The Season of Migration by Nellie Hermann

to tell you more about Alard, whose room I shared at the Denis house, and who remains my greatest friend in mining country. He is nine years old. He is the first boy I shared a room with since I shared one with you. You saw a drawing of him when you were here, but I’m not sure you will remember that, or if my sketch did him any justice.
    Alard is thin and quiet, with sunken eyes and a head of dark and tousled hair. He is always listening, standing in the back of rooms or in doorways, and he is never afraid to ask questions when he doesn’t understand. The other day, we walked in the nearby woods and looked at birds’ nests in the trees, even came across one nestled in the ground. “What happens to the birds in the winter?” he asked me, genuinely concerned. I explained that the birds often left their nests for the winter, moving off to warmer climates, and would come back again when it was safe for them. He seemed satisfied with that, but he asked again, “What happens to their nests?” I told him they would remain, but he needed my assurance that we would come back to the woods in the winter to find them there.
    He is a special boy, thoughtful for his age. He impressed me from the first day as a boy destined to grow to be just like his father, prosperous and smart, with his hands ever kneading fresh quantities of delicious dough. In my first few weeks in the Denis house, I was often up late studying my Bible, reading a book, or sketching an image of the miners that would not leave my mind. Alard, who knew how to read, sat up in his bed and read his Bible, too, though most often when I looked over at him I saw his head drooping, the book propped on his knees and his chin to his chest. The sight always warmed me, for it was the vision of a boy who so dearly wanted to be a man, a human spirit trapped in time.
    There are boys who want to grow up faster and boys who don’t want to ever be men; in the Borinage, the boys don’t usually get the chance to learn the difference. I am grateful to Alard for reminding me of what it is to be a boy; he is a boy much like I was, struggling with adult questions long before it is required of him. Many nights before I moved from the Denis house, I turned Alard’s lamp down and coaxed his knees straight, taking the book from him and easing him back onto his pillow. Most nights Alard was too asleep even to mutter a response, but occasionally he whispered a good night that made a knot come into my throat. Theo, not since the two of us shared that bed in the room with the flag in the window have I felt that kind of fellowship with anyone.
    One day at the Denis house, I watched from an upstairs window as Alard and his brother Nathen played a game in the front yard. Nathen is four years older than Alard, and while I watched them I saw you and me. They were playing an imagination game, lining up rocks on the grass and moving them around, taking branches from a nearby tree to place in the path of the stones. I couldn’t hear them from where I was, but felt as if I could.
    I was telling you to move the branch just so, and you were doing what you were told, but I could see on your face that you saw something I didn’t see. I told you to put four rocks on top of the branch—the front line of the advancing army—and you did so. I watched your face; what did you see?
    â€œThey’re swimmers,” you said.
    â€œSwimmers?”
    â€œSwimmers. See? This is the front line; they’re about to jump off the dock and into the water. It’s a competition! They’re nervous.”
    And so they were. I saw them clearly then, the swimmers, wearing trunks and with their arms up, preparing to dive. “They’re swimmers!” I said.
    You grinned. You lifted the rocks up one by one and dropped them off the branch and onto the grass. I moved them through the water and you cheered for the one in blue, who beat the others by a healthy margin.