Helen unwrapped it.

The wooden comb, one of the ones from the wash station.

Simple and utilitarian.

The kind of object that had no value except its function.

Keep it, Helen said.

Clara shook her head.

For the next girl, she said.

Maybe she will think she is beyond cleaning too.

Helen took the comb.

Clara looked at her for a moment and then did something that was not in any regulation or protocol or framework for the management of prisoner transfers.

She stood straighter and met Helen’s eyes and said in careful English that she had probably learned in school long before the war had broken the world.

Thank you for not looking away.

Helen held the comb.

The truck doors closed.

The convoy moved out through the camp gate and onto the Tennessee road and the pine trees closed behind it and the camp returned to its morning.

McCoy was at the gate with his clipboard, checking the transfer manifest against the departure time.

He made his notation.

He watched the truck until it was out of sight and then looked back at the yard and continued his rounds with the same pace he always used, unhurried, systematic, the ordinary maintenance of order conducted by a man who took it seriously.

He did not know what had happened in the laundry room from his particular position.

He knew the facts of it, the medical incident, the treatment, the resolution.

He did not know that Elsa had stood at a window and watched him complete his circuit and set something down that she had been carrying for 17 years.

He did not know that Ingred had sat on a stool at the end of a table and let the warm water come, and that this was where something had started that would take her a long time to complete.

He did not know that Clara had kept a wooden comb for 3 days specifically to return it.

He was a sergeant doing his rounds on a February morning in Tennessee.

He had done his job.

He had done it the way the best of them always did.

Not for recognition, not for the record, not because history was watching, but because a girl was on a floor and needed a doctor, and that was sufficient reason and the only reason required.

He checked his clipboard.

He moved on.

 

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