Rhineland Inheritance (8 page)

They detoured around a building that had slipped from its destroyed foundations and created a hillock in the middle of the road. When they reached the other side, Jake asked, “And the third?”

“The third choice is to learn to take each day as it comes, and to do what you can with what you have. This means learning that you cannot avoid seeing the suffering of others, which is hard. Extremely hard. I would imagine that it would be impossible to do this without the strength of God in your heart. At least a believer can respond to this suffering with prayer. But the key is to learn to do with what you have, Jake. That is the central issue. Do not see yourself as a failure because you can't touch all who suffer. Recognize that universal healing can only come through Jesus Christ, and accept your assigned task. Then do all you can with everything you've been given.”

Chapter Five

They returned from the second meeting to find Sally Anders still at the créche. Jake walked through the door and was met with the cocked head, the hands on hip, the blunt, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Don't be obtuse, soldier. How did it go?”

Chaplain Fox answered for him. “It went splendidly. I do believe they have taken to both Jake and his idea.”

Jake fumbled about with his cap, bent over to stroke the cheek of a passing little girl. Finally he glanced back at Sally. She watched him with a small smile playing across her lips. “You may invite me out to dinner, Captain Burnes,” she said. “If you like.”

“I like very much,” he said.

“I know a little place not far from here. A farmhouse. Probably the only decent restaurant for miles. You can pay with dollars, chocolate, cigarettes, booze, or food.”

“Sally, I think you should know I didn't do this for you. Well, not entirely. That is—”

“I know, I know,” she said, reaching for his arm. “That's why I accept.”

Jake pushed open the créche door, waved a farewell to the smiling chaplain, said, “Step into my Rolls, and let me take you away from all this.”

“If only you could, soldier,” Sally said, mounting the stairs. “If only you really could.”

****

They climbed a hill out of the city, passed through deep forest as darkness descended, then came over a crest and entered a clearing that stretched out for what seemed like miles. A cluster of farm buildings offered the only sign of life. The farmhouse was a vast structure, rising among a series of
stables and barns that covered over an acre. Lit by lanterns and warmed by a sweet-scented wood fire, the farmhouse was the first sign of coziness Jake had seen in months.

“This is terrific,” he said, taking his place at the end of a long farm-style trestle table. “How did you find it?”

“Being one of the few American women around means I field all kinds of offers,” Sally replied, settling herself across from Jake. “You should know that, soldier.”

Seven long tables filled what once had been a great family hall. Antlers and old blunderbusses decorated the high smoke-stained walls. The farmer and his wife, serious middle-aged folk, cooked and served with the help of a pair of shy country girls. The clientele was mixed. A few German civilian officials who had the power to obtain curfew passes sat in shiny suits beside women decked out in hats dating back to the thirties. They spoke in low whispers and avoided the eyes of everyone else. Most of the others were American officers from surrounding garrisons. Some escorted local girls. Those without female company sat in inebriated clusters and eyed the others with envy.

Sally's beauty drew a lot of stares. The candlelight flickered with gentle fingers across her face, deepening the glow in her eyes, softening her features. It even seemed to gentle her voice. “There's no menu,” Sally explained as the host walked over and set two pewter mugs and a tall clay jug in front of them. “Homemade brew to drink, and whatever dish they have.”

“Schweine Roladen mit getrokene Pfifferlingen und Knödeln,”
the host said abruptly,
“Zwei Dollarn pro Kopf.”

“I only got the first couple of words of that,” Sally admitted.

“Ist gut, wir nehmen zwei Portionen,”
Jake said for them both, then translated when he had left, “Pork loins rolled and stuffed with smoked ham. Pfifferlingen are mountain mushrooms, sort of nutty tasting. A lot of country people
pick them in the fall and hang them out to dry. Knödeln are big potato dumplings.”

Sally shrugged out of her jacket, a stiff affair meant to copy a uniform's uncompromising lines. Underneath she wore a starched white blouse which accented the delicate curves of her body. Her hair was pinned back, but enough had escaped to fall in abundant auburn disarray around her shoulders. “Where did you learn your German?”

“I was studying at the university when I was called up,” he said by rote, then stopped himself. “That's not exactly true.”

She leaned across the table. “Are we going to be truthful tonight, soldier? Sounds dangerous.”

He ignored the jibe. “My brother was already in the infantry. Nothing was ever said about it, I guess there was no need to. After I finished my second year at university, I enlisted. That's just how things were. The last thing my dad told me was, be a good soldier. I was brought up to obey my parents. I did as I was told.”

“Where are you from?”

“A small town nobody ever heard of. Sauderton. Pennsylvania. Dutch country. Solid people. Hard-working. Bedrock of the nation type of folk. The kind who go where they're told and do what they're told to do.”

She inspected his face, and said, “Are you looking forward to going back?”

Slowly Jake shook his head. No.

“Why not? The decorated war hero coming home to a grateful nation. They'll have a parade for you, Jake. Make all kinds of speeches.”

“Parades come to an end,” Jake replied quietly, his eyes fixed on the fire. “Speeches go where all hot air goes.”

“Why don't you want to go home?” Sally pressed.

“I'm just kind of lost, I suppose,” he said quietly. “Here or there doesn't seem to matter so much, when ‘there' is no longer the place I left behind. People and places change, I
stay the same.” He turned to face her. “Lost here, lost there, what's the difference?”

For some reason his words had stripped her bare. It took a while for her to gather herself, then she asked, “What is it you're after?”

“I don't know,” he sighed. “Things just seemed a lot clearer in the war. Everything came down to one basic rule—knock out the enemy. That was the only way to survive.”

“Weren't you scared?”

“I lived with fear all the time,” he replied. “Every time we were about to go into action, I used to get such a sick in my stomach until the first shot was fired. Then all that mattered was surviving. Keeping myself and my troops alive, and bringing the boys home.”

“And so now you miss it.”

“No,” he stated flatly. “That's not it at all. I know some guys do, and I can understand them. I really can. But that's not the way I feel.”

“What is it, then?”

He wrinkled his forehead in concentration. “What I did stood for something. I fought for what I believed in. There was a clear pattern to life. That much about it felt good. I was doing something with meaning. Now it's gone. All gone. I guess I just need something to believe in.”

Sally filled their two cups, lifted her own, and said, “Here's to all the yesterdays, soldier. Wherever they've gone.”

“To yesterday,” he agreed.

“I want it all back. All of it. I'd trade my life for one day of how it used to be.” She set down her cup and said softly, “I can't work out how it's supposed to be now.”

“I can't either,” he agreed.

Their meal was served, two steaming platters piled high with solid country cooking, German style. They ate in silence, gathering themselves, recovering from the shock of honesty.

Eventually she set her fork down with a contented sigh.
“I didn't know how tired I was of army food, or how much I needed that meal, soldier. Thank you.”

Jake nodded. “Will you do me a favor?”

“Depends.”

“Stop calling me soldier.”

The look of mock surprise returned. “All this time and I didn't notice? Excuse me, sailor. I didn't catch the cut of your uniform.”

“Not sailor, either,” he persisted. “Jake. Just Jake. It's my name.”

“Okay, Just Jake. From now on, Just Jake, that's all you'll hear.”

“Why do you make a mocking joke out of everything?”

“It's my last line of defense,” she said, her tone brittle. “Don't knock it down. Please. It's not much, but it's all this girl's got left.”

He searched her face and said quietly, “Tell me about your fiance.”

Her eyes became open wounds. Her mouth worked, but for a moment she could manage no sound. Then, “Why?”

“Because I want to know. Because I feel his presence with us here.”

“No you don't,” she said shakily. “What you feel is his absence. He is not here. I wish he were, but he's not.”

“Tell me,” Jake pressed.

She turned away from him and looked out beyond their table, beyond the farmhouse wall and the darkened forest and the dusty tumble-down city and the war-torn country, to a place and a time that was no more. Jake let her be, content to sit and watch her search the unseen distance, and wonder if a woman would ever love him that much. Or if he would ever deserve such a love.

She turned back and said with strength and a kind of fervor, “He was a great man, Jake. Not a good man. A
great
man. The hardest thing I've ever had to do in my whole life is forgive God for letting him die. Sometimes I can, and sometimes it's
just beyond me. I mean—” She stopped and took a couple of harsh breaths. “The world needs men like him, Jake.”

“Tell me about him,” Jake asked, because it seemed now that she wanted the question asked. It tore at him more than he thought possible to encounter this love for another man in her voice and her eyes. But still he asked.

“Strong,” Sally replied, smiling with a tenderness that washed over him, making it hard not to stand and rush over and crush her to his chest.

“Strong in body and strong in spirit,” Sally went on, unaware of the effect she was having. “He was a leader. Not born that way, but made that way through his faith. All the credit for his life he gave to God.” Sally looked at him, but saw him not. “I've never met a strong man who could be so humble. I admired him. I admired him as much as I loved him.”

“And you loved him a great deal,” he said softly.

“More than my own life,” she said, her voice trembling. “More than . . . More than I thought it was possible to love and lose and survive. But I did. Lose him and survive the loss. For the longest while I didn't think I would. He taught me to see God as somebody alive. That was an incredible gift, his ability to make the unseen seem within reach. And now that he's gone, I can't find that invisible strength when I need it most.”

“But you've made it.”

“In a way. I almost didn't, though. I almost accepted the fact that this old body would keep right on ticking for another fifty years or so, but the life would be gone. Dead and dried up and blown away.”

“What changed your mind?”

“The children,” she replied simply. “Seeing others who hadn't ever had the chance to live and love at all suffer a hell as bad or worse than my own. It woke me up, Jake. It made me realize that I had a purpose too. It gave a meaning to what was left of my life. But I had to make a choice. I could either drown in my sorrow and watch my soul die, or I could
struggle back to the surface and survive. Or try to. And I did. But I didn't do it for me. I would never have had the strength to do it for myself. I did it for them.”

She toyed with her cup, her eyes downcast. Jake waited quietly. At that moment, he would have been willing to wait for her all his life, and still count himself lucky. Then she said softly, “If only I could find my way back to what he taught me about the Invisible, maybe I could count my life as worth living again.” She looked at him. “Do you think it might happen?”

“I don't know,” Jake replied quietly. “I've never been much of a believing man myself.”

“He would have liked you, Jake” she said, the tender smile returning. “He used to say that strength wed with wisdom was God's most underrated gift.”

“I don't think of myself as particularly strong,” Jake countered. “And I don't rank high in wisdom.”

But she chose not to hear. “It's so easy to talk about God when I think of him,” she mused aloud. “And so hard otherwise. I wish I could understand why.”

Chapter Six

The next morning, Servais was ebullient over Jake's scheme. “A masterpiece,” he declared. “A stroke of genius.”

“Just trying to feed a few kids,” Jake said.

“Nonsense. You wait and see, my friend. This will benefit not only your young charges but us as well.”

“They don't have a chance in a million of finding treasure, and you know it,” Jake protested.

“I was not speaking of the treasure,” Pierre answered. “Not just, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let us wait and see,” he replied. “Come. This is an important meeting today, and we must not be late.”

The incoming French forces had established an initial base of operations next to the Rhine. The great river began high in the Swiss Alps, ran up through Germany, and ended its twelve-hundred-mile journey off the Dutch coast. It also formed the border between France and Germany from Basel to Karlsruhe, a distance of some one hundred miles. To the west of this border lay the province of Alsace, over which the Germans and French had fought for more than two hundred years. To the east loomed the Black Forest foothills. The river jinked and curved and split and tumbled over drops. The skeletal remains of bombed-out bridges grew giant icicles and stood as silent memorials to the recent war.