“In school, before I was drafted and sent to the deserts of North Africa.” He let me go. “Roger also teaches me new words. I pay him a penny apiece, but I will run out of money long before I learn everything he knows.”
“Yeah, Roger’s a smart one, always watching.” She looked past us and said, “The others are waiting.”
He took a final drink. “Don’t keep your true friend waiting, dear Cecilia. He might not be there when you decide to call for him.”
Now it was my turn to blush. She said, “Pleased to meet you, Hermann. ‘Bye, Roger.” She set off toward the next group of laborers while we resumed working. Less than five minutes later, Cecilia’s mother summoned her with a shout and the crack of a bullwhip. I wasn’t sure if the lash was a warning to her or for us.
I watched Cecilia abandon her water buckets and go inside with her mother close behind, coiling the whip. “Why’d you lay it on so thick?”
“What does that mean?” He topped another pole, and we moved farther down the row.
“Building me up like that: ‘strong American boy,’ her ‘true friend.’”
“I spoke only facts. She likes you, but you make her afraid somehow.”
“I know things about her. I’ve seen her with older boys. One time, I caught her with whiskey on her breath.”
He again pantomimed me, rattling peanut vines furiously. “She wants to do that to you for what you saw?”
“No, but she tries to avoid me.”
“Ah, then we will do what your Patton and the Briton Montgomery did to my Field Marshal: be everywhere at once.”
Hermann had all kinds of “stratagems”—I repaid him a penny for that one—to put me in Cecilia’s presence: searching out Mrs. Turner to offer help, since she was keeping Cecilia close; delivering a tin of crackers, courtesy of the Red Cross, as a gift from the POWs grateful for the chance to work and earn money; and, his best idea, asking her parents’ permission for Cecilia to bring around water under my supervision. By the last day of peanut stacking, I was spending most of my time with her and still earning money.
I refilled the buckets at the well and carried one for her. When we approached a group of laborers, regardless of whether they were white, black, or POWs, I let her precede me and chat with the men as they slurped from the skimmers and poured water over sunburned necks and overheated scalps. Everyone behaved toward her with excessive politeness.
At the edge of the field, we took a break. She said, “You don’t need to be my chaperone. Everybody knows their place.”
“If I don’t stay with you, you’ll get called inside.”
“God, these Germans have more freedom than me. My parents are armed guards and they’ve handcuffed me to you. Any of these prisoners can bolt for the woods with nobody to stop them.”
“I know what that’s like,” I said, “wanting to escape.”
“So how does it feel now to be a jailer? Huh?” She walked to the house.
I carted a bucket to Hermann and took a drink from the ladle. He dipped his kerchief in the water and tied the sopping bandana around his neck. “Your friend Hermann knows, yes?” He splashed his face and wiped dirt from his eye sockets.
“Oh yeah, she’s putty in my hands.” I earned a penny explaining it to him.
Mr. Turner continued to purchase POW labor after the peanut harvest; I got Hermann steady work this way. Soon, Cecilia’s father requested the Germans by name. When Christmas approached, he invited Hermann and several other prisoners for a Christmas Eve meal with his family. Cecilia invited me to join them, maybe a sign that my new friend’s stratagem had worked.
The first time I heard Hermann speak German was when he led the singing of “Stille Nacht” and “O Tannenbaum” in his clear tenor. We taught them a few carols learned in school, and they explained how Kris Kringle came from “Christkindl.” In Germany, the Christ child delivered presents, not Santa Claus.
“In America,” Mr. Turner said from the head of the table, “it’s the parents that play St. Nick.” He signaled to his wife, who brought out a box containing a wrapped present for each of us. I got a new bone-handled pocket knife, probably at Cecilia’s suggestion; she’d made fun of the broken tip of my old whittling knife, calling it a screwdriver.
The Germans received clothing and snacks. Two of them cried aloud as they held up socks and crew-neck shirts. Hermann challenged me to a swordfight, his unwrapped Hershey bar against my knife. As we gently parried, he said, “Quartermaster Fleming will have to lower his price.”
I shouted, in imitation of Fleming’s falsetto, “Hey, don’t you know there’s a war on?”
“I do, and you have lost.” He slipped past my knife and touched the chocolate bar to my breastbone. As Cecilia laughed, he told her, “Roger is not dead, merely sweeter.”
“You’re right,” she said, gazing at me. “I can tell already.”
*
Rienzi’s Christmas card featured a country snow scene with the word “Peace” emblazoned across the sky. Inside, she wrote, “Roger, I hope 1945 will bring peace at last. The war news is promising, but my father says that my mother’s countrymen are proud and stubborn. Remember, I’m an American and I root for the Allies without reservation. I don’t know what my mother would do if she was alive. Probably, she would cry, which is what mothers have always done, the world over.
“Please send me the latest word about Jay. Is he safe and unhurt? Has Chet completely thrown aside fighting and judo (ha ha!) for work? Do you still battle over chores and other small things?
“Thank you for your latest photograph. I wouldn’t recognize you without it, I’m sure. You look taller and more filled out. Think you’re strong enough to flip me? Don’t worry, I’ll still be easy to recognize, even if you’re hosting Japanese POWs alongside the Germans.
“After armistice (“penny” word #1) and the subsequent peace treaty, people’s feelings should calm down enough for me to travel safely. With the tides of battle turning so decisively against the Axis, my father and I haven’t been subject to the hatred we encountered in previous years. Someone even left a commiseration (#2) of sorts on our doorstep: a drawing of a slant-eyed, tearful man with spectacles and buck teeth and the words ‘Too Bad—So Sad.’ If the artist and his friends thought this was funny, maybe it’s the first step toward healing.
“I appreciate your punctual (#3?), thoughtful letters. Please keep writing to me, my faithful friend. Your words bring light as bright as the Dutchman’s into my woeful cell and edge open my prison door a little more each time. Sincerely, Rienzi.”
*
On a Saturday in February, Chet and I collected firewood on sleds and pulled them down Hardscrabble Road toward home. My teeth chattered so much that I could barely hear him. He was telling me his plan to hobo around the country until he turned seventeen the following year. I needed to warm up by working harder, so I interrupted him. “My turn to pull the heavy load.”
“I’m still the general and I’m still hauling it. You can pull all you want after today.”
“You better let me or else.”
“Or else what?”
Chet let me throw the first jab. He probably felt sorry for me and wanted me to think I had a chance. Ten punches later, I pulled myself out of a ditch.
As we trudged onward, my thoughts bounced between finishing high school and whether I should live a hobo’s life until I could enlist. Then I wondered what to write in my next letter to Rienzi and considered asking Cecilia to sit up with me before I hopped a freight train. Then the ’42 Chrysler Royal Sedan raced past us.
When Chet told me, “Papa’s back,” I recalled the rabbit watching the hawk streak toward it. I could think of nothing else during the rest of our journey home.
*
Chet was true to his word. On Sunday, he insulated his jacket and overalls with slender, money-filled Prince Albert tobacco cans and put his spare clothes into a rucksack. I sat on the mattress we used to share and watched him, trying to memorize h
is strong, bony face, the casual way he’d wrenched open each rusty can to double-check the amount—the sum always matched his penciled figure on the lid—and the grace of his movements, so sure and spare.
He settled the rucksack straps over his shoulders. “I’m ready,” he said.
“I’ll walk you as far as Hardscrabble Road.”
“No. I wanna step off that porch alone. Once I leave the house, I gotta feel like I’m on my own.”
“I wish I could go with you.”
He glanced up the hallway; Mama was hard at work in the kitchen. “Tell her goodbye for me.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“I knew I’d say something you’d have to pay for. She won’t miss me—she hasn’t missed my wages for a long time. Her boyfriends buy her anything she needs.”
I eased off the bed, trying to hold in my grief, to present the same stony expression he did. “You’ll write to me?”
“Fifty-two times a year. I promise.” Chet shook my hand and then he left.
CHAPTER 24
We celebrated the victory in Europe that May. Even the POWs seemed relieved; Hermann hugged my neck and cried for a long time. By the time Japan surrendered in September, though, shifting moods made the prisoners unpredictable. Hermann and others were happy, looking forward to returning home, while we did fieldwork in the morning. By dinnertime, some of them were scared about what they’d find at home and others cried about family members who might’ve died. When the truck picked them up before sunset, many of the Germans talked with eagerness about rebuilding their country, while others—especially Hermann—stared at their surroundings with a different kind of longing.
A week after my fifteenth birthday, Hermann sat with me beneath a sprawling live oak at the edge of the Turner property. He ate his dinner of chicken and peas while I enjoyed a final ham steak, the last of the sweetly smoked meat before the next hog-killing. He said, “Roger, it breaks my heart to know that the Army will send us home soon.”
“Don’t you miss Bavaria? You’re always telling stories about hiking and skiing.”
“I have lived and fought in deserts for years.” He scuffed his heel against the ground. “The sand and heat here are different, but now even more familiar. I cannot go back to a land of rock and cold. I cannot rebuild a place I do not love.” On his peaked field cap, he’d plucked away the swastika threads. The silver-gray eagle now clutched at nothing.
“Will you escape from the camp?”
“Some tried to tunnel out, but they hit a lot of water.”
“I could teach you to dowse so you could avoid—”
“The sand always fills in their holes regardless. I need to make my own plan.”
“How can I help?”
He snorted. “You are not afraid of an enemy prisoner running loose in America?”
“I want you to stay here—you’ve always been my friend.”
He waved to Cecilia at the other end of the long field of peanut plants almost ready for drying. She strolled toward us with her notebook; Hermann was teaching her more German Christmas carols and songs. He said to me, “And she is still your friend?”
“Thanks to you.”
“Anything more than that?”
“I’m afraid to…I think some boys messed with her before you came here. Got her drunk and maybe hurt her.”
“Ah, you are still protecting her. Do you plan to keep her for yourself?”
It was my turn to snort as Cecilia drew near. “She won’t be kept. Anyway, I’m not the keeping sort.”
She said, “What are you keeping? Hermann, if you want your secrets kept, Roger’s your man.” I looked away, realizing that I’d just told a secret about her.
When I got home that evening, Mama said, “Jay sent a letter. He’s stationed in Japan, but says he likes the people now that they’re not shooting at him. The women are very graceful and refined, he says. Oh my stars, imagine if he ends up with a Oriental girlfriend too.”
“Mama, I told you that Rienzi isn’t—”
“She wrote you.” She handed me the envelope from her apron. “You always look to see if I slit it open. I swannee, I did it the one time. How many letters have you got since then?”
“A bunch, I reckon.” I rubbed the envelope between my fingers, anxious to go outside. “Chet would know the exact number.”
“Aye God, don’t bring up the little coward, that ingrate who wouldn’t even say goodbye to his poor mother.”
He posted his letters every Saturday. They arrived from Atlanta, Chattanooga, Bristol, and across Virginia. Mama tossed every letter in the oven, but she repeated his news to me over supper, as if she’d memorized them word for word.
She said, “Left with my heart under his shoe, just like his father.”
The comparison riled me. My uncles reported seeing Papa in Colquitt and Bainbridge, but he hadn’t tried to contact us. The hawk circled, waiting, watching. Did he see us as the enemy, responsible for his years in the penitentiary? The more I thought about Chet getting lumped in with Papa, the angrier I grew.
I tucked Rienzi’s note in my back pocket. I knew better than to mention Stan but I did it anyway, like touching a smoking skillet to confirm that it’s hot. I planted my feet, prepared to take what came, and said, “Why did you step out with Stan Borden, my father?”
Mama raised her hand to slap me but then looked me over. Maybe she saw something different than she expected. Instead of bashing my cheek, she raked her hair, as if that’s what she’d intended. A look of relief softened her expression: now she didn’t have to pretend anymore. She asked if he’d told me.
“No, ma’am. I saw the snapshots and pieced it together.”
“Jesus, he kept those? Poor Buddy. He never knew what he wanted, but he could never say no to what came his way.” She dropped into a chair and pointed a finger at me. “Don’t you dare judge either of us, him married to my crazy sister, and me…You can’t know how Mance was with me. How puny he made me feel—and that was even before he tried to shoot my face off. Don’t think for a second that you understand what I been through.”
I joined her at the table, feeling braver by the moment. “Was Stan good to you?”
“He did his best, bless his heart. That’s why you’re here; I loved him that much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t need to have you, you know. But I wanted to keep a part of him. It like to have killed me, telling him he was banned from Ma’s. Banned from me too. The instant that Ma saw you, she knew.”
I rubbed my temples as I tried to take it in. “What do you mean you didn’t need to have me?”
“There’re old granny-women that can take care of it, cheap. Some doctors too, but they charge a arm and a leg. Don’t you know about such things?”
“No’m.”
“You never wondered why you stayed the youngest all these years? It’s ’cause I didn’t want to keep any of the others. You came from the last time I was in love.”
*
As I sat in the hayloft, my mind was addled from imagining a dozen younger brothers and sisters, maybe a few of them bastards like me. Maybe all of them. Did some of the money we’d given her over the later years go to granny-women and doctors?
The envelope in my back pocket crinkled as I shifted in place. Barely enough daylight remained for me to see; fortunately Rienzi didn’t write much this time. I had to read her note twice before the words broke through my shellshock: she was coming to visit in a week.
I rolled back and shouted, arms and legs in the air. My sudden excitement surprised me. I must’ve thought we would trade letters forever. Here was the perfect antidote to Mama’s latest bombshell. Rienzi would say again that it was always better to know—now I could debate with her in person.
She’d written as a postscript, “My grandparents insist that they throw me a belated ‘sweet-sixteen’ party next Sunday evening at 6. It’ll be just the four of us, if you can come. If you can’t dress up, they’ll
understand.”
I clambered down the ladder and uncovered the trapdoor I’d installed. I crouched near the stable where we kept Dan; Mr. Turner had returned Papa’s old horse when we moved back in. Dan whinnied at me and watched with those huge brown eyes, now gentled with age. I dug up my tobacco cans and squinted in the near-dark as I counted out ten dollars and change. I carried a fresh dollar-fifty in wages from Mr. Turner. All told, I could afford a dress-up outfit.
“Roger!” Mama called from the house, “You got a pretty visitor.”
It couldn’t be Rienzi. From the date of her letter; she definitely meant to arrive the following week. Then I smiled to myself, admitting that I found her pretty in my memory. Somehow, the fact that I never touched her beautiful braid made me envision the softest silk flowing between my fingers. Was imagination preferable to the truth? If I never found out what her hair felt like, I’d always have the best texture in my mind. I’d never be disappointed. Of course, that would mean that I never touched her hair: knowledge would be better than daydreams.
“Roger! Where are you at?”
I put the money away and trotted into the barn lot. Cecilia waved at me from the back porch. She said, “Thank you, Miz MacLeod,” and waited for me while Mama walked inside. The sky at dusk had turned to swaths of peach and strawberry. Red sky at night, Jerry had told me: sailor’s delight.
Cecilia wore makeup that outlined her eyes and shaded her lids. Her cheeks bore a powdered blush. She’d dressed in a simple white blouse, topped by a fake pearl necklace, and a calf-length skirt of aquamarine with matching high-heels. A pale sweater dangled from her index finger, disappearing behind one shoulder; her jutting elbow looked as round and smooth as the goddess statues in my history book.
I joined her on the porch. “Your parents are letting you out now?”
“My father dropped me off here. You should’ve seen how pleased he looked when I said we had a date.”
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