A Midwinter's Tale

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “He damn well better be all right,” I repeated my warning.

  Polly tilted her head, as she usually did when trying to figure someone out, especially me.

  “You’re not just kidding,” she agreed.

  On Thursday afternoon I drove down to Büttenheim again and checked the place out. It was a pretty little town built on a couple of hills, with low mountains in the background, kind of like the pictures of towns in the Swiss Alps we had seen in our geography books. Men and women were working in the fields, raking in the last hay of the harvest. Cattle were contentedly grazing on meadows. An old Catholic church with an onion dome looked as if it had been repainted recently. A town that would have been perfect for a Disney film about the good princess and the wicked dwarf. I found it hard to believe when I was in Germany that so many pretty towns, too unimportant to be destroyed in the war, could exist in a country where there was so much ugliness.

  I found the places in the town that would be perfect for my purposes. We would park the jeeps and the trucks and the buses for removing the prisoners (should there be any) off the main street. We would set up a command post behind the church, with communications back to the Residenz in the unlikely event we would need reinforcements, and a medic station nearby should there be any wounded, theirs or ours. We could set up in such a way that, once we deployed our combat platoons in the forest, someone driving down the two-lane highway would not know that there was a Constab any closer than Bamberg.

  I remained pretty sure that our crooks were autobahn people and that they rarely if ever traveled the back roads. But there was no point in taking chances.

  I checked carefully each spot on the aerial map I had liberated from the Seventh Army. The scheme looked good so far.

  Would the Outfit fight back? Not very likely. They had probably made lots of money already, and a few years in a disciplinary barracks or even at Fort Leavenworth was a lot better than being dead. Still, they might.

  Satisfied with Büttenheim, I returned to my Buick and searched for the two tracks that were the dirt road to the back door of the meadow. I thought I had a good idea where it was. Still it was hard to find, almost invisible. I backed into the trail and perhaps ten yards along its length, got out, and from the highway determined that the Buick was totally invisible.

  All right, what we’d do is deploy our men and weapons at this point and send the vehicles and the required personnel back to Büttenheim. Then, preferably while it was still light, we’d march down the path and deploy ourselves around the edge of the meadow on three sides, far enough into the forest so that at night no one would see us, not even if a stray headlight should come close to where we were hiding.

  Then we would wait; and I would pray that the rendezvous was not scheduled for three Thursdays out of four. I timed the walk from the two-lane road to the meadow. Between ten and fifteen minutes, say fifteen.

  We would wait till the work had actually begun and crates of goodies were moving back and forth. Then General Meade would make his announcement on the portable public address system we would bring along, and hopefully the crooks would surrender. All very neat.

  So I found my woodchuck position and curled up to wait for the two convoys to arrive. As soon as I was certain that it was another scheduled night, I would slip away back into the forest, pick my way through the trees to my car—more than fifteen minutes in the dark—and drive back to Bamberg. Again all very neat.

  And much safer than the last time, if I didn’t foul up one way or another. I had brought my flashlight, with new batteries and a spare set in the car, along with me to be used only in the direst situation as I crept back to the Buick. But the stars, which were dense in the sky above me, would probably provide enough light.

  My knee was hurting again. A pain pill would help, but now was no time for deep sleep.

  No camera this time. I had all the pictures necessary to make my case the next morning to the general. Camera in hand, I might take some new damn foolish chances.

  Just as dusk was turning into night, as I rearranged my body in a foolish search for comfort, I felt something metal under my hand. The key, naturally. Now I had another spare. Damn fool.

  About twenty-one thirty (I was wearing a luminous wristwatch this time), the first headlights broke the dark in the meadow. Approximately the same number of vehicles as the last time.

  Nine-thirty was about the time I had noticed them on the occasions when I was on the autobahn and probably the same time as a week ago when my watch was of no help. So they were pretty punctual; they had reason to be. Get in, get it done, and get out. No communication necessary except if there was a cancellation. The other bunch should be here soon.

  They were. At nine thirty-five they rolled into the meadow. This was the way it was supposed to have been a week ago. No wonder the Bamberg guys were upset about the delay. Probably they had to meet scheduled distributions when they returned to Bamberg. A clockwork system. Time for me to get out.

  I waited a few more minutes, however, because I was fascinated by the scene. Twenty trucks and about forty men jammed into a couple of acres of meadow. The men were unloading and reloading government property as if they were preparing for the Normandy landing while bantering obscenely as GIs always do. Some of them probably were involved in Normandy, but hardly in the front lines. They didn’t act like criminals and they probably didn’t think they were criminals. They were just good Americans trying to make a little profit for themselves during dull duty in what used to be Germany. Stealing from the government was perhaps a crime technically but certainly not a real crime, was it?

  Not quite innocents abroad, but not malicious either. In the Occupation, all were on the take, weren’t they?

  Their mental attitude was not my problem. I thought of the assault on Trudi. That was what the black market was about: preying on the hungry and the sick. Worse than rum-running for Capone during prohibition. I recognized the orderlies who had attacked her. I had expected they’d be part of the Bamberg convoy.

  Definitely time for me to go. Unfortunately, as I struggled out of my woodchuck mode, I bumped against a dead branch on a small tree—that’s what I thought it was anyway—and sent the branch crashing into the forest.

  How could a single branch make so much noise?

  I jumped as quietly as I could behind a big tree.

  “What the fuck was that?” someone in the unloading circle said.

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Someone out in the forest.”

  “Animal?”

  “It didn’t sound like no flicking animal.”

  “One of our guys taking a leak.”

  “I’m going to have a look.”

  A flashlight beam swept the area around me, brushing against the tree behind which I was hiding.

  “See anything?”

  “Nah.”

  Did he know that a primitive road led away from the meadow? Maybe he had never noticed it because at night it would not catch anyone’s attention.

  He kept swinging the light back and forth.

  “Hey, there’s a road here.”

  “So what?”

  “I didn’t know there was a fucking road here.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “People could come down the road. They could be spying on us.”

  “Hey, the bosses must know that. They’re not worried.”

  “Maybe you’re fucking right.”

  He walked a few feet down the road and stood next to the tree where I was hiding. Time stopped. I held my breath. I listened to the GI’s breath and smelled his body odor. I willed for him to leave.

  All right, wise guy, what do you do now? He isn’t armed; why don’t you knock him out or choke him or do something like the commandos do in the movies? Maybe shoot him with a bow and arrow, except you don’t have a bow and arrow.

  He swept the road with his light.

  “Not much of a road. Doesn’t look like you could get
any of our vehicles down it.”

  Wrong, asshole. You can drive a Buick on this road. I know. I did it. A jeep could do it easily.

  I could stab him in such a way that he would die silently. I didn’t have a knife; I would not know how to use one if I did; and I couldn’t plunge a knife into another human being’s body, anyway.

  He fanned the forest on the other side of the road with his light and then, beginning at the far reach of his beam, began to search my side, slowly moving the light in my direction.

  Maybe, I prayed, he’ll miss me.

  A sharp noise erupted on the other side of the road, a creature of the night bolting through the forest. The GI fanned the forest in that direction with his light.

  “A fucking deer!” He laughed. “Nothing but a fucking deer!”

  “Let’s get back to work. The bosses will say we’re dogging it and dock some of our pay.”

  I was unwilling to start breathing until he and his buddy had returned to the work circle.

  Wage slaves, was that all they were? But the courts-martial would give them the big sentences and let the officers off with a slap on the wrist.

  I warned myself to be careful and crept back toward the highway. It was easier this time because of the starlight and because I knew the path a little better. It was probably safe to use my flashlight after the first hundred meters. But I wasn’t going to take any more chances. I limped the last hundred meters to the car, climbed in, turned on the ignition with my rediscovered keys, and redeployed out of there in a hurry.

  A letter from Rosie awaited me at the hotel. I read it as I swallowed a couple of pain pills.

  Dear Chuck,

  Thanks for the picture of the lovely beer garden. I’d like to sit in it with you some evening and drink beer (in very moderate amounts because that’s the most I dare) and eat sausage and listen to the band playing polkas.

  That’s what they do in beer gardens, isn’t it?

  Do you drink beer in them? I bet you don’t.

  I’m still not sure that I’m no longer the obnoxious little Rosie who plagued your childhood. I have changed a lot, Chuck. Or sometimes I think I haven’t changed at all. And then I think that maybe both are true. But I accept your offer of a truce and maybe even permanent peace. I can’t promise that I’ll always keep my bitchy little mouth shut, but I’ll sure try.

  Peg says that sometimes she thinks I’m too bright for my own good. I see too much and think too much. She says that’s why we’re a perfect match: we both think too much and worry too much. But the difference is that your worries are superficial and mine aren’t.

  I don’t mean to insult you, Chuck, or your precious worries. I think that they’re cute. But, because you’re an O’Malley and have been loved intensely all your life, you don’t have any deep down uncertainties. You are not ambitious enough, maybe, but, like Peg says, you’re going to be a great man someday despite yourself. (She adds that will happen only if you marry the right woman, which I’m sure you will.)

  Your worries don’t go to the bottom of your soul like mine do. You are not afraid that you’ll mess up and ruin your life. I am. If I amount to anything at all, it’s because the wonderful O’Malleys have always loved me.

  That’s more than I want to say, but I’ve written it and I won’t tear it up.

  I’d better stop now. I’ve said too much already.

  All my love,

  Rosemarie

  PS. Your last letter arrived just as I finished this one. There was nothing in the papers, so I guess you’re all right. Please let me know for sure.

  I would write a reply tomorrow. Now it was time to sleep.

  In my dreams I was chased through a forest but not by GIs. Rosemarie and Trudi and Peg and maybe my mom ran after me, shouting GI curses.

  The next morning, my knee dormant again, I sat across from General Meade at a conference table beneath the windows of his office. He would not like what I was about to say. I’d better do it right.

  “Well, son, shoot!” he began with a skeptical frown.

  “Sir, you told me several weeks ago that you told no one else in the office about our raid on the caviar smugglers. But did you tell anyone outside the office?”

  “Certainly not,” he bristled. “Are you accusing me of being the leak?”

  At one time I was pretty sure that he was. Now I doubted it, but I had to be certain.

  “Hardly, sir. I’m merely asking whether as a matter of routine policy you may have informed someone who was not in this office.”

  “I don’t like the way this is going, son. I said I told no one and I meant no one.”

  I then told him who else might know.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “A week ago Monday, sir, I took the liberty of driving back to the border post. I interviewed Sergeant Lane, who was in charge of the post. I showed him a number of pictures of officers and enlisted men and asked him if any of them had been a routine part of the smuggling operation. He identified this man as the leader.

  “Here, sir, is an affidavit from Sergeant Lane, testifying to the identification.”

  General Meade shook his head sadly. “Well, I guess you’ve found the leak all right,” he admitted grudgingly. “I almost wish you hadn’t.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No way we can give him a pass, is there?”

  “It’s your call, sir.”

  The general nodded, still not quite willing to accept what my narrative implied.

  “You remember, sir, the night last winter when I brought a shipment to you from Nürnberg?”

  “I do. That wasn’t black market, at least I don’t know that it was.”

  “Do you remember anything else about that night?”

  “Something about three hospital orderlies who had stolen penicillin and tried to rape a fräulein?”

  “Yes, sir, a young German woman. You will also remember that I reported the crime to CID. They found the names of the men, but no action against them was ever taken.”

  He nodded glumly. “It all begins to fit together, doesn’t it, Chuck?”

  “There was something else that night. I did not mention it to you because it didn’t seem important. I was delayed for about ten minutes between here and Nürnberg behind a heavy convoy that was occupying both lanes.”

  “They’re not supposed to do that.”

  “So I understand, sir. I drove out there again on a recent Thursday evening and encountered the same convoy. They turned off the road at approximately the same point. I discovered that it was in this general area around Büttenheim.” I showed him the large-scale aerial map I had liberated from Seventh Army. “The changes took place in this meadow.”

  I described their modus operandi.

  “How do you know about this, son?”

  “I was there, sir.”

  “You were there?”

  “Yes, sir. I secreted myself in the woods and watched them.”

  “That was very dangerous.”

  “I don’t believe it was, sir. Except to my knee when I stumbled into my car as I was redeploying down this road.”

  “I see. . . . Chuck, I don’t doubt any of this, but do you have any proof that what you claimed to have observed was actually happening?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  I removed my five best prints and spread them on the table, including the close-up of the leader of the Bamberg Outfit.

  “How did you get these pictures?”

  “I joined them, sir. I was wearing fatigues as they were. I assumed that they didn’t know all their counterparts from the other end—whichever end it was. I reasoned that if I drifted in like I belonged there, no one would notice me. I did so and managed to take a few covert pictures.”

  “That was very, very risky.”

  I shrugged indifferently. “As you probably have guessed, sir, I was there again last night. So were they.” I smiled slightly. “I didn’t think more photography was necessary.”

&nb
sp; “No, it wasn’t,” the general sighed. He paused a moment to ponder. “Why, son?”

  “Why did I conduct this investigation?”

  “Oh, no. I understand that. You take your oath to protect the laws of the United States of America seriously . . . as I do, as much as it will pain me to do so in this matter.”

  Moreover, the general was well aware that if someone else discovered the black-market links when he was in command, he himself would be suspected and held responsible. That would be the end of his career. He realized, or would shortly, that I had saved his ass.

  “You mean why this officer . . . For the money I suppose. It was there to take. No matter what happened to his career in future years, he would never be poor. He did not expect to be caught.”

  “And he was responsible for the attempted rape on the young woman you rescued?”

  “Indirectly, yes, sir.”

  The general nodded grimly. “I’m sure you have a plan, son. I presume it is brilliant. I hope it isn’t too dangerous.”

  “It’s not dangerous at all, sir. We will have to move on it in the utmost secrecy.”

  I outlined the plan I had developed in Büttenheim yesterday.

  He nodded. “I see you’ve thought it all through.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Three platoons? B Company?”

  “Yes, sir. We brief the officers on Thursday morning and forbid them to discuss it with anyone. We gather the troops at sixteen hundred and take the two-lane highway to Büttenheim. Only when we’ve mobilized the troops there do we explain the mission to them.”

  He studied the maps and then studied me. “What are you going to be, Chuck?”

  “You mean when I grow up, sir?”

  “All right, young man, what are you going to be when you grow u?”

  “An accountant, sir.”

  His laughter at that filled the whole episcopal throne room.

  I didn’t see what was so funny.

  So, it was all set.