The Devil's Blessing (15 page)

And then he remembered that night in the basement. When the real him, one he'd never have guessed existed in million years, had lived. He looked at the smoke, smelled the smoke, and let it burn his eyes. It was the least he deserved after what he had done.

Another hardship was the food. A blessing at first, the fact that he hadn't eaten in a few days made the food land on his stomach like an anvil.

But he couldn’t sleep, he knew that. He had to continue going on forward. He needed Wolter, even if he didn't know it. He had something Otto didn't: food. War had made Otto a cruel man, but even he wasn't going to steal from a man who was on his way to save his child's life. But neither was he ready to wake up from a slumber to find Wolter, and in turn his only source of nourishment, gone. Wolter was a prisoner, whether he knew it or not.

❧

“And you?" Ulrich Wolter asked. "What about you?"

It had been two days since they had met, and they were now working on walking on a good clip. Wolter had told him that he lived in a small town called Schwaig, just outside of Nuremberg, south of Berlin—a perfect goal along Otto’s plan to navigate past the Reich's capital and make a straight line to the west. Otto would accompany him as far as Leipzig, and then they would each go their ways: Ulrich Wolter to Schwaig, and Otto Kunkel on his way to Hanover.

The morning was particularly miserable. The rain was light but without ceasing. In the near-darkness of heavy clouds, it was hard to tell if it was day or not.

They had not even tried to build a fire under those wet conditions; both men understood that it was an act in futility. And there was something else. What had once seemed bountiful was now coming up short, and quickly: their food. The sack that was carrying the cans was getting lighter and lighter.

So cold was it that morning that the stale smell of the beans could hardly be detected. Odor didn't carry that morning; just the sting of bitter cold.

"What do you mean, 'what about me?'" Otto asked in response.

"You haven't said why you're running. Why are you hiding?”

"Who said I was running?” Otto said, trying to show a genuine sense of surprise. He knew it wasn't a secret, but he had hoped that his gun had been enough of a deterrent on its own to keep the question from being asked. Whether or not Wolter was steeling his nerve or was just feeling more comfortable around Otto, he wasn't sure. But the question hung heavy and low, like the clouds above.

Wolter gave him in incredulous look as he passed the one spoon the men shared back to Otto. He seemed to be asking the question not out of the curious hostility that was Nazi Germany, but more as an innocent secret between friends. Otto relented.

"I'm off to the west," he said, refusing to use the word
running.

"Where?"

"I don't know," he said. "Just west."

"You know that there are nothing but English, French, and Americans that way, don't you?"

"And Canadians, too!" Otto said between laughs and bites, handing the spoon back. "But that's the plan."

Wolter seemed confused. He didn't understand at first, but then it slowly came to him. "You're running towards the enemy in the west rather than give yourself over to the enemy in the east. Is that it?"

Otto nodded.

"What makes you think a group of savages will be better than one solitary one? And the war isn't over. I've heard so on the radio. When you make it to the west, and Germany takes back France and then Britain, you'll be in German arms. They'll know that you ran. They'll kill you!"

In a confident manner that was becoming new to him, Otto calmly responded. "No. That is where you are wrong, civilian," Otto said. "There will be no more Germany to retake France, or anything else, because there will be no Germany to speak of. We are losing this war. It's just a matter of time."

"That can't be!" Wolter said, dropping the spoon on the ground. "But the radio and the reports, they say that we still have most of France, and the enemy to the east will soon—"

"Will soon what, civilian? Burst into flames?" Otto was genuinely angry. "You haven't seen what I've seen. The enemy to the east is not human, just like the Führer said. The only problem is that they aren't the vermin that he calls them—they are more like dogs. A dog can be shot, sure. But when there are millions of them, there aren't enough bullets."

"And France?"

"What about it? It's lost, too."

"But the radio." Poor Wolter was so used to believing what he was told that he always went back to that radio.

"Lies. All of it. France is no longer a part of the Greater Reich. In fact, most of Germany is now in the hands of the enemy. Soon, we will be an enslaved people for generations to come."

"But how do you know?"

Otto thought of Haas's dead body, falling to the ground, shot to death by a child.

"I just know," he said. Wolter could see that he meant it and believed him. Wolter picked up the spoon off the ground. They finished their meal in silence.

❧

"Why not go through here?" Otto asked. They were following a road that Ulrich Wolter had said would lead them to Leipzig. Every few hours or so, they would creep out from the vegetation and make sure that the road was still within eyesight. Soon, however, the nearby forestry became further from the road and was threatening to become out of sight from them. They had come across this problem before, always settling on following the road, albeit from a distance, than risking losing their path. Better to chance a run in with the patrols out there and stay on track than to get lost and still be discovered. So they persisted on.

Only this time, there wasn't so much a break in the road as there was an opening in the forest. They could follow it around as it made its way back to the road. It would more than likely cost them an hour of time, if not more; plus, they were already at a safe distance from the road.

Wolter could see what Otto was alluding to without being told.

"I don't know," Wolter said. "If we stay in the trees it'll be safer."

"C'mon," Otto said, resting his hands on his knees, proclaiming his exhaustion. It wasn't an exaggeration, either. They had been walking for hours, and Wolter shared in Otto’s weariness.

So they had a choice to make. Continue to follow the tree line south until it reached back up to the road going west, or just cut through the open field, staying true south. It seemed that Wolter's mind wanted to stay the clandestine route. But ultimately, the argument from his legs won out.

"Okay," Wolter said. "But lets make this fast."

They began to walk through the open field; the disappearing tree line felt like a mother's waving hand in a train station, becoming more distant by the moment. It was an uneasy feeling, and Otto knew that it was a silly one, but he was feeling it nonetheless.

As they walked through the high grass, fortune was smiling on them. They had made much headway in the past few hours since the rain had stopped. It was still bitterly cold, but the respite from the wetness made it that much easier to go. It was as close to sunshine as they could get, and they would take it.

Wolter still walked in front if Otto as he always did.

But this made Otto worried. Was Wolter part of the
Volksstrum,
though he denied it? Doubtful, but still a possibility. Otto also realized that he was a pretty big catch for any German, civilian and soldier alike. He was now a traitor on the run, which was as bad or worse than any Red Army or British boot. Could Wolter be luring him to his own death? That thought did cross his mind more than once. He had seen enough betrayal and had escaped it enough to know that his luck would eventually run out. That one day, he'd be on the losing end of a smile that betrayed.

It was for that reason that Wolter walked in front of Otto, more so than the fact that he knew—

The first explosion threw Otto back about one meter. When he hit the ground, he heard a second one.

Where was the artillery fire coming from?
Otto thought. It had to be artillery. No human arm would be able to throw a grenade that far. They were too far away from the tree line for it to be thrown. But why didn't they just shoot? Were they being used as some sick sort of target practice from some mortar base? They didn't see any tanks, so it must've been from a grounded mortar.

As Otto lay on his stomach, his hands were still over his ears, instinctively covering them from the loud noises. He was waiting for the marching of feet and the yelling of orders to come, but they never arrived. He wasn't sure if they would be German or Russian words, but they never came. All that arrived was a strange cloud of dirt that covered him in its film.

In the shock and surprise of what had happened, Otto didn't even check to see if he was injured. Like a person startled awake covered in bugs, he sat up and began patting his body, looking for injury. He felt comfortable sitting up, since the grass was high enough for him to hide his head. He checked his body again. There were no wounds, again. He waited for the shots and men. They still didn't come. Where were they?

Then, it hit him. The question he had forgotten to ask himself. Where was Wolter? It couldn't have been him using an explosive against Otto, could it? Otto had checked his bags, time and again, and saw nothing that could be used as a weapon.

Otto began crawling on all fours, trying to stay as low as possible in case whoever had fired the mortar round got a second chance to fire it again.

"Ulrich!" Otto said, as loud as he dared. "Ulrich! Citizen Ulrich!"

Just as he was about to ask where he was, he heard the low moan. Otto crawled towards the painful whimper, and that's when he came upon Wolter.

Wolter seemed to be laying face down in his sleep, but he wasn't asleep. He was nearly dead, with blood coming out from his body in every which way. His color was gone; his clothes and body were blackened from the explosions. His left leg was gone, up to the hip.

"Ahh... ahh..." was all that Wolter could say.

Without thinking, Otto turned Wolter's body over to better see him. He let out a scream that neither man knew he had inside him, and Otto soon saw why. His insides were strewn outside of his body, laying on the grass. It seemed as if his guts were steaming, but it was just the moisture of his intestines hitting the cold air. To Otto, it smelled like raw chicken hitting his nostrils.

"Take..." he said, over and over again. Otto didn't understand until he saw what he was barely patting with his right arm. The satchel that was still around his body. The satchel that carried his son's medicine.

"Your son's medicine? You want me to take it to him?"

Wolter gave the smallest of nods and gave a tiny smile that would have shown teeth if it weren't for all the blood.

"Richard. Richard Wolter."

"Richard? That's your son's name?" Again, the bloodied smile.

Otto saw that rain begin to fall on Wolter's face, but realized it was his own tears. Otto knew he was a coward, knew that he was only capable of saving himself, yet he genuinely felt that something had turned inside him, because when he said, "I promise I'll take your son his medicine," he felt that, at that moment, he was saying the truth.

What had happened to him?

"Mines," Wolter said, as if answering Otto’s question inside his mind. Then it all made sense. Wolter must've stepped on a mine, blowing off his leg. In a cruel twist, he had landed on another mine that had blown his body apart.

Otto looked around in panic, frantically searching for help that wasn't there. He needed to comfort Wolter in his final moments, but he also needed to make a run for himself. That explosion was sure to bring some attention. As he looked down at Wolter to say a few words of encouragement, he saw that there was no need. His eyes were slightly slit open, and his chest had stopped moving. He was dead.

Like a happy father, Otto stroked Ulrich Wolter's hair and gave him one last smile. Otto grabbed the satchel from the corpse and, staying as low as possible, went back the way he had come, hoping not to have the same bad luck befall him. As he walked back he realized it had been his idea to walk through that field. It was his idea that had caused another German son to lose his father.

It was a strange time for Otto Kunkel. He hadn't had time to think. Which was a good thing, oddly enough. After what had happened inside that basement in that town, he was still shaken up.

Now, as he walked along the muddied ground, he wasn't sure of who he had become anymore. He had lost his razor and was growing a beard. Even in the time of war, when men where freezing, starving, and dying from every sort of disease, Nazi commanders made sure that everyone stayed freshly shaven. It was a sick thing to many, but it also made sense. It gave the world some sort of normalcy. But for Otto, now that he had a mustache and a short, scraggly beard, it was a telltale sign that he was no longer a member of a unit. His face practically screamed that he was a deserter.

But that was just it. He didn't care. Because right now, as he carried the two sacks, the one that would sustain his life and the one that would save Wolter's son's life, he finally had time to think.

The days that had followed his murder of the baby were the longest, most disturbed days in his life. It was as if his punishment was to stew and look at what he had done. His ill reward was to sit there and look at what he had done, smell what he had done, and to dwell on it for minutes that felt like hours and hours that felt like days.

Then had come the evening on the mountain. What had begun as one of the most beautiful evenings had turned to something ugly. Why did he mourn for Josef Wernher? Wernher had hated him and treated him poorly. Otto knew that, if it were up to Wernher, Otto would have long been dead. So why did he feel a sadness for this man who had wished nothing but ill will towards him?

Maybe it was because he felt sorry that a man who was doing everything in his power to live hadn't. But more than likely the reason he felt sorry for him was because Otto saw himself in Wernher. He saw first hand what betrayal looked like, and it only reaffirmed how perilous this world was. If the invincible bulldog that was Wernher could die, why was he alive? That's the real reason he mourned him. Not because he had lost a friend or a comrade, but because he had seen his own death. And for this selfish thought, Otto hated himself that much more.