How Huge the Night (2 page)

He looked around. No one. He tugged on the ax, and it came free. He had seen this before: you lifted it up over your shoulder, and then you swung, and it—

Bounced.

It bounced so hard it nearly jerked his arms out of their sockets. He looked quickly around. Then at the wood: there was a mark, a little line cut in its surface. That was what he’d done.

He raised the ax up again—
Oh yeah?
This is for Tanieux
—and smashed it down into the log. It bounced again. He set his jaw.

This is for that soldier yesterday. And that girl—that girl ignoring me. Wham!
The ax bounced higher than before, almost over his head, and at the end of its bounce, he bore down wildly and brought it crashing down again with a resounding
whack
as the ax head hit the log side-on, its blade not even touching the wood. “Aaaah!” Julien roared, and kicked the log over and the ax with it.

“Julien!”

He jerked around so fast the tree line blurred. Grandpa. Grandpa standing with his seamed and weathered face set hard as stone. He had
never
seen Grandpa look like that.

“Do you know what one of those things can do to you?”

Julien looked down at the ax, and kept on looking at it.

“Look at me. Do you know?”

Julien looked at him. It kind of hurt. “No.”

“It can put a deep enough cut in your foot to lame you for life. It can put a deep enough cut elsewhere to bleed you to death.
Especially
,” he said in a sharp voice, “if no one is with you when you do it.”

“I’m sorry, Grandpa. I’m really sorry.”

“You’re the only grandson I’ve got, Julien.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I’d like to keep you. If I may.” His voice had the slightest tremble in it. “I know I never forbade you to touch my maul
without
asking, but I didn’t think I needed to.”

“Your what?”

Grandpa gestured at the ax. “What did you think that was?”

“An ax.”

Grandpa’s mouth twitched. A web of smile wrinkles began to break out around his eyes. “Let me show you what an ax looks like.”

The ax was thin and sharp, for felling trees; the maul was wedge shaped, for splitting them. At least he’d been using it for the right job. Grandpa showed him how to set his log on a base; how to aim along the grain and keep his eye on it; how to try again. And again. And again. Then showed him how to start with the maul as far back behind his head as he could reach. Since he wasn’t strong enough to do it the normal way. Grandpa didn’t say that part. He didn’t have to.

I’m going to get you, log.

Julien lifted his maul into position and sighted; then sudden as lightning, he went into the swing with every ounce of strength he had, feeling the power of it, the earth pulling with him as the heavy maul fell—and glanced off hard to the right as the log tumbled off the base and Julien stumbled forward and cracked his shin on it, painfully. He stood there, his teeth clenched on a curse word,
blinking
fast against the sting of tears.

“The first time I tried to split wood,” said Grandpa’s voice from behind him, “my brother asked if I was trying to dig a hole. ’Cause he’d never thought of using a maul, but it seemed to be working.”

Julien tried to grin. Grandpa had probably been ten years old. Not fifteen.

“It’s not the easiest, moving.”

Julien stared at him.

“You’re supposed to learn so many things you never knew, and everyone else has known them forever. I only did it once—and I didn’t take to it. Came right back home to Tanieux after a year.”

Well I don’t have that option.

“Looking like a fool. I broke my apprenticeship. That made me officially a failure.”

Julien blinked. “So then what did you do?”

“I did what you do when you’ve failed to better yourself. Became a farmer.” He stood silent a moment, his eyes on the hills, and said quietly, “And loved it.”

Julien followed his grandfather’s gaze out over the long rows of the garden, over the field of oats golden in the sun, to the rounded silhouette of the nearest hill; and suddenly it went all through him again like quiet fire:
War. There’s going to be a war.

“Grandpa? What was the Great War like?”

“We were very hungry.”

Hungry?
To cover his confusion, Julien picked up the log and set it on the base again.

“The front didn’t come anywhere near this far south. You know that, I’m sure. But there weren’t enough men to go around here in the hills, and there weren’t enough hands to do what needed doing—and even afterward …” His eyes were shadowed as he looked at Julien. “It seemed like only half of them came back. And they weren’t the same. There was something in them you couldn’t understand. I mean,” he said slowly, “something
I
couldn’t
understand
. I wasn’t there, you know. Your father wasn’t either. He was too young.” Grandpa glanced away. “Barely.”

Julien looked down at the maul, thinking about this. Neither his father nor his grandfather. And Papa said France would declare war within the week. And here he was.

“Your mother, on the other hand—the front passed over her
village
twice, in Italy. But you know that, I’m sure.”

He looked away. Something was tightening in his chest.
Sure. Of course. Except no one ever tells me anything
. He lifted the maul, and his grandfather stepped back; but then he stopped and looked up at the hills and swallowed. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Uncle Giovanni used to tell me and Vincent all about his friends in the prison camp and the crazy escape schemes they cooked up. It took me awhile to figure out there was more to the war than that.”

“They just don’t want to talk about it,” Grandpa murmured. “I suppose we’ll never understand.”

Julien looked at the maul in his hands and looked at Grandpa. “Maybe I will,” he said.

Grandpa’s face changed in an instant. “No,” he whispered. He was pale. “Julien. Don’t say that. You’re fifteen, Julien.”

“I know.” Julien’s voice was a whisper too. He didn’t know where to look, didn’t know what to do with the fire that was rushing through his body. He hefted the maul and swung it suddenly in a fast, tight circle, his eye on the grain of the wood. There was a
thunk
, and the two halves of the log sprang away to either side. They lay on the grass, incredible, their split edges clean as bone.

The lowering sun shone through the big south window as they finished their quiet supper, making patches of gold on the wall. Julien’s back and arms ached. Mama’s eyes weren’t red anymore, but something about her didn’t seem right. She didn’t look at any of them. Papa asked how many jars of beans she’d canned, and she answered without looking at him, without looking at anything—except a glance, lightning quick, toward the window. Not at the light. At the radio.

“Mama,” said Magali. She tossed her curly black hair. “Hey, Mama.”

Mama didn’t answer.

“Mama, tell them about the mouse.”

Julien watched his mother swallow and turn toward Magali with difficulty, like someone bringing herself out of a trance.

“In the sink?” Magali prompted.

“You tell it, Lili,” said Mama softly.

“Well, there was this mouse,” Magali started. “Um, in the sink. Except we didn’t see it until I’d run the dishwater. And it was alive—I don’t know how it got in there, but it was alive, and it was
swimming
round and round … looking … y’know … kinda scared … and then I fished it out and put it outside. It was funny,” she finished gamely. She looked at Mama again. Mama didn’t seem to see her. She turned on Julien. “Hey, I heard you split a log. In only half an hour.”

“Yeah? You wanna try?” growled Julien.

“I bet I could do it.”

“Don’t bet your life savings.” The chime of the grandfather clock by the stairwell door cut through Julien’s words, and, a second later, the deep tolling of the church bell in town. Papa and Mama were both on their feet.

Mama stood still, both hands on the table. Papa crossed the room and switched on the radio.

Loud static leapt into the room, a buzzing like an army of bees. Mama went to the radio. Julien and Magali followed. Phrases came through as they leaned in:
a general mobilization. Reinforcements being
sent to the Maginot Line. British forces are landing in France to … since our nation’s declaration of war …

War.

Efforts to persuade Belgium and Holland have failed … mmzzzzsh … remain neutral. Gallant Poland is no match for the German war machine … crack-crack-crack-fzz … pushing deep into the countryside … ffff … no stopping … crack-crack-crack-crack!

Papa switched off the radio.

Julien and Magali looked at each other. Magali’s eyes were wide.

“Maria,” said Papa in a gentle voice. “You get some rest. I’ll do the dishes.”

Mama nodded, not looking at anything. She walked slowly toward the bedroom door, stumbling on the edge of the rug as if she were blind.

Julien couldn’t sleep. His room on the third floor under the eaves was like an oven. His arms ached. His country was at war. He twisted and turned in the sweaty sheets, trying to find a position where his arms didn’t hurt.

He got up and opened the window to ragged clouds lit by the half moon. And the faint gleam of the river down at the far edge of town by the school. He turned away.

He slipped out his door, quietly, and down the hall to the
stairwell
; down the stone stairs, cool on his bare feet, to the second floor where his family lived. The living and dining room was full of moonlight and shadows. He crept to the bathroom door and opened it very quietly. Mama and Papa were asleep in the next room. He’d turn the water on just a trickle, wash the sweat off—

His hand froze on the tap.

“It won’t be like that, Maria.” His father’s voice carried through the thin wall. “We’re not in Paris anymore. There’s nothing they
want
in Tanieux.”

“There was nothing they wanted in Bassano.”

He had never heard her voice like that. Bitter.

Papa answered in a low voice Julien could not catch. He put his ear to the wall. He shouldn’t listen. He shouldn’t.

“… reasons we’re here. And Benjamin—his parents want safety for him more than anything, and this is where they chose. Maria, I firmly believe that the Germans cannot get this far south.”

“Unless they win.” A chill went down Julien’s spine, the way she said it. She said it as if they
would
.

He opened the door very slowly, very quietly, listening to his father’s murmur in which he caught only the name
Giovanni
, and then
soldier
, and then
Julien’s too young
. Then louder: “You will
never
be alone like that again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Her voice was flat and terrible.

Julien ran light and silent on his bare feet, through the stairwell door and up the cold stone stairs in the dark, and threw himself into bed, trembling.

He closed his eyes, pictured his street back in Paris, the Rue Bernier: the green grass of the park and Vincent’s brown leather
soccer
ball; the shouts of the guys, Renaud and Gaëtan and Mathieu; Mama leaning out their second-story window, calling him in for supper. Home, Paris, with none of this happening.

This was happening.

He turned over and smashed his face into the pillow.
They cannot get this far south. Unless they win.

They wouldn’t win—they couldn’t win. But if they made it into France at all, where would they aim for? Paris—where Vincent and Uncle Giovanni were, and Aunt Nadine and the little girls—that was where. He saw, suddenly, himself and Vincent in brown leather jackets, in two tanks at the mouth of the Rue Bernier, shuddering with the recoil of the guns.
They shall not pass.

In his history textbook, there’d been a map of the Great War: little red lines, jagged red splashes. Verdun had been a red splash, and no one had told him Verdun was a city where boys played in the park and mothers leaned out second-floor windows to call them in for supper. Bullets broke those windows. He saw the kitchen at home in Paris, the scarred pine table he’d known forever, broken glass and shrapnel among the dishes in the sink. Stupid. So
stupid
. How could he not have known?

He was shaking.

He got out of bed and went to the window. Dark clouds were blowing in over the moon. A breeze touched his face.

A faint sound began to rise from below, a pure and lovely thread of song through the darkness. Mama’s voice. From her open
bedroom
window, just below his, rose the sound of Mama quietly
singing
the song she had sung in church every year at Easter ever since he could remember.
To you the glory, O risen one.

The resurrection song.

Julien knelt at the window and listened, lips parted, taking in that pure sound till it ached in his limbs. He leaned his face into his hands and saw her in his mind, standing alone and singing, and it came to him that if he ever became a soldier, it would break her heart. The war would have to last three or four years first, and she could not survive that. And then his going away. Her voice rose easy as a bird to its final line:
No, I fear nothing
. Then stopped.

Julien looked up. The moon was gone, and so were the stars, and he was on his knees. “God,” he whispered. His voice was dry. “God. Please don’t let them get to Paris. Please keep … everybody … safe.” He sounded like a child—
and God bless Mommy
. When had God ever stopped a war because a teenager asked him to? The image came back, the tanks firing, the recoil, Vincent’s face
grinning
. He could never be a soldier. Never drive a tank.

It was unbearable.