Taste of Freedom

I won't lie. The train ride was definitely not a smooth one. I wondered at the time if all trains were like this.

You see, I've never been on a train before. Pa always said that we couldn't go on trains. I didn't question him. Pa knows practically everything about everything.

I didn't know about how we have to almost always stop, how we have to move as far away as possible from the door when newcomers arrive . . . I felt like I was a little child again, being so ignorant of the world.

I just hope one day that I could be like my Pa.

Then, I fell. Another dramatic stop. But this time, I heard voices shouting outside. They were speaking in some foreign tongue, I wasn't sure what they were saying. I just followed Pa.

"Now where are we going?" I asked him. He just stared straight forward, as if he didn't even see me. "Pa-?"

"Hören Sie genau!"

We got off the train, being shoved and pushed in different directions until everyone was outside.

They, the men in uniforms, were shouting in every language I could think of. It was getting to be so chaotic, I grabbed onto Pa's arm. He just looked down at me and then back at the men before us.

"Listen closely!" Finally someone who speaks Polish. I thought, sighing in relief at being able to understand what they were saying.

"You are going to march all the way to the camp. Anyone who is struggling will be-"

"Kid, you listen closely." Pa said. "You stay close with me, you hear?" I nodded. "Don't speak to them. Let me talk to them." I nodded again.

"Am I perfectly clear?" the man said, with an undertone that I couldn't quite grasp. A few coughs were muttered and the man said, "Good."

A terrible noise rang in my ears and suddenly everyone started running. "Pa, what's going on?" No answer. "Pa?" I lost him. "Pa!" I started running, looking through the crowd of other men for him. I looked behind me, he wasn't there. "Pa . . .?"

"Keep moving!" I heard, someone pushed me to the ground and I heard laughter. I shook it off and got up. My leg hurt a little, so I had to limp just a bit.

"Hey kid." some stranger next to me called to me. I listened as he whispered lowly so that only I could hear him. "Don't limp." he said with a certain poison in his voice. "Don't let them see you as weak, alright? You'll be as good as-"

"There you are." Pa. Finally.

"Where did you go?" I asked him, quickening my pace and ignoring the pain in my leg as much as possible.

"I went a little ahead. You have to keep up, Joaquin."

I felt like I could do anything with him around. I started running.

A lot of time passed. Men were falling over themselves and others who seemed to be taking a break. I wasn't even sure why we were running in the first place. I thought the whole point of a train was to get us to a destination quickly. But it didn't bother me much. I thought that maybe this was a game.

In the distance, I saw a fence. But it wasn't just any boring old white picket fence you'd see in the countryside. This one was huge. There were poles every twenty feet or so and this prickly looking wire was wrapped around them and sort of woven between the poles. It looked more like a fence to keep animals in.

"That wire's got enough electricity to light up Russia, kid." the stranger who warned me about limping said quietly. "Don't touch it." he finished. I nodded, staying close to Pa.

"Willkommen." Said a man at the gate.

The stranger said under his breath, "Welcome, my ass."