Amerikan Eagle

were there, helping the Legionnaires, laughing and joking, carrying short whips.

“Bunkhouse Six, Bunkhouse Six, at attention!” yelled a tall, thin Legionnaire who was joined by an SS trooper who yelled out, “Bunkhouse Sechs, Bunkhouse Sechs, an der Aufmerksamkeit!”

The Legionnaire counted out the number of prisoners before him, making notes, and Sam kept on shivering, thinking, This can’t be real, cannot be true, German SS and Long’s Legionnaires, stormtroopers from each side of the Atlantic, cooperating and working together as one in the mountains of Vermont. There had been a few news reports of Long’s Legionnaires traveling to Germany to visit their compatriots, but never had there been mention of the reverse. It was like some nightmare that his upstairs neighbor would be writing for one of those fantasy magazines.

The Legionnaire yelled something to a camp official, and then Sam joined his bunkmates as they marched out to the quarries, flanked by Long’s Legionnaires and SS stormtroopers.

* * *

His job was simple. By an area where cutting tools and drills made incisions into the marble wall, he had a shovel to scoop up marble chips that were processed later for some other use. The stone reared above him for scores of feet, and other prisoners scrambled up and down scaffolding, carrying tools. Only a few Legionnaires and SS men watched, content to sit in wooden chairs and gossip among themselves. Sam’s hands quickly blistered as he shoveled marble chips into open wooden wagons. Once during the morning, he had a few words with Otto, who was carrying lengths of wood scaffolding.

Sam said, “You volunteered for this?”

The man laughed. “It is easier work than before, over there. The food, not good, but enough. And here, the guards are forbidden to shoot us unless we try to escape. We may be beaten here and there, but to live, we are living here better than in the camps in Germany and Poland. And you? Why are you here?”

Sam shoveled up some chips. “I’m a cop. From a city called Portsmouth. In New Hampshire. Came here investigating a murder back home.”

Otto said, “You should have stayed home, eh?”

Sam coughed, leaned on his shovel. “Maybe so. What about you?”

Otto’s face darkened. “Ach, we are the lucky ones. You see there are no women and children here, eh? Only we capable of work were allowed to leave. Our family members, left behind. For them, who knows how they are…”

The Jew scurried away. Sam picked up his shovel and went back to work.

* * *

Breakfast came after two hours of work, a soup wagon pulled by a tired horse, ribs showing, plodding along. Thick oatmeal, cold toast smeared with foul-tasting margarine, and a mug of weak coffee. It was filling but something Sam would have sneered at earlier.

God, he thought, earlier. He went back to the marble chips, picked up his shovel, waited a moment. Look at what doing his job had gotten him. Right in the very heart of hell. His brother, Tony, would probably bust a gut laughing. Tony the hell-raiser, the criminal—Tony was a free man. And his Eagle Scout and high school football star brother, his Goody Two-shoes brother, he was in a camp, a place worse than Tony’s, a place where—

The blow to his back knocked him to the ground, the marble chips shredding his clothing, bloodying his knees. He got back up quick, shovel held up, facing the SS officer who had just belted him with his whip. The officer had fair skin, blond hair, and a sharp nose, and snapped, “Zuruck zu Arbeit, Juden!” Beside him was a Legionnaire wearing glasses and a thick mustache, his uniform muddy and worn. Sam choked out, “I don’t know what that fucking Nazi just said.”

The Legionnaire laughed. “Man, I guess you’re not from away, ’cause no guy here would raise a shovel to a Kraut. He said, ‘Back to work, Jew,’ so I suggest you do that. Even if you are an American, you ain’t an American here.”

Sam was going to say that he wasn’t Jewish but didn’t. He lowered his shovel.

Lunch wasn’t as rushed as breakfast. The prisoners were allowed to sit and stretch their legs and eat from metal bowls of stew with water and chunks of stale bread. Again Sam found himself next to Otto, who was leaning up against a pile of lumber. Sam said, “What did you do before the war?”

“Before the war? Ran a business in Amsterdam. Nice, safe, boring job. Someday I hope to be picked for my skills and get away from this stonework. They do that, you know. If they have a need—electricians, plumbers, university professors—they get picked and sent where they’re needed at special camps.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Eight months. Before that, I was somewhere in the South. Very hot. We cut trees in the swamps. Lots of bugs, too.”

“And before that?”

He shook his head. “Don’t want to remember that. It was a camp in Poland, very bad. Then one day an officer came in with an American in a nice suit. Volunteers for labor in America. Who would go? All of us, if we could, and here we are.”

Sam shoveled in a few more spoonfuls of stew. “What happens to the marble? Or the wood that was cut? Where does it go?”

“Trains,” Otto told him. “Loaded on trains. And why do we care? We work, we survive, we even get paid.”

“Paid? Money?”

“Yes, one dollar a week. We can use the money to buy things at a camp store on Sunday. Like soap. Razors. Tea.”

Sam finished his stew and wiped the bowl clean with a piece of bread. “Otto, have people escaped?”

“There have been attempts, yes. But how far can someone go, someone who is a stranger here? Eh? And dressed like this?”

“Have any attempts succeeded?”

Otto stared at him. “Are you thinking of escaping then, eh?”

Sam thought for a moment, not sure he could trust this fellow prisoner. “Just thinking aloud, that’s all.”

“Then think about this, my friend. If someone escapes from our barracks, everyone is sent to the cooler for punishment. Water only, no food for a week. And then one man from the barracks, he is chosen by lot and shot. For it is thought by the guards—helped by the Germans, of course—that shooting one from a barracks will discourage the others. It works. Most time.”

Sam kept quiet, stopped eating.

“So I ask you, my new American friend, is that what you will do? Try to escape? To sentence me or one of my bunkmates to torture and then death?”

Sam said, “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I need to get out and—”

“We all need to get out.” The voice was harsh. “We all want to leave. But where to go, eh? To be a Jew in this world now… there are no longer any safe places. None! So we live to live another day, and that is what we do. And here we are reasonably safe. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t,” the Dutchman shot back. “Here. I will tell you a tale. Mmm, no, not a tale but a true story. In the South, cutting trees, I knew a schoolteacher from a village in Poland. His name was Rothstein. One day, months after the invasion, special German police units came to his village and took out all the Jews and brought them to the town square. There, in the hot June sun, they made them sit still. No water. No shade. No food. And the Germans laughed. And they took photographs. They told the Jews, ‘You move, you will die. Understand?’ An old man, he couldn’t help himself. He tried to stretch his cramped legs. They shot him. A woman screamed. They shot her. Near Rothstein, his two-year-old nephew, he squirmed out of his mother’s arms, tried to run away, and the mother cried and a German policeman, he picked up the boy by his ankle, dangled him before everyone, and put a pistol to the child’s head and shot him. Rothstein, he was splattered with his nephew’s blood and brains. That happened in a place where Jews had lived for hundreds of years in safety and sanctuary. Now… nothing. Even here, in your America. We are no longer safe. So tell me, are you going to have me killed? Or one of my bunkmates? Are you so important that this will happen?”

Sam didn’t reply. Otto said, “And about your Jews. They have moved themselves to ghettos, haven’t they,