by Marc Hess
Max worked to keep a civil tone. “What I know, opa, is that you can fill your backyard and your shop with these rusty antiques”—he pointed to shadows in the backyard, where the children were climbing on the old harvester—“but that’s not going to keep Ritzi Agricultural Equipment in business long enough to feed those kids. Farming in Gillespie County is dying. Your son has a pretty cool idea on how to keep your business going. And all you can bring yourself to do is trash him.”
Jock put a hand up to stop Max. “It’s … it’s okay, Max. That’s enough.”
A deep grumble came from within Maximilian as he leaned forward, trying to push himself to his feet. “An’ whatcha know of farming? Hell, boy, you ever turn a row of God’s earth?” There was more bile in him, and he would have brought forth more insults, but he started coughing up phlegm instead.
“What do I know?” Max’s voice was rising. “I drove home in a Dodge Challenger coupe, Papa. I know something about making money. And I’m poised to pull down a lot more money than you’ll ever pull out of your dying farm equipment shop.”
But his father didn’t hear him. He had fallen back in his chair, coughing and struggling for breath, his whole body convulsing. Head back, Maximilian tried to suck in air from above them, a mouthful of cigar-stained teeth gasping at the sky, eyes rolling back into their sockets.
Gerdie came running from the kitchen, their mama right behind. She knelt by their father and put a napkin to his mouth. Then she placed an open palm on his chest and turned to Jock. “Bring me his oxygen, schnell.”
Jock hurried into the house as Maximilian heaved again.
“Just breathe, opa. Breathe slowly. Breathe deeply.” As the old man calmed down, Gerdie turned to Max with a pained and scolding look. “What did you do, Max? What did you do?”
• • •
Wrapped up tightly in his anger, Carel stepped into Schrubb’s office. He had no clever words for the bank folks today. Bev was standing over Schrubb’s shoulder, striving to hold her neutral expression. There were no handshakes. No witty greetings. Carel pulled his Resistol from his head, dropped it onto the corner of Schrubb’s desk, and plopped himself into his usual chair.
Schrubb’s face was glum. “You got our demand letter. Today is the day, so I have to ask. Can you make the payment?”
“Shit, Chuckie,” Carel spit back. “Ain’t nobody in this damn town got that kind of money just laying around. Unless it be one of your new friends from Houston.”
Bev diverted her eyes. Carel imagined that she was getting some visceral satisfaction from this.
Schrubb glanced about his desk, looking for some way out of the inevitable. He rolled his somber expression upward to meet the eyes of his old friend and shrugged. “Then we’re going to start with repossession proceeding. I have no way around it, Carel.”
Bev passed Schrubb a file folder, which he opened and studied for a moment. “All the construction equipment, including your truck. That lot out on Orchard Street. Your accounts with our bank—we’ll close them and claim the balances.” He spoke without raising his head. “I was actually surprised to see how much of your property the bank has title to now. Your office, for instance. We already own that, and it looks like you never paid your rent.”
Carel nodded quietly. “I knew that.”
Schrubb looked up. “What I don’t see in here, Carel, is your current residence up on Saddle Drive.”
Carel nodded.
“But what we do have is the old Hilss homestead on Washington Street. The house where your ex-wife lives.”
“And my daughter.” There was a fight brewing in Carel’s eyes. “What are you going to do, Chuckie? You going to evict them? How could you!”
Schrubb lunged across the table, yelling now. “I didn’t do this, Carel. You did!”
The move startled Carel, who recoiled in his chair. Bev stepped forward but said nothing. Schrubb swallowed loud enough for all to hear and then sat back in his chair.
Carel’s cell phone rang. It was Mari. “What do you want?” he answered it.
Bev rolled her eyes and turned away, her words falling away under her breath. “I can’t believe …”
Carel leaned back in his chair and continued his phone conversation. “And you’re just telling me now? … At the bank.” He paused and then added, “With Schrubb and Bev.”
At that, Beverly charged out of her professional demeanor, snatched the papers from Schrubb’s hands, and rustled them in Carel’s face. “This is serious business.”
Carel pulled the phone away from his cheek and spoke in a pedantic tone. “This concerns my daughter. If you’ll excuse me.”
“We’re going to sue you!” The veins popped from Bev’s neck. “We’re shutting you down! We’re taking it all! You might be going to jail! Can’t we just get a little bit of your attention?”
Schrubb leaned forward and eased the documents from her hand. “Let’s keep ourselves under control.”
Bev stepped back and crossed her arms; the blush was still in her cheeks. She spoke directly to Schrubb. “If you had this under control, we wouldn’t be here.”
Carel stood and moved toward the door while returning to his call. “Sure. Right now. I’ll look for you in the parking lot.” He snapped his phone shut and turned to his hosts. “I have something important to take care of. I’ll be right back. Don’t you go anywhere.”
He left Schrubb and Bev staring incredulously at each other.
As soon as he stepped outside, Carel got whacked by the scorching August sun. Sweat beaded on his forehead, while his teeth chattered as if he were shivering. He was caught in a vise between a bank and two marriages—one already failed and the other fixing to. Where the hell is she? He put his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
A dinged-up old Ford Super Duty rumbled to the sidewalk in front of him. He raised his head to make out the words Geische Custom Framing—Construction ineffectively scraped off the door. Mari shoved the door open for him, and Carel climbed in, thankful for the air-conditioning.
“Hot out there?” Mari piped.
Carel nodded, collecting his breath. “So what’s going down here?”
“Like I told you. I need six hundred fifty dollars cash money to get Willow bailed out. You know they’re gonna drop the charges like they always do the first time. But I only got some two fifty, and that’s all I got.” She paused and gave him a moment to do the math in his head. “So if you can spot me four hundred bucks—just four hundred—I’ll make Willow pay you back.”
“What happened to that Ebberhaus boy? He get locked up too?”
“Traffic violation. They didn’t hold him. The stuff was in Willow’s purse, and you know her. She wasn’t going to lay it on him. So she’s the one who got to spend the night in the hoosegow, courtesy of your uncle.”
He shifted his body toward her. “You hang on to your two fifty. I’ll just go down there and bail her out.”
“You?” Mari’s laugh was insulting. “She won’t come out if it’s you.”
Carel felt his body stiffen. He rubbed his eyes with his hands. He didn’t know that his body was trembling until he felt Mari’s calming hand on his shoulder.
“Ca-re-el.” She spoke his name like exhaling smoke. “It’s not like she’s gone and done nothin’ we didn’t do when we was that age.”
“Nothing.” Carel pressed back against the car seat as if trying to squeeze himself out of his own skin. “I’m nothing, Mari. I got less than I had when you threw me out. Not a pot to piss in.”
She wasn’t going to let that pass. “I didn’t throw you out, Carel. It was you who went pussy hunting.”
He stopped her with the meanest glare he could muster. “That’s not entirely true. You goddamn know it.”
“It’s basically true.”
They were locked in a death stare, but neither of them threw any more words. Neither of them wanted to dive back into their failed marriage. That reluctance gave Carel the space to fall back into
his current woes.
“I had it right here in my hands, Mari.” He clawed up his outstretched hands to show her. “In my hands. Now they got it all. Everything!” He gestured toward the bank with his thumb. “They’re taking it all away from me!”
There was a moment of quiet before Mari asked, “This mean you don’t have the four hundred?”
“Me! It was going to be me! I was going to be the one Geische who got out from under it all,” Carel bawled, thumping his chest. “My daddy couldn’t make nothing of himself. Same goes for Uncle Victor, God rest his soul. Not my opa or his father, either. Not one of us made enough so our kids didn’t have to start out at the bottom again. Not one of us.”
What stopped him was the stunned expression on Mari’s face, like she was looking at something she’d never seen before. His eyes were puffy with grief, his teeth clenched in rage. He quickly ran a hand across his eyes, afraid there might be a tear. “But these guys! So high and mighty.”
“Ah, you did good for yourself, Carel.” Mari was never daunted by his tyranny. “You just got a little too big for your britches. And don’t you go feeling sorry for yourself. That was my daddy’s land that you sold off to get yourself started. You remember that?”
“A-ach!” Carel let out a screech that sounded like a crow call. He dropped his head against the dashboard. “Oh, goddamn it.” Through all the ack-ack flying through his mind, Carel remembered that the deed to Mari’s home, the old Hilss farmstead, was wrapped up in that package the bank would be repossessing.
“They’re not going to stop with me, Mari. There is no end to what that damn bank will do to us.”
“Us?” Mari cocked her head. “Shouldn’t you be talking this over with your wife? And not me? I mean, it really ain’t my concern that your business went bad.”
Carel sulked back against the seat. “Probably gonna lose her, too. This is not what she married me for.”
“So what was her secret charm?” A witchy smile crossed Mari’s face. “As for me, I just married you ’cause I was pregnant.”
“Are you messing with me?” He spoke syllable by syllable, just like he’d say before he slapped her.
They fell again into that cold, hard stare—such a familiar part of their marriage. She played the moment well, letting him simmer as long as she pleased. Then she eased out of it with a joke: “Just sayin’ that you’ve got your own special way with women.”
Carel leaned toward her. “Your bitchy little sarcasm is getting me pissed off here.”
She grinned into his threat. “What I want is four hundred dollars. You got it or not?”
There was never an easy way out with her. He took a moment to pull himself together before suggesting, “Why don’t you just pull into that drive-through line and we’ll find out exactly how much I got. Where’s my hat?”
“You didn’t have no hat when you got in.” Mari ground the truck into gear and rolled up to the bank window.
“Hey, Suzi,” Carel shouted over her lap to the auto-teller. “Can you tell me what my balance is?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Geische. I can look up your account number, but I have to see your identification.”
“It’s me! Carel Geische. I went to school with your sister. You know me, Suzi.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Geische, but it’s bank policy. I need to see your driver’s license or something.”
Mari was doing a poor job of stifling her giggle.
“This whole town is going to hell, I tell you.” Carel passed his driver’s license to Mari, who passed it to the teller.
“When they start calling you Mr. Geische,” Mari observed, “that means they’re not on your side anymore.”
There was $708.62 in the account. Carel took $700 in cash, counted out $400 for Mari and folded the rest into his shirt pocket.
“I’ll be needing this,” he told Mari as he got out of the truck.
Bev was no longer in the bank manager’s office when Carel returned. Schrubb was slouched over his computer.
“God, are you guys brave.” Carel snatched his Resistol off of Schrubb’s desk.
Schrubb looked up at his old friend. “What?”
“You didn’t have to call me in. You could have just done all this by certified mail.”
Schrubb sat up and addressed him frankly. “We’re going to have to break the news to Mari. I just wanted to give you the chance to talk to her first.”
Carel stuffed his hat on his head. “I just talked to her.”
The two men parted without shaking hands.
• • •
Max found he was an odd visitor in his parents’ home. He stayed in his nephews’ bedroom through the weekend and into the following week. He saw his father’s antics as just that: antics designed to keep everyone focused on him. Still, Max got a kick out of his time with the kids, throwing footballs in the backyard and keeping them up late at night with quiet board games played in the heat of the upstairs bedroom.
Judging by the family photos that cluttered the mantels and hallways, Max had died after high school. The most recent photo hung at the dark end of a hall. It was his senior picture, mounted and framed, with a verse that his mother had created in needlepoint.
For this son of mine was dead and is alive again;
He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate.
LUKE 15:24, The Prodigal Son
In reality, this was the work of his father, who undoubtedly manipulated his mother’s hand—the subtle and cruel means that his father used to twist his mother’s impression of her oldest son. He hated the old man for that.
At Jock’s insistence, Max brought his smashed-up muscle car into Ritzi Agricultural Equipment for repair.
“I didn’t know you did body work. I thought all you did was fix broken sickles on hay swathers.” Max laid a cagey glance on his brother. “Does opa know about this?”
“Kinda. Just don’t go talking it up around him.” Jock displayed more humor and confidence in his shop than he had with his father. “A man can make more money around here fixing toilets in RVs than he can repairing harvesters and wind-rowers.” It was Jock’s turn to give Max the wily look. “Do you want flames?”
“What?”
“Flames. My guys can airbrush some neat-looking flames on your fender. Done it to a few cars, you know.” Then, lowering his voice and smiling through his secret: “Opa don’t know about that, neither.”
The old shop seemed much larger than Max remembered it, or maybe it was less cluttered. The value of the property itself afforded Jock good bank credit. His little brother had grown up to be one of the clean-shirt, cowboy-hatted businessmen of the town rather than the dirt-under-the-fingernails working man their father had been.
Jock led his brother into his air-conditioned office, where the Hunters Extravaganza brochures and plans for a show booth lay out among all the other stuff strewn across their father’s old desk.
Max picked up a brochure. “So, are you going to do those hunters’ shows?”
Jock plopped into the chair behind his desk without removing his Resistol. “Na. I’m going to wait to see what opa says.”
“Why the hell are you going to do that?” Max was left standing, not sure what to do with the boxes and piles of papers and debris that occupied the chairs on his side of the desk. “It’s you who has to make the payroll around here. Papa don’t know what’s going on anymore, and you have the right idea.”
“It’s just that …” Jock cast his eyes aside. “That’s just it, Max. I don’t know if I’m right.”
That comment showed Max how thoroughly the old man controlled the very thought process of his youngest son. “You just hang on, Jock. He’s going to pop off pretty soon, and then you can make this place work the way that it should.”
“Don’t you be so damn cold, Max,” Jock snapped back. “He’s had a hard life. You saw how sick he is.”
“He chose the hard life, Jock. It didn’t have to be so hard. Not for him. Not for Mama
. Not for Gerdie, you, or me.”
“Oh, that’s great advice coming from you, big brother. You just run off down the highway when things get tough.” Jock rummaged through some papers on his desk, as if he might find his next words there. “Talk about hurting people. Nothing ever hurt Mama more than you running out on us.”
“Ran out? No damn way, little brother. I was run out of this town. Not by vigilantes, I remind you. Not by the deacons of Zion Lutheran Church, but by your poor, sickly father. One hard-life man cut my future for me, and he’s doing it to you too, Jock!”
Jock sat up to protest, but Max cut him short.
“Why do you think you don’t have the balls to run your own shop?” Max snatched up a brochure off the desk and threw it against Jock’s chest.
Jock shooed the paper away and backed away, his mouth sealed.
Max felt terrible—it was just the way his old man would have acted. Still finding no place to sit, he toned down a bit. “You know, Jock, chasing me out was the greatest gift the old man ever gave me. It set me out of his shadow and let me be myself. And that is something that you will never get from him.”
Earlier they had talked about going to lunch when Max brought in his car, but the mood had soured. Jock clenched his jaws, said he had some business to attend to, and suggested they make it up sometime later that week.
Max figured it was best to just walk it off, and he set off through the pecan shade along old San Antonio Street. He turned up to Main Street to check out all the fancy boutiques that were replacing the old hardware stores and garages he’d grown up with. Passing through his childhood playground, now the town’s Marktplatz, he crossed over to the Altdorf Biergarten, where he arrived in a light sweat.
The outdoor beer garden fell in the shadow of the St. Mary’s bell tower. Beer barrel tables stood under red-and-white umbrellas stamped with the logos of old-world brews. To clinch the old-world ambiance and attract tourists, the waitresses wore dirndls—those tight, boob-lifting, waist-cinching dresses that Bavarian women wore at their festivals.
