Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4 Paul threw himself out of the way and smashed into the wall of thick, towering bushes that lined the road. He held his breath. The soldiers zoomed by. They were a blur of gray metal and black leather and red Nazi flags. Those soldiers would have run him down, Paul knew. They would have crushed him under speeding wheels and left him for dead. Like a worm cut in two by a plow.

Where were those soldiers going? The question stabbed him in the gut. He knew that somebody was about to get arrested — or shot. Paul pulled himself out of the thick, prickly bushes and stared at the cookies — or what little was left of them. The box lay open a few feet away in front of a gate in the hedge. The cookies were smashed to pieces. Paul desperately tried to scoop up the crumbs. But it was useless. Hot tears stung his eyes. He hated those men! He wanted to chase them down, knock them off their bikes, rip away those swastika flags and stamp them under his boots. Of course Paul couldn't do that. All he could do was sit here in the road, crying like a baby over a pile of cookie crumbs. But Paul knew that wasn't what was truly bothering him. It was this helpless feeling. There was nothing he could do to fight back against the Nazis.

Nothing anyone could do. Papa had tried to fight back… and look what had happened to him. He'd joined the French army right after Germany invaded France. Within six weeks, the Germans had killed tens of thousands of French soldiers. They took nearly two million men prisoner, including Papa. France surrendered. Now the Nazi flag flapped over the Eiffel Tower — and most of Europe, too. And Papa? He was trapped in a Nazi prison camp somewhere in Germany. Paul and Maman hadn't heard from him in four years. Paul shook his head to clear his mind. He couldn't just sit here crying all day. He was brushing off his trousers when he heard a strange sound. "Coo-roo." He looked up, and a plump gray bird was staring at him from the bushes. The bird swooped through the air and landed at Paul's feet.

It must have come for the cookies. "Go ahead," Paul said, motioning to the crumbs. "Someone should eat them." But the bird ignored the crumbs. It peered up at Paul. It had very shiny eyes, gold with a dot of black in the middle. "Coo-roo," it said brightly. "Coo-roo, coo-roo, coo-roo." It fluffed its feathers at Paul. And then it flew around in a slow circle, hovering for a moment right in front of his face. "Coo-roo." "What?" Paul asked gently. "What do you want?" Was he actually talking to a pigeon? Yes. And the pigeon seemed to be talking to him. "Coo-roo." The bird took off over the hedge into the meadow. And Paul walked through the gate after it. It had been a bad morning. Following a friendly

bird into a meadow didn't seem like such a bad idea. The bird flew low, looped around Paul, and headed for a tall apple tree in the middle of the meadow. It circled the tree as Paul walked through the tall grass to join it. Then, all of a sudden, the bird zipped up into the leaves and Paul lost sight of it. He gazed up through the branches, searching for the bird. Something wet dropped onto Paul's head. He wiped it away and glanced at his hand. It was streaked with blood. He cautiously stepped aside, and looked up. Paul froze at what he saw. His mouth fell open but he was too shocked to scream.