The German (33 page)

“Come on in if you’re gonna,” Brett called from the other side of the door.

I pulled back the screen and enjoyed a rush of cool air provided by a fan situated in the hallway ahead. Though gloomy, I could see dozens of framed pictures had been affixed to the hallway walls on either side of the fan, and a door stood open at the far end.

“This way, son,” Brett said from my left.

He had parked his wheelchair in the middle of the living room, its tires making noticeable trenches in the soft carpet fabric. A brown sofa ran behind him. Large round doilies draped the back cushions and the arms. Light poured into the room from the picture windows on the south and west walls, and here again, I saw dozens of framed photographs. They all seemed to include a gaunt woman with a bun of snow white hair, and it occurred to me then, that for all of the times Bum and I had come out to hear Brett’s stories, I’d never been in his house.

“What can I do for you?” Brett asked. He flicked his chin at me and said, “You got some homework you want me to look over?”

Confused I shook my head and then realized he had been indicating the book I carried over my shoulder. I removed the strap and held the journal for a moment, staring at its brown leather cover.

“You’re the boy whose daddy went missing,” Brett said.

“Yes, sir,” I whispered, still entranced by lines of the leather’s grain, etched like maps in the hide.

“I’m sorry for that, son,” he said. “I truly am, but a war needs its heroes, and you can sleep proud knowing your daddy fought a good fight.”

I wanted to tell him that my father wasn’t dead. Daddy was still just missing. I didn’t have the strength and instead of voicing what I had come to believe was a lie, I presented the book to Brett.

“Really?” Brett said. His eyebrows arched and he ticked his head to the side, hands still grasping the rests of his chair. “And where did you come across this book?”

“Found it.”

“Mmm,” he hummed, unconvinced. “Found it, did you? Well maybe you better let me take a look at that.”

I handed him the book, and Brett flipped it open, eyes moving rapidly as he absorbed the words on the page. He nodded and hummed and scratched his neck.

“There’s a pad and pencil on that table.” He pointed to his left. “Bring those here.”

I did as he asked. He snatched up the pencil and returned his attention to the book, and then he closed it, setting the pad and pencil down on its cover. My heart sank as I took his dismissal of the journal as his inability to read it, but he wasn’t interested in the book just then. He wanted to talk.

“You boys had the right idea,” Brett said. “The only shame is that you stopped yourselves short. More folks should be following your example. Maybe soon enough they will.” He scratched his ear and gave me a big smile. “What most folks don’t understand is that evil runs in the blood. It passes down from father to son like the color of your eyes and the hair on your head. Now I don’t claim to know all the scientific talk for such things, but those Germans come from rotten seeds, and their souls are sick with it from the moment they claw their way from between their mother’s legs. Some of them learn to cover it up good and proper, but most are only one step away from demon. Burl Jones had the right idea, and instead of sitting in that jail, they ought to be throwing a parade in his honor, and you boys should be riding right up front with him.”

“I don’t know about that,” I muttered. Brett’s ideas made me uncomfortable because they reminded me of things Hugo had said.

“You’re young yet,” Brett said. “With a few more years under your belts, you boys would have done the right thing and seen to it that Nazi piece of filth never got out of his bed, but Hugo’s daddy finished things up, so no harm done. We need more folks like Burl these days, a whole lot more. People need to understand that those bastards might have fled Germany, but that don’t mean they left their evil behind. No, sir. They brought it with them, carrying the dark seeds like another piece of luggage. You move down the street, it don’t change who you are, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Brett chuckled and slapped his thigh with a broad hand. “You do have some growing up to do yet. Maybe if you’d seen what I’ve seen you wouldn’t be so shy. Now I told a story at the Fourth of July celebration, and I know you heard it because I saw you there. The thing is I didn’t tell it right. I didn’t tell it truthfully because I thought the truth of it might have been too grim for the youngsters. But I think you’re man enough to hear it.”

“Sir?” I asked. I didn’t want to hear one of his stories. I wanted to know what the German had written in his journal.

“Before seeing the real action, I was stationed near Edinburgh, Scotland at a prisoner of war camp, where the English kept their German prisoners. Most of my day was spent speaking to that filth, trying to get information, but those fuckers just smiled at me and shrugged and acted like I’d asked them over for supper. I didn’t blame them. They had it good. Truth is I’ve never seen the like of it. The military had commandeered a fine old hotel to use as the prison, and those Nazi sons of bitches slept on fine beds and ate the same rations as my squad. Why would they say one goddamned thing? They were practically on vacation.

“As for the girls, well I don’t need to tell you how a lady is drawn to a uniformed man. No sir. The local women all but flocked to the edges of the camp to peer through the fences, and there were these two girls. Oh, they were the sweetest looking little things. Two sisters with the brightest eyes you’ve ever seen and pigtails, just as lovely as a spring morning. Many was the afternoon they’d stop by the hotel with a basket of cookies they’d spent all morning baking, and they thanked us for protecting their country. Maisie and Edeen. Those were their names. Well the security at this fancy prison wasn’t good. In fact, many times I complained about the lax conditions but the commanding officer was a brittle twig of a man who didn’t like his orders questioned so nothing was ever done about it. At least, not until he was forced to do something about it.

“I knew it would happen soon enough, and one day four of the Nazi bastards escaped into the hills. The commanding officer all but shrugged, certain his men would bring them back in no time at all, and I cursed up a storm, but the twig just sneered and dismissed me.

“His attitude changed fast enough when they found those two girls. A lot of attitudes changed because of that, I’ll tell you.

“The girls had been strangled and opened up just like the Ashton boy, and there was this note, see. The note accused the girls of fraternizing with the enemy – which meant Allied soldiers, you understand – and it went on to say that the killers would murder every child in Edinburgh before they were through. Well, those four men were captured the next day, and I don’t need to tell you things didn’t go too well for our prisoners after that. That very night we took every one of the escapees into the hills and tied them to trees, and we showed them what we thought of their ‘Master Race’ by cutting off what made them men and letting them bleed out on the forest floor.

“I honestly thought we’d be seeing that same kind of justice after those boys were killed, but that’s the difference, you see. Most men can be driven to kill if it’s to defend themselves or their kin or if they get angry enough. The lousy Germans do it because they don’t know anything else. Until folks realize that, they’ll be in danger. Do you see what I mean?”

“I guess so,” I told him, which brought another chuckle from my host.

“Well, whether you see now or not, you will soon enough.” He slid the pad of paper to the side and opened the journal again. Lifting the pencil, he began whistling tunelessly, knocking the wooden pencil against his chin. He gazed into the journal for some time, writing nothing, before he said, “Why don’t you go fetch us a couple of cold pops from the refrigerator? I know my whistle could use wetting.”

Though thirsty myself, my first inclination was to decline the beverage and excuse myself from Brett’s house, because the weird light in his eyes when he talked about those murdered girls and the Germans he’d helped tie to trees tightened my skin. He looked pleased about these things, as if he were describing a cool dip in the lake or a particularly good piece of barbecue. But I knew Brett often got lost in his stories, and he had trouble getting around, even his own house, so I agreed and followed the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house.

I pushed open the white door and stepped inside. To my right was the back door and through the glass I saw the polished black nose of a Ford jutting from a narrow stall in the yard. Next to the door a proper suit coat and a duster hung from pegs, and above this was a shelf. A gray Stetson sat on the projection, displayed like a trophy. But I wasn’t thinking about the Cowboy. I don’t know that I was thinking at all. I crossed the dirty wooden floor to the refrigerator, and I grabbed the handle. After opening the door it took me a moment to realize exactly what I was seeing, and once I did the blood fell out of my face, leaving my skin tingling with cold.

Ben Livingston stared back at me from the compartment. He’d been folded and tucked in tightly with his head against his knees, facing out. He was naked and dead and my mind took far too long to manage the sight.

I didn’t hear Brett coming up behind me. My first warning of his presence was the rough cord he slipped over my head and wrapped around my neck. And just as I understood what was happening, the rope bit into my skin and compressed my windpipe, locking my last breath in my chest.

“You’re doing your neighbors a service, Tim,” Brett said. His hot breath covered my ear and neck like flowing blood. “After I collect the other two, I’m going to use you boys to create a monument to the German evil, and the people in this city will have no choice but to kill every Kraut motherfucker in sight.”

I kicked my legs and scratched at the rope encircling my neck. My chest hitched violently, reflexively constricting to draw oxygen it would never receive. Brett’s voice lowered to a rasping growl, his words punctuated by an animal’s panting. Flecks of spit landed on my ear.

“You boys were heroes,” Brett said. “Which is what makes your sacrifice so powerful. Because of you, we’ll finally see the eradication of the….”

My head grew light. A high-pitched sound rang in my ears. The spasms in my chest became unbearable. Brett continued talking, but his voice faded to a buzzing in my ears, no more substantial than the beating of a mosquito’s wings all but lost amid the shrill, persistent tone, and the louder the tone became the paler the world became until all was bleached and deafening.

~ ~ ~

The first thing I saw upon gaining consciousness was Brett Fletcher’s face. He lay on the floor facing me. His eyes met mine, but there was nothing behind them. Blood dripped from his mouth and a small split high on his cheekbone. I tried to cry out, but the ache in my throat refused me this release. Instead I choked on the sound and gasped harshly, drawing air over tender tissue. Still dizzy, I managed to roll across the floor, far enough from Brett so that his hands couldn’t reach me on the chance that I’d misread his condition. I managed to stop gagging by taking shallow breaths through my nose, and a sweet, rich scent like roses tickled my nostrils.

The refrigerator door provided the leverage I needed to get to my feet. I closed it immediately to seal the terrible sight of Ben Livingston away. Then I returned my attention to my attacker. From this new angle, I saw the jagged knot below his ear, and though I didn’t realize it then, someone had snapped his neck, and the days of the Cowboy had come to an end.

Confusion and fear sent me around in tiny circles as I tried to figure out what I should do. Eventually, the right answer came to me and I called the operator and asked her to connect me with the sheriff’s office. It seemed as if I spent a very long time on the phone, and before I even hung up, I heard sirens squalling on the farm road. I wandered out of the kitchen, still too dazed to make sense of where I was or what had happened, and in the middle of the living room, I found Brett’s empty wheelchair.

Except the chair wasn’t empty. Mr. Lang’s journal lay on the seat and a scrap of paper jutted from it like a bookmark. I lifted the journal and absently sat in Brett’s chair before pulling the note from between the closed pages. I read the simple line of neatly printed words over and over and was still reading them when the police came in and started speaking to me, and again, even when they were grasping my shoulders and shaking me to get my attention. The note read:

Where will you go if not into flame or earth?

The week that followed became a series of twisted and blurred events. I spent those days mostly in bed accosted by recent, unpleasant memories and covered in a perpetual sheen of sweat. Ma put her hand to my brow a number of times and smiled, told me I wasn’t feverish, but I thought she was wrong – the fever burned in my head and my chest; it simply hadn’t surfaced to my skin. When I wasn’t in bed, I lay curled on the sofa, hearing the radio but unable to listen to it as the stories became tedious and insignificant moments after they began. I had stories of my own, and they lacked the distant comforts of these fictions. Deputy Burns and other policemen came and went in a parade. They vacillated between extreme concern for my ordeal and joy for my having survived and admiration for my having stopped our city’s monster, even though I had done nothing to subdue Brett Fletcher. They treated me like a hero, but I knew I was nothing more than an incomplete victim. Ma stayed home with me for the entire week and lost her job at the factory. Every morning she brought me a glass of milk and a copy of the
Barnard Register
to show me my name printed small and black on the page. She told me how proud she was of me; my crimes forgotten.