I slowly stopped working, both James and I still on our knees. I touched my son’s shoulder, signaling for him to stop pulling the wood. Then I looked up at the guard and waited.
“You think because you are not a zek with a regular job that you are special, a pridurok?” he said. “You think this is so because your Commander Koskinen put you in charge of a brigade? You think that makes you a lucky, Negro pridurok?”
“No,” I said, hearing this word for the first time. My ability to translate Russian still left me wondering what odd words like this meant. There were many within the camp that I was learning on a daily basis, and many had to remain Russian words, as translating them into English was difficult. The language of the camps was unique.
“Stand up!” he said, removing his shouldered rifle and holding it at his left side, barrel to the floor. “And put the hammer down.”
I did both, slowly, and with my heart rate increasing considerably. Positioned no more than three feet from him now, he reached out with his right hand and grabbed my collar, pulling me close, his breath smelling of whiskey, not vodka.
“I don’t like you,” he said, his mouth an inch from mine. “And I don’t like your bourgeois son either, always walking so proper, picking at his bushy hair. Probably filled with lice! And your Commander Koskinen is a spy. This is easy to see. He will be shot and replaced soon enough. Do you understand me, Negro zek?”
I didn’t answer, so he proceeded to grab my jaw and repeat himself with more force.
“Do… you… understand… me… Negro zek?”
Again I refused to answer, so he backhand slapped me across the face. Hard. I didn’t react. I just stood there, letting the sting dissipate. Using only his right, he took the canteen out again, pulling the top off with his teeth, and drank. Enraged, he threw it on the floor and rushed James, pulling him up by the arm and slugging him in the face, hard enough to drop him flat on the floor. It was a punch powerful enough to kill.
At this point, all sense of rational thought exited my mind at once. Watching James lie there on the floor, perhaps unconscious, I transformed into complete, instinctive father mode. A man of my height and age had struck my child.
As if he could sense the rage surfacing in me, he started to raise his rifle. I lunged forward and smashed him against the wall, the rifle falling to the floor. As he bounced off and tried to gather himself, I reached down to pick up my hammer. He came forward, trying to kick it away before I clutched it. But I already had the handle and his boot only clipped my wrist.
I stood and he swung at me with a right, nipping my nose. As I raised the hammer, he swung again and I stabbed his forearm with the claw, yanking it from his flesh as he cried out and stepped back. Seeing James in my periphery still lying there motionless, I raised the hammer again and rushed him. He tried to swing at me, but I kept coming forward, hitting him in the head with the face of the hammer. He fell to the floor and I straddled him, taking the hammer to his head repeatedly until I’d left him unrecognizable.
I stayed there straddling him for a moment while I caught my breath. Then I rushed to James. He was still out.
“Son!” I said, lifting and shaking him.
I shook him a few more times and he began to come to. There was no blood on him, but as I touched all over his face and head, I could feel a knot on his left temple under his hair. He had turned just enough to avoid a square shot to the face. I realized the predicament I was in, so I slid him toward the wall and sat him up.
“Rest here, son!” I said, looking over at the bloody guard.
I stood and approached him, searching for his keys. Finding them in his coat pocket, I also pulled out his identification card and read the name. Returning it to his pocket, I took off his hat and shoved it in my crotch, then grabbed my bloody hammer from the floor and slid it up my coat sleeve, holding it there. I stood and exited the chamber, walking down the hallway to the front door. I peeked out at the dark evening and across the now-invisible, snow-covered land situated between the isolator and the main camp. It was well below zero out.
I clutched his ring of keys, reentered the barracks, and headed for the guard’s room straight ahead at the end of the hallway. Using key after key, I found one that opened the door. Inside the closet-sized office were a toilet bucket, a small table, and a chair. On the table was a clipboard filled with papers, some stray bullets, a flashlight, a tin cup, and an almost-full bottle of whiskey. The top paper on the clipboard had “Punishment Isolator” typed along the top, and below it was a long list of names, some circled, as they were likely the current occupiers of the nine chambers. Typed under a line in the bottom left corner was “NKVD Guard,” and written above it was “Vladimir Divac.” It matched the name I’d seen on his ID card.
Grabbing the bottle of whiskey, I opened it and poured some all over the table. Closing it now, I reached inside my coat and placed it near my underarm, pressing it there so it wouldn’t fall. I lifted the back of my coat, picked up the clipboard, and shoved it in my pants at the back until it touched my rear. Sticking my finger in my mouth, I forced myself to vomit all over the table, which was easy. I grabbed the bucket, entered the hallway, closed the door, and headed for one of the big sewage holes near the western perimeter of the main camp.
I arrived there to find no one, luckily, and the only light was emanating from the bright, streaming camp lamps, as the day’s work continued throughout. I sat the barely full bucket down and scanned the area. No one.
Removing the bottle from under my coat, I opened it and then lifted the sewage lid enough to pour the whiskey out. I could tell the hole was almost full by how quickly the whiskey hit it. I slid the hammer out from my sleeve a bit and rinsed the blood off of the head with the remaining whiskey. Then I pulled Vladimir’s hat from my crotch and threw it in as well, hoping it would float. Closing it and removing the clipboard, I placed both it and the empty bottle near the western part of the lid’s hinge, as zeks would be approaching the hole from the east, and very few at night. I also kicked a little snow on the items to camouflage them a bit. Looking east, I couldn’t detect any guards looking this way, even though they might have been hidden from my view. I picked up the bucket, opened the big lid again, and threw it in.
Looking east once more at the single light above the door of the punishment isolator, I took a deep breath before turning and making my way back. Entering and returning to James, I found him still sitting there.
“You okay?” I said, and he nodded while I set my hammer on the floor.
I approached him and stood him up, steering him to the guard’s office. I sat him in the chair and went to retrieve the dead body. After returning the canteen to Vladimir’s pocket, I pulled his long coat up at the back and wrapped it over his pulpy head so there’d be no blood on the hallway floor as I dragged him to his office. I placed him behind James’s chair and returned to the chamber, taking the three slats we’d removed and returning them to their original position, even hammering the rusty nails back in. I then grabbed the rifle and our hammers and took them to the office. Touching James on the shoulder, I picked up the flashlight from the table and turned it on.
“I’m going to close this door now, son. And I’m going to turn the light off in here. Don’t turn around or move. He’s lying on the floor right behind you. Just sit right there and wait for me.”
He nodded and I closed the door behind me, flipping off the exterior switch for the office, then the one for the chamber we’d been working in. Even though the lights in the hallway remained on, all of the chambers were dark, as I could see the exterior switches pointed down. I found the hall light switch and turned it off, leaving me with only the flashlight to see. Approaching the chamber directly next to the one we’d worked in, I fiddled with the keys until I managed to open the door.