The left way turned south toward the improved road. The right track was muddy, rutted and gouged in places, and blocked by more uprooted stumps in others. The right lane seemed to peter out altogether near the far end of the stump field.
Have faith, Adeline thought, peering forward and believing she could see a clear path through the stump field, across the border, and into thick trees on the other side. She glanced back over her shoulder at the guardhouse windows, seeing all three men facing her and the boys now, but still in the midst of argument, with the man in the homburg waving his hands all around.
“How far are we going, Mama?” Will asked.
Adeline smiled, shifted her grip on the rail, and said, “To those trees out there.”
“That’s not far,” Walt said.
“Half a kilometer. No more. Like walking to school from Frau Schmidt’s.”
She looked back a third time when they were a hundred meters out from the guardhouse and could no longer see the lower windows, which meant the men could no longer see her and the boys. Adeline’s heart began to soar as they kept moving the little wagon across the ruts and around the stumps, heading steadily west.
It’s done, she told herself as they walked another fifty meters toward freedom. We’re already in those trees out there. We’re already on that train to Alfeld. We’re already with Emil.
A gunshot split the cold morning air, a crack and whoosh that seemed to go right by them. Adeline startled, cowered, and then twisted around as another shot went off from back by the guardhouse. She couldn’t tell who was shooting at them or where they were firing from.
But there was no doubt about the man in the homburg and the black long coat, who was running up the drive now, waving his arm and shouting at her. “Halt! Stop!”
Her eyes widened. He’s secret police! she thought.
Positive now that they were going to be caught or shot, Adeline felt her faith turn to abject terror, as if she were about to be burned alive or drowned before her sons. She lunged forward against the rail, screaming at the boys. “Push! Run! Fast!”
Within twenty seconds, her lungs felt ready to burst, and her leg muscles turned rubbery. For a moment, she could not find the way through the stumps.
“My God!” she gasped. “Help me! Please!”
She took a few more steps and saw a path through the maze. She hauled the little wagon and her boys down it, looking back with three hundred meters left before the trees, and seeing that the man with the homburg was well out the driveway into the stump field and gaining on them.
Realizing he was going to catch her at this pace, Adeline surged with an emotional energy that she’d never felt before and never would again, a mother determined to save her children, a wife desperate to hold her husband again, a woman fueled by fear, by love, and by prayer.”
Her vision tunneled. Her hands ached, her shoulders howled, and her back felt ready to break in two places. But her legs had returned and kept driving as she yelled again and again at Walt and Will to keep going, to not give up.
Suddenly, they were almost there. Less than two hundred meters. Even through the stinging sweat in her eyes, Adeline could see where the stump field stopped at a brush line with a few scattered trees beyond that before the real forest began.
A gun barked. She swore the bullet passed right by them.
Fighting hysteria, she screamed, “Stay low and don’t stop, boys! Just keep going!”
Another flat gunshot sounded before three more followed in slow, deliberate, aimed succession as Adeline, Walt, and Will propelled the little wagon toward that brush line, those sparse trees, the woods, and freedom.
“Where’s that man?” she yelled.
“He’s getting closer, Mama!” Walt cried.
Adeline put her head down and used those words like the whip Emil used on the horses during the tank battle, goading her through the next hundred meters. It felt like an eternity before she could see the end of chaos and want, right there in front of her.
In moments, they were out of the stump field, stumbling across a small path and then plunging down another that wound west through matted dun grass, willows, and thorn brush before entering the thick woods. At the edge, she looked back to see the man in the homburg still out there in the stump field, still coming after them, maybe one hundred meters behind them.
“Just a little farther, boys!” she said, plunging into the woods.
The forest was shadowed and stark, with snow dusted across the floor and tree limbs. The path widened ahead, becoming more of a used lane again. It wound into pines and past a small millpond on their right. At the other end of the pond, there was a bench. Surely that would be far enough.
Reaching the bench, Adeline looked back once more, and saw no one running after them through the trees. Her leg and back muscles knotted and spasming, she allowed herself at last to slow, stop, and let go the rail. Only then did she collapse on the bench and take her crying, terrified sons into her arms. Only then did she break down, sobbing for joy.
“We’ve done it!” she blubbered, squeezing them close to her, and then laughing hysterically. “We believed and we’re free, boys! Free! And we will see your father before the sun goes down!”
Back down the trail, a branch snapped.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Adeline whipped her head around and saw the man who’d chased them. He was limping toward them, his coat muddy and open, his homburg muddy and in his muddy hand, his face mud streaked, florid, and sweaty as he shook his head.
She pulled the boys even tighter as he gasped angrily, “Fräulein, why didn’t
