No Heroes (14 page)

The groups working outside the camp were the main vehicles by which the black market existed. I was in one of those groups, and somebody said, if you get this linen out, you get paid for it. I walked out with those fine linens under my clothes.

We got stopped at the gate and they found the linens. They brought us back to the main assembly. Naturally we had to undress completely. Put all the goodies in front of us to prove that justice is done. All day long we waited in the cold so they can shoot us in front of everybody. This was just naturally what they did. We were standing there from eight in the morning until about four o'clock in the afternoon, and then somebody come by and said, put your clothes on and get out of here.

There was another time with the firing squad, in the main camp at Natzweiler-Struthof in France. Very famous camp for medical experiments on prisoners. We went there in a boxcar. Fifty-two men. Goodness gracious, very comfortable. Lie down, stand up, sit, whatever you want. We had straw and sawdust. They gave us water, they gave us bread, and they closed the car. And they had a hole so we had a potty. The windows were slits with bars in them at the top.

We had bread. I ate two pieces in the morning and two pieces at night. After a while, no more bread. Fourteen days on a boxcar and I am out of bread. I was more than a week without anything. Zero. Finally my neighbor, a gypsy, took a piece of bread, cut it in half, and gave it to me. That gypsy kept me alive. I never saw him again.

We got out of these boxcars at night. It was spring; it was gorgeous. It was the most beautiful night I ever saw. We came to that camp and everybody had to assemble. Just to show us they mean business, they go around and take people for the firing squad. No reason, no rhyme. They picked me and other people and put us in front of everybody. They start shooting. I'm closing my eyes. They stop shooting and I open them. They were shooting over our heads. They said, this should happen to you, you did something wrong.

The third time was in France in a camp. Nicagara, the most beautiful part of the valley. We had no food, so what the cooks used to do, they mowed the grass in front of the barracks and cooked that and fed us. Naturally we don't want to eat grass. We throw it out. They said, look, we know that valuable food is thrown out, so if we find food thrown out, we gonna shoot every tenth one of you. We don't want to have any people dying from hunger here.

We throw out the food and they assemble everyone and they count. I am tenth. All right. I didn't give a shit. We undressed because they want to use the uniform later. They lined us up against a wall, about forty of us against the back side of the latrine. They start shooting. I closed my eyes. Then they stopped and I was still standing there. They shot half the line and I was in the other half.

All I was thinking was: Is it gonna hurt? How is it gonna hurt? I hope it doesn't hurt too long. Ordinarily you have ten guys shooting one guy in a firing squad. But here are two guys shooting twenty. It takes time. They're screaming and yelling because the soldiers don't care if a guy gets hit by one bullet, in the arm or your stomach. He moans, they shoot him again. It's messy. It's not a clean operation.

I took clothing from the heap but it wasn't mine. It was too small and too dirty. Naturally I did not go back for my clothes. I didn't feel like going back and asking for my socks. I hate to wear brown socks with black trousers.

In Plaszow there was a Jewish policeman who liked me but I never liked him. So he got his anger ready. He wanted to kill me. He sent me to Scozisco, which is terrible. A lot of people who couldn't work were sent there. It was an ammunition and grenade factory with terrible chemicals. In three months they were dead so they send the weakest people. It saved the trouble of killing them. As soon as we came, we saw people dressed in newspaper with yellow skin from the chemicals.

The supervisor was a nice guy, not SS man. His name was Gajowcgyk. He was
volks-deutsch,
means half German and half Polish. He hated the Polish. He helped the Jews much more than Polish. He said to me, you look intelligent and after the war you will save me because the Germans will lose. You will tell that I helped the Jews.

That's how I got chosen for giving out clean materials. I didn't work with the chemicals and die in three months. He was bringing me food. I was lucky.

Everybody shares a bed with somebody. It's not bad, it was straw and wood. No blankets. My bed partner is Magda and she had typhoid. Spotty typhoid. Very, very bad. If they find out she has typhoid, she go to clinic where she will die. The sick ones were shot. She broke the fever but is like a zombie. She doesn't know where she is. Somebody told me, the best remedy is you hit her very hard in the face from both sides. That's what I did and she opens her eyes like from a dream and says, I hate you. You're really bad to slap me like that. I explain it to her, but she always had resentment. She is the only person I ever hit in my life.

After the war, the Poles find Gajowcgyk and they kill him. I run away because if somebody would see me, they would say, oh, this is the Jew that he helped. So I run to the train, and I disappear from Scozisco.

Most rural childhoods evolve in isolation, but not mine. In Haldeman twelve boys lived along two ridges connected by paths in the woods. Ricky and Randy were oldest by a few years, then Charley, Marty, Michael, and me. Below us were Roy, Jeff, and Roger of the same age, then Gregory and Faron, and finally Sonny the youngest.

The older boys went off by themselves and threw rocks at us if we tried to join them. Charley was big and quiet. Marty was the smallest and never stopped talking. Michael was tough, I was reckless, and everyone looked after Sonny.

We Haldemaniacs were in each other's homes as much as our own. We rode bicycles along dirt roads, animal paths, and creek beds, flying at top speed through the woods until someone wrecked. On any given day, a couple of us were scraped, bleeding, bruised, limping, and suffering from a black eye or a fat lip. Regardless of weather, we spent every afternoon together, each weekend, and all summer. The woods was our house. Haldeman was our world.

The boys were different now. Every damn one of us had become a grown man with adult problems. One had a heart attack before age forty. Five of us were divorced, three liked to drink, nine had children, two were balding, one was solid gray, and seven were fat. Four lived in trailers and another lived at home. One of us was dead—Michael had used a pistol on himself, and none of us had gotten over it.

After a month I built the courage to visit Michael's grave and stayed there for a long time talking to him. I took a few photographs. He was my best friend, but instead of grief, I was surprised to feel anger. As much as I loved him, he used to piss me off a lot, too. Now, in death, he'd managed to do it once more. He'd have enjoyed that.

Faron had grown into a handsome man nicknamed Hollywood for his resemblance to Nick Nolte. Like many men of the hills, Faron was a man of action, even if that action meant sitting on the porch. He was like a tree with something nervous inside. Roy had gone through the Gulf War and returned with a part of himself concealed. Sonny was learning the trade of plumbing from his father. Randy walked hours alone in the woods. He was the only person from Haldeman who ever sent me a letter. “Hey hillbillie!” he wrote. “Glad to hear you made it ok. I was somewhat worried as I know from experience that mountain folks don't make good travelers. They usually get homesick before they ever leave.”

Roy drove a 1966 Mustang, cherried out, restored until it gleamed in the sun.

Faron drove a yellow Nova that could run like a scalded dog.

Sonny owned a broke-down GTO that he kept beneath a tarp in an open shed up a hollow beside a creek.

My Malibu fit in but the boys were appalled that I didn't know how to work on it. Sonny thought the car was wasted on me and sought to buy it cheap. Faron wanted the double-pump carburetor. Roy eyed my rig carefully. Although his car was easy on the eyes, mine just might be able to outrun his in the quarter-mile.

Some nights we all got together in front of our cars and drank beer, setting the cans on the hood of my Malibu because I had the worst paint job. We lied about the present, reminisced about the past, and utterly ignored the future. We repeated ourselves endlessly. My sons mingled with their kids, throwing Frisbees and footballs and trying to sneak a drink of beer. I was reliving childhood from the other end, but it always ended the same way—arms around each other, staggering in the dirt, wishing Michael were with us, wishing Haldeman was with us, wishing time had halted twenty-five years ago at the apex of innocence. Those evenings were my happiest at home.

Only one exchange comes to mind. Faron had a pistol lying in the front seat of his truck, and I asked why.

“It's like toilet paper,” he said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I'd rather have it handy than need it.”

“Well,” I said, “don't wipe your ass with your gun.”

“I done did and it went off,” Faron said. “You want to take a look?”

“Whatever you do,” his brother said. “Don't say yes.”

“I tell you what you ort to see,” Faron said, “is a old boy's ass I work with. We call him Fencerow. They's four of us. Hogbody's got a body shaped like a hog except with arms and legs like a human. I don't know how Dog Peter Gnat got his name, but we call him Dog Peter Gnat. Now Fencerow, he's the kind of feller likes to moon you when you don't expect it. He don't care. He never wears a belt so he can do it quick. His ass crack is hairy as hell. It's like where a fencerow used to be and the grass still grows thick there. That's why we call him Fencerow, and Chris, you ain't lived till you seen his ass.”

I was working with my friend in Mecarez and we were preparing a factory underground. The Russian prisoners of war were doing the digging, standing in water underground for six, seven hours all day long, day after day. You know what happens to your body when you submerge it in water? You rot away. There was a tremendous amount of dying in those areas.

My friend is in charge of this electrical group and one day he pushed me out. The new situation was much worse. The very nasty Ukrainian SS was in charge. Absolutely brutal. The worst. It was a miserable camp. My friend sent me there. My friend did it to me.

One day a boss comes in. He had an artificial leg. We go into the area where I am in charge of electrical work, maybe six hundred feet down. Everything is dark. Lo and behold, we find my men eating breakfast. The boss chases the men with a stick, the handle of a pick. That's how he walked, because he needed a cane. Everybody ran away but me. I'm in charge. I don't run away. He hits me with the pick in the side. Then he starts hitting me on the head, but I put my hand to protect my head. He could have killed me with one shot, but he was hitting me with compassion, not to kill me. He hit my arm and broke it. My working days are over.