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

spent the day cutting their stalks and piling them into bundles and then hauling them up to the barn where they were hung upside down to dry before the seeds were harvested. She liked the work because it was familiar, and that gave her comfort and peace during the long hours of toil.

She sang and hummed old songs for hours until she remembered how Emil used to sing lullabies to the boys before they slept. It was the only time all day she stopped to cry.

The boys returned later in the afternoon, running from the village as she cut down the last of the sunflowers. They sprinted when they saw her, hugged her, and babbled on about the school, their teachers, their new friends, and could they go tomorrow to play with them in the village. It would be Saturday after all, no school until Monday, and Will’s new friend had a real leather soccer ball. They were so excited and full of the newness of their lives, it was contagious, and she couldn’t help but laugh and clap and want to ask them about every moment of their day since they’d been gone.

That feeling remained with Adeline through dinner and even afterward as she led the boys in the moonlight from the farmhouse back to the outbuilding where they slept. She felt satisfied with the day, almost content with her lot. She had worked hard doing what she liked for people she liked. They had fed her family well in return, and now she was going to sleep with a roof overhead and with her schoolboys at her side.

“Is this our pretty green valley, Mama?” Will asked before they went inside.

“It’s pretty,” Adeline said, yawning.

“No mountains and no big river running through it,” Walt said in mild protest.

“Is it, Mama?” Will said. “I like it here.”

She smiled at him. “Remember what I told you when you asked me that same question last year in Romania?”

“No.”

“I do,” Walt said. “You said, ‘This is the green valley we are in today, and we should enjoy it.’”

“That’s right,” she said, and kissed him on the head, grateful that her older son seemed to be coming out of the shell that had formed during his repeated encounters with tanks and bullets.

Adeline slept fitfully that night but rose before dawn as she had nearly every morning since she’d gotten to the farm. She dressed quietly so as not to wake the boys and went out into the crisp air, smelling the fall and looking east for the first rays of the sun. She’d taken to imagining that they belonged to Emil, reaching out to her.

She helped pitch hay until three o’clock that Saturday afternoon when Will and Walt returned from playing in the village. After taking a shower, Adeline and the boys went into the farmhouse where Frau Schmidt had already cooked their evening meal: thin pork chops with onions sautéed with fresh black pepper, squash from the garden, and applesauce made from fruit gathered from the trees out back. It was so incredibly good, Adeline begged her for the recipe, which pleased the older woman all the more.

Kindness and good people still exist, Adeline thought as the farmer and his wife chatted with the boys about their new friends at school. Once again, in the company of her sons and this couple, she was content, almost at home, and it made her feel a little guilty and anxious. This farm, this village, weren’t as far west as she could have gone, and she was not going to find the freedom that Emil longed for here. No matter how comfortable her life felt at the moment, the Soviets had only been in control of eastern Germany for less than five months.

Give them a little time, Adeline thought. They’ll ruin this place and the hearts of these good people, take their lands, cast them out, sow hate, and turn them against each other. It’s guaranteed. It’s what Stalin does. It’s what tyrants do. And I don’t want to be here to see it happen. I don’t want the boys to be so beaten down by life, they—

“Adella?” Frau Schmidt said. “Did you hear me say it’s nearly five o’clock? Saturday night?”

Adeline’s eyes shot to the clock. “Sorry. I was off somewhere,” she said, getting up and hurrying to the sink to do the dishes.

When she was done and the boys were drying and stacking, she gave them each a hug and a peck on the cheek. “Mama will be home in the morning, and we’ll think of something fun we can do together.”

“Like what?” Will asked.

“Pick the rest of the apples,” Frau Schmidt said. “Every tree. You’ll get to climb the tallest ladders and eat the ripest fruit.”

Both boys broke into grins, hugged their mother one more time, and went back to their chores. Frau Schmidt followed her out of the farmhouse and onto the modest front porch.

“Thank you,” Adeline said again.

The older woman took her hands and said, “You’ve been through enough. We don’t need to add insult to injury, do we?”

“No,” Adeline said, and squeezed her hands. “I’ll see you early. Make sure the boys keep their door locked.”

“Early’s good, and I will make sure they’re sleeping it off.”

Adeline went back to her room and put a blanket, a pillow, a bottle of water, and a small Lutheran Bible Frau Schmidt had given her in a large cloth sack. She put the sack over her shoulder and left the outbuilding and then the farmyard, headed down the knoll toward the cut-sunflower field and the village. She’d reached the stubble, scattering three roe deer that had come in for the seeds that had fallen during the harvest.

Then she heard men laughing and singing to her left. She looked across the northern hayfields to the dirt road that led from the village to the farm and saw the three Soviet soldiers who also lived with the Schmidts. The men were too