Prisoner of Warren

by Andreas Oertel

  After the tenth run I was bushed.

  Finally, Martin said, “Okay, Varren, that is enough for today. Tomorrow we will work on the next ten metres.”

  The next ten metres? What the heck did he mean by that? When were we going to start running? I was more exhausted now than during any of Coach Roberts’ workouts, but I still didn’t feel like I was training. I mean, I hadn’t even run the whole hundred metres yet.

  Although, I had to admit—Martin seemed to know what he was doing. I felt like my starts were better than ever, and I liked having my own personal trainer. His enthusiasm and confidence made me begin to feel like I could run faster in only two weeks.

  Martin picked up the shovel and we left our homemade track. I was too tired to talk, and I even stumbled a couple times, but I couldn’t wait until tomorrow’s training session.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, the digging continued immediately after breakfast.

  “How are your hands today, Varren?” Martin asked, shortly after we started shovelling.

  “Good,” I said.

  Mom had seen my hands before I went to bed, and had scolded Dad for not providing us with gloves. She dug around in a box of winter clothes and found an old pair of her leather gloves. They were too tight for me to pull on all the way, so she cut off the fingertips. Without the tips, they were still tight, but comfortable enough for digging.

  Martin had declined Mom’s offer to find him a pair.

  “Let me do the heavy work,” Martin said to me. “You must save your energy for training—for tonight.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  I had complained jokingly to Martin at breakfast about how sore my thighs were, and about how I had no energy to shovel, and how he would have to finish the hole alone because I was so weak.

  He laughed and said, “Wait until tomorrow morning. I will make you so sore you will not be able to get off your bed.”

  I didn’t mind the digging this morning, because the heat from the sun was still tolerable. After lunch, I knew it would suck the energy from us.

  Our pit was getting so deep that in the afternoon we had to cut steps into the clay at one end. If we hadn’t done that, we would have needed a ladder to get out. I was trimming the top step when Tom flew around the corner on his bicycle.

  “I heard what happened at the swimming hole,” he said excitedly, even before he jumped off his seat.

  I held my finger to my lips, to get him to talk quieter. I didn’t need Mom and Dad overhearing. “How did you hear?” I whispered, standing up.

  Martin ignored us and continued digging.

  “Gwyneth told me the whole story. She said that you guys licked Rake’s crew real good.”

  I glanced down at Martin, who was pretending not to hear.

  “Gwyneth said it looked like Rake was going to beat him up,” Tom’s chin indicated Martin, “but that you stopped him. Is that true?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, stepping out of the hole and leading Tom away, “I guess that’s what happened.”

  Tom was dumbfounded. “But why’d you stop him?” he asked. “That was your chance to whack him, without having to kill him yourself. All you had to do was run away, and we’d have one less Nazi around.”

  I bit my lip and hoped we were out of earshot. “Ahh, he’s not a Nazi, Tom. He’s just German.”

  “What?” Tom looked more confused than ever.

  I sighed, and tried to explain what Martin had told me about Nazis, and soldiers, and German politics.

  “So, we’re not going to kill him?” Tom said quietly, still looking for clarification.

  “Well, no.” I went on to describe the incident in the middle of the night and the cross stuck in the ground. “So why would I want to kill him now? He’s just a guy—a German. And he may end up saving me from Rake.” I finished by explaining how Martin was also a sprinter, and how he was training me.

  Tom shrugged his shoulders. “But are you sure it isn’t all a trick? Maybe he’s faking not being a Nazi, so we won’t kill him.”

  “Trust me, Tom,” I said, “he’s harmless, and we don’t need to kill him.”

  Tom nodded, but I knew he wasn’t convinced.

  “If you’d seen what he did at the swimming hole,” I went on, “or in the middle of the night, you’d believe me.”

  I tried to change the subject. “Do you want to help us with the sewage pit? My dad’ll still pay you ten cents an hour—same as us.”

  Tom looked across the yard at the hole. Martin’s powerful hands were wrapped around a boulder he was carrying up the clay steps. Tom liked money, and ten cents an hour was a fair wage, but I think the thought of being in a confined space with Martin terrified him.

  “Ahh, no,” Tom said. “Dad would have a bird if he knew I was even here.” He stared at Martin, still looking scared.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, trying to sound confident. “He’s not going to kill anyone, and we’ve got no reason to kill him.”

  As soon as Tom was gone, Martin said, “So, you and your friend were plotting to kill me?”

  My face turned red. “Well, yeah,” I said, honestly.

  Martin grinned, like he was enjoying my discomfort. “But why?”

  “Because we thought you were going to kill us.”

  That really got him laughing. “Why would I wish to kill you? I don’t even know you.”

  “Because we thought you were a Nazi soldier,” I said. “Maybe even a Nazi spy.”

  “You know, Varren, I have never even held a gun?”

  “Sure,” I said. “How could a soldier have never held a gun?”

  “Because I was a Bote—a messenger.”

  “A messenger?” I said. “What kind of messenger?”

  “I carried important messages up and down the front lines from unit to unit. Common messages were sent using radio equipment, but some communications, senior officers did not want heard by anyone—not even by other German soldiers. Those documents were sent using foot messengers.”

  “And you never carried a gun?” I repeated. “Not even for protection?”

  “No. Never,” Martin said. “A rifle is a heavy piece of equipment. For example, the Gewehr 41—this is a common German infantry rifle—weighs almost five kilograms. Can you imagine running with that rifle, a full rucksack, and several litres of water?”

  I nodded. I guess I could see how a runner would want to be as light as possible. “But didn’t you have to go through some kind of basic training?”

  “Oh, yes,” Martin said. “I spent several weeks learning how to march and so on. But because of my running ability, I quickly moved on to regular service as a field messenger.”

  Suddenly, from above us, a voice said, “I don’t mind if you boys talk, but couldn’t you move some earth while you’re at it?” It was Dad. He hovered over us from the edge of the hole.

  But he was smiling.

  How long had he been standing there? I hoped he wasn’t close enough to hear us talking about killing each other. Dad wouldn’t take that as well as Martin had.

  “Sorry, Dad,” I said, and then quickly added, “I think we’ll be done by supper.”

  Dad laughed at my optimism. “Not if you don’t stick that spade in the ground once in a while.”

  Before I could say anything else, he disappeared.

  Martin looked at me and winked. “You have now made a promise we must keep,” he said, pushing his shovel deep into the clay. “Let us finish this loch.”

  I nodded and together we worked on making our loch bigger.

  We worked side-by-side all afternoon, until we had a hole that was at least six feet deep. I felt energized by Martin’s presence. His strength and stamina seemed to fill the pit, and made me want to work harder. Even as we carried out the last lumps of cl
ay, I didn’t feel exhausted.

  “It is a very nice hole we have dug,” Martin said.

  “Yeah, it sure is.” I stood at the edge of our pit, feeling proud that we had finished before Mom called us in to eat.

  “It’s a shame you have to fill it in now,” Dad said, from behind my back. Again, he had snuck up without us hearing. A roll of chicken wire was balanced on his shoulder.

  I wiped away a river of sweat from under my ear. “What do you mean?” I asked, suddenly worried we’d been digging in the wrong spot.

  “Well,” Dad said, “all those rocks you pulled out and put over there,” he indicated the large pile six feet away. “They all have to go back in the hole, to line the bottom and the sides. But there won’t be enough, so you’ll have to take the wheelbarrow and haul more from the fields.”

  I groaned out loud. I had totally forgotten the purpose of the hole. It wouldn’t work properly without the stones in it to spread out the wastewater that flowed in. Normally, Dad said, bricks were used to line sewage pits, but they were expensive and rocks would work just as well.

  “But don’t worry,” he said, slapping me on the back with his free hand, “you don’t have to start that until tomorrow. Your mother’s likely ready for us.”

  In unison, the three of us looked to the house, and sure enough, Mom was waving us in from behind the kitchen window.

  During supper, Mom gave Dad a hard time for making us do such hard work during the hottest time of the day. “I swear, Arnold,” she said, “they’re both going to get heatstroke if you keep working them like that.”

  I don’t think she was really that worried about us. I mean, Dad kept going non-stop—no matter how hot it got. And he usually worked a lot harder than we did. She was probably just helping us get time off.

  And it worked.

  “Oh, all right,” he said. “You boys go and do what you like, and I’ll keep plugging away. But don’t expect me to pay you for loafing about.” Dad grinned, and with a twist of his head toward the door, we were dismissed.

  Outside now, in the driveway, Martin said, “Shall we try and go for a swim again?”

  The thought of encountering Rake didn’t appeal to me, but I also didn’t want Martin to think I was a coward. “Why don’t we go to our track, and you can teach me some more tricks?”

  “Yes, that is a good idea, Varren. But they are not tricks. They are skills that professional sprinters practice over and over to win races.” Martin smiled. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling stupid.

  Gosh, he took this stuff seriously.

  “Good,” he said, “now let us go and find out what you have remembered from yesterday.”

  Chapter 10

  “Please get into position,” Martin said. “And when I say GO—run as I have taught you.”

  We were back at the track again, and I had finished warming up. I placed my feet in the clay holes we’d made the night before.

  “Okay,” I said, indicating I was ready.

  “Are you certain?” Martin challenged.

  He was making me nervous, so I quickly went through everything he’d told me. Arms shoulder width apart and straight, but not locked. Head and body relaxed. Front knee at ninety degrees. Back knee at one-twenty. Rear high and shoulders low.

  Okay. I’m ready. I nodded.

  “Three, two, one,” Martin said, and then after a two-second pause, “GO!”

  Meanwhile I had lost my balance and jumped the start.

  “Why did you wait to start me?” I said, angrily.

  “I wanted you to learn a lesson.” A sly smile spread across his face. “Many runners are disqualified at the start, because they have trained to predict the start and have not listened for the starter’s gun. You must train your mind and body to react to the gun. You cannot assume that each starter will command the runners at the same pace. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Good,” Martin said. “Therefore, from now on I will alter the speed with which I give you the start command. And I want you to relax your body, and only run when you hear the command ‘GO.’ Never, ever, anticipate the gun.”

  Wow.

  Again he had taught me something of critical importance—something I would never have thought of. Had this been a real start, I would have certainly lost the race.

  “All right then,” Martin said, “let us now train for the beginning of the race.”

  “The beginning?” I cried out. “What the heck do you call what I did yesterday?”

  Martin shook his head, as if he was dealing with a child. “That was the start. Now we will work on the beginning.”

  “But, when will I run the whole one-hundred metres?” I asked, looking longingly down the track. It seemed like a fair question, since all Coach Roberts did was make us run laps around the track and race each other.

  “When you race at your Summer Games,” Martin said, “then you can run the one-hundred.”

  Now I was confused. “You mean you don’t want me to ever run all the way down there?” I pointed to the end of the fence.

  Martin shook his head.

  “Then why did you want a one-hundred-metre track?” Now I was talking to him like he was a five-year-old.

  “So that you can see the finish line.” Martin laughed. “As I said before, Varren, I have seen you run, and we do not need to work on your running. I know you have stamina, and I know you have speed. We need to work on your sprinting skills, and for that you do not need to run the entire one-hundred metres.”

  He didn’t want me to run the hundred—the race I was supposed to be training for. This was getting really weird. I mean, I didn’t doubt his sprinting skills for a minute, but I sure thought that sooner or later he’d have me running the length of the track. After all, I had less than two weeks to get ready.

  “All right,” I said, giving in. “But I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “I know what I am doing, and you will win your race.”

  I realized, then, that I did trust him—I trusted him totally. In fact, if he’d asked me to run backwards with rocks in my pockets, I would have done it. Although there was no way I’d be suggesting that, because you just never knew what he thought might make good training.

  Martin walked ten metres ahead of the start line and scratched another line across the track. “Okay,” he said, “enough chitting and chatting. Please get into position, and remember to remain relaxed.”

  I dug my running shoes into the clay blocks, and waited for his instructions.

  He walked back to me and said, “When I, or the starter, begin the countdown commands, you will hold your breath and concentrate on that ten-metre mark I have made. Then when you hear the gun, you will use your legs and push from the blocks as quickly as possible. And you will not worry about proper sprinting form until you have reached that mark.” Martin waited for a sign from me that I understood.

  I nodded weakly, still trying to absorb everything.

  “And to help you accelerate at the start, you must try to apply a longer force against the front block.”

  I was still bent over at the start line, and my arms were beginning to quiver. “Okay,” I said. Just start me already.

  “And immediately, as you leave the blocks, use your arms to increase forward speed. Okay?”

  If he didn’t start me soon, my arms would buckle. I nodded again.

  “And keep your hands open and relaxed,” Martin said. “I cannot stress enough how important it is to relax as you run.”

  I was relaxed. In fact, I was totally relaxed, but now he was starting to stress me out. “Okay, okay,” I said. “Just start me already.”

  Martin giggled, and I wondered if he was trying to mess with my head again. “READY? Three, two, one, GO!”

&n
bsp; I jumped from the blocks, like Martin said—legs pushing hard, hands open, arms swinging, and feet pounding the track. In less than two seconds I was over his marker. Again, it felt like the fastest start I had ever had, but I somehow doubted Martin would approve. I turned around and was astonished to see him clapping.

  “Fantastic! That is how you must start every race. You can never let the things that happen at the start line affect your concentration. You must block out everything once the starter begins the commands.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “I had tried to distract you with many instructions, but it does not appear to have affected your concentration. Many things will happen at the beginning of a race, and you must never let them affect your race. Okay?”

  “What sort of things?” I asked.

  “Well, at an important race, runners are often so anxious that some may run before the gun. This happens because they have not trained to react to the gun. And each time this happens, they must restart the race, which will add stress to the other runners. So you must always run your own race, just as you have trained and—”

  BANG!

  The top of a fence post two feet away exploded, sending splinters of wood drifting through the air.

  Martin reacted instantly and dropped to the ground. Stunned by the blast, I stood staring at the damage. But Martin didn’t waste a second. He rolled onto his back and used his legs to trip me and take me down.

  With his powerful arms he pulled me close. “Someone has shot at us,” he said, fear in his voice.

  I nodded, quickly realizing what had happened. One second we were talking and the next a bullet had ripped past our heads. I glanced at the post, and knew the shot had come from a high-powered rifle. A pellet gun or a .22 could never shred a piece of wood like that.

  “The gully,” I said, barely hearing my voice over the pounding of my heart. “Should we slide down the gully?”

  Martin shook his head. “No. The bullet has come from across the gully. If we go there, they may have a better shot.”