the little monsters.
While he was recovering from the leg surgery, the Germans retreated, and conditions became hectic, nearly chaotic, for the splendid Wehrmacht. Berger took advantage. He deserted, hitching rides to Danzig and then to Rostock and across to Denmark under forged orders. He lighted in Sweden for the duration of the war and then took a berth as a cook on a cargo ship. He deserted it in Maracaibo. Every change of country, every painful movement along the way, was driven by his overwhelming fear of the Russians. Get away, as far as possible—that was his destination. And as far as possible, physically and politically, meant the United States. Well, he had finally made it, only to be called a hamburger by ignorant, undisciplined American brats.
The boy waited a long time without moving. Berger also did not move. Perhaps this one he would lure close and catch. Then he would work out his vengeance against them all at one time. He would wait to see.
With no discernible trigger, the boy was suddenly descending the slope in modest strides that left long projectile-shaped footsteps behind him and sent small fans of dirt sliding before. At the bottom he stopped just outside the turnaround and drew in a deep breath. Looking sidelong in the direction of Berger’s trailer, the boy veered and continued, although not straight for the trailer. Instead, he headed for the shack that stood to one side.
This is a first, Berger thought disgustedly. Now one is to go so far as to steal my food! The shack held the icebox where Hans stored his perishables, mostly meat. He curled his fingers around the long-handled, three-prong pitchfork that was propped next to him against the trailer. It was his only weapon, but it would be enough. No one would blame him for protecting his property, even if a boy was hurt by it. Or perhaps not just hurt. The boy had wild hair, coarse features, and cheap clothing. A poverty child, Hans saw. Someone no parent cared much for, if there even were parents. Probably unloved, cast off, feral. Hans could focus half a lifetime of disappointment, pain, and abuse from others on this one unneeded boy. Who would ever know?
The intensity of Hans’s desire for blood vengeance made his heart thump. A long-dormant warmth came to his face. So strong, so profoundly vicious was the desire that it took Hans aback. He was surprised to find himself already on his feet, using the pitchfork, tines upward, as a staff, and on course to head off the boy. Hans had to struggle with dizziness to remain aware of what he was doing. It was almost as if the boy were drawing him, compelling him to his vengeance.
Junior halted in the middle of the turnaround. The old man approached, dragging one leg over the dirt, jabbing the pitchfork handle in the ground and pulling himself forward. His face was twisted in an odd way. Junior had no experience in reading human expressions. A normal person, however, would have recognized the conflict in the old man’s face, two overwhelming emotions battling for supremacy: utter hatred and terrified shame. To Junior the old man seemed merely mistaken. He was not the one destined for Junior. The old man had done nothing to attract him.
Junior held up his hand at the old man, reciting from the book, “Better to starve free than be a fat slave.” The man stiffened in place. He blinked as if coming fully awake from a dream. Neither budged.
On the ridge above the dump Jurgen was finally invited to peck at the dead lizard, although little was left but bone. The strangers hopped backwards to let him in, and he approached ducking his head in thanks. But the strangers did not stick around. With a parting squawk each, they took to the air. Watching them go, Jurgen felt abandoned, and when he looked around for Junior, the boy was not in sight. Jurgen, never wholly alone in his life before, was suddenly forlorn. For a moment he spread his wingtips to the ground and shivered, bleating and rolling his eyes at the sky. Then he pulled himself together at last and tucked in his wings. He hop-flew to the top of the steep slope, casting his eyes over the smoking knolls and dales of the dump.
There in the clearing below was Junior. Jurgen recognized the brown hair sticking up from Junior’s head like a dark crest. At the same time Jurgen sensed trouble. Another figure was poised near Junior, holding a stick with three sharp points. Between Junior and this other one there was palpable tension. It frightened Jurgen as keenly as had the loneliness. Gathering all his strength, he stepped, bounded up, and flapped as the earth sloped away, then glided downward in a sweeping 270-degree arc. The heads below faced upward.
Berger spied the shadow as it slid by the boy and looked up to see the crow itself swing around, rear back flaring its wings, and land on the boy’s shoulder. For a second it looked remarkably like a symbol from his past, the black Nazi eagle. He squeezed his eyes shut, then peered between the lashes. Everything was too bright.
Off. Garish. Spooky. The light, the tousled, ill-featured child before him, the bird. Hans had never seen a crow land on a human, except on a corpse to tear out flesh. This one alighted, ruffled, settled in as if it belonged. It was all too schaurig. Seltsam. Hans struggled for English: infernal.
The boy said, “He is Jurgen.”
The crow emitted a two-part squawk-caw that sounded so like the name Jurgen that Hans nearly fumbled the pitchfork while taking a half step backwards.
“Heigh-ho, hi-ding-do,” said the boy, beaming hideously at the bird.
“Junior,” the bird replied.
To the old man the boy said, “I am Junior.”
Hans was now thoroughly fuddled and alarmed. Though there was no overt threat from the boy, or even a hint of taunting, he felt the urge to run. Run in any way that he could manage, however painful and perilous. But at the height of this panic, just when he was about to give in to it, the boy’s stomach gurgled loudly, protractedly, like the very last water in a bathtub as the drain sucks it down.
Hans relaxed.
The orphan was hungry. Of course he was! That was why he had come to the dump. That was why he was on his way to break into the shack. Scavenging. A empty-headed orphan, a gleaner at his dump. Han’s intense hatred and shame abruptly dissipated, although not the encounter’s surreal mood.
Hesitantly, Hans beckoned to the boy with his free hand. He pointed at his card table. “I have food, child,” he said.
Junior recognized the change and supposed that it meant the old man understood now. Junior had not come for him. So when the old man pointed to the table, Junior complied and went there to sit. Talking nearly constantly, producing long strings of incomprehensible words, the old man left Junior and entered the shed. He reappeared with a small white package in his hand. He unwrapped it to reveal a length of sausage. This he took into his trailer. When he came out again, he had the sausage cut up on a tin plate along with a piece of buttered bread. He set the plate on the table as well as a glass of tepid tea. Then he hobbled around the side of the trailer and came back with a packing crate, which he set down across from Junior and sat on.
Junior watched all these movements impassively. When the old man, who called himself Hans, urged him to eat the food, Junior picked up a piece of sausage, which was firm and cool and slippery with grease, and offered it to Jurgen. Jurgen took it in his beak but held it there while Junior ate. The old man, still uttering harsh words, such as Krieg and Flüchtling, followed his every move, helplessly fascinated. When Junior finished the food, Jurgen glided to the ground, dropped his sausage chunk, put a claw on it, and set to tearing it into bite-size bits. These he consumed, trilling delightedly. With another flurry of activity, the old man assembled a second plate of sausage and bread for Junior and set a piece of sausage on the ground near Jurgen. In the course of it, Junior heard in English about Germany, Russia, Sweden, explosions, dead people, snowbound landscapes, ships, trains, the mountains of Mexico, the seamy wharves of San Francisco, and the pitilessness of Americans who learned of the old man’s background.
Junior
