Defiant Heart (2 page)

Nodding, Anderson said, “But what about those who say it’s none of our business? Why should we get involved?”

Again, Jon paused briefly. “I don’t think it’s a question of if, but rather when, we’ll become involved. We won’t have a choice. Like it or not, we’ll be dragged in.” He stopped for a moment, searching for the right words. “Eventually, it’ll come down to us versus them. The longer we wait, the stronger they’ll get.”

“And who is ‘us’?” Marvella asked sharply.

The intensity of her look clearly shook Jon. “Us, all of us… Americans,” he stammered.

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

“Well, I happen to agree with that,” Anderson said. “But just to play devil’s advocate for a moment, why do you believe,” he asked, throwing a meaningful look at Mayfield, “that Adolph Hitler won’t stop with just Europe?”

Clearly grateful for the opportunity, Jon turned to Anderson. “Because he said so in his book.”

“You’re talking about
Mein Kampf
,” Mayfield said. “I’ve heard of it.”

Jon nodded. “Hitler wrote it before his rise to power. According to him, it’s all about world domination, and he intends for Germany to rule the world.”

“How do you know that’s what it says?” Mayfield asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve read it.”

“I have. Yes, sir.”

The reverend sat back, a surprised expression on his face.

“That’s very impressive,” Anderson said. “But, still,” he added, thinking about it, “if you’re reading a translation, you’re getting one man’s interpretation, don’t you think?”

Jon hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I think that’s probably right, yes, sir.”

Obviously picking up on Anderson’s point, Mayfield asked, “So what makes you think world domination is really what Hitler intends? Wouldn’t it be a convenient way to whip up support for the war if the English translation were skewed in that direction?”

Jon considered that, then replied slowly, “It could be. I haven’t read the English translation, so I don’t know how accurate it is.”

Not sure he had followed that, Anderson asked, “You’re not saying you read the book in German, are you?”

Jon nodded.

Startled, Anderson said, “You know how to read German. How in the world?”

“My grandfather.” Jon stopped suddenly, glancing at his grandmother, then clarified, “My father’s father. He was born in Bavaria, and he came to the United States as a young man. He worked in a bakery in Chicago. But he was very educated. He had a degree in literature from the University of Munich. When I was nine, he came to live with us. He started teaching me one day. It was fun, and we just kept at it. He’d bring home books for me, simple ones at first. I’d read them, and then we would go for long walks and talk about them. In German.

“He died,” Jon said, the words catching in his throat, and everyone was silent. “He died a little over a year ago,” he continued. “I’m just, I guess, lucky to have known him.”

No one spoke for a few moments. Then Mayfield broke the silence. “Do you speak any other languages we should know about?” he asked, with a smile.

#

In the morning, Jon discovered he was alone. He took a few minutes to wander through the house. At the end of the hall, he opened the door and stepped into the back yard.

To one side was a trap door to a basement and on the other a lean-to shed, about ten feet by ten feet, with a tin roof and wood siding. The door to the shed was secured by a simple latch that lifted easily when Jon tried it. The door opened with a squeaking protest from the hinges, and he was greeted with a dry blast of stale air.

Jon stepped up into the shed. To his left was a broad workbench, to his right a pegboard wall on which hung a series of tools. At the rear were dozens of small drawers laid out in neat rows and columns. Selecting one at random, he opened it and found that it contained a collection of nuts, all the same size. He opened the drawer next to it and found it also contained nuts, these slightly larger than the first. The drawers immediately above each contained bolts with diameters corresponding to the nuts in the drawer below. The lengths of the bolts increased as he moved up the column of drawers.

The person who worked here‌—‌his Grandpa Wilson, obviously‌—‌had been extremely neat and organized. To Jon, there was an undeniable elegance in the way his grandfather had organized his workplace.

A noise outside caused him to start. Moving quickly to the front of the shed, he stepped out and closed the door behind him. He saw no one in the rear yard, and there did not seem to be any sound coming from the house.

He would talk to his grandmother about the workshop when she returned.

#

Vernon King grabbed the keys hanging on the nail embedded in the wall, pushed open the screen door and stepped outside. The truck, he saw, was parked next to the barn. He was relieved to note that the bed of the vehicle was empty.

Absently tossing the keys in the air with the open palm of one hand and catching them with a downward snap of the same hand, he strolled across the dusty yard. He was reaching for the handle to the driver’s side door when he heard his father.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Vernon turned and saw the man standing by the corner of the barn. He had been pushing a wheelbarrow full of manure and now set it down.

“Out,” said Vernon.

“Don’t you have chores?”

He did, at least by his father’s reckoning. But he also had something else he wanted to do, and the two conflicted. He’d made the decision that the one outweighed the other. And, if he’d had more time, he might have been willing to engage in a more lengthy discussion about it. But he needed to get going and therefore opted for a much shorter response.

“Nope.”

His father came around the wheelbarrow and took a couple steps in Vernon’s direction. He had a look on his face Vernon knew all too well. It was one that had terrorized Vernon from the time he was old enough to remember until about three years earlier, when, at the age of fourteen, Vernon had, almost overnight it seemed, grown four inches and added about thirty pounds, all of it muscle.

As a youngster, Vernon had been a tall, gangly boy. He’d gotten his size from his father, who stood almost six foot three inches and was built like a locomotive. All of Vernon’s other physical attributes he’d inherited from his mother, a pretty petite blond who’d been forced to marry his father when she’d become pregnant with Vernon at the age of fifteen. Several years younger than Vernon’s father, she had, for almost ten years, put up with the man’s abuse, both verbal and physical, until one day, without warning, she’d simply left. Her parting words had been scribbled on a piece of paper she’d impaled on the nail from which Vernon had just retrieved the keys. They read, “I can’t take it no more. I’m going where you won’t never find me. Good bye. PS. Go to Hell.”

With his mother gone, Vernon had borne the brunt of his father’s cruelty. Even after he’d grown to be the same height as his father, he’d been thoroughly cowed by the man. Then came the miraculous growth spurt. It roughly corresponded to the time Vernon had begun playing basketball.

Everything came to a head one winter evening. The Jackson High School basketball team had played an away game, and Vernon arrived home several hours after sundown. His father, who had been waiting up for him and had been working himself into a rage, aided in no small part by a pint of bourbon, shoved Vernon the moment the boy walked in the door. Vernon, who was still smarting after the loss his team had suffered that evening, shoved back without thinking. His father fell backwards and sprawled on the floor.

Vernon was amazed at his own temerity. What had been more amazing, however, was the look on his father’s face. It was mostly surprise. But there was something else.

Fear.

It was a revelation for Vernon. Though his father, particularly after he’d sobered up, continued to intimidate him, it was never quite the same as it had been.

He considered his father for a long moment. Then he took a couple steps in the man’s direction. His father involuntarily took a step back. Vernon snorted. “Like I told you,” he said, “I’m going out.” He tossed the keys in the air and caught them, this time with a sideways snap of his hand that looked almost like a punch.

His father said nothing.

Vernon turned and casually walked to the truck. He slipped behind the wheel, fired up the engine and pulled away. In the rear view mirror, he could see his father still standing in the same spot.

#

With nothing better to do, Jon decided he might as well take the opportunity to explore the town. Leaving by the front door, he turned right and retraced the steps he’d taken the previous afternoon following his grandmother. He came to the commercial street on which he’d been the day before.

As he was trying to decide which direction to take, the door to a beauty salon across the street opened, and three women walked out. The small figure in the middle caught his attention. It was his grandmother.

She was talking to the woman on her left when she did a double take and looked directly at him. He raised his hand and waved. To his surprise, however, she gave no acknowledgement, instead turning and striking up a conversation with the woman on her right. The three continued down the sidewalk without a further glance in his direction.

Confused and a little hurt, Jon headed the other way.

#

The town of Jackson, Jon learned, was not much larger than what could be seen standing at the only intersection. The primary commercial drive, referred to in town as Main Street, was actually part of State Route 26, a highway that ran the width of central Indiana. The town, with a population of fewer than 300 people, served a large rural area in the northern part of Winamac County and a portion of nearby Clark County.

This information came from a garrulous old man whose sole function it seemed was to defy the laws of gravity by balancing on the back two legs of a chair planted in front of the small garage of the service station located on one corner of the intersection, while spitting sunflower seed husks with remarkable accuracy into a paper cup sitting on the ground near his feet. In the time he spoke with the man, Jon counted zero automobiles entering the station and several dozen bull’s-eyes in the cup.

“So, young fella,” the old man said, working a sunflower seed around his mouth with his tongue before expelling the broken shell and scoring a direct hit on the cup, “are you new in town, or passing through?”

“I just arrived yesterday. I’m staying with my grandmother.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, popping another seed into his mouth. “Who’s that?”

“Mrs. Wilson. Marvella Wilson.”

“Ah, Ernie’s widow.” Another spit, and another direct hit on the cup. “Didn’t know she even had any relatives.”

“My mother was her daughter.”

Brows furrowed, the old man leaned forward and allowed the front legs of his chair to touch the ground for a moment while he fished around in the pocket of his coveralls and pulled out another handful of seeds. Leaning back, he squinted his eyes and scrunched his face in thought. Then he snapped his fingers. “Sure, I remember. Claire, right?”

Jon nodded.

“Yep, I do remember her. Pretty girl. Smart too. So,” the man said, shuffling through the seeds in his gnarled left hand, “you’ve come back for a visit.”

“Actually, I’ve come here to live.”

“Really?” he asked with a renewed interest, looking Jon up and down. “You play basketball?”

“No.”

“That’s a shame,” the man said, returning his attention to the sunflower seeds. “We’ve got a darn good team up at the high school.” Plucking a seed and tossing it into his mouth, he added, “Especially for a town this small. Went to the regionals last year. Would’ve won, too, ‘cept for a lucky last-second shot by that guard from Muncie. Thank God he’s graduated.”

The old man leaned his head back and this time sent the shell in a high arc so that it dropped straight down into the cup. “Yep, just like that,” he said, shaking his head sadly.

He sat quietly, apparently lost in the memory. After a moment, he shook himself and jerked his thumb. “High school’s about a mile up the road. On the right. Elementary’s on the left. Gym’s in the back of the high school.”

Jon said his thanks, and, with no better plan, started off in the indicated direction, leaving the old man still perched precariously on his two-legged throne, mouth working sunflower seeds.

#

“Come on Judy,” Vernon said. “You know you want it.”

They were in the back seat of the big Oldsmobile that belonged to Judy Swisher’s father. It was parked in a small clearing several miles east of town. The clearing was accessible down a narrow lane that led off the highway, and it was used as a parking area by hunters during deer season. In June, of course, with hunting season months away, it would normally be deserted. This afternoon, however, there were two vehicles parked beneath the canopies of the large trees that encircled it. One was the Oldsmobile Judy had borrowed from her father. The other was the pickup truck that Vernon had taken.

Judy and Vernon had been dating for almost a year, and she had quite willingly and regularly succumbed to his charms in the past. Today, however, to Vernon’s surprise, he was getting nowhere. He’d been trying for about ten minutes, and she was having none of it. She had her legs crossed and her arms folded over her chest.

“I’m not that kind of girl.”

“Not that kind of girl?” Then he grinned. “Well, you sure were when we were out here last week.”

She flushed at that. “Don’t you want to talk?”

“Talk? Talk about what?”

“I don’t know. What about the future. Don’t you ever think about the future?”

“Sure,” he replied, leaning in again. “In fact, I’m thinking about the next ten minutes right now.”

She turned her head away.

He sat back. He was starting to get annoyed. “What the hell is this about, Judy?”

She was quiet for a long moment. Finally, she said, “I think we need to talk about us, our relationship, and where it’s going.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere at the moment.”