Finally, Claude had come up with his VE Day plan and Thomas conceded that it was worthy of the occasion.

So there they were on the Boylan hill, with Thomas carrying the can of gasoline and Claude the bag of nails and the hammer and the bundle of rags, making their way cautiously through the underbrush toward a dilapidated greenhouse standing on a bare knoll about five hundred yards from the main house. They had not come the usual way, but had approached the estate on a small dirt road that was on the inland side, away from Port Philip, and led to the rear of the house. They had broken in through a gardener’s gate and left the bike hidden near an abandoned gravel pit outside the estate walls.

They reached the greenhouse on the knoll. Its glass panes were dusty and broken and a musty odor of rotten vegetation came from it. There were some long, dry planks along one side of the sagging structure, and a rusty shovel that they had noticed on other occasions when they had prowled the grounds. When Thomas began to dig, Claude selected two big planks and began to hammer them into a cross. They had perfected their plans during the day and there was no need for words.

When the cross was finished, Claude soaked the boards with gasoline. Then they both lifted it and jammed it into the hole that Thomas had dug. He put dirt around the base of the cross, and stamped it down hard with his feet and the back of the shovel, to keep everything firm. Claude soaked the rags he had been carrying with the rest of the gasoline. Everything was ready. The boom of the cannon floated up the hill from the high-school lawn and rockets glared briefly far off in the night sky.

Thomas was calm and deliberate in his movements. As far as he was concerned it wasn’t anything very important that they were doing. Once more, in his own way, he was thumbing his nose at all those grown-up phoneys down there. With the extra pleasure of doing it on that naked prick Boylan’s property. Give them all something to think about, between kisses and the “Star-Spangled Banner.” But Claude was all worked up. He was gasping, as though he couldn’t get any air in his lungs, and he was bubbling, almost drooling at the mouth, and he had to keep wiping his glasses off with his handkerchief because they kept clouding up. It was an act of huge significance for Claude, with an uncle who was a priest, and a father who made him go to Mass every Sunday and who lectured him daily on Mortal Sin, keeping away from loose Protestant women, and remaining pure in the eyes of Jesus.

“Okay,” Thomas said softly, stepping back.

Claude’s hands trembled as he struck a match and bent over and touched it to the gasoline-soaked rags at the base of the cross. Then he screamed and began to run, as the rags flared up. His arm was on fire and he ran blindly across the clearing, screaming. Thomas ran after him, yelling to him to stop, but Claude just kept running, crazily. Thomas caught up with him and tackled him, then rolled on Claude’s arm, using his chest, which was protected by his sweater, to smother the flames.

It was over in a moment. Claude lay on his back, moaning, holding his burnt arm, and whimpering, unable to say anything.

Thomas stood up and looked down at his friend. Every drop of sweat on Claude’s face could be clearly made out, in the light of the flaming cross. They had to get out of there fast. People were bound to arrive at any minute. “Get up,” Thomas said. But Claude didn’t move. He rolled a little from side to side, with his eyes staring, but that was all.

“Get up, you stupid son of a bitch.” Thomas shook Claude’s shoulder. Claude looked up at him, his face rigid with fear, dumb. Thomas bent over and picked Claude up and threw him over his shoulder and began to run down off the crown of the hill in the direction of the gardener’s gate, crashing through underbrush, trying not to listen to Claude saying, “Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, oh, sweet Mother Mary.”

There was a smell Thomas recognized, as he stumbled down the hill under the weight of his friend. It was the smell of broiling meat.

The cannon was still booming down in the town.

II

Axel Jordache rowed slowly out toward the center of the river, feeling the pull of the current. He wasn’t rowing for exercise tonight. He was out on the river to get away from the human race. He had decided to take the night off, the first weekday night he had not worked since 1924. Let his customers eat factory bread tomorrow. After all, the German army only lost once every twenty-seven years.

It was cool on the river, but he was warm enough, in his heavy blue turtle-neck sweater, from his deckhand days on the Lakes. And he had a bottle with him to take the nip out of the air and to drink to the health of the idiots who had once more led Germany to ruin. Jordache was a patriot of no country, but he reserved his hatred for the land in which he was born. It had given him a life-long limp, had cut short his education, had exiled him, and had armed him with an utter contempt for all policies and all politicians, all generals, priests, ministers, presidents, kings, dictators, all conquests and all defeats, all candidates and all parties. He was pleased that Germany had lost the war, but he was not happy that America had won it. He hoped he’d be around twenty-seven years from now, when Germany would lose another war.

He thought of his father, a little, God-fearing, tyrannical man, a clerk in a factory office, who had gone marching off, singing, with a posy of flowers in his rifle barrel, a happy, militant sheep, to be killed at Tannenburg, proud to leave two sons who soon would be fighting for the Vaterland, too, and a wife who had remained a widow less than a year. Then at least she had had the wisdom to marry a lawyer who spent the war managing tenements behind the Alexander Platz in Berlin.

“Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles,” Jordache sang mockingly, resting on his oars, letting the waters of the Hudson carry him south, as he lifted the bottle of bourbon to his lips. He toasted the youthful loathing with which he had regarded Germany when he had been demobilized, a cripple among cripples, and which had driven him across the ocean. America was a joke, too, but at least he was alive tonight as were his sons, and the house in which he lived was still standing.

The noise of the little cannon carried across the water and the reflections from the rockets twinkled in the river. Fools, Jordache thought, what’re they celebrating about? They never had it so good in their whole lives. They’d all be selling apples on street corners in five years, they’d be tearing each other to pieces on the lines outside factories waiting for jobs. If they had the brains they were born with they’d all be in the churches tonight praying that the Japanese would hold out for ten years.

Then he saw the fire flare up suddenly on the hill outside the town, a small, clear spurt of flame which quickly defined itself as a cross, burning on the rim of the horizon. He laughed. Business as usual and screw victory. Down with the Catholics, the Niggers, and the Jews, and don’t forget it. Dance tonight and burn tomorrow. America is America. We’re here and we’re telling you what the score really is.

Jordache took another drink, enjoying the spectacle of the flaming cross dominating the town, savoring in advance the mealy-mouthed lamentations that would appear tomorrow in the town’s two newspapers on the subject of the affront to the memory of the brave men of all races and creeds who had died defending the ideals on which America was founded. And the sermons on Sunday! It would almost be worthwhile to go to a church or two to listen to what the holy bastards would say.

If I ever find out who put up that cross, Jordache thought, I’m going to shake their hands.