Emil was not interested in what was happening back there. His entire focus was on that bridge and getting as far west of the river as fast as possible. But there were too many vehicles, horses, wagons, and refugees on foot at the east entrance to the span. The caravan laced, tied up, and then unknotted with maddening slowness. People were screaming at one another. Two old men in adjacent wagons lashed at each other with buggy whips. The air stank of sweated horses and frightened humans.

“I can’t see my mother or Malia!” Adeline said.

“I can’t help them,” Emil said, gritting his teeth.

“Malia was driving!”

“I can’t help her, either. Where are my parents?”

“To our left four wagons and one behind. Rese’s between your mother and father. She looks as scared as I’ve ever seen her.”

“Do you blame her?” Emil said, seeing an opening and urging his horses through it and onto the ramp that climbed to the bridge.

As they reached the high spot on the span, Adeline peered back toward Dubossary again, seeing flashes and more blasts and plumes of smoke rising before German artillery finally responded with cannon and mortar. Bombs erupted to the north where Stalin’s Second Ukrainian Front of the Red Army was preparing to storm the town.

“Mama, I have to go pee,” Will said.

Before she could reply, she saw her mother, eight wagons behind them, sitting stone-still beside her older sister. “There they are!” Adeline cried. “Malia’s still got the reins!”

Walt shouted, “Mama! Papa! Planes!”

Adeline’s attention jerked upriver, seeing Soviet fighters flying low over the Dniester in waves. The first four broke toward Dubossary, and their machine guns opened fire, strafing the Wehrmacht positions. The second wave did the same. But the third flight of four came at them.

“Get down!” Emil shouted, let go the reins, grabbed Adeline by the shoulders, and half dove into the wagon beside the boys.

The four planes did not open fire on the wagons on the bridge; instead, they buzzed them and followed the retreating trek west, tracking the convoy before disappearing. The fifth wave of Soviet fighters did the same, and as the Martels finally rode off the bridge into the country of Moldova, they heard the rattle of machine guns far, far ahead of them and out of sight.

“I thought that was it,” Adeline gasped, sitting up beside Emil who’d already grabbed the reins and was urging Oden and Thor back into line. “I thought we were done.”

Emil had thought much the same as he clucked up his horses into a trot to keep pace with the wagon ahead. Even with the bombs still exploding behind them, now that he was beyond Dubossary and getting farther from it, a place never to be seen again, he felt somewhat emboldened by their escape.

“We are not close to being done,” he said, and pulled Adeline tight beside him. “You hear? The Martels are not close to being done.”

Adeline grinned and kissed him. He looked like the old Emil! He sounded like the old Emil! She loved him when he was like this, refusing to give up in his own quiet, stubborn way.

Will said, “I have to pee.”

Walt’s voice was shaking. “Did they almost shoot us, Mama?”

“No,” she said, spinning around and seeing her older son trembling and his hands clenched in fists. “They didn’t shoot at us. They shot at the town and somewhere up ahead.”

“Are they coming back? Are the tanks?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a long silence before Walt said, “I want to go home.”

“We have no home now,” Emil said.

“Yes, we do,” Adeline said firmly. “Our family is home. Wherever we’re together is home. This is home. It doesn’t matter if we’re on the farm or in the beautiful green valley as long as we’re together.”

“Can I go pee in the green valley?” Will asked.

Adeline frowned, took one look at her younger child—up on his knees, fidgeting while his swollen cheeks turned red with strain—and burst out laughing. “You poor thing.”

“It’s not funny!” Will said. “I’m going to pee my pants!”

“Ahh, don’t do that!” Walt said, and started to laugh along with his mother.

“Then stop the wagon,” Will said.

“I can’t,” Emil said. “The pace is too fast, and I don’t want to be left behind. You’ll just have to hold it another half hour at least.”

“I can’t, Papa! I’m pinching it with my fingers right now!”

“Pee out the back of the wagon, then,” Adeline said, trying to stop laughing.

Will gave her a sour look before grinning at the idea. “Okay!”

As he crawled toward the rear of the wagon, Walt said, “That family behind us is going to see you pee out the back, Will. You’ll probably hit their horses in the face.”

Will paused, craned his head up, and saw an older woman at the reins of the wagon behind them. There was a teenage girl beside her and three more kids beneath the bonnet. And their horses were less than a meter away at times.

“I can’t, Mama,” he said.

“You’ll never see them again,” Emil said, chuckling now.

“I still can’t,” Will said. “Forget it. I’m just going to wet my pants.”

“Don’t you dare,” Adeline said, biting her lip to keep from laughing again. “You’ll sit in your stew for hours, and then you’ll break out in a rash. Crawl back by the little wagon, the kitchen box in the corner. There’s an empty glass jar in there. You’ll pee in that.”

Will loved that idea and went scrambling back to the corner.

Emil glanced at her.

“I’ll clean it,” she said. “Unless you have a better idea?”

Emil smiled and shook his head.

Will found the jar, turned his back on the trailing wagon, and fumbled at the buttons to his wool pants. He got them undone and was reaching inside when he realized Adeline and Walt were watching him.

“Turn around,” he said, frowning.

“As you wish,” Adeline said, turning to look ahead. They were out on a floodplain that was just greening. There was a lull in the battle behind them.

“What do I do when I’m done?”

“Hand it to me, and I’ll dump it over the side.”

The trek was still moving at a steady clip and was nearing the far side of the floodplain where the road climbed a bluff. After a minute, Adeline said, “Are you done back there?”

“No.”

“No?” she said, twisting around to see him with his pants fully unbuttoned and pulled down to his thighs.

Will was still frowning. “It doesn’t want to come out, Mama. It’s like it’s scared!”

Adeline burst out laughing again. Walt looked, made a disgusted face, and clamped his hand across his mouth to hide his amusement. Emil glanced over his shoulder, and he started laughing, too. It was contagious. There was no stopping it.

Even Will started laughing so hard, tears streamed down his face and he was having trouble holding the jar in front of him. Then a short shot of pee squirted from him and hit the oilskin tarp beside Walt.

Adeline shrieked with laughter. Walt screamed as he rolled away, “Piss in the jar, idiot!”

“You pee any more on that tarp and you’ll clean it, Will,” Emil said.

Will clamped the jar over his groin. “I couldn’t help it,” he chortled.

Adeline turned around again. She had forgotten how good it felt to laugh like this, the tank battles and the bombardments forgotten for the moment. Laughter was like a hot shower for the soul after a long, cold day.

“Ahhhh,” Will said.

“He’s peeing!”

“Thank you, Walt,” Emil said. “Congratulations, Will.”

Adeline started laughing all over again. A half minute went by.

“He’s peeing a long time,” Walt said.

“Enough,” Emil said.

A few moments later, Will cried, “I’m empty, and the wagon behind us is back there pretty far, Mama. I’ll pour it out. You don’t have to do it.”

“Thank you, Will,” she said. “And find a place for the jar that’s not in the kitchen box.”

“Okay,” he said. “And I’ll find a rag to clean up the pee on the tarp.”

She looked at Emil and winked at him.

A few minutes later, Will crawled into her lap, snuggled into her, and said, “When are we gonna get there?”

Adeline kissed the top of his head and smiled. “In God’s time.”

“That’s long,” Will said.

“Sometimes. And sometimes God works in the blink of an eye.”

“And most times he doesn’t work at all,” Emil said. “Sometimes God is so deaf, you’d know he wasn’t—”

Adeline shot him a sharp look and said, “That’s enough.”

“What? They might as well learn the truth young, Adella.”

“And what truth is that?” she said in a tone that warned him he was on thin ice.

Emil hesitated, said, “God is not going to be there for them at every turn.”

“Of course he is. If they ask him.”

“I’m just saying a man has got to look out for himself and what’s his, Adeline. If some invisible God has a hand, I’m all for it. But I’ve learned from experience not to expect it, and neither should you, and neither should the boys. And I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

The wind shifted now and blew a little harder, forced her to rewrap her scarf as she watched Emil at the reins. Is he still scarred by Dubossary?

Every time she’d brought the subject up after that morning he’d come home back in September 1941, he’d gotten angry and walked away, just like his mother had the night before.

He said he was held by the Nazis. What happened? Is there a part of him I don’t know? And never will?

Chapter Seven