by David Healey
Of course, Cole was always taking the boy into the woods, showing him all that he knew, from the names of the trees, to the shapes of the tracks beside a mountain stream, to the constellations in the winter sky. Cole had reached an age where he felt that it was important to pass things along. It was something he had not done with Janey, her being a girl and all, but Cole could see the error of his ways. If he had only spent more time with Janey, maybe things would have turned out differently. He didn’t plan on making the same mistake twice.
When the boy was ten, Cole gave him an old single-shot .22 rifle, expecting that he would cut his teeth as a hunter on the local squirrels and rabbits. While the boy was responsible with the rifle and learned to be a crack shot, he never brought home any game.
“I don’t like killing,” he had explained to his puzzled grandfather. Danny made a joke of it. “If I could shoot a Snickers bar out in the woods, I’d be the best hunter ever!”
Just once, when the boy was twelve, Cole had taken him deer hunting. It had been nothing short of disastrous, and by an unspoken mutual agreement, they had never discussed it since.
For Cole, his fondest memories of childhood—and those were few and far between—had been waking early to go with his old man into the woods to go hunting. He had thought to share something equally as special with Danny.
Sure enough, Danny had been excited to head out into the woods before dawn. The late fall morning felt crisp as the sun slowly crept above the hills. Cole had already found a likely spot where a buck he had been scouting all summer liked to pass through on his way to forage for hickory nuts. They set up behind a fallen log and waited.
“There he is,” Cole said quietly. “Aim just behind his shoulder, just like we talked about.”
Danny put the rifle to his shoulder. The lever-action .30/.30 kicked like a mule, but the boy could handle it for one shot.
Across the clearing, the buck seemed to sense them, lifting his majestic head. The first rays of the morning sun caught the antlers, reflecting off the ivory tips. It was a sight that damn near took Cole’s breath away. The buck was a ten-pointer and weighed more than two hundred pounds. Any boy ought to be proud to take an animal like that as his first deer.
Beside his grandson, Cole waited tensely. Seconds dragged by. Any moment now and the buck would be gone.
“Go on,” Cole whispered.
But Danny refused to shoot. Slowly, he lowered the rifle.
“What’s wrong? You’ve got a clear shot.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t kill him.”
The buck had not moved. Cole put his rifle to his shoulder, lined up the sights, and started to squeeze the trigger. He was about to kill again, just as he had done so many times before. He breathed out, breathed in, held it.
That’s when he sensed Danny at his elbow, the boy holding his breath. He glanced at the boy and saw a stricken white face, the soft brown eyes filled with tears.
Cole lowered the rifle. The buck seemed to look directly at them, maybe catching their scent at last, then leaped away. The sun-dappled clearing stood empty. The buck that Cole had watched and waited for all summer was gone, likely spooked for good.
“You let him go?” Danny asked.
“I reckon we’ll let him live another season and get even fatter,” Cole said.
“I’m sorry, Pa Cole,” Danny said, looking as if he might cry. “I know I let you down.”
Cole worked through several emotions in the space of a few seconds, from anger to disappointment, then resignation. For better or for worse, Danny was never going to be like him. He reached down and squeezed the boy’s shoulder, then managed to force a smile for the boy’s sake.
“Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry about,” Cole said. “Let me tell you, there are a lot of ways to disappoint someone, and letting that buck go ain’t on my list. Besides, that buck ain’t none too sorry!”
“But we came all the way out here this morning and we’re going back empty-handed.”
“There’s no such thing as a bad morning in the woods,” Cole said, taking a deep breath of the fall air that smelled of fallen leaves and frost. On mornings like this, when it felt so good just to be alive, he often thought of the dead who weren’t there to enjoy it. He hoped that heaven was like the mountains on a fall morning. “Coming out here with you this morning is enough for me.”
“What will Gran say?”
“What, about not shooting a deer?” Cole snorted. “She don’t care about that. What Gran is goin’ to say is, do we want buckwheat pancakes and bacon for breakfast, that’s what. Now, let’s head on back.”
Chapter Three
Already, the trip to Germany was turning into an adventure. For starters, Cole had never flown on a massive, wide-bodied, Boeing 767. Each row of seats sat seven people, with groupings of two seats, then three seats, then two seats, separated by two aisles down the middle of the jet.
“Big as this plane is, I’m amazed the damn thing can take off,” he said.
“I’ve got a window seat!” Danny exclaimed, fiddling with the shade. “Pa Cole, do you think we’ll see the ocean from up here?”
“Gonna find out,” Cole said. “Once we’re in the air, look for a lot of blue water underneath us. That’d be the ocean.”
“Very funny. I think I’ll know it when I see it.”
Danny’s enthusiasm felt contagious. They hadn’t even gotten into the air yet, but Danny bounced in his seat like a puppy, taking in all of the sights and sounds. He had never flown before and was excited about the experience.
Cole had to admit that he was pleased to see Danny so excited. He realized that Norman Jean had been right all along. If nothing else, this trip would be memorable for their grandson. Although they saw each other every day, this trip was a chance to spend some one-on-one time with Danny; soon enough, the boy would be heading off to college or all his attention would be focused on a girlfriend. Cole knew well enough that time passed and things changed, even when you were standing still.
Maybe he ought to get out more and travel, but he felt content at home in the woods and mountains, hunting, or working on his knives. At first, the hurly-burly of the massive airport, along with the crowded plane, felt almost overwhelming. But Danny’s excitement helped him see the trip through the boy’s eyes and made him realize that he was just being what Norma Jean would have called a grumpy old man.
Besides, Cole reminded himself that all he had to do was sit back and relax for the eight-hour flight to Munich.
Most of the passengers appeared to be well-heeled tourists, some of the women wearing skirts and the men in dress slacks and sports coats. This being the early 1990s, anybody who wasn’t a college kid or teenager still dressed up to get on an airplane. His grandson had on jeans, a polo shirt with a little alligator on it that cost more than Cole’s first pickup truck, and Nike sneakers. Gran had taken Danny shopping before the trip and bought God knows what else that the boy wanted.
Cole’s needs were simpler. Hell, as a boy he’d gone whole summers without wearing shoes. He wore a dark brown corduroy sports coat with elbow patches that Norma Jean had found brand new at a thrift store, along with his best pair of Levis, freshly ironed, and sturdy brown shoes.
More than a few of his fellow passengers were Germans close to Cole's age. He found it jarring to hear them speaking in German, the sound of the guttural language taking him back to memories he hadn’t visited in a long time. More like dredged up, he thought. He told himself that he had better get used to it. He’d be hearing a lot more German spoken during the next couple of weeks.
Cole’s German consisted of a few phrases that were still stuck in his head, such as Surrender or Don’t shoot or even his personal favorite, Stirb, du Nazi-Bastarde. Loosely translated, this meant, Die, you Nazi bastards.
Somehow, he didn’t think those phrases would be a whole lot of use in the next few days.
He couldn't help but wonder if he had faced one or two of these German passengers fro
m the wrong side of a battlefield. It was a strange thing to think about, but he reminded himself again that the world was always changing.
Several people had brought along books to read on the plane, including a World War II novel by Ken Follett called Night Over Water, which was a current bestseller. Appropriately enough, it was about intrigues during a transatlantic flight. The in-flight movie was going to be Quigley Down Under, a shoot-‘em-up western starring Tom Selleck that was set in Australia, of all places.
Other passengers had newspapers and magazines with them to pass the time on the flight. Several of the headlines focused on the recent fall of the Berlin Wall. For more than forty years, Germany and Berlin itself had been divided. Western Germany operated as a free democracy. The people and the economy thrived in the post-war years. Eastern Germany found itself behind the Iron Curtain, as part of territory seized by the Soviets. There, people were forced to live under Communism, a highly dysfunctional system of government that treated the needs of its population as an afterthought.
That repressive system had finally collapsed under its own weight, helped in no small part by the efforts of President Ronald Reagan, who had been determined to win the Cold War for once and for all, famously declaring, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Prompted by many other calls for change from every quarter, the Soviet premier had listened. The opening of the border and the demolition of the wall were justifiably headline news. The Germany that they were visiting was being reunited for the first time in decades.
To Danny’s delight, they caught a few glimpses of the endless sea before the jet climbed above the clouds. The sky darkened as the sun went down; this was an overnight flight and they would awaken in Germany the next morning.
Once they were well out into the Atlantic, the free drinks flowed. These tourists set about drinking like it was their job.
“Something for you gentlemen?” the stewardess asked.
Danny looked at Cole. “Can I have a beer?”
“No.”
“I’m sixteen! The drinking age is fifteen in Germany.”
“We ain’t in Germany yet. Besides, if your Gran finds out I let you drink beer on the plane, won’t neither one of us get any older.” Cole looked at the stewardess, who had known better than to get involved in their beverage decisions, and said firmly, “Two Coca Colas, miss.”
With a sigh, Danny accepted his plastic cup of soda. “Well, when we get to Germany, does that mean I can have a beer?”
Cole thought about that. He didn’t intend for this to be one of those exhausting trips that parents and grandparents knew all too well, where Danny kept asking to do things or buy things, and Cole would be forced to say no. After all, his grandson wasn’t eight years old anymore.
He knew that he had to let the boy off the leash sometime to make his own discoveries—and mistakes. Hell, Cole hadn’t been much older when he shipped out for the war. But he had been a different person. Danny seemed a whole lot younger in Cole’s eyes, even a little naive. As for allowing his grandson to drink beer, Cole himself mostly steered clear of alcohol, knowing what it had done to his father. It wasn’t a habit he wanted to encourage in his grandson, but he knew that forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter.
“You know what?” Cole finally said. “You are sixteen years old. I ain’t gonna hold your hand every minute of this trip. You may want to go off on your own and explore, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”
Danny nodded, grinning. His grandfather hadn’t come out and given him permission to hoist a tankard, but he was saying that Danny could make some of his own decisions.
“That’s a deal. Just so long as I don’t have to keep you out of trouble,” Danny said.
“I’m an old man. What kind of trouble would I get into?”
“Gran told me not to let you shoot anybody.”
Cole snorted. “Your gran always had what I’d call a dry sense of humor, ever since she stole my clothes from that swimmin’ hole on Gashey’s Creek.”
“Huh? I never heard that story.”
“You ask your gran about that sometime when she’s acting high and mighty.”
Since Danny had taken the window seat, Cole found himself directly across the aisle from a fellow who looked to be about his own age. Like Cole, the man had opted for soft drinks and Cole couldn't help but notice that he had a slight German accent. Finally, he caught Cole’s eye and said, “Hello. Have you been to Germany before?”
Cole nodded. “A long time ago,” he said. “During the war.”
The other man nodded and offered his hand across the aisle, “Hans Neumann,” he said. After Cole had introduced himself in turn, his fellow passenger continued: “I, too, was in the war, but I suspect that I fought for the other side. You see, I was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. But not for long, thank goodness. I was captured and sent as a prisoner to Ohio.”
“A POW, huh?”
Hans smiled. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I felt like I had gone to heaven! The people were kind and I was just a boy really, who didn't have much choice about going into the army.”
“Nobody had much choice,” Cole agreed.
Hans nodded. “No, and that is why I was glad to be out of the war. There was plenty to eat in Ohio. There were pretty girls. I ended up staying there for the next forty years, ha! I found a wife and bought a farm and raised a family. I became an American citizen, which was my proudest day. But you see, I still have a few relatives in Germany, so here I am on this plane.”
Cole appreciated that Hans had summed up his life story in a few sentences, like the summary on the back of a book. Cole doubted that he could do the same; his life was a little more complicated.
“Good for you,” was all he said.
Hans smiled. “Good for me, indeed. This may be my last time going back. I have a bad heart, you see. Growing up, we were always told to eat lots of cheese and butter. It’s good for you, we were told! Well, the whole time it was clogging up my arteries.”
Cole snorted. “Yeah, don’t get me started. No salt, no sugar—”
“No fun!”
Cole found himself taking a liking to Hans, the Wehrmacht soldier-turned Ohio farmer. They were now just a couple of old codgers, bitching about the things that all old codgers bitched about. At this point in his life, he liked that just fine.
Cole had felt some uncertainty beforehand about this trip, but now, talking with Hans, he was finally starting to relax. Maybe Norma Jean was right that he was always too worried about what could go wrong.
“You hit that on the head, Hans. It’s no fun getting old.”
“You are from the south?” Hans asked. “I can hear it in your accent.”
“Born and raised. Got me a little place in the mountains and couldn't be happier.”
Hans nodded agreeably. “Look at us, having survived that nightmare, we are here today. We are blessed, my friend.” Hans raised his glass of soda in salute and Cole did the same. “Is that your grandson with you?”
“That's right,” Cole said. “We're taking a tour of Germany.”
“He is a good-looking boy,” Hans said in a tone of grandfatherly approval. “I have three grandsons myself. I am so glad that your grandson is going as a tourist and not as a soldier, as we had to do.”
“Amen to that.”
“Listen, I am going to put my head down and take a nap. All this traveling has made me tired and like I said, my heart is not what it used to be.” Hans took a pen from the pocket of his blazer and jotted a phone number on a cocktail napkin. “This is my telephone number and the address where I am staying in Munich. I still have many friends there and many family. If you and your grandson need anything while you are in Germany, you get in touch. You never know when you will need a friend.”
Cole took the napkin and nodded his thanks. “Much obliged, Hans.”
Left alone now, with Danny wrapped up in gazing out the window at the play of fading light across
the pillowy clouds, Cole found himself lost in reflection.
Cole thought about his own arrival in Europe aboard a landing craft at the Normandy beachhead. There had been lots of training in England, of course, but nothing truly prepared anyone for the horrors they had experienced on that beach. On that beach, Cole had picked up an abandoned sniper rifle and his real career as a soldier had begun.
Consciously, he knew that he should be saddened and filled with regret at all the lives lost and the killing that he had done. But a deeper, raw part of Cole that he sometimes thought of as “the critter” hadn’t minded at all. In fact, that part of him missed it. He missed the excitement and even the camaraderie of fighting alongside good men.
Maybe these weren’t the best realizations to be having thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic. He let his mind wander to other things, and soon Cole managed to drift off.
He awoke to the gentle chiming of the seatbelt light and the pilot giving a weather report.
Next stop, Germany.
Cole felt butterflies in his stomach, but he told himself that it was just from the jet changing altitude.
Chapter Four
After they disembarked from the plane and went through customs, with a bored official waving them through without even looking at their passports, they emerged into the busy international arrivals terminal to see a uniformed driver holding a sign that read, “Herr Cole.”
“I reckon that’s us,” Cole said.
Much to Cole’s embarrassment, the driver insisted on carrying their bags to a shiny black Mercedes. The uniform was simply that of a chauffeur, but deep down, it made Cole uneasy. He had some experience with uniformed Germans, and it hadn’t been good.
However, this German was friendly and pleasant. He spoke perfect English, and explained that he had been a school teacher before retiring and deciding to keep busy by ferrying important passengers around Munich.
“Last week, you would not believe that I met Jim Palmer. A famous American baseball player! I even got his autograph. Are you famous?”
