AbrakaPOW

by Isaiah Campbell

  “Hey, are you going to help me?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “You can’t just leave me here.”

  “I cannot take you with us.”

  Max watched them run down the line of trains, looking for an opening to get over to the clearing. She sighed, made sure Houdini was nestled in her pocket, and climbed down on her own. Then she hurried after them.

  Someone scooped her up into their arms.

  Thankfully, and for the first time in a very long time, it was her father.

  “Max,” he said, his voice gruff and quivering.

  She melted onto his shoulder. “I knew you’d be here.” It wasn’t entirely true, but it seemed the perfect thing to say given the circumstance.

  He nodded and squeezed her tight.

  “Dad, you’d better hurry,” she finally said. “Blaz and Judy are heading to Mexico. But Judy doesn’t want to go. She’s just trying to make sure he gets caught. Which is a really dumb idea, when you think about it. She’s just a girl, after all.”

  Her father shot her the look she deserved, and she blushed.

  “Okay, you’re right.”

  He took her over to a nearby platform and set her down. “There are a dozen G-men here, as well as state troopers and MPs. We’ll get Blaz. What about Felix? Where’d he go?”

  “He wasn’t on the train. I think he caught wind of the whole plan.”

  Major Larousse sighed. “Okay. Well, we’ll catch him eventually I guess. Now, don’t you move from this spot, got it? Once we’ve got Blaz back in custody, I’ll come get you. I’m not going to lose you again.”

  She nodded, he kissed her, and then he drew his gun and hurried in the direction Blaz had gone.

  Max stretched, relieved, and leaned on a nearby post. At last, she could relax.

  Of course, as it so often happens, her moment of relaxation was short-lived.

  A hand covered her mouth from behind.

  “Apologies, fräulein, but you must now come with me,” Felix said.

  And she would have screamed, but the gun pressed against her temple made her believe it was most likely a very bad idea.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  You’re not going to get away with this,” Max said as Felix had her running beside him toward the border.

  “We shall see, won’t we?”

  “No, I know you aren’t. Because people always make mistakes.”

  He chuckled. “A good magician never makes a mistake.”

  She was beginning to get winded. She slowed down, he dragged her, she dug her feet in and nearly made him fall over.

  “You’re right, they don’t,” she said, panting. “But you’re not a magician. And this? This is no magic trick.”

  He looked her in the eyes, and he began to laugh. Harder than she’d ever seen him laugh. With more joy and gusto than she thought he was capable, he laughed.

  And then his entire countenance changed.

  He straightened up to his full height, a good two inches taller than he had seemed before. His eyes twinkled. His smile widened. He twirled the end of his mustache and winked at her.

  “Haven’t you deciphered this puzzle yet?” he asked. “I was almost certain you’d have it figured out by now.”

  “Deciphered what?”

  “My dear, dear Max. I am a magician.” He waved his arm with a panache and produced a flower from the air. He handed it to her. “From 1924 until 1929, I was the assistant to the greatest magician on earth, the QUEEN OF MAGIC, Madame Adelaide Herrman as she toured in vaudeville. And upon her retirement, I took up her show.”

  “Wait, you?” Max asked.

  Felix pointed the gun at her again and motioned for her to keep moving.

  “I don’t understand. How come I’ve never heard of you?” Max asked.

  “Because I took the show to the only place still profitable during the depression. Down to South America and Cuba,” he said. “It was my beautiful assistant’s idea. You can probably already guess her name.”

  She groaned. “Josephine?”

  “Indeed,” he said. They exited the train yard and he hid the gun again. “The gun is in my pocket, still pointed at you, so don’t try anything.”

  She was far too preoccupied with the identity of his assistant to let a little thing like a bullet in the back distract her. “Josephine was your assistant.”

  “Is my assistant,” he said. “And the woman I love, that much is true. But she is the finest assistant there ever was. And now she is waiting for me across the border.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “You spoke to her, yes?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “And you said what I told you to say?”

  Max could feel her stomach sinking. “Yeah.”

  “Then she will be there. ‘The relationship went south’ is our code phrase. She knew exactly what it meant.”

  They walked across a street and over a hill, across a ditch, and through a yard. Finally they stood on the edge of a riverbank. He scanned the other side, and then he waved.

  “Ah, she is truly the perfect assistant. There is my Josephine.”

  Max looked over to see a woman dressed in white waving to them.

  “Now, my dear sweet Max, the finest servante I’ve ever known, I must say auf wiedersehen.”

  A gun fired and a bullet whizzed past his ear.

  Felix spun to look behind them.

  “Give me my daughter, Felix!” Max’s father yelled. Behind him were dozens of FBI agents, state troopers, and MPs. Next to him were Gil and Judy. All of them, except for Judy, of course, were armed and had their weapons aimed at the last escapee from Camp Barkeley.

  Felix sighed, grabbed Max, and put the gun to her head again.

  “Major, this is not how I hoped this would end.” He motioned his head across the river. “My sweet Josephine waits for me. Suppose we exchange lady for lady? Max to you, and I to Josephine?”

  “You’re not a murderer,” Major Larousse said, and he continued walking toward Felix. “I know that and you know that.”

  “You know so very little about me,” Felix said.

  Major Larousse raised his hands into the air. “Okay, maybe you are a murderer. But is that what you want Josephine to see? To see you killing a little girl, just so you can be free?”

  Felix backed toward the river. He glanced at Josephine, who looked much more anxious than he would have liked.

  “Come on, Felix,” Major Larousse said as he inched closer. “This isn’t the right thing and you know it.”

  Felix narrowed his eyes and cocked the hammer to the pistol. “All is fair in love and war, right, Major?”

  Max’s father dropped his gun. “Felix. I’m begging you . . .”

  Now, it just so happens that the area around the Rio Grande river is filled with many aromas, and of those many odors, there is one that is extremely pungent. The smell of rabbits.

  And it was that lovely smell that caused Houdini, who up to this point had been sleeping ever so soundly in his warm pocket inside Max’s shirt, to awaken. Seeing what he assumed was a rabbit holding what he assumed was a loaded carrot to his human’s head, he scurried out of the shirt and hopped just high enough to latch his little teeth onto Felix’s hand.

  Felix quickly flung the ferret away into Major Larousse’s waiting arms and then returned the gun to Max’s head. All without firing a shot, which was quite surprising.

  But then Max recalled one of the greatest lessons in magic: If a magician is holding a gun, then it is most assuredly not loaded.

  Max also remembered the judo lessons nearly every officer’s daughter had received back in Brooklyn. She took hold of Felix’s arm, swung her hip into his waist, and in one swift motion, sent Felix tumbling to the ground.

  Felix scrambled to turn the gun on her yet again, but to his dismay, it had disappeared from his hand.

  Instead, it was being held by THE AMAZING MAX, who had it pointed strai
ght at his head.

  Felix chuckled. “Ah, dear Max, there are no bullets in that weapon.”

  “Correction,” she said, and fired the pistol at the ground next to him, which sent a spray of dirt and grass up into his face. “There were no bullets in this weapon. Now there are three. Or, I guess two since I just shot one. And I’ll bet you money that you’re not up to recreating the BULLET CATCH TRICK today.”

  Felix looked across the river. Josephine had disappeared into the crowd of people that had gathered to watch.

  He sighed and applauded.

  “Bravo, QUEEN OF MAGIC. Bravo.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  “But why must ALL good things come to an end?”

  —Max’s diary, Tuesday, May 15, 1945

  The beginning of summer in 1945 should have been the most glorious in the history of American summers. Hitler was dead, the war in Europe was officially over, and there were high hopes that the conflict in the Pacific theater would be completed by the end of the year.

  But, with the end of the war also came the end of Camp Barkeley. The once-home of fifty thousand people had been officially deactivated and would soon become an empty plot of land. And with its closure also came the worst bit of news for most of the children who had found their best friends in Abilene:

  It was time to go home.

  There were no magical curses or incantations Max could utter that were powerful enough to keep the tears from infesting her eyes. As she carried the boxes from their house onto a moving truck, it seemed both as though she’d just been doing this exact same task, and also as though it had been a lifetime since she’d arrived.

  Shoji followed behind her, carrying a box full of her magic equipment. No warning had been written on the flaps this time. There was no need.

  He set the box on the back of the truck and stretched. He’d grown a full three inches over the past year and had gotten quite a bit stronger, and that wasn’t just regarding his odor, either. (Actually, if someone were to ask her in private, she would admit that Shoji smelled quite nice most of the time, but she’d never let him hear her say it.)

  He flicked his wrist and pulled a flower out of the air. He mischievously grinned and stuck it into her braid.

  “Where’d you get that?” she asked.

  He winked. “Magician’s Code.”

  Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Larousse came out the front door carrying their own boxes, and Mrs. Morris was busy sharing some sordid detail about people that nobody cared about. “But my boy, Richard, he says he’s in love with her. A married woman. Can you believe it?”

  “No, I can’t,” Mrs. Larousse said as she placed the box of dishes onto the truck. “It’s scandalous.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling him.”

  The door swung open again and Grandma Schauder walked out, one arm carrying a very tiny box of Hummel figurines she had brought down with her. She did not place these on the truck. She wouldn’t be letting them out of her sight until her family was safely back in Brooklyn.

  “And what about you?” Grandma Schauder asked, poking Shoji in the belly. “Are you going to visit us in New York one of these days?”

  Shoji gave Max a terrified look, and she laughed. “I don’t know. Shoji’s a slow-talking Texan through and through. He might not fit in up there.”

  “Hey! Dallas is no tiny town,” he said. This made Grandma Schauder laugh.

  “Dallas,” she said, still chuckling.

  He shrugged. “Anyway, if there’s anything I learned from our dear friend Felix, it’s that you do what you have to do to keep from being separated from the people you care about.” He looked in Max’s eyes. “Besides, I hear that New York is indescribable.”

  She blushed. “That it is.”

  Mrs. Larousse leaned against the truck and wiped the beads of perspiration off her forehead. “Poor Felix. He really deserved a better ending to his story than this.”

  “That was the prisoner you told me about, yes?” Grandma Schauder asked. “The one who held a gun to my poor granddaughter’s head?”

  “It wasn’t loaded,” Max said. “It was just an illusion. Besides, he’s been a model citizen ever since. He worked with Dad to keep the prisoners in line, insisted that the band play ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag’ in their concert, and toasted President Roosevelt the day of his funeral. Why, he even offered to replace our Hummel.”

  Grandma Schauder shot a look at Mrs. Larousse. “Oh he did?”

  “Um, it wouldn’t have meant the same if it didn’t come from you, Mother,” Mrs. Larousse hurried to interject.

  “You know, when you think about it,” Shoji said with an exaggeration of his drawl, “Felix is as American as I am, minus the citizenship. He just had the bad luck of being German.”

  Grandma Schauder huffed and broke her stare at her ungrateful daughter. “What’s going to become of him?”

  “He and all the other prisoners are heading back to Europe.”

  Mrs. Morris clicked her tongue. “Have you heard what’s happening to those prisoners when they return? When the French or the Russians get them, they treat them as though these men should pay for every last thing done wrong by Hitler. They march them until they collapse, starve them for days on end, and beat them mercilessly. It’s a terrible thing to do, even for those criminals.”

  “Not criminals,” Mrs. Larousse corrected. “Soldiers.”

  “And then there’s Felix,” Max said. “He’s something else entirely. He’s a magician.”

  “Here’s hoping he’s a good escape artist,” Shoji said. “I heard Blaz and the others have some pretty vicious things in store for him on the boat ride across the Atlantic.”

  Max winced. “Let’s not talk about that. Please.”

  Grandma Schauder sighed. “You people are going to make me start feeling sorry for the Nazis, and I don’t like it.”

  “Not all Germans are Nazis, Grandma,” Max said solemnly.

  Grandma Schauder yanked on Max’s braid playfully. “Next you’ll be telling me that you want to go wish the prisoners a fond farewell.”

  Mrs. Larousse stood up straight. “Now that is something I think we should do. Isn’t Felix leaving today?”

  “Yeah,” Max said. “You . . . you want to go say good-bye?”

  “Yes, absolutely. Like you said, not all Germans are Nazis. And if Felix can’t live free in the country he loves, he at least ought to be sent off like the American he is at heart.”

  Grandma Schauder shot her a disapproving look. “You sound like you wish his escape plan had worked.”

  “I’m the wife of the major, Mother,” Mrs. Larousse said. “Of course I’m glad he was recaptured. But if he had escaped under somebody else’s watch . . .” She smiled at Max. “What do you say? Let’s get everyone together and go give Felix the send-off he deserves.”

  Max and Shoji grinned at each other. It was always most satisfying when people set up the next trick for you.

  Chapter Fifty

  The last of the prisoners from Camp Barkeley were lined up, ready to be shipped back to the war-torn landscape they had helped to create. The truck that would take them to their final destination in the states was parked in front of them with the hood up, as the engine was getting its final tune-up before the long trek ahead.

  Felix stood at the back of the line, paying no attention to the proceedings around him as Major Larousse walked with the colonel, chatting about the headaches that came with shutting down such a massive camp. The Gremlins and the Mesquite Tree Girls were there to see Felix on his way. And this was what made the whole scene very odd, because not a single one of them acknowledged that he was there, standing in line with the other prisoners, back in their uniforms and feeling as though their lives had most assuredly come to an end.

  Instead, Max played with Houdini and stayed close to her father, who had just received a clipboard from one of the truck guards. The other guard, meanwhile, was busy talking to the Mesquite Tree Girls, and he seemed qui
te happy to have three teenaged girls giving him so much attention. Eric, Shoji, and Carl were by the prison truck too, reenacting a radio serial of Superman they’d heard earlier that day.

  The truck’s hood slammed shut and Gil emerged. “Looks like it’s ready to go.”

  “Alright, load ’em up,” Major Larousse yelled. The truck drivers jumped to comply and started shuffling the prisoners into the back of the truck.

  “That’s the last of them, isn’t it?” the colonel asked Major Larousse.

  “Yes, sir,” the major said.

  “And good riddance.”

  Felix was the last of the prisoners to climb onboard. The driver got in and started the truck, and it rolled forward all of three feet before it started sputtering and smoking.

  Gil ran up and signaled for the driver to stop and pop the hood. When he did, the smoke billowed out and the entire truck disappeared in the vapors.

  “Oh my land,” the colonel said. “The whole place is falling apart.”

  “Yes indeed,” Major Larousse said with a chuckle. “At least it waited until the end.” He dangled the clipboard close to the ground.

  Houdini, seeing the clipboard enticing him so, jumped out of Max’s grip and grabbed it out of the major’s hand. He dragged it over to Max.

  Meanwhile, Shoji, with a giant blanket tied around his neck, jumped into the cloud.

  “Hey, I get to be Superman this time!” Eric yelled and jumped in after him.

  “Get those kids out of there!” the colonel barked, so frustrated with the lack of professionalism around him that he didn’t notice when the paper on the major’s clipboard disappeared in Max’s hands, and a new paper took its place.

  Carl hurried into the cloud of smoke and emerged carrying a teeming bundle of boys in the blanket cape. He dropped them into his truck bed.

  Gil closed the hood of the truck. “Okay, I think it’s all fine now,” he said. He looked over at Carl’s truck. “And how about I escort those rowdy boys out of here? They’re just causing all sorts of trouble.”

  “Yes,” the colonel said. “You do that.”

  Gil got in to Carl’s truck and drove away.