Run, Boy, Run(36)

"Aaaooowwww ... Aaaooowwww..."

Jurek jumped up and ran for dear life. He crossed the yard and burst into the farmhouse. The last embers in the stove threw some light on the floor. He sat shaking with fear. The creak of the door woke the farmer, who stepped out of the bedroom. Seeing the apparition in white by the stove, he crossed himself fearfully and exclaimed, "Mama! What are you doing here?"

Several days previously, it seemed, the farmer's mother had died. Now he was sure he was looking at her ghost.

"It's just me," Jurek said. "Jurek Staniak."

The farmer grabbed him, hit him, and threw him from the house. "Go to sleep!" he yelled.

Jurek returned reluctantly to the hayloft. He was wide awake. Groping his way to his bed of straw, he found his pants, took Werner's lighter from a pocket, and lit it. Two cats were lying on his blanket. He crept under it with both of them, repeating out loud in as deep a voice as he could muster, "Mama! What are you doing here?"

He burst into laughter.

The next morning, seeing the farmer and his younger daughter near a wheelbarrow of mash for the pigs, he went up and asked for work.

"How can you work with one arm?" the farmer asked.

"I can do anything. Whatever you need done."

"Can you push this wheelbarrow to the pigsty?" the farmer asked.

"Sure," Jurek said. "I'll show you."

He took his rope, doubled it, measured off the distance from his right shoulder to the handle of the wheelbarrow, made a sheepshank with the help of his feet, and looped one end of the rope around the handle and the other over the shoulder. He now had a second arm. The farmer and his daughter watched curiously. Jurek seized the other handle with his good arm and straightened up. Although he had never done it before, he managed to keep the wheelbarrow on an even keel while pushing it safely over the planks to the pigsty.

"Papa, let's take him," the girl said.

"No," the farmer replied. "What you just did was impressive, but I need someone with two hands."

"I'll help him," said the girl.

"You'd better remember you said that, Marina," her father told her.

He turned to Jurek.

"Take that bucket and fill the trough."





14. Marina and Grzegorz


Stanislaw Boguta didn't give Jurek special consideration for being without an arm. He treated him like any boy given food and board for his labor. He assigned him every kind of chore and hit him when he did something wrong. Without intending to, he helped Jurek in his struggle to be normal.

When Jurek kept complaining about the sound of the rain on the roof, Marina and her mother cleared part of the hayrack in the barn for him. Reached by rungs on the wall, it was high enough above the floor to keep the cows from getting at it. The warmth they gave off was a natural heating system. Jurek took the two cats from the hayloft, and they continued to sleep with him.

He soon realized that Marina was her mother's favorite. Clara, the oldest daughter, was closer to her father. Perhaps this was why all eyes were on Pani Boguta when she served the meat at Sunday dinner. Yet try as she might to give everyone the same size portion, Clara would angrily declare, "You've gone and given Marina the best part again!"

Marina would switch her plate with Clara's, and Clara would angrily snatch her plate back again.

Stanislaw Boguta was bored by the winter days, on which there was little to do. Tired of making the rounds of the house and yard to find something for his daughters and Jurek to do, he would harness the horse to a sled if the farm was not snowed in and drive into town to sit with his friends in the tavern.

This left Clara in charge. She never allowed Jurek to go play with the village boys before he had finished all his chores—feeding the pigs and chickens, collecting the eggs, giving the cows and horses fresh hay—and would invent new tasks if she thought he had finished too soon.

"Go chop some wood, Jurek," she might say.

Although he could chop wood with one arm, it took him a long time.

"Aren't you done yet?" she would ask.

"Leave him alone," Marina would say, coming to his defense.

"Now sort potatoes."

Jurek went to the storeroom to sort potatoes. Clara came, took a look, and berated him for a careless job. He sorted them again and tried slipping away when he was done, but she was waiting for him outside.

"Go fetch some firewood!"

Not having two arms for the wood, he tied it with a rope and carried it on his back. One day a poorly tied knot came apart and the wood fell in the snow. Marina hurried out to help Jurek pick it up and bring it into the house. Then, while Clara watched disapprovingly, she told him he was free.

"Clara hates everyone because she's not married," she said to him with a giggle.