War Games (18 page)

It was then the understanding came. For a stranger, Uncle Spiro would have sent someone else. For those he loved, no one else would do.

Petros flipped over in his bed again. He couldn’t sleep. He felt like he’d been lying awake in the dark for hours. He wished the time had already come when he might know Lambros had arrived wherever Uncle Spiro was taking him.

Uncle Spiro too. This waiting bothered Petros a great deal.

“How did you think of what to do?” Zola said to him. “When the commander came, you thought fast.”

“No, I moved fast,” Petros said.

“So?”

“It didn’t feel like thinking,” Petros said. “It was as if the dead whispered in my ear, Here’s what to do. I didn’t have to think at all.” He felt a little thrill at realizing this.

“You did well.”

“Do you think Lambros is safe tonight?”

“Uncle Spiro’s a magician,” Zola said.

“A magician?”

“All those card tricks Papa knows,” Zola said. “Who do you think taught him?”

It made sense that Papa had gone to his little brother for help. Petros decided he could sleep after all.

Three days later Uncle Spiro stopped his cart at the gate. Petros saw him and ran to him. Still, Papa got there first. Uncle Spiro said to him, “The boy’s well. Our sister sends you her love.”

Petros spent a few minutes hanging from the bar after he unlocked the gate the next morning. It made his wrists ache. This would be worth it if one day he could do as the commander did, swinging from one bar to the other and back again.

When the commander came out, Petros went inside with a little nod. In the kitchen, plans were already made for a trip into town. Papa, Old Mario, and Zola had gone out to the garden to pick vegetables. Mama said, “Petros, pick all your tomatoes. We’ll need them to fill the baskets.”

Petros carried a piece of fried bread out to the garden with him. The broken pepper plant had put all its labors into one pepper. It was growing the biggest pepper he’d ever seen.

A breeze fluttered through the green pepper leaves.

He worked for a time, holding himself aloft with memories of the days the boys had run mad through the village, tossing a sand ball back and forth.

When he heard footsteps, he looked up from the smell of baked earth and bruised leaves to see the commander standing at the edge of his garden. He jerked a little, a reflex.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the commander said.

Perhaps Petros was frightened. He wasn’t sure.

“What happened to this pepper plant?” the commander asked him.

“It met with an accident,” Petros said. “But I’m giving it a chance.”

“Good,” the commander said. “I like that you aren’t wasteful.”

Petros ducked his head. He had Mr. Katzen to thank for this undeserved compliment. “I’ll save the seeds from the big pepper,” Petros said. “Perhaps more of my plants will grow bigger peppers like it.”

Papa came along then and said, “We’re ready.”

“I want to introduce you to a few people,” the commander said. “Then you’ll be able to come to the command post without alarming anyone. More important, perhaps, without anyone alarming you.”

Papa looked resigned.

“Are you taking the boys?” the commander asked him.

“Only Petros,” Papa said.

Petros sat between Papa and Old Mario in the truck. Behind the seat several dozen eggs were packed in straw with a blanket thrown over them. They were for families, not for soldiers.

First Papa stopped at the school building, now called the command post. Once they were relieved of more than half the
vegetables on the truck, Papa and Old Mario followed their usual route.

They stopped first to leave vegetables and eggs and cheese with Auntie. Papa sent them Lambros’s love. He made it sound as if Lambros had passed them running, not as if he’d spent nights belowground in their well.

Stavros frowned but said nothing.

“He couldn’t come to you,” Petros told him the moment Papa let the boys go to Stavros’s room. “He meant to keep you safe that way.”

“Perhaps. But he also meant to keep me home,” Stavros said with a deep bitterness.

Against his better judgment, Petros told his secret. “I made a kite.”

“No. Where is it?”

“Come out to the house—I’ll show you,” Petros said. “Zola helped me to hide it. I made it from the paper flag we had for the assembly. Remember it?”

“Very fine,” Stavros said. “We have to make a tail worthy of it.”

Papa and Old Mario were having a sweet drink with Auntie, so the boys pulled a box of money out from under her bed. They tied the bills at the middle with some fishing line Stavros had found. The tail looked like it was made of bow ties.

“But what about string?” Stavros said while they worked. There was only enough fishing line for the tail.

Petros told him where he’d gotten the kite string. He
showed the thin strand of silk he still had in his pocket, and Stavros put it into his own. They planned for him to walk out to the farm the next day.

But Petros took the kite tail with him, tucked carefully into Stavros’s book bag, which was strung across Petros’s back.

“Auntie checks my room lately,” Stavros said. “She worries that I might try something like writing notes, since the idea has been put into my head.”

At this they both laughed.

Papa made several more stops, where the vegetables and eggs were greeted like bread with honey. Most of them were given away. Then Papa swung back through the village before going home. It was said the Basilis sisters wanted to buy wheat.

Old Mario remarked on the young soldiers hanging about outside the shops. However German these soldiers were, life had to go on. Children were once more allowed to play outside. Shutters on windows hung open. The soldiers were ignored as much as possible.

Papa went into the bakery to talk business. Leaving Old Mario to wait in the truck, Petros stood near the bakery wall, but he didn’t lean against it. He took care not to crush the kite tail as he watched two small boys learning to shoot marbles.

Their marbles didn’t roll more than six or eight inches. One of them finally got frustrated and threw a marble, hitting one of the soldiers on the leg. Rather than get angry, the fellow got down on one knee to show the boys another way.

Petros stood with a couple of men who watched with interest. The soldier shot somewhat differently, and even the poor clay marbles went very far.

Petros envied the German’s skills as the little boys ran after a speeding marble, laughing. He thought it might soon be true that the village would be comfortable with German soldiers in their midst.

Just then Papa stepped outside. He stopped there, Mama’s string sack dangling from his wrist, the sack fat with two loaves of the bread no one liked.

Across the square a black car came around the corner very fast, pulling up hard at the open gate in front of Stavros’s home. The soldier who was good at marbles moved quickly into the street.

Even though he was scared, Petros stepped forward too. Papa grabbed him by the shoulder with a hard grip, a warning to stand still.

Two soldiers got out of the car and ran across the yard to Stavros’s house. One of the soldiers banged on the door, another kicked it so hard it flew open, and they barged inside.

There were shouts and a scream.

One soldier roughly pushed Stavros out into the street. The other followed them, controlling Auntie with one arm twisted behind her back. She kept up a strange breathless screaming.

An officer moving more slowly, importantly, got out of the car to meet them. And another, smaller officer got out on the
other side of the car. The soldier was holding Stavros by the neck when they reached the street.

“Gestapo,” Papa whispered as a fourth man climbed out of the car. “They’re looking for Lambros.”

“He’s not here,” Petros said in a small voice. Immediately he knew why Papa wouldn’t let them speak of Lambros having been in the well, not even to Stavros.

The smaller officer spoke quietly to Auntie; Petros doubted she could even hear him. Nearby, one of the men who’d watched the marble game said, “What’s the meaning of this?”

The other man said, “They’re making an example of the family.”

“No one has been there,” the nearby man said to Papa, who nodded. “It’s only the old woman and the boy.”

The Gestapo officer yelled into Auntie’s face, and she shook her head—no, she didn’t know where Lambros was, and no, to whatever else he asked in his poor Greek.

A dog started barking.

The other officer turned to Stavros, who shook his head also, no to both questions. “Where’s your brother hiding?” he shouted.

Stavros didn’t answer. His brows made a shelf over his eyes, hiding whatever he felt besides anger. Auntie knew this look too and became more shrill.

“Papa,” Petros said. It felt like a shout but came out as only a whisper. He noticed many other things at the same
time. Papa’s grip tightening. Old Mario sitting in the truck. The frozen postures of so many people standing on the street.

Only soldiers moved, first into the middle of the street, and then, when the Gestapo officer pulled a gun, away again.

Petros stopped breathing.

Stavros stayed rigid with stubbornness. Petros understood why the Gestapo officer went on yelling and yelling. But that wasn’t the way to move Stavros.

Behind Petros, one of the Basilis sisters stood in the doorway, reporting the events to all who remained inside the bakery.

The Gestapo officer raised his gun to Stavros’s face, shouting so continuously Stavros wouldn’t have been heard if he’d answered. Auntie fought to free herself but could not.

Petros’s mind went on working. On the one hand, he believed the officer would spare Stavros at the last moment—or save him somehow. But on the other hand, how could the man back down?

The commander came out of the schoolhouse, running, and some small voice within Petros cheered his speed.

The officer holding the gun shook it, warning Stavros, but then heard the commander running up behind him. He looked away from Stavros as the gun went off.

A burst of color splashed at Stavros’s throat.

In the moment Stavros hit the dirt of the street, Papa clapped his hand over Petros’s eyes. In the moment Stavros hit the dirt of the street, questions lit Petros’s mind like flashes of lightning:

Why had the officer looked away? Was he afraid of seeing Stavros die? In the same way that Lambros used to faint at the sight of blood?

Had he only just heard the commander, and the gun went off accidentally?

Had the commander reached out and caused the gun to go off?

Petros had seen the whole thing, but his mind had begun wrapping the event in layers of questions, burying the details as deeply as Mama’s Lenox china wrapped in paper and straw.

As Stavros fell, there were screams of shock all around, and people began to cry. The commander and the Gestapo officer were in a shouting match, all garbled words.

Stavros lay in the street, so still, the red stain spreading over his white shirt. This much Petros saw before Auntie threw herself over him, as if to hold his soul within.

Papa turned Petros away from the square. “Go home,” he said. “Don’t stop anywhere. Don’t talk to anyone. Stay off the road.”

“Mama?”

“Tell her, but everyone’s to go into the house. No one stays in the yard or garden.”

The argument going on above Stavros broke off as suddenly as the gunshot tore the air, and there was silence behind Petros. But he went, letting Papa see him as he was meant to go, obedient. He got around the corner of the bakery before he looked back.

The men who’d gotten out of the car had returned to it. The commander stood long enough to watch them drive off in a reckless manner, the black car swerving all around the village square.

The commander’s back was turned to Auntie and Stavros, as if in his anger he’d forgotten them. The other soldiers appeared to ignore Auntie’s wailing. It was their job to wait for orders.

Petros waited long enough to see the commander turn on his heel and stomp back toward the command post. Some soldiers followed him, others simply walked away from the street as if they had something else to do.

Papa crouched over Auntie and Stavros. Old Mario got out of the truck, hurrying in a way that had only become true of late, when speed was called for. Other people had begun to move toward them to help.

Petros ran, still seeing in his mind’s eye the way Stavros lay, unmoving. Still seeing the bright blood at his throat.

The mile home stretched longer than it had ever been as Petros cut across one orchard and then another, through a farmyard where a dog chased him and then the Lemoses’ orchard.

The sunlight cut as sharply into his eyes as scissors, and his head ached, but he ran, Stavros’s book bag flopping against his back. Wave after wave of nausea made him stop to bend over, sweating, shaking. And then he ran on. And walked, and for a few minutes, crawled.

When he reached home, Mama and Sophie were on the veranda. “Who is that?” Sophie said to Mama while looking straight at him.

It seemed Mama looked for a long time as Petros clung shakily to the locked gate. He understood, remembering the look of Lambros in the well, how different he’d looked. Petros had no breath left in him to call out.

Everything happened next.

Mama shrieked and began to run at him.

And next.

“Zola!” Sophie yelled, and then began to scream.

And next.

Zola shot from the other side of the house at the sound of Mama’s voice and ran to unlock the gate, having the key in his pocket.

Petros’s throat tightened around any words he tried to speak. Mama grabbed him through the gate, holding him up. “What happened?” she kept saying, and finally Petros was able to say, “Stavros has been shot.”

The gate swung open and Petros fell a little against Mama. Sophie clung to Mama’s other side as Zola pushed him toward the house.

“What’s this?” Mama asked as she tugged at the book bag. She let go of it almost immediately, asking, “Where’s your father?”