AbrakaPOW

by Isaiah Campbell

  When she said that, he covered his mouth with his hand and turned from her. “No, no, no, Lassen Sie es nicht wahr sein.”

  “I just told you, it is true,” she said. “Es stimmt. So you might as well get over it.”

  Her voice speaking German seemed to knock the crying off his face, and he stared at her, puzzled and seemingly amused. “Stimmt es?”

  “I don’t know how to lie in German,” she said.

  That made him chuckle, but everything else made him end his chuckling before it could change the mood in the air. “But why? Why are you canceling?”

  “I thought you were listening. I told all this to Gil.”

  “I did not come by until you were finishing your discussion.”

  She sighed. She did not feel like going into all the details of why she felt the way she did and how she came to her decision, especially not with him. “There’re lots of reasons,” she said.

  “I am listening.”

  “Okay, fine, if you want to hear a reason, I’ll name one.” She picked up a hammer and pointed it at him. “You haven’t been completely honest with me.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

  “You made me believe that you were some poor sap who got his heart broken and that’s why you went back to Germany. But that’s not even close to the truth. You were arrested for attempting to incite a Nazi uprising in America. And don’t try to deny it.”

  He stared at her for a while, possibly attempting to find a way to deny what she was saying. Finally, he slid a mop bucket over and sat down. “Yes, that was why I was arrested.”

  “Aha! So you admit it.”

  He nodded. “But I was not attempting to incite an uprising.”

  “Then why did they arrest you?”

  “Because I am a fool.”

  She paused to ponder that statement. “Okay, yeah, I’ll believe that. Go on.”

  He took a very deep breath and let it out slowly. “The day I was arrested was the day I had intended to make the most rash, headstrong, dangerous decision of my life.”

  “What, were you going to assassinate the president or something?”

  He scolded her with his eyes. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Rather, I was going to ask Josephine to become my wife.”

  She set the hammer down on the floor. “That’s not what I was expecting.”

  “I had purchased the ring and a dozen roses. I had everything I needed for a beautiful proposal. Everything except courage. So I went to a place that sells courage by the pint.”

  “You mean like a bar?”

  “A pub,” he said. “A German pub in Manhattan. I went and intended to only have one drink, but a group of men overheard my plans, and so they each bought me another glass. In appreciation, I sat with them at their table and contributed to their rousing conversation.”

  “Let me guess, they were Nazi sympathizers and you got guilt by association.”

  “They were Nazi sympathizers, yes,” he said. “And I was a fool. As they spoke, it reminded me of the conversations mein Vater would have with the friends he fought with in the Great War. Speaking of the offense that had been leveled on our home country and the need for Deutschland to rise again. And so, perhaps to honor my father or perhaps simply to fit in, I spoke as they were, as he once did. I said the very things that had driven me away from my family in the first place. I pretended that I believed in their cause.”

  Max began to feel sorry, not so much for Felix, but for Josephine. “So somebody heard you.”

  He nodded. “A few hours later, I walked to Josephine’s house, finally filled with the courage I had been seeking. But reaching her house was not part of my destiny. Two blocks away, I was stopped by four men in black suits. They took me and shackled me in handcuffs. They forced me into the back of their car, and they drove me away. I strained to see the flowers they had taken from my hands and tossed onto the sidewalk. They were already trampled by the time we turned a corner.”

  “What about Josephine? What did she say when she found out?”

  “I do not know. I wrote to her the moment I was allowed, but she never sent me anything in return. Perhaps they were not delivering my letters to her, or perhaps they were holding hers from me. Or, as I truly began to believe, perhaps she had heard the accusations against me and could not love a man such as that. Such as me.”

  Max could feel that she was yet again buying into the words and deeds of this man, in spite of all the warnings Gil had given her. “That’s really sad. I mean that. But, still, I don’t see why you care about this magic show so much. Who cares if I cancel?”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the map-napkin. “When they took me from my Josephine, they took away everything I loved. When they sent me to Germany and I was made a Nazi, I became everything I hate.” He looked up at her. “A life in which there is no love, in which there is only hate, this is not a life worth living. And it was not a life I intended to live much longer.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You and your magic show gave me a reason to stay alive another day.”

  The gravity of his words sank into Max’s cranium. Every magician tries their best to paint their tricks as though someone’s very life is at stake. To actually have someone’s life in her hands, though, was an entirely new responsibility. And not one with which she felt particularly comfortable.

  Of course, responsibility is most often not what we request, but rather what we are given. And, as such, she knew what she must do.

  “Okay, fine, if you’re gonna kill yourself over it, I won’t cancel the show. But you better make sure it’s a danged good one. And our final trick had better blow everybody away.”

  He jumped up, grabbed her hand, and kissed it. “Fräulein, I promise you, the final trick will be remembered forever.”

  She sincerely hoped he meant that in a good way. And, of course, she also hoped she could somehow get the Gremlins on the same page.

  But, like Gil said, a true performer sees the show through to the end. No matter how many Erics stood in her way.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “No, I wasn’t giving up. I was just exploring all my options. Okay, I was giving up.”

  —Max’s Diary, Saturday, March 25, 1944

  It occurred to Max in a dream that the reason she had been so easily railroaded during the rehearsal was because she had been outnumbered, even with Lola on her side. The dream hadn’t been about the magic show or even anything to do with the Gremlins. She was back in Brooklyn, and had stopped at the corner drugstore on her way home from school to purchase a bottle of Coca-Cola with a nickel that she’d found under an elephant’s back leg. While she was sipping the soda, she had the epiphany and told the drugstore owner, a green man who looked surprisingly like Jack Benny, that she’d figured everything out. And he, of course, replied with a growl and a snarl. Then he licked her nose, and she awoke to Houdini, whom she’d forgotten to feed before bed.

  So Max decided that her best course of action was to meet with each of the Gremlins individually. Starting with Lola.

  “So it was really just because of Eric?” Lola asked in disbelief after Max had apologized. “I thought you were bluffing to cover that you were scared of the witch’s curse or whatever Margaret was talking about.”

  “What?” Max had almost forgotten about that. Well, not forgotten, but almost stopped thinking about it. Which of course meant that she’d almost stopped being bothered and unsettled at the thought of someone actually taking the time to cast a curse on her and those who lived in her household. “No, I couldn’t care less about that.” (Another half-truth, of course. She could care much less. But the saying isn’t “I could probably care less, but I still care very little, and as such am not inclined to make decisions with this topic in mind.” It doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as well.)

  “Oh. Well, good Lord, if I’d known he was bothering you so much, I would have punched him in the face. It’s been a while sin
ce I did that. He’s due.”

  Max was grateful for the sentiment, but it begged a further line of questioning. “Why do you even hang out with him? He’s such a jerk.”

  “Yeah, but at least he’s a jerk to everybody. Which is really helpful when you need someone to be a jerk for you.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where having a jerk-on-call would’ve been handy.”

  “Oh, you will. And then you’ll appreciate him,” Lola said. “Trust me. He’s gotten me out of a lot of jams. So we tolerate his big mouth.”

  Max filed this information away for a rainy day and, after confirming that Lola was committed to following Max’s lead during the show, moved on to her next objective.

  Carl.

  She found out from his mother that he was over at an older lady’s house digging up a stump for her, so she made him a sandwich and some lemonade. This was mainly to convince her mother to drive her over so they could deliver him some lunch. Mrs. Larousse was a sucker for giving food to working boys. It was her single vice. Well, that and The Burns and Allen Show.

  “What’re you doing over here?” Carl asked as he downed the lemonade while leaning on his shovel. Perspiration dripped from his forehead and down his arms and back. “I thought you’d be practicing for the show.”

  She was momentarily derailed by his apparent ignorance of the level of drama she had been experiencing since she’d last seen him. “Uh, I—don’t you remember? I said I wasn’t going to do it anymore.”

  He resumed shoveling. “Oh, I just figured you were being emotional ’cause Eric’s such a knucklehead. I didn’t put no stock in that. If I had a nickel for every time somebody’s been mean to me on account of him . . .” He laughed. “But then again, I am an imbecile, so maybe that’s where the problem is.”

  She suddenly felt indignant. “Stop saying that about yourself. You’re not an imbecile.”

  “Well I ain’t smart.”

  “You’re not good at school,” she said. “So what? There’s more to life than being a great student.”

  He stopped shoveling again and looked into her eyes to see if she was being serious. “I don’t act my age either. You know I’m old enough to drive? Got my license and everything. But I can’t handle being around people that are old enough to drive. I don’t mix well with them.”

  “Okay, so maybe your mind and your body grow at different speeds—”

  “Isn’t that the definition of an imbecile?” he asked.

  She handed him the sandwich. “Here, eat something.”

  He smiled and took it. “Guess I won that argument, didn’t I?”

  She glared at him. “No, you didn’t. Who cares what speed you work at? Who cares what age you’re supposed to be? You are who you are, and I think you’re pretty darn good at it.”

  He raised one eyebrow and took a bite of the sandwich. “Wow. If you’re trying to win me over to your side, you just did it. Consider me signed on to Team Max from here to eternity.”

  “Wow. Eternity?”

  He thought about that. “Okay, maybe not eternity, ’cause I don’t know if you’ll make it to heaven or not, but at least until we finish school together.”

  With two of the Gremlins now fully committed to her plan, Max felt as though the momentum was moving in her favor.

  Then she went to meet with Shoji.

  “What do you want?” he snarled when he first opened the door, but then he realized Mrs. Larousse was standing next to her daughter, and so he quickly changed his tune. “I mean, won’t you come in?”

  They stepped into the house and he quickly admonished them to take off their shoes. While they disrobed their feet, he moved to the hallway and called out, “Mama, we have company.”

  They heard some pots rattling in the kitchen, and then, wiping her hands on an apron, Mrs. Jingu came into the living room. She was a slender Japanese woman with a smile that matched her son’s and worry lines that matched the times in which they lived.

  “Hello,” she said to the Larousses. “Please, come in and have a seat.”

  Max was never one for formalities. “Can I talk to Shoji alone, actually? It won’t take too much time.”

  “Max!” Mrs. Larousse said, perhaps over-exaggerating her embarrassment because she would have been embarrassed to be thought of as one who did not get embarrassed by such embarrassing behavior.

  “No, that’s okay,” Mrs. Jingu said. “Shoji, go eat your lunch in the kitchen and your friend can talk to you there. I made octopus hot dogs.”

  “Aw, come on, Mom,” Shoji started.

  “Yamate!” she yelled, and he grabbed Max by the wrist and hurried into the kitchen.

  “Okay, start talking,” he said as he went to the counter and picked up the chopsticks next to a plate of rice, topped with with seven odd little pink creatures with tentacles on them.

  Max stared at the contents of his lunch for a few seconds, and then she laughed. “Wait, those are literally hot dogs that your mom cut to look like octopuses, aren’t they?”

  He grinned. “Yeah.”

  “So why does everyone make you eat them before you join the group?”

  “I’ve never told them what they are,” he said as he popped one in his mouth. “I don’t like to share my food.”

  She shook her head. “Wow, you are—”

  He pointed his chopsticks at her. “Stop. I’m still sore at you.”

  “I know, and I shouldn’t have called you all stupid hillbillies.”

  “That doesn’t bother me. Heck, I’d have liked to have been called that.”

  She scrunched up her forehead. “What are you talking about?”

  He ate another octo–hot dog. “You called me an Oriental cowboy. Now that’s all Eric calls me. Even when he’s talking to my mom.”

  She didn’t see the problem. It seemed better than a hillbilly. Not much better, but still, better. “That’s just ’cause Eric’s a jerk.”

  “He’s always been a jerk. He’s called me ‘slant-eyes,’ ‘Nagasaki,’ ‘Most Honolable Blother,’ and all sorts of stupid things. But not an Oriental cowboy. Not till you said that.”

  “So be mad at him.”

  He shrugged. “There’s no point. He won’t understand why I’m upset, or he won’t care, or whatever. But I guess I thought—I don’t know—that you and me were better friends than that. Better friends than me and the others. And then you went and called me that. So I’m mad at you until you apologize.”

  She took a breath. “Okay. I’m sorry. For everything I said. I was so preoccupied with wanting you guys to be my assistants, I forgot that I need you to be my friends. And, even if I don’t get the magic show of my dreams, I’d rather have the friends I didn’t know I wanted.”

  He glared at her for all of two seconds, then broke out in a wide grin. “Okay. We’re friends.”

  “What? You got over it that fast?” She smelled some trickery. “Wait, were you faking?”

  He nodded. “Oriental cowboy is actually pretty funny. Just not from Eric.”

  “You’re stupid,” she said.

  “Hey! Friendship over.”

  “Shut up.”

  He laughed. “Okay, okay. But, just so the truth is known, I am not a cowboy.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just said that ’cause I was mad.”

  “I’ve never even ridden a horse.”

  “Right.”

  “Of course, if you think girls like cowboys, then maybe I could be a cowboy.”

  “I don’t really know. Maybe? Some girls might. I guess.”

  “I mean, if you think cowboys are good-looking or something, then maybe I want to be a cowboy. Or something.”

  She was beginning to grow uncomfortable with the conversation. “I don’t think cowboys are cute. Can we move on?”

  He laughed again and ate three more of his octo–hot dogs. He offered her one. “So, are we still doing the show on Tuesday or what?” he asked.

  “Yup,” she said. “And
I’ve already gotten Lola and Carl onboard. And now you, I assume.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that should be good.”

  “Now I just need to get Eric.”

  He stopped chewing. “Oh, wow. That’s gonna be a problem.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he hates your guts.”

  She absentmindedly grabbed one of the octo–hot dogs and bit off two tentacles. “Really? Since when?”

  “Since he met you. That’s his default with people. He hates your guts until he decides he’s going to start liking you. And he hasn’t started liking you yet.”

  She amputated the remaining tentacles and then devoured the head. “Okay, so how do I get him to start liking me?”

  “You’re the magician,” he said. “You figure it out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Never underestimate the power of a little smoke and mirrors.”

  —Max’s Diary, Sunday, March 26, 1944

  When Eric opened Max’s storm cellar door, he was still in his church clothes, the sounds of the organ still resonated in his ears, and his tummy was rumbling in anticipation of Sunday lunch. He didn’t know why Carl had stopped him on the way into the service that morning and told him to meet him at Max’s house, but he certainly hoped it was worth the walk home. Or that Carl could give him a ride. He could tolerate a lot if he didn’t have to walk anymore. The seven blocks from church in dress shoes had already put him in a very un-Christian mood.

  “Carl, you down there?” he called into the abyss. The only response he received was the echo of his own voice. He very nearly turned and walked away, but that would involve more walking, and Carl had said to come down into the cellar, so perhaps that was the stipulation. After all, Eric considered, Carl wasn’t too bright.

  Eric stepped down the stairs quickly. Best to get this strange ordeal over with, and then go fill his belly with his mom’s goulash. He began to salivate at the very thought.

  Then, halfway down the stairs, his mouth went completely dry.

  Because the cellar door slammed shut above him, leaving him in complete and total darkness.

  “Uh, Carl?” he called out. “You up there?” He moved gingerly up the stairs and rapped his knuckles on the door. There was no answer. At least, not from outside the door.