Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  “Most of the people were not in on this,” Elder Thomas said, trying to explain it not just to Elder Mecham but to himself. “Think about the Stoltz family. They would never do this.”

  “Maybe so. But who’s going to stop it?”

  Elder Thomas had no idea. He had always felt safe in Germany, even at the time of the evacuation to Holland. But nothing seemed certain now.

  “Maybe we should try to find Bruder Goldfarb,” Elder Mecham said. “He might need our help.”

  “No. We’d better stay away. We’re in trouble already.”

  “Come on, Elder Thomas. He’s a member of the Church. We’ve got to do something.”

  Elder Thomas tried to think what to do. “We can’t just walk to his shop,” he finally said. “We could be spotted.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Follow me.”

  Elder Thomas walked to their apartment house and in the front door, but instead of walking up the stairs he continued on through to the back door and into the courtyard. Then he slipped through a back gate and down an alley. The elders followed lanes and alleys into the ghetto. Each time Elder Thomas reached a street, he checked it out, then hurried across and into another alley. He ended up at Brother Goldfarb’s tailor shop, at the back door.

  He knocked on the door and then waited. “He might be afraid to answer,” Elder Mecham said.

  But at that moment Elder Thomas saw a curtain move. “Bruder Goldfarb. It’s the missionaries,” he whispered.

  A few seconds passed, and then the door opened. Brother Goldfarb waved them in and closed the door, but immediately he said, “You must not come here. You must leave now.”

  “We had to make sure you were all right,” Elder Thomas said.

  “I’m fine. Don’t bother about me. You must not be seen coming here.”

  “Did the SA come to your shop?” Elder Mecham asked.

  “Oh, yes. They came. They broke my windows and turned my machines over. They knocked me around, and they painted traitor on my door. But at least they didn’t take me off in their trucks.”

  Brother Goldfarb looked old. He was probably not much more than fifty, but his hair was gray, and he had deep lines around his eyes. He had always seemed stoic, ready to accept his lot in life—given what the Nazis thought of Jews—but now he looked defeated. His voice was flat, his face emotionless.

  “Why didn’t they take you?” Elder Mecham asked.

  “I don’t know. They took only men—but mostly young men.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “I don’t know. There were many threats. ‘Filthy Jew,’ they called me. At first they said they would haul me off and kill me, but then they left. I have no idea what it all means.”

  “What can we do to help you?” Elder Thomas asked.

  “Nothing. You must go. I won’t come to church now, but I will worship. I will pray.”

  “Why won’t you come to church?”

  Brother Goldfarb looked surprised. “Don’t you know? I’ve been asked not to.”

  “By whom?”

  “President Meis. The Brown Shirts came to the meetings last week. They told him to rip all the hymns from the songbook that speak of Zion or Israel. And they asked him whether any Jews attended his church. He decided it was better to say no.”

  “But that’s not right,” Elder Mecham said. “You can go to church if you want to. Come to our branch. In Maintal. You can ride with us on your bicycle.”

  “No, no. President Meis is right. It will only cause troubles. This time will pass, perhaps, and then I will return.”

  “Have you talked to your wife?” Elder Thomas asked.

  “No. I must not do that. I will stay here. If they will let me sew, I will be all right.” Brother Goldfarb nodded, his jaw firm, but tears were gathering in the corners of his eyes.

  “We’ll check on you again,” Elder Thomas promised.

  “No. Please don’t.” He was blinking now. “I’ll be fine.”

  Elder Thomas took hold of Brother Goldfarb and hugged him. “I’m sorry,” he said. Elder Mecham reached around and patted his back.

  “I am fine,” Brother Goldfarb kept repeating, but when he stepped back, tears were on his cheeks. “Please, don’t come back. I don’t want anything to happen to you because of me.”

  “We won’t abandon you,” Elder Thomas said. “But we’ll be careful.”

  Elder Thomas opened the door a crack and looked out. Then he reached back and shook Brother Goldfarb’s hand, as did Elder Mecham, and the two slipped out. They followed the back alleys to their building and slipped in the back door. But before they walked upstairs, Elder Thomas went to the front door and opened it an inch or two. Then he shut it again immediately.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s a man across the street. Just standing there.”

  “Gestapo?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not wearing a uniform. He could be an informer. Kellerman could have posted him there.”

  “Maybe he’s just . . . waiting for someone.”

  “Maybe.”

  But it didn’t seem likely.

  Chapter 2

  Wally and Gene were trying to slip out the front door when Wally heard his father’s big voice. “Where are you going, boys?”

  “Just outside to get a little air,” Wally said. He grinned at Gene, but he knew what was coming next.

  “Why do you have a football with you?”

  “It’s Gene’s new one. We need to give it a test flight.”

  “Not today. It’s the Sabbath, Christmas or not.”

  “Before we throw it, we’ll have an opening prayer.”

  Gene laughed, but Dad said, “That’s not funny, Wally. Close the door. You’re letting all the heat out of the house.” Dad was sitting in the living room in “his” chair. He was holding the Salt Lake Tribune open in front of him.

  Wally stepped inside and shut the door. Most of the snow had melted off the front lawn, but the air was cold this morning, and smoggy. “Hey, Dad,” Wally said, as he walked into the living room, “is it all right if I go visit the sick? That’s okay on the Sabbath, isn’t it?”

  “Stick around,” Dad said. “We’re going to have our meeting just as soon as your mother can get away from the kitchen.”

  “After that, can I take the car for a little while?”

  “No. I want you here. The family is coming for dinner.”

  This was a pronouncement, stated one word at a time in Dad’s deep, authoritative voice, and Wally knew he had no chance of winning any concessions. Still, he pushed ahead. “I just want to run over and see Mel before he dies.”

  Dad looked curious as he peered through his reading glasses over the top of the newspaper.

  “Mel’s getting skis for Christmas, Dad. He’s sure to break his neck—the way you said I would if I got skis. I just want to see him one last time before he’s a goner.”

  “Maybe he’ll only be paralyzed, and you can visit him in the hospital,” Dad said. He looked pleased with himself, but he didn’t laugh. He hoisted the paper in front of his face again.

  Good old Dad. President Thomas. He had been stake president for six years, a counselor in the stake presidency before that, and bishop before that. Wally was sixteen, and he

  couldn’t remember a time when his dad hadn’t been gone all day on Sunday. Everyone in Sugar House—the south part of Salt Lake City—knew and loved the man. Wally was one of the very few who thought President Thomas could be improved upon.

  Wally gave up. He walked through the dining room and into the kitchen. The Thomases lived in a big, white frame house, built before the turn of the century. Dad always said it was a fine home, well constructed, but Wally liked the new one-story brick homes that most of his friends lived in.

  Beverly and LaRue, Wally’s little sisters, were in the kitchen with Sister Thomas. Beverly, who was seven, was sitting at the kitchen table studying a picture in her coloring book but not
yet coloring. LaRue was standing on a stool watching her mother roll lumps of dough into balls. Both girls had on white aprons over their red velvet Christmas dresses.

  “Mom, give me your honest opinion,” Wally said. “Don’t you think Dad is unreasonable, tyrannical . . . bossy . . . and—”

  “No, he’s not,” LaRue said. “He’s a sweetie.”

  “Yeah. If you’re nine, and you know how to flash your

  dimples and get anything you want.”

  LaRue cocked her head to one side, smiled, and stuck a finger into one of her dimples. Wally tried to stick his finger into the other one—deep—but LaRue twisted away and stepped off her stool. “Leave me alone!” she demanded.

  “Mom,” Wally said, “I need food before I pass out. The smell of that turkey is killing me.”

  “Eat a carrot,” Mom said. “What did Dad do to you?”

  “He won’t let me take the car.”

  “Big surprise. You know he holds a family meeting on Christmas.”

  “It’s not a meeting. He just gives a speech—the same as he does on family night. Gene and I call it ‘chloroform night.’”

  “Shush.” She looked away, but Wally saw, from the side, that her cheek was swelling, and he knew she was smiling.

  “Which family is coming?”

  “Grandpa and Grandma Thomas. All the Thomases.”

  “Why doesn’t the Snow side of the family come on Christmas? They’re not dumb as adobe bricks—like all my Thomas cousins.”

  “Don’t say that, Wally. That’s not funny.” She turned toward him and tried to look stern, but he could see she was struggling not to smile. Wally took some pleasure in that.

  Mom had a smear of some sort of berry—maybe cranberries—across the top of her apron. She was a pretty woman, but squat, and a little overstuffed in her purple Sunday dress. “Wally, you’ve got the whole week out of school,” she said. “You and Mel can run around all you want.”

  “But you would let me take the car if it were up to you, wouldn’t you? Tell the truth.”

  Mom smiled this time, her big dimples puckering her cheeks like the crowns of apples, but she didn’t answer. Bea Thomas was known as widely as President Thomas and loved as much. And even though she said less than her husband, she was quoted more often. She thought for herself, and she had a way of coming out with things that no one expected from a stake president’s wife.

  Wally tossed a ball of dough into his mouth, and he wandered back to the living room. Then he tried one more time, just to be annoying. “What if I run over to Mel’s for ten minutes? I’ll get back for the meeting, and if I wreck the Nash, I’ll jump out before I bleed on the seats.”

  “Wally, that’s enough.” President Thomas owned and operated a Hudson/Nash dealership, and every year he got a new car. The Nash “Silver Bullet” that had come out that fall was his current pride and joy. He rarely let it out of his sight.

  “All right then,” Wally said. “I’ve reached a decision. I’m staying right here with you.”

  “Threats won’t do you any good either,” Dad said, and he chuckled. He was a burly man, a head taller than his wife, even a couple of inches taller than his eldest son, Alex. He had bulldog jowls for cheeks, and he always looked as though he needed to shave—even right after he had done so. The only time he didn’t wear a white shirt and tie was when he put on his pajamas.

  “This might be a grand time for us to have a father-and-son chat,” Wally said. “You could give me some fatherly advice.” Wally loved the silence that followed. Dad hated to be interrupted when he was reading the paper, and even more, he hated Wally’s facetiousness.

  Slowly the paper lowered, and Dad’s eyes appeared, his glasses reflecting the yellow light in the room. “Actually, we do need to talk about your grades.”

  “Now that I think about it, Dad, I’d like to read the paper myself. Do you have the sports section?”

  Dad picked up a section of the paper from his lap and handed it over. Then he watched.

  Wally laughed as he unfolded the paper. “What?” he finally said as his dad stared at him.

  “I just want to see you read something. Anything.”

  Wally decided he had lost this one, so he ducked behind the paper. Wally’s grades hadn’t actually been that terrible, but they were below his father’s expectations. “You’ve got as much ability as Alex or Barbara,” Dad always told him. “But you’re lazy. You’re wasting the talents the Lord blessed you with.”

  Wally didn’t want to get into all that again, so he read the sports pages, and Dad went back to the section he had been reading. But it wasn’t long before Sister Thomas came to the door and said, “I’m going to let these rolls rise. We could have our meeting now—if it doesn’t last too long.”

  Wally glanced at Dad, who looked a little irritated. And Wally knew why. Dad didn’t like to work around other people’s schedules. “Go get Barbara and Gene,” he told Wally.

  Wally got up, hiked halfway up the stairs, and then shouted, “Bobbi, Gene, shake a leg. It’s time for Dad’s meeting.”

  Everyone soon gathered in the living room. Mom arrived last, wiping her hands on a dish towel and saying, “Al, I have potatoes boiling. I’ll have to check on them before too long.” Dad nodded. He asked “Barbara,” whom everyone else in the world called Bobbi, to lead them in a Christmas hymn, and he asked Gene to say the opening prayer.

  As soon as Gene ended his quick little prayer, President Thomas said, “I know Wally is put out with me that I wouldn’t let him leave, but I like Christmas to be a family day. That’s how it really ought to be. I hate what I see Christmas becoming.”

  “If you ask me, it’s way too commercialized,” Wally said, and he grinned. He knew he had taken the word right out of his father’s mouth. Wally glanced at Bobbi, but she gave her head a little shake.

  Dad took a breath; he didn’t smile. That was a sign he had been pushed about enough. So Wally decided to lay off. “In some ways the depression has been good for people,” Dad said. “It’s caused us to humble ourselves. But now, as times start to get a little better and folks have a dollar or two in their pockets, they’re starting to spend too much money again.”

  LaRue and Beverly were sitting on the floor, their aprons removed now. They were already beginning to “fidget”—as Dad called it.

  “I guess what upsets me most is that members of the Church ought be different. We let the silly radio and the newspapers tell us how to live our lives.”

  This was dad’s favorite topic—the corruption in Zion. Wally could have given the speech himself. But after a few

  minutes, when Dad had just gotten up a head of steam—

  condemning the trashy movies showing in town—Mom said, “Al, I’ve got to check those potatoes really quick, so they won’t boil over.”

  Off she went, and Dad waited. Gene, who was thirteen, was sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch. He was wearing jeans and an old plaid shirt. He looked distant, as usual, but not anxious. Gene was usually one to go along with things and not complain.

  Bobbi was sitting on the couch, facing Dad. She had a new navy blue dress on, and her hair was already curled. She was often Dad’s main supporter, when she agreed with him, but she had strong opinions of her own, and she never held them back. “Dad,” she said now, “the movies aren’t really that bad. I saw that Clark Gable, Myrna Loy movie, ‘Too Hot to Handle,’ and it wasn’t vulgar, or anything like that, but the ads made you think—”

  “It’s the ads I’m talking about,” President Thomas said. “I don’t have time to go to movies.”

  Bobbi was about to respond, but just then Mom returned, and Dad quickly jumped back into his speech. “The point is, this is Zion. The mountains you see outside that east window are the very mountains spoken of by Daniel the Prophet. What do we sing? ‘For the strength of the hills we bless thee, our God, our fathers’ God.’ Do you stop to think what those words mean?”

  Dad didn’t want
an answer. Bobbi must have known that, but she couldn’t resist. She had always talked a lot, but now that she was going to the University of Utah—taking literature classes—she had gotten even worse. “I think the mountains symbolize steadfastness,” she said. “There’s one line in that song . . . I can’t think how it goes.” She got up and walked toward the piano, apparently to look for a hymn book.

  But Dad saw the danger. “It doesn’t matter right now,” he said. “My point is that we came to this valley to get away from the influences of the world, to escape the evil and the mobs, and to build something. It wasn’t that long ago. Do you realize that my Grandfather Thomas was friends with Brigham Young? His father crossed the plains with the second company Brother Brigham brought to this valley. He buried a wife and child out on the plains. And your mother’s family—the Snows—were some of the greatest missionaries in the history of the Church.”

  Bobbi sat down. Dad looked frustrated, as though he had something he wanted to communicate that he couldn’t quite get at. Maybe he saw the absence of interest in most of the faces.

  “Brigham Young used to talk about ‘this people.’ Think what that means. We were bound together then—one society. We knew our heritage. But we’re becoming like the gentiles. Look at the scandals we’ve gone through in Salt Lake this year. Gambling dens broken up. Women arrested for running . . . evil houses.”

  “What women, Daddy?” LaRue asked.

  “Just some . . . bad women.” Dad looked away from her.

  LaRue looked baffled, and Beverly was obviously lost in her own imagination, where she spent most of her life. Mom kept nodding to show her support, but Wally was sure she was thinking mostly about her dinner. And he didn’t blame her. Dad was always alarmed about something. Short skirts. Dance halls. Jazz music. The truth was, all the “evil women” in Salt Lake could probably be rounded up and put into one jail cell.

  Wally sat back and tried not to let his dad bother him. The sun was at a steep angle this time of year, so the house was aglow with a kind of half-light, made amber by the fire in the fireplace. It all seemed like a scene from a play that Wally had watched before. These three connecting rooms—the living room with the front entrance and parlor to the west and a large dining room to the north—had been exactly the same for as long as Wally could remember. The rose-and-green flowered wallpaper had never changed; Mom cleaned it each year with a pink cleaner—Bennett’s dough—and then said, “I think this paper will last us another year.” And everything else lasted another year: the hefty gray couch and chair, the upright piano with its claw feet and chipped keys, the knickknack shelf with the little porcelain cats, the mirror with the beveled edges, the picture of a wolf howling in the snow. Even the Christmas tree returned each year to the same spot, always a Douglas fir, eight feet tall.