Blood and Salt Read Online Free PDF Page A

fight, hammering and flailing until bodies plummet to the earth like heavy birds.
    Eickl thumps Scarman on the nose and blood sprays like black rain in the failing light. For a second Scarman can’t believe it. Then he kicks Eickl in the knee. Eickl screams.
    Guards rush in shouting and shoving, bayonets jabbing the air. In seconds everyone is sick of the fight and it stops cold. At that moment a fist crashes into Taras’s left cheek and jaw and he goes down hard. Christ, it hurts. Who did that, for God’s sake? He wasn’t even fighting. Of course the guards didn’t notice a thing. Complete useless tits.
    Scarman, bloody but grinning wildly, helps him up, and Taras thinks he could maybe become part of Oleksa and Scarman’s group if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want to, doesn’t even want to get up yet. Somebody might hit him again. In the sudden quiet, the prisoners walk off, some with pulpy lips and bruises blooming on eyes or cheeks. Scarman isn’t the only one who looks pleased.
    Yuriy and Ihor have stopped to see what’s going on. Taras stum bles up to them. “I wasn’t even fighting,” he says. Yuriy’s hand- kerchief comes out again, wipes away blood where Taras’s cheek is cut. Ihor shakes his head like a parent with a foolish child.

    Once again Oleksa, Scarman and Toma sit cross-legged on the dirt floor of the tent playing a game Taras doesn’t even want to understand. Their eyes track each card that falls as if it matters. Oleksa with his mismatched hair. Scarman with his bushy eyebrows. Toma with his round, almost gentle face.
    Scarman started the game in a good mood, but now looks ready to hit somebody. His nose has stopped bleeding, although it still has a mashed look. Like a boiled potato flattened with a wooden spoon.
    Taras thinks about a whole boiled potato. Whether he’ll ever see one again.
    The other card players from the first night stare at the walls, smoking each cigarette until their fingers start to burn, tired of Scarman telling them what to do. Scarman wanted to play for a penny a hand, but Toma, who usually does everything he’s told, led a revolt. He said he’d die if he lost all his money and couldn’t get cigarettes. Taras was surprised when this worked, but by then the other men didn’t want to play any more.
    Each man earns twenty-five pennies a day from his work. It doesn’t get you much at the camp canteen, but if you’re careful you can have, over a week, several candy bars and plenty of smokes.
    Taras watches Yuriy read an old copy of the Banff newspaper he found outside. A soldier must have dropped it. He notices Taras watching and reads out loud – a story that explains how the town benefits by selling provisions to the internment camp.
    “Good to know we’re helping someone,” Toma says.
    Ihor sits beside Taras, fingers drumming on the ground, and hums a tune that leaps and dips and whirls. A song from another place, of rocks and streams and a life spent on the shoulders of mountains. Oleksa keeps giving him dirty looks, but doesn’t say anything. Taras sees that he doesn’t quite want to take Ihor on. Doesn’t know what might happen.
    Taras worries that a fight will start in the tent. Just for something to do. Or to get warm. It probably won’t; Yuriy and Ihor are always so calm. Also, Oleksa and even Scarman don’t want fights that aren’t their idea. Still, you never want to take another man’s cigarettes or candy bar. It seems that the less you have, the more you don’t want anyone to touch it.
    Taras lights a cigarette, but the left side of his face burns and the teeth on that side feel loose. It hurts even to smoke. He throws down the cigarette, watches it glow a moment and sputter out in the dirt. What a waste. His hands and feet ache with cold, even though he’s wearing everything he has, in layers. It makes his clothes feel stiff and tight.
    He pulls his one blanket closer around his shoulders and looks toward the glowing oil lamp in the