The Dog in the Wood Page 2

  Mama and Oma Lou exchanged worried looks. Fritz wiped his mouth with the back of his right hand, leaving a glistening smear on his skin. He forced himself to take the last bite from his sandwich. The bread tasted like paper. He took a sip of milk to make swallowing easier.

  “Would anyone like a piece of sheet cake?” Oma Lou asked. But they had all lost their appetites, and Mama started to collect the dishes. Fritz felt bad to turn down Oma Lou’s offer, but he needed to get up and move around. He returned the butter to the cellar. Irmi washed her face at the kitchen sink.

  From the living room they could hear the sound of the radio. After a long high-pitched static squeak, classical music flowed from the brown receiver. Fritz was drying the dishes when the familiar voice of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, began a speech honoring the führer’s birthday. Dramatically, he affirmed Germany’s final victory and thanked Hitler in the name of the German nation. Due to the static Fritz could not understand everything, but he picked up the words “heroes” and “infamy of the enemy.” Goebbels continued, “Within a few years after the war Germany will flourish as never before. Its ruined landscapes and provinces will be filled with new, more beautiful cities and villages.” Oma Lou shook her head and turned to join her husband in the living room. Fritz put the last plate back into the cupboard. Mama removed her apron and hung it on a nail close to the door.

  “They don’t know what they are saying anymore. The Nazis have lost. They just don’t know it yet. It’s time for peace.”

  3

  Grandpa Karl didn’t let Lech sit at the family table, so Mama had Fritz take his meals out to the barn. Fritz was glad to see Lech. Since Lech had come to work for the family last summer, Fritz had grown close to the big, burly Pole. Lech sat at his workbench in the barn, holding a piece of wood under a light. In his spare time he carved figures out of soft wood.

  “Hmm! My dinner.” Lech turned around and cleared the workbench for Fritz to put down his plate. “Thank you!”

  Lech didn’t have much hair on his head, but his arms were covered with reddish curls, and a ring of the same curls circled his head.

  “You look like three days of rain, Fritz. What’s the matter?” He scrunched his face into a mock frown, sending a ripple of small wrinkles onto his strong nose and over his freckled forehead. Lech’s funny grimace usually made Fritz laugh, but today he couldn’t even smile.

  “They were arguing again. Grandpa Karl wants to fight the Russians,” Fritz said, sitting down on the bench next to Lech. “And Mama says that he shouldn’t.”

  “Your mother is right.” Lech took a large bite out of the bread and chewed off a bite from the cheese. “Even the German army couldn’t stop the Russians. That’s why they will be here soon.”

  “Grandpa wants me to go with him and take a rifle.”

  “You’d better stay away.”

  “But I have to do what he says. Maybe I should practice shooting,” Fritz said, imagining himself again fighting Russians with Grandpa.

  “No you shouldn’t,” Lech said, finishing the first slice of bread. Fritz wished he could tell Lech about the hole, but a secret was a secret.

  “Maybe you could come with me?” Fritz asked.

  “With you and your grandpa? I don’t think your grandpa will trust me to defend his farm against the enemy.” Lech nudged Fritz. “Don’t worry about shooting at Russians. Your mother won’t let you.”

  “But the Russians will come soon. What will happen?”

  “We’ll wait and see. They will be here any day now. They will come, and then they will go on to meet the Americans and British in Berlin.” Lech gave Fritz’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “It’s like when a boat meets a storm. There will be broken water for a while, and then things will calm down.”

  “Choppy waters, not broken,” Fritz corrected. He had helped Lech improve his German, but Lech often confused words. Fritz wondered if he did it on purpose, just to make him laugh.

  “Okay then, choppy waters,” Lech said. “But you know what I mean?”

  Fritz nodded, hoping that it would be just a short storm.

  “But you know what? I speak some Russian.” Lech smiled at him. “I’m from eastern Poland, from an area that used to belong to the Ukraine. The Ukrainian language is very close to Russian.”

  Fritz remembered the map on his schoolroom’s wall. Ukraine was a big country, part of the Soviet Union, bordering the Black Sea, a place the Nazis had wanted to take over.

  “So you can ask them what they want. That’s good.” Fritz felt a little lighter.

  “And now you should pass me the small carving knife over there, the one with the green handle.” Lech pushed the plate away and turned his attention back to the piece of wood he was working on when Fritz had entered the barn.

  “What are you making?”

  “I’m still working on the old couple.” Lech was carving two figures standing side by side. The man was wearing overalls. The woman was dressed in a peasant skirt and blouse. Lech took the carving knife Fritz passed him and with a few swift movements gave her face an aged expression.

  “You are making her old,” Fritz said.

  “They are old.”

  Lech motioned toward the lump of wood that Fritz had been trying to shape into a dog. “Why don’t you work on your dog?”

  “My dog looks more like a pig without a neck.” Fritz held the lump of wood in his hands. He would never be able to make it look like a dog.

  “The dog is already there.”

  “Where?”

  “Inside the piece of wood.” Lech passed Fritz a carving knife and motioned him to start working.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Not yet. But it’s already there inside. You just need to uncover it.”

  4

  Mama had just stretched out on the sofa for her Sunday afternoon nap when they heard knocking on the front door. It was Fritz’s friend Paul.

  “How did you get away from watching your little brother?” Fritz asked.

  “Thomas is taking care of him today, so I’m free. Let’s go to the main road!”

  “My mother won’t let me go that far anymore,” Fritz answered. “Last week old Herr Heimann told her that an escaped French forced laborer had shot a peasant woman from a jeep as she was working in her field.”

  “So we just don’t tell where we’re going!” Paul answered. They heard Mama calling from the living room and followed her call.

  “Guten Tag, Frau Friedrich. Can Fritz come out and play?”

  “Where are you going to play?”

  “We’ll go out behind the wheat field and play with a ball,” Paul said. The lie came easily from Paul’s lips. Fritz quickly told himself that it was Paul who had said they were going to play ball.

  Mama nodded. “Just be back in time.”

  Fritz grabbed his jacket, and Paul threw him a triumphant smile as they walked out the door. “Don’t be a worrywart!” Paul teased him. “Nobody will find out unless you tell them.” When they crossed the yard, a group of hens scurried away. Paul kicked a pebble after the slowest one.

  The cow pastures at the south end of the village had been plowed into beet fields, and the green crowns of the plants spread out in rows across the dark soil. The weather had been blustery this spring, but now, after a rain shower, the sky was brilliant and the earth seemed cleaned up for Sunday. When they came to the end of the sugar beets, they turned right and made their way into the wheat field. Through it was a shortcut to the main road connecting their village with the county seat.

  Last winter, the road had been filled with horse-drawn wagons and people on foot, all headed west. Trek after trek had clattered down the road. After Fritz had watched the treks the first time, Lech had explained that the refugees came from eastern Prussia and other German regions in the East. The people had all be
en fleeing from the Russians. Now they saw a trek only occasionally. There was also military traffic to watch.

  Paul led the way up a nearby hillock. At first there was only the occasional truck, a jeep, or a horse cart on the road. Then Paul called out, “There’s one coming.”

  The treks usually consisted of groups of refugees from one village who were trying to stay together on their journey west. This one was made up of about eight wagons, led by a boy on a bicycle who rode ahead to scout out the way and to seek villages that were able and willing to take in refugees for the night. Some wagons rolled on big balloon tires pulled by strong farm horses and led by women in handsome coats. Others were just rickety carts, dragged along by a single mule or a shaggy-looking horse. Most wagons were covered with canvas, some with Oriental rugs. People packed onto the carts as many belongings as they could carry. All of them were fleeing without their fathers, of course, since the men were fighting in the war or had been killed. Some older men, probably grandfathers, were sitting on the carts or walking slowly beside their belongings. Had these grandfathers first tried to defend their villages? Fritz caught a glimpse of a boy sitting on a wooden box, steadying a clock in the crook of his right arm each time the wagon rolled over a stone or hole.

  “Look at that.” Paul pointed in the direction of a middle-aged woman who walked beside a scrawny horse, leading it on a rope. She turned around frequently, looking at the mare. Two big leather suitcases were tied onto its saddle, swaying with every step.

  “What’s wrong with the horse?” Fritz asked.

  “I don’t know. It looks very skinny,” Paul answered.

  “It also looks very sick,” Fritz added, examining the shivering animal.

  The horse was now stumbling, and its forelegs buckled every time its weight shifted. Then the horse stopped, and when the woman tried to pull it to the side of the road, it staggered into the ditch and fell on its side. The suitcases slid off the saddle. The boys saw the horse’s belly heaving. It let out a heavy groan. The other people in the trek hardly took notice. Some looked briefly at the woman, but her place in line was quickly filled, and the group moved on. The horse moaned again. Then, with a last sigh, it leaned its head back, and a final shiver rippled through its emaciated body. The woman collapsed over it and cried.

  “It just died,” Paul stated.

  Fritz wished that someone with a stronger horse would offer help to the old woman.

  “What’s she going to do now, I wonder,” Fritz said. “She’s all alone.” Fritz looked at Paul, expecting an answer, but Paul just shrugged.

  “Don’t you feel bad for her?”

  “She should have taken a stronger horse,” Paul said.

  The woman picked up the suitcases. With slumped shoulders she walked slowly, trying to catch up with the others.

  “I want to go home now,” Fritz said.

  “All right, but let’s come back soon.”

  “I’m not sure that we can,” Fritz said as they began their way back. “My grandpa says the Russians will be here any day.” Fritz looked back at the road. This is where Russian tanks would roll soon. German jeeps and soldiers would be fleeing. He could almost hear the gunshots and the roaring of the treads. He picked up a round stone from the path. “What will your family do when the Russians come?”

  “My mother says we will put out a red flag and greet the Russians with food,” Paul answered.

  “Give them food? They are our enemies!” Fritz cried out.

  “My mother can’t wait until the Russians liberate us,” Paul said.

  “Liberate us from what?”

  “From the Nazis, the brown pest! They brought all this on,” Paul said. “My dad will come back once they free all the political prisoners. The Russians are Communists themselves, just like my dad.”

  Paul turned to Fritz. “What’s your family going to do when the war is over?”

  “My mother says it’s time for peace. She says the Nazis lost, but they don’t know it yet.”

  “What does your grandpa say?”

  “He wants to defend the village,” Fritz answered, smoothing his thumb over the stone.

  “How? Karl Friedrich, the hero of Schwartz, the savior of the Reich?” Paul added.

  “But what about all the horrible things the Russians have done to people?” Fritz now squeezed the stone in his fist.

  “My mother says that the Russians will bring peace. That’s what the Communists want.”

  “Haven’t you seen the pictures? The fires in Dresden and Hamburg?” Fritz remembered the weekly newsreel film he had seen in a movie theater in Nirow. The Allied air raids had left big German cities destroyed. Mama had cried when she left the movie hall.

  “What do you think German soldiers did in Russia?” Paul asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The German army invaded Russia without having been attacked. Now the Russians are defeating the Nazis. Their time has come.” Paul was now slashing the long grass on the right side of the path, moving his hand like a scythe. “You have to pay a price when you lose a war.”

  Fritz wondered what Paul meant by that but did not dare to comment. Instead he asked, “What about your patriotic duty?”

  “Hah!” Paul stopped. They had reached the edge of the village. “Patriotic duty! That’s what your grandpa tells you. Are you his parrot?”

  “No!” Fritz screamed. He wished he would know what to say, but he drew a blank. He hurled the stone into the field. Paul had started walking in the direction of his house.

  5

  Oma Lou was preparing dinner in the kitchen when Fritz returned to the house. She took a large loaf of bread out of the bread box, held it to her chest, cut off thick slices, and placed them in a small basket.

  “Where have you been all afternoon?” she asked.

  “Paul and I saw another refugee trek near Buschof,” he answered, looking at her to check if she disapproved.

  “More and more people are coming from the East. I don’t know where they all are going to live.” Oma Lou sighed.

  “Do you think we are also going to leave Schwartz, Oma Lou?” Fritz asked, thinking of the dark stream of people and carts rolling slowly westward.

  “Oh no! Your Grandpa and I are never going to live anywhere else.” Oma Lou placed the bread basket on the table.

  “But how can Grandpa defend the village?”

  Oma Lou fastened a strand of her hair back into her bun. “There will be very tough times ahead once the war is over,” she said, her voice low. She looked down and shook her head. “But leaving our home? Never! We don’t know anyone in the West.” She said what Fritz had hoped to hear. They wouldn’t leave the farm. But the sadness in her voice made it impossible for him to feel relieved.

  That night Fritz could not fall asleep. He again thought of the hole in the forest and tried to imagine how he and his grandpa would fight the Russians. He knew he would fail Grandpa. Paul’s words also echoed in his head. Paul was so sure of everything, and he never seemed afraid. From the front room Fritz could hear the adults talking and the radio announcer warning the German people that “a grave and important announcement” was about to be made. Classical music followed. Then a man introduced himself as Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander in chief for the north of Germany. Fritz strained his ears but could not hear the words. He got up and tiptoed into the hall, putting his ear close to the living room door. In somber tones, the man announced the death of Hitler and his own succession as führer of the Reich. Hitler had “fallen” that afternoon, he said, fighting “at the head of his troops.”

  “Oh, God!” he heard Oma Lou exclaim. “Lord help us! What are they going to do to us?”

  “Let’s get a white sheet and hang it out on the flagpole,” he heard Mama say.

  “How dare you say this, Gertrude?” Grandfather boomed. “The führer g
ave his life for us!”

  “Karl, not so loud!” whispered Oma Lou. “The children are sleeping.”

  “We need to fight the Russians!” Grandpa’s voice was lower now.

  “How?” Mama replied. “There aren’t even enough able men to do the farm work. Do you want the women and children to defend Schwartz against the Russian army? Why don’t you realize that it’s over? We don’t need any more death and destruction. I have two children to care for. Germany has lost the war! Now we can only hope for a new beginning.”

  Fritz heard a deep sigh, then slow sobbing.

  “Karl!” Oma Lou called out, alarmed.

  “It’s over!” Grandpa sobbed.

  6

  At first he only saw their shoes.

  Oma Lou’s were hanging a little higher than Grandpa’s heavy black shoes. A thin wedge of morning light came in from the window in the barn roof, illuminating the swastika stitched onto Grandfather’s right sleeve. For a moment it seemed as if the patch gave off the light itself. Grandpa’s suit looked as it had when hanging in the bedroom closet after it had been pressed. A dark stain, shaped like a spoon, grew along Oma Lou’s left stocking. Rope connected each neck to a broad beam above, the heads slightly cocked to one side, reminding Fritz of his hand puppets. Then, suddenly, he realized what he was seeing.

  Fritz tried to breathe, but the air in the barn had turned thick. He needed to suck it through his nostrils in small portions.

  Just as he took a step forward, he heard Mama’s cry from behind. She grabbed him, her hands covering his eyes. As she pulled him closer, he could smell the onions she had cut for dinner the night before. Her hands felt cool and moist from the tears she had wiped from her face. Fritz squeezed his eyes shut and pushed his face against her hands, as if by pressing hard he could erase the image he had just seen.

  “Fritz! Let’s go inside!” Fritz made his legs move. When they stepped out of the barn, he was blinded for a second by the glare of sunlight flooding the yard. Mama led him inside to the living room sofa, and they sat side by side. She turned her face toward him, her eyes red and swollen.