“Uh, yeah, it gets that way sometimes,” she said with a smile and a twinkle in her eye as she kept looking at him, as if she couldn’t look away, either.
“No need to stand out here on the porch,” Mister Hodge said as he held the door open, breaking the awkward spell. “Come on inside.” Leslie reached her hand out to take his suitcase. “Here, I got that,” she said, as their fingers touched and they bumped together in the narrow doorway. Two clumsy people? Maybe. However, when their fingers touched it was as if an electric shock passed between them. He felt it. From her expression, she felt it too.
“Careful, you’ll knock the man over, Les!” Mister Hodge said, laughing.
If he only knew, Michael thought. “Sorry,” she laughed and he laughed too, but this was a complication he had not bargained for. It wasn’t something he needed; it wasn’t something he wanted; but it wasn’t something he had any control over, either, and that left him flustered and confused. Not that he hadn’t had girlfriends in high school. Plenty, but work, football, and the war put the thought of a normal life on the back burner; that is, until he stepped up to Earl Hodge’s screen door and looked into those green eyes.
As Earl Hodge went inside, Michael noticed the old man walked with a bad limp. “Fell on the boat last year, and it ain’t been right since,” he said. Leslie took his suitcase and carried it down the hall. “We figure you’ll stay here with us for a while, Michael, so Les is puttin’ your stuff in Eddie’s old room. Hope that’s okay.” He pointed to the small, threadbare couch. “Take a seat. Les’ll bring us out some sweet tea in a minute.”
Michael never had much of a family life. His parents lost their dairy farm in the late 1930s and the family quickly drifted apart. But after the long months he and Eddie spent together in Texas and in Italy, he came to know the Hodges better than his own. Eddie read him all their letters, which usually centered on oysters and clams, problems with the boat, duck hunting, and the things his kid sister Leslie was doing. By the same token, Eddie had been good about writing home. As he sat on the couch, he saw an old cigar box on the coffee table. Inside was a stack of letters in envelopes. The paper was the tissue-thin stuff they issued to the military overseas.
“Those are Eddie’s, the ones he sent us from Texas and Italy,” Mister Hodge began. “Les here saved every one of ’em.” Since Michael and Eddie had been inseparable, he knew the other half of Eddie’s letters would have been about him. “Nobody told us very much about what happened, just that he was gone. That’s why we were so happy to hear you made it out, and that you could come down here and see us.”
“I promised him I would, but I stayed in Sweden for a while.”
“Sweden, ain’t that somethin’. And Eddie said I’m supposed to take you out duck huntin’? Well, the season’s a tad early; but I got the boat out. We’ll go do that tomorrow, early, if you’ve got a mind to. Give us a chance to talk.”
“Yeah, that’d be great!” Michael lied, knowing what lay ahead.
The next morning, the two men set out in the small skiff at dawn, just them and three dogs. It had a small gas-powered motor and rode low in the water as they motored about a mile upstream to the Hodges’ small duck blind. It stood where the marsh and the small islands blended into the reeds, the cattails, and the soft morning mist.
They tied the boat off and Michael helped Mister Hodge up into the blind. Leslie had made them a hamper full of sandwiches and a big thermos of coffee. They sat side by side on the floor with their backs to the wall, eating and drinking, waiting quietly for the first birds to come over. Mister Hodge looked over at the two shotguns leaning against the wall. “I never asked you if you liked huntin’,” he said. “You know how to use one of them?”
Michael smiled. “We didn’t do a lot of bird hunting back home in Wisconsin. Some, but mostly we hunted deer and rabbits, with rifles.”
“Deer, they’re real hard to sneak up on, aren’t they?” Hodge smiled back. “And them damned rabbits, they take a good eye and a real steady hand.”
Michael smiled. “I usually hit what I was aiming at, with a rifle anyway.”
“Eddie said that’s why they made you machine gunners, waist gunners, he called it.”
“Yeah, but it’s easier to hit something that isn’t shooting back.”
“Still, he says he got a FW and a 109, and you got three of ’em. I guess the both of you figured it out.”
“We figured some of it out,” Michael looked at the other man with a sad smile. “But they got as many of us as we got of them.”
Shortly after dawn, they heard the first V-shaped flock come over and they alternated shots for the next half hour or so, giving the dogs time to go out and retrieve the half-dozen birds they’d hit. Michael got his shots in and pretended he was enjoying himself, but his heart really wasn’t in it. He didn’t think Mister Hodge’s was either. Finally, they set the shotguns against the wall and sat down once more.
“Well, I reckon’ we got that out of the way,” Mister Hodge said with a sad smile as he sat back down on the floor and leaned against the rear wall. “Least wise, we got enough to claim we wuz shootin’ at ’em with a purpose.” He pulled a pint of Wild Turkey from his hip pocket, took a swig, and handed it to Michael. “Son, I might be mistaken, but you look like you got some things you need to tell me about.”
Michael took a drink, too, and not just to be polite. “This was Eddie’s idea. He made me promise I’d come here and tell you what happened out there, all of it. He said it would be good for both of us.”
“Well, I don’t know if he wuz right or wrong about that, but I figured it was bad. That’s why I didn’t ask you no questions in front of Les.”
Michael took a second long pull from the bottle. There was no good place to start, so he closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the wall, and just started talking. He told him about Italy, what he remembered about the first sixteen missions they flew, and about that last one. He told him about the B-17 being shot down, about being on the run in East Prussia, and about those long, painful months they spent in Königsberg. Finally, he told him how Eddie got sick, about the frostbite and the gangrene, and how there was nothing anyone could do. Then he told him about the old truck, about Eddie’s last morning, and about how he gave Stolz his last five dollars to borrow his pistol.
Hodge’s old man sat there quietly and didn’t speak for a long, long time. They passed the bottle back and forth again, then he said, “Thank you, Michael. I know how hard it was for you to tell me all that.” He coughed and wiped his eyes, then said, “And I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you to fetch that pistol and give it to my boy, knowing what he was going to do with it and all. As horrible as it was, only a real friend would do something like that. Only a brother would, and we thank you.”
That was when Michael knew he had done the right thing by coming to South Carolina and telling him, the right thing for them and for him. He felt as if a huge load had been lifted off his shoulders.
“One thing, though,” Mister Hodge said. “Don’t tell Les about that last morning or the gun, not yet anyway. She was only twelve when he left, and Lord, she worshiped that boy. Maybe later, but for now, it’s enough for her to know he just got sick and died.”
Michael knew he was right, but the truth was he doubted he could have told her anyway. He convinced himself that he could tell her later, when the time was right. But all that did was build a wall, higher and higher, so high that neither of them could ever climb over it. They sat there a while longer passing the bottle and eating another sandwich until Mister Hodge looked over at him and said, “You look like you got more to say, boy. If you’re goin’ to get it out, then get it all out.”
So Michael continued. He told him about those final weeks he spent alone in Königsberg, about the U-boat, about the SS, the crates and boxes of gold, Kapitan Bruckner, and that last night off Sweden when the U-boat was sunk. “I haven’t told anybody the rest of that. Not Einar or Emma Person o
r the other guys I worked with back in Sweden, not the people at the Embassy. It’s our secret, mine and Kapitan Bruckner’s, but with all the rest, I thought you should know. Can you understand that, Mister Hodge?”
“Yeah, I can, Michael. The man saved your life and it cost him his, his boat, his crew, and everything else. I guess I can.”
“But you’re right. It feels better to have gotten it off my chest, all of it.”
They sat there a while longer, ignoring the ducks flying overhead. Finally, Mister Hodge said, “Michael, I’d like you to stay with us a while, if you’ve a mind. It would give all of us a chance to get to know each other a little better. After what we’ve all been through, I think we could use that. Maybe it’ll give us all a chance to heal.”
“I think I’d like that too,” he said, realizing Eddie may have been right after all.
“Good, but if you’re gonna stay, you need to start calling me Earl,” he said. “After all you been through, I can’t abide you callin’ me ‘Mister Hodge’ no more.”
When they got back to the house, Leslie had already unpacked his suitcase and put his things in Eddie’s old room. She had cleaned out Eddie’s dresser and his closet, carefully packing it all away in boxes and carrying them up to the attic. Earl told her Michael would be staying with them for a while, but it was obvious from her smile that she knew that without being told, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
PART FOUR
ROCKCREEK
SOUTH CAROLINA
JULY 1951
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rock Creek, South Carolina
Sometimes you don’t decide things. Sometimes things decide for you.
The easy answer was guilt. Michael stayed because Earl needed help, but the reason he kept staying was Leslie. The day after they went duck hunting, Michael began going out with them on the oyster boat to help work the dredge. It was what Eddie would be doing if he had come back, and Michael felt useful filling the role a son and older brother would have filled. Useful, but no less guilty. Had Eddie been that clever back in Königsberg? Michael wondered. Is this what he had in mind all along? Hard to tell.
As the weeks passed, they settled into a routine. When Earl’s leg would act up, which was becoming more and more frequent, Michael and Leslie would take the boat out alone. At first, she seemed nervous and reserved when she was alone with him; then she seemed more nervous and reserved when Earl came along. That autumn and winter, as the air and water cooled, Earl’s leg and his back went from bad to worse. By early spring, he stopped going out on the boat altogether, leaving Michael and Leslie to take it out alone every day. That was when Michael’s relationship with her, or the lack of one, grew more and more awkward; because he had fallen hopelessly in love with her, and that made things even worse. He knew he shouldn’t stay but he couldn’t leave. He was trapped.
By early summer, when it grew really hot and humid in the Carolina lowlands, the sweat would pour off them and soak through their thin clothes by mid-morning. He’d strip down to shorts and she’d wear shorts and a thin shirt rolled up and tied in back like a halter-top. It was practical, but it left very little to the imagination. He knew it, she knew it, and it was obvious she didn’t care. By noon, one of them would push or pull the other into the water to cool off. There would always be a lot of laughing, giggling, and close contact, but he wouldn’t let it go any further. From the looks she gave him, he knew she wouldn’t have stopped him, but she was Eddie’s little sister and he could never get beyond that basic fact and the guilt that went with it.
She seemed to understand, and was willing to put up with his non-responsiveness as long as he was there where she could see him, talk to him, and occasionally touch him, knowing he wouldn’t leave. That worked well enough out on the boat, but at night, it was infinitely worse. It was a small house. Her room was next to his. He would lie awake on those hot, steamy nights all too aware that she was on the other side of that thin sheet of plasterboard, soaked in sweat, probably thinking the same thing he was, and there was nothing either of them was going to do about it.
One particularly sweltering night, he got out of bed and went to the kitchen for a drink of water and saw her sitting alone in the dark on the screened-in back porch. He stood in the doorway and they stared at each other for long minutes without saying anything. Finally, she got up, walked over and stood next to him. He was wearing an old pair of boxer shorts and she was wearing a thin tee shirt and panties. There were tears running down her face as she reached out and put her hand on his chest. “It’s okay,” she whispered as she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “It’s okay. Just don’t leave me. Don’t you dare leave me.” Then she turned and walked back to her room.
Finally, he asked Earl. They were working on a net down on the dock and Leslie was in the house cooking dinner. “Why don’t I see any guys coming around to see her? Doesn’t Les have a boyfriend?”
A thin smile crossed Earl’s lips. “I suspect there’s two reasons, Mike — me and you. She won’t take up with some boy and leave me alone here. I talked to her about it a bunch of times before you came, but it didn’t do any good. She won’t do what she don’t want to do. Then there’s the second problem, and that’s you.”
“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” Michael answered. “It’s not that I’m not interested, Earl, but I’m too old for her.”
“You ain’t either. She’s twenty-one now and you’re what? Twenty-seven? Believe me, boy, that ain’t too old.”
“It’s not that kind of old, Earl. I wouldn’t be any good for her. I’m burned out, and she deserves someone who isn’t carrying all this guilt and anger around inside.”
“Why don’t you let her worry about that, Mike?”
“I can’t, Earl. Aren’t there some guys in town?”
“Used to be, but she chased ’em away a long time ago.”
Michael looked at him. “Earl, she fell in love with an old picture, with those stories Eddie wrote about in his letters.”
“Maybe that was true five years ago, but she’s a grown woman now.”
“You don’t need to tell me that.”
“I expect not. The two of you workin’ on that boat by yourselves out in the hot sun, you got a lot more willpower than I ever had, boy.”
“Earl, you know I’d never let that happen.”
“Oh, I know.” The old man put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “She’s my baby girl, Mike, but sometimes I wish you would. Oh, I know you’ll do the right thing. But you two are nuts about each other, and you won’t hear no objections from me.”
“You don’t think it’s just me taking Eddie’s place in her mind?”
Earl sat back, shook his head, and chuckled. “I seen that look in her eye, Mike, and she ain’t thinkin’ of you as no brother. You two need each other and it would make an old man very happy.”
“But Königsberg. The pistol. I helped kill him as sure as if I pulled the trigger. Do you know how that feels? How could I make love to her when I can’t even get up the nerve to tell her how her brother died?”
“You didn’t kill him, boy; you need to get that out of your head. It was them Germans. All you did was what Eddie wanted you to do, and what you knew you had to do.”
His head told him that Earl was right. Getting the pistol from Stolz was the right thing to do, and he had nothing to feel guilty about. Eddie was suffering and dying a horrible death. Still, after that first night when he didn’t have the courage to tell Leslie, the absence of truth grew and grew, and became a lie.
Leslie leaned her head out the kitchen door and called them to dinner. Earl looked at her. “Michael, whether you like it or not, Les knows what she wants and what she doesn’t want. I just hope you change your mind before it’s too late, for her and for you.”
As the months wore on, he and Leslie fell into a comfortable but silent relationship, silent on anything that mattered, like each other. Most of the time, that seemed okay with her too, but
there were days on the boat when the sexual tension was so strong that if they had accidentally bumped or touched, the spark would have lit up half the eastern seaboard. But, somehow, they got through it.
That tense status quo lasted until the morning Michael saw the story in the Charleston newspaper about Admiral Eric Bruckner’s trip to New York City. It was a hot Sunday in July, the one day they never took the boat out. They were sitting in the living room. The windows were open and there was a breeze off the ocean that helped cool the house. Earl was in his armchair, reading the newspaper from the front section on back. Leslie and Michael sat on the couch. He was reading the sports section, trying to ignore her while she lay lengthwise with her back propped up on a cushion and her bare feet in his lap. She was darning a pair of his socks but her eyes were on him, not the needle. Like a little kid, she would occasionally shift her feet to jostle the newspaper and distract him or dig her toes into him to annoy him even more. It was one of the innocent, but playful things she did that drove him crazy. He knew she was watching him, trying to get a reaction, and he was trying his best to ignore her. He learned months ago that glaring at her, complaining, or even retaliating accomplished nothing. The only way to get her to stop was to put a hand on her foot or her ankle and gently caress it with his fingers. That always worked. She’d stop annoying him, content to sit like that for hours if he’d let her. So would he. He loved touching her. He loved her, and that was the hopeless trap he had fallen into.
The lead stories in the sports section were about Jersey Joe Walcott knocking out Ezzard Charles for the heavyweight boxing title, and some guy named Randy Turpin beating Sugar Ray Robinson. In baseball, the Yankees were once again atop the American League and the Dodgers and Phillies were battling it out in the National League. Earl had finished the stories about the stalemate in Korea and one about Moslem fanatics assassinating Jordan’s King Abdullah while he was praying in a mosque. He turned a few more pages and said, “Michael, here’s a story here you might want to look at. There’s a Kraut Admiral comin’ to New York. He was a skipper on a U-boat that got sunk in the Baltic, just like the one you were on. What was the name of your Kapitan? This fella’s name is Bruckner.”
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