The German

by Thomas, Lee

  “What have we to fear?” I ask. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Have you?”

  Carl looks as if I’d slapped him. “Or course not,” he exclaims.

  “Then let the sheriff ask his questions. He will get his answers and then go ask his questions of someone else. Should I worry over something I haven’t done and cannot fix?”

  “I’m very worried, Ernst.”

  “I know that. I see that.”

  “Who could have done such a thing?”

  He is working himself into a panic, and I know this will do him no good. He is gentle, this Carl Baker, and I don’t know any words that can soothe him. His own son is not much younger than the Ashton boy and his daughter only a year younger than that. I understand his concern for them, but it goes deeper than his fatherly fear of a monster preying on his children. He carries the fear of being seen as a monster by the Americans and dreads their retaliation against him and his family.

  I was called a monster many times, but the label means nothing. In politics and in war, monsters are defined by which side of a fight a man claims. He is still a man to those who share his beliefs, perhaps even a hero. To those that oppose his philosophy, he is a beast, a creature, one of a thousand unspeakable demons clashing over an ideal.

  With no words to soothe my friend, I tell him that I do not know who could have murdered Harold Ashton. I express my disgust at the crime and voice a hope that the monster will soon be caught and executed.

  Peter Lorre strolls through my thoughts, carrying a balloon and whistling from Peer Gynt.

  My conversation with Carl takes a turn toward the common and he talks about his family, his shop. He comments on the wonderful celebration and taps his fingers in time with the untalented brass band that has resumed banging and honking on the bandstand. Though we discuss many other things, I see the weight of concern on Carl’s face, but since there is nothing I can do to relieve it, I pretend it is not there.

  Eventually, he excuses himself. He tells me that he must find his wife and his children, and asks if I will be staying for the barbecue because he has baked many pies, and I tell him that I will, and I promise to come visit with his family for a time. I finish my second tea and stand, stretching out my back and feeling a pain beneath my shoulder blade. It is a bullet trapped between my ribs, one of many I carry in my chest, and on cold days they feel like bits of ice lodged in my tissues, but only this one shell brings me discomfort regardless of the weather, and it is my belief this is the bullet that killed me.

  As I leave the tent, Yvette reminds me that I can have a third glass of tea free of charge, and I thank her and ask her to keep it for me until I return. Behind the row of tents I take a piss and notice two other men are doing the same. They stare at the stream between their legs as if it is magical and will tell the future. I couldn’t care less for the functions of my body and scan the rows of trucks over my shoulder and the wagons laden down with hay for the cows that will soon face the sledgehammer. A train approaches from the south. In the sky above, the sun appears to be melting, spreading out in a vast pool of molten light.

  ~ ~ ~

  The barbecue at the celebration is good. Weigle serves bratwursts and frankfurters from his shop. To everyone he serves he tells the story of how the sheriff requested his assistance in solving the murder of Harold Ashton, and I know he is lying, but see no reason to question him when he seems in a rare good mood. Good for you, I tell Weigle. With your help, the sheriff will catch this man in no time. He smiles and nods tersely, proudly, as if I am absolutely right. I eat with Carl and his family. His wife makes inappropriate overtures that Carl laughs off as if this is a common game between them. I attempt smiles of my own, but find the woman’s behavior terrible – showing such little respect for Carl.

  I am used to flirtation, though I am not a handsome man. Scars make an otherwise unimpressive face fascinating. Long ago, my position and authority assured a quantity of admirers from both genders who found power an efficient aphrodisiac, and while I could have my pick of lovers, never once did I attribute their attentions to any physical quality I possessed, but rather understood it as a benefit of my social stature like good cigars, fine brandy, and convertible motor cars. Now, if I am considered attractive it is simply because I am here – present when so many others are absent. Women see me as strong and available, lacking the emotional obligation of a wife. As for the men of my sort, who can say what they see? In this place I represent all that they loathe in themselves, yet they come to me like starving peasants begging sustenance from a despised baron.

  After the sausages and salads and slices of Carl’s blackberry pie, fatigue falls over me. It is pleasant in its way, but with the persistent heat it drives me nearly to sleep. Feeling it would be rude to drop my head on the bench while Carl speaks, I excuse myself for a walk around the grounds. Again, I see my neighbor Tim. His fat friend is no longer with him. Instead, Tim sits at a bench with his mother and she speaks to a plump woman with crooked teeth as Tim devours a wedge of watermelon. Pink spots cover the white napkin tucked into his collar and drip to a plate already freckled with black seeds. He doesn’t see me pass and I do not stop to say hello but rather continue to the edge of the fairgrounds. As I wander, I carry a vague hope of seeing the teacher, Jeffrey. If he sees me perhaps it will occur to him to visit my house again, and I immediately scold myself for such a pathetic yearning, because I do not enjoy the man’s company. He is shamed and weak and brings me little but a few moments of distraction and every moment in his presence diminishes me. But it is company, and suddenly I am aware of how very long it has been since I shared my time with a companion of value.

  I think of a man named Richert. He gave me a car I rarely use and offered me a home by the water, though I could have purchased these things myself. We spoke as good friends, but only later did I understand his opinion of me was far lower.

  It is this place. A place of freedom shouldn’t know such fear, but it clings to these people like flies on the dead.

  At the edge of the fairgrounds, I decide it is time to go home. My mood has soured and I find no joy among this population. So I cross the field a final time. Near the bandstand I see a group of children gathered around a man in a wheelchair. He is speaking loudly and waving a hand in the air – his face a twisted mask of mock fury. The children – and there is Tim’s fat friend among them – listen rapt by the man who I recognize as Brett Fletcher, the town’s first war hero. His eyes are those of a madman, sharp and at the same time focused on things well out of sight. He makes fists of his hands and twists his shoulders back and forth to give the impression of marching and the children laugh, and he raises his arms as if sighting down a rifle and the children gasp, and he makes a stricken face and falls back in his chair and the children applaud and shout. I leave the performance and the fairgrounds behind, and walk home.

  On the road into town a car approaches. It is traveling very fast and the driver honks the horn in a staccato flurry. The car swerves across the lane, and I believe it is the driver’s intention to hit me. I expect to be afraid, but the feeling never appears. The grill of the car races for me and I look upward searching for the driver’s eyes and I see the vehicle is crowded with young people and they all look insane as their faces fly toward me, but I do not move, not so much as a flinch, and I have no explanation for why this is so – it isn’t bravery, nor is it death’s welcome – but I stand there as if watching an approaching friend and at the last moment the car swerves sending up a spray of dust to cover me as many young voices scream obscenities and call me “Kraut.” None of those faces are familiar to me. How they know I am a German simply by my face and my clothes I could not say. Perhaps it is as simple as a predator recognizing its prey.

  At home I strip off my clothes and use a damp cloth to scrub the dust and sweat from me. Then I lie down for an inordinately long nap. When I wake, the sweat is thick on me, so I again wipe myself off with the damp rag. Unsatisfied with the rapidly warming moisture
on my skin, I retrieve my swimming trunks from the line in back and walk to the lake.

  Evening is falling and the mosquitoes dance thickly about me. I wade out until the water covers my shoulders. My feet sink in the spongy foliage at the lake’s bottom, and I find a stone on which to stand. I watch the smooth surface as the water works through my skin to cool the muscle and bone beneath, and for a time I am comfortable and calm. Except for the occasional refrain from Peer Gynt, my mind is quiet.

  Dark falls and I wade out of the lake and I go to my house, and inside I shower to get the lake off of me, and I splash rose water on my palms and massage it into my skin, and I pour myself a whiskey and return to the porch and sit in the hard backed chair and close my eyes. No fireworks tonight. The city is supporting the war effort and conserves the powder for the killing of the Japanese and the German. It is not quiet, though. Men fire their guns into the sky. The reports echo across town, and distant guns fire back – violence summoning violence like animals calling mates. Shouts of appreciation rise and fall as this place celebrates the birth of America. It sounds like battle, and the familiarity of the barrage brings melancholy warmth to my skin.

  In the streets of Munich my men and I confront a communist brigade with chair legs and broken bottles, and I smash a man’s nose beneath the pine club before slashing his cheek and stomping his throat under my boot. Next to me, another communist meets the blade of my lieutenant’s knife. Later the lieutenant recounts the fight over a brandy in my home, and later still, we are in my bed and he is sobbing, and I drift off to sleep as if on the notes of a lullaby.

  This life I imagine is impossible, but I have no memories to contest it, and what is a man but an accumulation of memories? He is neither his name, nor the names others call him, but rather a series of events recorded in tissue like scars behind his eyes. A name is meaningless. Names are for the corpse registry and the carvers of stones.

  I remember being cold and wiping flakes of blood like bits of dried autumn leaves from my chest. I remember laughter and the sound of a man choking on blood, and that man is me.

  I think of Caligari and wonder if these mad memories hold me in black waters, trapping me under ice until I emerge from delusion into the hands of my keepers.

  Ten: Sheriff Tom Rabbit

  Tom Rabbit also spent his afternoon wandering the dusty fairgrounds. Though solemn, he occasionally forced a smile when greeting friends and neighbors, and he shared moments speaking with them, but never settled into real conversation. Walking among the people he had been charged to protect, Tom was stricken by the uniformly changed demeanor. The Texans had made the city a courtroom with hundreds of jurists already weighing guilt. Tom saw the quiet conversations, the subtle nodding of heads as simple folks with absolutely no evidence passed judgment on their neighbors, and many of them looked at Tom, not as an ally, but as an accomplice to the crime because he had not yet solved it. On the other hand, the Germans wore guises of the accused when Tom spoke to them. Faces became contrite and words crawled from lips in a stilted yet respectful way, all except for Weigle who believed himself somehow above suspicion.

  Days had passed since Harold Ashton had been found, and Tom was no closer to identifying the killer than he had been. The snuffbox was of German origin and very common in that country; it could have arrived with any number of families who had chosen this part of the country to settle. No additional evidence presented itself, and he’d received no reports of similar crimes from any of the sheriff’s offices he’d contacted. So he was left with a dwindling list of men who needed to be interrogated and all but useless tip-offs from the community. It seemed that every slight against a neighbor had become sufficient cause for suspicion. Phone calls came in day and night. Angry citizens marched into his office certain they knew the identity of the Ashton boy’s killer and their convictions were born of evidence that amounted to: he plays his radio too loud; he closes his blinds at three in the afternoon; he parked his car in front of my drive; his son threw a muddy ball into the clean sheets I had drying on a line and all he did was laugh about it. Petty and ridiculous.

  He stopped at a tent to share a glass of tea with Doc Randolph, and the doctor asked him how he was feeling, though both of them already knew the answer, and Tom expressed his frustration, but the doctor only added to it with a glare of superiority cast through a fog of pipe smoke. Rex Burns joined them and the three men exchanged ideas, all of which they had exchanged before and the futile redundancy of the exercise fueled Tom’s aggravation, because he knew that the crime would remain unsolved unless the killer walked right up to them and confessed, but of course he couldn’t say that to anyone except Estella – and only because she could never translate the admission of his failure.

  Finally, Tom excused himself and returned to the sun-baked fairgrounds. He walked from tent to tent, hoping to see every face in the city. He thought on the information Doc Randolph had given him about Albert Fish and imagined that such sickness must surely cover a face like warts or boils, and if he looked hard enough, the blemishes of malevolence would show themselves. He strolled to the bandstand and crossed the grounds to the German tents and peeked inside each to find families and young couples and plump, pretty women attempting celebration as the shadow of the Ashton boy’s murder hung over them all. They regarded him sheepishly, then looked away like bashful children. In one tent, Tom saw a man sitting alone at a back table. The man wore deep scars like a line from cheekbone to cheekbone, and Tom felt a tickle of unease under the man’s gaze so he turned away.

  He checked the next tent and the next, and then wandered back across the dusty field, through small groups of playing children and the parents who hovered at the edges of the games, speaking quietly and keeping close eyes on their boys and girls.

  He’d shaken a hundred hands before the celebration began to break up. The forced smile had brought an ache to his face, and the greasy food and acidic drinks were working to tear a hole in his stomach. By five o’clock only a handful of people remained. The vendors packed away their supplies and disassembled their tents.

  With no fireworks to look forward to, Tom imagined fewer families would gather by the lakeside, swapping flasks and stories as the moon rose over Barnard. But single men would still gather at Mitch’s Roadhouse, the Longhorn Tavern, or the Ranger’s Lodge for beers and whiskey. The German men would gather at Mueller Beer Hall to the east.

  A cold beer sounded good to Tom, and maybe a few shots of whiskey as well. He hadn’t had so much as a sip since the morning they’d found the boy in Blevins’s woods, but today the call of intoxication was just too loud.

  So he left the fairgrounds and drove the Packard back into town. He parked in front of his office. Gil limped across the room, carrying a short stack of papers. Rex had beaten Tom back to the station and sat in a chair, reading over a ledger and shaking his head. Don Nialls would be at home with his family; he’d become obsessive over their protection in the last few days, and Tom didn’t blame him in the least. Dick and Walter wouldn’t be in for another hour to monitor things on the night shift. Tom had given their dispatcher, Muriel Iverson, the day off so she could attend the Independence Day celebration with her family. Six officers were out on general patrol, so that left Rex and Gil.

  The three men exchanged exhausted greetings and Tom nodded at the ledger in Rex’s hands.

  “Anything useful come in today?”

  “Not really. Same old horseshit. Mrs. Reeves over to Fredericks Street thought she saw someone prowling around her neighbor’s yard last night. Couldn’t describe the guy, except to say he wore a long gray duster and a gray Stetson.”

  “A duster? In this heat?” Gilbert asked.

  “Who’s the neighbor?”

  “That’s the Williams place. Deke and his son David.”

  “Sure,” Tom said, having known Deke Williams since their school days. “Those two can handle themselves just fine. Anything else?”

  “A missing cat. Someone else spotte
d Hugo Jones and his friends walking through the lakeside neighborhood.”

  “A bunch of donkeys,” Tom said. He shook his head and crossed to his office. At the door he paused and said, “Once Dick and Walter get in here, I’m buying a round at the Longhorn for those law enforcement officers interested in joining me.”

  This brought out a “Whoop” from Rex and a smile from Gil.

  “Count me in,” the young deputy said.

  “Good.” Tom turned on his heels and returned to his desk.

  The phone rang off and on for twenty minutes, but Tom let his deputies take the calls while he rested his head on his arms. Sleepless nights and a day in the sun had sapped his energy and despite the phone’s constant interruptions Tom fell into a deep sleep.

  It felt as if he’d just dozed off when a strong hand shook him awake. Rex was saying his name urgently, and Tom shot upright. He rubbed the fog from his eyes and was almost startled to find himself at the office rather than at home.

  “Tom,” Rex said for the third time. “You need to pick up the phone.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Instead of replying, Rex lifted the phone from its cradle and handed it to the still-disoriented sheriff. Tom put the device against his ear and then quickly pulled it away.

  Two people were screaming: one was a man insisting Tom come at once; and the other was a woman who made no requests but rather shrieked incoherently like two saws trying to cut each other down. Tom eased the phone back to his ear.

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  “Sheriff Rabbit,” a man shouted. The shrill cries of the woman continued in the background.