Winter Sky

by Chris Stewart

  He looked up. “I have no idea,” he said.

  The small group watched him, waiting for him to explain, but he didn’t, so they went back to staring into the flames.

  TWELVE MILES WEST OF GORNDASK

  The sky was gray and growing darker, but the snow had stopped, leaving fresh powder atop the uneven ground, the trees drooping under its constant weight. The forest was thick on the south side of the track, with fields to the north, barren, snow-draped, and cold. A flock of black birds circled overhead, something tempting them from the edge of the forest. They hung in the sky, a tang of acid from hundreds of artillery and mortar explosions drifting in the wind.

  The refugee train had come to a stop. The engine was no longer belching black smoke, but wisps of steam still hissed from the brake lines. The body of the engineer hung out of the engine window, both arms hanging limply toward the ground, his face leaning against the cold metal.

  The refugees were standing in the snow, huddled close together. Children cried in fear and hunger. Mothers held them close. The SS officers, accompanied by a squad of regular army infantry, worked their way from car to car, pushing and screaming to get the last of the refugees off the train.

  In the last car, the Devil’s Rebels stood in a semicircle against the back wall, their faces drawn and resolved. One of them pulled at the bars on the windows, but he only gave it a half effort, knowing there was nothing he could do. There were at least a hundred German soldiers waiting for them outside the train, leaving no hope of escape.

  What will we tell our children?

  That we fought beside our brothers.

  Like their brothers before them, they knew their fight for freedom was about to come to an end.

  Colonel Müller stood on a small hill watching the soldiers work. He would have preferred to have only Schutzstaffel men under his command, but that was no longer possible. The war had thinned their ranks, leaving him a hundred regulars to carry out his work. He didn’t know yet if he could trust the regular army soldiers, but he was about to find out.

  He looked at the sky, checked his watch, then lit a cigarette. His command sergeant stood beside him, a black machine gun in his hand.

  “How many?” Müller asked as he pulled a drag on the unfiltered smoke. He held his breath a moment, then exhaled through his nose. His dark eyes burned, black coals of resentment smoldering under heavy lids.

  Fisser nodded toward the last car. “We were told there were more than a dozen.”

  Müller frowned. That would leave some stragglers. Completely unacceptable. He wanted this over with.

  He glanced down at the dirty notebook in his hand, flipping through the few remaining pages, then pulled out a stubby pencil and lifted his eyes to watch again.

  It took twenty minutes to empty the train, contain the refugees inside a guarded circle, and round the rebels up. Müller watched and smoked, impatiently checking his watch and the darkening sky. Nineteen rebels were lined up outside the last car and pushed to their knees, the SS men standing guard. Satisfied that all was ready, Müller moved forward, his black boots leaving tracks in the fresh snow.

  He came to a stop in front of the pitiful rebel soldiers. They kept their heads down. He stared at them as if he expected some kind of response. But they knew that they were going to die here, and there was nothing for them to say.

  “Gentlemen, look at me,” Müller finally said.

  The rebels slowly looked up. Young and dirty faces. Anger. Resignation. One of them laughed, the high-pitched tone giving away his fear.

  Müller moved forward, coming to a stop in front of the first rebel. “Urbanski,” he said.

  The rebel’s face showed surprise.

  Müller wrote his name in his little notebook, then moved to the next man. “Bobka,” he said and then wrote. He worked his way down the line. He knew every man.

  Finished, Müller nodded toward a young lieutenant who commanded the regulars, then turned and walked away. He heard a few sobs of fear behind him and then shots. He counted as he walked. The last shot was fired. Silence settled over the winter landscape. He stopped and turned toward Sergeant Fisser, who was following a few steps behind. “The others too,” he said in a low voice.

  Fisser hesitated, glancing back toward the huddled refugees, then turned and started walking back.

  The young rebel stood by the fire. As time passed, the night grew colder. One by one the villagers peeled away, leaving for their bombed-out homes or hovels or wherever they were going to sleep. A few of them said good night, but most turned and left without a word. He stood alone until the embers had turned to coals and gray ash. The night was perfectly quiet: cold and still, black and empty as the space between the stars.

  He heard the shuffling behind him and quickly turned, his right hand moving instinctively toward his hip as if reaching for a weapon. A man was hobbling toward him with the help of a makeshift crutch. The stranger looked to be about thirty, maybe a little older. His face was tense beneath a light beard and brown hair, and his eyes were always moving, darting anxiously here and there. He wore a mix of civilian and military clothing: thick cotton farmer pants, leather combat boots, a white shirt underneath a heavy military coat. His left leg was missing from just above the knee and he limped along on a crutch made from a branch of gnarled oak, the knotty top worn smooth as glass. He moved toward the fire, seemingly disappointed at the dying coals.

  “So cold,” he said.

  The rebel threw on a couple of logs and stirred the embers, making the fire leap into an orange and yellow flame. The stranger moved closer and extended his hands, then nodded to introduce himself. “Antoni Geric,” he said.

  The younger man nodded back but only grunted. Both of them were silent for a moment. Finally the rebel asked, “When were you injured?”

  Antoni seemed to calculate. “Funny. It’s my anniversary. Two years ago today. Outside of Stalingrad.”

  The rebel nodded sympathetically. “Stalingrad. A hard place.”

  The wounded man pulled out a wooden pipe, tapped it over his open palm, and shoved it in his mouth. He didn’t have any tobacco, but he still sucked on the mouthpiece as he thought. “I was conscripted when the Germans ran us through in thirty-nine. They took me and my two brothers. I was sixteen years old. My older brother was seventeen; my little brother two years younger than me.”

  The young rebel glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. The war had aged the man many years. Behind them, from some unseen shelter, they could hear a baby cry.

  Antoni put his empty pipe back into his pocket and smiled bitterly. “I should be famous, you know. I have the unlikely distinction of having fought on not one, and not two, but on three different sides of this war. I fought for the Germans, and then the Russians, and then . . .” he paused and looked at the younger man carefully “. . . and then I fought with the rebels. Now, that’s the good side of the war.”

  The younger man looked away. This was very dangerous ground.

  Antoni lowered his voice and used his crutch to move a couple of steps toward him. “I was first conscripted by the Germans when they invaded. We had no choice, of course. Everyone they didn’t kill, they forced into their army. Fodder for the enemy. Targets to take the bullets before they sent their own men in. They gave me five days training and sent me into the fight. Some of us didn’t even have a weapon. We were attacking with rocks and sticks. Such is what the Germans thought of us. From there I was sent east to the Baltics. Kiev. Western Russia. My unit spent the winter outside of Stalingrad. Tens of thousands of us died. After nearly freezing to death or starving to death, take your pick, we were taken captive by the Russians. Turns out there are exactly two things worse than death. Fighting for the Germans is the first one. Being captured by the Russians is the second.”

  The crying child in the darkness fell silent and the night was still. The pipe came
out again and he sucked it as they studied each other in the light of the yellow flames. Antoni used his crutch to push a rusted ten-gallon bucket a little closer to the fire and sat down. “It didn’t take Stalin five minutes to find a use for us Polish prisoners. He granted us amnesty—for what crime, I don’t know—and sent us back into the war, but this time for the Bolsheviks. We Poles are good fighters, not something either side is willing to waste. But once the leg was gone, I was left to my own doings. Took me eight months to beg and crawl my way back home.”

  Antoni stared into the fire. “It’s a hell of a thing,” he whispered. “I crawled a thousand miles out of Russia, and now here they are again, knocking at my door. Germans to the west. Warsaw will fall in the next few days. I hear that entire city looks like this.” He motioned to the devastation all around him. “Ninety percent of the city is destroyed. Beautiful Warsaw, the city that used to be my home. The Germans are having mass executions, killing thousands every day. And why do they do this? Because we are Polish. So instead we wait here for the Russians, who have killed a million of us already. And why do they kill us? Because we are Polish.” He sucked on his pipe, drawing air into his mouth. “God hates the Jews, the gypsies, and the Poles, it seems.”

  The younger man shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”

  “How could you not?”

  “Because there is no God to hate or love us,” he said. “If there was a God, we wouldn’t be surrounded by starving children, smoldering churches, and old women scavenging for food.” He motioned to Antoni. “If there was a God, then you would have both legs.”

  Antoni pressed his lips together and shrugged. “Maybe. But I think there has to be another answer. At least I hope there is.”

  The younger man looked away. “So you were saying about the rebels?” he asked carefully.

  “Tak. But you know as much about that as I do.”

  Antoni was silent as the other man stared at him. A long moment passed. “So that’s the way it is,” Antoni finally said.

  One of the logs shifted on the fire, and a burst of glowing ash lifted on the heat, a dozen red embers rising into the air. Both of them lifted their faces to watch them until they cooled enough to turn dark and float back to the earth like black snowflakes. Antoni turned to look at the rebel, then leaned forward. Reaching underneath his coat, he pulled out a handgun and threw it to him. The rebel caught it expertly, turned it in his hand, cycled the action, and pointed it at Antoni, ready to shoot.

  “I heard you were pretty good with that thing,” Antoni said.

  The rebel sighted down the barrel. “I can hit out to one hundred sixty meters, if the winds are calm.”

  Antoni snorted. “No one can do that with a handgun.”

  “I can.”

  Antoni snorted again. “I was with Gorky and the Southerns, so we didn’t fight together, but I recognize your face. And if I know you, then Colonel Müller will know you too. It’s foolish to be out here, walking among our people. You put the entire town in danger. They will come looking, and if they don’t find you, these people will pay the price.”

  Everything Antoni said only added to his confusion, but something in the words and the dreadful way he said them made his gut tighten up.

  Antoni rubbed his hands through his hair, frustration growing on his face. “I saw you get off the train. A lot of people did.” He stopped and waited. The younger man stared blankly. “You don’t know what happened to the train, do you?” Antoni continued. “No. Of course. How could you know? The Germans interdicted it just an hour out of town. They dragged all the passengers off. When they found the rebels, they killed everyone on the train. Every single person. That is what we are up against. That is what we face.

  “They’re looking for us,” the wounded man concluded in a defiant voice. “And they’re not satisfied to just beat us, they have to destroy us, every one. It makes no sense, I know that, but very little does. Why are they still sending trainloads of Jews to the camps? Why are they committing valuable men and equipment to relocation and cleansing efforts when they are losing the war? The same logic applies to us. It doesn’t matter if they find themselves in defeat, the Nazis will do whatever it takes to see each and every one of us killed.

  “So go wherever you are going to go, but do it quickly and in the darkness. You make things very dangerous for our countrymen if you are seen.”

  The younger man nodded. “Tak.”

  They stood a few more minutes. The fire was dying now, leaving glowing embers in the middle of the pit. “We can’t be seen together,” the wounded man said. “It’s much too dangerous. I’m going north. And you are…?”

  The rebel shrugged. “I might stay here.”

  Antoni frowned. “Do whatever you see as right,” he said, then turned to leave. He had hobbled only a few steps away when he turned back. “I have a family,” he said. “Crazy, I know, a cripple like me, but I have a wife and she is beautiful and she doesn’t seem to care about my leg.”

  The other man was silent.

  “I even have a little girl.”

  “I’m sure that she is beautiful as well.”

  “You have no idea how beautiful she is. God gave me this great gift, and I don’t want to lose it. The war is over. I’ve done everything that I could do. We’ve done everything we could do. All I want is to see my family. I just want to go home.”

  “I hope you make it.”

  “I will,” Antoni said. He lifted his hand to wave good-bye. “Good luck, Lucas,” he said.

  And with those words, the rebel’s world suddenly shifted on its poles, spinning on its axis like a ball spinning through the air. His mind flashed back, the memories coming in lightning-quick images of emotions and sounds and smells. They ran through his head with a force that made him close his eyes to the flashing in his head. A yellow-painted hallway. A woman’s voice calling from the bottom of a curved stairway. A black dog. A sun-drenched sky. His mother walking toward him across a wide lawn. He saw her face. He heard her speaking. “Lucas, I’m going to miss you…”

  Lucas. His name was Lucas!

  “I pray that God will bless you. You know I love you, Lucas…”

  He seemed to falter, almost bending at his knees. Antoni watched him, reaching out a hand as if to brace him.

  Lucas stared at him and smiled. My name is Lucas Capek. He wanted to weep with joy.

  He stood by the fire long after Antoni had left. It seemed a great victory, knowing his name, and he savored the feeling though it also brought frustration that the revelations had stopped there.

  How long would it take, he wondered, before he remembered the rest of his life?

  Looking around, he realized that the streets were deserted, everyone too cold and hungry to be out any longer. The fire had burned down and the night was very dark, with only a few flickering lights glowing from the windows of the church. Shivering, he turned and walked toward it. He was suddenly exhausted. All he wanted was to sleep.

  The stone church had generally been spared from destruction, though most of the windows were broken and the north spire was completely blown away. It was set back only a few feet from the cobblestone street, and the heavy wooden door was not locked. He carefully pushed the door back, expecting to find other refugees inside, and was surprised to see the sanctum empty. It was noticeably warmer in the church, and the interior was dimly lit by candles in the windows on both sides of the altar.

  Turning to shut the door, he saw her sitting in the shadows on the back pew. Her head was bowed, as if in prayer, and she raised her eyes reluctantly at the sound of the door moving on its metal hinges.

  He looked at her curiously. White dress. Light blue apron. Canvas shoes. Dark hair. Light skin. Her clothes were war-dirty, but her face and hands were clean. She was beautiful in the candlelight, and he blurted out without thinking, “What are you doing here?”
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  She looked at him curiously but didn’t answer.

  He blushed, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he stumbled to explain. “It sounded…something like I didn’t mean it to. It’s just that, I don’t know, you seem a little out of place.”

  She smiled, her eyes sparkling in the flickering light. He studied her carefully. At first he thought that she was beautiful, but then he realized that wasn’t right. She wasn’t beautiful, it was more like…elegant, he supposed. And there was something else about her, something in her deliberate movements, in her calm reaction to his coming into the church. She showed no fear or hesitation. In a world of so much uncertainty, she was supremely confident.

  He stood there awkwardly until she motioned to the front of the chapel. She stood and walked toward the rounded stone. Reaching underneath her apron, she pulled out two small loaves of bread and placed them on the altar. He watched her curiously.

  “When we have extra, we leave it here for those who might need a little help,” she explained.

  He watched her skeptically, then glanced through the open window to the devastation outside. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “I do,” she replied as she carefully positioned the loaves in the middle of the altar. Turning to face him, she motioned for him to come closer. He moved beside the flickering candles, his face barely illuminated by the yellow light.

  “My name is Melina.”

  “Lucas,” he offered simply. Lucas! My name is Lucas! Without knowing it, he smiled.

  She watched him and gently laughed. “You seem very pleased at that.”

  “I’m sorry. It would be hard to explain.”

  “Is that your real name?” she asked suspiciously.

  “It is.”

  She hesitated. “Are you from Gorndask?”

  He stared at the stone floor and waited too long before he answered. “That’s what they told me.”