Without Trace

by Rae Richen

  “Barely sixteen,” she said, “and in debt to the state for having a lead foot.”

  “Yeah,” Glyn said, “Not too bright.”

  “Oh, you’re bright enough. Just not wise. What was the hurry?”

  “Had to fill up Mom’s car and get it back to her on time.”

  “Well, you got to pay that fine, and I’ll be switched before I let you stiff your parents for it. So, sit down here and fill out this application.”

  “Loan application?” Glyn asked.

  “Job application.”

  Chapter Three

  Holly Hill Dining Hall

  Fried chicken or baked salmon were the choices for the evening meal at Holly Hill Dining Hall. Easy choice for Wilhalmena Stamps. In her Texas youth, she’d had fried chicken enough to have grown half as wide as she was tall. Now, she preferred Northwest fare, and baked salmon rated top of that list.

  But, she couldn’t order until her neighbor, Geneva Oppenheim showed up. Not polite. Not done. Willie still had her southern manners, no matter that she’d lived in Oregon these forty or more years.

  Geneva was her guest at the table tonight. As a result, no other residents signed up for this table. Bunch of old, stuffy ladies.

  Sure, Geneva had a few problems. It was sometimes hard to understand what she talked about, but Willie was certain that with a show of understanding, Geneva could calm down, feel accepted, even learn to ask questions and listen to others. She just had not had enough security and love in her life, so Willie grew determined to fill that gap.

  And, while providing empathy for Geneva, Willie could keep an eye on Glyn Dower Jones, her grandson. This was Glyn’s first night working in the dining hall.

  He was a handsome young devil, she thought, big bright eyes, curly blond hair and already taller even than his father. He seemed to have inherited none of her family’s short genes and certainly not her family’s dark hair, but he inherited her daughter’s curiosity, and the empathy for the hurts of others that was a Stamps trait – much to generations of Stamps’ detriment. Empathy had made Willie’s father a poor man, losing one grocery store to the debt of his depression customers, and another to the debt of his dry-land neighbors during the dust-bowl days.

  Willie knew her own wealth had more to do with the wisdom and investing capacities of her late husband, Clifford, than with her own ability to make money grow. Clifford had taught her to laugh. She had taught him how to support worthy causes.

  And today, Geneva and Glyn were her causes.

  Grandson Glyn had applied, and despite his driving ticket, with Willie’s negotiating in the development office, he had the job.

  Gordon Cartier, the development manager had looked at the application and asked her, ‘What’s with the name?”

  “What do you mean?” she knew the name would intrigue him.

  “Glyn Dower Jones?”

  “His father, my son-in-law, is Merlyn Jones, a Welshman. I suggested that every Merlyn should have his Arthur, but that wasn’t acceptable. No greater Welshman than Owain Glyn Dower according to Merlyn. Thus, no better name.”

  “Kid’s a speeder, huh?” Cartier said. “That’s the kind of teenager pushes the old ladies’ wheelchairs too fast, and can’t take the time to remember orders correctly.”

  “I assure you, Glyn is very thoughtful with old ladies. He understands me quite clearly.”

  He patted the form she had not signed, the annuity form that might someday give Holly Hills access to some of her many financial assets.

  He said, “We also understand you, Wilhalmena Stamps. You have no trouble making yourself understood in the development office.”

  “Then you will convey your approval to human resources?”

  “Provisionally.” Mr. Cartier stacked the application on top of her unsigned form.

  “They will love him,” she said.

  “Provisionally.”

  “No. Whole heartedly.”

  **

  So, across the room, she watched Glyn help seat old ladies at another table. Willie realized she was going to be very glad to have him nearby. Sharp kid. Knew how to spar with his grandmother, and would add the spice of youth and adventure to the bland politeness that passed for friendship in an old folks’ high rise.

  Ah, here came Geneva. Willie stood and waved her over.

  Geneva seemed disoriented and disheveled. Her hair, in fact, stood on end, and not the way some youngsters like it, with mouse and sparkle and spikes. Geneva’s hair looked as though it had been hurricaned, each strand blown inland as the wind made for shore.

  “Come sit down, Geneva. Are you feeling quite well?” Willie asked.

  As Geneva sat, one of the student servers, started to settle two gentlemen at a table in mid-dining room, then, at some whispers from the balding younger man, the server swerved and brought the men to the table near Willie’s table at the edges of the dining hall.

  One of the visitors seemed old enough to be a Holly Hill resident, the other, the balding one, a tall, slightly pudgy young relative. Probably checking out the food before deciding to move dad in. Willie recalled the day her daughter, Susan, had accompanied her to lunch to test the food and the service. This had been a good choice.

  Geneva plopped into her chair and smacked a fist on the white tablecloth, then grabbed at her linen napkin. “They’re doing it again,” she said. “Slavery, that’s what it is. They’ll starve them and work them till their fingers freeze, and then just replace them with more.”

  “Who is doing it, Geneva?”

  “The Nazis, of course. They haven’t given up. They’re still out there, waiting for me to let my guard down.”

  Willie nodded, “I know you are frightened sometimes by those old memories.”

  “You don’t understand. They are here. Now. Taking those poor children to the work camp.”

  Willie knew that Geneva had lived through the death camps of the Second World War. She’d been six when Mittlebau-Dora Concentration Camp and its factory, Mittlewerk, had been liberated – Mittlewerk, where children with small hands were prized workers in munitions, especially the development of the dreaded V2 rockets.

  Peenemünde and then Mittlewerk, Willie thought, the wartime work places of Wernher Von Braun. Von Braun was now dead, but for many years after the war, he’d been a famous rocket scientist for the United States. Yet, he’d been head of a rocket research team at Mittlewerk when Geneva was there. No wonder Geneva couldn’t let go of the idea the Nazis followed her here.

  “Geneva, dear, let’s order our dinner.” Willie waved over her grandson.

  Willie thought Glyn Dower Jones looked ever-so-much better in a button shirt and slacks. Those draggy jeans and messaging t-shirts of his were plain ugly.

  He arrived at the table, slung a white napkin over his arm like a British butler, in what Willie thought was sarcasm aimed at her.

  “Lose the butler’s napkin, and take our order, young man,” she said.

  Glyn clicked his heels, together, performing a mid-century European bow, kept the napkin and said, “Yes, Ma’am, what may I get for you two ladies.”

  “What a nice young man,” Geneva said.

  “A little officious,” Willie said, aiming her remark at Glyn.

  “Anything to please,” he said. “Our evening choices are frayed chicken and balked salmon.”

  Willie ignored him, “I will have the baked salmon, with the Caesar salad and the green beans, thank you.”

  Geneva said, “Frayed chicken? Is that something like that pulled pork?”

  “No, ma’am,” Glyn said, “Frayed chicken is dipped in condensed milk and then in spiced flour and then deep-frayed to a crispy golden brown.”

  Willie looked at Glyn over her half glasses. His overly-enthusiastic vowels were aimed to poke fun at her. She raised her left eyebrow and whispered, “Please leave my home state out of your English.”

  Geneva said, “I believe I’ll have the frayed chicken and the house salad.”
<
br />   “Right away, ladies.”

  Willie glared at Glyn’s back and almost missed the next thing Geneva said. When her attention picked up Geneva in mid-sentence, what she got was:

  “And they have them ready to ship out to the concentration camp. Held in that warehouse and starving.”

  Behind Geneva, Glyn greeted the visiting gentleman and his young relative. “Good evening, Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Rylant,” Glyn said, picking up their guest name tags for accounting. “Have you decided what to order for dinner?”

  “Yes,” the older man said, “We’ll have the fried chicken, potatoes and Caesar salad.”

  Willie yanked her attention back to her own table and answered Geneva. “What warehouse, Geneva?”

  Geneva glanced around and then whispered, “The warehouse by the railroad tracks, you know, just like in Peenemünde. Right by the railroad tracks. Shipping cattle.”

  “Oh, Geneva, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Geneva whispered, “The Nazis have invaded with their ideas about purity and using lessor human beings for the workhouse. The damned German workhouse.”

  “I believe that was England, dear,” Willie said, thinking of all the Dickens novels she had read.

  Geneva stared at her. “I thought you were my friend,” she said, loudly.

  “I hope that I am your friend,” Willie said, quietly. “I’m just sorry that these memories keep intruding into your present life.”

  “Did you not hear me? Are you trying to make me seem crazy and paranoid?” Her voice rose. Her hands scrabbled with the cloth napkin in her lap.

  “Geneva, tell me more about the railroad tracks,” Willie said calmly, but thinking that paranoid must have been a word used by Geneva’s psychologist. Geneva had visits with the Holly Hill psychologist ever since she’d begun thinking that the house across Seventeenth Street was beaming X-rays and laser rays into her balcony windows.

  Geneva said, “The tracks run right behind the whole company, because, of course, they use it for shipping to Mittlewerk, and to Stuttgart for Daimler-Benz warehouses. But this one building is full of pesticides and herbicides and no one is supposed to go into them, and I just know that’s where they keep the children.”

  Willie remembered that Mittlewerk factory had been set up underground in the Harz Mountains after the Allies bombed Peenemünde. Geneva had been found in Mittlewerk in 1945. By that time, her family and many friends in the nearby Mittlebau-Dora concentration camp had died. Floggings, hangings, starvation, no wonder Geneva’s mind was flailing back to those times.

  “Geneva, dear, have you taken your vitamins this morning?” Willie knew that Geneva had been told her anti-depression medicine was a vitamin – a lie Willie did not approve of. Be honest and let the patient decide, she believed. But that didn’t seem to be the easiest way for the retirement center nursing facility, and what was easy was Nurse Robinson’s way.

  During the sudden silence from Geneva, Glyn delivered their dinner plates.

  “No, young man,” Willie said. “Mine is the salmon. Miss Oppenheim will have the fried chicken.”

  Glyn switched plates and murmured, “Sorry, ladies.” Then he concentrated a stare at his grandmother, and said, “I am new to the job, and a very short-term employee here.”

  “Provisional and poor, or so I hear,” Willie said, smiling up at him. Then she raised her eyebrows toward him. “You’ve got to decide how to fix the poor part and be less provisional.”

  She returned her attention to Geneva while Glyn swooped two plates of fried chicken onto the visiting neighbor’s table.

  “Here you go, Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Rylant.”

  Willie was glad to see Glyn had already memorized the names of guests in Holly Hill.

  “I ordered the baked salmon,” Mr. Corrigan said.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I have written fried chicken, potatoes and Caesar salad for you, sir.”

  “Yes, uncle, it was the fried chicken,” the tall relative said. “You are just not remembering.”

  “Not so, Christopher,” Mr. Corrigan pouted.

  “Uncle, you have merely forgotten.”

  The older man seemed to deflate, then rally and look at Glyn with renewed stiffness. “Fried chicken, then, young man.”.

  Headed to the Alzheimer’s unit, Willie decided and then forked into her salmon as Geneva stared at her chicken.

  “Willie, Wilhalmena. That’s a German name, isn’t it?” Geneva asked.

  “Dutch, actually, and not even the usual Dutch spelling.”

  “Might as well be German.”

  “I think the Dutch would object.”

  “They didn’t much object when my family was moved to Buchenwald.”

  “You were in Holland before the war?”

  “Tried to escape into Holland. Those Dutch fools let Germany walk all over them and we were taken away on trains, trains, trains.”

  “I don’t believe the Dutch had much power to tell the Germans to stay out, or to keep their hands off most of the Jews of Holland.”

  “You are like all the others. You don’t listen to me, and you apologize for the ones who let it happen.”

  “Geneva, I am trying to listen. You say it is happening again, here and now, but then you tell me about the tracks being used for places in Germany. You haven’t been to Germany since 1946. What I hear is you thinking in the past.”

  “You see?” Geneva threw down her fork. “It’s you, mixing me up. It is here, I tell you. They are here.”

  Geneva stood and pointed at Willie. “You are part of them, trying to make me look stupid, just like they did back then. I know what I know, and you aren’t going to stop me.”

  Willie saw Glyn pick up on the strife. He hustled toward her, but she waved him to stop. People at other tables turned to watch. Willie said, quietly, “Geneva, tell me where it is happening. Stay in the present and in the United States and tell me what you are worried about.”

  “Nazi spy,” Geneva shouted at Willie. “I knew you were the one. You have the laser that flashes into my windows. It was you, all along.”

  Geneva strode from the dining room. Willie stood, trying to catch up with her, but she tripped over the chair at the next table and reached out to catch at anything solid.

  In that moment, Glyn had his arm around her shoulders, pulling her upright again. She blinked up at him.

  “Sorry,” Mr. Corrigan said, drawing in his chair.

  “Uncle Don!” the younger man, Mr. Rylant, said, and then glanced at Willie. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. My uncle isn’t quite himself these days.”

  Willie glanced at Geneva’s disappearing back, decided to give up and merely said, “It is no trouble.”

  Glyn said, “Need the walker?”

  “No, thank you. You really are fast.”

  “Speed is useful,” he said.

  “Just not in a car,” she said.

  He smiled, “Even there, sometimes.”

  “I believe I should finish my salmon. What is for dessert?”

  “Grandma,” he said, after she’d been seated, “Should I catch up with your neighbor?”

  “No. She’ll calm down by the time she’s climbed eight flights”

  “Climb?”

  “Won’t get in an elevator since the war.”

  “Since Mittle-bau – that place she yelled about?”

  “By eight flights, she might forget that I’ve been added to her list of suspects.”

  “A list?”

  “Certainly. She’s accused several here of having been in Cologne, or Amsterdam before the war, or of working in the Mittlebau-Dora Concentration Camp. Eventually, I expect she will accuse every one of us of something.”

  “Paranoid,” Glyn said.

  “Strong old memories.”

  Chapter Four

  Glyn felt his interest in work at Holly Hill perk up when he saw the young lady who served the tables in the private dining room which was off the north end of the main dining hall. He realized soon tha
t the private dining room often was reserved for small parties, or for business interests who needed a space that might be quieter. The expectations for service in that dining room were a step above what happened in the main dining room.

  He knew that fact by watching the young lady, who served always from the right, never rushed, but also never left people with dishes they didn’t need at the table.

  Her movements seemed slow, almost what grandma would call ‘languid’. But the truth was, he saw, that she did not ruffle the awareness of her clients, yet everything she did was efficient. She was small, but elegant – a dark-haired beauty with a dimple in her right cheek that he kept hoping to see as she walked toward his observation point.

  Glyn stood close enough to the door to hear one of the other lady servers call her Violeta. And then, he noticed the embroidered flower on the right shoulder of her blouse – a flower sort of like the pansies that his mom loved, but simpler and violet colored –Violeta.

  Over the next days, partly because he watched and imitated the calming efficiency of Violeta, Glyn found that work at Holly Hill gave relief from his deep fear for Trace.

  Among his band members, a lot of sweat and work went into searching for Trace. Leneld and Markus tested Danny’s theories about sources of Trace’s drugs. They found that most of what Danny had to say about street life came from Danny’s imagination.

  “As real as his dreadlocks,” Leneld said, “And as old as his hair gel. The guy couldn’t buy a toke on his own.”

  So, here Glyn was, knocking on DeAndre’s door, hoping to pry a little info from the guy who missed most of their meetings and seemed most scared by Trace’s disappearance.

  DeAndre opened the door and said, “Come in, quick.” Behind him, his terrier huddled in the background.

  Glyn stepped in. DeAndre closed the door and then he said, “They know he was in your car. They think you still have the stuff, but they couldn’t find you.”

  “Who’s they?” Glyn said.