Free The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel by P.S. Duffy

this had been said before. “You ever hear about that Mr. Fritze?”
    “Nope. Making it up, I bet.”
    They had reached Hennigar’s Dry Goods and Grocery. Maisie turned back to Simon and said she had to buy some thread for her mother to take to the Red Cross tea at Simon’s house. “ You can take it to her,” she said, and led her group into the store.
    Simon rolled his eyes. “How’d I get so lucky?”
    “Forget her, too,” Zenus said. “There’s our girl.” He pointed at the store window. The two of them fell silent as they always did at the face of Little Belgium, staring out at them from a war poster behind sacks of Beaver Flour and a pyramid of canned pears. Little Belgium—a soft-featured peasant girl with dark curls loosely framing her face and a gray cloak set back on her head. The cloak fell in folds around her shoulders, revealing a deep red dress topped with a hint of lace. In her shadowed eyes, something sad and weary; in the tilt of her head, something vulnerable and imploring. She was framed by a pale circle of gold. Above her the words have YOU any women folk worth defending? You bet they did. Below her, nearly hidden by the tinned pears, pale blue script slanted up with the words, “Remember the women of Belgium.”
    How could they forget? How could anyone forget? Poor little Belgium, raped and pillaged, houses burned, women dragged through the streets by their hair, children murdered by the swords of the advancing German hordes, exacting revenge on common citizens. And for what? Because the teeny-tiny Belgian army had chosen to defend their teeny-tiny country. “Outrageous propaganda” his grandfather called it, but to Simon and Zenus, the girl in the window was Little Belgium, and she needed rescue.
    “Just a couple more years . . .” Simon leaned forward, hands in his pockets, resting his forehead on the glass.
    “Three, if the war’s still on,” Zenus said.
    Simon jerked upright. “It will be. My grandfather’s sure of it. Besides, in a year or two, we can fake our age.”
    “Right,” Zenus agreed. “Say, how about that enlistment card? You’ve had it for a week.”
    The card was tucked away in Simon’s copybook. “A week is seven days. I get one more day with it.”
    “Let’s see it anyway. Whata ya figure, the gorilla is a Hun or a Prussian?” Zenus laughed and thrust his hand out.
    Simon squatted down and unstrapped his books. “It’s Prussian or Bavarian .”
    “Yeah . . . so, our boys over there are supposed to go up and say, ‘Howdy do. Could you tell me if you’re Bavarian or Prussian so me and my chums know whether to blow your brains out?’ A Kraut’s a Kraut. Period.”
    It did seem strange how hot and bothered Mr. Heist was over it. Simon dug through his books for the enlistment card, carefully hiding the poems, composed by Mr. Heist himself and bound into a book with covers of dark green linen. He’d told Simon he could keep it as long as he wanted because maybe Simon had some poet in him.
    “Damn it! Hurry up!” Zenus hissed. “Too late. Here they come.”
    The girls, leaning into one another, giggled their way out of the store. Maisie grabbed Simon’s hand and dropped the thread in it in a grand gesture. Simon rolled his eyes again.
    As he left the group, Zenus shouted, “Don’t forget, my turn tomorrow! Have fun with the Red Cross ladies, ya stinking Prussian!”
    Simon whipped a snowball at him. “Who ya calling a Prussian, ya blasted Kraut?”

    A LONE ON THE short bridge over the causeway to the peninsula, he lingered, watching snow fall silently onto the islands—Snake, Sad dle, and beyond them, out of sight, Mountain, Mark, Woody, Lynch, Quaker, Rafuse, Clay, Gooseberry, Oak, and so many more. And to the southwest, Big Tancook and Little Tancook. Barrels of sauerkraut put up by the islanders, lined up on the Tancook wharf and lowered into the hold of the Lauralee for transport to Halifax. Kraut . Of course! He’d never made the connection