The Last Green Valley, Mark Sullivan [most read books in the world of all time .txt] 📗

the first few minutes. He was able to see where they’d come from but understood how fast the snow was falling and how quickly the wind was covering their tracks. He wanted to urge his horses to go faster, but he was having trouble seeing.

And then he couldn’t make out their wheel tracks at all. Everything was snowed over. The snow was up to the axles of the wagon. If I keep it up . . .

Emil did not like thinking about ifs. He decided instead to zigzag forward from the last trace by dead reckoning, hoping to come upon tracks the storm had not yet erased. But with the wind churning the heavy snowfall, there was nothing. He finally turned the wagon broadside to the wind, stopped, and set the brake.

“What are we doing?” Adeline asked.

“Waiting out the storm,” he said. “We can’t be more than five hundred meters from that road, but I have no idea where exactly. When we can see, we’ll find it. We’ll catch up to the trek.”

He climbed down and unharnessed the horses. He brought them around on the leeward side of the wagon, tied them to it, and then climbed into the back of the wagon.

“You look like a snowman, Papa!” Will said from under the blankets.

Emil looked down and saw he was coated head to toe in snow.

Walt started to laugh. So did Adeline, who said, “Take it off or brush it off. You’ll get us all wet if you get under the blankets with us.”

Emil struggled to get his coat off, then shook it out the back and laid it to the side.

He did the same with his boots and pants, and then slid under the blankets next to Walt. It was warm, and even though the wagon was getting buffeted, the bonnet and his frame seemed to be holding. They were safe for now.

The wind ebbed a little and then a lot. For a good fifteen seconds, the bonnet above them luffed. Then a gust hit before another lull and then another howl. Emil gazed across the heads of his boys at his wife, frightened and transfixed by the weather.

“We’ll be okay,” he said.

Adeline roused slowly from her nap, at first not understanding where she was, only that her body was warm, and she was breathing in bitterly cold air. The horses shifted against their leads and the wagon, bringing her fully awake. She opened her eyes, saw it was still day but no longer snowing. Emil was already up and gone.

Will stirred, said, “Are we there yet?”

Walt said, “Does anything look green out there to you?”

Adeline tickled Will, and then got out from under the blankets and onto the bench. Her breath threw clouds. The sky was clearing. The sun said it was midafternoon. Everything as far as she could see, and she could see quite far, was sparkling and brilliant white, so dazzling, it hurt her eyes to look for long.

Emil came around the side of the wagon, leading Oden and Thor. “Can you fetch some grain?”

“Yes. Where are we? Where’s the road?”

“I think it’s near that thin tree line way over there,” he said, gesturing with his free hand. “But we’ll go up that little hill to get a better look.”

“I don’t see any wagons or vehicles.”

“We will from up there,” he said, harnessing Oden. “I promise you we’ll be on that road before dark and caught up to the trek before you know it.”

When Adeline jumped down, the snow was up to her knees in places, but she could see where it had drifted deeper. After she’d gotten the horses a full can from their single sack of oats, and Emil had harnessed Thor, they set out for that hill ahead of them.

“You think we’ll make it to the top?” she asked. “We don’t want to get stuck.”

“We’ll get as close as we can, and I’ll climb from there.”

In the wake of the storm, the air had turned so bitter, the blowing snow writhed like smoke around the horses’ legs and the wagon wheels. Emil stopped them well short of the base of the hill, which was drifted over.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, and handed her the reins.

Adeline watched her husband march into the drift, only to go as far as midthigh, which delighted both boys, who laughed.

“Papa got stuck,” Will said.

“Not for long,” Adeline said as Emil fought and kicked his way up to shallower snow and then went steadily up the hill.

He was about three-quarters of the way up when, over the boys’ talking and the horses’ jingling their harnesses, Adeline heard a low rumble to the south, back toward the tree line. She got up on the wagon bench, shielded her eyes, and saw six German Panzer tanks about a kilometer away, grinding through the snow in their direction.

“Thank God,” she said to the boys. “Once they drive through, they’ll pound down all the snow, and it will be easy for us to get from here to the road.”

The sound of the tanks seemed suddenly to get louder and closer, so close she barely caught the sound of a voice yelling. Then she realized the sound was not coming from the south, but from the north.

She whipped her head around, seeing Emil leaping down the hill toward them like some spooked goat, his knees pumping and his lower legs snapping forward, getting buried in the snow, and then vaulting up and out again. Even with seventy meters separating them, she could see the terror on his face.

“Adeline!” he screamed.

“Mama! Look on top!” Walt yelled.

Up the hill and behind Emil a good two hundred meters, the barrel of the cannon of a Soviet tank appeared, followed by its huge turret and armored hull, treads chewing up the snow and the semifrozen earth below.

“Run!” Will screamed. “Run, Papa!”

Emil glanced over his shoulder, hit the deep snow at the bottom of the hill, staggered, and sprawled forward on his face. The tank stopped,