by Thomas, Lee
“You don’t look beat up.”
“I know how to fight, Sheriff. It is one thing I am very good at.”
“Is that how you got those?” Tom asked, indicating the German’s face with a wave of his finger.
“I was injured in battle.”
“You were in the war?”
“I was in a war. We did not win that war.”
Was he talking about the Great War? He didn’t look old enough, not that Tom knew the man’s age.
“I am not the one who hurt those boys,” Lang said. “You ask at Mitch’s. They will tell you about Ernst.”
“I intend to.”
“Yes. Good. No more talk of it then.” He broke his stiff-backed pose and walked up to the sheriff as if to show him out.
“We aren’t finished here.”
Lang’s face clouded and when he replied his voice rumbled with anger.
“Then you take me to your jail until the next dead boy is found so that you are certain Ernst is not your criminal. I have been falsely accused before and I will not have it again. You arrest me and see. You will see I am no killer of children.”
“Settle down, Mr. Lang. I just have a few more questions for you.”
“Then ask them.”
“Do you support the Nazi party?”
“Nuh,” Lang said. “I was a socialist, many years ago, affiliated with a group that rose in power along with Hitler, though we viewed very different futures. I believed the government should serve its people; he believed the people should carry him to godhood. Ten years ago, he took action against us. Many men died in a few short days, and he was allowed to become the thing he is now.”
“Were you attacked as well?”
“Yes. I was arrested and charged with treason, made a conspirator in a conspiracy that did not exist, all to gather the sheep around their shepherd. I should be dead, now. That is why I fled my country. My face is too well known for me to ever walk a German street in safety. I went to London and then to New York, and from there I traveled to New Orleans, and then here.”
“Why here?” Tom asked.
“Another friend invited me.”
“And what’s his name?”
“I would prefer not to say, and it makes no difference. He is dead.”
“Names would help your defense.”
“I have nothing to defend myself against.”
Tom continued his questions, asking the German where he was on the nights Harold Ashton and David Williams were abducted, and both times the German responded that he was at home alone. No one could confirm the information, but Tom’s suspicions were already fading. Something about the man intimidated Tom, and the sheriff had no doubt that the German was capable of violence, but he did not think Ernst Lang had killed either of the boys or snatched Little Lenny Elliot. It might have been the man’s composure or his honesty in answering the questions about his homosexual illness – Tom didn’t know. The German had integrity, or perhaps a good façade of it.
Still Tom knew better than to trust a suspect at his word. He asked Ernst Lang to sit on the porch while Tom searched the house. The Elliot boy was still missing, and Tom checked every closet, every nook and the attic, but found no sign of a young man or the belongings of a young man. Nor did he find a Stetson or duster of any color, let alone of the gray Mrs. Reeves had described. He found a large ledger, bound in brown leather, and Tom leafed through it, noting the shape of Lang’s penmanship, though unable to read any of the entries as they were written in German. He thought about the notes the killer had left and from memory compared them to the scrawl filling page after page of the journal, but the lettering seemed wholly different from the precise craftsmanship in the killer’s notes. Noticing the chicken coop through the kitchen window, Tom let himself out into the backyard. Inside the wired fence, he kicked aside two hens as he made his way to the long narrow box. Lifting the lid, he felt a moment of dread, certain Little Lenny Elliot’s dead eyes would greet him. Instead Tom saw four neat nests and boards covered in bird shit.
Upon finishing his search of Ernst Lang’s home, he could not say the man was guilty, though he certainly wasn’t ready to absolve him. Instead he called the sheriff’s office from the phone in the German’s kitchen, and asked Muriel to send Rex Burns out to Dodd Street. Tom wanted his deputy to park on the north side of the street near the middle of the block, and he wanted Rex to keep an eye on Lang’s house. If the guy had snatched and hidden Little Lenny away, he could still lead them to the boy.
Then Tom asked the German back inside. He requested that Lang write “One less gun against the Reich,” on a scrap of paper. The suspect did so without hesitation, but Tom had been unclear and Lang wrote the phrase in English. The second draft, this time in German, went into Tom’s pocket. Though he wanted to give Rex ample time to drive across town to Dodd Street, Tom could think of no additional questions to ask of Lang. So he thanked the German and shook the man’s hand, noting the strong dry grip, and said his good evening.
“You come back if you have more questions. I will be glad to help.”
Tom pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch. A fly buzzed at his ear and Tom slapped it away. He looked across the field at the lake but it appeared as a pale blue smear, oddly unattractive beneath the scorching sun.
Noticing that the sheriff was not leaving, the German poked his head through the door. “Something else?” he asked.
“Are you really a queer?” Tom asked.
“Yes,” Lang said without hesitation, “I am.”
Western Union
A. N. Williams
President
1944 Aug 9 2 PM
THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR HUSBAND PRIVATE FIRST CLASS FREDERICK RANDALL HAS BEEN REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION SINCE TWENTY THIRD JULY IN FRANCE IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION ARE RECEIVED YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED =
R A ULIO THE ADJUNCT GENERAL.
Seventeen: Tim Randall
The telegram arrived on Wednesday afternoon. I didn’t hear the uniformed men knock on the door or my mother’s attempt to greet them pleasantly. I’m sure she eyed the envelope the way she might an attacker’s knife. Bum was helping his mother with chores around the Craddick house, so I was alone in my room, reading an old Captain Marvel comic when these sad events transpired. The first I knew of the note came when I got thirsty and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Ma stood with her back to me and the phone against her ear. When she heard me walking behind her, she turned and tried to smile but it just made her look sick, and she let the smile fade, revealing a mask painted the grim shades of misery and loss. She told the caller that she’d call back and hung up the phone.
Though it was clear something terrible had happened, it did not occur to me that this dreadful news would concern my father. Another dead boy? was my first thought.
She asked me to sit at the kitchen table, and I saw the envelope lying beside an empty water glass. Sitting next to me, she turned her chair and put her hands on my shoulders and she ran a palm over my hair. Again, she tried to form that grotesque smile.
“We received a telegram today,” she said.
I knew what that meant – everyone knew what it meant. The Washingtons had received a telegram to inform them of the heroic death of their son Chip. Mavis Clooney, who I’d seen through a cheap tin spyglass crying and laughing at the news from her radio, had received a telegram from the government about her husband. Despite the miserable expression on Ma’s face, I quickly rationalized the news. The arrival of a telegram didn’t mean my father was dead. Telegrams had been around long before the war. They’d been used to announce weddings and the births of children. I didn’t want to know what our telegram said. If she never told me, I could go on believing that some distant cousin had just married a successful rancher in Seguin or Luling. My thoughts tumbled down this hill of optimism, scrabbling for purchase but finding little to hang on to.
“Your
father is missing,” Ma said with a cracking voice.
Then the tears came, and she pulled me into her arms, whispering about hope and prayers and telling me to be brave. From her hair and neck came the substantial fragrance of factory oil, and I remembered that before the war, she’d always smelled of flour and cinnamon. “Missing” became an enigma. It carried too many meanings in those moments, effectively making it meaningless. My father wasn’t dead; he was “missing,” and I no longer knew what the word meant, but every time the word appeared in my mind, a shock of sickness hit me in the stomach, an ice-cold spear driven through my navel, revolving and jabbing the tender tissues.
The word filled me, as unrelenting as the reek of factory oil wafting from my mother’s flesh. There was no Cowboy. Harold Ashton and David Williams had never existed. I couldn’t even picture my disturbed neighbor’s face. There was only the feel of my mother’s arms around me, the oil offending my nose, and the cryptic word.
The house soon filled with familiar faces. Rita Sherman was the first to arrive. She stormed into the house and immediately commandeered the place, setting on a pot of coffee and ushering me into my room to “clean up for company.” My mother’s parents arrived soon after, and my grandmother went to the table to join the other women while my grandfather stood in the corner of the kitchen – his pants hiked high on his great belly and arms crossed – with a hard frown cutting across his face as he gazed down on the women. Neighbors began arriving. I walked from the living room to the kitchen and back again, sorrowful faces hovering over me like ugly blossoms on tall plants, and they all said the same things: “We’ll pray for Fred,” “He’s a strong man,” “You be brave for your daddy.”
Soon the odors from cooking food filled the house. The women who had gathered in the kitchen had begun the process of preparing a feast, and the men sat on the sofa and in the chairs in the living room, speaking quietly and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t distract myself with frying catfish or making biscuits. The freezing spear in my belly kept twisting, and I thought to dislodge the point with movement not understanding that it was the thing dragging me.
Unable to grasp what was expected of me, I disappeared into my bedroom and went to the window and pressed my cheek against the cool glass. A row of cars had formed in the dirt track next to the road. Across the street, Mr. Lang stood in his front yard staring at my father’s house, and the sight of him incensed me.
This was his fault. Men like him had captured my father and thrown him in a cell, and they would cut him and beat him, and they’d laugh as they tortured him because that’s the way Germans were. I thought about what I’d seen through Mr. Lang’s window, the thing he’d done to that man – the worst thing one man can do to another – and the icy blade in my belly changed. It burned hot, searing the tissues so recently chilled.
I looked at his scarred face bathed in sunlight and found it monstrous. My fists tightened at my sides, mentally daring the German to come across the street and try to walk into my father’s house. Right then, I believed I’d kill him if he tried it.
The Kraut son of a bitch.
The disgusting queer.
~ ~ ~
I was still sitting on the windowsill when my grandfather walked into my room. The German had disappeared into the shadows of his porch some time ago, but I kept my eyes on his house the way you keep an eye on a rabid dog in a distant field. My grandfather closed the bedroom door and crossed his arms over his enormous belly. The frown remained carved deep. Swollen pockets of wrinkled skin surrounded his eyes like small wasp nests, and his fleshy cheeks were red as if sunburned.
“Come away from the window, son,” he told me.
I cast a final look at the yellow house across the street, and then did as I was asked, except I didn’t know where else in the room to go. I settled for the bed and dropped onto it.
“You got a lot of people out there come to pay respects for your daddy,” he said, his voice thick and warbling as if his vocal cords were as laden with fat as his belly. “It’s not right you leaving your Ma alone with all of them folks, but I suspect you need some time to grieve on your own, and it’s good not to make a show of it.”
“Daddy’s not dead,” I muttered.
“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t,” my grandfather said, “but one way or the other the man you knew won’t be coming home. If he got himself hurt bad or if he got himself captured by the Krauts he’s going to be changed. Even if those things didn’t happen, he’ll be changed because war does that to a man. Sometimes it’s for the worse and sometimes it’s for the better. You just don’t know, and you have to be ready for that, because he may not be able to tell you it himself, and I know your ma isn’t good at explaining things like this – complicated and all. So the sooner you get it in your head as a fact, the easier it’s gonna be. We’re praying your daddy is alive, but sometimes just being alive isn’t the best thing for a man.”
My grandfather had never said so many words to me before, and I wanted more than anything for the fat old man to shut up. His advice smacked of cruelty and inevitability, and maybe he didn’t want Daddy to be dead like he said, but it sure sounded like he’d already buried the man.
“You think over what I said, and then you come on back out to be with your ma.”
“Yes, sir.”
Except I had no intention of thinking over what he’d said. My mind already raced with terrible thoughts of my own and there was no room for the callus old man’s theories. After rising from the bed, I returned to the window and glared at the yellow house across the street.
The German was probably inside soiling some strange man, treating him like an animal. The memory of what I’d witnessed returned virulently, making my face hot and my stomach knot with sickness. He might have been killing another boy in there as friends and neighbors gathered in my daddy’s house to pay their respects.
Eventually I left my room and found that the number of people in the house had tripled and swarms of concerned men and women huddled in the kitchen and living room, reminding me of the repast following David Williams’ funeral, only no one had put on their Sunday clothes, and amid all of the quietly chatting neighbors and family, I wanted to scream, “He’s not dead. He’s just missing. Don’t you stupid hayseeds know the difference?” but I kept the fury contained and wandered through the crowd, accepting premature condolences and falsely optimistic words of faith, prayer, and hope. Every palm that fell on my shoulder or patted my back took a little of me away on it. My grandfather stood against the back door, arms still crossed, watching over the room like a clean-shaved Santa Claus supervising a crew of inept elves. Women fussed and bickered at the stove as if they could create an adequate cure for grief by adding the right amount of salt or butter to a recipe. Ma sat at the kitchen table, flanked by her mother and Rita Sherman, and I pushed my way through to them. My grandfather approved of my actions with a shallow nod of his round head.
My presence was wholly unnecessary and I saw that right from the start. Ma cried and the women at her sides held and consoled her as best they could, and I thought to leave her to them, worried that the women would turn their comfort on me. Imagining their soft perfumed bodies crushing in from both sides struck me as no different from drowning, and my nerves were too agitated to endure such a suffocating prospect. It was better to move and keep moving. I stopped long enough to put my arm around my mother to let her know I was there, and she stroked my cheek and asked if I wanted something to eat, and I told her I didn’t, and I stayed for a minute – though it felt more like an hour – and excused myself, making my way back to the living room, not checking with my grandfather for his approval.
Then I was back in the theater of the absurd, its performers sending me conflicting messages. “You be strong. You’re the man of the house now.” “He’ll be home before Christmas, just you wait and see.” “He was a fine man. You should be very proud.” “He just got separated from his men.
I bet he’s already back at camp and the telegram hasn’t gotten here yet.” And they insisted on patting me and squeezing my arm and shaking my hand, and bits of me clung to their hands like mud, and before I’d made it to the front door, I felt empty. Even my anger had receded to a ticking rhythm at my temples, hardly distinguishable from the hum of desolation in my chest.
More people had gathered on the porch, but there was nothing left of me for them to take, so I let them bestow their hope and grief and I let them pat my back, and I stared at the German’s house across the street. Dust and pollen – or maybe it was just my agitation – cast a scrim of grit across the scene. I imagined I could see every sun-bleached speck in the air, every piece of filth that separated me from the degenerate who’d chosen my street to live on.
I thought of Daddy trapped in that house, imagined his Nazi captors had shipped him home to be tortured by our neighbor. The German’s disgusting grimace eclipsed my father’s face, and his muscled body moved perversely against him, and then Hugo Jones was standing beside me, and he said, “Hey, kid.”
The blemishes on his face looked particularly inflamed on that afternoon, and it occurred to me that perhaps Hugo wore his anger in his skin instead of in his chest the way I had before its retreat to tick away like a beetle in my head.
“Hey, Hugo,” I replied.
“I’m sorry about your daddy,” he said, awkwardly.
“Yeah,” I said, unable to come up with yet another response to a phrase I’d heard a hundred times already.
