After the Train by Gloria Whelan Read Free Book Online Page B

but I could be a long-lost member of your family. I know that your children were taken from you and the children of your husband’s family were taken from them. Although my parents won’t tell me where I came from, some things they have said make me think I might be a Stauffenberg. I am a thirteen-year-old boy who grew up near you and who doesn’t know who his real parents are, although I have very nice parents now. I am sending you a picture of me so that you or someone in your family can recognize me. I would appreciate hearing from you as soon as possible.
    Peter Liebig (von Stauffenberg?)
    I stuff the letter into an envelope and, before I lose courage, run to the mailbox and drop it in. It’s nearly dark now, but I find Hans and Kurt under a streetlight. We walk along the darkened streets planning what we will do on the weekend. I feel bad, knowing that if I go and live with the Stauffenbergs, I might not see Hans and Kurt again. I tell myself that I will send them train tickets and comfort myself with thoughts of going to meet them at the station in a big black Mercedes—and maybe with a chauffeur driving.

SEVEN
    I TOSS AND TURN all night. When morning finally comes, the bedding looks like a squirrel’s nest or a dish of noodles. As I dress, I imagine the Stauffenbergs seeing my letter, recognizing me, being excited, and sending me the fare to come and join them. My summer will be spent in their castle getting to know my real family. When I finally come downstairs, I look at my mother and try to guess if Father has said anything to her about my discovery, but she looks just as she always has and warns me I’ll be late if I don’t hurry.
    In the early morning as Father and I walk to the church together, the summer day is still cool. Mist covers the ground. As the sun warms the earth, the town gradually appears through the mist so that it looks as ifit has been newly made. As we walk along, I keep hoping Father will say something about my nightmare and the woman, but he doesn’t. Instead he uses the walk to work to tell me all his problems. Crucial construction material has not been delivered, and what has been delivered is not what was ordered. A workman is drinking on the job. Father is having an argument with the pastor of the church about how to place the pulpit. I guess that he is using a list of problems to evade what I really want him to talk about.
    My job at St. Mary’s is to fill a cart with bricks and wheel it over to where Herr Schafer or one of the other bricklayers is working. After all the months shut up in the classroom, I thank my lucky stars that I am outside in a world of trees and sky and sun with not a desk in sight.
    For an adult Herr Schafer is easy to be with, and I feel as if he is someone I have known for a long time. He dresses like the other workers, in an old shirt and trousers, but he does not look like them. For one thing, he wears old-fashioned rimless glasses, and for another, though he is an excellent workman, he has always a look of not being where he is. I remember Father telling me that Herr Schafer was a professor, and it’s not hard to imagine him at the head of a classroom. I think ofHerr Schmidt’s lectures and wonder what happened to Herr Schafer, as a Jew, during the war.
    While the other workers gather at noon for their lunch—sausages, big hunks of cheese, and cold bottles of beer—Herr Schafer sits by himself with his lunch and a book. The other workers like to joke, and I see that they are uncomfortable telling their earthy jokes with me nearby; so I take my own book and lunch to where Herr Schafer is. Sitting next to him is like having a book in your hands and not being able to look inside. At last I ask him, “How did you come to be a bricklayer?”
    He doesn’t answer my question but only says, “Nothing wrong with bricklaying. In his spare time the former British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was a bricklayer.” In a more serious voice he adds,