“What happened?” my mother asked.
“They found out,” he said again. He leaned on the kitchen countertop to steady himself and knocked the empty milk pot over. His face was flushed red from running, something I’d only seen him do once before, under the bridge in Rotterdam. “The engineers came back to the factory and found out what I’d done.”
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“What have you done?” my mother mouthed. She walked up to him and hit him on the chest and yelled this time, “What have you done?”
“I sabotaged the assembly lines to make all the lights we’ve been sending blow out or explode.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.
“After they took Father Heard, I had to do something.”
“Not this. No, let others fight this war, but not this. Now what will you do?” she asked.
“Let them build this nightmare of theirs in the dark.”
The heat of his words silenced us. We all stood there for a moment. He was still panting, his chest swelling and sinking. The water on the stove rose to a boil. The image of the lightbulbs shipped from Koopman Light exploding all over Germany came into my mind—a hundred thousand lightbulbs, all over the continent popping and raining little shards of glass onto German soldiers.
“What happened?” my mother asked.
“They figured it out. I went to the factory and the engineers were back and working on the assembly line they had me install. When they pulled out my addition, I ran off. They’ll know to find me here. They’ll be here soon.”
The smell of wet, boiling onions hit me. “Our food cards,” I said, immediately ashamed that this was my first reaction, fear of where my next meal would come from. “They’ll take away our food cards.”
“They’ll take away your father first.”
He ran from the room and up the stairs to his bedroom. Fergus followed. A moment later he came down with a satchel and was stuffing a shirt and a pair of pants into it. In the corner of his library he fished through a file cabinet for papers that he started shoving in his bag. He held up his passport and then he shoved it into the satchel.
“Where are you going?” my mother asked.
“You can’t go,” I said.
“Jacob. Come here.” He put his hands on my shoulders and bent down and kissed me on the forehead. “Meet me later tonight by the tree fort you boys built in the woods.” He pulled his pocket watch loose, flipped the worn lid open and checked the time. “Ten tonight, okay? If I’m not there by twelve, don’t wait any longer. Okay. Okay?”
“Aren’t we coming with you?”
He squeezed my shoulders and looked me square in the eye. Then there was a loud pounding on the door. Behind it words, stern and brutal. Hearing the voices without having heard a car pull up arrested us all for a moment.
“Open up, now,” a voice said. The pounding on the door started again, with greater force. We looked at each other without moving. My parents’ whispered conversations late at night over the past several years—their hushed words and careful planning—had all been to avoid this moment.
Fergus barked at the door. The doorknob turned and pushed open. My father sidestepped out of the hallway into the shadowy interior of his workroom. I had heard the same things everyone else had. That there were places the Germans sent Jews, nonconformists, and people like Samuel the air-writer—camps.
Camp. The word whistled through my mind as our front door swung open. My mother put her hands up to her pale face and stood frozen. Two men in knee-length, shiny, black leather jackets and padded field-gray hats with the red and black Nazi crosses above the eyes walked into the foyer. Each had a Luger pistol in his hand, leveled at his hip. From the corner of my eye, I could see into my father’s workroom, where he knelt, lay down on the floor, and began crawling across all that glass on his belly toward the outside door. His pocket watch dragged beside him by its thin, gold chain. He pulled himself by his bare forearms.
“Where is Hans Koopman?” one of the officers asked.
Fergus jumped up on the man who spoke and rested his paws on his jacket and barked. The man jerked his knee up into the center of the dog’s chest. Fergus collapsed. With a gasping exhale he kicked on the ground as his stomach shuddered. He dug into the carpet and writhed for air, making a dry swallowing sound, then stood up and limped out of the room.
“Where is Hans Koopman?” the man asked again and stepped forward.
“He’s at work,” my mother said and stepped closer to him to block his view of the workroom. Her fingers trembled.
The shadow of my father slithered over the floor.
One twitch of my eye, one tremble of the wood boards beneath him, and he’d be given away. His knees parted the layers of glass beneath him and his long body looked unnatural sprawled out on the ground. He swung open the door of his workroom to the snow-dusted yard and snaked out. Natural light flooded into his dark work space before he pushed the door shut with his foot. Part of me wanted to grab him and stand him up, make him face these men. I wanted him to be brave enough for all of us, for him to show me that there was no real threat to be scared of. To look these men in the eye the way I wanted to but still could not.
“Check upstairs,” the German who kneed Fergus said to the other.
Fergus cautiously followed the man through the house.
“You two, come over here,” the man in the foyer motioned with the gun.
My mother stepped in front of me and didn’t move. The heavy, heel-toe, heel-toe footsteps from room to room upstairs was followed by the tap and scratch of Fergus’s nails.
“We want to talk with Mr. Koopman right now.”
The soldier upstairs came down and searched the basement. He came up and walked by me, trailing the scent of cool leather. He stepped into my father’s workroom. Time stopped. He pulled something from his deep side pocket. Then he scratched a match across the box and held the flame out in front of him. The match made an outline of the rounded features of his hat. He stepped farther into the workroom. The match lit a path several feet ahead of him, and if he saw the door, he’d see the path my father made in the snow. I tried to say something, even reached my hands out toward the man to touch him, but there was such a knot in my throat that no words came. As he got to the end of the room, he waved the match in front of him, then turned back to me. He stood in the back part of the room for a moment. Then scraped something off the shelf. Small copper fixtures chimed on the floor as they landed. Each little, metallic note echoed in the air. Then the man shook the match out, and the smell of smoke drifted into the air as he walked back out of the room and into the kitchen.
When he came back, he held the skillet of caramelized onion.