The Dog in the Wood

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In the distance Fritz heard again the droning of engines. The front was coming closer, and the east wind blew the noise of cannons, tanks, and gunfire toward their farm. The Russians would be there soon. Fritz set down the tray with the tomato seedlings on the corner post of the garden fence and looked up into the cloudless sky. No sign of the Luftwaffe. The Russians should have come during the winter when the weather was gloomy and everyone had to stay inside. Now, in late April, Fritz enjoyed being outside and the best time for gardening had begun. The garden was at the south end of the farm, behind the barn, overlooking the pond and the family’s forest in the distance. Fritz imagined the Russians coming through the forest. Would they arrive in tanks? Would there be air raids? He had seen a picture of a Russian soldier in a leaflet about Bolshevism on Grandpa’s desk. A man with a shorn head and mean eyes, holding a knife between his teeth, was running after a blond child. Fritz squatted down and began his work. Better not to think about what would happen when the Russians arrived. He loosened the fragile tomato seedlings from their pots and set them one by one into the row of small hollows he had prepared in the soil. By the time the tomatoes were ripe the war would be long over.

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