Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone: A Novel by Stefan Kiesbye Page B

me.”
    Holger grunted. He was heavyset and had short dark hair and a red face with even redder cheeks. His feet were already larger than those of most grown men. “Anke won’t go for you.”
    “Why not?” Alex asked. His brown mustache was frozen, his small eyes framed by icy white lashes. “If my brother doesn’t return, I’ll inherit the inn and the land and will be richer than the Hoffmanns.”
    Alex’s brother was a sailor, and after leaving for New York one day, he had never returned to his wife. Postcards from around the world arrived irregularly in our village.
    “Why shouldn’t he come back?” I asked.
    “Maybe he’s contracted leprosy or maybe he’ll drown. Who knows? If it were up to me, the ship’s kobold could carry him off.”
    “But if he returns?”
    “I’ll deal with him then. The inn is mine, and if Anke won’t have me, I’ll buy her family’s farm and have her brothers cut my peat.” He focused on Broder. “Right?”
    “Right,” Broder said. “I’ll cut peat.”
    “She won’t be able to find a better man,” Alex said, more to himself.
    I nodded. I wasn’t as strong as Holger or as pretty as Bernhard. Nor was my family as well-heeded as Alex’s, which owned Frick’s Inn. Yet I had kissed Linde Janeke before Christmas break and considered myself ahead of the others. Linde wasn’t as beautiful as Anke, but she had been seen with a boyfrom Groß Ostensen who rode a moped and was seventeen. That counted for something.
    It was around the time we lost any feeling in our feet that Alex dropped his hatchet in the water.
    “What’d you do that for?” Holger said.
    “You’re stupid,” Bernhard chimed in. “That hatchet is gone.”
    “Maybe.” Alex pulled out a ten-mark bill. “Maybe someone is willing to dive after the hatchet for ten.”
    We laughed at his offer. Christian tapped his finger to his forehead and rolled his eyes.
    “Okay,” Alex said, pulling out another bill. “Twenty. I’ll give you twenty if you can get the hatchet.”
    “Keep your money,” I said, stretching my legs. I was ready to head home.
    “I could,” Broder said. His eyes were large; the things he could buy for twenty marks! You could see his mind at work, his head filling with possibilities. “But I won’t. I’m not stupid.”
    We laughed. “Good call,” Bernhard said. “No one’s that stupid.”
    “But I’ll do it for fifty.”
    We shook our heads, still grinning, gathering our lines and tools.
    “I’ll do it,” Broder repeated, more loudly. He took off his coat. “For fifty.”
    “Man,” Bernhard said, “put your coat back on. You’ll freeze to death like that without having to dive.”
    “Fifty,” Broder crowed.
    “Wait,” Christian said and fished in his pockets. “I have a five, a ten, and three ones.” He lay the bills and coins on the ground, then grabbed Alex’s two tens and put them on top.
    Bernhard whistled. “Guys, that’s dumb. Look, even if he doesn’t die from the cold, he’s not going to find that damn hatchet, and he’s not going to find this shitty hole again when he comes up for air.”
    “I can do it.” Broder took off his skates and shoes.
    Holger came up with another eight marks, and I provided the rest. Alex put Broder’s shoe on top of the pile and looked at the kid. “Fifty,” he said.
    “Wait!” Bernhard raised his right hand like a teacher, begging for silence. “How are we going to dry him off? If he comes back up.”
    “Shut up,” Alex growled. “My grandpa used to take baths in the Droste all winter long, and he’s still around.” He turned to Broder. “Okay, we’ve got fifty marks.”
    The boy stripped to his underwear, then stood by the rim of the ice. Around us the air was filled with snow and darker than the ground, and it was very quiet, except for Broder sucking in the air and blowing his nose. The snow must have been a shower of a thousand needles.
    “I can do it,” he said and looked once more at the pile of