Free Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller

blame yourself?’
    â€˜Yes. Entirely. I brought him up on war stories. I told him that a man fights for his country. I encouraged him to enlist. Jews can’t get out of Russia. They file their papers to emigrate and they get blacklisted — they call them refuseniks. They live like nervous rats. We live like men. That’s because we’re Americans. And America is at war. So, Johnny, go get your gun, I said.’
    â€˜You said so before.’
    â€˜They’re smoking dope and listening to records. We’re all a bunch of change-the-world liberals now, I said.’
    â€˜You said this before. We don’t need to do this again.’
    â€˜I had to fill my kid with ideas.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜I remember when Harry James hit that C-note above high C at Carnegie Hall in 1938. It was Benny Goodman’s orchestra. No one was sure if jazz deserved that level of respectability — if those musicians were serious enough to deserve Carnegie Hall. And then that one note. The city went wild. Can you even imagine a single note being heard across this country anymore? They smash their guitars on stage now. My son could have played music. I sent him to war.’
    â€˜It wasn’t his nature.
    Sheldon shook his head.
    â€˜We used to worry that if we picked him up when he cried, he’d never learn self-reliance. What the hell were we thinking?’
    â€˜I’m staying with you, Sheldon. I think it’s enough for now. OK?’
    â€˜Yeah. OK.’
    And that was it, the last time they brought it up. If there was more to be said, she took it to the grave.
    They manage to escape shortly before the police arrive.
    Sheldon gently cracks opened the closet door and listens as carefully as he can. He listens for several minutes. Listens for the crush of glass on the steps, the sound of doors opening, closing. He knows there is no defence if they are discovered, but he can help prevent that from happening.
    The struggle had been horrible and long. The boy had buried his face in Sheldon’s chest. And when it was over, Sheldon had felt a wave of shame and regret as powerful and unavoidable as the years after Saul died. In his mind, any other sequence of events — not opening the door for her, not keeping them there so long, calling the police, anything — would have resulted in that poor woman living on to raise her gentle son. He may as well have murdered her himself.
    He fully opens the closet door and looks around the room. Nothing has been disturbed. The monster has not come here.
    Sheldon yanks down the rug that covers the back door and works the lock. He jiggles it, and presses on the door, and lifts up and finally manages to push it open just enough to let them out. It is noisy and heavy. Something heavy had been pressed against the door. He could not have done it without being heard. This is small comfort.
    Speaking into the dark closet, Sheldon whispers — so as not to startle the boy — ‘You stay here for just one moment. I’ll check to make sure the coast is clear, and then we’ll go. Because we can’t walk through the living room.’
    Sheldon slips through the doorway into a small alley behind the building. A garbage bin had been pressing against the door. Rust had formed on the hinges, from neglect. And together these could have killed them.
    Sheldon walks a few metres to his left and emerges on a side street where the sun is shining and couples walk by. It is calm and safe and uneventful. The events in the apartment do not radiate from it, disrupting the world around. We are all truly unconnected .
    Before Sheldon turns to collect the boy from the apartment, a white Mercedes slowly drives by. It is the same Mercedes he saw from the window. In the driver’s seat, looking straight ahead, is a man in a black leather jacket with gold chains. Beside him is another man.
    This other man and Sheldon look at each other as the car drives