Run, Boy, Run(32)

As soon as he had put some distance between himself and Pani Herman's farm, he took off his new shoes and put them in his knapsack. He knew he would need them in the winter, if he wasn't caught before then.

The harvested fields were yellow in the early-autumn sun. The forest was green in the distance. Purple heather grew in the untitled fields. Jurek followed a dirt path between them and prayed silently. Not in the words he had learned from the pretty woman. He simply asked God to help him, repeating over and over, O God, O God, O God, O God, O God...

Once he had been a Jewish boy. He hadn't forgotten that. Then, too, he had known there was a God. His father and oldest brother had prayed to Him every morning, tying a black box to their foreheads and winding a leather thong around their arms. Although he couldn't remember the words for these things, he could picture the two of them in their white shawls, swaying back and forth in prayer. Sometimes they took him to the synagogue. That was where the Jewish God lived. But now God lived in the churches of little villages and there were three of Him, for he was also Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Jurek touched the cross and the medallion of the Madonna around his neck. How could they have let the young doctor refuse to save his arm?

He came to a low wall ahead by the side of the path. It had a gate with a large metal cross. He went and peered through it. Inside was a cemetery filled with crosses of all kinds and shapes. He opened the gate and entered. Apart from the tombstones, there were several structures that looked like little houses. These were old mausoleums in which nobles and rich landowners had been buried. He approached one of them and tried its low metal door. The door creaked and opened a bit. He pushed again and forced his way inside. He was in a room with two stone benches, one on each side. An old stone coffin lay on one of them. In the middle of the room was a long rectangular pit with a mound of earth. Broken pieces of stone were scattered on it. Jurek tried to open the coffin but couldn't. He went outside and found a shovel without a handle. After many attempts, he managed to pry open the coffin's lid. He feared finding a corpse and hoped to find a treasure. But there was neither. Except for a few bones, the coffin was empty. He threw them in the pit, climbed into the coffin, and lay down. It was comfortable enough for a boy his size.

Jurek decided to made this place his home. He went outside and found a well at the far end of the cemetery. At least he wouldn't die of thirst here.

The next day he left his knapsack with what remained of the food in the coffin and left the cemetery early. He didn't want to bump into anyone visiting a grave. He spent the day in the forest and came back at night to sleep. When the food was gone, he foraged for vegetables in the nearby villages. Coming across a field of kohlrabi, he bent to dig up a few plants. Suddenly he heard a shout, and a man came running toward him. Turning to flee, he was shocked to see that he had lost partial control of his body and could no longer run and hurdle obstacles as before. The loss of his arm had affected his sense of balance. Though he managed to get away, he spent the next days practicing running and jumping to see how best to do them. Using his slingshot was out of the question. The results with his left hand were so dismal that he soon gave up.

The autumn rains set in. The trees lost their leaves. The berries disappeared from the forest. Seeing the wild boar eat the acorns and horse chestnuts that fell from the trees, he tried roasting these in a fire and eating them, but they weren't edible. Mostly he lived off unharvested vegetables and potatoes left in the gardens. If it was raining and he couldn't light a fire, he ate the potatoes raw.

His favorite occupation was playing with the rope. Using his mouth and feet, he taught himself to tie and untie knots. One day he decided to climb a tree. He heaved one end of the rope over a branch, knotted the two ends, and pulled himself upward. On his first try he slipped and almost fell, grabbing on to a branch at the last second. But after a day of experimenting, he found a system that worked. If he ever had to return to the forest, he would be able to sleep in the trees again.

His success with the rope restored a measure of his self-confidence. If only he dared, he could do many of the things he used to do. It simply took patience, as the nun in the hospital had told him. One day he decided it was time to look for work in the villages.

He opened his knapsack, took the shoes, and put them on. Tying the laces was a problem, because he couldn't raise his foot high enough to grab hold of them with his teeth. But he had an idea. He pulled the lace from the shoe and reinserted it with one end long and the other short. Now he could grip the long end with his teeth, get his foot into the shoe, and knot the short end. He felt proud of this solution. His knapsack on his shoulder, he set out full of hope, tapping with his stick on the tree trunks and running it over the bushes as if they were the picket fences of Blonie.