“I deserved it.”

“That’s how a man answers.” Ingrid leaned and kissed him again. “Goodnight, love.”

She refilled his water glass, then left. An interval of time later—minutes, hours—different footsteps came in. Heavier ones. And the smell this time of leather and machines and cigarette smoke and Bay Rum. The mattress sagged as Emil sat on its edge, elbows on knees. It was so quiet, Kennet could hear the little rasp of skin on skin as Emil rubbed his hands together. When he glanced through his cracked eyelids, he saw Emil was smiling, and he followed his father’s gaze to the bedside table, where three apple cores were lined up by a stack of sugar cubes and crumpled candy wrappers.

“Will you remember now,” Emil said, “that your brothers and sister will go anywhere and do anything for you? And that it carries a great responsibility?”

His voice was soft. As if he stood on the far side of a bridge. Kennet made the decision to cross. A boy would lie there in sullen, martyred silence. A man now, and a captain, he whispered back, “I will. I promise.”

Emil’s hand fell warm on Kennet’s head.

“Godnatt, gullgosse.”

“Förlåt mig?” Kennet said.

Emil leaned and brushed a rough buss above Kennet’s ear. “Förlåten.”

Forgiven.

Hangman’s Coming

Kennet slowly came back to his soldier self, realizing he’d been telling his story aloud.

“What did I know of hunger?” he said. “I was a damn fool boy then. I’m just a damn fool punk now. I don’t have an onion to know.”

Fisha was awake, listening, attentive and solemn. Nodding as if he understood.

“Gullgosse,” he said, moving the word around his mouth like a piece of the American confection he constantly craved. “Godnatt, gullgosse.”

Kennet tugged the boy’s dirty shirt down, hiding the scars.

He wished he could get back the way he cried, that night he tried to beat the storm home and lost. The way he opened his throat and sobbed from his guts while the rain beat down. What luxury. What indulgence. He’d never cry that way again. Not after today. What possible reason could there be?

The pain of his long-ago beating was nothing compared to the agony of this forsaken place, where hundreds of thousands of family trees were sheared to the ground. Lives ended. Names ended. Nobody left to tell.

The shame choking him that long-ago day was nothing to the shame of merely being alive right now. Being whole and fed and clothed and shod and inoculated. He was a grunt, a cog in the Army’s labor force, but he had value. His body was the currency of war but Jesus H, it was sold dearly.