Kennet put an arm around Anderson, rubbed his head. The scalp was hot and damp, as if he were running a fever. Kennet felt a dull concern. Along with lice and fleas, the camp was alive with dysentery, typhus, pneumonia and a host of other infections.

Oh well, it doesn’t matter. Not now. Not ever.

He rubbed a couple circles on Anderson’s tense back. “It’s okay, bud.”

Such lies were effortless when you had good armor.

“Let it out. Just let it go. Close your eyes, Andy. Go away from this place.”

Anderson obeyed, and Kennet sat under his tree, smoking and guarding the two sleepers. He stared at the swath of skin between the torn hem of Fisha’s striped shirt and the pleats of his trousers, belted tight with a piece of rope around bony hips. The skin was scarred horizontally, pink and wrinkled, as if the stripes of the shirt leached their pattern into the boy’s skin.

Emil whipped Kennet when it was deserved. But never with emotion. Never for cruelty. Never, never delegating the task out to his other children.

And never to the point where he broke the skin.

Kennet couldn’t stop staring at the welts, imagining each cruel blow into this little boy’s tender body. No fat or muscle to cushion him. No mercy from the mate who held the whip, because a Nazi stood by to make sure every lash cut to the bone.

How do they all smile after such things?

He rubbed fingertips against his face, with its constellation of shrapnel scars. In his earlobe, he felt the little, hard lump. Just like the lump in Emil’s bum leg.

I want my father.

I want to go home.

I want to be a child again. I want to go back to a time when getting my fish warm was my biggest fear.

He went on fingering the tiny bulge in his ear. No gold. Just ordinary, grunt metal.

Your golden time is gone, gullgosse, and it will never come again.

You’re not him anymore.

You’ll never be him again.

The tips of his fingers rubbed together, recalling the feel of a little burr. A sharp point on the hoop of the sugar barrel, where he bent over to collect his due, while his siblings waited in the kitchen and listened.

And counted.

Ordinary metal is good enough for Old Nick. He’s got enough gold.

“You damn fool boy,” he said softly.

Saudade sinks. Armor floats. And thunder follows lightning.

He wondered, dispassionately: Am I going crazy?

Fisha mumbled something behind closed eyes.

Kennet reached a finger, pushed the dirty fabric of Fisha’s shirt up and began to count…

The Barrel

“You fool boy,” Emil said hoarsely, one hand holding Kennet’s head hard against his pounding heart. “You damn fool boy, don’t you know what it would’ve done to me if you died?”