The Losing Role (13 page)

New German bombardments tore into the woods around
them. They ducked. Splinters and who knew what whacked at the jeep
as Zoock drove on.

“Help us! Slow down! Need a ride!” GIs ran out to
them from the trees waving their arms. Some slipped and fell, yet
more came from all sides. “Krauts’ll kill us,” one screamed, “SS
are coming, Mac, gotta roll back,” yelled another. One got within
inches of the rear fender. He lunged but missed and tumbled.

Up ahead, GIs were hauling an antitank gun into the
road. Some broke off and started for the jeep. A GI landed on their
hood. His helmet bounced off but he stayed on. Zoock swerved to
shake him. The GI grabbed at the windshield. Max pulled him in by
the collar. It was a kid, no more than 18. His blonde hair flapped
in his eyes, and he gasped for breath. “Thanks mister, sir, thanks
much,” he panted.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Max said—

A boot struck the kid in the face and he toppled out
the jeep. Rattner’s boot. Rattner was standing, clutching at the
back of Max’s seat. “See that
Ami
half-pint?” he shouted in
German, “That’s all they’re fighting with?” He cackled and fumbled
for his bottle, but Felix pulled him down.

“Will you stop with the German?” Zoock shouted.

The horizon turned purple. Dawn. Up ahead a dead GI
lay on his back, still clutching a pack of cigarettes. They slowed
to nab the pack. Inspired by the prize, Felix suggested plundering
the wreckage and dead for American gear but Max argued it was too
risky. The rest agreed. Rattner mumbled thanks to Zoock for his
fine driving, then nodded off. Up front, Max and Zoock smoked the
American cigarettes. They were Pall Malls. Max had smoked the very
same in New York City. For a moment the fine musky aroma took him
back to his apartment on the Lower East Side, back to the stoops
and drug store diners and salary men in the elevators, and even
back to that strange automat where he ate pie with a slice of
cheese. And then the moment was gone. It didn’t take him back to
Lucy. She smoked Camels.

The sky became a heavy, dark gray mass. The morning
mist formed drops on their olive green wool. It was time to
consider the mission, and Felix took the lead. He checked the maps
as they drove on. As planned, they had been dodging the major
crossings and villages. They passed only minor crossings and
checkpoints. At every signpost Felix had Zoock stop so he could
jump out and switch the signs backward. Ideally this would send any
unwary or retreating Americans right back into the advancing
Germans and, similarly, any counterattacking Americans far to the
rear. It was vaudeville to the death. And with every switch Felix
jumped back into the jeep giggling.

They headed downhill, and the fog thickened. A
stream had washed out part of the road, revealing the tops of rocks
through the mud. Zoock shifted down to cross the water. Max peered
through the fog. Something was ahead, at the base of the hill. He
grabbed the binoculars.

It was a roadblock. Two jeeps, an armored car, and a
squad of roughly ten American soldiers stood ready. The silhouettes
looked unreal in the fog, like two-dimensional cardboard cutouts.
Seeing them, Felix cocked his Colt pistol. Max shook his head at
Felix. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. I’m all right,” Felix said.

“Good,” Max said, and to Zoock, “So. We’ll just
proceed slowly.”

Zoock nodded, slowly.

This was the first semblance of order they had seen.
It meant they had to be well behind American lines. I could end it
here, Max thought. Just step out of the jeep, stroll over and tell
these Americans that German soldiers were with him. Then he’d be
free. Wouldn’t he? He looked again with the binoculars. The
Americans’ helmets had horizontal white stripes. They were Military
Police—MPs, they called them. Could it be that easy? Max wasn’t
sure. Logic and sentiment clashed and sputtered in his head.

Felix passed around American chewing gum—Black Jack
gum. Zoock refused it, but Felix and Max chomped on theirs,
smacking and sucking down its weak licorice sap. Any prop would
help. Luckily, Rattner was still passed out, his head hanging to
one side.

The MP jeeps were parked angled into the road,
creating a narrow passageway. The armored car stood behind, its gun
aiming down the road. “Easy,” Max said, “easy.” As they approached,
slowing, an MP each moved to the hoods of the two jeeps. They had
Thompson submachine guns—“tommy guns” like Chicago gangsters used.
They raised arms to halt the jeep. Zoock came to a stop.

One MP was a lieutenant and the one on Zoock’s side
was a corporal. The MP corporal stepped forward. Seeing Zoock’s
Confederate hood flag, he rolled his eyes. Then he gave Max a lazy
salute, which Max returned with only a nod and a smack of gum. Only
now did he realize he was smoking and chewing gum. Frightful.

“Kill the engine, please,” the MP said to Zoock.
Zoock did so, and they heard the distant thudding of battles. It
was much louder without the whine of their jeep. Zoock and Felix
straightened in their seats. The MP winced at the loudest bursts.
He had thick eyebrows. “Man, you boys look lost,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” Max began. Zoock blurted:

“Ah wreck-on we done gone da wrong dang way.”

The Chinese Southern accent had returned in
force.

“What?” the MP said. He pushed back his helmet and
cupped a hand to his ear.

“Ah sayde, we done—”

“He thinks we’re misplaced,” Max shouted over
Zoock.

“Come again, sir?” The MP stepped closer.

“Go lay an egg,” someone blurted. It was Rattner.
His head was down, his chin at his chest. He was so stoned he
hadn’t sounded German but simply drunk.

“Excuse me?” The MP stepped back and glanced over at
his lieutenant.

“Real fuckin egghead,” Rattner said, snickering.

The MP glared at Max. “Where does he get off?
Sir?”

Max glared at Rattner. “Shut your snout,
Corporal.”

Zoock added, “Ah, doen mine heem, massa Joe. He’s
mahty fine.”

“Jesus,” said the MP, glaring at Zoock now. “You
sure speak a funny kind of English.”

Rattner’s head had raised up. He was grinning. His
mouth opened. Felix slapped him, hard, and then again. Rattner
groaned and slumped back.

“It’s the goddamn shell shock, see,” Felix said in
fine American English, “thinks the war’s a gas. Imagine that?”

“Yeah, imagine,” the MP said. He rubbed at his chin.
Felix offered him some gum. The MP took a stick and slid it in his
breast pocket. He patted the pocket, staring at the four of
them.

“Look here, corporal,” Max said, “I can explain.” He
stepped out of the jeep, and to his relief, no one made a move from
the jeep or the roadblock. He felt the power of the stage now,
infusing his brain and heart, a poise he could only know while
performing. Hearing the rhythm of real American English stirred
him. He understood these Americans. Sure, they wore olive drab wool
and steel helmets, yet weren’t they still the men on the streets
he’d passed day in, day out for years? And now? He was an American
lieutenant. A salary man. He strode around the hood of the jeep,
tossing his cigarette butt in the mud.

Over at the MP jeeps, the MP lieutenant nodded. Max
walked up to the MP corporal, handed over his papers and took the
corporal aside, a yard or two away. They had their backs to the
jeep. As the corporal checked the papers, Max stared off into the
woods. More GIs were gathering in there, staring back from the
branches and trunks like so many wolves and owls.

Max spoke softly. Fatherly. “We are a long way from
our unit, as you may read in my papers here.” A sigh. “We became
cut off, and we lost a good deal of men. In an instant, they were
all gone. Cut down. We are among the few left.”

The MP corporal stopped reading. He looked up. “I
lost two pals this morning.”

“I’m sorry about that, son. Truly. However, we are
going to find our way back, aren’t we? Aren’t we, son?”

The MP stared, his eyes wet.

“Yes, we are. As for our driver, old Bert Ignatius
over there, well, there is no explaining his type. He is from
Louisiana, you see, and he took too many bombs too close to the
head. And, he always was a little, well, let us say, cuckoo. A fair
driver though. And as for the one in back? Pity.” Max added a
smile. He drew his plundered pack of Pall Malls and, careful to
smack it against the back of his hand American-style, slid one in
his mouth. He lit it and offered one to the MP.

“No, thanks, sir. I’ll bet he is that—your driver, I
mean. The loony ones can always drive.” The MP handed Max back the
papers and gave his lieutenant a thumbs-up. He shook his head at
Max’s jeep, at their mud-caked windshield and dented fenders. “You
saw some tough stuff this morning, didn’t you?”

“We did, yes. I’m afraid the Germans are coming in
fullest force.” Max started back for the jeep. The MP followed.

Felix was leaning out the rear seat waving at them.
“Say, Corporal,” he said to the MP. “We’re a bit lost. We’re in
Belgium? How far we from the front lines?”

“About twenty miles. It’s definitely Belgium. You’re
good and safe now—for now. Krauts are throwing everything they got
at us. Say they even got planes in the air. Trying to split us
north and south, we’re hearing. Making lots of headway too.”

“Gawdang bastahds,” Zoock said.

“Fuck it, I’m leaving,” Rattner muttered.

The MP turned to Max. “For your shell-shock case
there? There’s a field hospital up the road a stretch, take the
first right. Then look for the signs.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“And good luck, sir. Hope you make it back
safe.”

“Thanks, son. You as well. I’m guessing we’ll all
need much luck in the days to come.”

Eleven

Ten o’clock in the morning. They had infiltrated over
forty miles behind American lines yet had another forty to go, ever
westward, toward the town of Huy on the Meuse River. Huy’s bridge
was their goal. They were to confirm the bridge was intact, cross
it, and report back on conditions. Seizing the Meuse bridges was
supposed to be crucial. By the end of this first day, the surprise
panzer columns were to cross the river and race onward for the
Belgian city of Antwerp. After Antwerp the countryside opened wide,
and France beckoned. It could be 1940s’ Blitzkrieg all over. A
German Europe. Fortress Europa. Wine, women, and song. It was all
crazy talk. The successes of 1940 had also been a delusion and
would never come again. Even taking Antwerp was a pipe dream.

All Max needed was to get over that river. Once
their jeep crossed that bridge at Huy, he’d make his move and be
long gone. It was a good thing he hadn’t tried to defect at that MP
roadblock. The Americans were rattled. So why would they reward him
for turning in his friends? Wasn’t he one of them too, and wearing
the uniform of a US lieutenant at that? Once a kraut, always a
kraut—hadn’t he heard people say it in America? Besides, how could
he betray Felix and Zoock like that? He was no traitor, not to his
comrades. Until he got over that bridge, perhaps he could help them
help themselves. He certainly couldn’t let them destroy themselves.
He’d already let that kid Braun destroy himself. He would make his
own way but only when the time was right. In the open country west
of the Meuse he’d go on the lam. He knew enough French, and Paris
was not far. If only they could get there. The Ardennes was proving
a tangle of thick woods and craggy ravines. The roads were so
narrow and tricky and the main crossroads so clogged that every
jammed mile seemed to take an hour.

At the same time, Max couldn’t help but get
engrossed in his new role. After they made it through that MP
roadblock they raved about it like school kids who’d just visited
the zoo. They compared the ways the MP GIs walked, talked, stood.
They analyzed the fit and wear of the uniforms and debated whether
the repainted olive green on their jeep was close enough to the
real thing. Mostly, they raved about Max’s performance. Fantastic
yet balanced, they called it. “Subtle, you know?” Zoock said,
abandoning his Chinese Southern English for the moment.
Subtle—there was no better compliment for an actor. Max took great
pride in that. Even Rattner came around. “Nice work, truly,” he
said in German and added a careful pat on Max’s shoulder. Then
there was Felix—Felix the Sphinx. For the first couple miles after
the roadblock, he had grinned at Max, smacking his gum.

“You really went out of your way there, didn’t you,
von Kaspar?” he said finally. “For the team. I am truly in
wonder.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” Max said. “I do what I can.”
It was a grand scene, he had to admit. He had changed the mood of
that MP corporal completely.

And yet, as with all great performances, the thrill
could not last. A few miles down the road and Max was regretting
his bravado, his recklessness. He had totally ad-libbed his lines.
What if the MPs had checked them out closer? Zoock’s cover identity
wasn’t even from Louisiana—his papers said Delaware. It might have
been a slaughter. Only by accident had it succeeded.

By noon, Felix had led them in switching five
signposts and cutting two telephone lines. He boasted of blowing up
a transmitter station or a munitions depot—if only they could find
one. They passed a minefield along one side of the road. Felix
asked Rattner if he could remove the warning signs. Rattner
consented. He then ordered Max to help and Max had no choice.
Rattner was sobering up. He tried radioing HQ but the weather and
battles, ravines and hills made it impossible. With each failed try
he grew darker. He slumped in his back seat and scowled at the
trees rushing past, his left temple twitching. Max liked him better
drunk and violent.

Felix came up with a new con. In one village they
pulled it off brilliantly. The place was little more than a fork in
the road. A team of GIs stood guard there. Zoock raced up and
started honking, and the four of them were waving their arms before
the jeep had stopped. The GIs raised their guns. Zoock screeched to
a halt and they yelled: