The Last Green Valley

by Mark Sullivan

  The shed was flimsily built, with gaps between most of the planks on the rear wall, which faced the dirt road, the lane, and the farmland. At first, she saw nothing. But then, coming out of a low spot about five hundred meters west of town, she saw four Soviet soldiers with guns and fixed bayonets urging a group of prisoners with their hands behind their heads back toward Oebisfelde. Beyond them another kilometer or so, she made out the roof of the two-story guardhouse. The patrol had to be coming from there.

  In minutes, they were near enough for Adeline to see that there were twenty prisoners, fifteen men and five women, and to hear the soldiers berating them in Russian, calling them traitors to the new order.

  “Don’t move,” she whispered to the boys, and stayed frozen herself as she watched the prisoners come so close, she could see the terror plain and gutting on their faces.

  To a person, they were filthy. Several bled from facial and head wounds. Adeline tried to breathe shallow and low when the patrol reached the end of the lane, less than twenty meters away. The prisoners were ordered to turn right and march south toward the tower. The breeze carried their sour odor as they walked around a bend in the road and vanished from her sight.

  For two seconds, she lay there, panting with relief. Then she heard a voice, not in her head speaking words, but in her heart spurring emotion that she understood completely.

  This is your chance, Adella! Take it!

  In the most courageous act of her life, Adeline pushed herself upright off the firewood stack, got the boys to their feet, and said, “Let’s go see your papa.”

  Adeline bent over and picked up the rail and the front end of the wagon once more. They dragged the wagon back into the alley before she stood straight and set her gaze west, beyond the fields, beyond the Soviet guardhouse to a distant line of trees, three, maybe four kilometers away. That had to be the other side of the border.

  Her lower back began to burn again as they pushed the wagon across the dirt road onto the lane, which was flanked in places by low rock walls. When they were one hundred meters out from town, Adeline straightened enough to glance south toward the medieval tower and saw someone moving in its open window.

  She swallowed hard and had to will herself not to scream at the boys to abandon the wagon and the last of their belongings and make an all-out sprint for the border. Having grown up in big open spaces like this, however, she knew a running horse got noticed whereas a drifting cow rarely drew attention. With that in mind, she kept them moving at a slow, steady, maddening, and backbreaking pace. Time dragged, but soon they were two hundred meters from town and then three and four. The farther they went down the lane, the more Adeline felt as if her arms were being yanked from their sockets. Her lower back was still barking at her, and she had to rest every hundred meters to tolerate the pain.

  Five hundred meters west of town, as they came up out of that low spot the patrol had passed through, she stumbled and felt as if something sharp had been stuck between her shoulder blades. Adeline gasped, dropped the rail, and was almost overcome with an agony she recognized from her many long days bent over in crop fields. She hunched there, trembling.

  “Mama!” Walt said. “Are you okay?”

  Adeline couldn’t talk as she forced herself to straighten up and then rotate her shoulders back and her shoulder blades down. A few seconds later, she felt her spine shift with a crack. The pain lessened, and she stood there panting, wiping at the sweat pouring down her forehead and swallowing at the nausea in her throat.

  “Mama?” Will said.

  Before she could answer, Adeline heard a volley of gunshots from back where she’d last seen the patrol. Panic began to well in her. Are they shooting the people who tried to cross the border last night? What will they do to us? They wouldn’t shoot the boys, would they?

  For a moment, she was frozen in place. Should we go on? Or turn back?

  She thought she heard a woman scream before a second round of gunshots went off.

  Walt said, “They’re not going to shoot us, are they, Mama?”

  She saw how scared he was, and it shook her.

  “No,” she said, aware of the squeak in her voice. “Here we go now.”

  Adeline took two deep breaths and then squatted gingerly to pick up the rail. She raised the front end higher than she had before, pinning the rail across her lower thighs, not caring that the wagon’s balance was off as they walked out to eight hundred meters and then a full kilometer from town. The sun had risen higher now. The snow had begun to melt in earnest.

  With every step, more of the two-story farmhouse that served as the Soviet guardhouse came into view off to the south-southwest. By the time they were less than five hundred meters from the guardhouse, she could see the stumps of what had been the forest that was supposed to shield them as they crossed the border. Some of the stumps had been turned up out of the ground. She could see their root systems blocking the lane beyond the driveway to the guardhouse.

  Turn around, Adeline! a voice in her head cried. They’ll shoot you! They’ll shoot the boys!

  But she knew that if they stopped now, they had no chance of being with Emil before sundown, maybe ever. Another voice, stronger and more powerful, began to speak to her.

  No doubts now. Have faith, Adella. Walk right by that guardhouse the way Corporal Gheorghe walked through the Battle of Stalingrad and survived the Elbow of the Don.

  An odd little smile began to form on her lips. To her surprise, the pain between her shoulder blades, in her lower back, shoulders, and hips eased as they walked nearer.

  Then the frightened voice flared up when she realized the guardhouse was not one hundred and fifty meters south of the lane. It was much closer, no more than fifty meters to their left. On its ground floor, there were two large glass windows facing the driveway.

  They’re going to spot you, Adeline. They’re going to shoot you before you find . . .

  Adeline stopped to rest and to shake off the feeling of despair. She looked right at the windows from less than seventy-five meters, and, imagining the beekeeper, she smiled.

  Have faith, Adeline thought over and over as they came abreast of the driveway and the upturned stumps blocking the lane. Still smiling, she glanced at the windows and saw two Soviet soldiers in the left one. They were in some kind of argument with a heavyset man wearing a homburg and a dark long coat. One of the soldiers looked their way. She smiled as she took her eyes off the window.

  “We’ll go around, boys,” she said, trying to sound confident as she veered the wagon around the root balls to see that the lane beyond the stumps was split in two.

  The left way turned south toward the improved road. The right track was muddy, rutted and gouged in places, and blocked by more uprooted stumps in others. The right lane seemed to peter out altogether near the far end of the stump field.

  Have faith, Adeline thought, peering forward and believing she could see a clear path through the stump field, across the border, and into thick trees on the other side. She glanced back over her shoulder at the guardhouse windows, seeing all three men facing her and the boys now, but still in the midst of argument, with the man in the homburg waving his hands all around.

  “How far are we going, Mama?” Will asked.

  Adeline smiled, shifted her grip on the rail, and said, “To those trees out there.”

  “That’s not far,” Walt said.

  “Half a kilometer. No more. Like walking to school from Frau Schmidt’s.”

  She looked back a third time when they were a hundred meters out from the guardhouse and could no longer see the lower windows, which meant the men could no longer see her and the boys. Adeline’s heart began to soar as they kept moving the little wagon across the ruts and around the stumps, heading steadily west.

  It’s done, she told herself as they walked another fifty meters toward freedom. We’re already in those trees out there. We’re already on that train to Alfeld. We’re already with Emil.

  A gunsh
ot split the cold morning air, a crack and whoosh that seemed to go right by them. Adeline startled, cowered, and then twisted around as another shot went off from back by the guardhouse. She couldn’t tell who was shooting at them or where they were firing from.

  But there was no doubt about the man in the homburg and the black long coat, who was running up the drive now, waving his arm and shouting at her. “Halt! Stop!”

  Her eyes widened. He’s secret police! she thought.

  Positive now that they were going to be caught or shot, Adeline felt her faith turn to abject terror, as if she were about to be burned alive or drowned before her sons. She lunged forward against the rail, screaming at the boys. “Push! Run! Fast!”

  Within twenty seconds, her lungs felt ready to burst, and her leg muscles turned rubbery. For a moment, she could not find the way through the stumps.

  “My God!” she gasped. “Help me! Please!”

  She took a few more steps and saw a path through the maze. She hauled the little wagon and her boys down it, looking back with three hundred meters left before the trees, and seeing that the man with the homburg was well out the driveway into the stump field and gaining on them.

  Realizing he was going to catch her at this pace, Adeline surged with an emotional energy that she’d never felt before and never would again, a mother determined to save her children, a wife desperate to hold her husband again, a woman fueled by fear, by love, and by prayer.”

  Her vision tunneled. Her hands ached, her shoulders howled, and her back felt ready to break in two places. But her legs had returned and kept driving as she yelled again and again at Walt and Will to keep going, to not give up.

  Suddenly, they were almost there. Less than two hundred meters. Even through the stinging sweat in her eyes, Adeline could see where the stump field stopped at a brush line with a few scattered trees beyond that before the real forest began.

  A gun barked. She swore the bullet passed right by them.

  Fighting hysteria, she screamed, “Stay low and don’t stop, boys! Just keep going!”

  Another flat gunshot sounded before three more followed in slow, deliberate, aimed succession as Adeline, Walt, and Will propelled the little wagon toward that brush line, those sparse trees, the woods, and freedom.

  “Where’s that man?” she yelled.

  “He’s getting closer, Mama!” Walt cried.

  Adeline put her head down and used those words like the whip Emil used on the horses during the tank battle, goading her through the next hundred meters. It felt like an eternity before she could see the end of chaos and want, right there in front of her.

  In moments, they were out of the stump field, stumbling across a small path and then plunging down another that wound west through matted dun grass, willows, and thorn brush before entering the thick woods. At the edge, she looked back to see the man in the homburg still out there in the stump field, still coming after them, maybe one hundred meters behind them.

  “Just a little farther, boys!” she said, plunging into the woods.

  The forest was shadowed and stark, with snow dusted across the floor and tree limbs. The path widened ahead, becoming more of a used lane again. It wound into pines and past a small millpond on their right. At the other end of the pond, there was a bench. Surely that would be far enough.

  Reaching the bench, Adeline looked back once more, and saw no one running after them through the trees. Her leg and back muscles knotted and spasming, she allowed herself at last to slow, stop, and let go the rail. Only then did she collapse on the bench and take her crying, terrified sons into her arms. Only then did she break down, sobbing for joy.

  “We’ve done it!” she blubbered, squeezing them close to her, and then laughing hysterically. “We believed and we’re free, boys! Free! And we will see your father before the sun goes down!”

  Back down the trail, a branch snapped.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Adeline whipped her head around and saw the man who’d chased them. He was limping toward them, his coat muddy and open, his homburg muddy and in his muddy hand, his face mud streaked, florid, and sweaty as he shook his head.

  She pulled the boys even tighter as he gasped angrily, “Fräulein, why didn’t you stop when I yelled at you to stop? Look at me. I’ve got mud everywhere.”

  “They were shooting at us,” she said coldly. “And you can’t make us go back.”

  “Shooting at you?” he said, cocking his head at her. “Can’t make you go back?”

  “That’s right,” she said forcefully. “You’ll have to kill us before we do that.”

  To her surprise, he threw back his head and roared with laughter. “So you didn’t have permission to cross?”

  Adeline said nothing.

  “Of course, you didn’t,” he said, putting his muddy hat on and clapping his muddy hands in delight. “Do you know how lucky you and your boys are? Those people who were caught last night? Four of them were repeat offenders, who were shot in Oebisfelde shortly after the guards spotted you coming out of the town. You came out so close to the patrol that passed you that the guards assumed you’d already been stopped and cleared to cross.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “But they shot at us from the guardhouse. You chased us.”

  He laughed again. “Those shots were the guards taking target practice. They weren’t aiming at you. They felt sorry for you having to carry the wagon. They sent me to help you.” He smiled. “I’ll still help you. Where are you trying to go?”

  She broke down crying at that, then gathered herself. She swallowed hard, wiped the tears from her eyes, let the boys go, and got up on quivering legs. “A town called Alfeld?”

  “I can’t help you get all the way there, but Danndorf and the train stop aren’t far.”

  Adeline was suddenly trembling head to toe, more exhausted than she thought she’d ever been. When he said he’d be the fourth wheel, she nodded in gratitude and followed him and the boys on toward Danndorf.

  When they arrived, they drank from a fountain and went into a café-bakery where Adeline bought bread. When the owner heard they’d just escaped the Soviet Zone, he gave the boys small sweet cakes and let her use his telephone to call the Alfeld displaced persons camp.

  She was told Emil was at work in the fields and left a message to tell him that they had made it across the border, and they would be arriving at the train station there soon. The good Samaritan cleaned the mud off his clothes and helped her get the broken wagon to the local train stop.

  When they finally were on the platform and she was thanking the man, Adeline realized she’d been so worked up about actually escaping, she’d never asked his name. When she did, he smiled.

  “My name doesn’t matter. You and your boys are safe and where you’re supposed to be.”

  She got the chills at that, and said, “May God watch over you, sir.”

  “Hearing your story, I’d say he watches closely over you, ma’am, and your sons and your husband,” he replied before strolling away, chuckling to himself.

  Adeline watched him go, feeling a tingling sensation as if the tips of feathers were softly brushing her entire body.

  “What are you thinking about, Mama?” Walt asked.

  She smiled and teared up as the Samaritan disappeared from view. “I was thinking about grace, God’s love, and how truly blessed we are to have it.”

  Alfeld, British-Occupied west Germany

  Emil paced up and down the train platform in the afternoon spring light, feeling as nervous as he’d been working up the courage to ask Adeline out on their first date. He kept inspecting his reflection in the station window. He’d had plenty to eat in the refugee camp, but he hadn’t gained back half the weight he’d lost during his imprisonment and escape.

  Would Adeline recognize him? Would the boys?

  It did not matter. He would recognize them. He would have recognized them even if they’d been separated a decade. He was certain of it.

&
nbsp; Emil walked back to the end of the platform, looking south, trying to make another train appear. For the longest time, he saw nothing but the rails disappearing around a far bend. In years past, he would have grown more anxious, more fearful of imagined disaster with each passing minute.

  But since escaping to the West, Emil had never been calmer or more self-assured. He’d survived the worst that life could throw at him, and those trials and his time with Corporal Gheorghe had changed him, made him stronger and humbler and more aware of the power of dreams and the magic of life all around him. He appreciated every sunrise and every sunset and was grateful to the Almighty for every gift he was given in between.

  He’d also practiced seeing Adeline and the boys and himself together in his mind while feeling how intensely good that would be in his heart. In the displaced persons camp, he had declared to any and all who would listen that he would find his family. And when he’d found Adeline and the boys through the International Red Cross and they began communicating in code, he’d openly declared over and over again that his family was not staying in the East. They were not living under Stalin anymore.

  Shifting his weight back and forth from one leg to the other, Emil summoned every bit of strength and certainty he had and uttered a vow he’d repeated ten thousand times in the past year.

  “They’re coming west,” he said firmly. “They’re coming to freedom. They will not be stopped. We will never be apart. Ever again.”

  A faint whistle blew, and with it his heart raced, his eyes watered, and his stomach fluttered like birds flushing. He heard the train’s rumble build before the locomotive appeared and sped toward him. He suddenly knew in his heart they were on the train, and it took everything in his power not to run right at it.

  The engine slowed and rolled past Emil, followed by the first passenger car, and the second, and the third. He scanned every face looking out at him and didn’t see any of them as the train came to a stop with the baggage car in front of him. His emotions started to sink, but he was already telling himself that they would be on the next train, when the baggage car’s door slid back. The little wagon was right there, missing a wheel, but without a doubt it was the one he’d built for the boys so long ago.