The Last Green Valley Read online

  “What?” Emil said.

  “It’s silly.”

  “Tell us,” Will said.

  Adeline didn’t want to but finally replied, “I want a doll with a pretty dress.”

  “A doll?” Emil said, surprised.

  “I never had one growing up,” she said, raising her chin. “Is that too much to ask for?”

  “No, Adella,” he said, and patted her thigh. “It’s not too much to ask for a doll.”

  That made her happy, and she grinned for a moment before gesturing ahead and saying, “They’re splitting the trek ahead again.”

  Emil looked up the road a hundred meters and saw another German officer on the hood of a truck, directing traffic. To his relief, it was not Haussmann but a captain he’d never seen before who waved them toward the center of Dubossary and the north bridge over the Dniester River.

  The caravan slowed to fits and starts as they inched toward the crowded town center. When they got there, Emil could see the remainders of a high barbed-wire fence and empty buildings beyond.

  Hearing the crying in his mind again, he kept his eyes on the livid scars on his horses’ haunches, wondering if his memories of this cursed town would ever leave him, if he’d ever be free of that night when—

  He heard a whistling sound that grew louder before the town was rocked by a massive explosion just to the north, and then another.

  “Emil!” Adeline shouted.

  “They’re shelling the town!” he said, fighting to keep his horses under control.

  Ahead of them in line, horses began to buck and rear up at the blasts. Others must have stampeded out of town and toward the bridge, because the trek moved much quicker.

  Three more artillery rounds hit behind them as the Martels came free of the town proper, Emil urging his horses on at a trot and then a canter. Ahead, two other covered wagons had gone off the road and flipped. Four more were lurching away over the rough terrain, their horses spooked and galloping from the roar of the artillery.

  “Papa!” Walt cried. “We’re going too fast!”

  Emil was already pulling hard on the reins. Thor and Oden slowed and settled to puffing and snorting as they passed an SS soldier waving them toward the chaos at the mouth of the bridge. Wagons and German army vehicles already crowded the span over the river, all heading west. A long line of those who’d already crossed the Dniester snaked toward the southwestern horizon. Emil berated himself for not waking earlier, for not being on the bridge at dawn.

  “There’s smoke and fire back there!” Walt said. “They hit something big, Papa!”

  “Mama!” Will said in a whiny voice.

  “Not now, Will,” Adeline said, climbing up on the bench to look behind them.

  Emil was not interested in what was happening back there. His entire focus was on that bridge and getting as far west of the river as fast as possible. But there were too many vehicles, horses, wagons, and refugees on foot at the east entrance to the span. The caravan laced, tied up, and then unknotted with maddening slowness. People were screaming at one another. Two old men in adjacent wagons lashed at each other with buggy whips. The air stank of sweated horses and frightened humans.

  “I can’t see my mother or Malia!” Adeline said.

  “I can’t help them,” Emil said, gritting his teeth.

  “Malia was driving!”

  “I can’t help her, either. Where are my parents?”

  “To our left four wagons and one behind. Rese’s between your mother and father. She looks as scared as I’ve ever seen her.”

  “Do you blame her?” Emil said, seeing an opening and urging his horses through it and onto the ramp that climbed to the bridge.

  As they reached the high spot on the span, Adeline peered back toward Dubossary again, seeing flashes and more blasts and plumes of smoke rising before German artillery finally responded with cannon and mortar. Bombs erupted to the north where Stalin’s Second Ukrainian Front of the Red Army was preparing to storm the town.

  “Mama, I have to go pee,” Will said.

  Before she could reply, she saw her mother, eight wagons behind them, sitting stone-still beside her older sister. “There they are!” Adeline cried. “Malia’s still got the reins!”

  Walt shouted, “Mama! Papa! Planes!”

  Adeline’s attention jerked upriver, seeing Soviet fighters flying low over the Dniester in waves. The first four broke toward Dubossary, and their machine guns opened fire, strafing the Wehrmacht positions. The second wave did the same. But the third flight of four came at them.

  “Get down!” Emil shouted, let go the reins, grabbed Adeline by the shoulders, and half dove into the wagon beside the boys.

  The four planes did not open fire on the wagons on the bridge; instead, they buzzed them and followed the retreating trek west, tracking the convoy before disappearing. The fifth wave of Soviet fighters did the same, and as the Martels finally rode off the bridge into the country of Moldova, they heard the rattle of machine guns far, far ahead of them and out of sight.

  “I thought that was it,” Adeline gasped, sitting up beside Emil who’d already grabbed the reins and was urging Oden and Thor back into line. “I thought we were done.”

  Emil had thought much the same as he clucked up his horses into a trot to keep pace with the wagon ahead. Even with the bombs still exploding behind them, now that he was beyond Dubossary and getting farther from it, a place never to be seen again, he felt somewhat emboldened by their escape.

  “We are not close to being done,” he said, and pulled Adeline tight beside him. “You hear? The Martels are not close to being done.”

  Adeline grinned and kissed him. He looked like the old Emil! He sounded like the old Emil! She loved him when he was like this, refusing to give up in his own quiet, stubborn way.

  Will said, “I have to pee.”

  Walt’s voice was shaking. “Did they almost shoot us, Mama?”

  “No,” she said, spinning around and seeing her older son trembling and his hands clenched in fists. “They didn’t shoot at us. They shot at the town and somewhere up ahead.”

  “Are they coming back? Are the tanks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There was a long silence before Walt said, “I want to go home.”

  “We have no home now,” Emil said.

  “Yes, we do,” Adeline said firmly. “Our family is home. Wherever we’re together is home. This is home. It doesn’t matter if we’re on the farm or in the beautiful green valley as long as we’re together.”

  “Can I go pee in the green valley?” Will asked.

  Adeline frowned, took one look at her younger child—up on his knees, fidgeting while his swollen cheeks turned red with strain—and burst out laughing. “You poor thing.”

  “It’s not funny!” Will said. “I’m going to pee my pants!”

  “Ahh, don’t do that!” Walt said, and started to laugh along with his mother.

  “Then stop the wagon,” Will said.

  “I can’t,” Emil said. “The pace is too fast, and I don’t want to be left behind. You’ll just have to hold it another half hour at least.”

  “I can’t, Papa! I’m pinching it with my fingers right now!”

  “Pee out the back of the wagon, then,” Adeline said, trying to stop laughing.

  Will gave her a sour look before grinning at the idea. “Okay!”

  As he crawled toward the rear of the wagon, Walt said, “That family behind us is going to see you pee out the back, Will. You’ll probably hit their horses in the face.”

  Will paused, craned his head up, and saw an older woman at the reins of the wagon behind them. There was a teenage girl beside her and three more kids beneath the bonnet. And their horses were less than a meter away at times.

  “I can’t, Mama,” he said.

  “You’ll never see them again,” Emil said, chuckling now.

  “I still can’t,” Will said. “Forget it. I’m just going to wet my pants.”
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  “Don’t you dare,” Adeline said, biting her lip to keep from laughing again. “You’ll sit in your stew for hours, and then you’ll break out in a rash. Crawl back by the little wagon, the kitchen box in the corner. There’s an empty glass jar in there. You’ll pee in that.”

  Will loved that idea and went scrambling back to the corner.

  Emil glanced at her.

  “I’ll clean it,” she said. “Unless you have a better idea?”

  Emil smiled and shook his head.

  Will found the jar, turned his back on the trailing wagon, and fumbled at the buttons to his wool pants. He got them undone and was reaching inside when he realized Adeline and Walt were watching him.

  “Turn around,” he said, frowning.

  “As you wish,” Adeline said, turning to look ahead. They were out on a floodplain that was just greening. There was a lull in the battle behind them.

  “What do I do when I’m done?”

  “Hand it to me, and I’ll dump it over the side.”

  The trek was still moving at a steady clip and was nearing the far side of the floodplain where the road climbed a bluff. After a minute, Adeline said, “Are you done back there?”

  “No.”

  “No?” she said, twisting around to see him with his pants fully unbuttoned and pulled down to his thighs.

  Will was still frowning. “It doesn’t want to come out, Mama. It’s like it’s scared!”

  Adeline burst out laughing again. Walt looked, made a disgusted face, and clamped his hand across his mouth to hide his amusement. Emil glanced over his shoulder, and he started laughing, too. It was contagious. There was no stopping it.

  Even Will started laughing so hard, tears streamed down his face and he was having trouble holding the jar in front of him. Then a short shot of pee squirted from him and hit the oilskin tarp beside Walt.

  Adeline shrieked with laughter. Walt screamed as he rolled away, “Piss in the jar, idiot!”

  “You pee any more on that tarp and you’ll clean it, Will,” Emil said.

  Will clamped the jar over his groin. “I couldn’t help it,” he chortled.

  Adeline turned around again. She had forgotten how good it felt to laugh like this, the tank battles and the bombardments forgotten for the moment. Laughter was like a hot shower for the soul after a long, cold day.

  “Ahhhh,” Will said.

  “He’s peeing!”

  “Thank you, Walt,” Emil said. “Congratulations, Will.”

  Adeline started laughing all over again. A half minute went by.

  “He’s peeing a long time,” Walt said.

  “Enough,” Emil said.

  A few moments later, Will cried, “I’m empty, and the wagon behind us is back there pretty far, Mama. I’ll pour it out. You don’t have to do it.”

  “Thank you, Will,” she said. “And find a place for the jar that’s not in the kitchen box.”

  “Okay,” he said. “And I’ll find a rag to clean up the pee on the tarp.”

  She looked at Emil and winked at him.

  A few minutes later, Will crawled into her lap, snuggled into her, and said, “When are we gonna get there?”

  Adeline kissed the top of his head and smiled. “In God’s time.”

  “That’s long,” Will said.

  “Sometimes. And sometimes God works in the blink of an eye.”

  “And most times he doesn’t work at all,” Emil said. “Sometimes God is so deaf, you’d know he wasn’t—”

  Adeline shot him a sharp look and said, “That’s enough.”

  “What? They might as well learn the truth young, Adella.”

  “And what truth is that?” she said in a tone that warned him he was on thin ice.

  Emil hesitated, said, “God is not going to be there for them at every turn.”

  “Of course he is. If they ask him.”

  “I’m just saying a man has got to look out for himself and what’s his, Adeline. If some invisible God has a hand, I’m all for it. But I’ve learned from experience not to expect it, and neither should you, and neither should the boys. And I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  The wind shifted now and blew a little harder, forced her to rewrap her scarf as she watched Emil at the reins. Is he still scarred by Dubossary?

  Every time she’d brought the subject up after that morning he’d come home back in September 1941, he’d gotten angry and walked away, just like his mother had the night before.

  He said he was held by the Nazis. What happened? Is there a part of him I don’t know? And never will?

  Chapter Seven

  Those questions did not leave Adeline’s mind until she forced herself to remember the laughter they’d just shared and their survival of both a tank battle and a bombardment. She was feeling grateful as they got farther from the border and the sun arced toward the western horizon. Every single tree or abandoned shack or rock wall or windmill that they encountered seemed to shine and catch her attention.

  “What’s that, Mama?” Will asked, pointing straight ahead and down the road.

  Adeline stood, shielded her eyes from the low-angled sun. Large, twisted, hulking things stuck up out of the ground in and to either side of the road. She could see men and animals moving about among them.

  Closer, they became lorries and other vehicles, bent, torn, riddled with machine gun rounds. German soldiers whipped mules to drag debris off the road. They rode through the destruction caused by the Soviet fighter planes earlier in the day. Adeline was shocked, seeing maimed corpses frozen in the grotesque positions in which they had died. They’d gone by the third dead soldier before she realized her sons were seeing it. She looked back. Will and Walt were staring at the scene, wide-eyed and horrified.

  “Sit back now and don’t look,” she said. “You don’t have to be seeing this at your age.”

  “Leave them be, Adeline,” Emil said. “I want them to see this, understand what one man will do to another.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “So people getting killed in war is real to them. Not something you see from far away. It should be something burned in their minds young.”

  Adeline stared at him, feeling irrationally angry. “I want to protect them from that, Emil.”

  “You can’t.”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes I love you more than anything on earth. And sometimes I don’t understand the half of you, Emil Martel.”

  He nodded. “That sounds about right.”

  Before darkness fell, they stopped and pitched camp near the road. Emil’s parents and sister rolled in beside them shortly afterward, followed by Lydia and Malia. They did not bother with a fire that second night. They ate dried meat and water and the last of the bread Malia had baked the night before they left on their journey.

  Emil again worked salve into his horses’ wounds by lantern light, brushed them, and told them how much he appreciated their hard work.

  As Adeline got her sons back under the blankets inside the wagon, she could hear him talking to the horses. “I’m sorry, boys, but it was life or death. Our lives and yours.”

  She took off her boots and stockings and put them at her feet before sliding in beside Walt, who’d been very quiet much of the rest of the day.

  Emil climbed in with the lantern.

  “Mama, I wish God’s ‘soon’ was tomorrow,” Walt said.

  Adeline hugged him tight, said, “I do, too.”

  Emil blew out the lantern as the wind shifted southwest. Temperatures began to rise.

  “Day two,” he said. “We made it.”

  “Together,” Adeline said, and smiled sleepily in the dark.

  They had made it, just as they had time and again throughout their marriage, and just as she had before she met Emil. Emotionally and physically drained by the past thirty-six hours, Adeline nevertheless prayed and gave thanks for her family’s miraculous journey so far before plunging into deep dark sleep. When she finally dreamed, it
was as if time had been hit by one of the tank rounds and more than a decade had vanished altogether.

  October 1933

  Birsula, Ukraine

  Eighteen-year-old Adeline stood on her tiptoes in a kosher butcher shop in the little town, watching in wonder as the butcher wrapped a whole fresh chicken in paper. Fresh chicken. When was the last time she’d seen or even allowed herself the thought of something like that?

  And she was sure she was going to taste it. Well, of course. She was going to cook it, wasn’t she?

  Adeline could not have wiped the grin off her face if she’d tried. Roasting a fresh chicken. Eating a fresh chicken when only months before . . . And now, here she was, living the high life!

  The butcher put the package on the counter. “Tell Mrs. Kantor she is a blessed woman. The first chicken I’ve been able to offer in months. A miracle you walked in when you did.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Berman,” Adeline said, smiling and putting the chicken into a sack slung over her shoulder.

  She hurried outside, excited. A chill breeze hit her in the face, reminded her that winter was not far off, though the thought did not concern her as much as it might have a year ago, or the year before that.

  After Adeline and her mother and sister were thrown off the family farm, she was sent to work on a collective farm in the rolling hills outside Birsula, a small town roughly two hundred kilometers north of Odessa. For months, in stifling heat and biting cold, she’d gone shoeless into vats of mud and straw, mixing them for bricks with her bare feet. There were times she thought her legs were going to snap off like icicles beneath a winter eave, and other times when she’d grown so despondent, she’d wondered if she’d ever have even a glimpse of a better lot in life. Then to add to her misery, Stalin had cut off the food in the fall of 1932.

  As Adeline left the butcher shop with the chicken, she could remember being so hungry during the Holodomor, she’d hallucinated chicken, swore she saw steaming plates of her mother’s egg noodles and carved roast fowl appear in the air right before her eyes. Later, she’d been so weak, she collapsed in the mud vats on a frigid day, contracted pneumonia, and barely survived.