The German (10 page)

Before long the sheriff peeks in. He smiles and says, “Hello,” to Yvette and then looks at us sitting on the bench. When his eyes reach me, I know without question he wonders on my guilt, but I take no offense. He is a policeman, investigating a crime. What else would he be thinking?

The sheriff is a fine-looking man. He has the strength of maturity and honest work about him, but he is not a clever man. I see that in his eyes. The way he unsubtly appraises me is both aggressive and apologetic. I keep my eyes on him. Though I have much to hide, the murder of a boy is not among my crimes. He flinches first as I knew he would. He drops his gaze to the hard-packed dirt and then casts a quick smile to Yvette. Before he exits the tent, he allows me a final glance. I nod, and he is gone.

The tea is strong and cooling. I buy a second glass and Yvette says that the third one will be free before she winks at me. She is a pretty girl and will one day make a fine wife for a man who requires such a thing. She imagines I am this sort of man. Greater mistakes have been made.

“It’s not just Weigle,” Carl continues and he proceeds to list names of men who worked at the stockyard and the two German doctors in Barnard: Reinhardt and Hoffman.

One of the men who had been questioned – the foreman at the stockyards – was familiar to me. He was a greatly muscled but ugly man with a face like a goat. In the bedroom he spoke like a woman, going so far as to affect a falsetto tone and call me “husband.” My laughter at his display kept him from returning, and though I regret that my uncontrollable humor over his performance caused him some humiliation, I did not miss his company.

My thoughts have wandered and I do not realize that Carl is addressing me by name. “Ernst,” he says. “Ernst.”

“Yes, Carl,” I reply. “I’m sorry. I was daydreaming.”

He insists that this is no time for daydreams. Soon it will be our turn to meet the sheriff and endure his questioning and the prospect makes me smile.

“What have we to fear?” I ask. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Have you?”

Carl looks as if I’d slapped him. “Or course not,” he exclaims.

“Then let the sheriff ask his questions. He will get his answers and then go ask his questions of someone else. Should I worry over something I haven’t done and cannot fix?”

He is working himself into a panic, and I know this will do him no good. He is gentle, this Carl Baker, and I don’t know any words that can soothe him. His own son is not much younger than the Ashton boy and his daughter only a year younger than that. I understand his concern for them, but it goes deeper than his fatherly fear of a monster preying on his children. He carries the fear of being seen as a monster by the Americans and dreads their retaliation against him and his family.

I was called a monster many times, but the label means nothing. In politics and in war, monsters are defined by which side of a fight a man claims. He is still a man to those who share his beliefs, perhaps even a hero. To those that oppose his philosophy, he is a beast, a creature, one of a thousand unspeakable demons clashing over an ideal.

With no words to soothe my friend, I tell him that I do not know who could have murdered Harold Ashton. I express my disgust at the crime and voice a hope that the monster will soon be caught and executed.

Peter Lorre strolls through my thoughts, carrying a balloon and whistling from
Peer Gynt
.

My conversation with Carl takes a turn toward the common and he talks about his family, his shop. He comments on the wonderful celebration and taps his fingers in time with the untalented brass band that has resumed banging and honking on the bandstand. Though we discuss many other things, I see the weight of concern on Carl’s face, but since there is nothing I can do to relieve it, I pretend it is not there.

Eventually, he excuses himself. He tells me that he must find his wife and his children, and asks if I will be staying for the barbecue because he has baked many pies, and I tell him that I will, and I promise to come visit with his family for a time. I finish my second tea and stand, stretching out my back and feeling a pain beneath my shoulder blade. It is a bullet trapped between my ribs, one of many I carry in my chest, and on cold days they feel like bits of ice lodged in my tissues, but only this one shell brings me discomfort regardless of the weather, and it is my belief this is the bullet that killed me.

As I leave the tent, Yvette reminds me that I can have a third glass of tea free of charge, and I thank her and ask her to keep it for me until I return. Behind the row of tents I take a piss and notice two other men are doing the same. They stare at the stream between their legs as if it is magical and will tell the future. I couldn’t care less for the functions of my body and scan the rows of trucks over my shoulder and the wagons laden down with hay for the cows that will soon face the sledgehammer. A train approaches from the south. In the sky above, the sun appears to be melting, spreading out in a vast pool of molten light.

~ ~ ~

The barbecue at the celebration is good. Weigle serves bratwursts and frankfurters from his shop. To everyone he serves he tells the story of how the sheriff requested his assistance in solving the murder of Harold Ashton, and I know he is lying, but see no reason to question him when he seems in a rare good mood. Good for you, I tell Weigle. With your help, the sheriff will catch this man in no time. He smiles and nods tersely, proudly, as if I am absolutely right. I eat with Carl and his family. His wife makes inappropriate overtures that Carl laughs off as if this is a common game between them. I attempt smiles of my own, but find the woman’s behavior terrible – showing such little respect for Carl.

I am used to flirtation, though I am not a handsome man. Scars make an otherwise unimpressive face fascinating. Long ago, my position and authority assured a quantity of admirers from both genders who found power an efficient aphrodisiac, and while I could have my pick of lovers, never once did I attribute their attentions to any physical quality I possessed, but rather understood it as a benefit of my social stature like good cigars, fine brandy, and convertible motor cars. Now, if I am considered attractive it is simply because I am here – present when so many others are absent. Women see me as strong and available, lacking the emotional obligation of a wife. As for the men of my sort, who can say what they see? In this place I represent all that they loathe in themselves, yet they come to me like starving peasants begging sustenance from a despised baron.

After the sausages and salads and slices of Carl’s blackberry pie, fatigue falls over me. It is pleasant in its way, but with the persistent heat it drives me nearly to sleep. Feeling it would be rude to drop my head on the bench while Carl speaks, I excuse myself for a walk around the grounds. Again, I see my neighbor Tim. His fat friend is no longer with him. Instead, Tim sits at a bench with his mother and she speaks to a plump woman with crooked teeth as Tim devours a wedge of watermelon. Pink spots cover the white napkin tucked into his collar and drip to a plate already freckled with black seeds. He doesn’t see me pass and I do not stop to say hello but rather continue to the edge of the fairgrounds. As I wander, I carry a vague hope of seeing the teacher, Jeffrey. If he sees me perhaps it will occur to him to visit my house again, and I immediately scold myself for such a pathetic yearning, because I do not enjoy the man’s company. He is shamed and weak and brings me little but a few moments of distraction and every moment in his presence diminishes me. But it is company, and suddenly I am aware of how very long it has been since I shared my time with a companion of value.

I think of a man named Richert. He gave me a car I rarely use and offered me a home by the water, though I could have purchased these things myself. We spoke as good friends, but only later did I understand his opinion of me was far lower.

It is this place. A place of freedom shouldn’t know such fear, but it clings to these people like flies on the dead.

At the edge of the fairgrounds, I decide it is time to go home. My mood has soured and I find no joy among this population. So I cross the field a final time. Near the bandstand I see a group of children gathered around a man in a wheelchair. He is speaking loudly and waving a hand in the air – his face a twisted mask of mock fury. The children – and there is Tim’s fat friend among them – listen rapt by the man who I recognize as Brett Fletcher, the town’s first war hero. His eyes are those of a madman, sharp and at the same time focused on things well out of sight. He makes fists of his hands and twists his shoulders back and forth to give the impression of marching and the children laugh, and he raises his arms as if sighting down a rifle and the children gasp, and he makes a stricken face and falls back in his chair and the children applaud and shout. I leave the performance and the fairgrounds behind, and walk home.

On the road into town a car approaches. It is traveling very fast and the driver honks the horn in a staccato flurry. The car swerves across the lane, and I believe it is the driver’s intention to hit me. I expect to be afraid, but the feeling never appears. The grill of the car races for me and I look upward searching for the driver’s eyes and I see the vehicle is crowded with young people and they all look insane as their faces fly toward me, but I do not move, not so much as a flinch, and I have no explanation for why this is so – it isn’t bravery, nor is it death’s welcome – but I stand there as if watching an approaching friend and at the last moment the car swerves sending up a spray of dust to cover me as many young voices scream obscenities and call me “Kraut.” None of those faces are familiar to me. How they know I am a German simply by my face and my clothes I could not say. Perhaps it is as simple as a predator recognizing its prey.

At home I strip off my clothes and use a damp cloth to scrub the dust and sweat from me. Then I lie down for an inordinately long nap. When I wake, the sweat is thick on me, so I again wipe myself off with the damp rag. Unsatisfied with the rapidly warming moisture on my skin, I retrieve my swimming trunks from the line in back and walk to the lake.

Evening is falling and the mosquitoes dance thickly about me. I wade out until the water covers my shoulders. My feet sink in the spongy foliage at the lake’s bottom, and I find a stone on which to stand. I watch the smooth surface as the water works through my skin to cool the muscle and bone beneath, and for a time I am comfortable and calm. Except for the occasional refrain from
Peer Gynt
, my mind is quiet.

Dark falls and I wade out of the lake and I go to my house, and inside I shower to get the lake off of me, and I splash rose water on my palms and massage it into my skin, and I pour myself a whiskey and return to the porch and sit in the hard backed chair and close my eyes. No fireworks tonight. The city is supporting the war effort and conserves the powder for the killing of the Japanese and the German. It is not quiet, though. Men fire their guns into the sky. The reports echo across town, and distant guns fire back – violence summoning violence like animals calling mates. Shouts of appreciation rise and fall as this place celebrates the birth of America. It sounds like battle, and the familiarity of the barrage brings melancholy warmth to my skin.

In the streets of Munich my men and I confront a communist brigade with chair legs and broken bottles, and I smash a man’s nose beneath the pine club before slashing his cheek and stomping his throat under my boot. Next to me, another communist meets the blade of my lieutenant’s knife. Later the lieutenant recounts the fight over a brandy in my home, and later still, we are in my bed and he is sobbing, and I drift off to sleep as if on the notes of a lullaby.

This life I imagine is impossible, but I have no memories to contest it, and what is a man but an accumulation of memories? He is neither his name, nor the names others call him, but rather a series of events recorded in tissue like scars behind his eyes. A name is meaningless. Names are for the corpse registry and the carvers of stones.

I remember being cold and wiping flakes of blood like bits of dried autumn leaves from my chest. I remember laughter and the sound of a man choking on blood, and that man is me.

I think of Caligari and wonder if these mad memories hold me in black waters, trapping me under ice until I emerge from delusion into the hands of my keepers.

Tom Rabbit also spent his afternoon wandering the dusty fairgrounds. Though solemn, he occasionally forced a smile when greeting friends and neighbors, and he shared moments speaking with them, but never settled into real conversation. Walking among the people he had been charged to protect, Tom was stricken by the uniformly changed demeanor. The Texans had made the city a courtroom with hundreds of jurists already weighing guilt. Tom saw the quiet conversations, the subtle nodding of heads as simple folks with absolutely no evidence passed judgment on their neighbors, and many of them looked at Tom, not as an ally, but as an accomplice to the crime because he had not yet solved it. On the other hand, the Germans wore guises of the accused when Tom spoke to them. Faces became contrite and words crawled from lips in a stilted yet respectful way, all except for Weigle who believed himself somehow above suspicion.

Days had passed since Harold Ashton had been found, and Tom was no closer to identifying the killer than he had been. The snuffbox was of German origin and very common in that country; it could have arrived with any number of families who had chosen this part of the country to settle. No additional evidence presented itself, and he’d received no reports of similar crimes from any of the sheriff’s offices he’d contacted. So he was left with a dwindling list of men who needed to be interrogated and all but useless tip-offs from the community. It seemed that every slight against a neighbor had become sufficient cause for suspicion. Phone calls came in day and night. Angry citizens marched into his office certain they knew the identity of the Ashton boy’s killer and their convictions were born of evidence that amounted to: he plays his radio too loud; he closes his blinds at three in the afternoon; he parked his car in front of my drive; his son threw a muddy ball into the clean sheets I had drying on a line and all he did was laugh about it. Petty and ridiculous.