Black Radishes by Susan Lynn Meyer Read Free Book Online

himself. “If the Boches ever dare come here.”
    He took out his pocketknife and began sharpening the first of the three long sticks that he had found in the yard behind the house. When he had made three spears, one for each boy, he arranged the weapons against the wall. In his rucksack were the Y-shaped stick he had found last week and an old pair of underwear. Yesterday he had torn them so badly when they caught on a twig while he was climbing one of the hazelnut trees that Maman had said they couldn’t be mended. Now he carefully cut the elastic off with his pocketknife and attached it to the Y-shaped stick, making a perfect slingshot. He shoved it into his back pocket.
    “Just in case,” he muttered.
    In Gustave’s opinion, the fort was the best thing about Saint-Georges. Otherwise, it was lonely. Luckily, he had never run into the pale-eyed boy again, but he also hadn’t found anyone else to hang around with. He wasn’t going to school. Papa said that it didn’t make much sense to go, since the school year was nearly over, and they might not be in Saint-Georges very long. Once, at the post office, Gustave had spotted the little boy who had peered out at him from the gate that first day, and another time, Gustave had seen a group of girls about his age in the village. One girl had looked at him curiously, but it was hard just to go up and start talking to girls you didn’t know. Maman was away from home a lot now, working at a typing job she had found almost right away. She pedaled off in the mornings on an old bicycle she had bought from Madame Foncine.
    Without his store, Papa didn’t have much to do in Saint-Georges either. He listened to the radio a lot, and sometimes he and Gustave worked together, fixing things in the new house. Sometimes he walked to nearby villages and sat in cafés for hours, talking with other men about the war. The house was often empty. Gustave would never admit it to Jean-Paul, and especially not to Marcel, but these days, he usually carried Monkey around in his pocket, just to have a little company.
    Gustave climbed down from the loft and wandered into the kitchen. Maman was home from work early, and she had a box of photographs open on the table. She was sorting them into piles while dinner simmered on the stove.
    “Look, Gustave,” Maman said, smiling. “Here’s a picture of you when you were a baby. Do you remember this little tricycle you used to ride? And look—here is one of you and Marcel, eating your first ice cream cones ever!”
    Gustave looked over her shoulder and laughed. In the ice cream picture, Marcel was standing and Gustave was in a stroller. Both of them were grinning, their faces and shirts covered in chocolate.
    “Do you have a newer one of me and Marcel and Jean-Paul?” Gustave asked. “One I can put in the picture frame that’s in my room?”
    “Oh, I’m sure there’s one in there somewhere,” Maman said, getting up from her seat to check on the pot on the stove. “Go ahead and look. Just be sure to hold the photos by their edges so that you don’t get fingerprints on them.”
    Gustave went up to get the frame and came back down, rubbing the dull metal on his shirt to make it shiny. He sat at the table and shuffled through the photographs. He found one of Maman and Aunt Geraldine as teenagers, smiling astride their bicycles, and one of Papa with a much younger Gustave on his shoulders. There was Papa as a boy, standing waist-deep with his friends in a lake in Switzerland, snow-capped mountains soaring behind them.
    “Oh, look—perfect!” Gustave cried. Maman leaned over his shoulder to see a photo of Gustave, Marcel, and Jean-Paul on their winter camping trip in the mountains two years ago. Gustave and Jean-Paul were bundled up, but Marcel had stripped off his hat, jacket, and shirt for the photograph and was standing bare-chested in the snow, flexing his arm muscles to show how tough he was. The three of them were standing close together,