The wind tickled its way through the loosely cupped hands that joined a middle-aged man to his young daughter. Markus led little Stephanie on a short path that paced back and forth in front of a red brick house. The girl tugged at her father’s arm, to veer the slightest bit, to crunch the crispiest-looking leaf. Not persuading his weight even with an outstretched leg, she unclasped their joint and hopped on the leaf, grunting with satisfaction. With his hand freed from custody, Markus lit a cigarette.

“Hey, dad.”

“Hey what?”

“I like orange leaves best.”

“Me, too.”

“The yellow ones are okay. But not the browns.”

“Hm.”

Stephanie walked over to an apple tree, kicking her way through the rotten apples in the grass and cleaning the amber gravy off her shoes by scraping them across the trunk. To start toward a destination that her elevated eyes had already decided upon, her fingers skimmed along the knots and slits in the lowest branch, shopping for a comfortable grip.

“Do trees miss their leaves when they fall?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they do…and that’s why they grow new ones in spring.” Markus’ smug smirk accepted the kudos for surprising even himself with that clutch bit of parenting.

But his daughter’s eyes had already escaped her curiosity, to drift along with her fingers on the course toward her secret perch.

“Hey, Steph, don’t go climbing right now. You’ll get your dress all dirty. We’ll pick some apples later and have grandma make some apple sauce, okay?”

The little girl pouted, then with a sweeping of her legs she raced to the grass where she sat to trace the longer blades with her finger, looking up as the wind rewrote her bangs with a short-lived excitement, before rising to rattle the leaves above.

Markus checked his watch and took a seat at the picnic table. He held a long glance toward the side of the house, where hornets and yellow jackets erupted unexpectedly from the wilting grape vines. Beneath the tree, Stephanie picked up a rotten apple and slowly brought it to her nose, which then wrinkled and retreated as the apple dropped to the grass and burst upon impact. The musk reached Markus, reached down into his mind’s throat, to the innards of his childhood that rumbled every autumn at the acerbic stench of rotten apples stewing in the sun.

He sucked the last breath out of his cigarette and flicked it into the grass. Stephanie noticed the act and glared at him. He rolled his eyes and told her he’d give her ten cents for every butt she picked up, and she excitedly scrambled to the task.

The investigation, engaged full force on her hands and knees, produced so many butts scattered around the front walk that she had to stack the piles on a nearby hammock when her hands got too full. Markus laughed at the leisurely recline of the corpses, remembering how easily the hammock would overturn at the slightest human appointment.

“What’s taking Grandma so long?” Stephanie asked.

“Come on, cool it. She just needs some time. It’s not an easy day for her.”

“How did her and Grandpa meet?”

“Oh gosh. Grandpa never really talked about the past much—or anything, really. Grandma told me parts of the story; let’s see if I can remember.”

Elizabeta and her older sister, Theresa, hurried down the main market street, eager to escape the clamor of carriages and automobiles, of which Theresa had to twice yank the inattentive Elizabeta out of the way. But how dearly the capricious girl wanted to sample each store in every direction: for a young farmer’s daughter who sparsely visited the small Hungarian city, she was as excited for all the small wonders of modern living as she was for Theresa’s wedding gown, which they had come to purchase.

Elizabeta stopped in front of a toy shop to admire the porcelain dolls in the window. The pair had only brought allowance for the dress, but, in the deep pockets of imagination, Elizabeta found the means to afford emulation by pinching Theresa’s cheeks until they burned red. Theresa scowled and ordered them on to the book store.

Theresa was chunky in her hips and calves: she stepped heavy and moved slowly among the aisles. Elizabeta slumped behind her sluggish sister, who rambled on about her favorite authors of history. Theresa had maintained her studies long after most children had quit school to work full-time on their family’s farm, Elizabeta included. She remained in education not for personal enjoyment, but because she had grown addicted to the validation of her above-average test scores. She now had no choice but to become a teacher. As for having children herself, her slow-witted fiancée had admitted that he wouldn’t be much good as a father, nor did she have the patience for them: it would take years to see results.

Theresa spent more time ambling about the book store than she did picking out a wedding dress; her eyes alighted brighter in front of words than sequins, and her stubby fingers turned pages with more anticipation than they did racks. As soon as she found a dress that struck her hips dumb, she bought it and wanted to go home.

On their way out of town, they passed a collapsible shop that belonged to a gypsy woman. The windchimes and fresh lavender stalks uncurled their chords and scents to tease Elizabeta nearer.

“They say the gypsy’s herbs are better than prayer,” said Elizabeta, with fingers fluttering diabolically.

“Oh hush, silly girl,” said Theresa.

Jest must sound the shrillest siren to the devil, for, being beckoned so mockingly, the gypsy emerged from her tent, face shadowed under a babushka, though those wicked green eyes of the east needed only the slightest bit of light to burn at their peak.

With a long finger she invited the girls inside. Elizabeta braved the entrance flap, stopping just after with a hand to her chest in awe of the treasures in store. She ran her hand over the peacock feathers and wood-carvings—even a head dress from Egypt! She didn’t dare touch it, nor reveal it to Theresa, for fear of a history lesson. She spotted a small cart of dresses in the back of the shop, and took to rifling through them with no hurry. A gasp escaped her as she removed a turquoise cocktail dress. “Theresa! Come here, come look at this! It’s beautiful. This is the dress I would get married in.”

Theresa followed her sister’s voice to the back of the tent. “Hum.”

Elizabeta pinned the dress to her body and swayed with eyes closed. A full set of lanky fingers snuck onto the shoulder of the daydreamer, who quickly replaced the dress on the hanger. A soft, Slavic voice lifted the gypsy’s youthful chin from shadow, “Oh, child, don’t be so modest. That dress isn’t for a modest girl,” she winked. “I am Piriovitch. Call me Piri, like the birds do. Let me tell you about that dress.”

Elizabeta listened intently to the woman’s tale spin from the restless hands that sewed the dress after being inspired by falling water: the unrelenting return to earth and home. Piri explained the suspension in the stitching, and the tassels at the bottom, each a path which the water may take. Elizabeta fell in love even more underneath the woman’s words, as the dress found its way in between Elizabeta’s fingers and back in her embrace.

“I would like you to have this dress. Please, take it.” said Piri.

“What? No—I couldn’t.”

“I insist. To me this dress was just a task. But, to see it come alive in someone’s life, that would a beauty deserving of this dress.”

“But I wouldn’t feel right without paying for it. No—it’s your hard work: I can’t just take it away for nothing.”

“Child I will hear no more! Posh, if you think it is giving it away. To know the dress belongs to someone who would wear it as no one else could, it would be to give back.”

Though the limited space in the church kept the wedding small, the burst of white lilac on the altar and aisles, the eager spring of laughter—caught and set loose in all corners of the ceiling—and the slightest hue of love amidst a new and greater world war made the occasion a grand prize, too tight a fit for the church, but settling well in the expanse of Elizabeta’s envious heart, and moving quickly to the picnic grounds for the reception.

The bride and her husband, Johan, rode in a carriage to the grounds. Johan barely needed to extend his long, lanky limbs over the side before they touched ground. He turned to help Theresa, whose descent never once disturbed her eyes from the pages of her book.

The couple stood in front of the center-most table and accepted the thanks and kisses of all family and friends. Elizabeta found it excruciating to converse with Johan, who cupped her hands and bobbed his head while he found his words, which then traveled as fast as Theresa’s hobbled steps.

The couple took their seats once and for all, enjoying neither one dance nor any further conversation. They sat silent and still in the middle of one long, awkward picture. Elizabeta watched from the refreshments table, imagining her own wedding, how livelier, how much prettier—certainly how much merrier.

A collection of three fingers woke her from her daydream, as they smeared a small piece of cake on her nose. She huffed audibly, knowing the culprit immediately. He was Stefane, the obnoxious younger brother of Johan, and the only person in the world whose company she enjoyed less than his. At least at the moment.

“Hey Liz, wanna dance?”

“Some gumption you got. Go away.”

A waltz began on the family’s old record player—drats: it was one she adored. Maybe she could use this ridiculous boy to get one dance in. His deep brown eyes did match her wedding plans…but no! He wouldn’t earn an invitation to the party in her mind that easily; she would wait for another boy to ask her. Or, as she slumped down in a chair, she would wait for the next wedding.

A black MG scuttled over pebbles and dispersed the dust of the dirt road when it stopped. Three Nazi officers stepped out of the car and waited at the edge of the celebration until Elizabeta’s father waved them an invitation. Both families had fresh German blood, so the invading army had always treated them amicably. The soldiers excused their presence, only intending to congratulate the new couple and the happy parents, who offered them some refreshments. Elizabeta scooted her chair over to allow them more room to gather punch and cake. The youngest soldier, almost still a boy, gently lowered an open hand and nodded toward the dance floor.

She curtsied and delightfully skipped to the middle with him. Stefane watched on from his seat next to his brother, and spat in their direction.

When the time for spring planting arrived, the cold winds still swept down from the hills. Having no sons, Elizabeta’s father often hired out the early season’s chore of tilling beneath the drying fields to excavate moister soil. Elizabeta told her father the story of the gypsy woman who had given her the dress without making her pay a thing. That woman had spoken of her husband, here and there, who took on those sorts of jobs on the farms around the area. Also claimed that he knew the land and its plants better than all but their Creator.

Her father wasn’t convinced of the latter, but the woman did right by his daughter with that gracious gift (Lord knows they didn’t have aught to spare for such frivolities), and he’d do right to hire on an honest man that needed work.

Elizabeta espied the stout gypsy man the very next day, near the shed, chopping some fence planks. She found him to be nearly a beast, surrounded by curly hair and a massive beard that shrunk as it collected sweat. To top off his natural fashion, he wore a coon-skin hat that made Elizabeta giggle and give away her presence.

The man’s head rose slowly from his task, and when upright an ursine voice bellowed from a cave within his beard, introducing himself as Daci. The man looked as if he wore every drop of water that had ever flowed through him in beads on his forehead, or soaked into his beard and clothes. Elizabeta offered to fetch him some water, but he politely declined, content to lean against the shed and fan himself with his hat. He noticed her eyes once again took to it peculiarly, so he emptied upon her his complete knowledge of America, or of it the pioneers and great woodsman that used to live like animals in her virgin forests.

Though his history ended, the tales found new vehicle aboard his reanimated strokes. The axe made a perfect arc above his head that seemed to slice the sky at each crest. Even as Elizabeta neared she could hear no sound of contact, the blade too sharp and the slice too clean. She heard only a dull thud reporting as the blade met the chopping block. Immediately after each log split, the rich oils of the eucalyptus released their perfume into the air, as if freed from incarceration. He rubbed this wild sap onto his blistered palms.

“I will tell you, little girl, how to find the best trees for this oil. In winter you must go into the forest when the snow has fallen and stand very still until you cannot hear any sound at all. Then you wait, patiently, until the trees trust you, and then they will begin to pop. Pow pow pow! Some will ring out. Those are the ones who had the oil in them that wants to travel, to participate in the senses of men. Cutting it out is not killing the life of the tree; it is giving back. My wife taught me that.”

Elizabeta smiled and held the story in memory to later impress upon someone as her own. Her father approached from the fields to relieve the man with a hand on his back. Daci bent down and scooped a handful of soil in his palm. He smoothed out the clumps with his thumb and raised it to his nostrils and inhaled. The man perked up straight, invigorated, as if his skin had sucked up all the moisture within the soil, or as if the earth refreshed his body as water would to any other.

Elizabeta’s father unloaded on him some thoughts. The discipline that had guided a sharp edge into wood now guided sharp ears to the farmer’s parting lips. “My daughter was telling me the other day—she studies up on these sorts of things, you see—she told me that ‘afor the turn of this coming century, there’s looking to be more people alive at one time than in the whole history of mankind put together. So that got me thinking: well, that’s something we’d each one of us have in common, any which way you slice it. Maybe, by that time, folks’ll be trying real hard to look at it that way. That’s the thing though, ain’t it? About even one grain of truth? It’s a hard day’s work just to hold on to it.

“Lot of hard-working boys—God rest ‘em—probably going to find their death in it ‘afor too long, but I’m in the habit of believing those things aren’t allowed to happen without the good that come with it,” her father said, squinting in the fading sun. “What do you think, old boy, what kind of changes might you like to see spring up in this world?”

Daci balanced his axe hilt against his knee and folded his arms. Everything about the man grew out of necessity: the vitality pumping through every vein in thick hands that spread cultivation; the girth of his back and biceps that counseled him in conflict; and for that moment a slumbering infancy peeked out of his eyes, set to wonder over a question which he had never before entertained.

For the teenagers of the village, though modest and devout, the extended mass on Easter Sunday proved a restless matter, corrected by echoing throat clearings and looks of warning and, finally, pinches to the arm. After church let out, all the girls scurried to find a hiding spot while the boys raced home to fill the biggest buckets they could find with water from the well and lastly steal a ladle from the kitchen, before taking to the hunt.

With ammunition in hand, the boys stalked the streets near the church, some, at this point, being relieved of their church jackets by parents returning home. The boys sung and rallied at the first sign of a bonneted-head peeking from behind a fence, or a blur diving behind a store, or echoes leaking out of an alley. They charged aimlessly until squealing girls fled their hiding spots, outrunning streams of water that darkened the sand as it splattered around their feet. An unlucky girl ran into an alley, at whose exit hid two awaiting boys. The girl shrieked and fell into a ball as each boy scooped a ladle-full of water onto her and ran off.

Stefane waited behind a fence until all the laughter tapered into pants. He watched troops of boys tote their exhausted buckets home, while relieved and soaking girls took a seat together on a porch. They called out to Elizabeta to come out from her hiding spot; it was over. Stefane’s knees shook to a start.

Elizabeta skipped toward the porch, splaying her dress to brag of how dry it remained—when Stefane sprang out giggling at how perfectly she cued his trap. The girl stood paralyzed with her mouth open and her dress still in her hands. She took one step back; Stefane dropped his ladle and grabbed the bucket with both hands, fearing that he might lose the opportunity. Elizabeta’s eyes shut as the pressure of an entire bucket of water smacked her chest, rushing up to bead on her cheeks and lips and cascading coldly down her legs.

Her loose dress now clung to her, exposing the curves on the side of her breasts, the bumps of her nipples, the valley in between, the slope of her stomach and her full legs. Stefane lowered his bucket and stood at attention, sighing with acknowledgment and silent approval that everything was exactly where it ought to be.

Seconds after the assault, Elizabeta ripened with a sort of power she had never felt before. Soaked, chilled, in some ways naked, she smirked at her captivated captor. She elongated her pale neck and he involuntarily wet his lips. Her right arm moved and his eyes darted to it. Her fingers bloomed and his pupils expanded. Her wrist waved good-bye and his little heart broke.

She walked off to join her friends.

The next day, after chores let out, the boys hid as the girls chased them down with buckets overflowing of sloppy revenge. Stefane walked into the middle of the street and planted himself. When a boy ran past warning him of a swarm of girls just behind, Stefane faked a cramp to slow his escape. When he discovered Elizabeta wasn’t among the mob, he gave up the half-hearted getaway.

Every time a feminine pitch of laughter rumbled from around some corner, his skin pimpled with goose bumps where it expected storms of prickly cold water. They never came. He stood in the middle of the road, kicking the dry dirt. He walked home with his hands in his pockets, never realizing that she had struck her perfect blow with each rise of his anxious heart, and each downbeat of disappointment.

Throughout that year, none of the local farms or surrounding cities had seen much consequence of the Nazi’s occupation in Budapest. But as summer thickened, rumor abound that the Russians were pressing against Hungary’s borders; Nazi regiments began materializing on the roads. The foot soldiers were less polite than the officers to which the farmers were accustomed. Their bodies were skeletal, scarred, and smelled as if they hadn’t been bathed in some time. Bands of these troops confiscated or killed the livestock from any farm on their path. Elizabeta’s father hung a shotgun above their door.

Her parents didn’t like her traveling on the roads, so when Elizabeta grew bored of the farm, she’d walk along the creek to her sister’s new house. She helped Theresa with lunch and laughed at how motherly her sister had become: in the way she wore her apron and rolled dough. Theresa waved her off and told her to wash the peas for the soup.

Theresa called in the boys to eat, while Elizabeta set the table. Before serving the soup and potatoes, Johan whispered grace while everyone held hands. Stefane retrieved a bottle of ketchup from the icebox and smothered his potatoes in it. Elizabeta giggled, but declined his invitation to try it. Theresa muttered about serving the boy raw potatoes if he was going to treat them like that.

After a quick and shy lunch, the brothers went back to work on their father’s farm and Elizabeta helped her sister carry the laundry crate and washboard down to the creek.

“I swear, Stefane must eat lunch here and again at his mother’s house. He’s growing twice each season. More than once I mistook him for his father,” Theresa said.

“In a hundred more seasons that boy would still find a way to avoid growing up.”

“Well, I know someone who isn’t getting any younger, silly girl.”

Elizabeta slapped some water at Theresa, before being shooed off to roam the creek, toward the tall patch of reeds that awoke with a whistle as they held concert with the wind. Her feet fit comfortably on the rounded pebbles as she stepped. The water felt cold around her ankles, and was clear but for the traces of dirt that it carried off of her soles. A sharp gust rippled the surface and washed through the small dogwood trees lining the creek bed.

Elizabeta began to hum a waltz, floating every third beat as she daydreamed of doing her husband’s laundry, bending uneasily around her pregnant belly. She placed a hand on her stomach to feel the child within her—

Two arms leapt out of the thicket of reeds and pulled her down into them. She fell on top of Stefane, squirming and panting. He laughed and told her to relax, but she waived that option, preferring to pinch as much of his skin as she could reach. He wrested her wrists against the ground, pinning them until her eyes softened and her heart slowed. “Get off me! How long you been waiting in here? You cat.”

“I was here first, just so you know. This is my spot.”

“For what?”

“I’ll give you three guesses.”

“You’d better tell me or I’ll tattle on your little spot. I know you’re supposed to be working.”

“That’s a rotten deal. Besides, dad and Johan don’t need much help after the army grabbed up all the livestock.”

“Well, I have a secret, too.”

“So tell it then.”

“Swear you won’t tell anyone?”

“As long as you put a lid on mine.”

“All right then. One of those officers—from Theresa’s wedding—he stopped by the house before taking off and told us that he worked it out so we could keep all our chickens. It was that handsome one I was dancing with. Remember him?”

“Quit being a brat.”

“I am not a brat!” Elizabeta took a deep breath and yelled, “STEFANE’S OVER HE—” but he clamped his hand down on her mouth, only to release it when she wouldn’t stop licking his fingers.

“Gross; got your slobber all over me!”

“Now are you going to tell me what you do here or ain’tcha?”

Stefane raised one eyebrow and turned his bottom lip out. Then he sandwiched all his loose skin, and lips, between two flat palms, as if his face got squished between two bus doors folding inward, and rolled his eyes up into his lids.

“I’ll holler again—I mean it!”

“What? That’s the sort of stuff I do here, honest. Just make odd faces and impressions if the mood strikes me. Hey, it ain’t no different than you and your queer dancing.”

“Hush up! I dance swell. It was cruel to let a young woman think she was all alone.”

“See. People just get funny when no one’s around. You should give it a shot: make some goofy faces.”

“I wouldn’t even know how without a mirror.”

“Simple. Just start bending and pinching stuff. Here, I’ll startcha out,” and he pinched her cheek, though retreated when she snapped at his fingers.

“All right then. Hold on.” Elizabeta sat up straight and removed the clip from her hair, tickled by its unfamiliar weight against her shoulders. She brushed her hair forward so that it erased her whole face underneath a bushy blonde landslide. “Ha! I’m making one and you can’t see it!”

“Don’t be a cheat. I even showed you my favorites.”

“Naw, I can’t. It’s embarrassing.”

“Suit yourself. I was just fooling earlier anyhow. I got tons better ones.”

“Swear you won’t laugh?”

“Liz Mueller, I swear that I won’t like you so much the second you stop making me laugh.”

“All right then. I’m ready.” And she parted the curtain.

When the front door swung open and two small feet stepped onto the cold linoleum, hugged tight by a dripping dress hoisted up for mobility, the young girl’s mother glanced over from the kitchen and fumbled with the coffee cup she was washing, nearly dropping it. “Elizabeta! You’ve let your hair down! And don’t be coming in here with wet clothes. Wait outside and I’ll bring a towel.”

“Yes, momma.”

As she waited with the door open, wiping her feet on the doormat, she leaned in to yell into the house, “Hey momma, what do you think about the name ‘Liz?’”

“If I wanted to call you Liz, would’ve named you Liz.”

As summer waned, on a clear day approaching noon, the townspeople smelled the slight ammonia of displaced dirt that precedes a storm. The dust came next, swept into town from east; then the rhythmic clapping of boots, thrust forth and down, up and down, over and over, as the rigid bodies of a small Russian infantry materialized above them.

A single car brought up the rear, chauffeuring a man in the backseat who had the medals and unregulated movement of an officer, a Rotmistr. The brim of his hat hung so low that pure shadow blanketed his eyes, where, to escape the darkness himself, he had to lift his chin to survey the street; even then one could only see two quick bursts of white from his eyes.

His raised hand slowed the brigade as the town’s barrel-chested gendarme approached. The Rotmistr wriggled out of the car, pushing himself to an arched stance that pouted his large belly as he spoke to the man in broken Hungarian. The gendarme led him and a crew of soldiers into the jail, soon escorted by the same soldiers back out into the street with a bag of his belongings.

Inside the jail, the Rotmistr sat at the gendarme’s desk and directed his men to set up the maps and communication hub. He unbuttoned his uniform as his belly plumped out of its mold. It was an expensive belly, which he earned through filling it with only the most succulent, delicate, most irresistible of flavors. He calmed a quake within it by placing a hand on its peak: as with any work of art, it would always be a work in progress to its owner, a constant composition that rumbled for indulgence over sustenance.

After he drew a hand-rolled cigarette underneath his nose, tickling his curled moustache, he propped his shiny boots atop the desk. He removed his shirt and handed it to a soldier, pointing at a coat rack near the door. He lit his cigarette. With his eyes and nostrils he inhaled the first few emissions, then walked over to the men imprisoned within the cells. Of what they understood in the foreign words of this new captor, their hands wrung the bars to be nearer it, this promise of an immediate pardon, so long as they enlisted under his command. Their empty stomachs wept for it, and heads nodded the acceptance of it, spilling the drool than hung unchecked from the corners of their mouths.

This new Russian militia gave amnesty to none. They established a racket that bullied the shopkeepers into paying protection fees weekly. Unsolicited assaults occurred enough that Piri handed out free babushkas to all the young women as they entered town. She taught them to wear them low over their eyes and hunch when they walked, the way old women did.

When the racket reached the edge of town, she too was visited by a soldier come to claim dues. She calmly refused on the undeniable grounds that she had no money. The soldier smashed nearby pottery and tore apart her dresses with his bayonet. He then approached her and slid the cold rusted blade along her cheek.

She smiled and bowed away from the blade. He spit on her and she slapped him. He grabbed her hair and dragged her to the back of the shop where he broke her nose with the butt of his rifle. He lifted her dress and ripped her underwear. The gypsy woman did not kick her legs, did not flail her arms; she calmed her sobs and closed her pooling eyes. The man moved in and out of her.

The next afternoon Piri returned to town, walking with a straight back, but a limping step. Her hair was completely let down, wearing no babushka. It was shining amber, reaching down to her lower back. She had a crooked nose that dipped into two black eyes, out of which hawk-ready pupils searched the streets until she found the soldier who had visited her, smoking with a comrade in an alley.

When he recognized her, his composure collapsed in slight horror. She floated like a specter, carrying a basket topped by a blanket covering its contents. As she reached into its depth, the soldiers aimed their weapons; yet she withdrew a single chrysanthemum.

The soldier laughed and nudged his buddy to announce that he couldn’t wait until next week’s payment. The pair called her a slut and the second man grabbed her ass, inviting himself to join his friend next time. He died clutching; not the gypsy’s ass, for his claws had swiveled onto his friend’s waist, dragging down the man’s pants after the axe blade cut halfway through his neck, making no sound until it met his spine with a crack, releasing a sharp expunge of air and blood from his throat. The original soldier dropped the flower to keep his pants proper. As such he fell, with the axe implanted in his back. Daci took his wife’s hand and hurried off.

When church let out that Sunday, Stefane and Elizabeta walked out together, planning a picnic for sundown. The line of people exiting the doors ahead of them halted abruptly as gasps erupted from those in the front. The line parted to the sides of the entrance, filling out the porch. When Elizabeta reached the steps she saw a circle of Russian soldiers surrounding Daci, handcuffed in the middle. The Rotmistr stood behind him. He beckoned for all to observe.

“I do not prefer your country,” he pouted his belly at the wiry frames of the farmers and sons. “But I must to remain here and watch it. I do not come and take and kill your sons. I allow you your shops and your homes. But I must save these streets. My law wins under the open sky. My law is another ray from the sun. Where it can touch, and seek, this is all mine!” He grabbed Daci’s hair and forced his head back. A soldier handed him a bayonet and with it he cut away Daci’s heavy beard. The dull, rusty blade searched in saw-like motions for the soft white flesh of his neck. The Rotmistr pinched a large tuft at its roots and began to hack away at it, but the flesh gave way and the roots ripped out, like a shrub tearing out of the earth. The Rotmistr turned to the people and pointed the blade at the pink, bleeding patch illuminated in the bright sunlight. “Now, his life is mine.”

The women covered their eyes and cried and the men bowed their heads; Johan vomited over the side of the porch; Daci passed out on his knees.

Daci awoke on his bed with a harsh cough. It tasted like evil ash. His arms and legs were unbound. Smoke drifted into his bedroom through the open door, and above the smoke a fire crawled, flocking like wild buffalo across the ceiling and down the walls. He turned his head and stared into his wife’s eyes. She coughed ash and tears from the thickening smoke. He began to lift her, but an impossible weight told him that her body was chained to the heavy oak bed frame. He laid back down next to her, and took her face in his hands. He whispered into her ear; he moved in her, and in her, and in her.

A young Russian soldier entered the jail and shook the rain out of his hair. He pulled a bag of groceries out from underneath his jacket and placed it on the Rotmistr’s desk. After the delivery, his hands returned to pat down his upper body, finding and withdrawing a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. No amount of flame that he dedicated to the mouthpiece succeeded in any task except to singe the damp paper to a hissing death. A gentle rap on his arm revealed a dry cigarette waiting in a friend’s palm.

The Rotmistr tilted the bag and raised his nose until it hovered just above the wax paper, eyes following the items as he pulled out, one by one, a fresh bun, a small wheel of cheese, and a package of roast beef. He sliced the bun in half and gingerly layered three slices of roast beef, two slices of cheese, then three slices of roast beef. His tongue had completed its third lap around his lips, and his fingers had clenched around the sandwich, tensed to the knuckle, when the door reported a knock.

A soldier opened the door and braced his eyes against the rain that swept in. An old, thin farmer walked slowly through door, dripping from his wide-brimmed straw hat. The Rotmistr placed his hands in his lap, glanced at the trail of mud smeared behind the man, curled his moustache, and asked the gentleman why he had seemingly traveled so far in this weather. The man scratched his grey beard. “Wellsir, times is hard. I don’t think otherwise that I’d be here doing this, if I may?”

The Rotmistr beckoned him forth with his hand. The man quickly removed his hat and held it against his stomach. “Sir, I was just wondering if, well, if information about certain German spies might be worth much to you.”

The Rotmistr curled his moustache as he glanced around the room. He poked his sandwich with two fingers and smelled them. “Say a man come to see me, proper clothes, not putting all of his mud onto my floors. He say he know things, worth money things. He give me proof; I say, yes, I will pay for that information.”

The man looked back at his mud trail, lowering his eyes. “I do apologize, sir. Weren’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t all too sure how to present my humble offer to one such as yourself. But I do have the proof. Sure as anything. When the Germans left, they did a number on a lot of the farms around here: didn’t leave much in the way of animals or fresh crop. Except one farm—didn’t even touch it. I seen a whole coop of healthy chickens with my own eyes. I even hear the man’s daughter is engaged to a German officer. I seen such a person stop to visit with them as the army marched out of town. Same officer as was invited to his oldest daughter’s wedding.”

The Rotmistr stared at his sandwich, swallowing the accumulating moisture in his mouth. His stomach yearned for it in gurgling pleas—his eyes and hands lunged at it, pinning the buns together and scooping them into his open mouth. Amber juices dribbled out the back, displaced by the force of his gorge. He leaned back and leaked a suffocated moan. Massaging the food with his tongue, he opened the curtain to that tempest and spoke: “Where is this farm?”

“I’m headed out that way shortly.” The man eyed the Rotmistr’s sandwich and licked his lips. He stood up straight and clenched his fist. “But my mind keeps going back to the stomachs I have to feed. Might we have an accord?”

From her bedroom, engaged in writing a letter, Elizabeta’s ear perked to the opening and violent shutting of the front door. She heard her mother begin to cry as her father shook the woman. She rushed out only to be gathered in her father’s arms and carried toward the back door. Liz begged to know what was going on.

“Soldiers coming.”

“But we’ve done nothing wrong!”

“Whatever business they have with me, I want you to leave out back and run to Theresa’s. Stay the night there, you hear?”

He wrapped her in his arms and only let go once they reached the back door. At their parting she hadn’t maintained enough sense to cry.

She sprinted toward the shed, heeding neither a plan of destination nor cessation, simply abiding the haste to which her legs insisted. She spotted the chicken coop behind the tractor shed and aimed for it. The rain slapped her harder the faster she ran. Twice she slipped on the slick earth and crawled for a few steps before regaining posture. She reached the shed and pinned herself against the boards, peeking around the corner. She looked behind her and grabbed an axe that was resting in the chopping block.

She opened the chain-link gate to the chicken pin, clomping through the ankle-high mud toward the small house where they slept. She undid the hook latch and opened the light wooden door. She stepped inside with the axe blade leading her. The cornfeed underfoot scattered as she hunted for cover. The chickens sat in three levels, like bleachers, each occupying a straw nest barely wider than they.

On her third step one chicken popped its head up, clucking as it bobbed its head toward the others in alarm. Liz raised the axe with tense arms waiting to release the blade to gravity’s custody in a course down through that chicken’s skull. The chirps subsided, and Elizabeta dropped the axe. She closed the door as the humid fog of feces and muck stuffed her sinuses and throat. She cried them out, collapsing in the corner with her palms digging into her eyes. The church bell chimed five times.

She huddled tighter into the corner to maintain warmth and avoid a drip from the ceiling. Soon the storm faded and washed past. Light seeped into the coop, at first a dying gold, but slowly the air darkened and white light was chopped into thin strips on the floor of the shack.

She heard the collision of wood—possibly of doors—and clapping of hoof beats advance and retreat. One dog barked from the north, then one from the west, then two from the south. Wolves howled from far out on the hills and all the dogs went silent. The clock struck seven.

The wind picked up and blew the door open, waking Elizabeta. Sweat pumped from her pores with each hyper breath, chilling in the breezes that swept through the coop. She slowly extended her leg to shut the door. The chickens sighed in their sleep, occasionally belching a snore. She wiped the dew from her face. She waited for any sound, jumping as the clock struck ten.

Elizabeta peeked through the back door of her house, tip-toeing to her room with a basket of eggs in one hand and her sloppy dress in the other. She placed the eggs in the icebox and went straight to sleep.

When Elizabeta woke the next morning, her mother was rocking in a chair in the corner of her room. The woman stared straight at the wall, making no adjustments as Liz sat up.

“Where is papa?”

The woman continued her unblinking, unflinching rock. Liz stood up and walked over to her mother. The woman slowly turned her head to inspect a foreign hand placed on her shoulder, and the eyes of her daughter that reinforced it. She smiled weakly and placed a hand on top of Liz’s.

Liz excused herself to make breakfast, returning with what meager results the pantry afforded her. She placed the tray of food in her mother’s lap.

“Did you sleep at all, mama?”

The woman shook her head.

“Why don’t you go lie down then.” Liz helped her mother to her room and tucked her in. The aging woman grabbed Liz’s wrist and squeezed until Liz let out a short gasp; “They took him. Took him to jail. Never said why. Never gave a reason. He promised me the war would never take him. I made him promise!”

“It’s all right, mama. He’ll come home all right,” Liz said, prying her mother’s fingers from her arm.

Theresa came over and talked with Liz while their mother slept. Liz noticed how her sister’s posture had straightened, how delicately she handled dishes and silverware, how attendant she had become to dust and dirt and tidiness. Theresa had contacted their cousin, Ilanka, in Budapest. Beneath her protests, Liz knew there would be no way to feed both mouths without her father.

Johan had agreed to take Liz tomorrow morning by carriage. She nodded her head that she would obey.

Theresa arrived in the coach with her husband the next morning, on appointment to tend to their mother, who had not gotten out of bed since Liz had placed her there the day before. Trays full of cold food rested on the bed next to her crooked body.

Theresa helped Liz into the coach and handed her a bundle of old history books to read while she was away, and in them Theresa placed a girlfriend’s identification papers, “Just in case, sister. Just in case.”

As the coach left the farm, Liz thanked Johan, he nodded, and neither spoke anything more for the rest of the trip. After an hour of empty country they met Ilanka, a thick, hearty gal, on the southeast corner of Budapest. Liz traded coaches as Johan transferred her luggage. He removed a letter from his breast pocket and handed it to her. “That’s from Stefane. We’ll look after your mother and your father’s land; won’t no more be taken from you. I’ll have Theresa write to you soon. I suppose I’ll be heading back then.”

“Thank you for this, Johan.”

“It wouldn’t stand to do anything less, for my sister.”

Elizabeta cried silently as the carriage rode through the streets toward the northern end of the city. Ilanka wore a bandana over her nose and damned herself for not thinking to bring one for Liz. The middle of the city stank. Liz forced herself to stop crying so as not to inhale the stench so frequently. She turned to look upon the streets and could no longer prevent the release of tears. There were bodies wrapped in tablecloths lined up along the curbs. There were bodies, orphaned of fabric, boiling underneath the open sun, spitting up flies in place of bubbles.

She lived with Ilanka and her great-aunt, Babi-Pazel, for all of fall and winter. As the cold crept into the floorboards and every inch of skin uncovered through sleepless nights, each morning the stove stoked new smells that woke and drew her, and warmth that kept her; so each day began with a cooking lesson.

Not the thinnest jewel of fat was allowed to cling to the bone in her broths, nor was any scoop of lard too large for her bases. Her eye became the scale, and her wrist the instrument, that reined discharges of spice and season, left to stew until her nose, intercepting skyward fumes, and trained by then to speak for her tongue, approved.

She learned the field and plants as well. Tending the vegetable garden, she discovered her natural affection for the bees and spiders, the hares and squirrels, even the deer that trampled the wire fences and ate the crop.

On holidays, Ilanka shared the secret of her girth: the crispiest, sweetest pastries Liz had ever tasted. Miming her cousin’s activity, it wasn’t long before the volume of holiday treats doubled, as Liz folded, kneaded, twisted and turned sheets of dough into butter cookies, strudel and fried raisin bread.

Stefane spent the fall underneath the sun, harvesting the crops on his own land and taming any wild growth on Elizabeta’s farm. His bare feet turned the latter chore into a privilege, excited into exploring the foreign fields as he half-heartedly cut down weeds and dried-out crops. On the northern edge, he found and revived an orchard of grape vines, turning the barn into a winery. After experimenting with prunes and apricots, which also grew in abundance on the land, he sold his distinct varieties to the town market. He hid the extra money in an old ketchup bottle.

Elizabeta’s father returned home in the first month of winter, and suffered more from the new purpose of his barn than his months of privation. He dismissed Stefane’s apologies; after inspecting the operation, he grew impressed with the boy’s ingenuity, and willfully donated his barn to its perpetuation. “Besides,” he said, warming to the habit of a glass in hand as the wine warmed the coldest of nights, “Still better company in a drunk Catholic than a sober Russian.”

When the winter months depleted the crop reserves and forced the men into the woods to hunt for wild sow, Elizabeta’s father taught Stefane how to prepare his family’s brand of kielbasa. Each month, for three days use, he and Stefane built a smokehouse out back, reusing the same bent, rusted nails that her father kept in a jar in the shed. During construction, Liz’s father stopped him now and again to point out new whiskers on his face and playfully slap his square chin and swelling shoulders.

The boy’s hair lost its blonde highlights and his voice deepened, though he spoke less. When, on the weekends, Stefane carted his crates of wine to the market, men called him Mr.

The days lengthened and the snow melted—except on the northern slopes of the hills, where the shaded earth erased only half the white and left spider webs of the rest. The Russian infantry dispersed as the snow, re-deployed to Germany, or Poland, or the major cities in Hungary that harbored a budding resistance to the invasion of the communist regime. In these founding days of spring, Liz received a letter from Theresa, stating that it was safe to come home.

After greener travels than those by which she left, Elizabeta stepped out of Johan’s coach and into Theresa’s arms. There she slept until Theresa said, “Let me get a look at your face. And, oh, your posture! Where did you pack my silly girl?”

Elizabeta ran into the house to see her father and mother, who was still bed-ridden and had grown very ill. Liz’s father accepted her hugs from a rocking chair next to his wife’s bed, with the bible in his lap. Her mother promised to try each one of those new pastries that Liz spoke of, but later on: she hadn’t the stomach at the moment.

“And where is that other boy?” Elizabeta asked.

Her father looked up, “If he’s where he should be, then he’s in the barley. But you won’t find a boy.”

Elizabeta blushed and kissed her father another hello. She walked out back, stepping slowly to the fields beyond the chicken coop. He was as tall and thin as the barley, with skin darkened beneath the sun. The wind whipped the furry stalks against him, and blew his hair into his eyes. He dropped the sickle to brush away his bangs, and there saw her dress kicked into a fury by the same wind that battered him.

She walked up to him, suppressing any hello to first sate a curiosity by drawing a flat hand from the top of her head straight across on a course that skimmed the underside of his chin. For accuracy’s sake she slid her arms around him and pulled her body into his chest, with it her cheek into his neck. Just as she suspected, she fit perfectly.

They sat in the barley field, she petting the furry bulbs at their top, he chewing on sweet grass. She mentioned that she was baking cookies later for her momma, which he could help himself to, if he was around. He nodded that he would be.

“You don’t talk much anymore, huh?”

“Guess not.”

“How come?”

“Been out of practice, I suppose.”

“Well quit. I mean start.” She tickled his knee. “Tell me about how you grew up so fast.”

He looked at her, smiling with a crooked stem swinging from his mouth. Then he lowered his head so that his eyes fell under his bangs. “I guess I could tell you about the day I grew up the fastest.”

He looked away from the sun. “A few months back was the name-day feast for St. Savina. I always get a kick out of the old guys who come and stand real close to the maypole, you know, just to get a good look at the kids and memorize all the faces that go with each name, for another year. That’s what I like best about them. So, at that last one, there was this vagabond standing on the edge of the grounds, underneath a tree. He was dressed a little shabby, which’s why I thought him a vagabond at first. Had with him a small toting bag, too. No one recognized him, so he was let alone to mind what business he come for. A few farmers thought he might be looking for work, so they went over and got what he had to say. Then Mrs. Andrasné notices what’s going on and she comes running up. She starts crying all a sudden and licks her thumb to rub off all the dirt on the man’s face. Then she stands there, holding his head in her hands. Turned out it was Mr. Andrasné—remember him?”

Elizabeta nodded.

“First time back from the war. Can you imagine that? He just slipped off of everyone’s mind like that. But then when they find out they all start shaking his hand and clapping him on the back, and of course his wife’s still hugging him all kinds. They begged pardon from all the girls for interrupting, but it was another occasion to celebrate, they all thought. Except Mr. Andrasné: he didn’t look all too happy. He never really looked anyone in the eyes; kept looking past them. And the whole time his wife is pulling at his side, trying to look into his eyes. But in a way like she can’t recognize them, like they weren’t the eyes he left with. And then all the other wives want to know when their husbands are coming home. And they make a circle around him. This point he’s starting to cry and look around like mad, and he can barely talk: he’s choking so bad. And he just says, ‘Ain’t no one else coming home.’

“I won’t ever forget those eyes—not his—hers, I mean. They were asking so much. How does a man adjust back to the way he was, when he’s been in the way of unalterable things?”

It was her knee that now tickled his knee.

“What’s more!” Stefane’s hand swiped through the air heedlessly, but caused her not a flinch. “I was jealous of that poor woman! And it’s sick, I know; and for it I haven’t breathed more than a few words to anyone, afraid that it all might come out of me. I couldn’t help it, being jealous of her. Looking at her man like even if it turned the rest of her life into one hard fight, she’d found something in someone else that she wasn’t willing to forget.”

Her hand balanced his chest from toppling forward.

“All I knew ever since was, ‘If she comes home, what’s she going to come home like?’”

A red sourness lined his eyes, like the onset of a metal spiral applied to fire, heating the outer ring to a glow. As they began to melt he covered his eyes with his palm. In spite of all the strength invested in his provisionary hands, a few tears slipped through his fingers, and those beads carried in them a richer fruit than any birthed from soil.

She let the tears dribble their full course, leaving behind dew drops caught on his stubble. She petted his hair until his lungs calmed their convulsions. She cooed, “Those new eyes don’t have to be bad. Seeing things different ain’t always bad.” She took his face in her hands. “I love my family and my home here, but when I saw you, standing there, as you are now, I’ve never wanted anything more. The whole time I wished I was coming home to you.”

He dried his eyes and his nose with his sleeve and sniffled twice more. “Those cookies you were talking about a while back, what kind are they?”

She wiped away her own tears. “Um. Butter cookies.”

He nodded and rubbed his chin. “Yeah. I do pretty good with wine. I’ve got the right wine for that.”

Theresa washed the wine glasses and handed them to Johan to dry, who then lifted them to the tallest cupboard shelf, where they might sit for another year before the next call for proper celebration. Her father sat on the couch with a plate of cookies on the table next to him.

Theresa folded the towel on the countertop and slapped her hips, “Well, I think we’re off to bed. I liked this flavor tonight, Stefane. I haven’t felt this loose in a while.” She kissed her father’s head and walked out with Johan.

The candle flickered next to the record player. Father’s foot tapped along with the smooth waltz. He dusted his hands of crumbs. “Are you two going to give it up anytime soon? Dancing like you’re trying to win a prize.”

The next morning a young couple raced through the wet grass with hands clasped and turquoise tassels patting against the woman’s ivory shins. They reached the church porch, panting when they stopped to regain their breath on the front steps.

They knocked softly on the door. The door opened by a massive paw that reached out to pull it inward. The simian fingers and hairy knuckles belonged to the gendarme, who peeked out and ushered Elizabeta and Stefane inside. His right arm was cradled into his stomach—gunshot wound, Stefane whispered into her ear. The shotgun that answered his disability was slung over a shoulder that had never worn a gun nor wound before the war. The grizzly man retired at the first pew, sitting hard as if his limbs woke that and every morning to a whole day already loaded onto them. He then shut his eyes and crumpled his brow so that his wild, bushy eyebrows grew over any evidence of his lids.

The old church smelled musty sharing the air with the morning dew. The light fell in faded colors on the floor, barely influenced by the weakly-dyed stained glass windows. On that day, the building was a disappointment as a Catholic church: the ceiling hung too low to make one feel small and insignificant, the acoustics held no looming echo, and even the meager attempt at color and light still failed to depress the senses.

The priest approached, running his rosary beads through his fingers and whispering to himself. He bowed to the couple and cupped Elizabeta’s hands in his as he asked what he might do for them on that morning. Stefane inhaled and stood up straight: “We’d like you to marry us, Father.”

“What’s that? My two young…oh my. Splendid then! My, I should say so!” The priest’s smile tightened the loose skin on his face and straightened his crooked back, his own small victory against the badges of war that fought themselves into his ruddy cheeks and his posture.

At the podium, he excused himself to gather his effects. He returned, draping a green silk scarf around his robes. Instead of inserting a digit into the source, a short tongue flicked out of his mouth to wet his finger, before he scanned the bible for a few moments until indicating with the same wet finger that he had found the correct passages. He began to read, clearing his throat after every paragraph. Ahem.

With no audience to indulge, the priest’s quick and faint words reached and died only in the ears of whom they truly blessed. Some may have wafted to the rear pews, but carried no determined force to wake the sleeping giant, who instead sat beneath dreams of ancient gods who consorted with wars as often as with whores, who kept better fed but still sampled the habits of men, before prophets and faith and orchard thieves.

Stefane and Elizabeta stared at one another, whispering their vows and giggling where they stumbled. The priest reached his hands to God to sanctify the marriage, and returned them to offer Stefane his bride. The young man closed his eyes as he leaned toward her unobstructed lips, but felt a hand pressing against his chest. He opened his eyes wide to ask of the matter. Liz reached behind her head to untie her babushka and let it fall to the floor. Her golden hair spilled onto her shoulders, then slid down to her chest.

Stefane stood stunned, and blushed in view of the saints and the crucifix and the priest. But Liz took his hand and kissed each knuckle slowly, and, promoting herself from practice, kissed and held his lips.

The priest looked on, fixing at the point where Elizabeta’s curls rolled over her breasts. “To think I knew you both since you toddled. How lovely a moment for me also. Oh my yes.”

As their dry lips stretched and parted, Stefane was jolted by a heavy paw that came down square between his shoulders. “I doubt a man that pledges away his life before breakfast would object to a stiff drink after it. I’d be obliged to contribute that much to your day. And the missus of course, if she partakes.”

On adventure back from the tavern, intoxicated by two means, the married couple, twice as merry, decided not to tell their parents until that evening. Insistent curiosities had been at work in them far longer than each parent’s eye; how shifts sobriety, so shifts restraint: away fled the explorers to the barn, for their honeymoon.

Not for many seasons had it sheltered any animals, of which a prying eye might be felt. The door was shut, and latched; the lantern lit by habit, and trembling. Though the bittersweet scent of fruit and ethanol lingered by the entrance, the stench of dirty straw and hide still hovered near the floor, where they laid.

Stefane played with her hair and kissed his way around her face to distract her from his fumblings with her dress strings. Liz felt the tickle as her dress raised above her waist. She quivered with confirmation that he had entered her.

Stefane wanted to last long enough to please her, calming himself by focusing on the redundancy of his movements, and in the back of his mind a hereditary anxiety kept him vigilant of the lantern burning so close to the dry straw and puddles of alcohol; he moved the morbid image of the barn burning to the forefront of his mind to postpone climaxing. So much diversion abounded that he failed to reach catharsis until Elizabeta, sweating and whimpering, contracted every muscle in her body in reflex to this raw sensation blossoming deep inside of her. Stefane felt her rigidness grip every part of his body. When she released him and relaxed her muscles they both collapsed in panting.

They said nothing as they caught their breath and traded turns feeling each other’s heartbeat. Liz rolled over onto his chest and announced that she had something for him.

“What’s that?”

“Hold on. I’ve been practicing.” She pinched her lips together and pulled them out as far as she could until they looked as flat and wide as a duck’s bill. Then she crossed her eyes.

“Man oh man, I never knew you had such big lips. Look at those things.” He kissed her over-puckered lips.

She released the face and laughed. “I guess that was it.”

“I guess I still love you.”

The Hungarian government that had led them into a world war had now retired into a communist utility for peace, whose first step toward that goal was deportation; for that they trained their nostrils on German blood. Elizabeta’s family, having an arrest warrant under file, immediately received their notice.

The night before they were scheduled for eviction, the family gathered in the living room to talk of what to do about mother. Her condition had worsened to the edge of deterioration. Though she ate little, she had grown incontinent. Yet, father mentioned, her mind was plenty there and hard-headed as ever. When those tiny lungs drew in breath to give you a right talking-to, they still erupted in a foaming German accent.

Johan suggested they take the hay cart and load her and a mattress on back of it. After that, until they found some stable ground, it’d be up to the old gal’s wherewithal; that or some charity from either St. Christopher or our Lord, Amen.

Stefane cleared his throat and the party responded with their attention. He shyly confessed of his ketchup bottle and the modest bit of wages therein. Might be enough to pay for what medical care she needed, or at least a wheelchair for the traveling. Father thanked him for his kindness, but couldn’t accept such hope that belonged with youth.

The popping logs in the fireplace replaced further conversation. Theresa stood to clear the cups of coffee and wipe off the table, but her father touched her wrist. What’s the point? She lowered her head to perform a nod, yet couldn’t find motive to raise it again. Johan held her from behind. “The sooner we get to Germany, the sooner we’ll get to see what real beer tastes like, yeah?”

Each member smiled without effort and held the hand nearest theirs. From her bedroom, Liz’s mother smiled, as a tear made an unusual trail down her temple. The bedroom fireplace was nearly starved, and the last flames flickered on the face of the old woman, hunting deep into the wrinkled grooves where shadows never fled.

A man fell against his house. He banged his head against the planks of siding that his hands had erected. The damp dirt, caked heavily onto the shovel he carried and absorbing every new bullet of rain, pulled him down to his knees. He leaned the tool against the house, moist eyes redirecting his free hand to pull up a weed which he then tossed back onto its property.

He walked to the road and met his family. Five emigrants stood waiting on a ride through an unfamiliar day. The two young men postponed the chill of the morning rain by wrapping tight around their women.

The gendarme rolled slowly toward them in the carriage that would escort them to the train station. He thought his relaxed pace would be a service to a family removed from their home, but to their ears and hearts his slow hoof beats sounded “clip-clop, tick-tock” on the wet sandstone. From afar, in the morning mist, his grey coat gave the illusion that his steed roamed rider-less; his delayed speed stoked the illusion before correcting it. Puffs of white steamed from his horse’s nostrils.

He wore a felt cap with a floppy brim that collected the rain and tumped it on his nose when full. When his cart halted in front of the shivering attendants, he twisted his whole body to thrust down his good arm to assist with their luggage. They had none to be assisted with. The chickens and house wares they had given away or sold. As for Stefane’s wine, it was left to the wanderers or drunks or thieves. One small leather bag compiled each of their belongings.

The gendarme counted their heads twice before inquiring if the lady of the house might be needing special accommodations. Elizabeta’s father shook his head. The gendarme held his hat to his heart as he whipped the reins, kept his hat at his heart for some time afterward. His muffled cries barely survived the sound of the bumpy exodus.

They waited in a caravan of families on the road to the train station. A foot soldier walked up and down the trail, wailing an announcement that the station had reached its capacity; folks’ll have to try a different town. No eyes were raised in objection, repulsed by the swarm of heads seemingly decoupled from bodies buried beneath blankets and being herded through chain-link fences.

Elizabeta recalled her childhood friend Katarina, who, along with her family, had been deported many years ago by the Nazi’s. Liz expected as much chance of returning to her home as Katarina. She never imagined that many people could be so afraid together: mothers clinging to children for comfort; warmth and security being so unknown.

The carriage drove along the train-tracks to the next station, where no fewer emigrants huddled. The gendarme stepped down from the coach and, though he didn’t speak any good-byes, when he shook everyone’s hand, he drew it into his free-hanging hand and clasped tight. He passed out blankets, bread and jerky as they parted.

They waited for hours in the formless line until they were thrust forward into a railroad car. Liz climbed in first and tucked herself into a corner, where her family pressed in around her. She thought it smelled like their barn, including the addition of the winery, and found it a pleasant surprise. When the last car was full, the train inched forward so that a new set of empty cars became accessible by the platform, as if the government engineers organized the process after watching an assembly line fill pudding cups.

The train started into real motion with a shrill squeal, jolting any legs which only had room to hang out the open doors. Past the station, on open track, the sun came in as horizontal rods through the vents of the car. When the wheels slowed for curves, the brakes cried like puppies.

Elizabeta sat there in the corner of the train, wide-legged with her husband in her lap, stroking his hair. When she felt his muscles relax and his breaths deepen, she slid her hand over her belly, calling softly to the child that might be within her. She told it about the apricot trees and the sweet old men who always sat quietly in front of the hardware store; the shallow graves of her corncob dolls, buried by bullies, and that of her long-dead beagle. She told it their future, living in single-room farmhouses with distant cousins, sleeping in barns for privacy, and its beautiful birth in a Nazi barracks that the Americans had converted into a hospital for refugees. She begged it to pardon its father: she feared he would always be a quiet man, but a good one. His sentence to railroad steel would endure on another shore, past an ocean across which they would float inside a tiny ketchup bottle. And she told it to wait; she would be patient, too. She hadn’t a home for it yet.

Markus opened the screen door and stepped inside to the narrow kitchen. The window in the corner provided the only source of light once the door closed. Beneath it stood the dining table, barely fit for four, draped with a tablecloth of cartoon drawings of vegetables that hadn’t been replaced in decades. He grabbed a butter cookie from a tin on top of the fridge.

Markus walked past the piles of pots and pans, the stains of seasoning and grease, and the rusty meat-press that still smelled potently of the pork fat and sausage seasonings that ground itself into the lungs of the machine. He walked past the above-ground cellar, whose walls he swore were painted with two coats of vinegar.

He entered the cellar that, in its whole life, had only sheltered shelves of pickle jars and damp oak barrels half full of wine. He checked the sink in the back corner and walked out.

He called upstairs to his mother, but heard something near the utility room through the kitchen. Past the water heater, past the box of toys his mother collected over the years for Steph to play with upon her visits, toward the pantry that was sealed by a curtain. He pulled the curtain aside.

Elizabeta sat there, wide-legged, paralyzed. Her open eyes were screaming. She clutched a bouquet of flowers in her lap, with a ketchup bottle on top of it, of such considerable ancestry that the label had shriveled into white freckles. It carried the weight of its age, unknown in terms of memoriam but visibly in the jumble of coins it stored. That weight pressed tightly against the bouquet, pinching off a few pink petals and laying an anchor that pinned Elizabeta’s black dress above her knee-high stockings. Markus turned away at the sight of her earthworm veins.

“For God sakes, mom,” he said, and replaced her dress to her ankles. He grunted his way to his knees, to better cup her chin in hands unprepared to receive the full weight of her head, so dipping before he pulled her cheek into his neck. Her tears warmed his flesh as they fumbled over knuckles and into valleys.

As he moved the bottle to the vinyl floor, the coins rattled against the glass, a ring that called rarely visited memories of his childhood, of that ornery device that jammed inconsolably more often than it dispensed coins properly, even under the most vigorous oscillations. Yet the woman in his arms answered that call in the present, with nails digging deeper into his shoulder and shivers intensifying. With his fetal mother cradled in his torso, Markus dreaded his future trials with the bottle, glancing up at the shelves for some sort of utensil with which to pry at the guts of the thing, if he ever hoped it to spit up a practicable amount of change. Even then, especially when the contents grew shallow, all that effort might only be rewarded with old German and Hungarian coins, magical once, so reburied fittingly, to deposit the next discovery.

Markus patted his mother on the back, waiting for the poor woman to cry herself out, in no hurry before applying his hand to that stupid bottle to coax out enough dimes to compensate each brick in his daughter’s temple of cigarette butts.