Read Online A Quiet Belief in Angels by R. J. Ellory - Free Book Online
Authors: R. J. Ellory
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something he will not let it go.”
“I’m not one to judge,” Reilly said. “He’s the only boy I’ve ever been close to and I care for him a great deal. These recent things, these killings, are terrible things. Something like this happens, well, you cannot even begin to imagine how the parents must feel.”
“I know the second girl’s parents, just as acquaintances mind,” my mother said. “Leonard and Martha Stowell. Sweet people. Never met their daughter. She was the youngest, I think. Seem to remember there were three others, two boys and a girl.”
“A tragedy, a terrible tragedy. And to think, such a thing is the work of a human being.”
“In the very loosest sense of the term. Barely a human being, I think.”
Reilly cleared his throat. “I don’t know, Mary, it seems a terrible place the world is becoming, what with this war in Europe, the awful things we’re hearing about the Polish people and the Jews. I have heard rumor that the Germans are searching out and killing all the intellec tuals—musicians and artists and writers and poets, even professors and teachers—anyone who in any way opposes their views. They are searching them out and sometimes just executing them right there in the street.”
“It is not the world, Reilly. It is simply a few insane men using their power over ignorant people. This propaganda against the Jews has been going on for twenty years or more. Adolf Hitler has been slowly poisoning the minds and hearts of the German people, and he was doing this long before he went to war. I only hope that this war is over before we are drawn further into it.”
“I don’t know that such a thing can be avoided,” Reilly said. “As a free and democratic people it’s our responsibility to stand up against this kind of persecution.”
“So it is,” she said, “but first it is our duty to protect the children of our neighbors and friends against the monster in our midst.”
Later I crept back along the hallway and went into my room. From my window I watched as Elena Kruger helped her mother hang washing in the backyard.
Three days later Elena Kruger began attendance in Miss Webber’s class. She sat one row to my left, one desk down.
She sat where Ellen May Levine had sat before someone cut her in half.
It seemed an injustice to me, the affliction Elena Kruger suffered. I was never witness to her grand mal episodes, but the bruises on her arms and shoulders were clearly visible when we went swimming in one of the small tributaries that escaped from the Okefenokee. June was hot, but July went off the barometer sufficient to split stones, and when school finally broke for the vacation in the first week of August it was all we could do to stand straight in the brutal temperature. The sun broke high and bright, hard like a fist, stayed resolute until nightfall and then rested to gather strength for the next day. Reilly said it was the hottest summer on record; Gunther Kruger said Reilly had access to no such records, and how would he know such a thing anyway. Seemed to me it didn’t matter what any other summer might have been like, the one we had was enough to go around, and more besides. Walter Kruger worked much of the day with his father, and so the three of us—myself, Hans and Elena—we took to crawling beneath the Kruger house and hiding from the heat. Beneath the house it was cool and damp, almost another world, and despite the scritching of bugs and the sensation of moist crawling that was always on our skin, the shade it afforded was far more tolerable than the harsh and unrelenting sun.
“I think . . . I think if this goes on for another three weeks the swamps will be hard enough to walk on,” Hans said. I considered Hans a little slow—well-meaning, yes, but somehow a little dense, as if all his thoughts had a prearranged time for arrival and yet managed to be overdue. He worshipped Walter, however, and looked upon his older brother as the fountainhead
“I’m not one to judge,” Reilly said. “He’s the only boy I’ve ever been close to and I care for him a great deal. These recent things, these killings, are terrible things. Something like this happens, well, you cannot even begin to imagine how the parents must feel.”
“I know the second girl’s parents, just as acquaintances mind,” my mother said. “Leonard and Martha Stowell. Sweet people. Never met their daughter. She was the youngest, I think. Seem to remember there were three others, two boys and a girl.”
“A tragedy, a terrible tragedy. And to think, such a thing is the work of a human being.”
“In the very loosest sense of the term. Barely a human being, I think.”
Reilly cleared his throat. “I don’t know, Mary, it seems a terrible place the world is becoming, what with this war in Europe, the awful things we’re hearing about the Polish people and the Jews. I have heard rumor that the Germans are searching out and killing all the intellec tuals—musicians and artists and writers and poets, even professors and teachers—anyone who in any way opposes their views. They are searching them out and sometimes just executing them right there in the street.”
“It is not the world, Reilly. It is simply a few insane men using their power over ignorant people. This propaganda against the Jews has been going on for twenty years or more. Adolf Hitler has been slowly poisoning the minds and hearts of the German people, and he was doing this long before he went to war. I only hope that this war is over before we are drawn further into it.”
“I don’t know that such a thing can be avoided,” Reilly said. “As a free and democratic people it’s our responsibility to stand up against this kind of persecution.”
“So it is,” she said, “but first it is our duty to protect the children of our neighbors and friends against the monster in our midst.”
Later I crept back along the hallway and went into my room. From my window I watched as Elena Kruger helped her mother hang washing in the backyard.
Three days later Elena Kruger began attendance in Miss Webber’s class. She sat one row to my left, one desk down.
She sat where Ellen May Levine had sat before someone cut her in half.
It seemed an injustice to me, the affliction Elena Kruger suffered. I was never witness to her grand mal episodes, but the bruises on her arms and shoulders were clearly visible when we went swimming in one of the small tributaries that escaped from the Okefenokee. June was hot, but July went off the barometer sufficient to split stones, and when school finally broke for the vacation in the first week of August it was all we could do to stand straight in the brutal temperature. The sun broke high and bright, hard like a fist, stayed resolute until nightfall and then rested to gather strength for the next day. Reilly said it was the hottest summer on record; Gunther Kruger said Reilly had access to no such records, and how would he know such a thing anyway. Seemed to me it didn’t matter what any other summer might have been like, the one we had was enough to go around, and more besides. Walter Kruger worked much of the day with his father, and so the three of us—myself, Hans and Elena—we took to crawling beneath the Kruger house and hiding from the heat. Beneath the house it was cool and damp, almost another world, and despite the scritching of bugs and the sensation of moist crawling that was always on our skin, the shade it afforded was far more tolerable than the harsh and unrelenting sun.
“I think . . . I think if this goes on for another three weeks the swamps will be hard enough to walk on,” Hans said. I considered Hans a little slow—well-meaning, yes, but somehow a little dense, as if all his thoughts had a prearranged time for arrival and yet managed to be overdue. He worshipped Walter, however, and looked upon his older brother as the fountainhead
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