Home By Christmas

Chapter Six - Kurt

The village square throned with people. Kurt could hardly hear himself amongst the noise and chaos of the young men departing for training. Women were crying, children were complaining that they were tired and wanted to go home, and the men who signed up were jostling with each other and trying to show off to the girls who had joined the crowd.

It would have been a celebration were it not for the war hanging in the air.

Kurt stood to the back of the group, his mother fussing over his uniform and pulling his cap so far down that he could hardly see. He tried not to look too embarrassed and pulled his cap back to its usual position once his mother had stopped adjusting it. The uniform was supposed to make people respect him and Kurt didn't think it had the desired effect with his mother fussing and fawning all over him. Still, he knew his mother cared about him and that mattered a little more than his friends might have thought.

Beside him, Wilhelm craned his neck and eyed the large crowd that somehow got bigger every time Kurt blinked. Almost everyone in the village had turned out to say goodbye to the young men who were going off to defend their homeland.

With no sign of Anna, Wilhelm too was subjected to the constant fussing by his mother who had handed him some sandwiches for the journey to the training ground. They exchanged glances, looking away before they burst into laughter. Neither of them looked much like shoulders.

"I'll be fine, Mother," Kurt said. He readjusted his cap yet again and brushed her hands off his shoulder where she was trying to pick off a loose piece of thread.

Mrs Schäfer offered him a small smile, but it didn't quite reach her eyes the way it used to. "I know you will, but you'll always be my little boy."

"What about me?" Hans tugged on his mother's dress and pouted. "I'm still the littlest!"

"Yes, you are my sweet." Mrs Schäfer reached down and kissed Hands on the forehead. "You're both still my babies."

Hans quickly wiped the lipstick mark from his cheek, not too keen on looking like a baby in front of the soldiers. Kurt smiled a little, but a small knot tightened in his stomach at the sight of his brother trying to be older than he was. It had been hard not to miss the change in his attitude since Kurt had signed up; the dislike towards their mother's affection, his obsession with completing farm chores rather than his wooden blocks. He had stopped acting like the child he was and Kurt hated it.

He was going to war to give his brother the chance to have a childhood and to grow up, not for him to act older than his years.

"Can you see Anna?" Wilhelm asked, slapping Kurt in the arm and aching his neck to search the crowd.

"She slapped you the other day, are you sure you want to risk another meeting?" Kurt suppressed a smile. "I thought you were going to give up trying, anyway."

"I am. I just want the chance to say goodbye, that's all.

"If you say so."

A wide grin stretched across Wilhelm's face. "Anna might not be here yet, but a certain someone is."

"Almost the entire village is here. You might want to be a little more specific."

"Don't be a dummkopf." He nudged Kurt with his elbow and pointed to the very edge of the crowd. "Look."

Kurt glanced in the direction he had pointed, his eyes roaming the ground for a few seconds before he spotted Marie. Her hair had been pinned up in a knot on the back of her head and she wore a white hat adorned with a purple ribbon to keep the sun off her eyes. Gone was the baker's apron that Kurt had seen her wearing at the shop and instead she wore a pale purple dress and shoes with a small heel to keep the mud off the hem. He smiled a little.