they just want a society where–”
“Don’t,” Burke stops me. “I’ve heard all the arguments before. I’m not going to tell you which side you should be on. You’re old enough to choose. All I’m saying is be aware. Know what you’re signing up for and accept the consequences. Mrs. Reed and your dad are modern-day fascists. Only a fool would think otherwise.”
Then he walks off and leaves me trembling.
I think about the Nazis. I think about my dad.
“It’s not true,” I whisper. “They’re not the same.”
But a voice inside my head snickers slyly and asks the question that I don’t dare form out loud. Aren’t they?
THIRTEEN
I wander off by myself, thinking about the Holocaust and what Burke said. I want to come back at him with a watertight argument, show him he was wrong to make such accusations about my dad. But I can’t think of anything.
I don’t pay much attention to the exhibits. Some of my mates tumble by, calling for me to join them, but I shake my head and stick to myself. I can’t get that girl’s book out of my mind. I keep imagining myself in her place, head bent over the pages, concentrating hard, unaware of the army of hateful Nazis bearing down upon me, surrounding the house, crashing in, taking me.
I push lower into the building, down the stairs to the World War I section,familiar from my previous visit. I wish I’d paid more attention before. If I had, maybe I’d understand about the two wars, how one led to the next, how other nations let the Nazis build and spread and do whatever they liked.
There’s a trench re-creation that I vaguely recall, a life-size model of what part of a real trench was like, to give an idea of the hellish conditions soldiers lived in before they went over the top to be ripped apart by machine guns. I stroll through the narrow, nightmarish maze, pausing to study the details, holes where soldiers slept, things they ate, fake rats.
In a strange way I feel better here. It helps distract me from the horrors upstairs. This war was brutal but human. Soldiers fought other soldiers. Millions died, but there were no death camps, no gas chambers. No little Jewish girls were rounded up, humiliated, tormented, and executed.
If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t mind stopping here, in the years before the truly horrific war began, before people found out just how demonically vile they could be. I could live with a war like this. But not the one that followed. And for Burke to say that my dad was no better than a Nazi…
My blood boils and rushes to my cheeks. I won’t let that insult drop. I’ll tell Mrs. Reed. Burke can’t say things like that. If I rat on him, he’ll be out of a job, and good riddance to the bugger.
But as much as I’d like to hurt Burke, I don’t want to do that. Partly because nobody likes a grass. But mostly because the stuffthat he said got under my skin. I’ve always liked to think that I see things as they are. I know Dad’s no saint but I’ve never thought of him as a monster. But if Burke’s right, and I take Dad’s side, the way I’ve gone along with him for all these years, won’t that make me a monster too?
I’ve told myself it doesn’t matter that I never stood up to Dad. For the sake of a quiet life I’ve pretended to be on the same racist page as him. I didn’t think it made a difference, letting a minor bigot spout off without challenging him. But I’ve been questioning that recently, even before what happened with Nancy.
Did people like me go along with the Nazis that way in the early days? Did other children put on an act for their fathers, figuring nothing bad could come of it? Can the terrors of that war in some way be traced back to the kids who didn’t put their parents on the spot?
As I’m pondering my twisted relationship with Dad, I turn a corner and spot a struggle ahead. Two men are fighting with an Indian woman. She has a head scarf, a painted dot in the middle of her forehead, long
“Don’t,” Burke stops me. “I’ve heard all the arguments before. I’m not going to tell you which side you should be on. You’re old enough to choose. All I’m saying is be aware. Know what you’re signing up for and accept the consequences. Mrs. Reed and your dad are modern-day fascists. Only a fool would think otherwise.”
Then he walks off and leaves me trembling.
I think about the Nazis. I think about my dad.
“It’s not true,” I whisper. “They’re not the same.”
But a voice inside my head snickers slyly and asks the question that I don’t dare form out loud. Aren’t they?
THIRTEEN
I wander off by myself, thinking about the Holocaust and what Burke said. I want to come back at him with a watertight argument, show him he was wrong to make such accusations about my dad. But I can’t think of anything.
I don’t pay much attention to the exhibits. Some of my mates tumble by, calling for me to join them, but I shake my head and stick to myself. I can’t get that girl’s book out of my mind. I keep imagining myself in her place, head bent over the pages, concentrating hard, unaware of the army of hateful Nazis bearing down upon me, surrounding the house, crashing in, taking me.
I push lower into the building, down the stairs to the World War I section,familiar from my previous visit. I wish I’d paid more attention before. If I had, maybe I’d understand about the two wars, how one led to the next, how other nations let the Nazis build and spread and do whatever they liked.
There’s a trench re-creation that I vaguely recall, a life-size model of what part of a real trench was like, to give an idea of the hellish conditions soldiers lived in before they went over the top to be ripped apart by machine guns. I stroll through the narrow, nightmarish maze, pausing to study the details, holes where soldiers slept, things they ate, fake rats.
In a strange way I feel better here. It helps distract me from the horrors upstairs. This war was brutal but human. Soldiers fought other soldiers. Millions died, but there were no death camps, no gas chambers. No little Jewish girls were rounded up, humiliated, tormented, and executed.
If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t mind stopping here, in the years before the truly horrific war began, before people found out just how demonically vile they could be. I could live with a war like this. But not the one that followed. And for Burke to say that my dad was no better than a Nazi…
My blood boils and rushes to my cheeks. I won’t let that insult drop. I’ll tell Mrs. Reed. Burke can’t say things like that. If I rat on him, he’ll be out of a job, and good riddance to the bugger.
But as much as I’d like to hurt Burke, I don’t want to do that. Partly because nobody likes a grass. But mostly because the stuffthat he said got under my skin. I’ve always liked to think that I see things as they are. I know Dad’s no saint but I’ve never thought of him as a monster. But if Burke’s right, and I take Dad’s side, the way I’ve gone along with him for all these years, won’t that make me a monster too?
I’ve told myself it doesn’t matter that I never stood up to Dad. For the sake of a quiet life I’ve pretended to be on the same racist page as him. I didn’t think it made a difference, letting a minor bigot spout off without challenging him. But I’ve been questioning that recently, even before what happened with Nancy.
Did people like me go along with the Nazis that way in the early days? Did other children put on an act for their fathers, figuring nothing bad could come of it? Can the terrors of that war in some way be traced back to the kids who didn’t put their parents on the spot?
As I’m pondering my twisted relationship with Dad, I turn a corner and spot a struggle ahead. Two men are fighting with an Indian woman. She has a head scarf, a painted dot in the middle of her forehead, long
Similar Books
