Run, Boy, Run(9)

"Couldn't we be caught in the forest, too?"

"No one goes very deep into it. Except for the partisans. "

"Who are they?"

"Poles who fight the Germans. They don't want any part of us, though. You have to watch out for the forester, too. He turns Jews in."

"Are all the Poles bad?"

Yosele thought. "No. Once I knocked on a door and they gave me food without any questions."

"Are we deep in the forest now?"

"Not yet. In the dark it's safe here too. In the morning we'll go deeper."

The next morning, Yosele awoke him. Srulik was surprised to open his eyes and see trees and branches instead of walls and a ceiling. Then he remembered where he was. He was hungry and thirsty.

"Come," Yosele said. "We're going to our hideout."

Avrum led them through the trees to a brook. They stopped to drink, scooping water with their hands or lapping it while lying on their stomachs. Srulik stuck his head in the water. It felt good flowing over him. He opened his mouth and drank.

They took out their vegetables. Avrum put the basket of eggs in the middle. When they finished eating, they stored everything in a hollow tree trunk and went to look for berries—wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and red and black currants. They also picked white and black mulberries from the trees and little green nuts whose shells were still soft.

Srulik found some mushrooms. They were the kind he had gathered with his brother in the forest near Blonie. His new friends were afraid to eat them.

"Srulik," Avrum said, "you'll die from them."

He ate them anyway, and his friends learned.

Late that afternoon, Avrum led them back to their hideout. They drank from the brook and ate more vegetables and eggs.

"How can Avrum always find the way?" Srulik asked.

"Partly by the moss and partly ... I don't really know," Itsik said.

"What's moss?"

Itsik showed him some growing on the tree trunks. "You see," he said, "it only grows on one side of the tree. And no matter how many trees you look at, it's always the same side. It helps you to find your way back."

Srulik didn't understand.

"How?"

"By following it in the opposite direction."

Although this made no sense to him either, he didn't ask again. He would try to figure it out for himself.

"Do you have any more farmer's cheese?" he asked.

Itsik laughed. "No. We finished that long ago. We'll steal some more when we can."

The next night Srulik slept near Yosele again. They talked quietly before falling asleep.

"You know something?" Yosele whispered. "Trees have souls."

"Who told you?"

"Leybele. He said their souls go places at night."

"Was he your friend?"

"Yes."

"Are the souls of trees good or bad?"

"They must be good. No tree ever harmed anyone."

Srulik thought about that. "Do you think it hurts a tree to break its branches?" he asked.

"Maybe no more than clipping your fingernails," said Yosele.

"My mother always threw the clippings from my fingernails into the oven," Srulik told him. "First she mixed them with feathers."

"So did mine. Without the feathers. You know why?"

"Why?"

"So that your soul won't look for them on Judgment Day."

"What's Judgment Day?"

"The end of the world. When all the dead rise."

"Everyone?"

"That's what my grandpa says. I'll see my mother again. And she won't be sick anymore."

Srulik sighed. "I wish I knew what happened to my mother."

"What about your father?"

He told Yosele of the time they tried escaping the ghetto and the German soldiers appeared on motorcycles.

"I can't remember my father," Yosele said. "He died when I was little. We lived with my grandfather. He was a bookseller."

"Can you read?"

"Yes. Can you?"

"No."

When he was little, Srulik had gone to Hebrew school. All they had learned there were the Hebrew letters. The Polish letters were different.

"What did your father do?" Yosele asked.

"He was a baker. Sometimes he took me to his bakery to sleep on top of the oven. In the morning he woke me and gave me the first hot rolls to eat."

Srulik's mouth watered, thinking of those rolls.

"Do you have brothers?" he asked Yosele.

"No."

"I have two. And two sisters."

"Where are they?"

"I don't know. Maybe they're dead. They were probably caught in some roundup."

"What's a roundup?" Yosele asked.

"That's when the Jewish police and the German soldiers take the Jews to trains for resettlement."