The sun sets late in northern Vermont summers, but that evening, it seemed to take impossibly long. John's misery had only increased as he and Thomas had returned from the hunt with nothing—and, John noted, no one. John had cooked supper, an uninspired meal of canned beans and bratwurst, with a wide-open opportunity to slip poison into Thomas' plate. John rejected the idea. Dr. Adler, the poison's provider, had claimed it was undetectable, and the autopsy would blame a heart attack, but how likely was that cause of death in one so young? Someone might suspect foul play, or worse, might suspect a congenital heart defect that would put John's family under the very scrutiny he was trying to avoid.
No, the best way of killing Thomas, it was clear in retrospect, was a gun accident. But John had already lost his appetite for that method.
"Father, I'm tired. I'd like to go to bed."
John regarded his sleepy-eyed son. In the cabin's dim, yellow lamplight, the boy's pimples and dirty face were blurred away and he seemed even more the perfect exemplar of a Nazi heir. With his tousled hair and rugged flannel shirt he might have been posing for a Hitler Youth recruiting poster.
John made an extra effort to reply in a steady voice.
"Yes, you go ahead. Take the top bunk. I'll be up for a while yet; I have work to do."
John's statement was absurd. He had been sitting in the musty, overstuffed chair by the fire since the dishes were done, doing nothing but staring at the far wall of rough-hewn logs. Such was his inattention to detail that he had not brought a satchel of papers. He had not expected to stay the night, and yet, here he was, sitting up in the semi-dark while his son struggled with weakened arms to pull his body up onto the bunk.
At last Thomas got himself into the bunk and laid down, turned to the side so the light of the fire was not flickering in his eyes.
John waited. Scenes of his past, deliberately forgotten scenes of cruelty and every kind of wickedness, came to his attention like a line of POWs shuffling up to him to make their resentful, hollow-eyed accusations. His mentors had told him the way of life he had chosen would require strength, and he had rejoiced. He had been a fool; John saw now the way demanded of him a kind of strength he had not expected: an inhuman strength. To send those memories—of innocent people murdered, of children used as hostages for the enslavement of parents, of repeating the bald-faced lies his superiors found convenient—to send those memories back down to the deep unconscious part of his mind where they could never trouble him again was utterly beyond John's ability.
And yet, here he was. He was sitting in this lodge, waiting until he heard his beloved son Thomas' steady, slow breaths that signaled deep sleep. Waiting for the time after which his excuses would run out.
John leaned over and pulled from his duffel an overnight bag labeled only with a neat swastika embossed in its black leather. Inside was a small case.
It contained a vial of a powerful barbiturate and a syringe. It seemed Dr. Adler's first suggestion had been correct all along. An injection, a quick stab in the sleeper, was the only way. Or, if not the only way, then at least, the way that presented itself, now that John was done with waiting.
That is what John told himself. But after he had filled the syringe from the tiny, deadly bottle, he continued to stare at the wall—and the fire crackled, and Thomas maintained his deep, quiet, steady breaths, and John's ghostly accusers marched past as he did nothing.
