The Second Son: A Novel by Jonathan Rabb

eyes told him nothing. “You don’t mind leftover chicken, do you?”
    Hoffner shook his head.
    “Good. We’ll have that then.” She tried a smile before moving off down the hall.
    Upstairs, Mendy was at his writing table, deep into a drawing.
    “I hear we lost the nap again,” Hoffner said.
    Mendy continued to draw.
    “Maybe you’re getting too old for that.” Hoffner stepped over and cocked his head to see what the boy was drawing: blob and badge were front and center. “Not such a bad thing to be too old for a nap.”
    The pencil continued to move, and Mendy said, “Does that mean I can go?”
    “Go where?”
    “With you and Papi?”
    Hoffner pulled over another small chair. His knees were almost to his chin as he sat. “I don’t think so, Mendy.” He expected the little face to turn, but the boy was showing some resolve. Hoffner said, “Papi always brings you something nice. I can bring you something, too.”
    “I don’t want anything.”
    “How do you know when you don’t know what it is?”
    Mendy finished his drawing, handed it to Hoffner, took another piece of paper, and started in again.
    Hoffner watched as the little hand moved, the other pressed down on the page to keep it in place. He couldn’t see the face, not that it would have helped. It was nearly half a minute before Hoffner decided to look again at the drawing he was holding. He then stood.
    When he reached the door he said, “Thank you for the picture.” Mendy kept to his drawing, and Hoffner said, “I’ll see you downstairs.”
    *   *   *
     
    Mendy never made it to dinner. In fact, he stayed in his room even after the cab arrived. The worst of it came during the walk down the front path. There was still enough sun in the sky to catch a little face and eyes in the window, but Hoffner refused to turn.
    Even so, the thought of them stayed with him for the forty-minute ride. It would have been longer had the cabbie not been clever and taken them south from the start. Anything else and they would have hit traffic heading west to the games. Luckily Johannisthal was far enough south, and far enough east, to keep it immune. Tempelhof, where all the big aeroplanes had been landing, was a zoo now. Mueller had been smart to keep himself out here.
    “My tires blow on this,” said the cabbie, “and you’ll be the one paying for the spares. Understood?”
    The man had been grumbling for the past ten minutes. Most of the roads around Johannisthal were little more than stomped-down grass and ruts. The modern touches—tarmac and lighting—were reserved for the airstrips: this time of night, the cab’s headlights were no match for the sudden dips and turns.
    When the cabbie finally reached his limit, he pulled up about fifty meters from the old air show bandstands and reached back to open the door. They were sitting in the middle of a deserted field, the beams from the headlights spilling out like two narrow pancakes. “You’re close enough,” he said.
    The big hangars were beyond another field, but Hoffner was happy enough to let the man go. He stood and watched the taillights bounce along the grass—the engine’s grind a thinning echo—before he picked up the valise and headed across the mud. The smell of sewage and sulfur seemed to follow him. By the time Hoffner stepped into the last of the hangars, his shirt was damp through to the waist.
    The place reeked of gasoline, even with the doors wide open. The cement floor was a trail of brown and black puddles, with tire marks crisscrossing the entire landscape. Twelve or so aeroplanes were parked along the walls—German, French, English—most of them stripped of parts in aid of the others. Elsewhere, pieces of engine were neatly laid out on sheets, while wheels and the like rested against walls and toolboxes. As far as Hoffner could tell, there were no signs of life.
    Stepping farther in, he recognized a few antiques among the four or five untouched planes: a Sopwith Snipe in