by Alex George
For as long as he could remember, Polk’s life had revolved around alcohol—the making of it, the serving of it, and the drinking of it. There had been women once, but a long time ago. They had all escaped in the end. One had married a cattle farmer and gone to live in a big house in Cooper County, where she’d had eleven children. Another departed for Topeka soon after a young and over-ardent Polk had left a necklace of walnut-sized bite marks on her neck.
Then there had been Loretta Heismoth. Loretta was a farm girl with a hint of a mustache on her upper lip and legs as solid as tree trunks. Over the course of one blissful summer, in a secluded spot in one of her father’s cornfields, she let Polk do more than any of the other girls had ever done. His hands had been allowed to wander a little farther on each fevered excursion. He dreamed constantly of what lay beneath the seemingly inexhaustible layers of Loretta’s undergarments. Progress was tantalizing but slow. As fall closed in, Polk began to worry that his time was running out. It turned out that he was right, although not quite in the way he’d imagined.
Early one September morning, Loretta’s gelding, Buster, was stung by a wasp on his hindquarters while she was cleaning out his stable. The horse lashed out with his hind legs just as she was bending down to shovel his droppings into a bucket. When they found Loretta some hours later, there was a perfect facsimile of a horseshoe in the middle of her forehead. It had been a closed casket service. Polk had sat in the church behind Loretta’s family, and wept along with them. His tears were born more from frustration than grief, but they were just as heartfelt.
This was more than fifty years ago. Polk had given up on women after that. There was more fidelity at the bottom of a bottle, less chance of humiliation in the next morning’s hangover. Polk hadn’t thought about romance for years—until Jette walked into the Nick-Nack that morning and turned his life upside down.
Perhaps the shock of Frederick’s departure had momentarily lowered the ancient bartender’s emotional defenses. Perhaps there was something about Jette’s physical heft that reminded him of poor Loretta Heismoth. Whatever the reason, as he leaned against his broom, Polk felt the fingers of God brush lightly over his soul. He had seen my grandmother many times before, of course. She had often come to the tavern for Frederick’s musical performances. Then she had stood quietly at the back of the room, never emerging from out of her husband’s shadow. Now, though! She had stepped into the light, a life force of impossible loveliness. Jette stood by the bar, impatiently waiting for an answer. Something slipped within him.
“Yes, Frau Meisenheimer,” he croaked.
“Good. Thank you.” Jette was calm, all business. “Let’s see, we have a few hours before we open. Perhaps it would be best if we started with the prices.”
Helpless to resist the quiet dignity of this little speech, Polk fell in love. Jette was twice his size, forty years younger, and married to his boss: the noble futility of it all was irresistible. He saw the chance for one final, doomed waltz with heartache.
In some ways, Polk was an incurable romantic. He understood that it was the act of loving, not of being loved, that mattered. He would keep his infatuation to himself. Besides, he had come to like and respect Frederick. Perhaps falling in love with his wife, if done correctly, might be considered a compliment. A beatific calm settled upon him. His unilateral adoration for Jette Meisenheimer would be a final, cleansing absolution. And, once in a while, he would bathe in the heroic misery of it all.
So Polk became a silent foot soldier of love, trudging onward with his exquisite burden. He spent the rest of the day explaining to Jette how the Nick-Nack was run. Her gaze made him stammer and blush like a young boy. Soon he was yearning for the first customer to walk through the door and rescue him. More than anything, he needed a drink.
When Polk collapsed at the end of that first night, he fell further and harder than he had ever fallen before.
Jette had been sure that the Nick-Nack’s customers would be horrified when they heard that Frederick had volunteered for the army. They would shake their heads and shuffle quietly away to their tables to contemplate her husband’s irresponsible behavior. An air of sober reflection would descend.
By the end of her first evening behind the bar, as the loud, drunken crowd launched into their sixth joyful rendition of the national anthem, Jette stepped out into the alleyway behind the tavern and shed hot, angry tears. There had been no shocked silence at the news, no bemused outrage. Instead, Frederick’s departure had been met with rapturous celebration. He had gone off to fight for the country he loved! He was a hero! Toast after toast was drunk. Rambling speeches were made, full of frank admiration.
After that, to Jette’s dismay, the Nick-Nack became the town’s war room. Men went there to talk about the latest news. Reports were analyzed, tactical developments discussed. Drinks were drunk—and so, inevitably, songs were sung. There were no German tunes now, of course. Instead the men swayed to “America the Beautiful,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Jette quickly came to loathe them all. She wondered what Frederick was doing. She was sure he was not singing.
When news reached the Nick-Nack of the death of a local soldier, an impromptu wake would be held. She hated those evenings most of all. Men sat quietly at their tables, raising their glasses to the fallen hero. It did not take long for the place to fall into an inebriated stupor. Those with the energy to fight often did. Jette watched this maudlin buffoonery with barely suppressed contempt. To make matters worse, the excessive consumption of alcohol, when combined with the contemplation of their own mortality, had a strangely libidinous effect on some of the Nick-Nack’s clientele. It seemed that no man was immune to my grandmother’s charms if he had enough drinks inside him, and poor Jette had to be constantly on her guard. I say “poor Jette,” but she never regretted these encounters half as much as the fools who tried their luck with her. The punch that had floored Frederick at the moment of Joseph’s birth was no fluke. She had a good eye and the size and strength to ensure that anyone she hit wouldn’t forget it in a hurry. Although she only swung her fists in self-defense, every blow she landed bore the full force of her accumulated fury and frustration. Her victims would not return to the tavern for several days afterward, hiding their bruises. Heaven knows what they told their wives.
Jette’s English improved dramatically when she began working at the Nick-Nack. During the day she would speak to Polk quietly in German, but when the doors opened she turned and faced the world with foreign words heavy on her tongue. She was a fast learner. Unlike Frederick, she did not study textbooks and newspapers; the Nick-Nack was her classroom. As a result, she was soon speaking with a splendidly idiomatic grasp of the vernacular that her husband never acquired, for all his diligence.
My grandmother continued Frederick’s policy of booking bands, although for different reasons. Music could drown out the men’s incessant talk about the war. Her booking policy was based largely on the volume of noise that the musicians were capable of generating. A really loud band could even stop the men from singing their stupid patriotic songs. She had only one rule: there was no more opera. The tunes that Frederick had made his own remained unsung.
While Jette struggled to come to terms with life without her husband, Joseph and Rosa were fighting battles of their own.
The children’s lives had been turned upside down by Frederick’s departure. Unfamiliar routines were forced upon them, now that Jette was working at the Nick-Nack. Each evening Joseph gravely led his sister to the tavern, where Jette fed them supper and put them to bed on improvised pallets in the back room. Joseph lay awake in the darkness, listening to the sounds of revelry through the wall, and thought about his father. At the end of each night, they made their weary way back home, Rosa asleep in Jette’s arms and Joseph doing his best to hide his yawns, baffled by exhaustion and sadness.
Joseph was devastated by Frederick’s desertion.
He could not help believing that he was to blame. His attempt to reconcile his warring parents had failed—and now Frederick was gone. Guilt swarmed around him, blocking out the light. He clung to Jette’s promise that Frederick would be home soon, and did his best to be brave. He tried not to think too much about where his father might be and what he might be doing, but it was a source of fascination for Stefan. Joseph listened numbly as his friend speculated endlessly about how many men his father had killed. He was unable to connect the steely, ruthless hero of Stefan’s imagination with the gentle man he knew and loved.
Once a week my father walked across town to the Bloomberg farm, where he and Riva planned a grand recital to celebrate Frederick’s return. Joseph felt happiest when he could disappear into the music and submerge himself in all that beauty. In between the songs, he told Riva Bloomberg how it would be: where Frederick would sit, how he would react to each piece. She listened with a sad smile on her face.
Rosa was too young to understand exactly where her father had gone. All she knew was that he was no longer there. Like her brother, she imagined herself responsible for his absence: she believed that Frederick had left because he did not love her. Her hypochondria worsened. Every week she was laid low by a fresh barrage of imagined ailments. But her broken heart was real enough.
One day in the early fall of 1917 Rosa looked out the kitchen window and saw a fat raccoon sunning himself on the roof of the outhouse. He lay on his back, quite still but for his long striped tail, which occasionally gave a languid flick in the warm afternoon air. He looked as if he did not have a care in the world. She went outside to get a closer look. At the sound of the kitchen door clicking shut, the raccoon slowly rolled over onto his belly and peered down at her from the roof.
“Hello,” said Rosa. “What are you doing up there?”
The raccoon studied her unblinkingly for a long moment and then rolled onto his back again with what sounded like a deep sigh.
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” said Rosa.
The raccoon sighed again, but did not move.
Rosa was used to having to work hard to get the attention of others. There was no reason why wildlife should be any different from her parents or brother. She went back into the kitchen, cut an apple into slices, and carried the fruit outside on a plate. She put it down on the grass and took a step backward.
“I brought you something,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
The raccoon’s head popped into sight again. He looked down thoughtfully at the fruit, and then vanished. There was an effortful scrabbling noise, and then the raccoon appeared from around the corner of the outhouse, heading for the plate. Rosa stood quite still and watched as the apple quickly disappeared. When he had finished, the raccoon picked up the plate and looked hopefully underneath it to see if there was any more to eat. Then he turned and looked Rosa in the eye for a moment before scurrying back to the outhouse. Moments later he was back on the roof, basking in the sun once more.
The next day the raccoon was sunbathing again, and the day after that. Each afternoon Rosa put a plate of fruit out for him, and watched from a distance while he ate. She decided to name him Mr. Jim.
The raccoon was extraordinarily fat and lazy. Not for him the joyous cavorting about of his peers. There was nothing Mr. Jim loved more than his long siestas on the roof of the family latrine. Each day, Rosa stood a little closer as she watched him eat his snack. Before long she was within touching distance of him. One afternoon she did not put the apple pieces on a plate, but held them out to him instead. To her delight, he shuffled closer and carefully took each slice from her fingertips.
Soon, much of Rosa’s day began to revolve around the plump little creature. She spent hours watching him pad about the yard, casually sniffing out food and making himself at home. The only time he grew agitated was when other raccoons tried to eat Rosa’s fruit. Then he quickly saw the intruders off, growling and snapping at them until they retreated. Rosa was pleased—Mr. Jim knew that the food was meant for him alone. Before long she was able to feed him sugar cubes out of the palm of her hand, and played with him like a regular pet.
The two of them quickly became devoted to each other. The minute Rosa stepped out of the kitchen door Mr. Jim would materialize, as if he had been waiting all day for her to appear. They would find a warm spot in the sun, and there Rosa would feed him and scratch his stomach. Mr. Jim lay on his back, his little legs akimbo, sighing blissfully.
One morning the little raccoon hobbled gingerly across the yard, and held his front paw up for Rosa’s inspection. It was dark with blood. “Oh, you poor thing,” whispered Rosa. “What did you do?” She went inside and fetched the family first-aid kit. Mr. Jim watched as she looked through Jette’s box of home remedies. (My aunt, of course, was very well-acquainted with all of the various rubs and tinctures in that box.) She pulled out some alum peroxide and iodine. “Here, boy,” she said. “Let’s get you tidied up.”
The raccoon did not move as Rosa cleaned the wound and then tightly bandaged his paw in gauze. When she had finished, Mr. Jim limped cautiously around the yard with a mournful look on his face. Rosa went to fetch her mother.
“Look at him,” she said. “He’s too hurt to go back out into the wild.”
Jette watched the raccoon shuffle lopsidedly by. “What are you proposing, Rosa?” she asked.
“Can’t he come and live with us?”
“I thought he already did,” said Jette dryly.
“No, but I mean really live with us,” said Rosa. “He could be the family pet. We could take it in turns to—”
Jette shook her head. “I like Mr. Jim just fine, but he’s not coming indoors.”
“Just until he gets better,” pleaded Rosa.
Jette sighed. “All right, look. If you want to make a little bed for him on the porch, that would be fine. Just until his paw gets better. But he stays outside.”
They found a wooden crate, and Rosa spent the rest of the day transforming the box into a luxury raccoon accommodation. To her delight, Mr. Jim climbed right into the warm bed of straw that she had prepared for him. After that, Rosa dedicated herself to nursing Mr. Jim back to health. She checked and cleaned the wound every day and lavished double rations of fruit on the invalid.
Of course, that raccoon was no fool. He knew a good thing when he saw it. Even once his foot had healed, he returned to his comfortable crate every night. Jette had planned to throw the makeshift bed away, but she could see how much Rosa adored the little creature. In fact, she had grown quite fond of him herself. And so the crate was allowed to stay on the back porch, and my aunt continued to lavish all her untapped reserves of affection on the lucky creature. Thanks to Mr. Jim, Rosa finally found a way to escape her loneliness and heartache.
When Frederick’s first letter arrived, Jette had been too angry to open it. During those first days without him, her fury had propelled her onward in a whirlwind of indignation, eclipsing sorrow. The next day, a second letter was delivered, and she dropped it unopened on top of the first. Another envelope joined the pile the next morning, then another.
After two weeks, Jette felt her resolve wobble. She moved the letters to the ledge above the fireplace, where she wouldn’t have to look at them all day. Each morning a new envelope arrived. Jette found herself wishing that Frederick would miss a day, just once. But he never did. The letters sat in chronological order beneath the terra-cotta angel’s wing. Not one of them had been opened.
By the spring of 1918, however, Frederick’s unswerving dedication to his epistolary task had begun to provide Jette with a measure of lonely comfort. Her anger had not survived the long winter nights. Now she simply missed him, and wanted him home again. She still did not open the envelopes when they arrived—it was too late for that—but now she began to dread the morning when the postman’s hands would be empty. While the letters kept coming, she kn
ew that Frederick was still alive. And so that unread library became a testament to hope.
THIRTEEN
When Frederick’s train arrived in Kansas City, a committee of officers barked and cajoled the new recruits into straggling lines. They were led to a hall across from the station, where temporary lodgings had been established. Exhausted by his uncomfortable night in the outdoor latrine and the journey west, Frederick slept deeply, too tired to dream.
The following morning the men were woken before the sun had risen, and for the next three hours they paraded up and down a hastily cleared strip of land in their civilian clothes. A granite-faced captain screamed orders at them. By the middle of the morning the sun had risen high in the sky, baking the makeshift parade ground in stupefying heat. Frederick marched and spun to the left and right, his heart filled with foreboding. That night he lay on his bed and wrote another letter home.
Frederick was at least ten years older than all the other recruits. The men didn’t know whether to laugh at him for his advanced years or respect him for volunteering. He passed the physical, but only just. The army needed men; it wasn’t going to set the bar too high. After five days of marching and saluting, Frederick filed through the quartermaster’s store and was finally handed his uniform. He was now an infantryman in the 35th Division of the United States Army. His platoon was moved out of their quarters and put on a train heading south.
For the next seven months, Frederick’s home was a vast encampment of tents on a bleak, windswept plateau of rock, high above the Oklahoma plains. During that winter he forgot most of what he knew of himself, and learned how to be a soldier. He marched for miles across barren landscapes, buffeted by high winds and blinded by dust storms. He dug trenches in the frozen ground, unable to feel his frostbitten fingers. He rehearsed drills for poisonous gas attacks. He skewered countless sacks, practicing how to twist his bayonet into a man’s stomach without catching the blade. He learned a number of ways to kill a man.