American Dreams (61 page)

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The sergeant cleared his throat. 'Fix bayonets.'

Paul kept cranking as the soldiers marched forward and rammed their steel into the civilians. They pulled the bayonets out and kept stabbing until each Belgian was certifiably dead.

'Leave them,' the captain said when all of them had fallen. His cigarette was down to a stub. As he started to toss it away, he happened to glance at the barn. There must have been a flare off the lens; the officer pointed.

'Up there. I saw something. Surround the barn.'

'Come on, gov.' Sammy dove for the ladder.

'Give me the other magazine.'

'Gov, there's no time--'

'The other magazine, God damn it.'

Round-eyed with fright, Sammy obeyed. Hurrying, Paul removed the magazine with the exposed footage, locked the other magazine on. He had no time to open the camera and thread the leader. He buried the exposed magazine under straw just as soldiers kicked the barn doors open.

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'You keep quiet, not a word,' he whispered to Sammy. 'Whatever you do, don't show that British passport.'

Rifle bolts rattled down below. Paul shouted in German, 'Don't fire, we're Americans. American citizens.'

'Climb down, hands in the air.' That was the captain.

Paul went first. The captain couldn't have been more than twenty-five.

He had a soft baby face, mild blue eyes. A map was neatly folded over his belt. An electric torch stuck from a pocket of his blouse. All the German officers carried a map with roads and key locations marked, plus a torch for night duty.

The officer clicked his heels. 'Captain Herman Kinder. You speak German.'

'I emigrated from Berlin as a boy.'

'Ah, ein Landsmann. Have you papers?'

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'Yes.' Paul pulled them from under his smock. The captain unfolded the oversized parchment signed by Secretary of State Bryan and inscribed with pertinent details of Paul's age, build, approximate weight, eye and hair color, all filled in by some scribe with a beautiful hand. The captain turned the passport this way and that, studying it for an agonizing length of time.

Finally he handed it back. He next examined Paul's laissez-passer. 'For your information the Belgians no longer control this country. Brussels fell on Friday. This document is worthless.' He tore it in half and threw the pieces on the ground. He eyed the ladder. Sammy had stopped halfway down, one arm hooked over a rung. His face was pale, tense.

'What do you have up there? I saw a reflection, sunlight on a spyglass or similar.'

'I have a news camera up there,' Paul said. 'I take pictures for theaters.'

, ''Kino.'' The captain smiled briefly. 'Bring it down,' he said to Sammy.

Sammy didn't understand the German. Paul repeated the order in English. Sammy started to speak. Paul stared at him. Sammy gulped and scuttled up the ladder.

He lowered the camera to a soldier, then climbed down. Captain Kinder walked around the camera resting on the ground.

'You have pictures of what transpired in the field?' Paul nodded. To one of his men, Kinder said, 'Destroy it.' A soldier bore the camera out of the barn, and out of sight. Paul winced at the sound of the wooden case splintering.

'Since

Germany and the United States are not belligerents, I am obliged 384

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to treat you courteously. But I advise you to leave the district at once. In the hands of a less conscientious officer you might be subject to execution without a hearing.'

'I understand.'

'If you're seen around here again, you will be summarily shot.'

'Yes, right, we'll go.' Paul dug his nails into his palms. They were almost free, almost out of the trap.

Remembering the film hidden in the loft, he signaled Sammy with a look. The two of them walked to the sunlit doorway and out. Sammy looked ready to burst with anger. Carefully, Paul laid a finger across his
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lips, keeping his back to the barn. He walked quickly, without running.

Any moment he expected a bullet in the back. At the edge of his vision he saw black birds with leathery wings feeding on the red flesh of the dead.

When they reached the far edge of the field, Paul risked a glance over his shoulder. Captain Kinder and his men were marching away toward the village.

He pressed on, toward a low fence of stones some farmer had built.

There, quietly he said, it's all right, Sammy, they're gone.'

He'd never seen Sammy's face so ugly. Sammy kicked the stone wall.

'Fucking bloody bastards. Fucking savages.'

'Huns. That's the name I heard in the village.' Sammy's expression was blank. 'Like Attila's hordes.' It still didn't register. He gave up, rested both hands on the stone fence and bent his head, sickened by the killings.

'It's lucky they didn't hear you say anything or I imagine we'd be dead.'

i'm one who follows orders, ain't I?' Sammy snarled, still visibly upset.

'You are, Sammy. You're that and much, much more. God bless you.

Let's sit down and rest.'

Sammy sat next to him, fanning himself with his beret. 'Where next, gov?'

'We'll make a run for Ostend and the Channel. I'll pay some fisherman to carry us across.' They sat silent until Paul said, i think it's safe now. We can go back for the film.'

'You stay here, I'll fetch it. Got to make sure those pictures get home, so people know what kind of fucking bloody monsters we're fighting.'

Paul was about to argue, but the ferocity in Sammy's eyes kept him quiet.

Troubled House

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69 Troubled House

Old age had carried off the well-remembered Nicky Speers, chauffeur to the Crowns for so many years. According to lisa's letters, the General said no one could ever equal Nicky for efficiency and good humor,
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so he'd chosen not to replace him. Fritzi was met at the Chicago depot by the close-mouthed Bavarian steward, Leopold, who was waiting on the platform.

'Welcome home, Fraulein.'

'Thank you, Leopold, I'm glad to be here.'

'Your mother and father will be happy to see you.' In speaking ten words, Leopold was being loquacious. Plus, Fritzi suspected only half of his remark was true.

The sky above the noisy street was yellow and smoky. A rampart of black clouds in the west threatened rain. It was Thursday, October 1, three days before 'Peace Sunday' proclaimed by the president as a national day of prayer to end the war.

With special dispensation from B.B., she had come halfway across the country at her mother's urging. On her journey she'd listened to fellow passengers with strong opinions about the war: The U.S. must follow Wilson's lead and remain completely neutral. The Germans were barbarians guilty of raping nuns, burning priests alive, amputating the hands of Belgian babies. Never mind, the whole thing would be over by Christmas.

Fritzi had no strong opinions of her own at this point, and the war had nothing to do with her return to Chicago. She was here to celebrate her parents' forty-fifth wedding anniversary at a lavish party at the Palmer House. Guests at the annual affair included many of the General's senior employees, business associates, and friends from their years in German American society in Chicago. After some hesitation, Fritzi had decided to venture home, hoping that the festive atmosphere would help her heal the rift with her father.

The family's maroon Benz touring car delivered her to Twenty-first and Michigan at dusk. The servants were all new, unfamiliar. Her mother was still at a church committee meeting, she learned, and the General was away in St. Louis. He'd gone there to straighten out a problem at his distribution agency and would return late tomorrow.

wr

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Her old room on the second floor had a stale, disused air despite clean, starched sheets and a vase of flowers. Unpacking, she turned suddenly, sensing someone in the doorway.

'Joey!'

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'Hello, sis.' He limped across the carpet; they hugged. Joe Junior tossed his old cloth cap on a chair. Approaching forty, he was pasty and smelled strongly of whiskey. His waist was much thicker than she remembered.

Joey hung on to his job despite his socialist disdain for capitalism. Mama said sadly that he traded his principles for drinking money.

'Nice California tan you've got, sis.'

'Thank you, kind sir. You could use a little sunshine yourself.'

'Ah, who'd notice? I saw your new flicker, the one where you break everything. Funny.'

Tm glad you liked it. Tell me, how are you?'

'How should 1 be? I'm the same. Go to the brewery six days a week, work at party headquarters on Sunday.'

Fritzi didn't like the tone of self-pity, but she didn't say anything. She sat on the bed. i las the war had any impact in Chicago? Out West people hardly know it's happening.'

'German people are pretty worked up about it. Pop's hung a big map of Belgium and France in his office downstairs, with colored pins for the two sides. Any day I expect to see him bring home a portrait of the Kaiser.

He may be getting a little soft.' Joe Junior tapped his head. 'After all, he'll be seventy-two in March.'

'What's your opinion of the war?'

'In one word? Criminal.'

'Which side do you mean?'

'Both sides. The way international socialism looks at it, all governments are by nature corrupt, and wars are nothing more than policy extensions of that corruption. Common people don't start a war, sis. War is inflicted on them by the exploiters.'

She smiled. 'Papa would call that red talk, wouldn't he?'

'Sure, but it's the truth. I'll wash up now. Glad you're home.' He turned to go, dragging his crippled foot. 'Say, did anyone tell you? Carl's coming on a midnight train from Texas. He's on his way to France, can you feature it? Guess you'll be glad to see him, anyway.'

Joey's tone implied that she wasn't glad to see him. How sad he was, how lost. She doubted that anyone could redeem him from what he'd become.

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Carl boomed into the house at half past four in the morning, his train delayed several hours. He came bounding up the staircase with a worn out Gladstone in hand and a bedraggled red scarf draped around his neck. In her night clothes, lisa alternately hugged her younger son and urged him to be quiet -- most forcefully when he bumped the newel post so hard it shuddered violently.

Fritzi yawned and waved at Carl from the door of her bedroom, promising to see him first thing in the morning. Joey hadn't bothered to get up.

Every year when the Crowns celebrated by hosting their party, the General adamantly refused presents from his guests, though he didn't object to receiving them from his children. Fritzi still had to buy hers. She asked Carl to go with her. He'd already wrapped up the best gift he could afford - a cheaply framed photo of himself, posed against a rickety airplane on whose wing panels bullet holes were clearly visible.

In the Loop they saw evidences that Chicago's large German-American population was far from neutral about the war. A State Street vendor stridently hawked tin replicas of the Iron Cross. The window of a music shop displayed Columbia gramophone records of German patriotic songs.

'Pop won't like it when I fly for the other side,' Carl predicted somberly.

After shopping for an hour, with Carl complaining that he.needed another cup of Java to wake up, Fritzi finally bought a handsome clock.

The lacquered cabinet was twenty-five inches high, encrusted with knobs and scrollwork and little balconies - very German. She wasn't sure her father would like it but her mother would use it. lisa maintained her orderly household with at least one clock in every room.

About to pay, she remembered something. lisa was in her late sixties, and her eyesight had deteriorated badly. 'I've changed my mind. That one.' It was identical except for larger hands and dial.

'Cost you two dollars more,' the clerk said.

'Fine, wrap it up.'

In the Fort Dearborn Coffee Shoppe on Wabash Avenue, Fritzi ordered tea and a biscuit, Carl a double-sized coffee. He unbuttoned his coat, let the red scarf hang loosely over his shirt. The disreputable thing was at least a yard long, with frayed ends and all sorts of stains. Finally her curiosity prodded her to ask, 'Where did you get that old thing?'

'From Tess, the girl in Detroit. I told you about her.'

She recognized something deep and serious in his words. 'You cared for
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her, didn't you?'

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'I still do.'

'But you left her.'

He nodded, saying nothing.

Fritzi brushed her hands together to rid them of crumbs. 'Do you know what that does to a woman?'

'How would I?7

'Of course you wouldn't. I'll tell you, because I'm in love with a man who's just about as footloose as you are.' With great intensity, and a surprising sense of relief, she described Loy Hardin, her feelings for him, and the way he retreated each time she seemed to be drawing him closer.

'That kind of thing tears a person apart, Carl. It wrecks their sleep, their work--' She'd gotten a little angry, thinking there were»now two men in her life, Loy and her brother, who refused any commitments to others, without thought of the consequence. Some of the anger came through as she took another tack:

'When you were a little boy, do you remember how you'd bang around the house and sometimes break something valuable? I remember a clock once. And a chair, and the marble top of a washstand - you were too little to know how to fix them properly. Maybe then it was all right to walk away and let Papa or one of the servants repair the damage. But you can't clumsily damage a human being and walk away without taking responsibility.

Do you know where to find your Tess?'

'Far as I know, she's still in Detroit.'

'Go see her, Carl. Do it before you're off to a place as dangerous as France. She deserves that much - one visit. I know. I've been on the other end.'