Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

‘Ah, it’s an Australian racing expression – it means it’s all over, bar the shouting.’

  Abe Stennholz was silent for a few moments, then said softly, ‘We thought, under the circumstances, it was best that Frau Kraus wasn’t put through the public humiliation of a trial.’

  ‘I beg your pardon? I’m not sure I understand.’

  Abe Stennholz looked directly at me. ‘Mr McKenzie, I was a lawyer for the defence and was giving my clients the only possible legal advice I could. I also believed I could spare their mother a great deal of public humiliation if she didn’t testify at the trial.’

  I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. ‘Just what advice could you give them that would prevent Frau Kraus giving testimony and at the same time spare her public humiliation?’

  ‘I advised them to have Frau Kraus examined by a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Naturally they accepted your advice?’

  ‘Yes. As I guessed might be the case, the psychiatrist found that she suffered from delusions and acute paranoia.’

  ‘These delusions, what were they? The blood on the baseball bats?’

  ‘No, no. She was clearly disorientated and kept claiming she’d murdered her husband and that she’d also murdered the Negro boy. That his death was her fault for letting him stay in the house.’

  ‘And the paranoia?’

  ‘When the psychiatrist told her that Jimmy was alive, she refused to believe him and demanded to see him for herself.’

  ‘Which, under the circumstances, wasn’t unreasonable.’

  ‘But impossible. The psychiatrist suggested she should be placed in a clinic and, in his opinion, her testimony would not have been reliable. We submitted his findings to the court, where the judge ordered a second opinion. The court appointed a psychiatrist from the State Mental Institution at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, Morris Plains.’

  ‘Let me guess – he agreed with his colleague in private practice?’

  ‘Yes, but not until he’d closely examined her past behaviour and all the circumstances leading up to the Negro boy being chased from the Kraus farm. Then there was the fact that Frau Kraus still persisted with claiming she’d murdered her husband and was responsible for the boy’s death. Abe Stennholz paused and then asked me, ‘Do you know the circumstances of Otto Kraus’s death?’

  ‘Only that he died on the way to the internment camp,’ I lied, again not wishing to reveal to him that I knew the complete story.

  ‘Yes, well, he’d been incarcerated in the county jail for some time before the train journey to the internment camp. In the confusion at the time, what with war having been declared, there wasn’t an official post mortem or coroner’s inquiry into his death. But the military doctor who examined him came to the conclusion that he’d committed suicide, as a blood analysis after he died showed traces of arsenic poisoning in his system. The point being that Frau Kraus quite obviously had nothing to do with his death. She also confessed to an intense dislike of her sons, supporting their own evidence of her complete and early rejection of them in childhood. Finally, the Lutheran minister who attended the . . .’

  ‘Your brother, wasn’t it?’ I interjected.

  Abe Stennholz didn’t miss a beat, completely ignoring my remark. ‘. . . funeral of her husband, Otto Kraus, told how she’d placed a crude black paper rose on his grave, whereupon she’d spat onto the casket and announced, ‘Danke, meine saubere Frau,’ after which she’d laughed hysterically, so that he was forced to slap her to calm her down. This, taken along with the further evidence from several members of her church congregation of her strange or erratic behaviour in their presence, all added up to a profile of someone who was mentally disturbed.’

  ‘So Frau Kraus wasn’t present at the trial. I take it the twins agreed to have her committed to a clinic for treatment.’

  ‘No, she was admitted to Greystone Park.’

  ‘Why not a clinic?’ I asked.

  ‘The Kraus twins had her examined a third time by a forensic psychiatrist who told them there was no possibility that she’d recover, even with electric-shock treatment. Greystone Park was the logical recommendation.’

  ‘Putting her away for keeps.’

  Abe Stennholz didn’t reply.

  I’ve subsequently done a little research on Greystone Park Hospital, one of the very few mental institutions in New Jersey at the time. In 1945, the year Frau Kraus entered this notorious place, the inmate population exceeded 5000! Frau Kraus would simply have disappeared into this bedlam, never to surface again.

  ‘With nobody to testify for the prosecution, did any trial eventuate?’ I asked.

  Abe Stennholz gave me an indignant look. ‘Of course – my clients had wilfully attacked a minor, there was no getting away from that.’

  ‘And the judge’s verdict?’

  ‘You think it was a conspiracy, don’t you, Mr McKenzie?’

  ‘Well, sir, you have to admit, everything seems to have fallen very neatly into place for the Kraus twins.’

  ‘You could say so, but there was additional evidence to suggest they were telling the truth.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Sheriff Waterman sent the two baseball bats in for forensic examination. Blood, as you may know, is very difficult to eliminate and they did find a very small trace.’

  ‘Ah! They then tested it against Jimmy’s blood group? The hospital would have known what that was.’

  ‘Of course. The blood trace they found was well into the grain of one of the bats, high up on the grip, and it didn’t match the Negro boy’s. In fact, it turned out to belong to Fritz Kraus. At some time in the past he must have received a crack on the hand from a baseball that had caused him to bleed.’

  ‘What about the back of the truck? If, as you say, blood is difficult to eliminate, would there not have been traces of blood there as well?’

  ‘Unfortunately, the truck had been steam cleaned. This was easily enough explained. As any nurseryman will tell you, tomato plants need to be transported in a very clean environment so as not to pick up diseases. But they did find a trace of blood that matched the Negro boy’s blood group. This was put down to him having suffered a haemorrhage from the nose, explained by the nosebleed the twins had admitted giving him.’

  ‘And that was the final conclusive evidence?’

  ‘That, and the report of the two psychiatrists, and the fact that the Negro boy had disappeared without making a statement.’

  Any further questioning seemed pointless. Abe Stennholz had all the answers.

  ‘You have a remarkable memory, sir,’ I said. ‘After all, this took place over twenty years ago.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr McKenzie, but that’s not entirely true. The reason I wouldn’t see you yesterday was so that I could read through the case file and acquaint myself with the precise facts.’

  ‘Which leaves me only three further things to ask you. What verdict did the judge come to?’

  ‘The judge accepted that my clients had acted unlawfully. They were found guilty and fined fifty dollars each and placed on a good-behaviour bond.’

  ‘And so a violent and unprovoked racial crime, perpetrated against an innocent juvenile, was reduced to a confrontation that involved giving a minor a bloody nose and driving him out of the county, where, due to no fault of the perpetrators, he met with an unfortunate road accident. The net result being a hundred-dollar rap on the knuckles for the Kraus twins and an admonishment not to do it again, not to mention Frau Kraus’s permanent loss of freedom!’ Abe Stennholz chose to ignore this outburst. ‘What happened to the twins?’ I then asked.

  ‘Fritz never recovered from the war and became an alcoholic. He was eventually killed in an automobile accident. Henrik took up politics and still serves in the New Jersey legislature. He sold the farm and later took up real estate and has made a considerable fortune.’

  ‘Are you likely to see him at any time?’

  ‘Not deliberately, but he’s not hard to contact.’
r />   ‘I wonder if you would be kind enough to give him a message?’ I asked.

  ‘That would depend entirely on the message,’ Abe Stennholz said cautiously.

  ‘Can you tell him Jimmy hasn’t forgotten the beating and he’ll be around to see him one of these days.’

  ‘I don’t believe I will give him that message, sir!’ the lawyer said sharply. Then he added, ‘You had a third question?’

  ‘Do you feel justice was served, sir?’

  Abe Stennholz’s blue eyes showed a momentary flash of anger and he rose from his chair. ‘I think it’s time you left, Mr McKenzie.’ Then, almost as quickly, he recovered, pointing at the sky. ‘It’s getting dark, and Martha will be fixing my supper,’ he announced.

  ‘And you feel no remorse?’ I asked, standing up and preparing to leave.

  I fully expected him to dismiss me angrily. But I told myself what the hell, I had nothing to lose. Instead, Abe Stennholz looked at me steadily and then said, ‘Mr McKenzie, as a born-again Christian and also a lawyer, the secular and the spiritual worlds are not always compatible. While I have no doubt whatsoever that Frau Kraus was mentally disturbed, she was harmless enough. I truly regret that this normally quiet and in many ways competent woman was forced, due to the prevailing circumstances, to spend the remainder of her life in a state mental institution.’

  ‘Do you know if she is still alive?’

  ‘I believe she passed away about a year ago.’

  ‘And Jimmy Oldcorn? No regrets?’

  He seemed genuinely surprised at my question. ‘Regrets? None! I never knew the boy.’

  ‘Would you like to know what happened to him?’ I asked.

  ‘No, sir, I would not!’ he said firmly. ‘I must go in now, Martha will be waiting to serve my dinner.’

  I extended my hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Stennholz, I appreciate the time you’ve given me.’

  He took my hand, his grip no longer firm as he shook it in an uninterested manner, looking over my head. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said, then, turning, walked through the door into the darkness beyond.

  Jimmy, with a nose now permanently flattened by way of a baseball bat and wearing an ugly scar down the left side of his face, looked a great deal older and meaner than his fifteen years. Which was a good thing – taken along with his size, these are the sort of looks that street kids take seriously.

  Jimmy managed to live on his seventy dollars for sufficient time to see his bruises all but disappear and to get the plaster from his hand removed and his fingers working again. But this was not until the plaster had served him well, so that he was almost reluctant to see it go.

  After a month of wandering around, sleeping in a disused shed behind a mechanic’s workshop until he was moved on by the cops, he finally found a room on the first floor of a condemned tenement. The major feature of the disused and dirty room was that it contained a fireplace. It was now the beginning of December, with the days closing in and the nights bitterly cold. On the first night Jimmy managed to gather sufficient wood from bits of old discarded furniture for a fire, although when it died down in the early hours of the morning he nearly froze to death.

  The following day he came across a pile of old blankets in the basement of the same building and helped himself to four of them. Late that same afternoon a gang of black kids burst into his room, accusing him of stealing their blankets. The leader, a boy nearly Jimmy’s size, confronted him with the theft and, without warning, punched Jimmy on the jaw, knocking him to the ground.

  ‘Dat time I ain’t no fightin’ man, Brother Fish. Dis dude he hit me where mah jaw still sore an’ I git up, I mad as hell an’ I hit him back wid da hand got da plaster. I don’t think about it got plaster – it mah right hand an’ I hit dat dude natural, ’cos I right-handed. He go straight down like he pole-axed an’ he lay der, his eyes dey rolled back in his head, he ain’t done no movin’. I sup-prised – I also scared, man! Der’s eight dem mothers standin’ der.’

  ‘“Fuck, one punch!” one dem says, and he pull a switchblade on me.

  ‘“Hey man, you wanna be next?” I say to him, like as if I ain’t scared. But o’ course inside I shittin’ mah birthday jeans. But dis little dude wid da switchblade, his name it turn out is Marty, he make me a prop-po-sition. He say maybe I can join Da Brotherhood? Dat what der name is, der motto, he tell me, it “one for all, all for one”. Well, I ain’t got no better idea for survivin’ and mah money it jus’ about all gone. So I bullshit an’ I tell him I think about it, ’cos I got me one or two offers from some da other gangs in da borough and I ain’t made up my mind yet. “Come back in two days, but meantime I keep dem blankets,” I say to him. Two days later dey come back an’ I tell dem, okay, I der man. Dat when I start to learn good how to be bad.’

  I guess a gang of homeless kids doesn’t change much over the years, requiring two essential characteristics – sufficient members to defend themselves and their territory, and yet to be small enough to supply their collective needs. It was here that Jimmy first began to show his talent for organisation. While the gang had borrowed the motto from The Three Musketeers – ‘All for one, one for all’ – they had little idea of how to make it work. This was well illustrated by the fact that they hadn’t rushed to overpower Jimmy when he’d knocked their leader down with his plastered hand. Now they looked to him for leadership, unaware that he’d never done any street fighting and had little or no experience in the business of staying alive on the streets of New York.

  It was most fortunate for Jimmy that, with the exception of the recipient of his lucky plaster punch, the gang he now led were all younger and smaller than him. As it turned out, the guy he’d king-hit was a bully and a coward, and constantly made a mockery of their motto by ruling the rest of the gang by violence and intimidation. When he’d finally regained consciousness, to Jimmy’s relief, he hadn’t been game to take the matter any further. Instead, he’d skulked away, leaving the room and calling out to the others to follow him. They’d left reluctantly, with Marty, the kid who’d pulled the switchblade, the last to go. Pausing momentarily at the door, he said, ‘Hey, Joe Louis, one fuckin’ punch, eh!’

  Two days later they returned and Jimmy agreed to be part of the Brotherhood. They then introduced themselves, prefacing each of their names with the word ‘brother’, a habit Jimmy brought with him to Korea when he pronounced me first Brother Jacko and then later Brother Fish.

  Somewhat to Jimmy’s surprise the Brotherhood immediately elected him as their leader, with Brother Marty second in command. The bloke Jimmy had knocked out moved on, no longer able to command the gang’s respect. Jimmy found himself leading the youngest street gang in the borough. With fourteen-year-old Brother Marty as his offsider, he was about to learn the value of leadership qualities on the streets of the Bronx under extreme combat conditions.

  It was a credit to Jimmy’s leadership that the gang avoided trouble with the police for nine months, but eventually they were caught breaking into a warehouse and Jimmy was sent to Elmira Reformatory. He learned a lot at Elmira, but not what the strict military routine and intense Christian indoctrination had intended. Like the orphanage, Elmira’s agenda had been to make him a God-fearing nigger with the ‘right’ attitude, subservient enough for the humblest of work.

  After eighteen months, at the age of eighteen, Jimmy’s time was up and he was on the streets again. To survive, he found himself another gang, which lived by ‘protecting’ a row of shops for a moderate but accepted sum from shopkeepers. But conflict erupted when another gang moved in on the territory, and resulted in Jimmy being charged with grievous bodily harm. Jimmy ended up in the US Army as an alternative to jail.

  Of course, Jimmy wasn’t to know then that what he would learn running a New York street gang would one day serve him brilliantly as a prisoner of war in Korea. I haven’t the slightest doubt that Jimmy’s qualities of leadership saved my life, as well as the lives of many other prisoners of war – men who would otherwise have
given up out of a sense of hopelessness and despair. It only ever takes one man to stand up and spit in the face of extreme adversity to save the clan. Jimmy Oldcorn was our man.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Place Where the Guards Wear Horace Horse Boots

  We joined a truckload of prisoners heading north, and the two-and-a-half-day journey, with the end of summer approaching but the flies not yet gone, was miserable but uneventful. We finally arrived at the POW camp somewhere on the border of China just after dawn, though quite where the camp was situated along the border was anybody’s guess. We’d travelled by night to avoid observation by enemy aircraft, this time successfully. Though all the way I kept thinking that if our aircraft found us and dropped flares prior to destroying our convoy, this time Jimmy and I would be able to leave the truck and seek safety rather than be sitting ducks, alone in a truck, anchored by our plastered legs.

  The POW camp was huge and seemed to contain members of just about every army fighting for the United Nations, though, understandably, the predominance of prisoners were the Americans, of which there were around a thousand.

  A great deal has been written about the collapse of morale and the unpatriotic behaviour of American prisoners under the Chinese in the Korean War. It has become one of those dark chapters in American military history, and as a consequence the Korean War is given less historical attention than many of the other conflicts in which America has been engaged. Many believe that in the Korean War, American soldiers taken as prisoners of war failed the expectations of the American people.

  However, while I have been somewhat critical of the way some of the young, poorly trained US soldiers fought in Korea, I would say that based on my own experience in a POW camp, to come down exclusively on the Yank behaviour in captivity is unfair. In truth, few of us came out of the experience untainted. This was due, in part, to the way the Chinese operated, and not necessarily caused by a lack of courage under extreme hardship and privation.

  I’ve touched on the subject before: war and extreme challenge are things for which men need to be prepared. We are not natural predators – the warrior has to be trained into us. In the face of fight or flight, the latter is the much more powerful instinct. Early man soon discovered that to escape a dangerous opponent was almost always the better option. If you want a man to stand and fight, or to endure physical and emotional hardship and aggression, you have to prepare him slowly. Good citizens without training make lousy soldiers. The warrior you can rely on to do his duty is not born out of a few weeks of yelling and square-bashing in boot camp. It takes a long period of hard training during which soldiers overcome hardships together to forge the bonds, loyalty, confidence and mateship that help to withstand the stresses of the battlefield and those experienced in captivity.