Run, Boy, Run(6)

They rode through the village. A barking dog chased them. A woman sitting in her doorway with a child watched them go by. Boys played soccer on the road. The farmer reined the horse to a walk to keep it from kicking up dust at them. He didn't speak. Neither did Srulik. They left the village. Another village appeared on the horizon, and the farmer stopped and pointed. Srulik looked and saw several boys dressed in rags by a stream that sparkled in the sunlight. The boys noticed them and dived into the reeds along the bank.

"Those are Jewish children," the farmer said. "Go to them."

He dismounted and helped Srulik down, then took two cubes of sugar and a piece of bread from his pocket. He gave Srulik one cube and the bread and fed the other cube to the horse, patting its neck fondly. Putting his hand on Srulik's head, he made the sign of the cross over him and said, "May the Mother of God look after you."

He mounted his horse and rode off. Srulik watched him go. He wanted to wave goodbye, but the farmer didn't turn around. Should he eat the bread and sugar together, or first one and then the other? He decided to eat the bread first. He chewed it as he watched the farmer grow smaller in the distance and vanish around a bend in the road. Then he ate the sugar.





3. The Forest Protects Us


Srulik cut across the field and went to look for the boys who had hidden by the stream bank. Although from the horse he had seen the spot clearly, he now he had to guess where it was. Soon, he found it. The boys were sitting by the water, having an argument. They fell silent when they saw him. After a while one of them said, "That's the redhead we saw on the farmer's horse."

"Was that you?" a boy asked.

Srulik nodded.

"Where are you from?"

"The Warsaw ghetto," he said.

"When did you leave it?"

"Today."

"What were you doing on that horse?"

Srulik shrugged.

"You don't know?" The question was accompanied by an incredulous laugh.

"No."

"What happened to its wagon?" someone asked. "It was dragging its harness."

Srulik told them what happened and showed them his ripped pants. He also, he now discovered, had a bloody cut on his foot.

"You're lucky. That German had a bayonet."

"Do you have anything to eat?" Srulik asked.

A boy took some farmer's cheese from his pocket. Srulik broke off a piece, ate it, and licked his fingers.

"Where did you get this cheese from?" he asked.

"The Poles hang it in bags from their fences to dry. It's easy to steal it," the boy said.

There was a consultation.

"What should we do with him?"

"One little brat is enough."

"Don't you even care about him, Shleymi?" asked a small boy who was sharpening a pocket knife on a stone.

"You keep out of this, Yosele," Shleymi said. "Be happy we agreed to take you."

Apart from the boy with the knife, everyone was older than Srulik.

"Let Avrum decide," the boy with the cheese declared.

Everyone looked at Avrum.

"We'll take him," he said.

"If he does something dumb that gets us caught, you're to blame," Shleymi told him.

The boy with the cheese said, "Once we're caught, who cares who's to blame?"

His name was Itsik. He sat by the stream, throwing sticks into the water and watching them float away on the current. Srulik lay on his back and gazed at the sky. He kept picturing the farmer and his horse growing smaller in the distance. His thoughts were full of the day's events.

Someone was waking him.

"Come on, we're moving out."

It was little Yosele. He was barefoot and wearing a grown man's clothes with the pants hitched up to his waist and tied with a rope. Srulik saw that he was the only boy with shoes. They didn't look like they would last long, because Yoyneh had never managed to mend them.

The boys set out on a path that led through some fields toward a far-off village. When they neared it, they took cover in a wheat field. Some people and animals were visible in the nearest farmyard. The sun was setting. A mare stood tethered by a stable, its little foal scampering around it. A girl was coming home with a flock of geese. A dog barked a greeting and the geese crooked their necks at it with fearsome shrieks. A teenage boy led some cows to a barn. A woman stepped out of a house and shouted at him:

"Yacek, get those pigs into the sty!"

Wasn't that the Polish name that was supposed to appear on the postcard his parents had planned to send to his brothers and sister?

The woman, her sleeves rolled up, went to the barn. She held a milk can in one hand and a milking stool in the other. Avrum studied the farmyard.

"They've prepared baskets of vegetables to take to the market tomorrow," he whispered.