by Bette Greene
At the moment of absolute quiet, Grandpa spoke. “We pray that we’ll all be together for many, many years to come. And that Hitler and his Nazis should be finished—Kaput! And our dear President Roosevelt should be given a long life and much wisdom. L’chayim!”
“L’chayim,” we repeated, bringing our glasses to our lips.
The talk centered on war news. The fate of the Jews, the capture of General Wainright, and the Russian offensive on the Kalinin Front. My father gave dire warnings about the Russians—how it would be better if they were fighting against us. That way we could destroy both Hitler and Stalin at the same time. Two birds with one stone.
“Why do we always talk war, war, war?” my mother finally asked. “Why don’t we ever talk about happy things like clothes or parties? Something nice?”
Aunt Dorothy nodded in agreement. “Ben, tell your sister about the insurance meeting in New York that the company is sending us all to.”
“Irv and I want to take in all the sights,” said Uncle Ben. “But all the girls can talk about is shopping and plays. Plays and shopping!”
My mother turned her gaze from Uncle Ben to my grandfather. “You’re sending them on a vacation but not me?”
Grandpa shook his head. “I’m not sending them any place—the company is.”
“Papa, you are the company!” said my mother, not hiding the anger in her voice. “And you’ve always done that, given everything to your precious boys. Don’t I count for anything? Don’t I deserve something nice too?”
My grandma’s chin lifted as though it had been struck by an uppercut. “That’s foolish talk, Pearl. Foolish! The difference between you and your brothers is that they always liked whatever they were given, but you, Pearl, never liked anything once it was yours.”
It was early evening when we drove across the Harrihan Bridge, entering the neon strip of highway known as West Memphis, Arkansas.
I leaned back into my dark corner of the car, patted my skirt pocket, and felt reassured by the folded square of paper. Grandma’s ten-dollar bill. On the seat next to me was a whole bag of her freshly made cheese and onion knishes. I breathed in deep. It was as though I had just left home and was now going to where I lived.
3. POWs
WALKING BACK DOWN Main Street with the bank bag heavy with rolls of dimes, quarters, and halves, I began wondering what I could do with the rest of this Monday. If only I lived in Wynne City, there’d be no problem. The public pool is filled with kids, more kids than chlorine; the school library is open even when school isn’t; and the Capitol Theater has a matinee practically every afternoon.
A drab-olive truck, canvas-covered from top to sides, passed. I recognized it as the Army truck that had picked up the prisoners from the train station. It turned and angle-parked in front of our store.
Two men in Army uniform and wearing guns in polished leather holsters jumped from the cab. One of the soldiers, quite muscular despite a prominent belly, called to the back of the truck, “All right, out! Everybody out.”
And out they came: young men. Two, three, four. Not much older than boys. Five, six, seven. Wearing their matched sets of blue denims. Eight, nine, and ten. As they walked towards the entrance of the store the backs of their shirts revealed for all the world to see the stenciled black letters: POW.
They were, with one exception, blond- or brown-haired and wore pleasant enough expressions. Didn’t they know they were losing the war? That they were at this moment entering a Jewish store?
As I followed the last prisoner inside, I watched my father approach the guard with the corporal’s stripes. “Something I can do for you boys today?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bergen. These prisoners been spending more time passing out in Mr. Jackson’s field than they do picking cotton. So Mr. Jackson gave them two dollars apiece and the commandant said it was all right to bring them here for field hats.” He pointed toward the one black-haired prisoner who was moving away from the herd. “Reiker there speaks American. He’ll talk for them.”
“Tell the boys to come over to the hat department,” my father said as though he didn’t hate them. As if he had never said, “Every German oughta be taken out and tortured to death.”
When the nine prisoners were gathered around the counter the corporal shouted, “Reiker!” Reiker didn’t look quite so tall or strong as the others. His eyes, specked with green, sought communication with my father. “The men wish to purchase straw field hats to protect themselves from your formidable Arkansas sun.”
My father remained impassive. “Here are some styles in men’s straws. These are the best quality at one dollar and seventy-nine cents. They will last you for years.”
Last you for years? I checked out my father’s face to see if he was making a joke at their expense. But it was empty of expression.
The Germans began trying on the hats, smiling as though they were on a holiday. Reiker had pushed out from the center huddle and was exploring the broader limits of the store.
One very blond prisoner turned to my father. “Der Spiegel?”
My father shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Wo ist der Spiegel?” said a second prisoner.
Again my father shook his head. “I don’t understand your talk!”
Voices called for Reiker, and at his approach the men parted like the Red Sea for the Israelites. Again the word “Spiegel.” Reiker turned to my father. “They’d like to see themselves. Have you a mirror?”
Reiker used English cleanly, easily, and with more precision than anyone I know from around these parts. And he didn’t sound the least bit like a German. It was as though he had spent his life learning to speak English the way the English do.
Again Reiker left the others to walk with brisk steps across the store.
The corporal was involved in selecting off-duty socks for himself while the other guard leaned heavily against a counter and rolled himself a cigarette. Neither seemed concerned as Reiker headed unobserved towards the door. He could be gone before they even got their guns out of their holsters. Terrified that the guards’ casualness was only a cover for the sharpest-shooting soldiers in anybody’s army, I closed my eyes and prayed that he would make it all the way to freedom.
But I heard no door opening, no feet running and no gun firing. By sheer force of will I opened my eyes to see Reiker calmly examining the pencils at the stationery counter.
Stationery was one of the many departments seen to by Sister Parker. But Sister Parker was busy waiting on a lady customer, and lady customers take half of forever to make up their minds. Who was going to wait on Reiker? I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I didn’t even have a comb. Why, in God’s name, didn’t I carry a purse with a fresh handkerchief and a comb like Edna Louise? I ran my fingers through my hair and patted it into place.
I took a few hurried steps and stopped short. Reiker may not wish to be disturbed, anyway not by me. The skin-and-bones girl. But I can wait on him if I want to, it’s my father’s store. Who does he think he is, some old Nazi?
Pushed on by adrenaline, I was at his side. “Could I help you, please?” My voice came out phony. Imitation Joan Crawford.
Reiker looked up and smiled. “Yes, please. I don’t know the word for it—” Above those eyes with their specks of green were dark masculine eyebrows. “Pocket pencil sharpeners? They’re quite small and work on the razor principle.”
“Well,” I said, reaching towards the opposite end of the counter to pick up a little red sharpener, “we sell a lot of these dime ones to the school children.”
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly right.” He was looking at me like he saw me—like he liked what he saw.
“What color would you like?” I asked, not really thinking about pencil sharpeners. “They come in red, yellow, and green.”
“I’ll take the one you chose,” said Reiker. He placed six yellow pencils and three stenographic pads on the counter. “And you did not tell me,” he said, “w
hat you call these pocket pencil sharpeners.”
He was so nice. How could he have been one of those—those brutal, black-booted Nazis? “Well, I don’t think they actually call them much of anything, but if they were to call them by their right name they’d probably call them pocket pencil sharpeners.”
Reiker laughed and for a moment, this moment, we were friends. And now I knew something more. He wasn’t a bad man.
“Could I ask you something?” I asked, impressed by my own nerve. His face registered the kind of flat openness that comes when you haven’t the slightest idea what to expect. “Well, I was wondering how—where you learned to speak such good English?”
He seemed relieved. “No great credit to me.” He showed fine, white teeth. “My mother was born in Manchester, in England, and my father was educated in London.”
“Gee, that’s something,” I said, immediately regretting my “gee.” “Being born in one country,” I went on, “and then having to go clear over to another to get educated.”
“Keep in mind the relative smallness of European countries. It’s like being born in Arkansas and going to a university in, say, Tennessee.”
“Oh,” I answered, still feeling the grandeur of it. “What did he study in England?”
“History. He’s an historian.”
“I never met an historian. What do they do? Teach?”
“What is your name?” he asked, quietly.
“Well, my real name is Patricia Ann Bergen,” I said, grateful that I was able to remember. “Mostly, though, my friends call me Patty.”
“And my real name is Frederick Anton Reiker, and when I had friends they always called me Anton. So I hope you will too, Patty.”
“O.K.,” I said, feeling too shy to speak his name.
“Back to your questions.” He sounded very businesslike. “My father is a professor at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Before the war he wrote two books and a great many articles, but not any more. Now nobody is allowed to write.” Anton sighed as though he had just run out of energy.
“And did you teach too?” I asked, wanting to know everything there was to know about him.
Anton moved his head from side to side. “Before I became a cotton picker I was a private in the German Army and before that a medical student.”
“Someday when the war is over,” I heard the sound of conviction in my voice, “you’ll go back to school, become a doctor.”
Anton shrugged. “Someday—perhaps.” Then with a grin calculated to banish heaviness he said, “I believe it’s here in the cotton fields of Arkansas that I’m destined to find fame and fortune.” My smile joined his.
“Yes,” I agreed. “You and Mr. Eli Whitney.”
“Eli Whitney?” Anton repeated. “Should I know him?”
I searched his face for fraud. Surely a man as smart as he would know what every third-grader knows. “Well, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin; it sucks all the seeds out of cotton like a giant vacuum cleaner.”
“Clever of Mr. Whitney. Perhaps even genius. What is genius, anyway, if it isn’t the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge?”
“I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to think about that.”
“I hope you do, Patty. Next time we meet you can tell me your conclusions.”
A distant voice intruded upon us. “All right, boys, the truck is leaving. Let’s go.”
Anton took a dollar bill from a cocoa-brown wallet made of the smoothest calfskin. A fine wallet, better even than our very best ones and they sell for five dollars. I counted back the change.
“Good-bye, Patty.”
“Good-bye Anton. I hope you’ll be all right.”
As he turned to go, my eyes closed. I found myself carrying on a silent conversation with God. Oh, God, would it be at all possible for Frederick Anton Reiker to become my friend? I understand that it’s not an easy request, but I would be so grateful that I’d never bother you for another thing. But if this is something you can’t arrange, then could you please keep him safe so that he can return to his own country and become a doctor? Thank you, dear God.
“Patty!” Anton’s voice. I opened my eyes. He was pointing to some object behind the glass-enclosed jewelry counter. “Sell me this pin. The round one in back that looks like diamonds.”
I followed his pointing finger. It was big and gaudy, nothing that Anton would in a million years buy. “Not this one?” I asked, expecting to be embarrassed by so obvious a mistake.
“Exactly right!” he practically shouted, as he took the pin tagged a dollar, dropped the money into my hand, and went off grinning a different, more jaunty kind of grin.
4. Infatuation
SISTER PARKER HELD the canvas bank bag aloft. “Patty, you know anything about this? Found it lying on the stationery counter.”
“Oh! Yes, thanks. Change from the bank.”
“Don’t you know any better than to leave a bag of money lying around?”
“I was waiting on a customer and I forgot. Uh, don’t mention it, please, to my mother or father.”
Sister shook her head. “I’ve got better things to do than tattle.”
I found my mother between dress racks with one of those heavy, colorless country women who all look alike until you focus in on the one thing that gives them their uniqueness. Sometimes it’s the forehead that gives a faint suggestion of things noble. Once, I remember, it was long polished hair of deepest auburn. And another time it was the eyes. Large blue-green eyes that seemed to have come from the sockets of some jungle cat.
I lifted the bank bag to eye level. “Here’s your change, Mother.”
“Go put it in the big register. Where have you been so long?”
“Well, I just finished waiting on one of the prisoners and before that I stopped to talk with Edna Louise’s mother—she was in the bank too.”
“I didn’t know,” said my mother, “that you and Mrs. Jackson had anything in common.” She made an adjustment of the three-way mirror, presumably to give the customer a better view of her large economy-size behind.
I felt angry enough to burn my mother in her own insult, but open anger was not the tool I needed. “Know what Mrs. Jackson said to me? She said, ‘Patty, it’s always a deep and abiding pleasure talking with you.’ Then she asked me, know what she asked me?” I could see that Mother wasn’t going to bite, so I went right on. “‘Patty,’ Mrs. Jackson said, ‘just tell me where in this wide world did you acquire those nice, polite manners?’”
Mother glanced at me, shivering as if from a sudden chill. “Can’t you do anything about that hair?” Then she turned back to her customer with a smile. “Now that fabric is what we call a bemberg sheer. It’s lightweight, easy to care for, and very cool and comfortable. And I do believe that rose is your color, don’t you think so? Do you know how much you’d have to pay for that dress in Memphis?” Mother apparently assumed that Mrs. Country Woman didn’t know the answer, so she supplied it. “Ten ninety-five and not a penny less. But we only have a few left, and I’m closing them out at only five ninety-five.”
Mother is what you might call a prize saleslady. I mean, she has an answer for everything. If there were silver-dollar-sized holes running across the backside of that dress Mother would be talking about how fine it is for ventilation, or maybe even that it was a definite aid for irregularity.
Now, customers expect salesladies to praise the merchandise, that’s only natural. But I don’t believe you should outright lie. God would consider that sinful even for a saleslady. But then, what would God think about the lies I tell—“Where in this wide world did you acquire those nice, polite manners?”
I punched the No Sale key on the register and placed the rolls of change into their appropriate bins. I watched my mother still smiling her gracious smile as she set a pink leftover Easter bonnet on the woman’s head. “Now doesn’t that just make the outfit?”
Mrs. Country Woman shook her head. “No, ma�
�am, I don’t want no hat today.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” Mother said, soothingly. “I just wanted you to see the big difference the hat makes.”
The woman pushed a loose straggle of hair beneath the bonnet and gave herself a front-view inspection. I thought I saw her smile. Yes, she had found something in her reflection to admire. She would buy the hat too; my mother would see to that.
But I didn’t want to think about leftover bonnets or even my mother’s ability as a saleslady. I only wanted to think about him. My friend, Anton. “The next time we meet,” he had said. Anton Reiker. Mr. Frederick Anton Reiker.
Across the store, in Notions, Sister Parker was customerless, but far from idle. What is it I’ve heard Ruth say about idle hands and the devil? Sister Parker has no worries on that score. Her left hand held a couple of bottles of lotion while the right hand gave them a dusting with a big wad of cheesecloth.
Maybe it would be O.K. to talk to her about him, but not exactly straight off. First I’d talk about the prisoners in general. Later I might just mention that Anton didn’t seem too bad—for a German. But I would approach with caution. Her kid brother, James Earl, will probably be sent to fight the Germans just as soon as he finishes up his basic training.
I stood by her side and tried to come up with a good opening. “Hey, that was pretty interesting, wasn’t it? All those Germans coming in here buying things.”
Sister Parker’s hands didn’t stop for a single moment. “I don’t see much interesting about a bunch of Nazis.” Her answers, like her hands, moved quickly. It was as though she kept them on the topmost part of her brain for easy access.
“Well, I think it’s interesting,” I countered. “Gives you a chance to see the enemy close-up.”
“I guess,” said Sister, unconvinced.
“I wonder why they decided to build a prison camp right outside of Jenkinsville?”
