Free The UnAmericans: Stories by Molly Antopol Page A

every day the war seemed to be getting worse, he said, and now the brigade was traveling farther to carry out attacks. They torched cottages and stole guns. When they ran out of bullets, they sneaked into cities with empty shotguns and long, straight branches, which, from a distance, could pass as rifles. They chopped down telephone poles, attacked supply depots, burned bridges to disrupt military routes—and that night, the five boys at the campfire had just returned from dislodging two hundred meters of rail line.
    And? Your grandfather said then, turning to one of the boys.
    And the conductor stopped the train, the boy said, spearing a sausage from the fire. And I walked right on and shot four soldiers in the dining car. They didn’t even have time to put down their forks.
    Your grandfather clapped the boy’s shoulder like a proud parent, and I just sat there swallowing.
    I told the other passengers to tell the police the Yiddish Underground was responsible, the boy continued, and your grandfather nodded. Everyone on the train was so scared, the boy said, and I just kept saying it as I walked through the cars, taking all of this, he said, gesturing at the suitcases and sacks of vegetables and bread by his feet.
    Perfect, your grandfather said, and when he flicked on his radio, everyone put down their food to listen. He tuned through static until an announcer came on with word of the day’s casualties. But when the announcer described the ambush, he said it was the work of Russian guerilla fighters, communists camping out in the woods. The Yiddish Underground wasn’t mentioned at all. All around us were these kids, huddled together in stolen coats, waiting for their commander to speak. Your grandfather cleared his throat. He’d looked his age for that second, wide-eyed and serious and more than a little frightened, and I’d had a flash of that same boy in the schoolyard, the market, walking his younger brothers down Pinsker Street. I’d known that whatever he said, inside your grandfather felt as lost as every one of his fighters. But he stood up. He switched off the radio and said the only way they couldn’t ignore us was to plan bigger. We have to let them know, he said, that there’s a secret army they can’t touch, soldiers fighting back with weapons taken from them, then retreating deep into the forest to plan their next attack.

    T HIS IS the part of the story where I know you want to hear how we fell in love. I understand—don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’re always free to visit your grandfather and me, even on Saturday nights. How five years out of college you’re still living like a student, still alone in that shoebox studio. Even when you were little, it was your favorite part of every story. It used to kill me when I’d overhear you asking your mother those kinds of questions about your father, this young chubby you with long blond braids and a dreamy expression, as if with your eyes half-closed you could envision a time your parents weren’t sneaking around your living room at night, scribbling their names into each other’s books, or storming after each other outside your old apartment, fighting over who got to keep this ceramic fish-shaped platter your mother said she made at summer camp but which your father claimed he made at an Adult Ed class at the Y—a fish, he yelled, that held his nachos just right.
    And I remember after he left, you and your mother piled all of your possessions into a taxi and headed over the bridge to our apartment in Queens, where the two of you moved into her childhood bedroom, sleeping side by side on her trundle bed, surrounded by her spelling ribbons and stuffed-animal collection, as though you were living in a permanent exhibit in the museum of her life. And I remember all the dates she’d bring back, Philip and Hugh and the one who wore his sunglasses inside, how she’d parade those men into my home with the same defiance she had in high school,