Summer of My German Soldier (7 page)

There are two important things that make the place secret enough to be called a hide-out. A long time ago my father pulled up the horizontal stair boards to keep hobos from finding a home. I like it that way because no grownup would balance himself on the brace boards to climb up like I do. The second secret point is that the stairs leading up to the hide-out are located inside the garage, so from our house it’s impossible to be seen climbing up or down the stairs.

From the hide-out’s back window I watched a slow freight rumble noisily down the tracks towards Little Rock. I opened
Webster’s Collegiate
to the
F
s. Time to get going on my ambition. It’s not the only one I have, but it’s the only one I work at. Someday I’m going to know the meaning of every word in the English language.

I let my finger run down the page of the dictionary until it stopped at the first word that wasn’t completely familiar: “Fragile.” Lots of times boxes of glassware and things come shipped to the store marked:
Fragile! Handle with care.
But it must have more of a meaning than that. I copied the definition into my notebook: “Easily broken or destroyed; frail; delicate.” My word of the day.

A few minutes later I climbed down the steps’ skeleton and went into the house where I found Ruth leaning over the tub giving Sharon her bath. Up to her belly button in bubbles, it was plain to see that Sharon was in one of her giggly moods.

“Do you know why the little moron—” she interrupted herself with an attack of giggles. Again she began, only to act as though she had been breathing laughing gas.

It was becoming tiresome. “Ruth, you tell me the joke,” I said.

Sharon straightened up. “No, let me! Do you know why the little moron took his loaf of bread to the street corner? ’Cause—’cause the little moron wanted to wait to get some jam.” Hiccup-like laughter engulfed her and I joined in. Mostly because I had never before heard anybody louse up a moron joke.

I hung around watching while Ruth got Sharon all dolled up in her Shirley Temple dress and Mary Jane shoes for Sue Ellen’s sixth birthday party. One thing, and it’s not because she’s my sister, but Sharon happens to be very pretty. Everybody
says that with her black hair and dark eyes she looks just like Mother, while I look like—No, I don’t think I look at all like him!

Outside, the two o’clock sun right away showed us that he was far from fragile. “We’ll walk slow,” said Ruth, “so as not to anger him up.”

On the sidewalk in front of the birthday house Ruth adjusted Sharon’s pink hair ribbon. “Now don’t let me hear no bad reports come back on you, you hear me, girl?”

Sharon nodded, turning to go. “Hold up now!” called Ruth. “Remember what it is you is going to say to Sue Ellen and her mother ’fore taking your leave?”

“I had a very good time at your party and—and ah—” She looked into Ruth’s face for the answer.

“And I thank you kindly for inviting me,” supplied Ruth.

Sharon smiled. “And I thank you kindly for inviting me,” she repeated. And without even a good-bye wave she skipped off into the birthday house.

As Ruth and I walked slowly back, I tried to talk to her, but she wasn’t in too much of a mood.

“Ruth—why are you mad at me?”

“Mad at you? Oh, Patty Babe, I ain’t mad at nobody about nothing. Sometimes when a person be thinking about one thing it don’t mean they is mad about another thing. It don’t mean nothing but that they is too busy for normal conversation.”

Then it was Robert. Laughing, light-skinned Robert over there fighting in some faraway foxhole. God, would you please remember to keep Robert safe from harm? Please, God, ’cause he’s all Ruth has. Amen.

“Want to know who is the strongest man I ever knew in all
my whole life? Robert is. I bet he could beat up six Germans and outshoot a dozen of them. Honest he could!”

A slow smile spread across her lips. But her eyes—Ruth’s eyes had this gloss and they weren’t smiling.

“Oh, Robert’s going to be O.K., you’ll see. And you know what? Robert’s going to help win the war.”

“Honey, I don’t care about no war. I jest cares about my boy.”

“You have to!” I felt embarrassed by the conviction rushing through my voice. “You’re supposed to care! Don’t you know the Germans will take everything you’ve got, and then they’ll take you into the field and kill you? Don’t you know that?”

Ruth laughed. At me? Let her. Let her laugh her fool head off. She’s not my mother.

From a deep well between her bosoms Ruth brought out a white handkerchief with printed flowery borders and dabbed at her eyes. “Oh, Honey Babe, I got nothing in this here world worth taking, and no German or nobody else is gonna kill me till the good Lord is willing.”

“If you believe that,” I said, trying to frame the words, “then why can’t you believe it’s also true for Robert? No German can kill him unless God wills it.”

There was no answer, nothing except the sound of shoes against blacktop. But then her arm dropped across my shoulders, bringing me to her in a sudden hugging motion. “Unless God himself wills it,” I heard her say.

I followed Ruth into the kitchen where a headless hen, its blood already drying on its body feathers, lay on the rubber drainboard. “Sit and talk a spell,” she said.

I glanced again at the grotesque bird. “I’ll see you when you finish with her,” I said, backing away.

Out at curbside even the neat row of houses, mostly bungalows with screened-in side porches, seemed peopleless. Not a soul was about. I pictured the ladies of the houses, sitting with saucerless cups of coffee, their eyes fixed on the kitchen radio as they lived through Mary Noble’s trials as a backstage wife, Helen Trent’s over-thirty-five search for romance, and poverty-reared Our Gal Sunday’s efforts to keep up with the local nobility.

I didn’t want to grow up to spend my days like that, but I didn’t want to spend my growing-up days like this either. Sitting alone on a curb trying to think of something to do.

If I had a horse as black as the night I’d go galloping off in search of her. Go, Evol, Go! North toward the Ozarks and never come back.

People would ask, “What a peculiar name, and what does it mean?” And I’d lie to them, saying it was short for “evolution.” Evolution like in Darwin’s theory.

But someday it would happen. I’d find her and she’d understand right away that Evol has more power spelled in reverse. And that would be the sign between us. She would be my real mother and now at last I could go home.

A car passed. Chrome hubcaps mirrored the sun’s rays. I began collecting those gray-white stones that were within lazy reach. Improve your aim. Hit the hubcap. Win a prize.

From some distance away, I heard a boy’s thin voice calling me. He was short-cutting across our yard, walking as though he wore springs on his feet, up-and-down Freddy Dowd.

The last time I saw Freddy, a week ago, we were playing marbles on the sidewalk and my best agate was at stake. Suddenly he appeared from inside our house, my father. “You get yourself in this house this minute!” As soon as I
closed the front door, he was standing there, telling me that he didn’t ever want to catch me playing with that Dowd boy, not ever again. I didn’t understand why.

“But why can’t I? He’s very nice.”

“Are you questioning me?” my father demanded. “Are you contradicting me?”

I told him that I wasn’t, and after a while he cooled off and went back to the store. The crisis was over.

But later when I looked outside my bedroom window I saw Freddy was still there waiting for me. So I called down that I couldn’t come out anymore, not today, because it was getting close to suppertime; and Freddy nodded before slowly loping away. Later, though, I thought about it, wondering if he could have heard. Feelings are fragile too.

Freddy said, “’Lo,” and sat down next to me. “Hey, whatcha doing?”

“Ohhhh, I’m playing Hit the Hubcap, it’s a wonderful game I just invented. I’m having a wonderful time.”

“Hey, lemme play.”

“O.K., but first you have to gather up the ammunition.” I held up a smooth, gray pebble. “Ten for you and ten for me.”

Freddy wandered barefoot over assorted road gravel, searching out only the small quality stones he knew I would like. In winter Freddy wore denim overalls with a checkety shirt of faded red flannel, but now he was dressed in his summer attire—the same worn denims without the shirt.

He counted out the stones in a one-for-you and a one-for-me fashion and then sat down on the curb to play the wonderful game. When no car came along, we played Hit the Oilcan.

“Hey! Hey! There’s a car a-coming” shouted Freddy.

I called out last-minute instructions: “Dead center of the hubcap is bull’s-eye. Hundred points.”

Achoo-ey, Achoo-ey.
From the sound of its motor it was a tired old thing that used sneezes as a means of power. The car moved slowly into firing range. Then small stones pinged against metal. A single stone revolved around and around the hubcap before firing upward against—crack!
The Window!

From inside the car a family of faces turned to stare vacantly, like they had all experienced sudden, violent slaps across their faces.

I ran. Oh, God, now what have I done? I ran through our yard, behind our house, and to the field beyond. I ran until my heart warned that it was ready to explode. And then deep in the field I fell down and let the tall grass bury me.

After a while my heart slowed down. Nobody was hurt. It wasn’t exactly the crime of the century or anything. Just an accident that I caused, but an accident I could make right. Yes, if only I could find them again. I remembered their car. The sickly sound of it. The lackluster blackness of it. And there, sitting atop the hood, a silver swan with V-spread wings. I could find that car again. At this very minute it was probably parked in front of some Main Street store.

Ruth would loan me the money to pay those folks for a new window, I knew she would. I pictured the scene between the car’s owner and me—“I want you to know that it was an accident, and I only hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” The old farmer would slowly nod his head, taking it all in, before saying that I was a fine, honest girl. Maybe we would even shake hands before saying good-bye.

I got to my feet. Sticking to the front of my damp polo
shirt was a layer of field dust and down my knee ran a single rail of dry, red blood. I couldn’t remember hurting my knee. As I walked through the field I could hear Ruth singing: “I looked over Jordan and what did I see-e?”

She didn’t just sing from her neck up like other folks I know.

“Coming for to car-ry me home. ...”

Her songs always seemed to come from a deeper, quieter place than that.

I swallowed down the sadness in my throat before going into the kitchen. She sat there at the white metal table shelling a small mountain of peas. Through squinting eyes she gave me a questioning look.

“Honey Babe, you is jest too pitiful-looking for the cat to drag in. You been fighting with Freddy? Now you tell Ruth.”

“We didn’t fight,” I said dully. “I never in my whole life had a fight with Freddy, and that’s a terrible thing to say, besides. You sound exactly like my father. Just ’cause Freddy’s poor and doesn’t dress up you think he’s not as good as anybody else. Well, he is, and it says so right in the Constitution of the United States of America: ‘All men are created equal.’”

Ruth shook her head. “I asks you if you had a fight and you gives me a history lesson. A person can shore learn a lot of things around here.”

I sat down next to her at the kitchen table, but not one more word did she say. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. Gently, even against my will, Ruth was supposed to squeeze the information from me.

I realized it wouldn’t happen that way, so I just spilled it out. For a long while Ruth didn’t say anything. Then she
sighed and asked, “Them folks, did you know them? Was they white folks or colored?”

“I don’t remember knowing them, but they were white folks from the country.”

Somewhere on her forehead a line deepened, and I knew it wasn’t so good that they were white. Ruth pulled down a brown simulated-alligator bag from the top of the refrigerator. “Did those folks know you is Mr. Bergen’s girl?”

“No—I don’t know. Maybe they did,” I said, remembering running towards the rear of our house. Not very smart.

She pushed aside a black eyeglass case and a Bible about the size of an open palm to bring out a red zippered change purse with the printed words, “Souvenir of Detroit, Michigan.” Inside the change purse some coins jangled, but all the paper money was pressed neatly into one small square. She opened the three one-dollar bills to their full size. Carefully she refolded them before placing the money in my hand.

“Now you ask the man how much a window costs ’fore you go giving him all your money.”

She would do all this for me? There between her neck and shoulders was the warm cove where a head could lie and rest. And there I would be home. Home safe.

Ruth’s eyes met mine. Could she know? Could she possibly know? There’s nothing to know! I’m not a baby and she’s not my mother. I ran out of the back door, letting the screen make a slamming noise.

As I walked toward downtown I noticed a breeze pushing a few elm leaves around without doing much more than promising to cool things off. Still, my thoughts began to tidy themselves up and I felt better. After all, wasn’t Ruth on my side? And wasn’t I even now going out to right a wrong?

It was then that I saw a green Chevy roaring down the street towards me. My father! For a moment I thought I was going to take off behind one of the houses or maybe hide behind the shoulder-high hedges that separated front yards from public walks. But I didn’t. Didn’t run. Didn’t hide. Didn’t anything.

The car passed me and then came backing up to a jerky stop. The door was opened and hurled shut. His face was frozen a bluish whitish color, like all the red blood had iced over. With long strides he came toward me. My back pressed against the hedge.

“Let me tell you what happened. Please!”

It was just noise to him. A mask cannot really hear. He kept coming toward me. I propelled myself backward, falling into and finally through the tight little branches. From across the protecting hedge he commanded, “Come here this instant!” At his temple a vein was pulsating like a neon sign.