Raising Sons In a Forest Full of Fascists

Adela by Julian Zabalbeascoa

Añon de Moncayo, June 1938

David and Marco, my two youngest, walk into the forest and return with wounded animals, branches that resemble people, leaves in the perfect shape of a star, colorful rocks for which they invent fantastical stories. If we’re lucky, Pedro, who turns fifteen next week, will consider them childish and simply ridicule them. More often, he’ll snap the branches, crumple the leaves in his fist, throw the rocks as far as he can, and should the animal die, I worry that David and Marco question if their older brother isn’t partly responsible, if there isn’t a lesson they’re meant to learn.

Today, though, David and Marco enter the forest and return with a soldier.

Or—I think he’s a soldier. He wears no uniform but flame-bathed clothes soiled by dark, indefinable stains. Textures that make me swallow hard. He’s likely out of rations and starving. Whatever fight he survived, it must have been several days from here. After two years, the war has finally discovered this pocket of the Spanish map.

The soldier’s rifle is strapped across his chest. It troubles him not to grip it in his hands, one of which is badly wounded.

Our house sits alone in the woods. My husband built it: my wedding gift. He doesn’t trust me, so I had supposed this—more than a desire to live amid nature—was why he moved us so far from others: nobody would have an opportunity to steal me away. Later, I assumed it was because he didn’t trust himself. Far from the village, he’d be far from drink. Now, though, I’m convinced he knew all along he would beat me and didn’t want the villagers to lay eyes upon my bruises.

The soldier frowns at my black eye, my split lip, the fingerprint marks along my neck. I set my needles down to receive him. He had approached the clearing seeking help, but seeing my bruises his posture stiffens. So that’s the order of things—a battle-torched soldier sunken-eyed from hunger should pity me. He slides the rifle so he can quickly sling it off his shoulder, glances at David and Marco. They wail when my husband is atop me as though they’re the ones receiving his fists. But afterwards, with their father gone, you’ve never seen two happier boys. They live for the respite. The soldier considers the lightness in their step, their unburdened shoulders, how this picture might come together.

“No need to be afraid,” I tell him, perhaps foolishly. My voice is raspy. Will be for several days yet. It was only yesterday my husband returned from the village reeking from drink. Increasingly, a more common occurrence, ever since the fascists severed Catalonia from the rest of Spain two months ago. When Vinaroz fell and all of Aragon with it, not once did we hear a muted thud of an explosion. No rifle reports. No puffs of smoke. Nothing. Even this patch of sky above didn’t interest the fascists. The moon seemed closer than Vinaroz. You wouldn’t have guessed it from my husband. He behaved like a hunted man, as though he was the main prize the fascists sought, as though the world now expected him to keep them from Catalonia, as though the world had ever expected anything of him. “Come in. We have a soup over the fire. Some clean clothes, too.” Where there’s one soldier, there are bound to be others. Something is set to begin.

My boys sit near him as he hunches over his bowl. Even Pedro.

What is it like, they want to know. The war. How exciting? How dangerous? What pulled him into it? Where is he from? Did the fascists destroy his home?

“Nothing’s ever happened in my village. You could drop a thousand shells onto it and not one would detonate.” Despite what he’s telling them, he says it playfully, even a touch tenderly. The hard, apprehensive edges of his countenance are rounding the more time he spends with us.

Have you killed anyone? What happened to your clothes? To your hand?

I shush and scold them, but he smiles away my concern and answers, “I’ve been given the opportunity to stand up for what I believe in.” His eyes are bright mossy green. The way the skin crinkles at their corners when he smiles, it’s like a beckoning finger. He’s probably ten years younger than me. Probably closer in age to Pedro.

“Our father is a soldier,” Pedro says, staking some ground. His shoulders aren’t pulled back. For his tone, they might as well be.

The soldier returns to his soup, face relaxed, but I see the question he’s asking himself: if her husband is away, who has done this to her? “Which regiment is he with?” he asks Pedro. “Maybe we’ve crossed paths.”

“He’s a Freemason.”

“And the regiment?”

“He fights with the Freemasons,” Pedro says, angrily this time.

The soldier understands: the child will perceive each question as a challenge.

“Brave that he should give himself for such a noble cause.”

David and Marco smile at this. Pedro only nods, setting his jaw as his father does—lips pursed, chin out ahead of the rest of his face, each tooth below battling those up top. When his father was younger, someone must have convinced him such an expression radiated seriousness, even danger. To me, it always made him look powerless—the squeaky bark of a small dog—and, at the start, I loved him for it. But that was a long time ago.

“Will you be staying the night?” Marco asks. Most questions he shouts, and this one’s no different.

David joins in. “Will you?” He grabs the soldier’s knee when he asks it. He is a tactile boy, always with a hand on one of us, as though being the middle child requires him to bridge Pedro and Marco.

The soldier laughs through his nostrils. A gentle smile, no menace behind it. “The fight’s still out there,” he says to my two youngest. “I just have to find it.”

“It will be there tomorrow,” I say. I’m doing this for my boys, I tell myself. They need to see—even Pedro, especially Pedro—that there are other ways for a man to be. “You won’t last but an afternoon off that soup. Stay the night. We’ll send you off with a full stomach.”

Pedro ignores him. Through his impotent fury, he wants us all to do the same. David and Marco notice this, but they’re too excited by the presence of a guest to bend to Pedro. I watch how freely they move about the soldier when they realize they need not predict his next mood and movement. It breaks my heart that half a day passed before they truly relaxed.

David takes his hand. Marco doesn’t hesitate holding the wounded one. Together, they weave around and enter the thickening trees with him. Their father often yells at Marco to collect the viscera of the animal he’s skinning, with a fist, not your fingertips! He’s still a gentle boy and doesn’t understand why he can’t remain so. Yet, as they disappear into the forest, the nubs of the soldier’s hands over Marco’s, I see no hesitation in my youngest.

Later, the boys sit near the house and direct the soldier as he attempts to whittle a dog from a chunk of wood. It’s Culito they’re trying to recreate. The mixed breed we once had, so named because of its disproportionately large backside. My husband had brought him home as a puppy two years ago. I need to know you’re safe when I’m not here. But then he threw open the door drunk one night and the dog wouldn’t stop barking for what he was doing to us.

David and Marco bounce the figurine about the dirt, tilt it so it urinates an imaginary stream on one tree after another. Culito had a system. He would awake determined to empty his bladder onto every tree that encircled the house. He was a patient and diligent gardener—little here, little there, what’s the rush.

“Thank you,” the soldier tells me. We’re standing side by side. I feel the heat off his body, a body that’s trying to learn again how to relax. “I hadn’t realized how much I needed this.”

“David and Marco, too.”

“It feels so familiar. Like it’s out of a dream or a memory.” He says it tentatively. “The next time I blink, you’ll disappear.”

“If only.”

He faces me. “Will your husband return soon?”

There’s a flurry above us, a rush of feathers, a dance between two birds right before they come together. We both lower our heads.

“Wherever he goes after his drunken nights, he’s gone for days.” When he does repentantly return home, it isn’t until my bruises have turned a ghostly blue. You could fool yourself they were never there, or at least never that bad.

“Is he really a Freemason?”

“He carries the card because there’s no other way to get paid for a job around here, and he needs money to drink.”

“Haven’t you tried running off?” The birds are not being quick about their business. Pine needles drift down between us.

When he does repentantly return home, it isn’t until my bruises have turned a ghostly blue.

“It’s my husband’s greatest obsession that I’ll pack what I can and take the boys.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’d be sentencing us to death.”

That night, we make a fire outside. It’s David and Marco’s idea. Together, they and the soldier gather large stones to border the pit. In the shape of Culito’s rear, David insists. Pedro remains near the house, sulking, while his brothers laugh for what they create.

Around the fire we eat soup and chew on strips of meat their father dried. Pedro is sure to tell the soldier so. He says it as though the man has taken food off his father’s plate. “He must be a great hunter,” the soldier says.

“He is.” To all our ears, it sounds like a threat.

“The seasoning is impressive, too.”

“I don’t like you wearing his clothes.”

“Pedro,” I say, admonishing him.

“When he returns,” the soldier says, “please express my gratitude.”

“I’ll let him know you were here.”

The fire leaps about Pedro’s eyes, then he shifts and they go black.

“Perhaps,” I say to the soldier, “you can share a story with us. My father used to require it of his guests. Your grandfather,” I tell the boys, “had a bad leg and an even worse pair of lungs. But also a desire to see the world. Everyone in the village knew, if a stranger was passing through, point them to Justicio Vallarte’s door. He’d travel through their stories.”

“Is that how you met Papa?” Marco asks.

“No. Your father was always just there. So,” I say to the soldier now, “what’s happening beyond the trees?”

“A story from out there?” He’s scratching his chin with his wounded hand, searching the treetops. “I’d have to change every ending.”

“About your home then.”

“That I can do.” He repositions himself on the log, sets down his bowl. Before he starts, he palms his mouth to catch a sneeze. I’m touched by this courtesy. My husband cackles like the schoolyard’s menace for how we jump and tense when he sneezes. “Like Marco, I’m the youngest of three boys. The difference in age is the same, as well. Once, at this exact time in our lives, when I was nine and Xabier was ten and Aitor fourteen, the three of us stole a boat. Somebody had seen a whale, and I convinced my brothers this was our moment. We each had a knife no bigger than—David, hold out your pointer finger. Well, slightly bigger than that. The plan was: hunt the whale, get rich off its meat. A good plan, I’d say. Turns out sailing isn’t as easy as the old fishermen make it look.”

David asks, “So what happened?”

“Something my village talks about to this day. We managed—”

He stops, turns to peer into the impenetrable night. I’m about to ask what he’s heard when, over the crackling of the fire, I suddenly hear it, too. Voices and the snapping of branches. At least a dozen men not trying to hide their approach. The soldier says to me, “Nobody knows I’m alive.”

I keep my voice calm for my boys’ sake. “In their bedroom you’ll find a half-made chair. Behind it is a loose panel in the wall. My husband hides his bottles there. It’ll be tight.” He drags his foot about where he sat and takes his bowl with him. I whisper to my boys, though it is specifically for Pedro’s sake, “Those are the fascists out there. Just be respectful. If they enter the house and find your father’s papers, they’ll hunt him. But they won’t go in there, will they? Because we’re not going to give them any reason to.”

The men must see or smell the fire. One by one their voices drop and others shout lowly for them to quiet. There’s the quick slide of rifle bolts, bullets shucking into chambers. “If we remain calm,” I say, “they will, too.”

From out of the forest’s darkness comes a gruff voice, a command. “Who’s out there?”

“Me and my sons,” I call.

Movement in the night, then the fire’s faint glow slips over the fascists’ shapes. They’ve fanned out, more than twenty of them. Each bends their knees as a predator on the hunt, their rifles against their shoulders. A few lower their weapons when they see that my sons are only children. The officer in the middle, the one with the gruff voice, asks, “Who’s in the house?” To his men he orders, “Aim at the windows.”

“Feel free to search it.”

“And we won’t find your husband cowering under a bed.”

“He’s in someone’s bed, but not mine.”

Now they see my bruises. I’d forgotten about them this past hour.

“Your husband do that to you?”

“Does it bother you he did?”

The officer’s lips curl into a derisive smile—another woman who’s yet to learn her place. “How does it work here? The man needs a little break so makes sure nobody’s tempted to run off with you while he’s gone?”

“Ask him when you get to town. Look for the one who’s filled himself to the brim.”

It feels good speaking this openly about my husband before his sons, but Pedro’s chin is out in front of his face again.

The officer pays this no attention. He studies the house, squints at the windows. “It’s tilted.”

“And that he built sober.”

He levels a grocer’s eye on my boys. To Pedro he says, “We’ll be back in a few years for you.” He then signals to the others—a sideways jerk of his head—and they blend into the forest once more. The four of us maintain a steady watch on the night as though the fascists might yet leap from it. When I’m certain they’ve gone, I reach over and squeeze Pedro’s knee but he slaps my hand away. “You did so well,” I tell them. Marco is smiling at the praise, shakily. His lips are determined to turn down. “It’s over,” I assure them. Their father’s been yelling at the walls about fascists for over two years, since before the war began. “After all this worrying, and for what?”

David and Marco want the soldier to sleep between them. He assures them he will, but the excitement of the day has exhausted them, even Pedro, so they’re asleep while the soldier and I sit at the lopsided dining table passing back and forth a dust-covered bottle of neglected grain alcohol. We haven’t touched flame to candle should the fascists return.

“I knew I was putting you at risk.”

“No more than is typical for us.”

He rubs down a splintered divot of the table’s edge. It’s probably the drink, but I’m focusing on his hands as though they provide an answer. But to what? Long dormant parts of my body tingle their response. He says, “I can remain here until your husband returns.”

“Don’t.”

“I’ll leave my rifle then. Hidden away should things ever get too bad.”

“You’re going to need it.”

“Our side has more rifles than men now.”

“My husband knows every corner of this forest. He gives a second glance when a leaf’s out of place. Besides, I’ve had every opportunity to poison him. I’m incapable of it.”

“How can you be so resigned?”

“Maybe before—while my father lived and Pedro was a kinder child—I could have run off. Too late now. He’d kill us if I tried.”

He’s shaking his head. In disbelief, perhaps disappointment.

“You’ll see,” I say. “Live long enough and life empties you out so you’re only a vessel for others.”

“And not for hope?”

“I have hope. I hope my boys don’t become my husband. That they don’t make the mistakes I did.”

The soldier passes me the bottle. I put my hand over his. With my thumb I stroke the uneven nubs of his missing fingers. The slightest tensing in his muscles carry into his hand. “It’s been so long since I’ve been touched with any tenderness,” I tell him. “I’ve forgotten how that feels.”

“I can’t give that to you. I’m sorry.”

“A wound?” There are, I think, other things we can do. Still with my hand on his, I scoot closer until my leg presses against his. That slight change in warmth moves through me. But when I find his eyes in the dark, I see pity in them.

“I’ve promised myself to another,” he says. For my sake, he adds, “Otherwise…”

I stop him. “There’s no need.” I let go of his hand but remain where I am. Out the window, the fire’s embers are a pure red against the black. With each breath they fade. “What’s she like?”

“Mariana?”

I nod.

“She’s a fighter.” He probably means nothing by it. I feel the thorn, nevertheless.

“A soldier?”

“No, a writer.” I wait for more, so he adds, “She is Erlea.”

He expects a reaction.

“You’ve never heard of her?”

I open my arms to show him my world.

“She’s a political writer,” he says. “She helped me put words to my ideas.”

“Which are?”

“Not my brother’s.” He considers a high corner of the room, then waves at the window. “They killed him, my brother who believed there existed something salvageable in everybody, even the worst of us. They hung him in a cemetery.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t stop imagining his murder. It’s different every time. Yet I always see him forgiving his killers before he thinks to forgive himself. Me, I can’t.”

I don’t say anything. I know enough to know there exist no saints among us. Even my father would be hounded from time to time by his personal set of demons.

“Mariana was right,” he says. “She was always right. This ends only one way. We must rid the world of them entirely. There can be no peace until we do.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to be so confident. “I envy her.”

“She’d laugh if she heard someone say that. She and her children are refugees in their own country.”

Though she has children, I imagine she’s his age, that she still possesses her youth. Mine passed me by—the world, too—while I was trying to keep my husband from getting upset. “I’ve never had any luck with this life. What I look forward to is the next one, of getting to start again.”

“But this is the one you were born to.”

“And the one I brought my sons into.” I stand. “You’ll still stay the night? I haven’t driven you away, have I?”

The faint light outside etches kind lines around his eyes. “I told David and Marco I’d wedge between them.”

“Terrible to be jealous of your children.” I take the bottle and finish the rest of it. Like swallowing one of the embers.

The morning sky is a creamy blue, the color of a starling’s eggs, and just as delicate. It could crack from our breaths spilling upon it. Pedro awoke sullen and left before breakfast, saying he was going to check the traps. I manage to convince the soldier to stay for lunch. It will be fish, David promises. So he and Marco lead the soldier to the river with their poles. He takes his rifle with him. At no point can I remember him not having it within reach. I keep thinking of his offer. The rifle has kept him alive this long, yet he believes I need it more than him.

The rifle has kept him alive this long, yet he believes I need it more than him.

The trees sliver their shapes as the three recede. Then I’m alone. It often occurs so abruptly. One minute my sons are clinging to me, my husband jealously observes my every step, I feel like my head is being held under water, and then everyone is gone and I have more air than I need.

This morning, I remain outside, sitting where I did last night. The ashes from the fire have drifted over the stones that remain in the outline of Culito’s rear. His coat was silver-black. The ashes thinly dusting the grey rocks evoke it. I’ll have to point it out to David and Marco. To this day my husband has blamed us for the dog’s death. Often, when the boys make a mistake, he’ll yell at them. And you think you deserve another dog? But even at their most playful or lonesome they’ve never asked for another.

Looking still at the rocks, my focus shifts. Boot prints in the ashes. They could be Pedro’s, though I don’t remember him walking in this direction when he left. Would the soldier have been so careless? And then I recognize the shape of the boot.

My vision swings left to right, behind me, back in front—the trees blur, the world spins. He’s here, somewhere. I hold in a breath to calm myself, search the gaps in the trees. “Arturo?” I call. Best my husband comes now, with the soldier and his rifle far away. “Arturo, show yourself.” The thing is, I never know exactly how it will go, what he will be capable of, so my heart clogs my throat when I see a figure through the trees. Then there’s another figure and another and more yet, all of them in the fascists’ dark blue uniforms. And at the front, leading them to the house, is Pedro.

“No,” I cry. Something in me breaks. It stops my breath. I clutch my stomach. A surprise: there are other ways yet to be hurt.

The officer from last night walks alongside him. “O sea que…” He’s smiling, draws the words out, practically sings it. “So someone was in there after all.” He flicks a finger at the house. Several of his soldiers look anxiously at one another. “Go,” he commands. One charges in, obligating others to follow. Were David and Marco inside, they’d have been shot on sight. If Pedro understands this, it doesn’t register on his face. He wears a hardened expression, as if all this is my fault. “I suppose,” the officer says, “you did tell me to search it.” I’m not worried they’ll notice my husband’s papers. They’ll pass right over them hunting for the soldier.

“You won’t find him,” I say. “He left hours ago.”

“She’s lying,” Pedro says. His voice cracks with a truculent note.

I want nothing more than to grab Pedro and hold him to me. Perhaps I haven’t lost him for good—not yet—but he’s at the officer’s side like a devoted adjutant, and I discover I’m pegged to the log.

“Where are your other two?” the officer asks.

“Foraging for mushrooms.” Yesterday, before the soldier’s appearance, we had spoken of doing so. The officer judges the possibility of this from Pedro’s tight lips that curl inwards.

Inside the house there’s a brief shout and the crash of glass. This perks the officer’s posture, but a moment later the soldiers file out, shaking their heads, while one holds the broken pieces of the frame that held my father’s one photograph, contrite, on the verge of offering an apology. With another flick of his fingers the officer orders him to toss it to the side. He then draws a tight circle with his finger. “Search the perimeter. He could be hiding nearby.”

“I already said, he left this morning.” The photograph of my father has been gashed by broken glass. It sits in the grass, nearly severed in two, about to be trampled by the soldiers. I try for a quick inventory: does anything of my life before my husband remain?

“If we find him, you’ll be wishing it was your husband’s fists you were contending with.”

Pedro shifts at this. The officer doesn’t seek to assure him. He must figure there’s little more he can get from my son. I turn back to the firepit, my husband’s boot print in the ashes—deal first with the soldier, then it’d be my turn. “You won’t.”

After completing their sweep, the fascists gather around the officer. I hear him sigh. He stands directly in front of me, trampling the print. “Normally, I’d make an example of you. But who would tell the story? The trees? I’ll entrust your husband with the honor.” To Pedro, he says, “You’ll let him know.” Pedro gives an uncertain nod. Much of the fight has left him. “If the soldier returns, you know where to find us. I promise we’ll spare your mother.” With his toe, he taps mine. “So, which way did the red go?”

I motion behind me.

“We came from that direction.”

“He’s a soldier. He’s searching for the war.”

The officer considers this, doesn’t appear convinced. He smiles while studying my bruises. His vision drifts to Pedro, the pieces of the picture frame, then the teetering house. “What else could I threaten to do to you?” I don’t acknowledge this or his final derisive chuckle. To his men he says, “He’s somewhere in the forest.”

They move away with all the discretion of a marching band, every footfall snapping branches. Pedro’s head is down. When I approach him, he steps back. Angry tears streak his face.

“My boy.” I open my arms to him. “You need to know: I’ve never been more hurt. But not for anything you’ve done to me.” Again, he steps back. “Please,” I say. “I need to know you’ll be able to forgive yourself.”

“I heard you,” he yells. “Last night. With the soldier. What you wanted to do with him. You’re lucky I didn’t tell the fascists.”

“I’m sorry you heard that.”

“I heard it all.” His arms are down and he’s crying openly. Finally, I can bring him to me, but the moment I touch him, he pushes me away and runs off. I watch him go and wait, wait for the sounds of him to disappear, wait to see if the silence might deliver my husband. When it doesn’t, I start running, too.

In a few months, the snowmelt will turn the creek into a wide, uncrossable river, further penning me in. These early summer days, the frigid and swiftly moving water comes only to my knees. It rushes between large stones and hurtles against the creek’s sharp bends. I listen for shouting while I run along its bank, until, finally, further ahead I see David holding Marco. The two are pressed against a tree, their expressions terror stricken, eyes fixed on something near the creek, a carve in the earth I still can’t see. I run towards that, not my children, fearing the gruesome scene I’ll find.

But the soldier is still alive. His face is scratched and he’s bleeding from his mouth. As I come up the bank, I see he’s kneeling on my husband’s back, hogtying him. My husband’s complexion is ashen from drink and mottled bright red with fury. He twists as he yells at David and Marco to untie him. Neither child moves. They only press harder against the tree. All goes still—my husband’s attempts to thrash himself free, even, it seems, the noisy water—when my husband spots me. It’s a jackal’s smile. “There she is,” he yells. “There’s the slut.”

I ignore him and crouch next to David and Marco. “I need you two to go home. Don’t run. Walk as casually as you can while collecting mushrooms. There are soldiers nearby. The same from last night. If they find you, say you’re foraging. Whatever you do, don’t run. And when they ask, the soldier left this morning headed for town. Our lives depend on this story. Now go, but slowly.”

They start. David turns around first, then Marco. They look at me, their father. He shouts, “Tell Pedro where I am.”

I smile warmly at them. “A casual pace. Collect every mushroom you see. I’ll be back soon.”

I don’t turn until long after they’ve vanished from sight. My husband is laughing at me. Snarling laughter. “Even when you try to give yourself to a man,” he says, “he won’t take you.” I walk down to the bank, wondering where he got that bit from. Not Pedro. And had my husband watched us through a window last night, he would have broken down the door. No, he’s just guessing at this fact. He’s always been able to sense my vulnerabilities. “How you tried to convince me otherwise. All those wasted years worrying.” Drink has deadened his tongue. Bloodshot squiggles his eyes. He’d probably been driven out of town by the fascists’ presence and thought, when he saw the soldier leave the house this morning with our two youngest, that he could best him.

The soldier extends the rifle. I think of the woman he promised himself to. She’d probably take it. I wave it off. A shadow passes over the soldier’s face, a coldness. Like the season changing to winter, I feel the warmth bleed out of him. It will be on him to kill my husband. My eyes go to the trigger. What force does that curve of metal exert on him? It is there for one distinct purpose. I signal for him not to do it. All this my husband misses. He’s still laughing. “No wonder we’re losing,” he says. “Our side’s so amariconado they get the women to do the killing for them.” To me, he orders, “Now release me.”

“Shush.” I kneel and search through his back pockets worried I won’t find it but, no, there it is. He tries glancing over his shoulder. “What are you doing?” I pull his Masonic party card from his pocket.

“Roll him onto his side,” I say. “Get him against this rock.” The soldier does, and I put the party card in my husband’s front shirt pocket so it pokes out. “Bitch,” he barks and spits at me. It mostly dribbles across his chin. He thrashes wildly now. Blood seeps from his wrists, further sinking the rope binding him. “Fucking whore!”

He tries to bite the card, then reach it with that chin.

I stand. “Leave him for the fascists to find.”

“You’re going to kill me,” my husband shouts.

“No,” I say. “Not me.”

He shouts for help, screams Pedro’s name. “Call the fascists to you,” I tell him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.” He’s apologizing not to me but to the soldier. “We’re on the same side. We have the same enemies. The fight needs every one of us.”

The soldier doesn’t acknowledge this but slings the rifle over his shoulder. He says, “Was it Pedro?”

“He heard me last night.”

My husband is yelling over this that he’ll change, he’ll never lay a hand on me again. All he wants is to love and protect me.

“I knew you’d kill me one day,” I tell him, “that it was only a matter of time, so I stopped caring about myself. Our boys, though. I had no other way to keep them safe.” If I caressed his mud-streaked cheek, a final goodbye, he’d try to bite me, so I turn up my hands and grimace.

He’s screaming at us while we walk away. “I’ll kill you. I’ll slit your throats.” The soldier turns back from time to time, as if trying to puzzle out a riddle—we can leave these brutes to destroy themselves. Then, my husband must accept there’s no saving himself, but he still has a chance to be buried with company. He shouts, “A red! Come quick, a red!” He’s shredding his vocal cords for the effort.

I point to the west. “They’ll be arriving from this direction.”

The soldier looks off to the east. I try imagining what awaits him there. He must, too. His body’s stiffened. Those kind lines around his eyes and mouth are gone. His time with David and Marco was but brief relief. He is, once more, the leery and troubled young man they brought to our house. I want to tell him to let go of that person and remain with us. But in what world would that be possible? Fascists prowl this forest. Mariana is out there. So are his brother’s killers. Turning back to me, he asks, “Will you be all right?”

“For the first time in a long time, I don’t know. It’s an improvement.” I lean toward him and kiss his cheek, one side then the other, holding my lips there. “Thank you.”

I watch him cross the creek. Only when the trees on the other side begin to conceal him do I turn, heading for the north, re-entering the forest’s cool and fragrant shadows. A bird sings nearby. Above, the branches whoosh and rustle. I can still hear my husband’s shouts when I bend for my first mushroom, grabbing it by the base and wiggling it from the earth’s soft clutch.

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