We sat huddled under the bridge like drowned rats, waiting for the thundering footsteps above our heads to cease. We've sit there for a long hour, listening to foreign tongue yelling out in the pouring rain, telling the other Nazi’s to keep in formation and to look out for any long nose, brown haired human beings pass by them, much like myself. My eyes would occasionally glide over the others surrounding me under the bridge in hiding, their eyes large and swimming in fear and my assumption was mine looked identical. When glancing at my mother, she put a single finger to her lips to silence anything that may escape past my lips, but she hadn’t need to do so. I understood the circumstances and understood the risk we were taking. I understood.

When the rain lightened up, as did the footsteps, my mother sent me out to look for any sign of the enemy. I crept up the small side of the hill and peeked my head above ground, looking up and down the road for a red and white swastika, for it wouldn’t be my first time running into someone who obtains one, but find nothing. I told my mother and she sighed in relief, then handed me my three siblings, all younger than eight, then carried up my injured father. We set beside the road while tending to his wounds, sewing cuts that need to be closed, washing off his blood-stained hands, anything that may help him heal better and quicker.

After replacing my father’s bandages, my mother directed me to my two brothers and sister and instructed me to make them useful. I nodded my head and took the hand of my four year old sister, Carmel, carried my baby brother Emanuel, and scolded my eight year old brother, Shay, for complaining that he had to walk, and set off to find a water or food source. '“Talia!”' I heard my mother call out. I turned around to see her signal for me to avoid the nearby town. I once again nodded my head at her for she was more than likely right; it must had been invaded by German soldiers by then.

The four of us walked for perhaps a little over half a mile when Shay began to complain again, whining over the fact that his legs hurt from all the walking. ‘“But Carmel is walking just fine and she’s smaller than you,”’ I told him and he stomped his feet, the start of a tantrum. We resided next to a small creek and I set Emanuel down, careful with his head, then had Carmel rest while dealing with Shay. ‘“Shay, you mustn’t complain. Would you like to be kidnapped?”’

‘“I want to go to camp,”’ He responded with while staring at his fiddling fingers and my heart dropped. ‘“The one that Bubbe went to.”’ I grabbed hold of his bony shoulders, that were once strong, and shook him a bit as if to wake him from his fictional dream. ‘“Don’t you ever say that, Shay. Bubbe went to a bad, bad camp and-”’ I resisted the urge to cry and swallowed the guilt I felt for not saving her the chance I had and continued.’”-and we’re never going to see her again.”’

‘“Ever again?”’ I moved my head up and down while his bottom lip quivered. I pulled him into a hug as he sobbed on my shoulder. Carmel, who was playing with Emanuel, noticed Shay and began to cry also. I grabbed all three of my siblings and whispered to them, ‘“You must have hope. This war is not quite over, these deaths are not quite over, but they will be soon. The Allies, the people who will help us, have already gone into Italy and are taking that over as we speak. This will all be over soon, just keep your hope there.”’

Two of the three faces stared intensely at me, Emanuel’s curiously looked over to the tree line on the other side of the creek, perhaps less than forty feet. I realized that he had been watching that treeline for an amount of time that seemed to be everlasting, so I also looked over. All I saw was my greatest fear; a red and white swastika. A man stepped out of the shadows, rifle in his hands, and he surveyed the area. By the time he got to the area I was in, I had shoved Emanuel in Shay’s arms and was pushing them away from the scene as quietly as possible.

A loud bang and a shot of pain in my right arm made me fall on my face onto the wet pebbles. I tried to scurry to catch up but slipped and slid all over the place. Instead, I shouted for them to run back to mama while listening to the splashing of water behind me. I attempted one last time to get away, but was only flung back by the collar of my dress into the warm water. A barrel of a gun was pressed against my neck while I pled for my life. I clenched my eyes closed, fearful of looking into the eyes of evil but felt the pressure of the gun released.

‘“Look at me.”’ I heard the words but was reluctant to open my eyes until I felt the gun once again. ‘“Look at me.”’ I finally looked up to a slender, young man with golden blond hair and baby blue eyes. He removed the gun from my throat and smirked a little, showing off perfectly white teeth, a rarity in a war crazed country. I furrowed my eyebrows, still not moving in fear, and felt my rapid heartbeat slow to normal. He sat beside me, and I could feel him staring at my eccentric features. ‘“You’re a Jew, huh?”’ I nodded my head. ‘“Have you got a family?”’ I nodded again. ‘“Are they around here?”’ I didn’t do anything, to be sure their safety was well and he laughed. ‘“I’m not going to kill you. Or them. I’m through with death.”’

His comment enraged me. If he was done with killing and death, why had he shot me? Thinking of my wound made the pain known but I didn’t reach up to check on it, instead I studied the features of the boy sitting beside me in the water. ‘“Do you have a name?”’ He asked and I nodded. ‘“What is it?”’

I gulped and figured what else could I do. ‘“Talia.”’

‘“That’s a pretty name. I’m Karl,”’ He flicked away a mosquito and took off his uniform hat, placing it on soil nearby, and he glanced up to the boiling sun that was pounding heat upon us. My dress, once a tan color, had transformed to an ugly brown on my right arm. I glanced at the wound but could not see it for the short sleeves of the dress obstructed it from my view.

Karl also looked at my arm and his blue eyes widened to a remarkable width. ‘“Oh Christ. I only meant to shoot as a warning. I never meant harm. Oh Christ!”’ He removed his uniform jacket and took off his white tee shirt, revealing pale white skin and a protruding ribcage, then tied the shirt around the wound. I winced in pain as he slowly had me sit up and I adjusted my short brown hair so that it wouldn’t be a bother.

Karl fastened the cloth tight enough to choke me then resumed his daydream phase. ‘“So Talia. How do you think of this war?”’ I scoffed at the question and he laughed. ‘“My mother’s in a camp also,”’ He told me and I whipped my head toward him. A boy with such German features with a Jewish mother? ‘“I know it sounds strange, but it’s true. I’m hoping this entire thing will end so we can be reunited. Have you lost anyone to the camps?”’ I nodded.

‘“You don’t say much, now do you?”’ I shook my head and he smirked a little. ‘“Well, Talia, if you hadn’t got any questions for me, I best be on my way.”’ Karl hastily put on his coat and placed his hat back on top of his skull and turned to go off.

The question was at the tip of my tongue but I mustn't. I mustn’t. ‘“Where are you going to? Are you ditching?”’ Karl turned back to me with a smile.

‘“I was secretly hoping you would say that. I didn’t want to set off with no destination. To answer your question, doll, I’ll have to say no, I’m not ditching.”’

‘“What about the other one?”’

‘“I am sure I have already answered that one. I have no destination.”’

‘“Well… your destination can always change to where I am going if you want food or shelter?”’

Karl nodded his head and smiled, thanking me for my hospitality. We set off with occasional stops to check on the bullet hole to be sure it had stopped bleeding. Mama was furious when I told her about the extra mouth to feed, but she was joyous that he had a hunting background and was allowed to stay as long as he was able to put food on the table. As for my father, well, he died of his injuries from being jumped by German men, and the reason, really, why we decided we had to go into hiding, later that week, the most depressed Thursday of my entire life. Not nearly as bad, however, as when Emanuel died of a fever a month after my father’s passing. He had never turned one yet.” I sighed while recalling my story of the Holocaust and how I first met him. He was listening intently but the saddest part was that he was unable to remember it. A single tear streaks down my cheek and he wipes it away, not being the first time he had done so during the last sixty-four years of our marriage, and I grab his hand in acknowledgment of the gesture.

“It was a bad time. Yet through it all, Karl was still there with me. I was fifteen when I first met him and he was nineteen. It wasn’t until I was seventeen when I realized that I loved him and that everything that he had done up to that point was to get my attention. I married him later that year, being decently young at that time period, but it certainly was not uncommon. I’ve asked him several things over the course of our marriage relating to the day we met. How his mother was, why he wanted to know where my family was. I’ve asked whether or not he had ditched, he answered with that his entire platoon was wiped out from the Allies during D-Day and since then he had been wandering. I had asked why he had shot so close to me, he answered with that he was trying to get my attention for I was already running away and that he never saw that he had gotten me because I had kept going. The most frequent one I asked my husband was why did he stop and talk to me on that fateful day. Each time, he responded with, in exact words mind you, ‘“I had always wanted to speak with a woman that was so beautiful that it left butterflies in my stomach, that made my heartbeat skip so fast I was afraid of a heart attack, and looked so much like an angel that I would have begun to believe in Christ himself. And when I saw you-”

“I saw the chance and I took it.” He finishes the quote for me and I roll my lips inward, holding his hand while he lays in the hospital bed, clinging to life. He’s been suffering with Alzheimer's for six years, and despite the amount of pills he takes each morning, Karl could never quite remember where he left something. I was never able to sleep and when I finally did a few days ago, he had woken up from a nap and wandered into the road. He was struck by a motorcycle who was screeching to a halt, but it still hit him. The driver was alright and I thanked him for stopping, but now I’m forced to sit here with a man that I love, who's not even able to remember what he had for breakfast, slowly die in a whitewashed hospital room.

“We would be celebrating sixty-five years in a couple of months,” I mention and Karl looks at me with empty eyes.

“Congratulations. I would love to have a girl like you.” This is the last thing he says before the visiting hours close and I’m forced to go home. I drive my way back and crawl into bed, reaching for the warmth of Karl on the other side, only to find nothing. Then I do what I’ve been doing for the last six years when I feel like my hope is slipping from my grasp; I cry myself to sleep so the aches and pains of the everyday life disappear.