A Thunderous Whisper (16 page)

“No, I only meant—”

“You certainly aren’t the same girl you used to be.” The slightest hint of a smile seemed to cross her face before quickly disappearing. “Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At least you’ve become a somewhat stronger creature.”

“I, um, uh …,” I stammered, unsure of what I should do or say next.

“I knew this moment would come.” She turned me around so I’d face the theater. “I’ve seen you changing over the last few weeks. It’s time for you to make your own decisions, Anetxu.” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear before giving me a nudge forward. “Just don’t depend on anyone … become who
you
need to be. It has to be what you want because, in the end, we’re all left alone.”

And with that she turned to walk back home.

At first, I didn’t move. Mamá’s words seemed to echo in
my brain. The fact that she had called me by my name highlighted that this was no ordinary conversation.

I thought about chasing after her and telling her that I didn’t care about seeing the movie. That selling sardines was going to be my life, too … but that would be a lie.

Plus, for the first time, I felt Mamá wanted something different for me.

Mathias flung open the front door to his building and ran across the street. “Where’s your mother?” he asked.

“It’s just me.” I looked at the street filling with other people, but for me it seemed empty. “She couldn’t stay.”

“But you’re not going … are you?” he asked.

“Well,” I bit my lip, still unsure of what I should do. I didn’t want Mamá to feel alone.

“You have to stay,” he said. “I leave in two days.”

“I can still meet you tomorrow out by the tree. No deliveries, right?”

“No, no deliveries tomorrow.” He looked back toward his apartment. “But what about today? The movies and my parents. Our plans.” His eyebrows scrunched together, trying to make sense of the situation.

Mamá had told me to make my own decisions. Not her choices … mine. I didn’t want to live like she did. I was already making a difference, and even without Mathias, my days of delivering secret messages weren’t going to be completely over.

“C’mon.” Mathias took my hand. “You can deliver sardines any other day,” he said, walking me across the street and to his front door.

He was right, I could always help Mamá later. She’d see that I hadn’t abandoned her.

But as I stepped over the threshold of the building and the door closed behind us, a feeling of sadness, laced with touches of excitement, pinched at my heart.

Sardine Girl was gone.

TWENTY-NINE

T
he next day I looked at the school clock at least a hundred times. Even though there weren’t any deliveries to be made, Mamá had agreed that I could spend the afternoon with Mathias and not help her at the market. I think she knew that I would’ve gone to see him no matter what and I’d have been willing to accept a beating for it.

The sound of the bell dismissing us from class was like the pistol at the start of a race. I rushed out of the schoolyard and down the crowded streets, weaving around people and carts. Mathias and I had agreed to meet by my tree, and I wasn’t going to let anyone slow me down. Every minute counted.

I turned onto the dirt road that led to the countryside, kicking up lots of dust on my way to the tree because I refused to slow down.

Then it hit me. I paused to catch my breath. I wouldn’t be
able to enjoy a regular day by my tree with Mathias. Were we going to pretend that this was any other day? He was leaving the very next day. I knew I wouldn’t cry, but I really wasn’t going to laugh either. It felt as if a gaping hole had opened up in my chest.

I thrust my hand into my pocket and felt for the satin pouch.

“Ani!” Mathias waved his
makila
in the air. He was already walking toward me across the field.

I smiled, refusing to believe that this would be goodbye forever.

“Hi, Mathi—” I stopped midword because in the distance the church bells had begun to ring.

I could feel every one of my senses go on high alert.

Mathias, who was now next to me, scanned the horizon and then looked back at me. “You think …?”

I stood still. We both knew that the nonstop clanging of church bells could signal an incoming attack. I waited for the factory sirens to start wailing.

We searched the sky again.

“I don’t see anything,” he said as the sirens joined the chorus of bells. “You think it’s another false alarm?”

“Probably. Maybe we should go home or to a shelter,” I suggested, not wanting to tempt fate as Mamá so often did. “Just until they give the all clear.”

“There’s no time for that. We can go up to the Garza farmhouse. That’s closer.” Mathias started walking up the mountain path.

A flock of birds heading in from the coast caught my eye. Then I focused.… Those were no birds.

“Mathias, look!” I pointed to what was clearly a group of planes coming our way.

“I see them! We have to go!” Mathias grabbed my hand and started a hobbling dash toward a ditch that someone had converted into a makeshift foxhole by placing sandbags around the edge.

“The tree. They won’t see us there. It’ll be a better place to hide,” I suggested.

“We won’t make it,” he said, pushing me into the dirt pit.

Moments later, a plane whizzed by, heading straight for Guernica. It was flying so low I could see swastikas on its wings and tail.

“They’re German,” I whispered. “But they wouldn’t … I mean, why? We’re just a little market town to them.”

Mathias didn’t answer. I looked over and saw him gripping his
makila
so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. A few mumbled words were all I heard before the roar of several more planes drowned out everything.

Then there was silence. For several minutes neither of us moved, barely daring to breathe, but the eerie quiet proved to be too much. The planes had come, and as far as we could tell, they had gone without doing anything.

I let out a deep breath. “They were just scaring us.”

Mathias slowly nodded and stood up. “Way to wrap up my stay in Guernica, huh?” he said, holding out his hand to help me up.

Both of us crawled out of the ditch, and although I’d been petrified a few moments earlier, a sense of giddiness seemed to overtake me. “Now you have to come back in the summer. Guernica must be pretty important if Hitler wants to see what we’re doing.”

“Yeah, Guernica … the great military base of women, children, and homeless refugees,” Mathias teased.

I put my hands on my hips. “
Oye
, you don’t have to be cruel.”

“Wait a minute, you just said the same thing!”

“Yeah, but I’m from here. I can make fun of my own town.”

Mathias rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I can never win,” he muttered.

I smiled. “Want to go back to the tree?” I asked, my heart beginning to settle down from all the excitement.

“Sure.”

As we walked back toward the field, the church bells started sounding again.

“Think that’s the all clear?” Mathias asked.

“Must be.” I took out my satin pouch and thought about Papá.

“Strange how the planes were flying so low.… It was like they wanted everyone to see them.”

“Probably just to scare us.” I wondered if that’s what it was like being on the front lines … always being afraid.

“But why bother? They had to know everyone would run to the bomb shelters.” Mathias stopped, his expression changing. “Why are those bells still ringing?”

I shrugged, and as I lifted my head up to the sky, several dots came into view. The planes were back, but this time flying much higher.

“Mathias …,” I whispered, pointing up.

“I see them too,” he said. “This is bad.”

A high-pitched whistling noise filled the air and then a loud
boom
rocked the ground. Smoke, or maybe it was dust, started rising from a spot along the mountainside.

Wait
, I thought.
The mountainside? There are only farmhouses there
.

Another high-pitched sound made me cover my ears, and then a wave of energy pushed me backward to the ground. Mathias and I both clambered to stand up again as the ground beneath us continued to tremble.

We were now halfway between the tree and the ditch, in the middle of the field. We needed to run … somewhere.

I could hear more bombs being dropped in the distance … in Guernica. A pungent smell had begun to fill the air, like burning fuel or gunpowder, but different.

There was no doubt. We were under attack.

The sound of planes grew louder. They were coming our way again.

“Foxholes are best. Garza always says that,” Mathias mumbled, still not moving.

I nodded, grabbed Mathias’s hand, and ran, almost dragging Mathias behind me, but I wouldn’t let go no matter how he stumbled. The sounds of things exploding filled the air. Most were in the distance, but I could see smoke scattered along the mountainside too.

At the edge of the road, we both jumped into the ditch and waited. As we huddled close together, Mathias put his hand over my head as if to protect me. I turned to look at him. His eyes said it all.

This was the end.

THIRTY

T
he bombers came and came again. High-pitched whistling noises made it seem as if the sky itself were screaming out in pain. The wind carried the acrid smell of fuel and destruction over our hole in the ground as more death fell from above.

Mathias and I didn’t move from that ditch for what felt like hours. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go. We waited while an eerie silence crept over the land. My heart pounded with the hope that it was over and the growing fear that it would never end.

I wanted to say something, but there weren’t words for what I was thinking, what I was feeling. I reached out and gripped Mathias’s hand as hard as I could. At least we were together.

A few seconds later, we heard voices yelling in the field.

“Someone’s coming!” I said, reaching up over the edge of the ditch to see who it was. Mathias tossed his
makila
over the top and climbed out after me.

In the distance I could see several people running away
from the smoldering city. They were yelling and screaming at each other to keep going. Guernica was burning.

“I need to go. My mother—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “We need to help.”

Mathias grabbed my hand. “Wait. It might not be over.”

I saw a woman running across the field with a little boy. “The bombers are gone, Mathias. It has to be over.”

“Not yet. Garza always said foxholes—”

I shook free from his hold. “Garza isn’t here, and this isn’t really a foxhole,” I argued. “It’s just a ditch with some sandbags.”

“Close enough,” Mathias said, not moving an inch.

“Look! People are leaving the bomb shelters.” I pointed to the dots in the distance scurrying out of town. “We can go.” I walked forward, expecting him to follow.

Mathias looked up at the sky.

“C’mon!” I yelled, but stopped walking, sensing that Mathias wasn’t following me. I glanced back and saw him frozen, his eyes still searching the clouds. I hurried to where he was, ready to drag him away if necessary.

“STOP!” Mathias shouted.

I stumbled back at the force of his yell, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was hollering at the people behind me.

I spun around to see a group headed across the field. They paused briefly to look at us.

“Get down! Get down!” Mathias yelled. “NOW!”

Instead of doing as Mathias said, some of the group turned and began to run toward a line of trees along the far side of the field.

For a moment, I didn’t understand what was happening. Why did Mathias want them to get down and why were they running? Then I heard what sounded like ten thousand mosquitoes swarming toward us.

I glanced up to see several small, low-flying planes. In a flash, Mathias spun me around and threw me back into the ditch. I wasn’t sure if I heard the screams or imagined them, but there was no escaping the rapid sound of machine-gun fire and of bullets bouncing off the ground.

My breathing quickened, to the point that I thought I’d pass out. I wanted to cover my ears, but instead I used my hands to hold on to the ditch’s walls … afraid that somehow the world would turn upside down and I’d fall out of the hole we were hiding in. Finally, I could feel the ground around us slowly stop trembling.

“We stay here until we’re absolutely sure they’re gone, you hear me?” Mathias yelled.

“Don’t scream at me!” I shouted back.

“I’m not!” The roar of the small planes was now fading as they headed toward Guernica. “I’m not,” he said again, more softly this time.

“Why? Why are they doing this? This isn’t the front lines. Guernica’s not important like Bilbao.”

Mathias stared at the ground, his shoulders slumped down.

A sudden realization swept over me. “Oh my God, what if they’re destroying everything? Attacking all the Basque towns at once.”

“They’re not,” Mathias answered matter-of-factly.

“How do you know? There could be planes everywhere. Here, Bilbao, San Sebastián.”

Mathias shook his head. “No, this is like Durango.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the dirt wall of the foxhole. “I overheard Father talking. This is what he feared.” Mathias opened his eyes and looked at me. “I think we’re just target practice for something much bigger. Something even worse.”

THIRTY-ONE

I
wanted it all to be over. Speed up the hands of time and have this be a distant memory. It was already growing dark, but the cool evening air wasn’t the cause of my shaking.

Mathias had put his arm around me a long time ago as we waited to see if there would be another attack. We were like two statues, frozen inside the makeshift foxhole, curled up against each other … afraid that if either of us moved, we’d find ourselves completely alone.

“I think it’s over,” Mathias whispered into my hair.