by Jacob Jordan
The sun was mean that summer, laying heavy over the red dirt of East Texas. The brickyard hissed in the heat like a living thing. Smoke curled from the kiln stacks, and the clay baked hard enough to crack under a boot heel. RC, age seven, barefoot and grinning, balanced on the edge of a stacked brick pallet like it was a castle. His little brother JC, five, sat in the shade of the brick mold shed with a tin cup full of buttermilk and a face smeared in dust. Calvin, nine, was their king—taller, leaner, and full of ideas. All three boys had hair like hay under the sun and eyes the color of cold river water. Their daddy, Joe Luce, ran the brickyard with a rusted wheelbarrow and a belt that whistled when he pulled it off.
Joe Luce was a mountain of a man with hands the size of dinner plates and a booming voice that commanded authority—especially when the Army dropped off twelve German POWs to work the yard. “They’re not your friends,” he warned, squinting at the line of blond-haired, sunburned prisoners. “You boys stay outta their way.” But curiosity was hotter than any warning. The Germans looked like kin in a strange way—same blond heads, same blue eyes. Just skinnier, quieter, and guarded by soldiers with rifles slung low. It was Franz who caught their attention. Tall, maybe nineteen years old, with dirt-streaked cheeks and a gentle wave when he passed the boys. He was the first to smile—awkward, like someone remembering how. A week passed before RC spoke to him. He was poking at a dead lizard with a stick when Franz walked by and knelt beside him. “Ist kaputt,” Franz said, tapping the lizard with the same stick. RC looked up, wide-eyed. “Dead, yeah. You talkin’ German?” Franz chuckled. “Ja…. You… lizard doctor?” RC cracked a grin. From that day, it was settled. Franz told the other Germans about the boys. Tillman, who missed hisbaby sister. Lukas, who carved little animals from scrap wood. They weren’t Nazis to the boys—they were just men with tired hands, strange words and familiar attributes. One Saturday, after a long morning of covertly pillaging watermelons from a nearby farm; Calvin nodded toward the treeline behind the brick yard. “Y’all ever swim?” he asked Franz. Franz looked at the guards. They weren’t paying much attention. He whispered something to the others. Ten minutes later, three barefoot boys and three nervous prisoners crept through the pines toward a waterhole so deep it looked black in the sun. The water hit like ice. RC whooped loud enough to wake birds from the trees. JC clung to Franz like a kitten while learning to float. Tillman showed Calvin how to skip rocks in wide arcs. For that one golden hour, war disappeared into the splash and laughter. They dried in the sun, lying in the grass. RC noticed Franz staring up at the sky. “You miss ya mama?” RC asked. Franz nodded slowly. “Miss mama. Like you miss yours when she not home.” RC pondered that a second. “My mama’s gone too. She went to be with Jesus when I was feeding her some ice chips.” Franz didn’t say anything, just reached over and patted RC’s shoulder once. They walked back in silence, muddy and smiling. No one told. It was their secret—blue-eyed boys in tattered overalls rolled above their bare feet and young men who were forced to don the uniform of a madman enjoying a brief lull in the madness. Two weeks later, the Germans were transferred. The Army truck didn’t stop. Franz waved from the back, mouthing something while tossing a service grey cap towards RC. JC cried quietly. Calvin didn’t say a word for the rest of the day. Years down the line, folks would talk about the war, about right and wrong, enemies and heroes. But for three blond-haired East Texas boys, war would always be a quiet memory at a hidden waterhole…not to mention a favorite story of their grandkids.
