‘You know my son?’
‘I knew him.’
The man stopped advancing. He tightened his lips, his hands worked.
‘Knew him?’
‘Yeah. I was his co-pilot. After we got shot down the Resistance brought us to Paris. Tommy got the big idea to stay. So we set up our little operation, which by the way you’re interrupting. So if you don’t mind...’
‘Where is he?’
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Honest to Pete, this is not a good time.’
Hugo lowered his gun. The four behind him followed suit.
‘Tell him,’ Hugo told White Dog.
‘Aw, geez, Hugo.’ White Dog flapped his hands against his sides.
‘Tell the man what happened to his son.’
White Dog was exasperated. This was old news. This rabbi had popped up out of nowhere. White Dog was amazed that he’d found this garage. Now, because one old guy couldn’t let go, a very simple and profitable afternoon was going to turn complicated and sour.
‘Tommy got picked up. By the Gestapo.’
The rabbi seized as if gut-struck. One hand went to his side like he was holding something in.
‘When?’
‘You want to know exactly? I’ll tell you exactly. June 12. Nobody’s seen him since. Okay, Rabbi? That what you needed to know?’
Hugo asked, ‘He is a rabbi?’
Acier’s father’s gaze stayed on the floor. His breathing filled the room. He did not speak.
Hugo spun on White Dog.
In French, he growled, ‘Acier was a Jew?’
‘Sure. Sure, he never mentioned it?’
‘He did not. But you knew this?’
‘Yeah. I knew. What’s the big deal?’
‘Then he is dead.’
‘I don’t know, Hugo. I guess he’s in a camp somewhere.’
‘Yes. A camp somewhere.’
Hugo shook his head.
‘Tell the rabbi what you did. Or I will.’
‘What? What did I do?’
‘Chien Blanc, do not think you are the only one who ever spoke to the Germans. Voltaire was not without friends in the Occupation. Now tell the rabbi, or our dealings are at an end.’
‘You’re shitting me. Over this? Come on, Hugo, we’re making money hand over fist -’
‘Do you think I am telling a joke?’
‘Fine. Whatever.’
White Dog smoothed the slicked hair on his temples. He shot his cuffs again and switched back to English.
‘Look, Rabbi. It was business. Okay? I might have put a bug in the Gestapo’s ear. That’s all. But they had plenty of reason to pick him up anyway, Jew or not. You know? The black market is illegal, and Acier was a big fish. I mean, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. We all do what we got to do. Tommy did it to others. I did it to him. No big surprise.’
White Dog turned toward Hugo. ‘Happy? Can we finish our discussion in private now?’
‘You killed my son.’
White Dog sighed. Was this not going to end, he wondered? Hugo glared. White Dog turned back to the rabbi.
‘You got me all wrong, Pop.’
‘Don’t call me Pop.’ The man winced. He reached under his jacket to press a hand to his side. This time when he pulled it away, he looked into it.
‘S’matter?’ White Dog asked. ‘You got no stomach for business?’
He intended this as a pun. It landed flat, so he kept talking.
‘That’s all it ever was. Business. Everybody did it. Get real, Rabbi.’
The rabbi staggered. He set a hand to a tabletop to steady himself. When he pulled the hand up, the table bore a crimson smear.
The rabbi had been shot. Who shoots a rabbi? This was one determined old buzzard.
‘So, Pop. What are we gonna do? I can’t stand here all day chattin’ about old times. You don’t look like you want to, either.’
The rabbi did not correct White Dog this time for calling him Pop. White Dog figured Acier’s father was just about finished, bleeding and with five armed mobsters staring at him. Still, he must be some guy, this Rabbi Kahn, to come all this way. Tommy had described him like that—tough, a hard nut, he’d said.
Ben Kahn reached again under his olive jacket. He hoisted a big pistol, a Colt .45, out of his waistband.
The man was trying to scare him, humiliate him in front of his associates. But the old guy held the gun hard, harsh, like he meant it.
‘What are you gonna do, shoot me?’
‘Yes.’
White Dog pivoted for Hugo. The mobster had not lifted his own pistol.
‘I think,’ said Hugo, ‘our business is concluded, Chien Blanc.’
The first wash of panic sprayed in White Dog’s stomach. What was going on?
Hugo put away his revolver. His henchmen did the same. Hugo flicked a finger at the biggest, the one who had sat on the car. The man came close. White Dog, breathing hard, smelled his cologne. He rifled White Dog’s jacket for the three thousand dollar wad. When he had it, he snapped his fingers and flattened the palm. From his trousers White Dog dug up the other roll. The thug gave the money to Hugo.
The mobster pocketed the cash. He sidled next to White Dog and whispered in his ear.
‘Mamzer. That is Yiddish, Chien Blanc. It means “bastard.”‘
Without another word or glance, Hugo and his men left the garage. White Dog stared into the black socket of the Colt until he heard the door slam.
He began to shake.
~ * ~
The search for Ben’s son ended here.
The letter in his breast pocket, which like another heart had beat and bothered him, had carried him, went silent. Ben set his hand over the pocket. The paper inside seemed old, an artifact. The last of its kind.
An end had been put to everything.
Almost everything.
The young man on the other end of the Colt began to quiver. Ben wondered what this coward White Dog saw that convinced him he was about to die. It wasn’t just the pistol pointed at him. Looking over the gun Ben felt exactly, to the breath, the way he’d felt in the Great War, cutting throats, cracking heads, crawling by dark to do those dark acts. A week ago, at Mairy, at the battle of the burning depot, he’d wept to kill while the colored boy had celebrated. Both arrived at their destinies in that foxhole. In front of White Dog stood an abandoned man.
Ben fixed the pistol between White Dog’s eyes.
The boy stammered, ‘You can’t do that!’
Ben’s voice was cool.
‘Yes I can.’
‘No, no, no, you’re a rabbi. You’re ... you’re a man of God.’
Ben answered down the barrel.
‘Not anymore.’
He did not ask what his son was like, what kind of man was he?
The first round Ben fired into White Dog would not bring Thomas back. The second bullet would not return the betrayed millions. The third would not lead God back to him. The fourth missed and went into the wall after White Dog was down and dead.
~ * ~
But Moses said to Elohim, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’
Exodus 11
~ * ~
December 24, 1944
Ben did not intend to arrive on Christmas Eve. The drive south from Pittsburgh took four days instead of two. He meant to come and go on Friday. Now it was Sunday. The roads through the Appalachians were stripes of snow, the mountains blotted white. With all the young men gone to the Pacific or Europe, clearing the highways took a long time. In his old Ford, Ben crept behind tractors and their skimming blades, his windshield wipers smearing snow. He slept in roadside motels in socked-in hollers. Beyond ordering food, fuel, or a room, he’d spoken to no one. The snow thinned when he lowered out of the Blue Ridge into Virginia. No snow clung on the brown banks of the Dan River.
He knew her address. He’d written her the letter she must have gotten in the
autumn. Crossing the river into Danville, Ben stopped for gas. On the western outskirts, smokestacks from the textile mill jutted, probably visible from anywhere in the town. At the lunch counter inside the gas station, he ordered a slice of pie. A sign above the counter read Whites Only. Ben took the pie plate outside and ate watching an old fellow pump the gas. He got instructions to Gypsum Road from the man, who also checked his oil and recommended another quart for the aging car. Ben left the plate and fork outside.
The directions to the farm carried Ben to the sparse eastern part of town, on the other side of Pumpkin Creek and the rail tracks. His tires thumped over the rails. The sound was notice of a boundary crossed. His foot left the accelerator. He coasted, unsure. For weeks since he’d been back he’d practiced what to say, but for the four days’ driving he’d done other thinking and now he was unsure. The Ford slowed almost to a stop. A pickup truck closed behind him and tapped the horn. Ben stepped on the gas.
The day had been sunny in Danville while Ben drove down out of the mountain clouds. Now the last light over the river beamed blue and icy. Ben found the house set back behind bare acres, the soil plowed and cold. He turned past a battered tin mailbox. The Ford’s tires ground gravel. A small white dog barked and ran halfway to see him, then stopped in the yard. A chicken stuttered around the corner of the house. Taped in the picture window was a cloth banner, a gold star on a white rectangle surrounded by a red border. The flag said a member of this family had died in service. Before Ben could shut the engine, she was on the front stoop in a shawl.
Ben got out of the car. He did not wave while he approached. She waited on her steps, her shawl pulled tight. She wore a colorful dress, to go out somewhere, and boots with fur tufted at the ankles. Both their breaths made mists in the chill.
‘Mister, how are you?’ She spoke first. Ben was not in uniform, he never would be again. She lifted a hand from under the shawl. She was a small woman but not frail. Ben walked without speaking but she did not lower her hand, her greeting did not fade. When close enough, Ben saw the calluses on her palm.
‘Mrs. Biggs.’
Her hand lowered. It rested over her breast, like a woman preparing herself.
‘Yes, sir?’
Her hair was gray, worn long and straight, pulled tight behind her head. She was darker skinned than her son, the color of her winter land.
‘I’m Ben Kahn.’
Stock-still, she said, ‘You’re the chaplain wrote me the letter.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘You were with my boy.’
‘Yes, ma’am. I was with Joe Amos.’
Her breathing clutched. The hand on her breast flattened against the shawl.
‘What you doin’ here, Chaplain?’
‘I’m not a chaplain anymore, Mrs. Biggs. Just Ben Kahn.’
The boy’s mother eyed him, frosty as the air.
‘Well, Mr. Kahn, would you like to come in out the cold?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
She turned and went into her house, not holding the storm door open for him. When he followed inside, the warmth of a woodstove stroked him. The house was tidy, doilies on every table, comforters folded over the sofa and chairs. A knit oval rug centered the room. Mrs. Biggs went into her kitchen. Ben walked to a wall tiled with dozens of photos, of children all ages, mostly girls. In the center, black crepe curtained one frame, a picture of a young man in a green uniform and cloth cap. Ben had looked into this same face; war and even the minutes bleeding to death had not stolen its contours from his memory. Ben could not think how to tell the boy’s mother this, how her son looked fighting, how he looked dying; at the end, the same odd smile that was on his young face was there when this photo was taken just after basic training. Each time, Ben knew, the boy had seen something hopeful ahead. On the right side of this picture hung a Silver Star medal, framed in gold. The decoration was a five-pointed star cast in gilt bronze. In its heart lay a smaller silver star. The medal dangled from a ribbon of blue-and-white stripes, with one broad red stripe down the center. Ben was glad to see the decoration. From his hospital bed he’d written the CO of Joe Amos’s trucking company, a Major Clay. Opposite the star; on the left side of Joe Amos’s mourning frame, hung an illustration of Jesus capped with a golden halo, hands clasped.
‘Have a seat, Mr. Kahn,’ Mrs. Biggs said.
Ben chose the sofa, with the service flag taped to the window behind his head.
She entered the room holding two glasses, iced tea on a December day. Ben thanked her while she sat in a facing rocker. He drank first, his mouth puckered at the amount of sugar. She sipped and licked her lips dry.
‘Where did you come in from, Mr. Kahn?’
‘Pittsburgh.’
‘That’s a long way to drive to see an old colored woman. May I ask your business?’
Ben set the glass on a doily. The ice numbed his hand. He looked at the stove beaming heat and thought of the son who before the war had chopped wood for it.
‘I came to tell you how brave your son was.’
On the table between them sat a worn Bible. The woman rocked forward to set her tea down and pick up the book. Inside the cover was folded Ben’s blue letter. She unfurled it and held it out to him.
‘You already told me that, Mr. Kahn. In this.’
He did not take the letter. She looked at it for moments, then folded it back inside the Bible.
She took up the tea again and rocked. She did not drink. The ice in the glass moved.
‘He was not supposed to get killed, Mr. Kahn. He was a truck driver. That’s what they told my boy he was gonna be. How did a truck driver get himself killed?’
Ben told her what he could not write in the letter, what the military censors would not have allowed. He told her the place, Mairy, a tiny village in France that mattered only because supplies had been stacked there. The Germans attacked the depot to disrupt the American supply lines, to slow their advance. Ben had been wounded. Joe Amos ran into a crossfire to lug him off the field. The boy found a foxhole and a rifle and fought until he was out of ammunition. He ran through bullets and flames to a truck, seconds before it was blown to pieces by a German tank. He returned with ammo and another rifle. There were colored drivers and white soldiers all fighting together. When the Germans came too close, the boy leaped again out of the hole to fetch grenades from another truck. He was hit, twice. Bad.
‘Mrs. Biggs, your son saved my life. He helped hold off a German attack. Before he died, he asked me to tell you this.’
The rocker quit. The woman’s furry boots rested flat on the rug.
‘Mr. Kahn, thank you. I appreciate that. It rests my soul to know.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘He also asked me to tell a Geneviève. Do you know who that might be? Was she his girlfriend or something?’
Mrs. Biggs shook her head, considering the name.
‘No, I don’t. But my son was a handsome man.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘He must have had him a French gal. Don’t surprise me none.’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Well, whoever she is ...’ Mrs. Biggs trailed off, seeming to think of another woman who grieved for her son. She rocked again. ‘I reckon she’ll find out when he don’t come back.’
Ben nodded to the mother as he had to Joe Amos, solely from the habit of listening.
Mrs. Biggs rocked more. Then, like her son had, she shook her head in a small way, to signal some pain had been dealt with, and some decision had been taken.
‘Mr. Kahn,’ she asked, ‘you could have written me all this in another letter. From Pittsburgh.’
She set her sweet tea on the doily beside his. In the wood-warmed room, the two glasses sweat. She asked:
‘Why aren’t you a chaplain anymore?’
Ben had not driven four days to Virginia to tell her in person that Joe Amos Biggs had died a hero. The medal already told her that. For two weeks he’d stared at the sea from the ship
that sailed him home over the cold Atlantic, then at the ceiling of his small bedroom in a sparking steel city, deciding to come to tell her, and only her, something else.
‘At the end, your son asked me to pray for him, Mrs. Biggs. I did not.’
She tightened the shawl at her shoulders. Her hand fluttered, seeking a place. She touched fingertips to her cheek.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 51