In this place, questions are as sharp as the sickles, all they do is get you cut. I have a line on each arm to show I was naive once. The boy who sleeps beneath my bunk has 16 to show he’s stupid or stubborn. This is the 3rd day in a row he hasn’t slept in his bed as punishment. Being here is punishment enough- something every boy who walks into this camp learns too quickly. We are all legal tender. Paying off debts our fathers owe. When can I go home? When can I eat? When can I sleep? These are questions you learn not to ask or the jackboots will find a way to keep you quiet. We labour in the field, lose all sense of time until they say stop.
The morning they came to take me away was the first time I realise shame had a colour. The same as my father’s eyes. It is not the lumpy mattress or my empty stomach that keeps me awake. The debt my father owes is what I lose time to, fantasizing about the day I leave this hell. What kind of life lies ahead if the Jackboots haven’t snuffed it out?
“Whenever we leave, we leave here as men”, the boy beneath my bunk once said. Right enough, isn’t that what all broken boys become? I watch him limp into the room, rage in his eyes as always. He takes off his shirt and I silently count his cuts again, wondering if I’ll ever be brave enough to be stupid or If I simply resemble my father.
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