Thief of Glory by Sigmund Brouwer

knelt for a closer look and felt my knees slope away from me. I pushed aside the lower part of the shrubbery and discovered how the chicken had disappeared.
    It was a concrete pipe. A wide concrete pipe, its entrance completely covered by the bush. I heard clucks of disapproval fade as the chicken receded deeper and deeper into it. I pushed my head inside and saw light at the other end. This meant that the pipe could take me beneath the fence and into the Indonesian world.
    This was such a magnificent discovery that I decided not even to mention it to Nikki. Someday, I realized, I might have need of something like this. But it would only stay in existence if the Japanese didn’t know about it. Which meant if I wanted to keep it secret, I had to keep it to myself.
    I went back to my spot on the fence and managed to trade those four cigarettes for two cans of condensed milk plus the original banana. We were so hungry that on our return to our room, we scraped the inside of the banana peel until it was translucent. Later, I returned to the pipe with blocks of wood and stuffed them into the opening so that no more chickens could appear and betray its existence.
    With the contents of that suitcase keeping us relatively well fed, and with a mother who took joy in her children, our lives were generally happy. It lasted until the morning our black puppy with the lop ear did not wake with the rest of us.
    Coacoa had died while we slept.

T HIRTEEN
    At my request, Elsbeth first lifted and carried away Nikki as she slept, then returned for Aniek. I had been the one responsible for bringing Coacoa into Pietje’s world, and I would not shirk the burden that came with taking Coacoa out of Pietje’s life. I had no choice but to remain beneath the mosquito netting and watch my little brother’s innocent face as he slept, dreading what would happen when he opened his eyes.
    I wasn’t going to try to explain why the puppy was dead. Elsbeth had suggested that Coacoa might have eaten something that poisoned him or that because Coacoa didn’t get enough food, it was just his time to die. I had begged her not to tell this to Pietje, for then he would blame himself for not taking good enough care of the puppy.
    Pietje woke, and when he saw me, he gave me his quiet smile. Then, as he did each morning, he reached for Coacoa to shake him awake. I found the courage to tell Pietje the horrible news.
    “I am so sorry, Pietje,” I said. “Coacoa died.”
    I’d been expecting sobbing and disbelief. Instead, Pietje pronounced calmly, “He’s not dead. He’s asleep.”
    He lifted the puppy’s underfed body and kissed Coacoa’s nose, singing, “Wake up. Wake up. The sun is up.”
    “Pietje,” I said, my throat thick with the tears I so badly needed to cry. “Coacoa won’t wake up.”
    “I know my own puppy,” Pietje said. “He’s asleep. That’s all. Please hold him. I need to get dressed.”
    Pietje passed me the puppy’s body. For a moment, because of Pietje’s certainty, I almost believed it. In the tropical heat, Coacoa was still warm.
    I spoke as Pietje finished dressing. “We can have a funeral. Moeder said she would read a Bible story and then we will pray over Coacoa and bury him. She also said she would pay for some chocolate and that you could eat it all by yourself without sharing.”
    “Moeder is silly sometimes, isn’t she?” Pietje said. He reached for Coacoa. “We always share our food. And Coacoa is just asleep.”
    Pietje crossed the threshold of our door frame, cradling Coacoa. He glanced back at me. I was rooted as I tried to absorb his reaction.
    “What are you waiting for?” Pietje asked. “We can’t let Coacoa sleep all day.”
    I stood and followed.
    It was a day with no clouds and a breeze that carried the stench of the sewage away from our house. Within a week of arriving at the Jappenkamp, the flushing mechanism on the toilet in our house had snapped, and we’d been forced to rig it so the lever