Gentlehands

by M. E. Kerr

  “Isn’t there something I can do?”

  “One thing,” he said. He wrote something on a piece of paper. “I’ve been late getting off something to someone. I’ll give you this number in New York to call. Make the call in the morning.” He reached into his pocket, then put a five-dollar bill in my hand. “Tell whoever answers the phone that the package from Trenker is on the way. I don’t want to use my own phone. It may be tapped. There’s no sense involving innocent people in all this.”

  I pocketed the money for the call, and the slip of paper with the number on it. “Can I call you tomorrow, too, to see if you’re okay?”

  “I don’t think that’s wise, Buddy, for the same reason.”

  “Can I come here after work?”

  He shook his head from side to side. “I’ll be all right, though. This thing will run its course. We’ll wait until it does, and meanwhile, enjoy the jeep.”

  I tried to get him to let me stay long enough to help him bury Mignon, and set Graham free, but he was firm. He put his long arm around my shoulder and walked me down the driveway. Before I drove off, I wanted to put my arms around him, although I didn’t even do that anymore with my father. We stood there for a moment, then he stuck out his hand and we shook.

  “I’ll see you soon,” I said. “Nothing better happen to you!”

  There were tears starting to roll down my cheeks, and he stopped one with his finger. Then he put his hand down.

  I saw him, through the rearview mirror, watching me as I pulled away.

  When I got home, my father was still on duty. My mother made me take the jeep up to the next street, park it there, and walk back, so my father wouldn’t know I’d run off.

  Streaker was in bed. I sat down in the living room and told my mother what had happened to Mignon. I thought I was going to bawl again. I hadn’t cried so much in front of my mother since I was Streaker’s age.

  My mother waited for me to finish and just looked at me for a minute.

  “Do you expect me to feel sorry for his dog after what he let dogs do to human beings?” she said. “Oh, Buddy.”

  “Can’t you get it through your head it isn’t him?”

  “Frank O. Trenker is him!” she said. “Tomorrow, you take that jeep back to the A&P parking lot where it was this morning, and stay out of his life!”

  “He said I could use it.”

  “I don’t care what he said. We don’t want anything from a Nazi!”

  “Now I can’t talk to you, either,” I said.

  “Why do you always give him the benefit of the doubt?” she said. “Why is it your father and I are always wrong and your grandfather can do no wrong in your eyes?”

  “Because I know him!” I said.

  “Oh and you don’t know us?”

  “I’m beginning to think I don’t.”

  “Go to bed, Buddy,” she said. “If your father comes home and hears that kind of talk, he’ll knock your block off.”

  I stood up.

  “Don’t discuss this with Streaker,” she said. “I’m worried about him. He’s heard Nazi this and Nazi that, and you’ve been running off whenever you’ve felt like it. That kid’s going to be a mess if this doesn’t stop!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Let’s all worry about Streaker for a change.”

  “We worry about you, too,” she said. “Your father fixed everything with Kick. You’ll still have your job tomorrow.”

  “That’s just what I feel like doing tomorrow,” I said.

  “And Buddy, don’t mention any of this to Kick or Ollie or anyone! We don’t want our name involved, do you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” I said.

  “It’s bad enough that the Penningtons know our connection by now,” she said. “Well, I’ve never met your girlfriend, anyway. I’m not good enough to meet her, I guess. We don’t travel in the same circles.”

  “You could say that,” I said.

  “I could care less about their circle,” she said. “That’s your hang-up, Buddy Boyle!”

  I almost knocked Streaker over when I opened the door to our bedroom. He’d been crouched there listening to everything.

  “Who killed the dog, Buddy?”

  “People,” I said, getting out of my clothes. “Get up in your bunk, Streaker.”

  “How did they kill her?”

  “They killed her. Isn’t that enough for you? Do you want all the gory details?”

  “Were they Nazis, too?”

  “What’s a Nazi, Streaker?”

  “A killer!”

  “How do you know what a Nazi is?”

  “Because your grandfather is a Nazi and he killed people. He’s a German!”

  I put out the light and got in the bunk under Streaker.

  “Listen, Streaker,” I said. “He’s our grandfather, not my grandfather, ours. We’re half German.”

  “He’s not my grandfather.”

  “And he’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known!”

  “But he’s not my grandfather and I’m not half German.”

  “You’re half German, all right. Mrs. Schneider up on Underwood is German. You better not eat those fudge brownies of hers anymore, they might be poisoned.”

  “She’s not German.”

  “Yes she is, Streaker,” I said, “and your grandfather is a very good man people are telling lousy lies about!”

  “He’s not mine and he’s not good,” Streaker said. “That’s your hang-up, Buddy Boyle!”

  Kick wasn’t there when I got to Sweet Mouth the next day. We were getting another rainy day, so business was off: people were sleeping late. I waited until nine thirty, then got some change and went down to the telephone booth in the A&P parking lot. I fed the toll and waited for the ring, and a woman answered.

  “Stanton Stamp Shop.”

  “Is this 212 324-4513?”

  “Yes.”

  “The package from Trenker is on the way.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Even though he’d told me not to, I stuck another coin in and dialed my grandfather’s number. I got a busy signal. I figured he probably had the phone off the hook again…. It was too early to call Skye.

  Kick came in about quarter to ten, smiling and relaxed, high again. He began talking with a couple who were trying to eat their eggs in peace.

  He was doing a monologue. “…so these Nazis surrounded this old Berlin Jew and said, ‘Tell us, Yid, who caused the war?’ Well, the old Jew was no fool, so he said, ‘The Jews,’ and then he added, ‘and the bicycle riders.’ The Nazis were puzzled. ‘Why the bicycle riders?’ The old Jew shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why the Jews?’”

  Kick laughed for a long time at his own joke, and then he said to the man, “We’ve got an SS guy right out here in Montauk. How do you like that?”

  “I read about it,” the man mumbled. The woman’s expression was getting more and more steamed.

  “They always have gardens,” Kick said. “Did you ever notice? They have gardens and an American flag waving in their front yards and people say, ‘Why Mr. Puffundstart couldn’t be a Nazi! He grows these lovely red roses and his petunia beds don’t have a weed in them!’”

  The woman looked up then and said sharply, “We’re on vacation. We don’t care to hear unpleasant things on vacation.”

  “Please excuse me,” Kick said. “And excuse me for the rain, too.”

  He walked back to where I was standing and whispered in a falsetto, “We’re on vacation. We don’t care to hear unpleasant things on vacation.” He gave my ribs a nudge with his elbow.

  I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock.

  “That was a great joke,” I said. “They’re jackasses, aren’t they? Can I please use the phone in your office?”

  “That was a great joke, they’re jackasses, can I please use the phone in your office? You are a gozlin, Buddy…. Use anything you want. This is my last day here!”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I sai
d.

  “No you’re not, and no, I’m not,” he said.

  It took Skye about five minutes to get to the phone.

  “Where were you last night? Your grandfather’s number was busy and I couldn’t find your father listed in the local directory.” We have an unlisted phone—a lot of policemen in Seaville don’t list their phones because of crank calls—but I didn’t have to explain because Skye went right on, as always. “I was worried, Buddy. Og told me he talked to you, and I want to tell you right now that I’m going anywhere I feel like going, including out to Montauk with you.”

  “My grandfather doesn’t want us out there. He doesn’t think it’s safe for us right now.”

  “Daddy just brought home a copy of The Record, Buddy, and I could die!”

  “I haven’t seen it.”

  “Your family isn’t mentioned, Buddy. De Lucca told my mother he purposely kept your family’s name out of what he wrote because he was aware of the estrangement.”

  “De Lucca’s all heart,” I said.

  “Oh, Buddy, there are photographs and everything. It has to be a terrible mistake!”

  “It is, and my grandfather’s going through hell because of it.”

  “Would you tell him for me I don’t believe it, not a word of it?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Pick me up after work?”

  She said she would, and then Kick appeared in the office. He had an envelope in his hand.

  “A small boy just delivered a billet-doux,” he said. “Mr. William Boyle, Jr. That’s you, isn’t it, Gozlin?”

  I took the envelope from his hand.

  “I remember when I used to be young and eager, too,” Kick said. He sat down and began to roll a joint. “Do you know when I decided I preferred pot to marriage, Buddy-O?”

  I hoped it wasn’t going to be one of his rambling pot stories. I started to tear the envelope open.

  “I decided I preferred pot to marriage when my sweet wife said this SS fellow living out in Montauk was only doing his duty. That’s what Mrs. Townsend said. Oh they never call her Mrs. Richards and I’m damn glad, because I told Mrs. Townsend that her mind stinks! Wouldn’t you say that her mind stinks like a manure heap, Buddy?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What does ‘okay’ mean?”

  “I think somebody ought to be sure he’s named the right person,” I said.

  “Ah!” Kick said. “You’re from the ‘it-couldn’t-be-him-he-grows-such-lovely-roses’ school of thought.”

  “I’d like to read my letter, Kick.”

  “Go ahead,” Kick said, lighting a match. “I’m going to escape these harsh realities. Grass will put you on your ass and make time pass.”

  I went into the Men’s and opened the envelope.

  The message from my grandfather was short, and very clear.

  I am going away. Take what you want from Montauk. I hope some of what you take will be a good memory of our brief friendship, which gave me great happiness. I know the person you will soon be learning about, only by hearsay now. He is as much a stranger to me as he will be to you. I live in the present between two unfathomable clouds, what was and what will be.

  18

  KICK WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE IN SWEET MOUTH talking about my grandfather that day. After The New York Record appeared in Seaville, customers arrived for late breakfast and early lunch carrying copies of the newspaper. De Lucca’s story appeared on the front page, and continued to the second section. Everyone I waited on was discussing it. I didn’t have a chance to read it until the crowd thinned out, around two thirty. Then I picked up a copy someone had left on a table.

  In the second section there were four photographs. One was a picture of my grandfather, taken thirty years ago in Argentina. It was easy to recognize the younger version of him, carrying a dog, a pipe in his mouth; his hair was darker.

  Two of the photographs were linked together in one frame. At the top was a photograph of a burned house; under it, a picture of a woman.

  The caption read: The house of Carlita Fornez (below) located outside Havana, Cuba, was destroyed by a firebomb in 1951, purportedly planted by The Jewish Action League. Miss Fornez was killed, but Trenker, the intended victim, survived.

  The fourth photograph was of a young man in uniform. The caption read: SS Colonel Dr. Werner Renner, chief physician at Auschwitz. Reported to be somewhere in South America. Renner carefully avoided being photographed after he escaped from Germany in 1945.

  There was more about Renner in the article.

  Dr. Werner Renner had two passions, stamp-collecting and carving pipes of wood and meerschaum. While some camp physicians had to drink great quantities of alcohol to tolerate their task of selecting those who were to die in the gas chambers, Dr. Renner, on the other hand, a teetotaler, whittled away on one of his pipes and casually pointed to the doomed men, women and children as they passed in review…. It has been rumored that Renner produced meerschaum pipes after the war, which were imported from Turkey, and valued at $5000 and more per pipe.

  I remembered the night my grandfather showed Skye his meerschaum pipe. I remembered my grandfather remarking that Mr. Verner was just an old man who still collected stamps like a boy. My grandfather always pronounced his w’s like v’s. It was not a Mr. Verner who called him from time to time. It was Werner Renner.

  The article concluded:

  Frank Trenker was born into a very strict Roman Catholic family. His father was a bigoted and fanatic man who took a religious oath at the time of his son’s birth, dedicating Frank Trenker to God and the priesthood. He directed his entire youthful education toward the goal of making him a priest, forcing him to do penance over the slightest misdeed. When Frank Trenker broke with the church, he joined the NSDAP. He exchanged Catholic dogma for Nazi ideology, and from 1940 on, his only activities as a member of the SS Death Head units were concerned with concentration camps…. In early 1944, as Allied armies began their drive for Paris, Trenker and Renner began melting down the gold from jewelry and teeth of Auschwitz victims to ship to Swiss banks. At the end of the war both men escaped through Austria into Italy, and ultimately boarded ships bound for Argentina.

  When Skye picked me up in front of Sweet Mouth she said, “I have to tell you something, Buddy. There’s an I.N.S. man looking for your grandfather. De Lucca told my father about it.”

  “He’s left Montauk,” I said.

  “Oh, no! Where is he?”

  “I don’t know where he is.” I had an idea I did know, that the “package” on its way to the Stanton Stamp Shop was my grandfather.

  Skye and I began riding around in the Jensen, in the rain, while she talked nonstop about him. “I’ve never heard of anything so gross in my entire life!” she said. “Even Daddy says he has to admire you for sticking by your own in the worst possible circumstances, and anyway, no one’s given your grandfather a chance to deny anything! Daddy says if De Lucca is wrong, your grandfather will have one hell of a settlement, and Mummy wants you to know she really doesn’t know anything about De Lucca. She thought all along he might even be investigating us, for taxes or some stupid thing. You can investigate anyone and come up with something!”

  I kept watching her in profile, trying to memorize the way she looked, and telling myself maybe I wouldn’t have to, maybe the whole thing would just blow over.

  “Og read a case once where a man spent thirty years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Buddy! He looked almost exactly like the real criminal!”

  I was thinking if it hadn’t been for trying to impress her, I never would have known him.

  If it hadn’t been for Skye, I probably would have been doing a number like my mother, snarling around about what a Nazi he was and praying to God the good name of Boyle wouldn’t ever be linked with his.

  “Did you tell him I don’t believe that article, Buddy?” Skye asked me.

  “I didn’t have the chance.”

  “I wish he knew there were people who believe in him
.”

  “He’ll get by.”

  “What about Mignon and Graham?”

  “He set Graham free.”

  “He took Mignon with him,” she said flatly. It wasn’t a question I had to answer.

  “This could ruin his life,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I wish there was something we could do,” she said.

  “There isn’t.”

  “I know it’s much worse for you, Buddy.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “If someone I loved was falsely accused of a crime, I’d just die!”

  “Yeah.”

  “I would, I’d die, because you feel so helpless and there’s nothing you can really do. You have to wait for time to pass and lawyers to do things and all the while you’re hurting so.”

  I shouted what I said next. “Cut it out!”

  She gave me one quick, wide-eyed stare of alarm and then got ahold of herself again.

  “I thought you’d want to talk about it,” she said quietly.

  “How long can we talk about it?”

  She didn’t answer and I didn’t add anything. We just continued to drive around aimlessly.

  Then she tried to change the subject. I knew she was making this big effort to be understanding.

  “Connie Spreckles has a new Connie. He came by this morning in it.”

  “What’s a new Connie?”

  “A new Lincoln Continental.”

  “Oh.”

  “Everybody calls them Connies.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Buddy.”

  “I just wish you could hear yourself sometimes,” I said.

  She clammed up and we kept driving around.

  “I don’t know anyone who calls a Lincoln Continental a Connie, that’s all.”

  “A lot of people do.”

  “Well I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong before.”

  “There’s nothing awful about calling it a Connie, either,” she said.

  We kept on going.

  “There’s a fair at the church,” she said.