by Roxi Harms
Mama was right. The family across the street from the new house had two boys, Michel and Tony Pender, and soon the three were fast friends, spending long summer days exploring the nooks and crannies of the neighbourhood.
"Look at those birds flying in under that roof," said Tony, pointing. "Nobody lives in that place. I bet there are nests under there."
They peered up under the eve of the deserted house and sure enough, a row of mud and wattle nests lined the top of the wall. A chorus of tiny chirps was audible.
"Baby birds! I wonder if they've got feathers yet. They're really funny looking before they get feathers," said Michel, then looked at his older brother. "Tony, climb up there and get one. Let's see if they can fly yet," he continued excitedly.
Tony looked at the wall. Like many houses in Elek, this one was built a few feet off the ground in case of flooding. The nests were a long way up. There was a barbed wire fence running alongside the house with one post leaning against the wall.
"I'm not climbing up there. That wire won't hold me. You climb up," Tony said.
"No way, there's nothing to hang on to," replied Michel.
The three boys stood staring up at the nests, listening to the baby birds. Mother birds circled against the blue sky above, swooping down every lap or two, trying to scare the boys away.
"I'll do it," said Adam. "I bet I can reach the nests if I stand on that post."
He was tall for six, almost as tall as Tony, three years his senior. Carefully, holding first onto the post and then leaning his hands against the wall of the house as he got higher, Adam climbed carefully, lifting each bare foot from one wire up to the next, until he stepped gingerly onto the top of the post. He stood still for a minute to get his balance, both hands pressed flat against the wall, feet gripping the top of the post like a bird on a perch. Glancing down, he saw Tony and Michel watching intently. Slowly, he stretched out a hand and reached into the nearest nest until he sensed the quivering warmth of a baby bird under his fingers.
Suddenly, the post shifted slightly. Adam's arms flailed for something to grab onto but found only empty air as he slipped from the post and landed with a thud on the packed earth between the grapevines. Dazed, he lay with his eyes closed for a moment. When he opened them, Michel and Tony were staring down at him.
"Are you okay?" Tony sounded scared. "Look at your leg!"
Adam lifted his head and looked down to where pain was burning through his lower leg. Blood was running from a long gash down the length of his calf. As he stared at it, tears sprung to his eyes.
"We better go get your dad," said Tony, and before Adam could respond, Tony and Michel took off at a run.
Adam lay staring at the sky for a minute, then turned his head and looked at the fence. His eyes focused on the red bits hanging from some of the barbs. It was flesh torn from his leg!
"Christ, Adam, what have you done now?" said his dad as he came running down the row of vines to where Adam lay.
"I was trying to see the baby birds up there," Adam pointed weakly to the nests, then wiped at his tears with his arm. "Michel and Tony were too scared to climb up."
His dad gathered him carefully into his big arms, and Adam winced as his leg jostled.
"You're lucky you didn't land on a stake," his dad said as he walked towards their house.
As his dad set him down on the bed at the back of the kitchen, he explained to Adam's mom, "He was climbing on the barbed wire fence, trying to reach a goddam birds nest with those Pender boys, then fell and landed squarely between two rows of stakes. A few inches either way and he'd have a hole in his head too."
"It's bleeding a lot," said his mom as she sat down on the edge of the bed beside him and wiped at his leg with a cloth, trying to see the wound. "It's deep and long. I think you'd better get the doctor."
"Goddammit," said his dad as he went back out the front door.
An hour later, Adam shrieked again as the doctor pushed the needle in for the last stitch. Little George sat on the floor nearby, wailing along with his brother, his pudgy tear-streaked cheeks red from the effort. Their mom and dad were holding Adam as still as they could.
"Okay, that should be enough," the doctor said, sounding relieved.
Adam's screams subsided to loud sobs. His whole leg was throbbing unbearably from the stitching as the doctor bandaged it up tightly and moved away to pack his equipment back into his bag. Adam's mom rocked him and wiped his tears while his dad walked with the doctor out onto the porch. As Adam quietened down, little George's cries faded to a whimper. There was a murmur of conversation out in the yard, and then his dad strode back into the kitchen.
"He says it will heal fine. We just have to keep it clean so it doesn't fester, and he'll have to stay in bed for a couple of days." His dad sounded relieved, but then his tone changed. "A doctor costs a lot of goddam money, Adam. Climbing that fence was stupid. Next time think a little bit." Adam stopped crying as his dad lectured him. Then his dad turned on his heel. "I gotta get back to work," he said, disappearing through the door.
CHAPTER NINE
The wound healed well enough, although the scar on Adam's left calf would be a permanent reminder of that carefree summer between kindergarten and grade one. Soon after, his father decided Adam was old enough to help with the chores. He showed Adam how to take the brood hen out of her pen, knot a string around her leg, and find a spot along the roadside with lots of chickweed where he could tie her for the day. The chicks would stay near their mother, practicing their scratching and pecking. Then the goat had to be taken out and tethered where there was lots of grass or a green tree to munch on. It was important to tie the rope tightly so the goat didn't get away. After school, he was to come straight home and get the chickens and the goat back into their pens in the yard and fill their water troughs. Weekends he mucked out the pens and whatever else his dad said needed doing.
At first it was kind of fun having some grown-up jobs.
In the springtime of second grade, Adam's grandma on his dad's side, Veronica Baumann, died. He wasn't sad. She'd always been so crabby. He did miss Grandpa Florian, who had been gone a couple of years already. He missed climbing into his grandpa's big lap and smelling the wood smell that clung to him. His grandpa told Adam about the things he built for people while Adam picked out the sawdust stuck in his beard. He especially loved lighting his grandpa's pipe. His grandpa needed help to light it because it was so long. He showed Adam how to strike the match and hold it so the flame wouldn't go out, and then hold it in the end of the pipe where the tobacco was. It would glow red when Adam held the match there and Grandpa sucked on the other end. Yes, he missed his grandpa.
Tradition said that the eldest son had first rights to the family home, but Adam's Uncle Florian, his dad's eldest brother and namesake to their father, was settled in nearby Gyula with his family and uninterested in the little house in Elek. Adam's dad jumped at the chance to take over the family home, puffing out his chest like a peacock when he told his friends he would be raising his family in the home where he was born and his father before him was born. Soon they had the old home looking new again, with whitewash covering the mud walls on the outside, and the dirt floors inside hardened with a thick slurry of blue clay from the Gypsies mixed with fresh cow dung to give it a good shine when it dried.
The house was across from the cemetery, on a corner lot with vineyards and orchard on two sides. With three rooms, it was bigger than the other houses they'd lived in. The room in the middle where the front door entered was for storage. To the right was the bedroom where Adam's parents would sleep in the double bed and he would share the single bed against the wall with his dad's youngest sister, Aunt Louise, who was seventeen and unmarried. The kitchen, to the left when you came in the front door, had a table big enough for the family to sit for meals, a cook stove, and two little cots for Theresa and George. The pantry and the summer kitchen were on the porch, for the months when it was too hot to prepare and eat meals inside.
A big garden for summer vegetables filled most of the front yard, except the spot where the copper laundry pot hung over the firepit at one end. The back yard was for animals. A little shelter for the cow and goat was tucked against the end wall of the house. Opposite were the pig pen and the chicken coop. A low roof covered part of the pig pen, giving shelter for the pigs and a place for the chickens to roost. When the animal pens were mucked out, the manure was piled beside the outhouse, waiting to be spread on the gardens each year.
Winter vegetables like potatoes, beans, and cabbage, the types of vegetables which could be grown in the fall and kept well over the winter, would be planted in the garden space out back in the orchard. Stacked against the end of the porch were the rabbit hutches. From the day they moved in, Adam was responsible for the rabbits, filling their cages with fresh grass morning and night, and learning from his dad how to tell males from females and when to put them in a cage together so they would make baby rabbits.
CHAPTER TEN
His dad's temper worsened as time passed. Or maybe it was Adam's behaviour that worsened. At eight, he had come to think of after-school fun as a gamble. If he could participate in whatever the kids got up to that afternoon, then hightail it home and get his chores done before his dad got there, he won. Otherwise, he lost. And the penalty for losing was a spanking.
"I gotta get home," Adam said to his new friend Franz Wittman. Even though Franz was in grade four, a year ahead of Adam, the two had become close, walking to and from school together and playing on weekends if Adam finished his chores.
Adam knew he shouldn't have stayed late again, but the kids had started a game of soccer using a new ball that one kid's dad, a shoemaker, had fashioned from scraps of leather stitched together around an inflated pig bladder. It was brilliant!
Adam's mom and grandma were sitting in the summer kitchen on the porch when he got there, chatting quietly over the steady rhythm of pea shells being cracked open and peas dropping into the bowls on their laps.
"Hello, Adam," his grandma said with a big smile as he walked up onto the porch. His grandma on his mom's side was gentle, just like his mom. "Why are you limping again?"
"Me and Franz were racing and I stepped on a thorn." It was still warm enough and the ground was dry, so he hadn't started wearing his shoes yet, except to school.
"You need to be more careful," she chided gently. "Here you go, I brought you a little treat."
Yum! She must have sneaked the cookie out of the house, Adam thought as he took it from her. Grandpa Johann got mad when she gave them treats. He said they needed their food for themselves.
"Thank you, Grandma!" Adam headed into the house, savouring the cookie as his grandma picked up where she'd left off the conversation.
"Anyway, Anna, if those medicine drops aren't helping her eyes, why not try it? I heard from my cousin in Gyula that the warm urine helped the son of one of her neighbours."
Ewwwwww, warm pee in Resi's eyes? thought Adam as he put his books on the table. Just then he heard the front gate open.
"Adam!" his dad bellowed from the yard.
The women stopped talking. Adam shoved the rest of the treat into his mouth and chewed fast, then walked out the front door onto the porch. His mom and his grandma sat very still.
"Why is that damned goat still out? I've told you a hundred times to come straight home from school and do your chores. Who do you think you are?"
His dad's face was red. He strode up the steps, shoved Adam out of the way, and disappeared into the house. A couple of seconds later he was back with his leather razor strap in his hand.
Shucks! The strap hurt more than a stick of kindling.
"Get over here," his dad barked as he sat down heavily on the bench that ran the length of the summer table.
Adam walked over dutifully, undid his pants, and leaned over his dad's knee.
"Owwww! Owwwww! Owwwww!" he yelled each time the strap hit his rear end.
"Next time, you come straight home and look after those animals, do you hear me?" his dad asked when he stopped swinging, his voice still raised.
"Yes, Dad," Adam said quietly as he stood and pulled up his pants.
"I gotta get over to the Mahlers' and mix the cattle mash. Hang this back up," he ordered, thrusting the strap at Adam. It was kept on a nail in the kitchen door frame where his dad could grab it to sharpen his razor in the morning.
When Adam came back out from replacing the strap on the nail in the kitchen, his dad was gone.
"Come here Adam," said his grandma holding out her arms. "Are you okay?" she asked, pulling him down onto her lap into a warm, soft hug.
"I'm okay, Grandma," Adam replied, his voice muffled, as she held his face against her neck and rocked side to side.
"That man and his temper," she muttered, and rocked a few more times. "Now go and do your chores like a good boy."
Getting up from his grandma's lap, Adam leapt down the steps and jogged out the front gate and down the street to where he'd tied the goat this morning. As he untied the knot, he started to whistle. Would they really put pee in Resi's eyes, he wondered, whistling absentmindedly as he headed back towards the house with the goat.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1938
Not long after their first Christmas in the family home, a new baby appeared. Adam, Theresa, and little George had been visiting at their grandparents' house overnight, and when they got home, there she was, with big blue eyes and a bit of soft white hair. They called her Anni.
By the time Anni was walking, her blue eyes, blonde curls, and sunny personality had captured the hearts of relatives and neighbours alike. Even Adam slowed down long enough to pick his little sister up and carry her around the yard or tickle her until she giggled.
"Ad-am," said little Anni, arms outstretched, when Adam got home from running an errand for his mom one afternoon. He tossed the empty egg basket and the box of matches he'd gotten in trade for the eggs at the general store, onto the counter. Adam could hardly remember what it was like before they had Anni. He walked over to where his baby sister, a year and a half now, sat on the bed he shared with George.
When Anni was born, his dad had put a cot in the bedroom for her and moved Adam's bed out into the kitchen. Aunt Louise had saved her earnings from doing laundry and mending for the rich farmers and used it for a ship crossing, so George shared the bed with Adam now, leaving Theresa with a bed to herself on the opposite wall of the kitchen. Theresa didn't have to go to the eye hospital anymore. The doctors said there was nothing they could do. Although Adam knew it was hard for her sometimes, not being able to see very well, and being stuck at home all the time, he was glad to have his big sister back.
"Anni up, Ad-am. Peees." She reached her arms up again, and Adam reached down to pick up his little sister.
"What did you do today?" Adam said, carrying Anni out onto the porch where their mom was chopping vegetables in the heat of the summer kitchen. Adam pointed towards the yard. "Look, there's Resi. What's she doing?"
Mimicking her big brother, Anni pointed to where Theresa was kneeling in the dirt, pulling weeds. "Gaw-den," replied the toddler.
"Adam, can you please fetch the wagon from the shed and go get the batteries?" asked Adam's mom.
"Sure," said Adam, setting Anni down and heading into the back yard to retrieve the wagon.
A couple of years earlier, people from Elek had started leaving to work in Germany, bringing a lot of interesting stuff back to sell when they came home for visits. The economy in the motherland was booming thanks to the brilliant Führer. Adolf Hitler had led Germany out of the Great Depression faster than any other country in Europe, Adam's dad and his friends bragged to each other regularly. If only they had a good German leader like Hitler here in Hungary, they said. In Germany, new factories were opening, autobahns were being built, and workers were in demand everywhere.
Although George Baumann hadn't gone to work in Germany, his hard work and determina
tion to get ahead had been paying off at home in Elek. With the earnings from selling their first little house, and his growing list of vineyard maintenance contracts, he no longer had to worry so much each day about feeding his family and keeping them warm. Still, he didn't spend money lightly. But when he'd heard about the radios people were bringing back from Germany, he'd counted out enough pengoes to buy one and the batteries to operate it. That radio had become George's most prized possession. A couple of nights a week, the men from the neighbourhood would come over after supper to listen to the news, and then they'd usually leave the radio on, playing music for a while. Adam listened intently to it all. The German broadcasters sounded a bit strange. Some of the words were different from how they talked in Elek, but he got used to it. After the news about Germany, they had news about other countries, sometimes even about America. When the music came on, Adam sat tapping his foot until everyone had gone home and his dad turned off the radio and put it away.
As Adam pulled the little wagon into the yard at the power plant, he waved at the attendant, then carefully unhooked the batteries where he'd put them on the platform to charge that morning before school. Bending his knees a little, and heaving with all his might, he lifted the box of batteries from the platform onto the wagon. Slowly, he made his way home, careful not to pull the wagon through any big holes. If any of the connections between the four batteries in the box came loose, Dad would fly off the handle.
As soon as he finished his supper, Adam's dad pushed back his chair and stood up. A moment later he reappeared in the doorway, leaning to one side to offset the weight of the battery box in his other hand. Carefully, he set the box down in front of the radio, and gently connected the wires, one by one. When he had them all adjusted so that they all stuck out of the box at the same angle, he reached up and turned the knob on the radio. After a minute, music began to emerge from the static. Just as his mom finished clearing the table, Adam heard the front gate open.