Secrets of Harmony Grove

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I eagerly listened as Heath explained what they had figured out. According to him, as Floyd had recalled each step of Wednesday night’s events, he had recovered from his muddy memory one new piece of information, that he had felt some sort of pain in his leg following the flash of fire.

  Armed with his new knowledge, Heath had taken it upon himself to examine Floyd, and what he had spotted, on the front of Floyd’s right thigh, was a small, circular bruise at the center of which was an even smaller puncture mark.

  Before I could even begin to guess what this meant, Floyd blurted it out.

  “Doc thinks maybe I got shot by a tranquilizer dart,” he said triumphantly. “Probably Nina did too, we bet.”

  Before I could respond, we were interrupted by the ping of a text message. It was from my grandmother: Success! Found poems, will fax in just a bit!

  After sending back a “thank you” with some exclamation points of my own, I returned my attention to Heath and Floyd.

  “Sorry about that,” I said, asking Floyd to repeat what he’d just told me as I slid the phone into my pocket.

  “Doc thinks I was shot by a tranquilizer dart.”

  “By accident?”

  “No, on purpose,” Floyd said, and when I looked at Heath, he explained the logic behind their reasoning.

  “One shooting could have been accidental, but not both,” Heath said. “Besides, the shooter disappeared and the darts themselves were removed from the scene after the fact. To me, trying to hide evidence shows intent.”

  None of us had any idea what this meant exactly or who might have pulled the trigger, but at least it gave us a starting point.

  They each immediately began to pursue this information in his own way. While Heath spoke to the pathologist at the lab, Floyd called up his FBI contact. I thought about calling Mike as well, but I decided to leave all of that to the two men and focus on my own discovered secret, the packet of my grandfather’s documents.

  For some reason I didn’t even tell Heath what I had found, not at first. Maybe I just wanted to have it all to myself for a while, to keep things between me and these ghosts of the past. As the rain began to drum more loudly against the eaves outside, I lit a fire in the fireplace, settled myself in the rocking chair, and held the packet in my hands for a long moment. Did the contents of this envelope contain answers to any of our questions?

  I was just about to untwist the clasp and begin to find out when my phone began vibrating in my pocket. It was Grandma Maureen, calling to say she was faxing me the poems of Daphne’s that she’d had translated from German to English.

  Heading into the office, I thanked her profusely, but I didn’t share my find with her, either. For the moment, it was still mine and mine alone. There would be time enough later to let others in on this treasure from the past.

  Standing there, watching the pages feed through the fax machine that sat on top of the file cabinet, I wondered how Nina had ended up with the papers. Had they had been given to her long ago, by Abe, or much more recently, by Troy? Whether she had received them from one man or the other, I was just glad they had come into her hands somehow.

  When the fax machine grew silent, its task complete, I lifted from its tray the pages of translated words. Between them and the brown packet, I had plenty to read and much to learn.

  Back in the main room, I saw that Heath was off the phone and on his laptop instead, no doubt searching the web for information about tranquilizer guns and veterinary medicines and the like. From the sound—and the smell—of things, Floyd was in the kitchen cooking breakfast. Though I didn’t relish eating food made by his hands—or even having to look at his lying, cheating, felonious face—I knew my stomach would win out. I was starving, and whatever he was making in there smelled incredible.

  But for the moment I returned to the rocking chair beside the fireplace and sat, glancing at Heath, who was working from the couch.

  “I’m finding some great stuff here,” he said, looking up briefly before returning his eyes to the screen. “This all makes so much sense.”

  “Good,” I said simply, wishing he wouldn’t elaborate just now.

  “Ready for this? Tranquilizer guns often contain a small explosive charge that flashes when detonated.”

  Lost in my own thoughts, it took me a moment to understand what he was saying. Once I got it, I gasped and said, “The creature’s burst of fire!”

  “Exactly.”

  We shared a triumphant smile, and then he concentrated again on his computer screen.

  Feeling encouraged, I opened up the envelope to see what treasures it held. Inside were numerous loose sheets of paper as well as a small, leather-bound book, its brown spine crumbled with age. Carefully opening the cover of the book, my heart leaped at the words that had been written by hand on the very first page:

  Frau Daphne Kahn Coblentz

  25. Mai 1945

  Daphne’s journal.

  My heart pounding with excitement, I closed the journal and turned my attention to the loose papers from the envelope, gently flipping through them. Most were yellowed with age and covered with sketches and notes, some in German and some in English, all in my grandfather’s distinctive handwriting. Then came pages and pages of newer-looking lined paper, covered with a completely different handwriting, one that was softer and more feminine than my grandfather’s. The words on the pages were dated, just like journal entries, so I compared those dates with those in the journal itself. Sure enough, they matched.

  Next, I compared the pages with those faxed from my grandmother, but it was obvious that the handwriting was completely different. This was a newer translation, one by someone other than my grandma’s old friend. Perhaps Nina had done this? Having grown up in this area, it wouldn’t have been unusual for her to know at least some German.

  Flipping through this embarrassment of riches, I decided first to go through the poems my grandmother had sent and then through the full translation. The poems were certainly interesting, and when I got to the third one, I did a double take, spotting amidst the verses the word “Werwolves.”

  Pulse surging, I read the entire poem, which said:

  Not Our Final Home

  I had but one wish to sustain me.

  Now thwarted by Werwolves,

  whose training casts long shadows from the castle.

  The grove, it has betrayed me.

  I shake off my sandal here

  And will search for another,

  One worthy

  Of this final, sacred ash.

  At the bottom of the page, in my grandmother’s handwriting, was a note:

  Sienna, I think the castle this poem refers to is Hülchrath, near Erkelenz. Of course, the ashes would have been those of her mother and sister.

  I had no idea what she was talking about. Pulling out my phone, I googled both “Hülchrath” and “Erkelenz” and was astounded at what came back. I found article after article about an elite group of Nazi commandos who trained in Germany in the 1940s. They were called the Werwolves.

  Composed primarily of Hitler Youth, the Werwolves had been created during the final months of World War II, even as the Allied forces advanced across Europe and it was clear to all that Germany would soon to be defeated. Werwolves were trained in various rural locations, including Hülchrath Castle, their mission to operate as guerrillas behind enemy lines, sabotage occupying forces, assassinate key allied commanders, and relay intelligence back to a centralized base. From what I could tell, during its brief existence the group had managed to carry out only one significant assassination, and otherwise their value lay more in propaganda and fear-mongering than it had in actual accomplishment. Finally defeated in the spring of 1945, the Werwolves had become, in the end, just another casualty of war.

  Unbelievable.

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember the words on the marker in the grove, the one in the German Gate section about werewolves. I wasn’t positive, but I had a strong feeling that they
had been taken directly from this exact poem.

  My pulse surging, I suddenly wondered if all of the markers in that section had come not from some literary source but from poems written by Daphne herself. Looking for familiar stanzas, I flipped through the other pages faxed from my grandmother, spotting several lines that sounded very familiar. I recognized quite a few parts of one of the longer poems, and I read it now in its entirety. It was called “The Other Daphne.”

  The Other Daphne

  She runs from love

  From her Apollo

  Though he follows fast behind

  Racing onward

  Arms upraised

  Her one escape a leafy grave

  I too am Daphne

  Abe my Apollo

  Though our pursuit runs in reverse

  I am the one

  Who loves and yearns

  And he who always makes retreat

  Oh, he is kind

  And he is good

  He fed me water drop by drop!

  He bound my wounds

  And brought me home

  And in the dark created life

  But still in Abe

  I do not see

  The love my heart so deeply feels

  Instead inside

  That muscled chest

  Beats obligation, penance, shame

  Worse, in his eyes

  There pity lives

  And looks upon my tattooed skin

  If only he

  Showed love instead

  My heart would ache with one less wound

  Yes, now I was certain that the poems in the German Gate section had come from Daphne’s own words. How must that have been for Abe, to pull stanzas from his late wife’s poetry to hammer into the small metal plates? Had he understood what this poem, “The Other Daphne,” was saying, that he hadn’t shown her enough love while she was still alive?

  If so, how had that made him feel?

  Blinking away sudden tears that filled my eyes, I saw that my grandmother had written a note at the bottom of the poem:

  Sienna—how sad is this? Rereading it now, I realize you were right. Abe was as absent with his first wife as he had been with me. How heartbreaking—for both of us, me and her. I just showed this to Bessie, and she said maybe that was part of Abe’s obsession with Daphne years later. He may have felt guilty for not having loved the woman as much as she had loved him while she was still alive. Who knows? Quite fascinating, though. I’m glad you called today and asked about all of this.

  So the story of Daphne and Apollo was more than just a fictional account of unrequited love. It also played out in the life of this Daphne and her “Apollo,” Abe, though in her case Daphne was not the pursued but the pursuer.

  How awful that must be, to love someone more than they loved you.

  Running a hand through my hair, I looked over at Heath, who was still working away, immersed in whatever he was reading on his computer. Watching him there, his gorgeous blue eyes glued to the screen, his brow furrowed, his brilliant brain thinking, calculating, and gathering information, I felt a surge of tenderness toward him, one so strong that for a moment my heart felt too big for my chest.

  I loved this man. I truly did.

  So what was my problem? After watching him for a long moment unnoticed, I returned my attention to the poems in my lap. Sadly, I realized, in some ways I was more like my grandfather than I had ever imagined.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The menu for the brunch Floyd had prepared for us was a familiar one, and I realized that the luxurious spread of Belgian waffles, fresh berries, whipped cream, and crispy sausage was identical to the meal he had prepared for me the day he interviewed for the job as manager. As he served Heath and me at the dining table, I asked him if he was intentionally trying to rub in my face the fact that I had been stupid enough to hire him in the first place.

  “No,” he replied, sounding hurt. “It’s just that this is the only breakfast I know how to make. Well, this and cereal. Troy made me learn how to prepare this and serve it before we met because he knew you would probably ask me to provide a sample meal as part of the interview process.” Incredible, this pair, Floyd and Troy. They were like a sad, Lancaster County version of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting. I guess that made me Robert Shaw, the one who had been played for a fool.

  The time had come, however, for Floyd to remove himself from the scene of the crime. I asked him how much longer he thought it would be before he was packed and could vacate the premises.

  “Actually, I’ll be out running errands most of the afternoon, but I was wondering if I could spend one more night here and leave for good first thing tomorrow morning. Do you think that would be okay?”

  “Where will you go?” Heath asked kindly, as if that were of any importance whatsoever. As far as I was concerned, Floyd should be going directly to jail—without passing Go or collecting $200.

  “I’m not sure, but my contact at the FBI is working something out for me with witness protection. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. After they wrap up their big investigation, they’ll probably relocate me somewhere sunny and sandy, with mango juice in my hand and babes in bikinis strolling past my reclining chair.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” I said, ready to punch Floyd—and Heath too, for that matter, just for being so kind to a man who had betrayed me so horribly. “So you play the tattletale and get off scott free, while I’m left here in financial ruin, possibly facing criminal charges, and my very life in danger.”

  “Yeah, you’re in a big mess, aren’t you?” Floyd said, as if he’d had nothing to do with my downfall himself whatsoever.

  Rage coursing through my veins, I stood, hands on my hips, and told the man he had exactly one minute to get out of my sight or I would quite literally kick him out the back door myself.

  “Okay, okay. I’m going,” he said, holding out both palms. “No need to get violent. What do you think I am, Amish?” Laughing at his own joke, he explained that he had overheard some of the cops at the station talking about it. “But about staying the night tonight. That’s okay, right? After tomorrow, I’ll be out of your hair for good.”

  “Fine! Now go!”

  I remained standing until I heard the back door close behind him.

  “What did he mean by that?” Heath asked as I took my seat and spread my napkin on my lap. “The Amish remark?”

  “Long story. I had a little run-in with an Amish guy yesterday. I kind of…gave him a black eye.”

  “You what?”

  I told Heath the story of poor Jeremy Lantz and my right cross. The more I explained, the more distasteful the expression on his face grew.

  “Don’t judge me, Heath,” I said suddenly, shaking my head. “It was an accident. Instinctive. I hit first and thought after. The same thing could have happened to anybody. He shouldn’t have surprised me like that.”

  Irritated and afraid I might keep going and say something I shouldn’t, I cut off a big piece of waffle, dipped it in syrup, and stuffed it in my mouth.

  “That instinct is thanks to something called muscle memory, Sienna, which is used to train the U.S. military and one of the main reasons I lean toward pacifism.”

  Not wanting to have our usual argument, I didn’t reply. Instead, once I had swallowed my giant bite of waffle, I changed the subject, asking him how he was progressing with his Internet research. He was about to reply when his cell phone rang and he excused himself to take the call.

  While he was busy on the phone, I retrieved the documents and brought them back to the table. Before the food was ready, I had already gone through the various poems my grandmother had faxed, and now I was reading the translation of Daphne’s journal that Nina had done.

  What I read was fascinating, a first person account of the Jewish experience in the Holocaust. Daphne’s story was so sad, so shocking, and so disturbing that it was hard to take it all in. But every time my eyes threatened to spill over with tears, she would
shift gears on me, moving from the gruesome to the mundane, from the stacks of corpses piled ten feet high and left to rot to the metal spoon she traded for a stub of pencil and scrap of paper so she could sketch a bird.

  Daphne’s words would shift randomly from prose to poetry and back again, a style that made the journal both lyrical and jarring. One section told of the day her mother and sister were absent from roll call. Frantic, Daphne knew what that meant. They had been culled from the others as unfit and then they had been killed.

  Daphne described the event from her perspective on her entry dated May 17, 1944.

  Did not know until the night

  When I came in from the fields

  That my world, once five then three

  Had now been reduced to one

  From there, she went on to share an account of events so heartbreaking I had a hard time reading the entry through to the end. That night, in her stupor of grief, Daphne decided to attempt an escape from the camp, knowing such an act would surely end with her own death. She didn’t care. She just knew she couldn’t be there even one more minute without her family.

  Creeping along the walls in the dark, past barrack after barrack, eyeing the fences for a possible route of escape, she eventually found herself at the crematorium. Realizing where she was, Daphne had stood there for a long moment, one thought consuming her mind, that this was where the bodies of her mother and sister had met their end.

  In the light of a dim yellow bulb that hung in the brick archway between chimneys, she spotted ash that had accumulated in a corner, on the ground. Unable to stop herself, Daphne moved forward and fell to her knees, reaching out and scooping up two fistfuls of it. The very act seemed to snap her from her stupor. Holding her ash-filled fists tightly against her chest, she made a proclamation:

  This is my mother, this is my sister, I said aloud, declaring forever that the ashes in my hands would represent both. If I could not join them in death, I would do what I could to give them the final resting place they deserved. I would bring these ashes home.

  Somehow, I made it back unseen, though not by my own doing. I stood up straight and simply walked from the crematorium all the way to my barracks. Perhaps Hashem laid a cloak of black around me as I went, blinding all who might have otherwise observed me.