Katyushas were not known for their accuracy

Lifting his head as he reaches the end of the row, his browned neck creasing as he rises, János looks blankly over the crest of the dike to the soft tops of the willows snaking east and west toward the horizon. The smell of ripe onion lingers unnoticed like the accustomed smell of home. A rest, a nap on the shaded banks? No. They don't pay you to dream.

The river flows fast. Straggler swallows skim the top as the swirling brown mass moves in its assigned path. Every few years the snow will be heavy in the Carpathians and the river will come out, maybe even to the top of the dike, but eventually receding, staining the willows a brownish-gray to their midpoint and leaving folks with a topic for some number of weeks. Floods are not so common anymore.

Everything is under control.

Even the Russians have moved on. Malinovsky and the Red Army crossed the river a few weeks before, crushing the 7th Hungarian Infantry and then heading toward Szeged and allegedly now north to Debrecen. Everyone has pretty much accepted that the war is over; at least in these parts.

For János and his little sister Julia, the hiss and roar of the "Stalin Organs" had been all they had known of the battles that raged along the road to Makó. One villager had met a single Soviet soldier hiding in his shed: an Asian boy deserted from his company, not much older than János. "The little Tatar almost shit his pants when I found him." He received some food and moved on, heading east along the river, away from the war.

János puts his head back down and starts the next row. Somewhere in the middle, his foot catches a stone. Giving it a shove with his boot, it glints silver in the surprisingly strong October sun and explodes.