Dorothy Garlock
Authors: The Moon Looked Down
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Dorothy Garlock
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: July 2009
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ISBN: 978-0-446-55091-8
Contents
B
OOKS BY
D
OROTHY
G
ARLOCK
After the Parade
Almost Eden
Annie Lash
Dreamkeepers
Dream River
The Edge of Town
Forever Victoria
A Gentle Giving
Glorious Dawn
High on a Hill
Homeplace
Hope’s Highway
Larkspur
Leaving Whiskey Bend
The Listening Sky
Lonesome River
Love and Cherish
Loveseekers
Midnight Blue
More than Memory
Mother Road
Nightrose
On Tall Pine Lake
A Place Called Rainwater
Promisegivers
Restless Wind
Ribbon in the Sky
River Rising
River of Tomorrow
The Searching Hearts
Sins of Summer
Song of the Road
Sweetwater
Tenderness
This Loving Land
Train from Marietta
Wayward Wind
A Week from Sunday
Wild Sweet Wilderness
Will You Still Be Mine?
Wind of Promise
Wishmakers
With Heart
With Hope
With Song
Yesteryear
This book is lovingly dedicated to Marion
THE MOON LOOKS DOWN
I climb alone to my secret place
And gaze from my rocky perch
To commune with the moon.
I ask that circling silvery stone the
Questions that perplex me so.
Can the moon on high tell me why…
Why dark souls aflame with hate
Ignite the fires that terrify me,
Why those whom once I trusted
Plot to harm the ones I love.
I look with hope into the night
And the moon looks down.
How absurd! It says not a word.
—F.S.I.
Victory, Illinois—June 1942
F
IRE
! F
IRE
!”
Sophie Heller woke suddenly from a dream in which she had been picking wild daisies and entered into a nightmare of confusion
and fear. Karl, seven years her junior at thirteen, stood beside her bed in his nightshirt. Even in the darkened room, she
could see that his face was anxious.
“What are you… ?” she muttered. “What’s happening?”
“Get up, Sophie! You have to come quick! There’s a fire!”
“Wait… wait a minute…”
“We don’t have a minute!”
Before Sophie could protest further, Karl grabbed her arm and pulled her from the bed and toward the door. She had scarcely
enough time to grab a shawl from her dresser and hurriedly wrap it about her shoulders before they were out of the room, across
the narrow landing, and racing down the picture-lined stairs.
Struggling not to stumble on the stairs, Sophie caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the glass panes. Looking back
at her through wide, bluish green eyes was a young woman of twenty years. Her straight, shoulder-length black hair framed
high cheekbones, a small nose, and full lips. The image quickly passed from view as she and Karl passed through the front
door, crossed the enclosed porch, and burst out onto the front step, only to stop and stare in amazement and disbelief at
what they saw.
“Oh, no!” Karl cried.
The large red barn their father had built shortly after the family’s arrival in Victory was on fire!
Crimson flames poured from the barn’s front doors and the broken windows on the building’s sides, reaching toward the sky.
Thick black smoke billowed upward and the air was filled with the smell of burning wood and hay. The quiet of the night was
split by the sound of crackling flames and the occasional snap of wood as it surrendered to its fate and crashed to the ground
below. Still, Sophie could only watch in amazement. Frightening though it was, the barn’s destruction was also captivating,
hypnotizing.
With effort, Sophie pulled her eyes from the barn and looked around for the rest of her family. Karl stood rooted beside her,
the dancing flames mirrored in his wide eyes. A precocious boy who loved baseball, Karl was a help on the farm, essential
to their father. Handsome, with a lanky frame and deep blue eyes, he would grow to be a fine man, Sophie was sure. At that
moment, she was glad that he was next to her.
Standing closer to the barn, her parents clung to each other. Her father, Hermann, was a short, squat man whose lifetime as
a farmer had given him muscular arms and heavily calloused hands. He ran desperate fingers through his thick black hair and
his shoulders sagged deep with hopelessness.
Ever at his side, Maria, Sophie’s mother, had both of her tiny hands wrapped around one of her husband’s thick arms. She was
a petite woman who, with her long, golden brown hair and thin waistline, looked far younger than her thirty-nine years. Now,
reflecting the light of the fire, her eyes were wide with fright.
Sophie turned back toward the house. There, in one of the windows, she saw her grandmother, Gitta, peering out from behind
the curtain of her room. Though Sophie could not see the older woman’s face, she knew that she would be worried yet calm.
Her father’s mother, at eighty, found little left to surprise her in life.
A large crack split the night air. Sophie looked back just in time to see part of the barn’s roof collapse in on itself, the
wood crashing to the ground with a deafening roar. The flames paused only for a moment before growing even higher and hotter
in intensity. There would be no chance to save the barn. Their closest neighbors were the Sanderses, but they lived a couple
of miles to the north. Even if they had seen the fire, they would be far too late to help by the time they arrived.
“What happened?” Sophie asked her brother. “How did it start?”
“I don’t know,” Karl muttered, lost in the blaze.
“Was it lightning?”
“I don’t… I don’t know,” he said again.
Sleeping peacefully in her daisy-filled dream, Sophie had not heard a storm, but that didn’t mean that one hadn’t occurred.
Summer storms in Illinois could be unpredictable and violent, leaving much destruction in their wake. Her eyes scanned the
sky but she couldn’t see any cloud other than the one the fire was making. The moon looked back at her, a crescent three-quarters
hidden, as if it were trying to shield itself from the chaos below. A crowd of stars filled the rest of the heavens, like
gawkers at an accident.
If lightning had not struck, what caused the fire?
In answer to her unspoken question, the night was split by another loud crack, this one coming from the corner of the house.
Sophie’s heart froze at the sight that awaited her. Three men stood side by side, all of them wearing burlap sacks over their
heads. Through the narrow eyeholes they had cut, she could see nothing but a blackness she knew matched their intentions.
All of them wore rough clothing; overalls spattered with grease stains and shirts peppered with holes. The one in the middle
loosely carried the rifle that had fired the startling shot.
“Goddamn Kraut bastards!” he spat.
In that instant, Sophie faced a horrendous truth. The men standing before her had set fire to the barn and they had intended
to herd the family outside because they wanted to do them
more
harm.
“What is the meaning of this?” her father bellowed in his heavily accented English, his German origins coloring every word.
“Are you responsible for this outrage?”
“Damn right we are,” the man answered defiantly.
“Why… why would you do such a thing?”
“Don’t ya dare play dumb with me, ya stupid Kraut! I’d bet ya thought we’d all just stand around with our fingers up our noses
and not say a word, but ya was wrong! Ain’t no way we’re gonna let no Germans just go on livin’ here and not do nothin’ about
it! You’re just waitin’ to make your move. Just waitin’ to wreck a train or poison the water!”
“What are you talking about? I’m an American citizen!”
“Ya ain’t no American, you’re a damn Nazi!”
The armed man’s words cut through Sophie like a knife, though what he was saying couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The Heller family had emigrated from Germany in early 1933, the same year that Adolf Hitler had become the chancellor of the
nation. While many had believed Hitler’s promises, Hermann had seen only danger. Their exodus had been fraught with peril,
their reasons for leaving many. Settling in Victory, Hermann Heller took great pride in considering himself to be as American
as any of his neighbors.
“I’m not a Nazi!” he now protested.
“The hell ya ain’t,” countered the man standing just to the right of the one with the rifle. Smaller than his armed companion,
he glanced nervously from Hermann to his ally as if he were searching for approval. The man to the left of the gunman remained
silent and impassive. From the way they behaved it was obvious to Sophie that the one with the gun was in charge.
“Just another Kraut lie,” the leader said.
With her heart pounding in her chest, Sophie closed her eyes tightly, as if by wishing hard enough the nightmare before her
would just miraculously disappear. But when she opened them again, nothing had changed. Sweat glistened on her brow, not from
the heat of the burning barn but from fear.
The fear of death!
“Sophie,” Hermann said sternly. “I want you to take Karl and go in the house.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, girlie,” the gunman warned. Catching the light of the flickering flames, the gun’s barrel
rose upward and another shot rang out. The bullet smashed into the wooden planks of the front steps, launching a shower of
splinters. Glancing down, Sophie saw that the shot had pierced the wood no more than a couple of inches from her foot. Her
shawl fell from her shoulders, landing at her bare feet. Her mouth opened and closed with no sound. Beside her, her brother
trembled with fright.
“Next one hits her,” the gunman said coolly, as a thin tendril of smoke curled skyward from the end of the rifle.
“How dare you!” Hermann bellowed. “How dare you come here and do this to us, threatening my children! If you so much as touch
them I will kill you! Only cowards would hide behind a mask!”
“Hermann…” Maria tried to restrain him, but her husband shook off her grasp.
“You best watch who you’re callin’ a coward,” the gunman said as he moved the rifle so that it pointed toward Hermann. “Now,
if you wanna keep on drawin’ breath, what you’re gonna do is take this here family of yours and get the hell out of Victory
County. Go back to Germany and Hitler. We don’t want your kind here.”