The Bold Frontier

by John Jakes

  “My feeling is running high,” Willi exclaimed, hitting a fist on the table so hard his plate danced. “My father fought almost four years with the Union Army. He fought despite being spat on and joked about as a Dutchman. He fought even though he could speak only a few words of English. He fought to deliver his new homeland from the evil of slavery and the damn wicked Southerners—he survived the revolution of 1848, and he took words like liberty and democracy very seriously. So did his comrades. They were proud of their uniform. ‘I fights mit Sigelí!’ It was a proud statement …”

  But there was less pride when O. O. Howard took over the Eleventh Corps after Sigel fell ill. Less pride when Jackson made his surprise thrust, and certain men of the so-called German Corps hacked the straps of their knapsacks in two so they could unburden themselves and run faster. Flying Dutchmen, the public called them.

  “But I did not run!” his father insisted forever afterward. It imposed a special burden, which Willi felt with increasing heaviness this morning.

  He saw Elsa’s worried, drawn expression. He cupped his hand over hers, patting and squeezing. “Please understand my feelings. Over two hundred thousand from the homeland fought for the Union. My papa took a wound that nearly claimed his life. That must not be forgotten. I won’t allow it to be forgotten. If we pay no attention—go about our business—refuse to be intimidated—we’ll be all right.”

  “But Willi …”

  “No,” he said, doggedly. “No more discussion. Please see if you can do something about Annemarie’s state. I’m going to get dressed and go down to the brewery as usual.”

  The small town of Planet, California, lay in the low hills along the Kern River on the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley. In just a few years it had become the center of a thriving region of oil fields. The roughnecks who worked on the rigs were a noisy, rowdy lot, but generally not threatening; at least not to the settled citizens who lived on several residential streets on Planef’s west side. Here Willi Aalen and his family lived.

  It was a half mile walk to the downtown from his heavily-mortgaged house with its gingerbread porch. He walked to work every morning, straight along to Kern Avenue, and thence around the corner a half block on B Street to the Planet Brewery, home of Planet Beer (“Best in the Universe”). This morning the sun was up in a cloudless sky, the air warm and typically dry. Willi could almost imagine that Moss Eames and the others had not come in the night; had not burned his picket fence and killed his bougainvillea. Of course there was evidence of the war on a number of porches along his route. Flags had been hung out in iron brackets; and when he reached Kern Avenue, he saw that many of the small shops displayed similar signs of patriotism. The entire second floor veranda of the Planet House was swagged with bunting.

  Still, reminders of the newly declared war didn’t trouble him so much in the sunshine. As a German-American—a hyphenate, the politicians and the papers called them—he believed steadfastly in his own good citizenship. He wasn’t one of those men of dubious honor who had promoted neutrality openly—or secretly, like the rich Milwaukee brewers whose clandestine funding of pro-German “peace” groups had caused a scandal and made German-Americans hated all the more.

  No. Willi wasn’t that kind. And he’d always had faith in the decency of people, especially those of his adopted country, and he wanted very much to be part of and reflect that decent Americanism. So he tried to reflect it this morning, walking with a brisk, confident stride, and calling a greeting to a child of a neighbor. He was neatly turned out, as always, in a proper worsted suit, starched shirt with high collar, fedora, cane with a gold plated knob. His mustache flowed down in luxuriant curves, ending in finely waxed points. His goatee was equally neat. He was the picture of a good citizen. Washing and dressing had restored his spirits from the outside in.

  Six mornings a week, it was his habit to stop off at Bloodworthy’s Tonsorial for a shave and trim. He did so again this morning. Elmer Bloodworthy had a customer in the chair; his older brother Loy, the police chief.

  “Good morning, Loy, Elmer,” Willi said, seating himself and reaching for a copy of the Bakersfield paper.

  Elmer merely nodded. Loy rolled his head over toward Willi and Elmer withheld the razor from Loy’s lathered face while Loy said, “Heard you had some trouble last night. I’ll send Newt Parker out to take a look.” Willi realized that Loy sounded unenthusiastic.

  “No need,” Willi said, waving. “Just some hooligans—a little property damage. Minor.” He folded the paper open and smiled. “Looks like you won’t be too long, Elmer.”

  Elmer stopped the straight razor. Loy regarded Willi with a straight look, then straightened his head on the headrest and once again considered the pattern in the pressed tin ceiling. Elmer said, “Willi, I can’t take care of you this morning. I’m closing up soon as I finish with Loy.”

  “Oh?” Willi said, coolly. “Why is that?”

  “I got some tooth trouble. Got to go over and see Doc Meeley.”

  “Tooth trouble? You?” Willi said with a half-laugh, closing the paper and folding it along its original creases and using another smile to hide the little cold flutter of his heart.

  “Ain’t that what I said? Can’t you understand English, Willi?”

  “Yes, of course,” Willi said, affronted; he reddened.

  “Then there’s no point your hanging around, is there?” Elmer said.

  “No, I suppose not. I’ll come again tomorrow.”

  Elmer concentrated on shaving his brother.

  Willi clapped his hat on his head. “Good morning, Elmer—Loy.” He walked out, noisily, to show his unhappiness. Elmer Bloodworthy hadn’t had tooth trouble since he exchanged his regular teeth for a complete false set three years ago; he bragged about how good they were.

  Just outside, he remembered something. Loy and Elmer Bloodworthy’s cousin March, who lived up in Oakland, had a boy in the merchant marine. The boy had been aboard the English freighter Wessex when a German submarine torpedoed her in a neutral zone. Several bodies had never been recovered, including that of March Bloodworthy’s boy.

  Willi straightened his hat brim and studied all the red, white and blue decorations along the avenue. He supposed he shouldn’t be too angry with Loy and Elmer over their anger just now. But he was.

  At the corner of Kern and B, as a creaking wagon loaded with driller’s pipe passed by, and then a puttering Oldsmobile runabout, Willi looked back at the barber shop. He saw Elmer and Loy regarding him from the doorway like a pair of cigar store Indians. Elmer showed no signs of closing up.

  Willi swore under his breath, took a tight grip on his stick, and went on.

  He said to himself that he mustn’t blow things out of proportion. What had happened at the Tonsorial was an annoyance, but only that. The Bloodworthy brothers and all the rest of the hot heads would get over their new war fervor and life would settle down again. No doubt everyone in Planet was still in shock over the news; he was, after Mr. Wilson’s many and frequent declarations that the U.S. shouldn’t intervene in the foreign war.

  All that had changed two days ago—April 6, 1917—when Congress passed the president’s war resolution. The German militarists had refused to behave in a civilized manner. They’d allowed their submarines to continue raiding neutral ships, and now the Yanks were going over. As a good American, Willi intended to support Wilson’s decision, and the war effort, one hundred percent.

  An ambrosial scent wafted to him as he walked along B Street. The scent was in his bones, and had been since he was a boy, and he tagged after his father in the small Cincinnati brewery where ex-Corporal Aalen had found a job after the war. Willi had grown up with beer-lovers and brewers. He knew the brewing process intimately by the time he was twelve.

  In ’93, Willi had buried his father beside two cousins in the midst of many friends in the German cemetery in Cincinnati. Eighteen years old, Willi then launched out for the West with his new wife Elsa, who was not as smitten as he w
as with the glowing phrases and promises in Willi’s second-hand copy of a Charles Nordhoff book promoting life and residence in California.

  With savings and a bank loan, Willi had opened the Planet Brewery in 1908. The brewery occupied an entire half a block behind a board fence with a wooden gate in it, and a gaudy sign above. PLANET BREWERY of California. On the sign, various painted planets enshrouded in gas or flame revolved around a large foaming stein floating in starry space. Willi had designed the sign personally.

  His young apprentice, Reinhard, was feeding his caged canary when Willi walked in the office and deposited his hat and stick. The smell of the fermenting beer in the vats out in the brewhouse was thick and delicious. Reinhard seemed nervous. He shot his employer a peculiar, almost apologetic look.

  “My young friend,” Willi said, lapsing into German, “has someone died, perhaps?”

  “Very nearly, Mr. Aalen,” Reinhard said. “Mr. Finnerman telephoned twenty minutes ago. He doesn’t want me to deliver anything today.”

  “But it’s his regular day,” Willi said, puzzled. The Derrick was Planet’s largest and most profitable saloon-cum-restaurant, over on Kern. “He wants to reschedule for tomorrow for some reason?”

  “Not tomorrow either.” Reinhard’s canary cocked its head on its perch. Usually obnoxiously fervent about singing, this morning the bird was silent. “What he said, Mr. Aalen—he said he’d get his beer elsewhere from now on.”

  Willi paled, then sank down on the squeaky swivel chair at his desk. Sadly, the new development didn’t surprise him. Nevertheless, his emotional reaction was strong.

  “He didn’t offer any reason for his decision, I suppose?”

  “Well, yes he did,” said the ingenuous Reinhard, who had huge muscles but little subtlety. “He said that we were at war now, and the drillers and tool-dressers at his place wouldn’t want to drink kraut beer, or give one cent to krauts for making it.”

  “Damn him,” Willi said, his cheeks bright pink suddenly. The points of his mustache quivered. “Damn them all. My father fought for America. He took a Minié ball and shed his blood—we are just as good citizens as James Finnerman and his crowd of oil-soaked hooligans. Wait here. I will set this right before it goes any farther.”

  “Why, Jim? My beer is superior, how many times have you told me that? It’s always delivered on time, fresh. The price is better than the brewery in Bakers-field can give you—”

  “You read newspapers, don’t you?” James Finnerman responded with an exhausted sigh. He was a bald horse-jawed man who inexplicably reminded Willi of a mortician, a very sad mortician. “You’re a Dutchman, Willi—”

  “No! Nonsense! Dutchmen come from the Netherlands, not Germany.”

  “I don’t care, to folks around here you’re a Dutchman. Buying beer from a Dutchman when there’s a war on could be bad for my business. Hell, being a Dutchman could be bad for your own health in a town this small.” He paused. “I hear you got some fence and flowers to replace.”

  “Ja, plenty,” Willi retorted, standing stiff as a Prussian drill sergeant. He was overwhelmed by the sudden, stupid, seemingly unstoppable tide of antagonism. When the Lusitania went down, someone had painted KRAUT SHIT on his galvanized mailbox, but he’d painted it over that same morning and figured it was merely a single incident, never to be repeated.

  Two hundred thousand Germans or more had mustered for the Union Army—immigrants, mostly—and the roster of their commanders were enshrined in communal memory. Alexander Schimmelfennig and von Steinwehr … von Gilsa and the honorable Carl Schurz. Many of those who fought—a few, even, on the damned Rebel side—left children who had grown up as decent, loyal citizens. How many of those were facing this kind of hostility? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Gröss Gott, it was unbearably depressing.

  Finnerman covered his embarrassment by flipping open a cigar box. Willi caught his attention by saying, “Finnerman,” sharply. “You are telling me you’re cutting off my business, like that?” He snapped his fingers.

  “Look, I regret it, don’t think I don’t. You’re an honest man, Willi, and a fine brewer. But I’ve got to think of my own situation. I don’t want a flood of red ink because I’m doing business with a Dutchman.”

  “Will you please stop saying—?” But Finnerman ignored the interruption:

  “I don’t want a mob breaking in here some night and smashing up all my furniture and fixtures. I can’t afford it.”

  “But you can afford to treat me dishonorably,” Willi exclaimed. “You can afford to insult me.” For the first time, Finnerman’s eyes flickered unpleasantly.

  “I wish you wouldn’t yell like that, Willi. I try to be fair in business, and a Christian—” Finnerman headed the local Knights of Columbus chapter, and took pride in it. “—but once I explain how things are, I expect you to honor the explanation and not cause me trouble.”

  “How can I do that when you’re simply giving in to blind fear and stupidity?” The last word brought high color to Finnerman’s pasty face. Willi heard the office door open behind him. He had an uneasy sense of who was there. “Of all people, Jim, you should not—you’re Irish. Don’t you remember what they did to Irish in America not so long ago? ‘No dogs or Irish.’ ‘No Irish need apply.’ ‘Irish will be arrested for vagrancy.’ The Irish were scum, dirt, treated like beasts—your people were just the same as me, only wanting to be good Americans—”

  “Spare me all the speechifying, Willi,” Finnerman sighed. “Maybe there’s something in it, but there’s war on, and I’ve got to pay attention to that, and to this.” He slapped the open page on an account book. “Three customers told me last night they wouldn’t keep coming to the Derrick if I served your beer. I do business with you, I’ll be drowning in red ink.”

  Willi Aalen had not been entirely Americanized. There was still in him a Germanic side that doted on dry pot roast and boiled potatoes and hasenpfeffer in season; on work correctly, not to say fussily done; and there was an extra stubbornness that lingered because of Chancellorsville. My father did not run. I will not. …

  Willi’s spine stiffened. He put on his fedora and glared at Finnerman. “Jim, I will not be dismissed like this.”

  “Sorry, I’ve got no more time to argue with—”

  Willi leaped to the side of the desk. “Jim, I demand that you treat me fairly.” Finnerman started to struggle. “Fairly and decently, like any other—”

  “Let go of my arm,” Finnerman cried, writhing in his chair. “Moss, make him let go of my arm.”

  “Sure, Mr. Finnerman,” said young Moss Eames, the swamper and sometime bouncer of the Derrick. It was Eames whom Willi had heard entering a few moments ago. Eames, who couldn’t read or write, but who didn’t need those skills because his shoulders were half as wide as an ox yoke, and whose hands resembled cantaloupes when he fisted them. He and Willi had never gotten along—and now there was last night between them …

  “Take your damn hands off him,” Moss Eames said, grabbing Willi from behind.

  The grip of those hands broke Willi’s composure altogether. He wrenched free of Moss Eames, dodged by and snatched his gold-knobbed cane from the chair where he’d left it. With a smarmy smile of pleasure, Moss Eames shambled at him but Willi quickly reversed the cane and jabbed Moss Eames’s stained lumberjack shirt with the big knob. The jabs were quick, and hard, three of them. Moss Eames dropped his cantaloupe fists to his sides, unable to believe that this hot-eyed man half his size would dare stand up to him.

  Willi’s chin came up and he snarled at Moss Eames as if the swamper were a new army recruit. “You witless idiot. I heard you outside my house in the dark, you and your gorilla friends. You come near my house again, I’ll horsewhip you, or worse. Now stand aside.”

  Moss Eames lowered his head, blinking and trying to decide how best to dismember the visitor. Willi’s lips puffed out in a tight, determined way and he slashed Moss Eames across the face with the cane’s ferrule.

  “Get
out of my way.”

  “Do as he says,” Finnerman ordered.

  The stick had left a red mark. Moss Eames rubbed it as he stepped back, watching with malevolent eyes while Willi marched out.

  “I’ll get him,” Moss Eames muttered.

  “No you won’t,” Finnerman snapped. “Go downstairs and get to work.”

  Two evenings later, under a mellow sky full of long thin lavender clouds, Annemarie Aalen came home from school the back way. It was late, with shadows lengthening; she’d stayed an extra hour for glee club practice. They were rehearsing a beautifully sweet war song, “A Long Way to Tipperary.” One of the girls in the alto section had asked her, rather nastily, whether she could suggest any songs in German.

  Annemarie had almost burst out crying, but walking home in the soft pleasant shadows of twilight rescued her spirits. She had three books tied in a leather strap, and she was anxious to slip out of her tight dress and bathe her face.

  She was walking along about a block from the house, paying little attention, when a big-shouldered young man stepped out from behind a shed. He had a mass of curly hair and wore a filthy lumberjack shirt. Annemarie shrieked softly as he jumped in front of her and gripped her wrist.

  “Hello, frowline. Out by yourself?”

  “Let go, please …” She started to struggle.

  “Now wait, I just want to show you something.” His free hand dropped; fly buttons popped open. Annemarie’s eyes grew huge, reflecting the cool orange light of the sky. “You krauts like weenie-wursts, don’t you? Here’s a weenie-wurst you can bite.” He pulled it all the way out and shook it, touching her skirt.

  Annemarie screamed and flung herself back, incapable of rational thought. She screamed and kept on screaming, hitting him with her books, kicking him— “Hey, hey, for Christ’s sake, you kraut bitch!”—and in order to escape, he had to form a huge fist and bash her twice in the side of the head.