Conversations with Clete
A Short Story
Steve Sporleder
Copyright © 2012 by Steve Sporleder
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Cover design and illustration by: Letty Samonte
Conversations with Clete is fiction. The characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Other books by Steve Sporleder
From Sleepy Lagoon to the Corner of the Cats
A Fouled Nest
Gallivanting in the Gem City
Available from: www.rp—author.com/Sporleder
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Contributor to:
Saratoga Fire: A Century of Volunteer Firefighting in Saratoga, California
by April Halberstadt
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CHAPTER I
He wasn’t just any soldier, not by a long stretch; he was a World War II German soldier in combat uniform. It would have been strange to see a German soldier looking in the window of a ranch-style home in this small Northern California town in the middle of the night, almost seventy years after VE Day, even if he were visible.
His dark green coal scuttle helmet sat properly on his head of red hair. His slate gray tunic was neatly pressed and the insignia of a gunner adorned the collar. The trousers, also gray, were tucked into shiny black calf jackboots. He had no weapon, but he moved with the stealth of a sniper, edging from the window and making his way to the backyard, careful to “let sleeping dogs lie” just in case any were around. Like a burglar casing the place, he peered into another window. He wasn’t a burglar, but he would’ve made a good one; nobody could see him.
CHAPTER II
I took a big swig of cranberry juice, straight from the plastic bottle, to break up the gravel in my mouth. Each morning it’s the same thing. My mouth hangs open when I sleep and I’m told that I snore. Sometimes I wake up gasping for air. That bothers me, but I sit on the side of the bed and calm my breathing down and I usually fall right back to sleep. I live alone, so I’m not hurting anybody or keeping anybody awake. But when I travel, it’s different. My buddies don’t want to room with me, but I’m fine with that. Meg, my steady gal of over twenty years, calls me on it regularly. She should talk! Anyhow we don’t spend nights together often, and when we travel we stay in suites. She’s in the big bed, and I’m on the couch, and I’m fine with that, too. She has an ample supply of ear plugs, which I replenish regularly. The first time I bought them for her, the kid at the pharmacy told me that they were the type he wore at rock concerts. That convinced me they’d be just fine.
My name is Cletus Rossiter. Meg and I are just left of our mid sixties. My brown hair is going gray and I have a paunch. I don’t exercise enough and probably drink too much bourbon. I retired almost ten years ago and I have a comfortable life and can do pretty much what I want. I have grown children, a boy and a girl, from a marriage that ended in divorce after twenty years, and four beautiful grandchildren. Meg has a son from her one marriage, which also ended in divorce.
Meg and I have been on vacations to Hawaii, the east coast, Chicago, and up and down California. Last year we went to Italy and France, the trip of a lifetime.
Because of language difficulties, we weren’t real sure if our accommodations would be met when we made the reservations with the hotels in Italy and France. We wanted a suite at each property. But the places were fantastic and our rooms made to order. The staff couldn’t have been better. The Euro to U.S. dollar, on the other hand, was like getting kicked in the shins.
I’m a travel planner. That’s not my occupation. It’s what I like doing prior to going someplace we’ve never been. I go to the bookstore and get books about our destination and visit the AAA office for maps and guides.
After gathering info for our next trip, to Cape Cod, I stopped at Meg’s to set our plans in motion.
“I bought something for you,” she said after we greeted each other. She is always buying gifts, usually through the mail or on the computer. Her short brown hair accentuates her angular features and her brown eyes flash when she is happy and when she is mad. Thankfully she doesn’t get mad often.
She handed me a cardboard box about the size of a Kleenex box. It was very light and the contents rattled slightly when I shook it.
I looked at her and said, “What have you got for me now?”
“Open it and see,” she said with lightness in her voice.
“I’ll open it when I get home. I want to show you the books I bought.”
“Please, Clete. I want you to open it now,” she said with a slight whine.
I used a paring knife to cut the package open. The top of the container inside read, “Snore no More Kit.”
I looked at Meg, waiting for her to laugh, but she looked like she was waiting for a thank-you from me. I opened the lid and saw a mouth piece inside, just like the one a football player would use.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked somewhat perplexed.
“Wear it when you sleep. It stops you from snoring,” she answered back.
“Well, thanks,” I said with little or no emotion. My thought was that I would put this in the drawer in my bathroom vanity next to the strips for my nose and the throat spray she’s given me over the years.
“If it works we don’t need to get two rooms or suites anymore,” she explained.
At home I read the instructions for the mouth piece and wondered if the snoring was really that bad. “It must be if she bought you this,” I said aloud. “But just how bad?”
I wandered around Radio Shack looking for a recorder to buy so I could actually hear myself snoring. I opted for a battery-operated unit that could record for eight hours. If this was really a problem, then I would use the anti-snore kit with appreciation.
The next morning, as I drank my coffee at my kitchen table, I rewound the recorder and pushed play. There was a fair amount of white noise, and I thought the recorder was defective, and then I heard my mantle clock chime eleven times. I got up from the table and looked at the mantle clock in the living room, and it said 7:20. I listened for a few minutes more and heard the rustling of sheets and a sigh as I settled in. Then a fart and grunt. “Real charming, Rossiter.”
Then the snoring started, softly at first, then louder and then suddenly it stopped. It wasn’t the gasping for air type of interruption, the snores just stopped. It went on like that for a few more minutes. Then I heard the toilet flush and realized it was recording my first of two nightly trips to the can. Then more snoring.
Well, it wasn’t the door rattling that I’ve been accused of in the past. Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely loud, but ear plugs should have been sufficient. I’d give it another one or two nights of recording and then make my decision if I was going to use the snore kit.
The next da
y, morning sun was shining in my kitchen window. I was up earlier than usual waiting for my friend, Perry, to pick me up for breakfast. I pushed play on the recorder and heard the white noise and then the mantle clock. I thought it was strange that I heard no snores or breaking of wind. And then I heard a voice say something unintelligible. At first it startled me and my heart started to beat faster, but then I realized that Perry must have arrived. I turned the recorder off and went to the door. No one was there. I stepped onto my porch and looked down the driveway. Nobody around. Out my back door I scanned the yard; no one there either.
I pushed play and heard the voice again. Then there were two voices. My heart rate was ramping up. A conversation was taking place and the language was foreign, possibly German. The more I listened, the more I was convinced that one of the two voices was mine. But how could that be? I have enough trouble with English, and here I was having a conversation in German. But with who? How in the hell could that be?
I was stunned and my mind raced with more questions—not just who but what and why? And how was it possible that I was speaking a foreign language? I must be going nuts. I held the tiny recorder in my palm and stared at. This is used I said to myself and was going to take it back to the store. But, then again, there was no denying that one of the voices sounded like me.
“You’re not very talkative this morning, Clete. What gives?” Perry asked. We were in the Wildcat Diner in downtown Los Gatos.
I shoved my plate of bacon and eggs away and said, “I didn’t sleep too good last night. Sorry to be bad company, Perry.”
“No need to apologize, Pal. Your turn to buy,” he said with a sly grin.
“Perry, do you still know some of the instructors at the college?” I asked, as I looked into his dark brown eyes. His face was creased with laugh lines at the eyes and corners of the mouth and his goatee was neatly trimmed.
“Yeah, a few. Why?”
“Anybody in foreign languages? German, specifically.”
I walked down the narrow hallway in the faculty office area at West Valley College. The door said “Frau Baker.” I knocked and she came to the door. We introduced ourselves and she showed me to a chair in her cramped quarters. She was short with strawberry-blond hair and a pleasant, freckled face. She wore a beige blouse and navy blue slacks and open-toed sandals. When I explained what I needed, she asked me, “Where did you get this recorder?”
I hemmed and hawed and finally said the work I needed translated was on a recorder I had found in the basement of a friend. To tell her the truth—that the recording was of a conversation I had last night while I was sleeping—didn’t seem like it would fly. Anyhow, she accepted my explanation.
“I’ll have it transcribed for you, but there is a fee,” she said. “Students anticipating State Department work in a foreign country beg for this type of job, but they charge.”
I told her I would pay the fee and she said she would call me when the job was done.
“It’s an old dialect,” Frau Baker told me over the phone. “Why don’t you come in and meet the student who transcribed it? She was fascinated by the conversation, by the way,” Baker said just before hanging up.
I sat in a classroom with Frau Bailey Baker and a young blond named Ruby Wayne, a tall athletic girl wearing a ball cap over her short blond hair. Her tan face was expressive with bright white teeth that, sans make-up, gave her the beach volleyball look. We chatted briefly about mundane things. I noticed Ruby was looking at me strangely, and then she took out a pencil and hastily wrote something on a pad.
“Would you please read this?” she asked as she pushed the paper toward me.
It was in German; I looked at her, perplexed.
“What does this mean? These words, I mean: was willst du?” I asked.
“It’s a question. In English it says, ‘What do you want?’”
She assisted me with the German pronunciation. When I finished, Ruby sat back and tapped her pencil to her cheek. Smiling, she turned the player on and fast forwarded for several seconds, stopped and pushed play. The words I’d just read came out of the recorder, and it was my voice!
“That’s you speaking, Mr. Rossiter; you’re speaking German,” Ruby announced.
I looked from Bailey to Ruby and then to the player. I shook my head for several seconds. “How can that be?” I murmured. Then I remembered the lie I’d told Bailey about finding the tape in a basement. I admitted to my snoring, the mouth piece, and recording myself. “Who’s the other guy? This is crazy.”
“This is where it gets interesting,” Ruby replied with a giggle. “The other man is a Nazi soldier and he’s asking where his leather field pack is.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” I yelled. The two women sat back with astonished looks on their faces. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that I have a German soldier’s leather pouch on my shelf. Jesus Christ! Kruger is looking for his pouch.”
“Who is Kruger?” Bailey and Ruby asked simultaneously.
“It’s the name printed on the inside of the pouch. I bought it at an antique store in Fayence, France,” I said. “I usually pick up some obscure piece while traveling, you know. Display it in a curio cabinet.”
Ruby told me the soldier was looking for his “soldbuch.”
When I asked her, she told me she had gone online and discovered that a soldbuch is a pay book. “All German military personnel are issued a pay book, which holds unit information and all issued equipment. It must be kept in the field pack.”
“There wasn’t anything in the pack when I bought it,” I announced.
“Have you had conversations before this one?” Ruby asked picking up the player and moving it like a fan.
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
The two women looked at each other, then turned to me.
“It might be interesting to see if this happens again. Keep recording and let us know if Kruger shows up again,” Bailey said.
“Why can’t I see this guy?” I asked.
Ruby suggested I see a psychic who deals with paranormal activity. I walked away thinking, If I’m talking to a dead man, am I dead too? No, that can’t be, you’re walking around and talking to yourself. I passed a window and saw my reflection and somehow felt that seeing myself was an indication I was alive. This was becoming absurd. No, I’d passed absurd a while ago.
I continued to record, but had no more conversations with Kruger. I figured he’d found his field pack and was satisfied that I didn’t have his soldbuch. Then I decided to try an experiment. I took Kruger’s pack from the curio and put it in a cupboard above my work bench in the garage.
CHAPTER III
The next morning I anxiously turned the recorder on and was disappointed to hear only loud snoring. Apparently I hadn’t had any conversations during the night. A few minutes later I walked past the curio and stopped dead in my tracks; the leather pouch was sitting in the cabinet, back in its regular spot! I paced the room frantically trying to make sense of what was going on. I ran to the garage and looked at the space where I’d put the pouch. There was the initial ‘K’ written in the dust! I lost my balance momentarily and steadied myself with my bottom resting on my cluttered workbench. “What the Christ?” I said aloud. “I gotta get some help. That’s all there is to it.”
When I told Meg what had happened, she was skeptical at first, and then she whispered, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I couldn’t make up something like this, Meg. This is just too, too…”
“Haunting?” Meg answered for me.
“That’s as good a term as any, I suppose.”
She asked me if I was afraid. “I don’t think afraid is the right word. Part of me is disconcerted, another is fascinated. What would’ve happened if the name on the pouch had been Hitler?”
“Now that would have been an interesting conversation, Clete.” Meg said with a slight chuckle.
All the while I kept asking, Why me? Why Kruger? I h
ave other things that I’ve collected that belonged to other people, and they don’t visit. Then again, maybe they do, I thought as I remembered the “K” in the dust.
When I got home I took a picture of the K and placed a glass jar over it as if I’d caught a grasshopper. I tried to upload the picture to my computer, but it didn’t show up. I got my cell phone and took the same photo, and this too didn’t come out. I put the jar back over the initial.
I telephoned an old friend of mine who taught Police Science at the college. I asked him if he had a student who needed extra credit. “Hell, Clete, they all need extra credit; they just don’t know it,” Darwin “Hoss” Hoskins replied over the phone. When he asked me the reason, I hedged and told him that he and his students might find something interesting in my garage. “It’s not a crime, Hoss. Just interesting.”
He agreed to bring several students and his fingerprint materials to my house on Saturday. “We’re gonna make this field trip worthwhile, Clete. We’re gonna treat your entire garage as a crime scene, so get your girlie book stash tossed,” Hoss chuckled.
Hoss Hoskins greeted me with a ferocious handshake and slap to the back. He’s a powerful man, and although short, he’s solid. His ruddy complexion and light brown hair offset his bright blue eyes. The brushy mustache, a new addition since I’d last seen him, completed the look of a retired cop. Hoss and the students, two boys and one girl, wore black windbreakers with POLICE in yellow lettering across the shoulders.
I laid out coffee and cinnamon rolls on the patio table. The students looked at the surroundings, especially the pathway to the detached garage.
“I told them they’d be doing a crime scene search for evidence,” Hoss announced as he pointed his chin to the students.
“What are the facts surrounding this event?” the female student asked authoritatively. One of her male counterparts rolled his eyes.
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