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

them. She glanced at Emil who was staring intently at two of the men by the vehicle.

One was a tall, lanky man in heavy wool civilian clothing; the other an SS officer. They stood in semiprofile, watching the oncoming tanks.

Chapter Ten

Nikolas and Sturmbannführer Haussmann turned their backs to the tanks coming to their right and the mud being thrown into the air behind them. Emil wanted to give Adeline the reins and climb into the back with his sons.

But his wagon was fewer than twenty meters from the two men. There wasn’t even enough time for Emil to lower his head and look away, hoping they did not recognize him.

The tanks veered off. Major Haussmann studied the wagon in front of the Martels and then Emil a moment before shifting his gaze to Adeline where it lingered before looking to the next wagon in the line. Nikolas barely scanned Adeline and the boys behind her before fixing on Emil and giving him a knowing smile and nod as they passed. The gesture felt oily, like honor among thieves, and turned Emil’s stomach.

“Who was that man?” Adeline asked. “Why did he smile at you like that?”

“I have no idea,” Emil said, wanting to look back.

“He nodded to you.”

“Did he? I thought he smiled. Probably just being friendly.”

He glanced over at his wife, who was skeptical. “It didn’t feel friendly.”

Walt and Will started moving behind Emil, which gave him the excuse to look over his shoulder and through the bonnet to the route unfolding behind them. Nikolas and Haussmann were staring after him.

“They’re watching us,” said Adeline, who was also twisted around. “Who are they?”

Emil glanced at his wife, shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“The SS officer looked like the same one directing the caravan the second morning.”

“Did he?”

“Emil, you remember faces. You always do.”

“I must not have given him much attention, Adella,” he said, looking back again. “Anyway, they’re out of sight now.”

But neither Nikolas nor Haussmann were long out of Emil’s thoughts the rest of that day’s ride. They passed more Panzer tanks and crews to either side of the route and more soldiers digging in along the hillsides, and even more Romanian soldiers setting camps.

The Martel clan stopped for the night near a creek running with cold, clear water. Along the banks, the boys easily found wood for a fire that their grandfather soon set ablaze. Emil dug another oven for Adeline in the creek bank. She made bread while her mother and sister brewed a soup of onions, potatoes, turnips, and strips of dried pork. Walt found another handful of wild-asparagus stalks that they also put into the pot.

As the sun set, it threw fingers of dramatic reds and purples overhead.

“That’s pretty,” Emil said. “The sky.”

Adeline looked up from her cutting board and started to smile before cocking her head, puzzled, and then saddened.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I have seen beautiful fingers like that only one other time that I can remember,” she said, and hesitated, her eyes welling with tears.

“One sunset looks like another to me,” said Rese. “When can we eat?”

“You’re up?” Emil said.

“I feel like I’ve slept for a week,” Rese said, and yawned.

“You have slept for a week,” Adeline said, pushing her grief aside.

“Which is why I’m hungry.”

“I’ll get her a bowl,” said Karoline, who had marched over.

“I’m fine, Mama,” Rese said. “I am more than able to carry a soup bowl.”

“Here,” Malia said, handing Rese a steaming bowl. “The potatoes might still be a bit crunchy, but that should fill you up.”

Adeline handed her a piece of bread. Rese smiled and thanked her. The boys were next, then the women, oldest to youngest, followed by the men. Emil waited until the very last to eat, but there was more than enough left to fill his belly that evening.

As they ate, the sky faded into night. They fed the fire and turned up the lantern. The wind picked up, whistling through the tree branches and causing the fire to roar, crack, and spark so violently, a small volcano of glowing embers burst forth and floated high into the sky.

On the other side of the blaze, in the shadows thrown by the wind-bellowed flames, Emil caught movement down in the creek bed. A man soon appeared, coming up the bank, carrying a rifle on his shoulder and a bottle in his hand. He walked toward the fire, revealing the olive-brown winter uniform of a Romanian army soldier. He was short, about five foot six, and in his midtwenties.

“Good evening,” he said in German, smiling and looking at them all in this strange, lit-up way while raising the bottle. “I am Corporal Gheorghe of the Third Romanian Army. The moon and stars have brought me to you with honey wine. I was crossing the creek, feeling cold, and saw your fire. Can we trade? Wine for warmth?”

Emil sensed immediately that there was something not quite right about the man. Why had he been in the creek bed? Where did the wine come from? When he glanced at Walt and Will sitting by their mother, both boys were frowning, distrustful. But not Adeline. She seemed amused by their visitor.

“I’ll take some honey wine, Corporal Gheorghe, please,” Rese said.

“You will not,” her mother said.

“I will,” Emil’s father said.

“I will, too,” Adeline said. “Where did you get honey wine? And how does a Romanian corporal know how to speak German?”

He walked up by the fire, smiling at them all as he twisted the cork from the bottle. “I stole the honey wine from an SS officers’ camp just up the road.” He went to Johann and poured some in his cup, saying, “Do you know what the stars and the moon and the Almighty One say I am going to do when the war is over and I get to go home?”

Emil wanted to tell him that he didn’t care what he was going to do after the