Free The UnAmericans: Stories by Molly Antopol

he talked. His family had escaped to a city in the north that past winter, he said—this was all happening in September—where he and his three younger brothers had trained with a youth group. The entire family had gone from there to Palestine, but he had met a plumber, Yosef Zanivyer, who’d seen something special in him (I couldn’t help but roll my eyes that even then, in these silent, deserted woods, your grandfather had to let me know how fabulous he was) and asked him to stay. Yosef was the plumber who’d engineered the sewer route I’d just come through, he said. For the past few months, your grandfather and his group had been roaming a labyrinth of tunnels, committing them to memory for an evacuation and supply route they’d use to smuggle weapons and food into the forest.
    He led me through a zigzag of uncleared scrub and over so many marshes and creeks I couldn’t count, until finally we reached the densest part, a cluster of trees so tall and thick it suddenly felt like evening—an area protected enough by branches, he told me, that no military plane could spot us from the air. He took my hand and we elbowed our way around trees and bushes until an entire village emerged. There were blanket tents held up by logs, what looked like an infirmary, a makeshift kitchen surrounding a fire pit. About forty people, all teenagers, almost all boys, unbathed and bedraggled, were at work in different stations. Everybody was speaking Yiddish and the whole scene was so stunning I didn’t know what to look at first. But your grandfather just kept leading me forward, as nonchalant as if he were giving a tour of our school back home.
    This is Yussel, he said, pointing to a squat, suntanned boy. He was a medical student and runs the infirmary here. And this is the kitchen—here he handed me a potato, still hot from the fire—and this is where we run drills after dinner. He waved to a bigger kid, this one fifteen or sixteen, oafish and freckled with red, flyaway hair, the parts of a gun spread out on his lap. That’s Isaac from Antopol, he told me.
    Isaac, your grandfather said, meet Raya. We grew up together.
    I’m trying to concentrate, Isaac grunted without even shooting me a sideways look, and your grandfather shrugged and said, He’ll grow on you.
    Then your grandfather stopped. Can you cook?
    Not really. My mother cooks. I could barely say it.
    What can you do, then?
    I thought about it. I can do ballet, I said. I can play the flute, and that was when your grandfather started laughing. Wow, he said, throwing his hands in the air, thank God you’re here, and I wanted to smack him.
    But your parents are tailors, right? he said. So I’m guessing you can sew, and I can’t tell you how much it meant to me right then that there, in the middle of the forest, someone knew this basic fact about my family.
    Yeah, I can sew.
    Good, he said. We already have a tailor, but if you’re quick with your fingers, you can go in the armory.
    So that afternoon I went to work, learning how to repair broken rifles and pistols, how to mend cracked stocks and replace the worn and rusted parts. He was right: all my years helping my parents sew on buttons and rip out seams made the job come easy. I was grateful I was good at it, and for many hours I sat alone, a little relieved Isaac was such a grump that I could work in silence. Your grandfather was running around, stopping at every station. It seemed obvious he was the leader, which I learned for certain that night at dinner, when five new boys arrived at the campfire.
    They were young, your grandfather’s age, and had just come back from a mission. Your grandfather crouched beside me and explained. Everyone here was part of a brigade, he said, called the Yiddish Underground. He’d started it back with his youth group, doing combat training in basements around the city. In the beginning, they’d slipped into nearby villages and robbed peasants for food and tools and blankets. But