reineke between us and lifted him onto the truck.

C
HAPTER
2

"Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship–run state has its roots in the street."
—Joseph Goebbels

NOVEMBER 2016

We lived in a stone farmhouse atop a forested knoll that commanded a sweeping view of the hills along the Ohio River to the southwest. The south end of the house projected just beyond a line of towering maples, the French doors of our old glassed–in porch opening onto a flagstone veranda. Beyond the boxwood hedge that enclosed the veranda on three sides, the hill sloped gradually at first, then more steeply, past our neighbor’s horse paddock to the two–lane state road that connected downtown Sewickley with Interstate 79.

I finished my mug of tea and joined my wife on the veranda. Juliet had begun covering the boxwood with burlap slipcovers and called me over to shovel mulch around the roots. I pulled a long–handled shovel from the wheelbarrow to join. Meanwhile, our two daughters, Claire and Louisa, aged five and three, busied themselves collecting fallen twigs for the woodpile. The sun was already high in a cloudless sky and the morning frost had melted nearly everywhere.

It was the second Saturday in November, only four days since the national elections in which the president was re–elected under the banner of his newly formed Unionist Party. The Unionists also took both houses of Congress, which had struck me as a complete surprise. I had been spending sixty–hour weeks at the office and had not paid much attention to the persistent reports of large–scale voter registration fraud, voting machine hacking, pre–stuffed ballot boxes, and voter intimidation at polling places in major cities across the country. Even with a government blackout on live television and radio coverage at the polls, by Election Day’s end rumors of a stolen election had spread to nearly every household that owned a phone or a computer. But like too many others, I did not understand what was happening until the damage had already been done.

"Where do we put the sticks, Daddy?" my older daughter, Claire, asked, bringing my thoughts back to the present.

"By the woodpile, sweetie," I replied. "Break them up in pieces about so big and make a stack with them."

"This one’s too big to break," she replied, dragging an eight–foot branch across the grass. "Will you help me?"

"Of course," I replied and lay down my shovel.

When I reached her, Claire had dropped the branch and was pointing toward the road at the bottom of the hill.

"Who are those people, Daddy, and where are they going?" she asked. "Are they going camping?"

I looked up and saw the road clogged with a slow–moving procession of cars, pickup trucks, trailers, Amish–style horse carts, bicyclists, backpackers, even big–wheeled garden carts pulled rickshaw–style. Those on foot were trailed by a pack of underfed dogs. It reminded me of World War II newsreels of the Dutch fleeing the bombing of Rotterdam or German refugees retreating later from the advancing Red Army. Most of the cars and trucks were far from new and many of the foot travelers shabbily dressed, though most gave the impression of being strong, hardy people who had once belonged to America’s middle class.

A trio of deer peered out from behind a copse of trees near the road and hesitated, unable to find a break in the uninterrupted stream of traffic. A few of the dogs looked up, as if catching a scent, but none gave chase.

"Where are they going, Daddy?" Claire repeated.

"I think some are headed north to Canada, darling, like the Moores," I replied. The Moores were our neighbors who, having lost their savings to inflation and having failed to sell their horse farm before the mortgage company gave notice of foreclosure, abandoned the farm and their unpaid tax obligations and moved in with their son in Ottawa.

"The ones in the fancy cars are probably driving to the Toronto airport to catch a flight overseas. The rest are probably headed south, where there are more jobs and it’s cheaper to live."

"Are we going away, too?" Claire asked, turning to me with a look of disapproval.

I heard footsteps behind me and felt my wife grip my arm. She held on with both hands as if what she saw on the road had given her a chill.

I looked into her eyes and saw the fear of losing our business, our savings, our house and everything in it—and not being able to start over. Not in America, anyway. Not with the Unionists in power. I glanced over to Claire, hoping that she had not sensed Juliet’s fear.

"Not today, sweetie," I replied. "We’re staying right here at home. Mommy and Daddy have work to do. And so do you and Louisa. Here, let me pull that branch over to the woodpile for you. Now, break up the small twigs, like this, but leave the big sticks for me, okay?"

My wife squeezed my arm once more and let go to take my hand.

"Jeff’s car just pulled in," she said softly. "I’ll brew a fresh pot of tea. Why don’t you carry some chairs onto the veranda?"

****

Jeff Fisher had been my personal attorney and business advisor for nearly fifteen years. He was sharp, strong–willed, and experienced, but also honest and utterly down to earth. Jeff had studied law at Columbia and doubtless could have risen to partner at any of the big law firms in downtown Pittsburgh but chose instead to join his father’s small practice in Sewickley. I was happy he did. His advice was invariably worth more than I paid for it.

"Any news from the Germans?" I asked, handing him a mug of Lapsang Souchong laced with a shot of twelve–year–old rum.

"Well, they’ve made you an offer," Jeff said without enthusiasm.

"That’s more than I’ve had from anyone else in the last three years," I replied. "I’ll give the Germans credit for that much."

"Don’t get too excited, Paul. Their offer is half of what we expected and a third of what the company is worth in today’s market. They don’t want to buy the company; they’re out to steal it. Still, it’s an offer. And it might even be worth taking, depending on what you expect from the economy under a Unionist administration."

"You and I both know that wage and price controls have been a complete disaster for small manufacturers like us," I responded. "The Germans, on the other hand, seem quite comfortable with government controls. With the European economy in the toilet and foreign trade down to a trickle, they seem almost desperate for a foothold in the U.S. market. I’d say that’s good news for us."

"But the bad news is that they think we’re even more desperate to sell than they are to buy," Jeff replied.