The Ragged Edge of Night(58)

When Anton enters the hidden clearing, the boys look up from their fire. There is a moment of dry, quiet tension as they sit, hunched upon a damp log, waiting for him to speak. Their eyes are bright and round in their solemn faces. The fire snaps, releasing a drift of sparks, but no one jumps at the sound, no one moves. Then, as if coming to an unpleasant decision, Al rises slowly. How tall the boy has grown; he will be a man soon. Anton can see very little of Elisabeth in his face, though Al has inherited his mother’s meticulous nature and her habit of quiet observation. But it’s the boy’s biological father Anton sees now. Albert, watching Anton with a man’s sternness and knowing. There is no mistaking the determination in his eyes, the somber paleness around his freckles. His height, his posture—he is strong, growing stronger and more his own man every day.

Anton thinks, Herr Herter, you and I could have been friends, in another life. Your children are good people—even little Maria—and through them, I have been gifted with fatherhood, a blessing I never thought to receive.

He doesn’t wish to anger Herr Herter’s shade, nor insult him. But it has fallen to him, Anton, to teach these children whatever the war has not taught already.

“I saw you take the potatoes,” he says. He can feel Paul Herter’s spirit there beside him, likewise mournful.

The boys hang their heads—even Al, tough Al’s eyes flash up, briefly and only once, to gauge or challenge Anton’s severity. In that moment, for the first time, Anton feels as if all the work he has done—the trips to other towns, carrying the coded words—everything he has wrought and risked to bring down this damnable regime—all is for naught. What is resistance for, if we fall back into evil?

Paul says, “They were left after the harvest.”

“But they weren’t yours to take.”

“We know,” Al says. “We talked it over. Didn’t we, Paul? We never felt good about it—we knew it was wrong—but we thought, in the end, it was more loving and kind to do it. Even though it’s wrong to steal. And we thought, if we only took the potatoes left at the end of the harvest, it wouldn’t be so bad. Then we wouldn’t be hurting the Kopp brothers. It’s wrong to steal, but if we’re not hurting anyone… and if it’s more loving to do it…” Al trails off, biting a dirty nail. His gaze shifts to Anton’s feet and stays there.

“More loving? What do you mean?” Then Anton notices the small white bones strewn around the clearing, kicked to the edges where carrion birds can pick them clean. Rabbit bones. As Al shifts restlessly on his feet, Anton sees the sling trailing from his trouser pocket. It’s a homemade affair, fashioned from scraps of soft leather. He thinks, I never went to M?belbauer for the leather. They must have done it themselves. I never helped them make the slings. I never taught my sons how to hunt. What kind of a father am I?

“We remembered what you said, that day—you know, with the grenade—about hunting and fishing.” Al swallows hard, but now he meets Anton’s eye directly. “We would have liked for you to teach us, but you haven’t had the time.”

“That’s true,” Anton says hoarsely. “I haven’t found the time.”

“We thought, if we could hunt up our own food, and take the potatoes no one wanted anyhow, we could leave more on the table for Maria and Mother.”

So his boys are no soldiers, after all. This is the act of a teacher, a father. Their generosity—and his soaring relief—move him almost to tears. “I only regret that it wasn’t I who taught you how to hunt. But in truth, it has been so long… I would have been a poor instructor. I’m afraid you wouldn’t have liked learning from me. Who taught you?”

“No one,” Paul says. “We figured it out on our own. Well—there was a magazine we found at school, a boys’ magazine. We read how it’s done, and tried it.”

“We worked at it for weeks,” Al says. “We made little houses out of sticks and practiced knocking them down.”

Paul pulls his sling from his pocket and holds it up for Anton to see. He has warmed to the story, swept up in the excitement of the telling. “Every time we hit a stick house, we had to take a step back. That was the rule. Soon we could hit them all from fifty paces away!”

“That is impressive,” Anton admits. “But rabbits run; they don’t stand still and wait for the hunter to come.”

“That was the hardest part,” says Al. “We had to learn how to aim all over again. But we’ve done it; either of us can bring down any rabbit in the forest.”

Paul whirls his empty sling, a demonstration. “I’m going to hunt partridges this winter.”

“Look,” Al says, suddenly stubborn, as if he expects Anton doesn’t believe his boast. As if Anton can’t see the bones among the tree roots. The boys shift aside, revealing their fire. A rabbit, pink-brown and spitted on a long, charred stick, sizzles over the flame.

Softening, Al says, “Do you want some meat? The potatoes won’t be done for a while yet—we’ve buried them in the coals—but the rabbit is good.”

“Thank you; I’d be glad for a bite.”

Anton joins them on the log beside the fire. The spit is wedged between two large rocks; Paul works it free and rolls it in his hands, twirling the roasted rabbit in the air to cool the thing down. When the fat no longer hisses and snaps, Al tears off a shoulder, carefully, then holds the spit so Paul may do the same. Then it is Anton’s turn; he takes a haunch, still hot enough to burn his fingers, but smelling like the first meal out of Eden. The meat is delicious, even unspiced, flavored only by forest and field. When they have picked the rabbit clean and licked grease from their fingers, the boys poke at the embers with broken branches; they roll the potatoes roasting in the ashes. Anton finds a branch of his own. He stirs the ashes alongside his sons and helps them fish out the stolen potatoes, leaving them to cool on a bare stone. He cuts the potatoes open with his pocketknife. When they’re no longer steaming, Anton eats alongside his boys, all sins forgiven and forgotten. After, they snap their branches into pieces and toss them on the smoldering fire. They talk of slings and hunting, of fishing in the river. They talk of trucks and mountain paths and love and generosity—things boys like, things men like—until the sun has almost set.