Hawthorn Woods

by Patrick Canning

She turned to find Roland Gerber seated under the big umbrella, his hands tied up in colorful string held by Diana Banderwalt.

  “Hi, Roland,” Francine said. “Hi, Diana.”

  “Hi,” the girl returned bashfully.

  “You’ll have to forgive me for not getting up,” Roland said, holding up his string-bound hands. “I find myself indisposed at the moment. We are attempting what I’m told is called a Cat’s Cradle.”

  “You guys are doing great,” Francine said.

  She’d been imagining this moment for the last few days, wondering if he would look or sound any different to her. He didn’t. He was same old Roland.

  “Roland, I feel like I should apologize for not coming over the past few days.”

  He shook his head. “The fault is mine. I was too aggressive in my attempts at assisting you. Your absence speaks to a fault in my methods alone.”

  She’d missed his lyrical way of speaking.

  “I’d like to come over again. How about dinner tomorrow?”

  She said it spontaneously, not knowing if it would be a friendly get together or a chance to spy. Maybe both.

  “I would adore a dinner,” he replied. “Provided I secure my escape before then.”

  Diana giggled, the string between them more knotted than ever.

  “Sounds good, see you guys later,” Francine said.

  She moved on to Lori’s other tables, examining his-and-hers watering cans, and a bright blue sauna suit. So much crap that didn’t merit a place in the house, banished to the humiliating fate of a garage sale. People always held on to something…

  Francine had a sudden, Nancy Drew idea.

  She snaked between the deal seekers, looking for a green shirt and Charlie Brown tie. “Lemme squeeze past ya. Ope, sorry, Carol. Bruno. Bruno!”

  Bruno was examining what looked like a giant blue paperclip. “Hey. Just stocking up on, um, whatever this is.”

  “That’s a Thighmaster. Listen, Roland’s here. Over by the umbrella. He’s basically handcuffed to a child.”

  “Okay. I don’t follow.”

  “He’s literally tied to Diana Banderwalt. His house is empty. I can run over there real quick and have a look around.”

  “What? That’s a terrible idea. It’s dangerous. And breaking and entering. And there’s probably some other reason I can’t think of yet.”

  “You said yourself that these guys always hold on to something. This is a rare chance to look for Gerber’s something.”

  “And if he suddenly decides to walk home?”

  Francine grabbed a referee’s whistle from the table and slapped it into Bruno’s hand. “Lori will make us buy it, but we can expense it to the agency.”

  “Francine…”

  “The longer we wait, the more dangerous it gets. I can do this. Give me five minutes.”

  Bruno chewed his bottom lip, then gave a nonplussed nod. “Five minutes.”

  ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

  After telling Laura Jean she was going to run home and use the bathroom, Francine eased her way out of the crowd. As she emerged through Roland’s mini-forest of spruce, she saw Charlie at a garage sale directly across the street, examining a giant bag of Tootsie Pops. She probably should have been more specific in her “anywhere but our block” directive, but that could be addressed later.

  She slipped into the screened-in porch, found the back double doors open, and suddenly, she was in Roland’s kitchen. Standing still for a moment, she felt the uneasy excitement of being in someone else’s house, uninvited. Then she got to work.

  The kitchen was about the same size as Ellie’s, with a much smaller table that had only two chairs. Faded paisley wallpaper was adorned with framed pictures of the Chicago skyline, a panorama of the Alps, and a crocheted doily of three silver oak leaves. A duo of hanging planters painted with hummingbirds held fragrant basil and oregano plants, which stirred gently in the breeze of a wicker ceiling fan. The cabinets held neat stacks of Pyrex dishware, a tin of dog biscuits, a Crock-Pot painted with tiny white flowers. All was as neat and quaint as could be.

  She moved on to the dimly-lit living room, centered by a quilt-draped couch. Marble-topped end tables sported matching lamps, a day-of-the-week pill reminder box, an Umberto Eco hardcover clipped with gold reader glasses, and an oversized television remote. A stack of TV Guides and a stereotypical bowl of butterscotch candies dressed a dusty player piano next to a chimney. No jackboots dried by the fireplace. No Luger gleamed on the mantel. Everything fit perfectly with the Roland Gerber she knew.

  The last three doors in the house waited down a short hallway. The five minutes she’d promised Bruno had to be up, but she’d come this far…

  She checked the bathroom first. Tidy and unremarkable. Same for the laundry room next door. Finally, Francine stepped into the bedroom.

  A bed with a patchwork quilt. An armoire of neatly folded clothes. A closet filled with suits and winter coats. No paramilitary brownshirt. No SS leather jacket. But there was something on the shelf above…

  She pulled a newspaper clipping from between two shoeboxes. It was from a Chicago-based, German language newspaper. In the haze of German words, she recognized only two, “Roland Gerber,” tucked into the middle of an article.

  The floorboards out in the hallway creaked.

  Francine’s heart forgot to beat for a few seconds, then made up for lost time by going into overdrive. This had been a bad idea. Maybe deadly bad. She was about to hold the record for shortest detective career in the history of crime.

  The shadow that edged into the doorway was low to the ground. Doglike.

  Francine exhaled in relief as Ajax’s snout edged into the bedroom. She dropped into a crouch to keep from passing out as the dog lumbered over to lick her hand.

  “Were you hiding, buddy? I scared you, huh? You scared me, too.”

  She pocketed the newspaper clipping, then walked back into the kitchen with Ajax. After giving him a dog biscuit from the tin in the cabinet, she left through the back door, only breathing normally once she’d cleared the line of spruce trees.

  She’d done it. She was out. She—

  Something was wrong at the Asperskis’. People were walking away from all the garage sales, in fact, looking scared and talking in hushed whispers. The music coming from Lori’s driveway cut out abruptly.

  Francine rounded the Colonial to find Mark with his arm wrapped around a crying Laura Jean, Bruno right beside them.

  “Bruno, what—?” Francine began.

  “I was just about to come get you.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  He pointed down the street where there were no garage sales and fewer people. Something hung from one of the lower branches of a hickory tree. Francine squinted.

  A breeze found the tree, dancing its emerald leaves and unfurling a red flag centered by a circle of white. Inside the circle were the sharp, black lines of a swastika.

  She drew in her breath. “Oh my God.”

  Chief Durham’s police cruiser screeched to a halt under the hickory. When he discovered the flag was zip tied to the branch, he simply broke the whole branch off and let it fall out of sight behind his cruiser.

  “I don’t get it,” Bruno whispered beside her. “He never left the yard.”

  Francine turned to see Roland still standing under the umbrella, the string of a ruined Cat’s Cradle dangling from one hand, a look of utter horror on his face.

  Chapter 23

  I have met problems so full of possibilities that I have been unable to make up my mind about them.

  [ x ] TRUE [ ] FALSE

  Francine pushed Charlie’s dinner of liverwurst and saltines across the counter. “You, mister, will eat this.”

  “I, lady, won’t!” Charlie declared, his face contorted into a bunny-nose of disgust.

  “Liverwurst is good for you.”

  “It’s gross! I hate it. What is it?”

  “I don’t know, it’s like…a spiced meat paste o
r something. Okay, yeah, that does sound gross, but just take a bite. If you hate it, I’ll leave you alone.”

  Despite the allure of “good-for-you spiced meat paste,” Charlie didn’t budge, so Francine opened the fridge for a carbonated bargaining chip.

  Immediately after seeing the flag, she had grabbed Charlie and raced home. Everyone else had done likewise, and the communal excitement of Garage Sale Day had been instantly zeroed out, replaced with low-grade unease.

  Charlie hadn’t seen the flag, and probably wouldn’t have known what it was anyway, but he seemed to absorb plenty of nebulous stress from Francine, despite her attempts to act normally. While she’d initially considered another cool-aunt popcorn-style dinner, given that Charlie had experienced yet another traumatic event, the kid couldn’t live on snack food alone. Thus, the liverwurst.

  “Take one bite, and you can have a pop.” She displayed a can of 50/50 she’d taken from Bruno’s.

  Keeping one eye on the soft drink, Charlie smeared liverwurst onto a cracker, exhaled, and with unfathomable bravery took a bite.

  “It’s good, right?” she asked.

  He kept his head low, but she could see he was grinning, unlikely to admit defeat.

  “Do you understand what happened today?”

  He sipped from the can and shook his head. “I just know everyone is scared or mad.”

  “Someone put up a flag. A flag from a long time ago that means a bad thing.” Francine knifed a cracker into the liverwurst. “People are scared because they don’t know who did it. Are you scared?”

  Charlie shrugged. “I dunno.”

  “When I was little and got scared, I had a made-up friend named Nancy. She helped me anytime I was worried.”

  “But I don’t need a made-up friend. You and me can fix things.”

  “I don’t want you to worry about that kind of grown-up stuff, remember? Your job is to be a kid. You can do that, right?”

  He nodded vigorously.

  “Good.” She unwrapped a Tootsie Pop from the gigantic bag Charlie had bought at a garage sale, and handed it to him. “Why don’t you go find us a movie to watch and I’ll be down in a sec?”

  “I’ll make us a fort!” he said, and galloped down into the family room with the sucker in hand.

  Francine picked up the phone and dialed. “Hey, it’s me.”

  “How are you guys doing?” Bruno asked.

  “We’re fine. I think he can tell I’m stressed, though.”

  “Yeah. Weird mood.”

  “You’re sure Roland was at the garage sale the whole time?”

  “One hundred percent. It was me, him, the Cunninghams, Lori. Everybody else was sort of coming and going.”

  Francine sighed. “I just don’t understand what it means.”

  “I talked to Chief Durham while he was untying the flag and saw it up close. It was new. Some kind of synthetic nylon, so I doubt it’s an antique souvenir of Gerber’s. To be honest, he looked just as shocked as the rest of us when he saw it.”

  “What if someone wants us to think Roland’s a Nazi?”

  “Or they know he is, and they’re threatening to expose him. ‘Get Off Our Block,’ remember?”

  Francine switched the handset to her other shoulder. “I’m meeting with him tomorrow night.”

  “Francine, please. Today was scary enough.”

  “Exactly.” She lowered her voice. “My nephew plays in this neighborhood, Bruno. I want to know what the hell is going on around here. There’s nothing more to find in your history books, we’ve learned all we can from a safe distance. I need to talk with him face to face again. I can do it.”

  He sighed. “Okay. We’ll prep tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. See ya bright and early.” Francine hung up and joined Charlie down in the family room.

  The boy had sandbagged all the leather couch cushions in front of the TV and stretched a bed sheet across the top in an impressive pillow fort. Seven-year-olds were natural furniture foremen.

  “Hey, Bubba. Are girls allowed?”

  Charlie waved her in, his focus on the big screen, where the Blues Brothers were haggling with Ray Charles about speakers.

  “Ooh, I love this movie.” Francine crawled in under the sheet. “Cover your ears if they say the f-word, okay?”

  “How will I know until after they say it?” Charlie pointed out. “Plus, it’s on TV. Nothing bad can happen on TV.”

  They huddled together in the safety of the pillow fort, front and back doors of the house locked, watching a movie on TV, where nothing bad could happen.

  Chapter 24

  My judgement is better than it ever was.

  [ ] TRUE [ x ] FALSE

  Francine winced as the classical music playing on the teddy bear radio atop Bruno’s fridge was drowned out by a high-pitched squeal.

  “Oops. That’s not it.” Bruno fiddled with the dial of a radio receiver he’d set up next to the sink.

  He had scoured the yellow pages and driven all morning to a spy shop in Joliet that sold some key items, including a microphone small enough to conceal in clothing, a transmitter strong enough to broadcast a couple houses away, and a receiver to record whatever was transmitted. The purchases, all advertised as amateur-friendly, were proving to be anything but for Bruno.

  “How can it be both direct and alternating current?” He flipped through the receiver’s user manual in frustration.

  Francine gave him a “you can do it” pat on the back.

  The newspaper clipping she’d found in Gerber’s closet lay on the counter nearby. Bruno was planning to fax it to a friend in the language department of Columbia University back in New York. Below the clipping, Francine noticed a typed transcript she hadn’t seen before.

  “Can I read this?”

  “What’s mine is yours,” Bruno said, still nose-deep in the user manual.

  February 11, 1989. New York, NY.

  Michael Bruno/Ida Nussbaum

  Michael Bruno: I think…yeah, I think it’s recording. Test, test. Is this light supposed to be on?

  Ida Nussbaum: I’ve never been on a radio show before.

  M.B.: This is just a recording for my records.

  I.N.: I’m teasing you, Michael. Ask away.

  M.B.: Oh, right. Okay, um, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to know about the day the Germans came to Trnów.

  I.N.: A Wednesday morning. A very nice Wednesday morning, in fact. Not a cloud in the sky when I saw the convoy of German vehicles. Once they’d arrived, the soldiers asked the men of age in our town to assemble outside the bread factory. We made incredible bread in those days. I can still smell it if I try. The Germans, always sticklers for paperwork, documented the names of all the men, then called for the rest of our village, perhaps nine hundred people in all. The Germans were polite, but clearly in charge. They told us we were being drafted into the war effort. The men were ordered to dig a trench alongside the factory. Women and children were to support the effort with food and water. What the Germans wanted with a Polish bread factory I couldn’t guess. We thought perhaps they’d mount machine guns in the windows. Our men followed their orders and dug the trench. The work lasted an entire day because the Germans kept ordering the trench deeper, wider. How could soldiers fight in a trench so deep? we wondered.

  M.B.: Then Lischka came.

  I.N.: Yes. He arrived with his SS men the next day, once the trench was finished. The regular soldiers had acted like men doing a job, but the SS were different. You could see something in their eyes. Hatred. Excitement. Lischka most of all. I was terrified of him before he said even one word. He inspected the work thoroughly, carefully reviewing the list of names several times and climbing into the ditch himself. The soldiers from the general army left that evening, and some in our town became less afraid. I did not share their optimism.

  M.B.: Did you interact with Lischka?

  I.N.: Yes. My father ran the only hotel in town. We were required to put Lischka and his men up for the n
ight. They danced with the women of our town, ate our food, drank our wine. This went on late into the night. Lischka never danced, but I brought him several glasses of wine throughout the evening. I think he might have even liked me. He was so meticulous, the only man I’ve ever seen wipe the bridge of his glasses every time he cleaned his lenses. His men even teased him for this. As a joke, they tried to get my father to give his own spectacles to Lischka. But my father’s glasses had been a gift from me. Thin rims of gold, my initials etched upon the stems. Time after time, my father politely refused their request. In the end, it wouldn’t have mattered.

  M.B.: What happened the next day?

  I.N.: We were all roused very early. It was dark out and very cold. All of the men in town, even the young, were asked to line up alongside the factory ditch for a new work detail. My grandfather, my father, my uncles, and my little brother. All stood next to the ditch. They were told to remove their clothes. One man refused. It was so terribly cold out. He was shot. Those who had been hopeful the day before now joined in my fear. The rest of our men quickly took off their clothes. They were instructed to put them in a pile. A pile for clothes. A pile for shoes. A pile for combs and jewelry. Neat piles. The same you may have seen in museums, but to know the owners…I will never forget the neat piles. Our men stood naked and shivering at the edge of the trench. Lischka waved his hand like he was shooing a bumblebee. His soldiers fired at them. My family, my friends, my neighbors… [Pause]

  M.B.: We can finish another time.

  I.N.: No. Most of the men fell into the pit, but a few who had been wounded stood yet. My brother Samuel was very young and very small. The bullets had gone over his head. My father had been shot in the stomach but was still alive. He took my brother’s hand. A few soldiers held the rest of us back while the others reloaded. We screamed and cried, witnessing but not believing. Lischka approached my father, asked for his glasses. The other soldiers laughed. My father refused. Lischka pulled a pistol from his belt and held it to my brother’s face. He asked again. My father gave him the glasses. Lischka tapped them down into his breast pocket, then shot my brother. [Pause] He cleared the line of fire slowly, allowing my father time to suffer the loss of his child, then he waved his hand a second time. The soldiers again fired, and the remaining survivors, including my father, fell into the ditch. [Pause] The SS put us to work immediately. Those who refused, those who fought, those who ran, were killed on the spot. Lischka proudly showed off his ‘new glasses’ given to him by ‘the defiant Jew, now a dead Jew.’ They laughed. They cheered. [Pause] Late in the day, I took a wheelbarrow past the ditch, before it was filled in. Perhaps some had survived, and I might somehow help. I was right only in my first thought. I believed it a trick of the setting sun at first, the small movements in the pile. Then I understood. Some at the bottom hadn’t yet died. [Pause] I think that’s enough for today, Michael.