Read Online Jakob’s Colors by Lindsay Hawdon - Free Book Online Page A

hammered into place with the intention of disintegration. Regularly they break down. Regularly they need to be mended. And so the barn is full of tools and spare parts and lingering soldiers who lie lazy in patches of sunlight, smelling of grease and gunpowder and hay.
    They come on a weekly basis, first to pillage what little food the old man has foraged, then to question, to seek out the pathway from the camp to the border, where people still flee to escape.
    â€œI tell you this not to scare you,” the man says, seeing that Jakob has stopped. “But so that there is only truth between us. Then you can come to trust me. Come, please, there is no one here. There have been no visitors for the past two days. Come, I can take care of you.” Again, he takes Jakob by the hand and pulls him toward the farmhouse. “How old are you?” he asks, as he leads him through a loose-hinged door that swings open too easily to keep the fear at bay. They enter the woodstove warmth of his stone house.
    â€œEight,” Jakob replies, finding his voice in the rawness of his throat, spitting out bits of peat and moss. He is pushed gently down onto a small stool that hides his head from window height. The man pours him a cup of water. His eyes watch nervously as his hands move hurriedly from object to object, despite their geriatric awkwardness.
    â€œMy name is Markus,” he says eventually. “And yours?”
    Jakob can hardly bear to say it. “Please,” the old man says. “Be brave. Tell me your name so that I can help you exist again.”
    â€œI am Jakob,” he says finally, and Markus nods approvingly.
    Jakob drinks quickly, taking in great gulps.
    â€œSlow,” Markus warns him.
    After he has finished, the empty mug is refilled with a thin soup of potato roots and seeds, barely more flavored than the water, but hot inside him.
    â€œYou have a destination you are heading for?”
    Jakob shakes his head.
    â€œThere is someone who can take care of you?”
    Again Jakob shakes his head.
    Markus shrugs. “You will not live through a winter in the forest. Once the snow sets in.”
    He fills a metal bowl from a tank outside and he washes him with a piece of rough linen. Jakob lets the old man wipe the dirt and another’s dried blood from his face, his hands, up and down the length of his skinny arms and across his chest, his ribs a wiry birdcage for his fragile heart. Markus does so tenderly, silently, stilling the tremors with his touch, and when he has finished the water in the bowl is dark and murky, but full of things Jakob cannot bear to throw away. Gently Markus pours it over the earth outside.
    â€œBack to where it came from,” he says softly. And afterward, “You will have to hide. I can keep you safe if you hide. You can rest until you are strong again. It is cramped, but it is warm.”
    Jakob is given one of three cupboards beneath the stairs, the lowest in the row, a small tight triangle of a space where wedges of light slash through the cracks in the door. But he can be a triangle; the hug of his arms around him, the scent of his knees against his nostrils, scratched and scarred; his eyes, mole-like now, blinking back the dim light. He finds a way of sleeping, legs curled up into his chest, and come morning there is a way of stretching every part of himself, one limb after the other, his feet slipping into the lowest cavity of the stairs. His eyelashes scrape against the closeted walls. He can smell the wood chippings on which he sleeps. He holds handfuls and smellsthe locked-awayness of them, wondering if he, too, will smell that way soon.
    He is used to scents of grass and soil, scents of the wind before rain, rain before sun, sun before dark. He is used to horse scents, dusty hides, hot oated breath in the palm of his hand, and the feel of their soft downy pelt against his knuckles. Of feathers and the yolk of cooked eggs. Of lemongrass and the