When the bus dropped them off in front of the old Cawthra House, there were already several cars parked in the lot. "Not a good sign," said Kat.
"We'll see, zolota zhabka," said her grandfather.
They walked past the cars and along the walk at the side of the house until they reached the path that dipped into the ravine and the woods beyond. It was like stepping into another time. The floor of the woods was covered with a deep carpet of autumn leaves and pine needles and the air around them was astonishingly still considering the woods were in a suburban area. Kat filled her lungs with the lovely damp woody smell.
Voices broke the stillness. Two elderly women were crouched down picking through the leaves not a dozen meters away from them.
"Come with me," said Danylo. Then he took Kat by the hand and led her in the opposite direction. Down a path, across a stream, and deep into the woods.
Kat was chilly and her running shoes were already damp, but she agreed with her grandfather. This is how they always did it: they'd find the others and then go in the opposite direction. "There's a mushroom," she said excitedly. Kat reached down and gently squeezed the barrel-shaped stem until it snapped. She had picked their first mushroom of the season.
"Let me check it," said her grandfather.
Kat held it out to him, although she was sure it was a pidpenok because of the distinctive brown cap.
Danylo held it up to his nose and breathed in the musty aroma. "Very good," he said approvingly.
Kat opened her bag, and he dropped it in.
Danylo and Kat worked industriously a few dozen meters apart from each other. It really was an excellent day for pidpenky. The best, in fact, that Danylo could remember. After picking more than a dozen clustered under a tree, Danylo stood up and stretched his legs. It was exhausting for him to crouch down and pick the mushrooms, and it was painful to stand back straight again.
He was thankful that Kat was much quicker at this than he was, so they would only take a few hours to fill both bags. As he stretched his back, he spotted another clustering of pidpenky a few feet further away so he walked towards them, making sure that Kat was always not too far away.
One time when she was about seven years old, he had lost her in the woods for about a minute. That was one of the longest minutes of his life. He could see her now, squatting amidst a good-sized clustering of mushrooms, methodically picking only the freshest ones. When she was finished in an area, she would stand up quickly. No aches or pains in his granddaughter's joints, that was for sure.
Danylo crouched back down so that he could reach the new clustering of mushrooms. There were quite a few dead leaves in the way, so he picked up a handful and placed it aside. As he reached for another handful, his fingers brushed upon something hard. He looked down and was startled to see a man's black leather shoe. Danylo's heart beat fast at the sight and he clutched his chest. His brain told him that it was just a discarded shoe, but it brought back a rush of horrible memories.
"Kataryna, come here," he called out urgently.
Kat stood up straight and strode quickly over to where her grandfather was. She could see that he was holding his hand to his chest and his face was contorted with pain. "What's the matter?" she asked.
"Help me to my feet," he asked meekly. "I just need to stretch out for a moment."
Kat pulled him to his feet, and then she looked down. A man's shoe. She nudged it with the tip of her running shoe, then bent down and picked it up. "Looks like it's been here awhile," she said, wondering why her grandfather would be so shaken by the sight of a shoe in the forest.
"Put it down," said Danylo.
Kat looked at her grandfather in confusion, but did what he asked. "Maybe we should go home?"
"I'll be fine," he said. "Just let me catch my breath." Kat looped her arm around her grandfather's back and led him over to a fallen log. They both sat down together.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"That shoe reminded me of something," he said.
"Of what?"
"I can't talk about it," he replied in a husky voice.
It was a cold June morning in 1941. When word came that the Nazis were attacking, the Soviet administration left the area en masse and had taken with them all the food and supplies that they could carry. The locals were left with nothing to eat. And soon, they would be at the complete mercy of the Nazis. His father had gone out to find food days before and still hadn't returned. Danylo knew that if they didn't eat soon, he and his mother would starve. His family's one salvation was that they lived close to the forest. There was a chance that he could sneak into the woods and scavenge wild roots and mushrooms and bring them back before the Nazis arrived. Now that the Soviets were gone, it had to be safer.
In the pre-dawn darkness, Danylo knelt down and blindly felt a beautiful clustering of spring mushrooms behind a rotted log. He carefully placed them one by one in his hand-woven sack and then brushed aside a handful of dead leaves to grope for more mushrooms, but instead, he felt something smooth and firm. He brushed away some more leaves and felt what seemed to be a length of wood covered with cloth. Very odd. A few feet from the rotted log, Danylo felt some more mushrooms and so he picked those and placed them in his sack too, working quickly because the sun was beginning to peek through the tops of the trees. He stood up and brushed the dirt from the knees of his pants, and then bent down to pick up his mushroom sack. What he saw made him cry out in horror. The firm smoothness that he had felt was a handmade shoe, and there was a leg sticking out from it. The corpse of a man lay there, a bullet hole through the neck. Danylo felt the bile rise up his throat when he realized that the man was his father. The first rays of sunlight now mercilessly illuminated the area. His father's body wasn't the only one. There were more than a dozen, all with bullet holes in their necks. Danylo recognized them all. Each one of them had been involved in Ukrainian resistance activities against the Soviets.
Danylo gripped his mushroom sack close to his chest and ran home.
Kat wanted to go home right then, but Danylo wouldn't hear of it. " Zolota zhabka," he said, "my sad thoughts will be with me whether we get the pidpenky or not, so rather we pick them and I be sad then we don't pick them and I be sad."
Kat couldn't fault his reasoning, but she insisted that her grandfather rest while she finished. It was close to ten by the time she had filled both bags. Instead of waiting for the bus, Kat called home to see if someone could pick them up. Genya answered.
"I'll be right there."
Kat noted her sister's suppressed look of cool disapproval as she pulled up in front of Cawthra House in their mother's car. Kat held her grandfather's elbow and guided him into the passenger seat and then she sat down in the back seat. Once they pulled into the driveway, Kat had barely enough time to get out of the car and help her grandfather out before Genya had put the car in reverse and was backing out of the driveway, spewing gravel as she went.
By the time they got into the house, Danylo was grey with fatigue. He quickly washed and then lay down in his room.
CHAPTER 14