“You pulled that on Carl?” Eric asked. “That’s just wrong.”
Max nearly blurted out a rather scathing commentary, which would have made the claim that the only thing worse than calling someone an “imbecile” was to actually treat them as though you genuinely believed they were mentally deficient, but then Houdini found his way to Carl’s collar and proceeded to nibble on Carl’s cheek. In the poor light, Houdini barely noticed the little lasso that Carl had made from the string and looped over his ear. The minute Houdini inched through the lasso, Carl yanked it and had the wily little ferret on a leash.
Carl pulled a band of cloth out of his pocket and put it around Houdini’s neck. He adjusted it through a buckle at the end and then, as fast as lighting, he tied a tiny little bell to it, all while laughing off the barrage of bites Houdini was laying on Carl’s giant bunny hand. Once he was sure the bell was secure, he released Houdini and the ferret scurried away into the dark, the little tinkling of his bell revealing his every step.
“There, now you won’t lose him,” Carl said. “I put those on all my rats. Keep a few on me at all times, just in case.”
Max wondered why she’d never thought of that herself.
“Why did you draw all this junk on the walls?” Lola asked, having silently been reading the incantations scrawled around them for herself.
“I didn’t. They were here when we moved in.”
“That’s kind of scary, don’t you think?”
“Hobos are crazy,” Shoji said. “But they’re almost always harmless.”
“What if it wasn’t hobos, though?” Lola was the sort who asked the important questions. “What if it was pagan witches and they were using this place as their coven?”
“If they were pagans, they were amateur pagans,” Max said. “Trust me, these drawings are nothing more than some half-witted kid’s way of showing that they have far too much time on their hands.”
“Which is something we don’t have,” Eric said. “The longer we wait to put Judy and her buddies in their place, the less time we have to actually enjoy this school year. So we need to come up with some better pranks than this stupid candle-eating one.” He sighed. “Or my pigtails in the ink one.”
Houdini, clearly quite frustrated with the jingling passenger the giant bunny rabbit had put on his neck, inched over to Max’s ankles and nibbled at her sock. She scooped him up and patted his naturally pungent ferret forehead.
“Oh, so just ’cause she fooled you, the candle thing is stupid now?” Shoji had had enough of Eric’s nonsense. Max, on the other hand, knew Eric had a point.
“No,” Max said. “Because every idea so far would be as sneaky as a ferret wearing a bell. They’ll see us coming from a mile away.”
As if to illustrate this dynamic, Houdini attempted to crawl onto her shoulder, realized that the little tinkler was still on board, and instead fell asleep. The giant bunny rabbits nodded their heads as they understood their natural predator’s plight. This, at least, helped Houdini to have pleasant dreams.
“So what do we do?” Lola asked.
The room grew silent as they all attempted to find the perfect prank plan.
“We could get a bomb and attach it to their alarm clock,” Shoji finally said.
“Wow, you really watch too many cartoons, don’t you?” Eric sneered.
Shoji leaped at him and they fell to the ground, rolling around and smacking each other silly. After a few seconds, Carl went over and pulled them off each other by their collars. Max wondered if he had any bells he could put on them.
“Let me think about it,” Max said. “I promise, I’ll come up with something.”
At the top of the stairs, someone knocked on the heavy door. “Lola, you down there?” a woman’s voice yelled.
“Yeah, Mamaw! What you need?” Lola yelled back.
“Papaw needs some help with the feed.”
Lola sighed dramatically. “I have to go, guys.”
Carl stood, “Want some help? I can carry two bags at a time.”
“What I want,” Lola snapped back, loud enough that her grandmother could hear, “is for my grandfather to get over himself and hire one of those prisoners to help with the chores. Heck, even Judy’s folks have one that tends their garden three days a week.”
Max felt an inkling of inspiration coming into her mind. She was finally getting over her disdain for the practice of allowing the best-behaved Nazi prisoners to find jobs in the area to earn some money, which they could use in the camp or even save and take home with them. If they ever went home.
But she knew that others in the area hadn’t yet embraced the concept of letting the animals out of the zoo. She would have assumed Judy was among that number.
She had no idea what exactly this fact was inspiring in her mind, but she was certain it would be brilliant. Or at least exciting. And probably the thing she needed to get the rest of the Gremlins to fall in line behind her lead.
She stroked Houdini’s back. She’d take the collar off whenever Carl went home. You can’t be hurt by that which you do not see happen.
Unless you were one of the Mesquite Tree Girls, of course.
Chapter Nine
Max generally made it a point to never become nervous. Or, if that goal proved impossible, she at least would never show how nervous she was to anyone.
As she rode in the car with her mother to meet Major Larousse in his office, even that ambition was severely threatened, for her mother had stated that they needed to have a “family discussion.” Merely twenty minutes after the meeting of the Gremlins. A meeting which, she now realized, could have been easily overheard by the ever-listening ears of her mother. The cellar echoed quite a bit, after all, and her mother had been hanging laundry when they left its depths and entered the light of day. And she’d had that look, like a mighty eagle circling over its prey.
She knows we’re up to something. And she’s not happy at all.
Max tried to decipher what the punishment would be for conspiring to ruin the lives of pretty bullies, and she finally laid her best guess on a written apology and, perhaps, being forced to leave the Gremlins to their own devices. And, of course, the business end of the persnickety switch that had taught many a lesson to Max’s backside. Usually from Grandma Schauder, but Max was fairly certain her mother had learned the fine art of swatting before they moved away.
When they arrived at the gate and the guard checked them in, Max decided to turn the tables on her mother and force her hand. “Is this about me and the Gremlins?”
Her mother laughed. “The who?”
“The Gremlins. The kids I was hanging out with in the storm cellar.”
“No, it’s not,” Mrs. Larousse answered. “Though I am happy to see that you’ve moved on to an entirely new group of friends. That’s very Manhattan of you.”
Max breathed a sigh of relief. You have no idea, Mother. “Well, you can take the girl out of the city, I guess.”
“But good luck trying to borrow her train fare?”
“Exactly. Though, I’m not so sure I’d classify them as ‘friends.’”
Her mother grew silent after hearing this statement, a troubled look in her eyes speaking all the thoughts she didn’t want her mouth to convey. Max could tell it was going to be a long evening.
They parked outside of Major Larousse’s office and headed in. Mrs. Larousse paused at the door. “It’s a nice day, why don’t you wait here on the porch instead of in that horrible green chair?”
“Or I could just sit in his office,” Max said.
“We need to talk before we talk to you,” her mother said.
Max sighed. “Fine, I’ll sit out here and die in the sun.”
“That’s my girl,” Mrs. Larousse said and headed inside.
Max stood for a minute or so, watching the hustle and bustle of the camp maintaining its own busy exterior, and then she sat on the steps and began to draw on the concrete with a piece of chalk from her pocket. At first
she doodled flowers and birds, then she decided to move on from the cliché and began to diagram different possible ways for the Gremlins to make Judy’s life miserable, all without getting caught.
As she drew a bucket of water falling on a stick figure’s head, a pair of drab boots walked up the sidewalk and stopped in front of her. She looked up into the blue eyes of Felix, carrying his broom and dustpan to begin cleaning the hallway again.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Nein,” he said. He stepped around her to go inside.
“Hold on,” she said to his back as he opened the door. He stopped and closed it. “There’s something that’s been bothering me ever since the rec hall. How did you know that trick I was practicing was from Madame Herrmann?”
He turned and looked at the diagram she was drawing again. “And this? Is this from Frau Herrmann as well?”
She looked at the squiggly line she’d drawn for Judy’s frustrated grimace. The whole diagram, nay the whole excursion, suddenly seemed even more juvenile than before. “No, of course not.”
“Of course not,” Felix said. “Perhaps you should apply your energies to the finer illusions and leave the”—he cleared his throat—“mischief to smaller minds.”
“Okay, but why do you care?”
“Why would a chef care that a man capable of cooking fine French cuisine is instead making ham sandwiches in a diner? Why would an artist care if Picasso decided to paint signs until he died? Those of us who care about such things, care about such things.”
Max pondered his words. “So, wait, are you a magician?”
Felix looked left and right, then sat down next to her on the steps. “I am Felix Roth, soldier of the Third Reich, now a prisoner of war. But before that, I was . . . a different man. I made things with these hands.” He held his hands, calloused and cracked, before her. “Before I made war with these hands, I made marvelous things.”
“Magical things?” she asked with a devilish grin, a grin he returned.
“For magical people?” he asked. “Perhaps.”
“Where did you do this? In Berlin?”
Before he could answer, the door swung open and Major Larousse stepped onto the porch. Felix jumped up and cast his gaze to the ground.
“Why are you talking to my daughter?” Major Larousse asked.
“Apologies,” Felix replied. He nodded to Max. “Apologies, fräulein.” He moved to walk inside the building. Major Larousse grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Felix, you’re a good guy,” he said. “Anybody else, I’d throw them in the clink right now. But I like you, okay? So, just don’t let this happen again. Got it?”
“Jawohl,” Felix said. “Vielen Dank, Major Larousse.”
“You’re welcome. And we say ‘Yes, sir’ around here, okay?”
“Jawohl,” Felix said. “I mean, yes, sir.”
Major Larousse patted him on the back and let him walk inside. He held out his hand to help Max up. “Alright, are you ready for our big family meeting?”
Max felt a lump find its way into her throat. Pesky things, they always picked the worst times. She followed the major down the hall and into his office, where her mother was seated in the most comfortable chair in the room, clearly rattled by the content of the upcoming conversation.
“Have a seat,” Major Larousse said as he sat in the most menacing chair in the room. Which left the most diminutive chair for her. How fitting.
“Can I just apologize and get this whole thing over with?” Max asked. Neither of them chuckled. This was not going to be pleasant.
“Your mother tells me that you’re having trouble finding friends at school.”
Max almost blurted out the newfound Gremlins as proof that they were wrong, but thought better of it. She’d already denied the quality of their friendship to her mother, and for good reason. Her relationship with the Gremlins was a coalition against a common enemy. And any such partnership forged in the fires of injustice would probably not suit the fickle tastes of her parents. Instead she nodded.
“Well, I can identify with that,” Major Larousse said. He sat back in his chair and looked over into the dark shadows at the other end of the room. “Trust me, every day I realize that I’m not making any friends in this job. Between the prisoners who’d rather be back shooting at our soldiers, and the guards who’d rather be shooting at the Germans, I find very few friendly faces in this place.”
Mrs. Larousse cleared her throat. He snapped his eyes back to his daughter. Apparently, he’d had his own lecture earlier reminding him of his long-neglected post as her patriarch.
“But I think we can change that. For both of us.” He stood and came around his desk. “Maxine, what is your biggest dream?”
“To find a wizard’s wand and finally make some real magic?”
He laughed. “Think smaller. And more realistic.”
“To perfect the FLOATING CARD TRICK?”
“Bigger.”
“To be the next QUEEN OF MAGIC and travel around the world, performing in every major venue that Madame Herrmann did in her day?”
“Uh, smaller again.”
Mrs. Larousse coughed. Major Larousse nodded.
“Right, right, okay, I’ll just tell you.” He took a deep breath. “Max, how would you like to do a magic show here, right in our rec hall?”
The skills of perceiving illusions had long been ingrained in Max’s mind, so she quickly scanned both of her parents’ faces to make sure this was not some high form of parental trickery before she allowed herself to respond. As far as she could tell, there was no hint of deception, which either meant that the major was an even better trickster than she was, or that he was serious.
And he’s really bad at tricking people, which means . . .
Oh my gosh, he’s serious!
She jumped out of her chair and attacked his neck with a hug so tight he might have been able to file for another purple heart, since it took place in the line of duty. He patted her, not how a father pats his daughter, but more like how one might pat a vagrant before they called the police. Still, she’d take it. Next she tackled her mother with the same gusto, thankfully not as unexpectedly, so her mother was prepared to fend off the onslaught of enthusiasm and protect herself from dying of her daughter’s excitement.
“And this was entirely your father’s idea,” her mother croaked out from the vise of Max’s arms. “Doesn’t he know you so well?”
“Not entirely my idea,” Major Larousse interjected. Mrs. Larousse shot him yet another look. He shrugged in desperation. “Credit where credit is due, Karly. The whole thing was sparked by a comment from that old boy you were talking to out on the porch.”
“Felix?” Max was beginning to feel as though this German was somehow psychically connected to her. And she wasn’t the sort to believe in such things. But it was awfully strange how interested in her life he seemed to be.
“Yes, Felix.” Major Larousse caught the concerned look on Max’s face. “He’s not a bad guy, to be honest with you. Probably one of the nicer prisoners we’ve got.”
“But still a Nazi,” Mrs. Larousse said. “Let’s not forget that.” She seemed to be second-guessing this whole idea. Max shot the major a panicked look. To be this close and then have her dream snatched from under her just because her mother didn’t like the person who sparked the idea would be unbearable.
“No, no, he’s not like that,” Major Larousse said, stammering, so unsure of his footing in this conversation anymore. “In fact, he’s been in the States before. Spent a good amount of time here before the war. He’s commented on how fond he is of our country. I really don’t think he has malicious feelings at all.”
“Where did he live while he was here?” Max asked, hoping to add more ammunition to the weapon defending her magic show.
“I don’t really know, to be honest. Not even sure how long he was here for, or why, or anything else. He’s not the most talkative of the Nazis, that’s for sure.”
Max could hear the rhythm of Felix’s broom out in the hallway, perhaps communicating far more about his character than words ever could.
“I should go tell him ‘thank you,’” she said.
“I don’t—” Major Larousse began, then he stopped himself. “You know what? Yes. This time only, I’ll give you permission to speak to a prisoner. But only this one time, understand?”
Max’s mother had the look of a person unsure whether to be adamant because her daughter was cavorting with the worst enemy the world had ever known, or to be joyful that, at last, her husband seemed to be trying again. She sighed and sat down.
Max hugged the major one more time—he again looked as comfortable as a koala climbing a cactus—and then she rushed out the door to express her gratitude to the Nazi.
Chapter Ten
Felix’s back was turned to her when she entered the hallway, and for a brief moment she envisioned herself running up to him and attack-hugging him from behind. But then she remembered when the major had just returned from the war and she surprised him in the middle of the night. Major Larousse grabbed her by the arm and tossed her, head over heels, across the room. Thankfully she’d landed on their sofa, but it had knocked the wind out of her. This was when she’d learned that the war does not so easily leave its valiant soldiers behind.
And Felix was a Nazi. She’d hate to see what the war still living in his heart would do.
She approached him meekly and tapped on his shoulder.
“Yes, fräulein?” he said without turning.
“My father just told me that I’m going to put on a magic show in the rec hall for the prisoners.”
He stopped sweeping. “That is wonderful news. Congratulations.” He turned to look at her. “I’m certain you will do Frau Herrmann proud.”
She blushed, which was not in her usual social repertoire. “He also told me that you had something to do with it.”
“He is too kind, of course,” Felix said and diverted his gaze.
“Well, thank you,” she said.
He nodded. “Bitte.” He turned back to resume sweeping.
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