They would rest briefly. Alice volunteered to stand watch at the base of a spruce tree, where she propped herself again its trunk and watched the gray of the night dissolve. Within moments, the rest of the Winfields were slipping into a thin sleep. No one slept deeply anymore. The sky began to swell with clouds as the dawn broke, ugly and red. It seemed to Alice as if the war had literally bled into the sky, as if the earth had hemorrhaged with its burden of the dead and the dying and simply could absorb no more. No birds spilled their song into the dawn sky. There was only the distant pounding of artillery.
The morning was cold, and they were wrapped up in every scrap of clothing they had. A shallow layer of ground fog was beginning to rise as Alice unwrapped a candy bar. She was just about to bite into it when a small figure emerged from a thicket of slender birches not twenty feet away.
My god! she thought. It was a child dressed in a raggedy coat that was several sizes too big. A flat hat, also too large, with a shiny black visor that almost covered his eyes. He carried a huge, ancient-looking weapon. And on his sleeve he wore an armband—a Volkssturm armband. Alice heard her father say, “Good lord, I haven’t seen one of those bolt action rifles since the Great War and Verdun.”
“Ja, ja. As good as a Panzerfaust—a tank fist. I can blow up a tank with this.” A high, piping voice emanated from somewhere under the dark visor.
“I’m sure you can, young man.”
The boy, who could not have been more than eight or nine years old, smiled slightly and narrowed his eyes.
“I’m going to kill you. Kill you all. I’m from the people’s army.”
“Uh . . . before you kill us, might you tell us your name?” Alice asked.
“Why?” the child snarled.
“I . . . I just feel that it’s polite.”
“But you’ll be dead. Why do you need to know? You going to tattle on me to God? God is on my side.”
“And do you know what side we are on?” Alan asked. By this point, Posie and Louise were wide awake.
“Yes, yes, it would be proper, dear, for us to introduce ourselves,” Posie spoke in her most motherly voice.
“My name is Max!” the boy blurted out.
“Max!” Alice exclaimed. “Like Max and Moritz.”
“Yes,” the boy cried with sheer delight. “You like Max and Moritz?”
“My very favorite comic strip in the whole wide world. I’m going to be a teacher when I grow up. And I’m going to insist that for homework every night, every kid has to read a Max and Moritz cartoon. And then we’re going to learn how to draw the characters.” The boy’s eyes grew wide.
“What’s your favorite Max and Moritz story?” he asked.
Alice put one finger thoughtfully against her cheek as if thinking. “Well it’s a tie, really. I love the one where they put the beetles in the uncle’s bed, but I also like the one about the Widow Bolte and the frying chickens.”
“Oh, that one is so funny! And the part where they get the fishing rods and climb onto the roof of the barn and then fish for the frying chickens and then the widow . . .” He now sounded like every eight-year-old boy Alice had ever encountered. They had to tell you every single part of a complicated plot in any story—a movie, a book, or a comic strip. “You know what?” Max’s brown eyes opened even wider as he looked at Posie Winfield, whose own eyes were fixed on the huge rifle. “Your mum over there looks a lot like the Widow Bolte.”
“Hmmm . . .” Alice said in a reflective tone. “I don’t quite see it. But maybe.”
“Maybe not!” flashed Posie. “I’m not nearly as fat as the Widow Bolte.”
“Oh, you read comic strips too!” Max was clearly delighted.
“Not that much, but I’ve seen the ones my daughter reads.”
“Well, you’re not as fat, but there’s something about your face.”
Posie smiled. Alice thought she saw the shimmer of tears welling up in her mother’s eyes.
“Max,” said Alice. “Come over here and sit beside me and tell me the rest. Want some chocolate? I have a Good Chew here. I can share it with you.”
“You have a Good Chew?”
“Indeed I do.” Without a thought, the boy laid down his gun and came and sat by Alice.
For the next twenty minutes, they talked Max and Moritz stories and ate candy, for the Winfields had packed at least two dozen bars. When Alice began to tell the one about Max and the angry teacher, Max burst out. “Oh, I didn’t know that one! The teacher stories are my sister’s favorite!”
“Ah, then you can tell her this one.”
His face suddenly turned somber.
“Nope,” he said crisply. “She’s dead.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” Alice said.
“My mum and dad too.”
“Oh dear,” Posie moaned softly. She stood up and walked over to where he sat next to Alice. “Tell me, Max, would you like to join us?”
He didn’t answer for what seemed to Alice as the longest time. He looked over at the gun he had laid on the ground. There was an unbearable tension that seemed to seize the air.
“Are you going to surrender?” he asked.
“You can call it what you like, son.” Alan Winfield walked up to him. “But we are going to live, and you still have a lot of growing to do.”
“Yes, sir. My father was six feet three inches tall.”
“Oh, I bet you’ll be too,” Alan Winfield said. “Come along, son.” Alice watched her father put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Then Max reached up and took Alan’s hand, and they all began to walk west.
They left their bikes in the woods and walked several miles until they reached the Elbe River. They spent hours crouched behind the wreckage of a panzer tank on the east side of the Elbe and watched. The bridge that spanned the river had been destroyed, and what was left was a twisted mass of steel rearing from the water like a warped sea monster.
“How will we get across?” Louise whispered. “The war is over, but we’re stuck here.”
“Look!” Alan Winfield said. “Look at those soldiers!”
Two soldiers were scrambling over the crumpled remains of the bridge. One carried a Russian flag, the other an American flag.
“They’re climbing out on that broken bridge,” Alice whispered. “I can’t believe it.”
“They’re shaking hands,” Louise said.
“We’re going home!” Posie sighed as tears streamed down her face. She turned toward Max. “Would you like to come all the way home with us, Max?”
“Where is home?” His little face looked up at her.
“England, child. England!”
Epilogue
Five days later on a transport ship across the English Channel, Alice and Louise stood by the railing, watching the coast of England emerge. The public address system crackled to life. Not with the voice of the captain, but of BBC newscaster Alvar Lidell.
“This is London Calling. Here is a dispatch just in. German radio minutes ago announced that Hitler is dead. I’ll repeat that. Hitler is dead. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, forty hours after marrying Eva Braun. Some say that an aria from his favorite composer, Richard Wagner, was playing at the time of his suicide.”