“Where’s your mum?” Fred asks Dov as the group of them—Fred, Ralphie, Jimmy—walk their bikes out the park’s paved entrance at the end of the day.

“Working,” Dov says.

None of the boys say anything else. They don’t talk about how Dov’s family doesn’t live on the farm anymore. They don’t talk about what may be happening to his family in Europe, to anyone’s family in Europe. They talk about tanks, about ships. They ride their bikes away from the park, pedaling faster and faster, laughing and taunting one another.

Just a few blocks from the park Dov yells, “See ya tomorrow!” He turns right while his friends continue straight, and he tries not to think about what his farm will look like as they pass it, whether another boy’s ropes and balls and kite will be tangled up behind the house now. If you can still smell dinner from the street.

Dov has to climb four flights of stairs to get to his place. The front door is open. Dov has a key in case his mother has to go into the dress shop but usually she works from home, sewing buttons. He likes to watch her work. She barely has to look down as she sews. He’s never seen anyone else’s fingers move that fast.

“Dov,” his mother calls. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” he says. She walks out the bedroom, kisses his head. She’s dressed in a blouse and a skirt, her brown hair braided and twisted into a bun.

“How was camp?” She asks.

“Are you going somewhere?” Dov says.

“Just to the post office,” she says. “How was your day?”

“Mameh?” he asks. “What happened?”

She shakes her head. “You shouldn’t know,” she says. “You’re only 11 years old. You shouldn’t have to know this.”

Dov’s father comes home when Dov’s already in bed. He learns everything then: in Vilnius, 5,000 men were taken to the forest in the night. People heard gunshots from the forest, they heard screams. No one has seen the men since. Uncle Leyb was among them.

“It’s not your fault,” Dov’s mother keeps telling his father. He’s crying, howling, making noises that don’t sound like him at all.

“I knew this would happen,” Dov’s father says. “And I did nothing, don’t you understand? I let this happen.” His mother mumbles something Dov can’t hear, then his father says, “Yes like the farm, you can’t say it isn’t my fault, it was my crop.”

Dov shuts his eyes, willing himself to sleep through it. I shouldn’t have to hear this, he thinks. I shouldn’t have to know.

The next morning is still overwhelmingly humid, the sky now mottled with light and dark clouds. It’ll be raining by 2:00, maybe 3:00 if they’re lucky. They send the kids home early from camp when it rains.

Dov sits on the couch in the living room beside the open window, waiting for his friends to shout up from the street. His mother went to work early, and Daniel’s next door with Mrs. Wilson. His father sleeps late and when he comes out of the bedroom he’s dressed in old slacks and a shirt he used to wear on the farm instead of his usual blue factory uniform.

Dov doesn’t know what to say to him. He looks at his hands instead of his father, hoping his father will speak first. Time feels slow, their breaths exhaling the seconds.

“I’m going fishing today,” Dov’s father finally says. He sits down beside Dov. Is he waiting for me to say something first? Dov wonders.

“It’s going to rain,” Dov says.

“It’ll stop before the afternoon.”

“How do you know? Look how dark that cloud is.”

“Notice how fast it’s moving?” his father asks. Dov nods. “That means it’s just passing through. It’ll be done raining by lunch I bet.”

His father’s eyes look exhausted, like he’s traced the lines underneath them with eyeshadow. Dov almost can’t recognize them as his father’s. “Hopefully I’ll catch something big,” his father says.

“I don’t want to see the fish’s eyes before I eat him this time,” Dov tells him.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll take his eyes out before you see him.”

Dov hears his friends pull up outside before he can see them. They’re arguing, debating something.

“Hey, Dov!” Fred yells from the street. “Come on! I wanna get a swim in before it rains.” Dov’s father touches his shoulder. “Dovy,” he says. His voice breaks on the word, the end sounding out in fractured noises.

“Yeah?” Dov asks. For a moment he’s afraid of what his father may say. He can’t remember the last time his father touched him. Neither of them talks for what feels like a whole minute. His father just sits there looking at Dov, his hand touching his shoulder.

“Have a nice day at camp,” he says.

It starts raining at 1:30.

“Out of the lake, out of the lake!” the counselors yell, clapping and blowing their whistles. Campers mob the small dock beside the park, climbing over each other to pull themselves out.

“One at a time!” the counselors scream, but no one listens. It’s one of those rainfalls that gushes out the sky. The lake and the sky are the same hazy, almost translucent gray, thunder echoing in the distance. Dov’s whole body shivers as he tries to grab the edge of the dock. A body hits his from the side, pushing him away from the dock.

There’s too much chaos. It’s cold in the lake, cold in the air. Dov drifts back, lying flat so he can see his feet floating in the rough lake, the raindrops tickling his exposed toes. The water covers his shoulders, his chest, his belly. He lets the water cover his ears. The noise and the whistles sounded faint, far away like the thunder. He pretends the thunder is German bombs. The screams and whistles and bodies are his platoon, preparing for battle. Grab your guns! The commander yells. Prepare to fire! He jerks up, turning his body to the side to shoot.

“Dov, get out of that water now!” Paul, one of the counselors, yells. “If you don’t get out I’ll come in and drag you out.”

He doesn’t have to. Dov swims to the dock, battle ready.

They’re sent straight home. It’s still raining, still wet, so they walk their bikes.

“See ya,” Dov says to the boys as he turns towards his street, and for once he doesn’t wish he was going with them, all the way down the long roads towards the farms.

His mother is sewing at the table when he walks in. “You’re soaking,” she says. “Go change.”

Dov walks into the bedroom and changes into a dry shirt and pants. Daniel is sleeping silently in his crib. When Dov comes back his mother is still sewing. She says, “Are you hungry? I made soup.”

Dov eats in silence as she works. He watches her small fingers move, and he thinks of all the work they all used to do at the farm, how they learned the soil and the seasons, the types of grain. It all seems so pointless now.

Later in the afternoon there’s a knock at the door. Daniel’s wailing and their mother is bouncing him in her arms, walking back and forth across the living room.

“Won’t you answer it?” she asks Dov.

At the door is a redheaded man, his hat in his hands. He’s wearing a factory uniform like Dov’s father’s. He’s panting and sweating as if he’s been running. His face is streaked with dirt, his clothes stained with earth and pine needles and the heavy odor of sweat.

“Is your mother home?” he asks. Dov nods. The man steps right over the door frame and then stops, his back almost touching the door, as if he’s afraid of coming in. As soon as he sees Dov’s mother he starts talking, blathering so fast Dov can barely understand him. “Hanny,” he keeps calling Dov’s mother. “I’m awfully sorry Hanny.”

Dov’s mother is still holding Daniel, who’s squirming and hitting her with his small fist.

“Do you understand me Hanny?” the man asks. “You need to come with me to the police station.”

“Why?” Dov asks the man. “Why do you need her to go to the police?” He tells his mother in Yiddish, “He wants you to go to the police station.”

“It’s—son, let me talk to your mother. Does she understand me?”

“Yes,” she says in English. “What happened?” she asks Dov in Yiddish. He recognizes the panic in her voice from the late-night whispering. “Ask him what’s wrong, why the police station? Did something happen to your father?”

“She understands a bit,” Dov tells the man. “She wants you to tell me, then I’ll tell her.” The man sighs. “Son, I think it’s best she goes to speak to the police. It’s—“

“What happened to my father?” Dov asks.

“He—there was an accident. It was. An accident, we just found him.”

“What’s he saying Dovy? What happened?” his mother asks. Daniel begins crying, his tiny body shaking against his mother’s chest.

“What kind of accident?” Dov asks the man. “I don’t understand.”

“I—oh hell, we just found him. He was just lying there in the water. He must have slipped, there are so many rocks there.”

“Lying where?” Dov asks. “Is he dead?” he asks. Or just hurt, he wants to finish, but he doesn’t. He knows the answer from the man’s face. Daniel begins to wail louder, his small hands grabbing his mother’s hair. Her face looks distorted and terrified, like it’s about to melt.

“Yes,” the man says quietly.

Dov’s mother drops to the floor, to her knees. The man takes Daniel from her arms. Her breath puffs out loudly. She begins sobbing, and Dov turns away so he doesn’t have to see her lip trembling, her eyes wide open, full of everything terrible he doesn’t want to see.

“Your mother needs to come to the police to identify the body,” the man tells Dov. He reaches out, lays his palm on Dov’s shoulder. Dov looks down so the man can’t see his eyes begin to tear.

“Mameh,” he says, not looking up. “We need to go to the police station.”

The station is lit so bright it feels like Dov’s eyeballs are burning. The Landsmans, the other Jews in town, meet them at the station. Dov’s mother hides her face in Mrs. Landsman’s shirt. Her back trembles as Mrs. Landsman rubs her shoulders, whispering things to her.

The police take Mr. Landsman and Dov’s mother to a room but they won’t let Dov come. Dov sits with Mrs Landsman on two chairs outside one of the offices. Daniel sleeps in her arms, somehow peaceful. Mrs. Landsman says things to Dov, things like, “You’ll make it through this,” and “You’re such a strong boy.” Things meant to be soothing. He wonders how she knows exactly what she’s supposed to say. He doesn’t answer. He stares at the wall instead, pretending the Germans have captured him. They want information. They’ve beaten him; they haven’t let him eat in days. He knows the things they can do. He knows there are pockets of earth that hide thousands of bodies, people who’ve been forced to dig their own graves. He won’t give up anything.

Suddenly he feels strangled, like his throat can’t breathe enough air in. He begins to cough, gasping as he inhales.

“Are you all right?” Mrs. Landsman asks.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he says. He runs out of the room. He needs to find his mother. She has to be somewhere here. He runs through the office, through the first door on the far left side. Down the corridor are two offices, both empty. Dov can hardly see anything. His breaths are rushing out too fast. His eyes begin to feel strange, too heavy for their sockets. Dark patches appear in his vision; the sides of his head begin to thrum with pain.

He goes into one of the offices. He crouches down on the floor, closing his eyes. All he can hear is his breath.

As his breath begins to slow, Dov hears the door on the other side of the corridor open. He hears two deep, male voices.

“Poor fellow,” one of the voices said. “Can you imagine doing something like that? Hell.”

“Christ,” the other voice says. “Did you see his wife? She’s beautiful. I sure wouldn’t have offed myself if I had that to come home to.”

“Two kids too,” the first voice says. “One of them’s just a baby. Imagine that.”

“Hey!” One of the voices says. It sounds close now. Dov looks up. “Hey!” The two men—two police officers—are standing at the office door, looking at him.

“You can’t be in here,” the officer says.

“I was just looking for my mother,” Dov says. He stands up. He sees dark patches again, moving across his vision like clouds. His legs feel frail, unsteady.

“Are you okay?” The other officer asks, but Dov is already running out the corridor, back through the office. If anyone chases him they don’t catch up. He runs right out of the station.

It’s night. The town somehow seems bigger now, the streets overwhelmingly dark. Dov runs to the end of the street, then up the slight incline to the train tracks. He follows the tracks past the community center, past the opening in the trees where—during the day—you can see the lake, past the bar where men and women are still yelling. When his legs begin to ache he walks. He walks from the train tracks to the path in the woods where he’s seen men walking before, clutching their fishing poles.

When Dov stops walking he’s at the river. Darkness stretches before him. This must be where he was fishing, he thinks, it’s where everyone fishes. He climbs over the rocks to the river, crouches down, and dips his hand in. The water is still warm from the rain. Dov stands and walks right into the river, letting the water soak his shoes and his socks. He moves his left shoe forward to where the ground begins to dip. The earth slopes down to where he knows he won’t be able to stand.

No, he thinks. No, no, no.

He jumps into the river. His shirt and shorts are heavy and he wonders if they’ll weigh him down enough to drown. The water rushes fast and even though Dov can’t see it he knows there’s a rapid, an open mouth at the end of the long corridor of the river.

The water begins to move faster and Dov thinks, I can lay here. I can do nothing and the water will bring me where it wants. He wonders if this is how his father felt, if leaving everything behind is something you don’t decide until you do it. He closes his eyes and he doesn’t think of his mother or Daniel or everything his father must have been escaping, he just feels the water moving his body.

He opens his eyes. The whole world looks drowned: the dark sky, the moving river, the sloping banks on either side of him. He knows he’ll climb out the river, knows he’ll eventually go home and face his mother and everything else he couldn’t escape. Knows there are things he’ll never be able to forget. That deep river, the rocks, the rapids. The wide, hollow feeling of leaving it all behind.