“I’m going to inspect the work of the other group.”
“Okee dokee, sir.”
“What?”
“Okay, sir. That’s fine.”
Max started down the trail Carls and his men had taken, stamping his feet hard like the American guards did to scare the snakes,
two of which slithered away during his walk. Ordinarily he marched double-time on such an errand; it was the military way
and he had a desire to show the Americans how real soldiers behaved. The sloppier they were, the more military he became.
But the forest was quiet today and the heat wasn’t so bad in the shade and Max took his time, breathing in the bitter earth
smell of the rotting pine needles. He began to run only when he heard the first gunshot.
When he reached the clearing two of the Afrika Korps men were sprinting hell for leather in the opposite direction, making
for the cover of the forest. The corporal was sighting them down the barrel of his rifle when Carls knocked him cold with
a pine branch thick as his arm. Blood spurted from the corporal’s skull. Carls dropped the club and started after the two
fleeing men and without pause the other three Afrika Korps men followed him.
The second sentry was scrambling to his feet five meters to Max’s right. Must have been napping. The youngster bobbled his
rifle awkwardly and Max plowed into him on a dead run, both of them crashing into the bed of dust and straw. A bayonet flashed
in the morning sun as the young sentry rolled into a crouch and drew the long knife from its scabbard. He lunged at Max, who
sidestepped and hit the boy on his backside, sprawling him out on the ground. But the lad rolled and came up, moving damned
fast, passing the bayonet from hand to hand as he and Max circled each other. The sentry lunged again, faking with his right,
and almost drove the blade through Max’s ribs, but Max spun and delivered a kick to the youngster’s kidneys. He stumbled and
Max dived for the branch Carls had used on the corporal. The sentry dived after him and Max rolled onto his back, bringing
the branch around to catch the boy aside the head. The American somersaulted, crashed into the trunk of a pine, and pulled
himself up again—pausing only to draw another knife from a sheath in his boot. Now he had one in each hand. He smiled at Max
and spit out a tooth. Blood dripped from his mouth and nose onto his starched khaki shirt. Max gripped the branch halfway
up, feeling the sticky pinesap on his palms. He feinted forward, taking a short swing at the sentry’s head, then drew back.
With a war whoop the boy jumped forward. Max reversed his grip and drove the butt end of the branch into the boy’s forehead,
just above the nose. The sentry dropped to his knees, unconscious, and pitched forward into the soft straw.
Max dropped the branch, then darted through the trees, following the others, fearing he’d lost them. Move, he told himself,
faster. The trees grew dense, he could see the broken tree branches that marked the passage of his men. In the far distance
a rifle shot, followed by a dozen more. Were these Americans shooting into the woods at random?
After another ten minutes of hard running, a sharp pain stabbed his side like a poker in the gut. Had to stop for a moment.
Head down, clutching his knees, sweat poured from his face as he gulped in great lungfuls of air. The hand that touched his
shoulder caught him completely off guard and he jerked upright in fear.
“Herr Kaleu!”
“Shit! Carls, for God’s sake, man!”
Gasping for air, Carls said, “Those lads run like ponies.”
Max didn’t speak, just continued to gulp air, chest heaving, as Carls did the same. Finally Max said, “Report?”
“I heard the guard give a shout and looked up. Seen two of our boys running. That swine of a corporal went to shoot and I
clubbed him.”
Max ran a hand through his greasy hair. Shit. They could still give themselves up, but he’d already been through the shame
of surrendering once. He didn’t want to do it again. Ever. But what to do? He knelt and put his head down with his hands over
his face. Had to think for a moment. Carls was silent. Perhaps two minutes went by before he heard the rifle fire. He jerked
his head up. More shooting now. A fusillade of rifle fire broke out, but it was far in the distance. Southeast of them, he
felt sure.
But he knew what they had to do. A freighter. They had to get aboard a neutral freighter. It was the only alternative. They
weren’t that far from New Orleans. He’d been there during his training cruise on
Emden
, had roamed the city for several days. But how in the name of Saint Peter and Paul were they going to get there?
“If we want to try and escape, we need to get to New Orleans and find a neutral freighter,” Max said to Carls, who nodded.
“Maybe one that would take us to Mexico. I can’t think of anything else.” Carls still worked at catching his breath. Finally
he said, “What about the nigger bus driver you talk to, Herr Kaleu?”
“Malachi?”
“Yes, sir.”
Max thought about this. Would the colored man help them? They would hardly be welcomed guests. Could they even find Poole’s
Crossroads? Was there an alternative? No, there wasn’t.
“He said he lives about six miles north of here, town called Poole’s Crossroads.”
Carls looked up at the sun, then pointed to his left. “North would be that way, Herr Kaleu.”
“Then let’s carry on.” They forced-marched through the woods for another hour, following the sun north, then stopped, put
their heads down, hands on knees, and gulped air like blown horses. They were drenched in sweat and Max knew they had sweated
out all their body fluids. They had to find water. Soon. Carls seemed to be suffering badly. “I’m not the youngster I was
on
Kronprinz Wilhelm
,” he said between gasps.
They moved on, much slower. Max saw spots in front of his eyes and knew they were approaching heatstroke. He could shoot someone
for a canteen of water. Dusk now—they came to a dirt road and dropped to their knees. Carls saw it first, across the road,
a large cow pasture with a water trough big enough to bathe in. There were no cows. They had been led back to the barn by
then and the pasture was deserted. Covered by the falling night, they slipped across the dirt road, stopped and listened.
Quiet. Max cut himself going over the barbed-wire fence but stifled a yelp. Carls got over without cutting himself and helped
Max down. On all fours they both crawled to the water trough. Max motioned for Carls to go first and the big man plunged his
head in and drank, came up breathing hard. Max followed, Carls keeping watch.
Max finished drinking then whispered to Carls that they must take their shirts off, rinse them out, and then put them on inside
out to hide the white PW letters painted on the back of each shirt. For the next fifteen minutes they alternately drank water
and rinsed and wrung out their shirts. They both took one last drink of water, then retraced their steps across the road till
they were back in the trees about fifty meters from the dirt road. Neither of them could go on without sleep, so they made
themselves as comfortable as they could on a mat of pine straw and slept.
Three hours, four hours went by, Max wasn’t sure. The sound of a truck in the far distance woke him and he was up and in a
crouch before he was barely awake. But the sound receded into the distance. Dark now with just a hint of light from a half
moon. They had to be close to Poole’s Crossroads. No more than a kilometer at this point. Time to move. Max could not get
Carls to wake up no matter what he did. Finally, he leaned close to his ear and whistled the bosun’s call for “Rise, rise,
get up,” the signal for the sailors to get up and stow their hammocks. That woke him. They crept to the dirt road and walked
north, staying on the down moon side so they wouldn’t cast a silhouette. A dog barked. Now two. They dropped. But this was
it—Poole’s Crossroads. In the dim moonlight he could make out four or five tin-roofed clapboard shacks scattered around the
intersection, their windows dark. The small grocery was unmistakable with its weathered Coca-Cola sign and the single rusted
gas pump in the dirt driveway outside. An open staircase on the side of the building climbed to the second-story apartment.
“The bus driver lives up there,” Max whispered.
Carls nodded, too exhausted to speak. Max led the way to the staircase and they made their way up very slowly, the weathered
steps creaking faintly.
On the landing at the top of the stairs, Max paused, listened. Nothing. He waited. A dog in one of the other houses started
to bark. He looked around. This had to be the place. Now what? Knock on the door? He rapped gently. Rapped again. Nothing.
Two more dogs added to the flurry of barking, which trailed off after a few minutes. Max went to rap again, but as he did
so the door opened slowly. It was Malachi, holding a kerosene lantern in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other, both
barrels pointed at Max’s gut. With great care, palms outward to show he was unarmed, Max slowly raised his arms into the air.
No one spoke for a long moment. Then Malachi, suddenly aware of the lantern light, hissed, “Get in here ’fore somebody sees
you, you goddamn sons of bitches. You trying to get me lynched?”
Malachi set the lantern on a table in the main room. It cast a dim light that sparkled on a spiked Prussian helmet from the
First War mounted over the fireplace. Malachi spoke quietly, still pointing the shotgun at Max. “Took that helmet from one
of your fellows I bayoneted in the Argonne. He didn’t have no more use for it. Your people thought fighting colored soldiers
was going to be easy, reckon they thought we could only sing and dance.” He tightened his grip on the shotgun. “And we can
sing and dance. You know what else we can do—at least those of us who was in the 370th Colored Infantry? We can fire six aimed
rounds a minute of .303 caliber from a Lee-Enfield and bring down a whole line of you. Did it more than a few times.”
“We want nothing from you, Malachi. We ask only how one must journey to New Orleans. For a ship. That’s all we want. To learn
how we may travel to New Orleans for a ship. That’s all.”
Not wanting to challenge him by staring, Max flicked his eyes to a photograph on the mantel—a younger Malachi in his doughboy
uniform with the silver bars of a lieutenant. “Yes, that’s me,” Malachi said. “I was a lieutenant. An officer. You know what
they called that war, the first one? The ‘war to end all wars.’ And here it is ain’t twenty-five years later and you people
has started it up again. As far as Malachi is concerned, we should just shoot every damn one of you German sons of bitches.”
Max looked down.
Silence now, the faint hissing of the lantern the only sound. Malachi still gripped the sawed-off shotgun but slowly pointed
it in the air and set the hammers to half cock so it wouldn’t go off accidentally. “I didn’t plan this,” Max said. “We didn’t
plan to escape. We never would have involved you. It just happened and… I thought… I thought you may help us.”
“Help you? Help you? Why in the name of Jesus would I help you? You ain’t the one who’s in danger. Don’t you understand nothing?
All they gonna do is beat up on you two. But they’ll hang me from the nearest tree. Didn’t think of that, did you?”
Holding his arms down with his palms out, Max looked up and said, “No, Malachi, I’m sorry. I never thought of that. I just
never… I don’t even understand it. We’re the enemy.”
Malachi looked at both of them for a moment, then shook his head. “’Cause you’re white and I’m colored and it don’t matter
that you’re Krauts. You’re white Krauts. I’d just as soon shoot both of you as look at you but then I’d be in hell’s own trouble
for killing two white Germans.” He stared at them.
Max looked away, trying to think of something to say. They had to get Malachi to help them. He slowly moved his hands up in
surrender. “We just need to get to New Orleans. For a ship. That’s all I’m asking. Will you tell us how to get there?”
Malachi gripped the shotgun with both hands, brought it down from his shoulder to his waist, pointed it directly at Max and
Carls. “Get out.”
Max bit his lower lip. “Can you at least tell us what direction New Orleans is in?”
“Get out,” Malachi said, pulling both hammers back to full cock; a pull of the two triggers and both barrels would fire. Max
kept his hands up, palms out. “We’re leaving. We wish you no harm.” They backed away slowly. Carls turned to open the door.
“Stop!” Malachi said. They froze.
“Shit. Someone could have seen you headed this way. If you’re caught anywhere near here, they’re gonna come for me next.”
He shook his head violently. “Damn you. God damn you.”
Malachi walked backward to a large dresser at side of the room. “Y’all take off them stinking clothes.” Holding the shotgun
on Max with one hand, he rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a worn pair of bibb overalls, threw them at Carls. Then he balled
up an old black suit of clothes and threw them at Max along with a white shirt. “Used to wear this suit when I played in Berlin.
It should come close to fitting you.” He reached again into the drawer and flung a tie at Max.
While Max and Carls stripped to their skivvies and put on their new clothes, Malachi moved to the small kitchen area.
“You,” Malachi said to Max, “tell the big man to pick up one of those watermelons by the door. Hurry up.” Malachi reached
under a counter and pulled out an Adluh flour sack, which he threw at Max. “Fold up your old clothes and puts them in the
sack then puts the watermelon in on top.”
Carls held the sack open while Max quickly folded their filthy uniforms and stuffed them in, followed by the watermelon. “Now
you look like some dumb-ass rednecks on the way to visit some of your redneck kinfolk.”
Max straightened his suit. “New Orleans?”
“Take the Panama Limited from Jackson—it’s ten miles due east of here. Follow the road you come in on till it cross Highway
22, then turn east. Get as far away from here as you can. You hear me? As far as you can. You got money for tickets? It’s
three dollars to New Orleans.”