“Lambros.”
“Us. I mean us.” Zola frowned. “Papa said if he were Lemos and his friends across the road were American, he’d tell his children to stay home. He’d be afraid for his own family first.”
“If the people across the road had trouble, Papa would help,” Petros said. “Mama too.”
Zola sounded almost angry when he said, “We don’t want the Lemos family wondering who is that extra fellow in the garden. We don’t want their help.”
“If something goes wrong,” Petros said, “how will you know when Lambros goes into the well?”
“Old Mario has a scarf wrapped around his scalp. He’ll put on the hat Lambros is wearing.”
Talking with Zola, Petros hadn’t really noticed the other sound in his ears. Not until the car pulled up outside the gate with a shriek of brakes and Zola dropped to the dirt floor.
Petros saw the commander getting out of his car. He’d gone away with a driver but he was alone now. Petros saw Lambros put down his basket. “Stay here,” he told Zola.
Petros ran toward the commander, pulling his slingshot out of his pocket. “I can kill two birds with one stone!”
“That would be pretty good shooting,” the commander said.
“I did it this morning,” Petros said with bravado. A lie. “I can do it again now.”
“All right. Let’s see it.”
Petros ran to the far side of the veranda, behind the leafy trellis, where the well couldn’t be seen. The commander followed him.
“This is the stone,” Petros said, digging it out of his pocket. In the back of his mind, Petros saw Zola run from the shed to the garden. How long would it take for Lambros to hide?
“See? It’s my lucky stone.” He showed it off as if it were one of Papa’s card tricks.
“Let us hope so,” the commander said, smiling.
Petros felt a stirring of shame in his heart. The commander had been good to him so far. To his family. He had come as the enemy and made himself one of two men, the way Uncle Spiro thought of them.
But the other man, Lambros, was Petros’s cousin.
“See that bird?” Petros pointed to a finch on the vine-covered trellis. Not an easy shot. The finches were quick, but he didn’t allow this thought to settle. He kept his eye on the bird.
He set the stone, drew back, and shot.
It was a lucky shot—he knew that immediately. The finch was used to people. It turned away, and in an instant it fell to the veranda.
“One bird,” Petros shouted, and a few of the finches flew away.
The commander laughed. “You said two.”
Petros ran up onto the veranda and retrieved the stone. He held it out. “Two birds with this one stone.”
Another laugh. “Very tricky,” the commander said.
Petros pointed to the persimmon tree. “Two birds in a row.”
As they neared the trees, the well stood in the distance behind them. Petros didn’t look there but danced ahead, trying to be everything at once—convincing as a boy at play, and more interesting than whatever had brought the commander back when no one expected him.
A catbird with its face in the fruit was the target he hoped for. These birds were a sure kill. One lifted into the air at his approach, and although it wasn’t the easy target Petros meant to find, the lucky stone wanted it.
Petros placed the stone while moving, drew, and shot, never hoping for another lucky shot, not even caring if he failed, imagining the chill darkness closing around Lambros, the safety of the well.
The stone found its mark.
The catbird fell to the ground.
“Very good,” the commander said as proudly as Papa might, clapping his hands together. “You’re a good shot.”
As proudly as Papa. The thought struck Petros as soundly in his guilty heart as the stone did the bird. “I have a lucky stone,” he said.
The commander crossed his arms over his chest.
Mama saved Petros further embarrassment, coming out on the veranda. She said to the commander, “To eat?” as if the man hadn’t already spoken perfectly fine Greek to them. At the same time, she put her hand out to Petros, the picture of a mama looking for help.
“No, Mrs. I only came back for some papers. I’m going right out again.” She gave the commander a stiff little nod and gathered Petros to her as he stepped up on the veranda.
He felt the tremble in her hand on his shoulder. He went inside, Mama only a step behind him. “Go to the kitchen,” she said.
Petros had begun to appreciate how Mama would get through this, holding the commander, even the danger, at a distance. Petros thought at least she would never have a guilty heart.
chapter 42
Either the sack was heavier tonight or Petros’s arms were weary from hanging on the bar. He couldn’t decide which. When one arm grew tired with pulling the sack forward, he switched to the other. It took him longer to reach the well, he thought.
When Petros dropped three stones, it was with a great sense of relief. Lambros came out of the well shivering, more than before.
“Uncle Spiro’s sitting on the veranda,” Petros said to give Lambros time to warm up. “After Old Mario introduced him, no one talked.”
Lambros said, “Perhaps your papa and Uncle Spiro can’t figure out how to start a conversation after so many years.”
That Uncle Spiro had come at all said everything.
“Mama’s feeding him there.” Uncle Spiro had come late, probably deliberately. It wasn’t troubling to lack conversation on the veranda, but it would have been strange at the kitchen table.
“What do you think of the commander?” Lambros asked. His voice sounded steadier—he’d warmed up a little.
“He walks on his hands.”
Lambros raised his eyebrows.
“For a little time in the morning. He has a name for it, I forget. He hangs from a bar and swings like a monkey.”
“He’s a gymnast.”
“He has two sons. You’d like him if it wasn’t for this war.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Lambros said.
“I never imagined him having a family.”
“It never helps to think of that,” Lambros said.
Petros agreed. Because his next thought had been What if he dies? Everyone worried when they thought of Lambros, and it never helped. Of course they also bragged about his courage. But even that was a kind of worry.
Lambros said, “You did a fine job of turning the commander’s attention today.”
“I tricked him.”
“You kept us all safe,” Lambros said. “You did right. You did a man’s job. But you must remember to go on being a boy. That’s your job if there are no more such emergencies.”
Petros warmed like a lantern.
“Lambros, the Georges told us you held off the Italians for six days. Single-handedly.”
“I had the company of five mules. Don’t sell them short.”
“You climbed the Needle bare-handed. No one did that before.”
Lambros said, “Perhaps no one was that scared before.”
“And you escaped the Gestapo.”
“When it’s time to sleep, the Germans sleep. When it’s time to get together in a meeting, they go. This much was on my side,” Lambros said. “But I was lucky too. Very lucky.”
“I hope I’m so lucky,” Petros said.
“I pray you never have to be,” Lambros said.
“How do you account for it? Did you know you would succeed?”
“I knew only what I faced if I didn’t.”
“Everyone before you knew the same thing,” Petros said. “How did you become such a good fighter?”
Lambros said, “Do you remember that time you cut your foot badly and I fainted at the sight of blood?”
“Yes.”
“I no longer faint. But I don’t look too closely.”
Petros let this sink in. “Do you speak to the dead?”
Lambros cocked
his head, but it was too dark for Petros to read the look on his face. “Sometimes they speak to me. It would be rude to ignore them, don’t you think?”
“Who are these dead?”
“Too many.” Together they listened to the night for a time. Fifi, tied inside the goat pen, bleated. Lambros said, “You should get back.”
“I can wait.”
“I’m going with Uncle Spiro, Petros.”
Petros didn’t know why someone else hadn’t come for Lambros, a man who could fight off a German soldier. One of those men who had come into the kitchen, someone a little scary. “Didn’t Uncle Spiro tell someone else to come and help you get past the Germans?”
“He’ll have told someone to feed his chickens,” Lambros said.
“It’s past curfew,” Petros said. “Uncle Spiro didn’t worry between his farm and ours, but what about when you get further away?”
“Those Omeros boys have a few tricks up their sleeves,” Lambros said.
“Really?” Petros wouldn’t have suspected it.
“They’re smarter than they look,” Lambros said, the white of his teeth flashing a little in the moonlight when he grinned. “Also, their grandmother has been my grandmother’s friend since they were little girls together. We are almost as good as cousins.”
Lambros ran his fingers through Petros’s hair and added, “Almost.”
Petros knew he should go, and yet he felt something had been left unsaid. “Mama’s mother, you know her?”
“Popi.”
“She speaks to the dead,” Petros said. “She says they don’t talk to just anyone.”
“Your grandmother’s right.”
“They don’t talk to me.”
“Someday, Petros,” Lambros said, “when you need them, that’s when they’ll speak to you.”
As Petros crawled back through the garden, he heard the creak of Uncle Spiro’s donkey cart passing him. The soft burr of Uncle Spiro’s voice in a low song.
It was then the understanding came. For a stranger, Uncle Spiro would have sent someone else. For those he loved, no one else would do.
Petros flipped over in his bed again. He couldn’t sleep. He felt like he’d been lying awake in the dark for hours. He wished the time had already come when he might know Lambros had arrived wherever Uncle Spiro was taking him.
Uncle Spiro too. This waiting bothered Petros a great deal.
“How did you think of what to do?” Zola said to him. “When the commander came, you thought fast.”
“No, I moved fast,” Petros said.
“So?”
“It didn’t feel like thinking,” Petros said. “It was as if the dead whispered in my ear, Here’s what to do. I didn’t have to think at all.” He felt a little thrill at realizing this.
“You did well.”
“Do you think Lambros is safe tonight?”
“Uncle Spiro’s a magician,” Zola said.
“A magician?”
“All those card tricks Papa knows,” Zola said. “Who do you think taught him?”
It made sense that Papa had gone to his little brother for help. Petros decided he could sleep after all.
Three days later Uncle Spiro stopped his cart at the gate. Petros saw him and ran to him. Still, Papa got there first. Uncle Spiro said to him, “The boy’s well. Our sister sends you her love.”
chapter 43
Petros spent a few minutes hanging from the bar after he unlocked the gate the next morning. It made his wrists ache. This would be worth it if one day he could do as the commander did, swinging from one bar to the other and back again.
When the commander came out, Petros went inside with a little nod. In the kitchen, plans were already made for a trip into town. Papa, Old Mario, and Zola had gone out to the garden to pick vegetables. Mama said, “Petros, pick all your tomatoes. We’ll need them to fill the baskets.”
Petros carried a piece of fried bread out to the garden with him. The broken pepper plant had put all its labors into one pepper. It was growing the biggest pepper he’d ever seen.
A breeze fluttered through the green pepper leaves.
He worked for a time, holding himself aloft with memories of the days the boys had run mad through the village, tossing a sand ball back and forth.
When he heard footsteps, he looked up from the smell of baked earth and bruised leaves to see the commander standing at the edge of his garden. He jerked a little, a reflex.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the commander said.
Perhaps Petros was frightened. He wasn’t sure.
“What happened to this pepper plant?” the commander asked him.
“It met with an accident,” Petros said. “But I’m giving it a chance.”
“Good,” the commander said. “I like that you aren’t wasteful.”
Petros ducked his head. He had Mr. Katzen to thank for this undeserved compliment. “I’ll save the seeds from the big pepper,” Petros said. “Perhaps more of my plants will grow bigger peppers like it.”
Papa came along then and said, “We’re ready.”
“I want to introduce you to a few people,” the commander said. “Then you’ll be able to come to the command post without alarming anyone. More important, perhaps, without anyone alarming you.”
Papa looked resigned.
“Are you taking the boys?” the commander asked him.
“Only Petros,” Papa said.
Petros sat between Papa and Old Mario in the truck. Behind the seat several dozen eggs were packed in straw with a blanket thrown over them. They were for families, not for soldiers.
First Papa stopped at the school building, now called the command post. Once they were relieved of more than half the vegetables on the truck, Papa and Old Mario followed their usual route.
They stopped first to leave vegetables and eggs and cheese with Auntie. Papa sent them Lambros’s love. He made it sound as if Lambros had passed them running, not as if he’d spent nights belowground in their well.
Stavros frowned but said nothing.
“He couldn’t come to you,” Petros told him the moment Papa let the boys go to Stavros’s room. “He meant to keep you safe that way.”
“Perhaps. But he also meant to keep me home,” Stavros said with a deep bitterness.
Against his better judgment, Petros told his secret. “I made a kite.”
“No. Where is it?”
“Come out to the house—I’ll show you,” Petros said. “Zola helped me to hide it. I made it from the paper flag we had for the assembly. Remember it?”
“Very fine,” Stavros said. “We have to make a tail worthy of it.”
Papa and Old Mario were having a sweet drink with Auntie, so the boys pulled a box of money out from under her bed. They tied the bills at the middle with some fishing line Stavros had found. The tail looked like it was made of bow ties.
“But what about string?” Stavros said while they worked. There was only enough fishing line for the tail.
Petros told him where he’d gotten the kite string. He showed the thin strand of silk he still had in his pocket, and Stavros put it into his own. They planned for him to walk out to the farm the next day.
But Petros took the kite tail with him, tucked carefully into Stavros’s book bag, which was strung across Petros’s back.
“Auntie checks my room lately,” Stavros said. “She worries that I might try something like writing notes, since the idea has been put into my head.”
At this they both laughed.
Papa made several more stops, where the vegetables and eggs were greeted like bread with honey. Most of them were given away. Then Papa swung back through the village before going home. It was said the Basilis sisters wanted to buy wheat.
Old Mario remarked on the young soldiers hanging about outside the shops. However German these soldiers were, life had to go on. Children were once more allowed to play outside. Shutters on windows hung open. The soldiers were ignored as much as possi
ble.
Papa went into the bakery to talk business. Leaving Old Mario to wait in the truck, Petros stood near the bakery wall, but he didn’t lean against it. He took care not to crush the kite tail as he watched two small boys learning to shoot marbles.
Their marbles didn’t roll more than six or eight inches. One of them finally got frustrated and threw a marble, hitting one of the soldiers on the leg. Rather than get angry, the fellow got down on one knee to show the boys another way.
Petros stood with a couple of men who watched with interest. The soldier shot somewhat differently, and even the poor clay marbles went very far.
Petros envied the German’s skills as the little boys ran after a speeding marble, laughing. He thought it might soon be true that the village would be comfortable with German soldiers in their midst.
Just then Papa stepped outside. He stopped there, Mama’s string sack dangling from his wrist, the sack fat with two loaves of the bread no one liked.
Across the square a black car came around the corner very fast, pulling up hard at the open gate in front of Stavros’s home. The soldier who was good at marbles moved quickly into the street.
Even though he was scared, Petros stepped forward too. Papa grabbed him by the shoulder with a hard grip, a warning to stand still.
Two soldiers got out of the car and ran across the yard to Stavros’s house. One of the soldiers banged on the door, another kicked it so hard it flew open, and they barged inside.
There were shouts and a scream.
One soldier roughly pushed Stavros out into the street. The other followed them, controlling Auntie with one arm twisted behind her back. She kept up a strange breathless screaming.
An officer moving more slowly, importantly, got out of the car to meet them. And another, smaller officer got out on the other side of the car. The soldier was holding Stavros by the neck when they reached the street.
“Gestapo,” Papa whispered as a fourth man climbed out of the car. “They’re looking for Lambros.”
“He’s not here,” Petros said in a small voice. Immediately he knew why Papa wouldn’t let them speak of Lambros having been in the well, not even to Stavros.
War Games Page 14