The Ragged Edge of Night(48)

Nevertheless, he chases the boys through the potato field, his sluggish legs burning with the effort. Al and Paul dodge through a scratching gap in the hedge into forestland beyond. Anton follows, though the hedge tears at his coat and the backs of his hands. Too breathless to beg them to slow down, to stop and talk it out, he can only run, striving desperately to keep the frightened boys in view.

The forest closes overhead, a deep-green canopy rustling with sound. Anton can no longer see the boys, nor can he hear them running. The trees are too dense; they offer too much cover for small, slender bodies and youthful feet. He halts in a small clearing, heaving for his breath, and stares around the wood. The boys must have gone to ground somewhere; otherwise, he would hear them running still, crashing through the underbrush. He may be aging, but he hasn’t yet gone deaf. Then he sees the little trail off to the right, new buds of a hazel broken off, the shoots of some small woodland flower crushed under hasty feet. He takes the trail.

The forest path leads from one clearing to another—and in this one, he finds the boys’ lair, a childhood kingdom so fascinating it forces a reluctant grin of admiration. The forest floor has been swept clean of detritus, and a fire ring made of charred stones stands at the center of the clearing—Al’s doing, that meticulous preparation, the attention to safety. A great stump of some long-fallen tree has been hacked and hollowed and roofed by evergreen boughs, and its splintered gap of a doorway hung with a scrap of fabric, the same heavy dark-green wool Elisabeth uses for her curtains. Torn pieces of colored cloth and cutout magazine ads, faded by the elements and spotted with mildew, swing on lengths of twine that have been strung like a cobweb, this way and that, across the clearing. Anton wonders rather mischievously whether Elisabeth has noticed the disappearance of so many clothespins from her wash line.

“I know you’re in there—in your fortress,” he calls. “Come on out, boys. I’m not angry. Not anymore.”

There is a furtive shuffling inside the stump. He waits, patient but firm. After a moment, they appear, eyes on the ground as they scramble from the stump. They stand with heads bowed and kick their feet in the dirt, unwilling to meet his eye.

Still breathing heavily, Anton sits on one of the logs near the fire pit. His knees crack as he does. Inside the fire ring, the earth is carpeted with dry ash and bits of charcoal. “Come here; sit with me. We need to have a talk.”

“Are you angry?” Paul says, hanging back. The cautious note in his voice says he might take off running again if Anton answers, Yes.

But Al scolds his brother: “He said he’s not. Don’t you ever listen?” Even so, shame and wariness narrow Albert’s eyes.

“Sit down, boys. I won’t bite, I promise.”

They sit, leaning elbows on their scraped knees, still turning their faces away.

“Do you know what that thing was—that you were tossing back and forth?”

“A grenade,” Al says at once.

He stares at the boy, taken aback. If he hadn’t known, then perhaps Anton could have understood such foolishness and forgiven him. How did this boy—his thoughtful, cautious one—think it wise to play with a grenade? “Don’t you understand how dangerous it is? I expect better sense from you, Albert. Where on earth did you get that thing?”

“One of the boys from our class found it in his grandfather’s fields, out near Stuttgart. He brought it back, and he told us where he hid it.”

“We only wanted to see it up close,” Paul says.

“Your friend brought it back from Stuttgart? It’s a wonder he didn’t get himself killed—his whole family, too.”

“He showed it to his father, and his father said it’s dead. Disarmed.”

Anton isn’t likely to trust the opinion of any old Unterboihingen man. These farmers and simple laborers—what do they know about weaponry? As for Anton, he has seen enough grenades in his lifetime, and more guns and bombs than he can bear to recall.

“I’ll have to learn the best way to dispose of it safely.”

“You can’t get rid of it,” Albert says, fists clenching at the injustice. “We were only playing. It couldn’t have hurt us.”

“We never have any fun!” Paul wails on the verge of tears.

“Do you call that fun, playing with a dangerous weapon? Would you think it fun to blow off a hand or a foot?”

“No.” A sulky chorus.

Al adds, “But it’s exciting, to play soldiers. We didn’t mean any harm. We only wanted some excitement.”

There is nothing exciting about a soldier’s life. He wants to tell them the worst parts, the grueling, dull hours, numberless and blank—the way the nothingness grinds away your spirit and erodes your judgment, your humanity. Worse than the dullness are the times when you must see suffering close at hand—when you must cause it yourself, if you are unlucky. But Anton is wiser than to speak of it. His sons won’t listen; boys never listen to the grim lectures of older men, men who know better than they. If he wants to prove to his boys that there is a better way to be, something to aspire to beyond soldiering, he must take a different tack.

“I admit,” he says, “life can get rather dull out here in the country.”

They turn to look at him now, wary but willing to listen.

“What do you suppose is the best part of being a soldier? What do you imagine they do, in the Wehrmacht?”