The sky that day in 1947 wasn't screaming crimson artillery fire but rather the gray, pneumatic dust-ghost left behind in the wake of shelling. Captain John Smith knew the war was over; the vacant air stung his lips with the metallic twang of defeat,
But it didn't have to be defeat.
Yes, he knew the war was over, but that was precisely why he disobeyed his senior officer's command and ordered his men forward.
"But sir," a fat-lipped young lieutenant cried. "You'll get us captured! The Nazis are waiting to take prisoners of war."
"I won't get you captured, lieutenant," Smith said calmly, eyes already set beyond the horizon line at the future. Beyond the buildings, the wrecked Maine lighthouses scattered on rocky beaches, he could already hear the glass-sharp sound of German. "I'll get you freed. I'll get us all freed."
And thus the 53th Infantry Battalion of the United States army marched, muddy sweat oozing from every pore, straight into the arms of the enemy.
"John, won't you help change the baby?"
The boy sighed, leaving his game of marbles against himself in the sandy dirt of the backyard, and went to his mother on the patio. In the past year he found himself having to duck to avoid the low-hanging loose plank from the roof that was two splinters away from crushing any unfortunate soul beneath it. John's father always said he'd fix it, but every night found himself too disheartened for anything but whiskey.
"Thank you, sweetheart," his mother panted, swiping a veiny hand across her forehead before going into the kitchen to check on the toddlers who waddled on the floor there. On the counter beside the icebox she kept a photo of her true family-John, Edward, her, her husband-from John's tenth birthday. Her face like an ironed satin curtain glowed through the photograph, eyes glimmering dark gems and hair of silken ringlets. So much had changed in just two years.
John held his breath as he changed the strange child, They were all strange children; they belonged no more in his house than a dolphin belonged in the African savannah. All day long they cried, from stubbing their toes or growing tired and hungry. For mere pennies a day, and sometimes less if their mothers couldn't pay, John's mother watched the squawling balls while mothers and fathers alike scrounged for any income. Of late John's mother had been paid in more "Next time, I promise"s than actual coins, but she had more children to watch than ever. John wished she'd pay half as much attention to him and to Edward as she did to the strange children.
"We're her own blood, her own children," he told the baby, but it merely mouthed its own hand.
"John?" His mother stuck her sagging face out the door. "Was that you talking?"
"Only to the baby, Mother," he said. He showed his mother the child, freshly diapered and gurgling. "I'm finished. May I go talk with Edward?"
Her expression softened. "Go ahead. I'll call you down if I need more help."
John raced up the stairs to the room he shared with his brother. Edward reclined on his pillow, propped up against the wall. On his nightstand his radio, a gift on his thirteenth birthday way back in the years before the Depression set in, mumbled softly. Upon seeing John, Edward shut it off with a shaky hand.
"Come to have pity on a feeble old man?" he asked, his signature easy smile making it almost possible to forget that there was anything wrong with him.
'Don't say that, Eddie," John said. He looked at the bundle of blankets where Edward's legs were, quivering gently. "How are your legs?"
"Still not cooperating, but I think they're getting better. Mother says if I rest them for a few more days I should be good as new."
John nodded, a little lump of fear poking at his throat.
"And besides," Edward said, "lounging around in bed all day isn't half-bad. Gives me a lot of time to listen to the radio. Get this." Edward patted a space on his mattress for his brother to sit. John obliged. "I heard a news report talking about a new guy called Adolf Hitler becoming chancellor of Germany."
"So?" John asked.
"Reporters don't seem to like him very much. I don't know. Any guy with a title like Chancellor seems fascinating to me. Say," Edward whispered suddenly, eyes stretching with the birth of idea. "You wouldn't be up for a run to the library, would ya? I mean, of course, you doing the running. Not me."
John shot off the bed, heart thumping in eagerness to be of service to his brother and to be out of the house, free of the sniveling strange-children. "Of course!"
Edward beamed. "Great. Pick me up some books about this Hitler guy and his group. News says they're called National Socialists.". He pronounced the words slowly to make sure John caught them. "Whatever you can find. We'll read 'em together tonight."
John nodded once more and then he was off, darting down the stairs, out the door, and down the street to the public library. Adolf Hitler. National Socialists. All the while the words formed a Gregorian chant in his head,
Adolf Hitler.
John heaved open the brass doors and nodded, short-of-breath, to the mousy librarian lady tucked away at her desk. The library smelled musty and of talcum powder.
National Socialists.
He walked briskly to the first place he thought he could find those words: the politics section. He scanned through a sea of endless brown spines. Adolf Hitler. He saw Machiavelli's The Prince alongside debates on the nature of the Italian states. National Socialists. Books on the French Revolution, and on Alexander Ypsilanti's liberation of Greece.
There. A small, chubby black book, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. John plucked it off the shelf. Beside it were two slim volumes contemplating the National Socialist movement in Europe. He took those as well, and plopped all three down on a table. He began to read.
The pages whirred past John's eyes until his fingers grasped the back cover of the first slim book. Family. The possibility of a perfect race, of a perfect humanity. An end to suffering, economically, mentally, physically. He was on the second slim book when the librarian lady tapped his shoulder.
"We're closing for the day," she said. "But I can check those out for you."
John thanked her and ran home, brain churning and humming with what he had read. His heart pulsed with a ravenous hunger. He would show the books to Edward. He would submerse himself in their pages once more.