The Last Green Valley - Mark Sullivan (black female authors .txt) 📗

After the jars were sealed, she left them on the table and decided to go for a walk to try to get her thoughts straight. Putting on her coat, she wandered through the village and found herself turning onto the road that led up to the Schmidts’ farm. She hadn’t gone more than a hundred meters when she saw Lieutenant Gerhardt’s car rolling her way.

For a second, she considered walking into the woods to avoid the secret policewoman but decided that would be about the worst move she could make. Adeline stood there, waiting for the black sedan to pull up beside her. The window rolled down.

Lieutenant Gerhardt smiled thinly. “I would think you’d be in the kitchen, Adeline.”

“I was given the afternoon off.”

“Yes, I know. How was your trip to the commissary yesterday?”

“Later than I’d planned because they’ve changed the hours,” Adeline said, and handed her the list as well as the receipt.

Gerhardt scanned the list. “Cigarettes?”

Adeline had prepared for that question. “The colonel started smoking again.”

“Hmm,” Lieutenant Gerhardt said, nodding. “And where are you going?”

“I’m out for a walk. It’s the nicest day we’ve had lately.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Gerhardt sniffed. “I’ve just come from your friend, Frau Schmidt’s. Her husband has taken a turn for the worse. A stroke, the doctor thinks.”

Adeline tried not to react, but did, wringing her hands. “Then I could be of help to her. May I go, please?”

“I hear your husband is thinking of joining you?”

She nodded. “That is his thinking.”

“He is not worried about being sent east if he comes here?”

Adeline didn’t know what to say, then blurted out, “I think he’s more worried about not seeing me and my sons.”

“As he should be,” Lieutenant Gerhardt said, and rolled up the window.

The car drove off. Adeline stared after it, feeling more and more anxious. Ever since Emil had contacted her, she had been trying to meet the midday train so she could talk to people in the stream of homeless refugees who came to the town to beg and barter and see what they knew about leaving the Soviet Zone safely. But every time she asked, she had gotten little solid information. And every time she opened her mouth to query another person, she risked one of them reporting her to someone like Lieutenant Gerhardt.

Emil wants me to run, but he can’t tell me how, she fretted before turning and hurrying up the road to the lane that led to the farm. She knocked on the door a few minutes later. Frau Schmidt opened the door, saw her, and smiled sadly.

“You heard?” she said.

“About Peter? Yes. Where is he?”

“Upstairs with the doctor,” the elderly woman said, a tear dribbling down her cheek. “He doesn’t know who I am, Adella.”

Adeline hugged Frau Schmidt, who hugged her back twice as hard. When they parted, the farmer’s wife sat at the table and folded her shaking hands, saying, “It gets worse. The party believes we are too old and now too infirm to farm. As you predicted, we are to be moved.”

Adeline’s heart ached for her friend. “I’m so sorry, Greta.”

The doctor clomped down the stairs. He glanced at Adeline, greeted her, and then spoke with Frau Schmidt about her husband’s condition. He’d given Herr Schmidt a shot, and he was sleeping. He cautioned her not to try to feed her husband anything other than water until he returned the following day and left.

The elderly woman went upstairs to check on her ailing husband and then came back down to the table, saying wistfully, “I wish we’d done it last week before he . . .”

“Done what?” Adeline asked, looking at the clock and seeing she had another hour or so before the boys got out of school.

Frau Schmidt hesitated before saying, “Tried to go west. We have relatives near Dusseldorf. But now . . .”

Adeline debated, and then said, “What does Lieutenant Gerhardt ask about me?”

“She wants to know if you are going to try to leave and go west.”

“And what did you say?”

“You’re going through the proper application process.”

Feeling relief as well as a thrill of anticipation, Adeline reached over to cover Frau Schmidt’s bony hands with her own and looked into her friend’s eyes. “Can you tell me where you were going to try to escape? And how?”

Greta swallowed hard and nodded. “But I have no idea if it will work, Adeline.”

Five days later, on March 18, 1947, Adeline arose at two thirty in the morning and roused her boys. Walt came awake groggily while Will groaned, “Why are we up so early, Mama?”

She whispered, “Quiet. We’re going to see Papa.”

Will took the pillow off his head. Walt snapped alert. “Really?”

“It’s now or never,” she whispered, and touched them both on the cheek. “Get dressed in your warm clothes. Lace your boots tight. We’re going to be taking a long walk. And please, quiet as a mouse when you come outside. We don’t want to wake our neighbors or their dogs.”

Will said, “Mama—”

“Not another word until I say so!” she hissed. “Do you understand?”

Both boys shrank but nodded. It was rare to see their mother so intense.

“Good. Wait for me outside. Close the front door slowly behind you.”

Adeline left the room as quietly as she could, put on her coat and boots, and eased out the front door, leaving it ajar. It was above freezing and nearly pitch dark, with only a sliver of a waning crescent moon above, when she went to the front gate and opened it on hinges she’d oiled two days before. Then she padded over to the big sliding doors across an arch of the brick barn. She’d oiled the wheels on those doors, too, and pushed them smoothly aside before retrieving their little wagon packed with their essential belongings covered by two blankets.

Adeline found the boys by the stoop and motioned to them to follow her. They went down the street to the other