Nobody should live like that. Certainly not a woman likeher. And sure ashellnot kids.
For days afterward, I flew my routes and tried to shake it. Tempelhof to Fassberg, Fassberg back to Tempelhof, flour in, mail out. Engines, checklists, the endless rhythm of the airlift. I told myself I was doing enough. I helped drop hundreds of tons of food on this city every week. That was my job. That was my responsibility.
But the image of Klaus's too-thin arms and Axel's limp kept crawling back into my head like smoke. I'd comefrom a tiny town in Montana. My little sister, Molly, used to complain if we didn't have second helpings of pie. I'd give anything to hear her whine about dessert now. I should write. I should call. Every night I thought it. Every morning I didn't.
Instead, I found myself standing in front of the PX—Post Exchange, a store for the soldiers and dependents .
It was ridiculous. I knew that. The PX was meant for us, American personnel, dependents, people with ID cards and paperwork. It was supposed to be a bubble of home in the middle of wreckage. Fluorescent lights, shelves, neat rows of goods that made no sense in a starving city: canned fruit, new socks, shaving cream, magazines, stacks of Hershey bars, nylons in crisp packets.
I walked in and felt the wrongness of it like a punch. Out there, kids were chewing on stale bread and boiling potatoes down to glue. In here, some lieutenant's wife was complaining that they were out of her favorite brand of lipstick.
It wasn't fair.
But I wasn't here for fair.
I picked up what I could carry without getting questions I didn't want to answer: two blankets, two pillows and cases—I thought a second, then added one of each for good measure—socks in a child's size and a size up, a couple of plain dresses that might fit Inga—serviceable, nothing fancy— undershirts and shorts for boys, a hammer and a box of nails, andlastly, some essentials, like soap. Real, good-smelling soap. Then I doubled back for whatever food I could smuggle out of the mess. Hamburger patties wrapped in paper, a few bread rolls, an apple or two pilfered from a crate, some boiled potatoes that wouldn't be missed.
Every piece I picked up, my dragon stirred. He liked this. Providing. Hoarding for someone other than me. It was an instinct older than war: bring back meat to the den, keep the young alive.
The soldier in me muttered about regulations. About boundaries. The man in me didn't care. At least not about that. What I did worry about was Inga. She'd be angry if I just turned up and dumped charity on her doorstep. I knew that in my bones. She was a proud woman. She wore her dignity like armor, because it was the one thing nobody could take from her. If I showed up while she was home, she'd probably throw half of it back in my face.
So I didn't show up when she was home.
I waited.
I knew roughly when she left for Die Ecke, late afternoon, coat pulled tight, hair pinned back, shoulders squared like she was going into battle. I watched from a distance once, just to be sure. Then, when the shadows stretched long and the city started lighting its candles and coal stoves, I made my move.
Klaus answered my knock. His eyes went round.
"Hallo," I said, feeling stupid. "Klaus. Hi."
He didn't understand the words, but he understoodme. His whole face lit up.
"Flieger!" he chirped—pilot—and stepped aside to let me in.
Axel was there too, sitting on a crate, one leg stretched out, hands folded like he was afraid to touch anything. He stared at the bundle in my arms as if it might explode.
"Hey," I murmured, lowering my voice like I was in a church. "I brought you something."
Klaus bounced. "Was ist das?"
I didn't have the words, so I let the action speak. Blankets first. Spread over the mattress that was nothing but sad springs and thin cloth. The pillows next. I shoved it under the sheet and patted it, then mimed sleeping. Klaus laughed.
Then the food. I unwrapped the hamburgers, and the smell hit the room like a bomb, a good one, for once. Meat, fat, salt. Their eyes went comically wide.
"Holy hell," I whispered. "You really haven't eaten anything like this in a while, have you?"
They didn't need translation. They needed permission. I nodded. "Go on."
They descended like wolf pups, small, polite wolf pupswho still looked at me every three seconds to make sure it was really okay.
Watching them devour those burgers did something to me. It wasn't just hunger; it was the disbelief in their eyes, their expressions that got to me. It was the joy and confusion and this fragile, wildhopethat maybe the world hadn't forgotten them entirely.
My throat burned again.
When they were done, Klaus leaned back, rubbing his stomach like an old man after Sunday dinner. "So gut," he sighed reverently.
"Tomorrow," I said, tapping his chest lightly, then my own, "we do this again, okay?"
