Summer of My German Soldier

  In the bottom drawer of the kitchen cabinet Ruth stores dozens of neatly folded grocery sacks. I picked one for my suitcase and thought of Robert’s suitcase, the one the whole church chipped in to buy him. How proud he must have felt—all those people wishing him well.

  After the nine o’clock news was over, the big upright radio in the living room was snapped off, and my mother and father began readying for bed. At nine thirty his breathing deepened into snores, and I guessed that my mother must be sleeping too. Sure she was. Haven’t I heard him joke about it, “Pearl falls asleep on her way to the pillow.”

  The unhooked window screen pushed out with a sound so slight that I didn’t bother to check to see if Sharon slept on. I dropped my paper bag to the ground and started to follow when I thought of something. I went over and stood for a moment by my sleeping sister.

  Sharon lay curled on her side, just a small soft thing, her lips resting against her thumb. Already past the age when she needs to thumb-suck, but not yet ready to stop keeping it handy.

  “Well, be good now,” I said. “I sure hope you grow up nice.” Sharon’s reluctant eyes opened. She took hold of my hand and closed her eyes again. As I tried to loosen my hand she seemed to get a better grasp, like she didn’t want me to go or maybe she didn’t want me to go without her. “Want to come along?” I whispered. Groaning like her sleep was being disturbed, she released my hand and turned over.

  Outside, the darkness was complete. I walked by the sandpile and the chinaberry tree whose strongest branch supported our chain swing. The seat had been cut from an old restaurant sign, and there was still the word, “EATS” painted in faded red letters.

  Is this how it all ends? Leave everything you know, and all that comes to mind is trivia—sandpiles and chinaberries.

  I left my sack at the foot of the garage steps and crawled my way up through the blackness. “Anton,” I whispered. But behind the closed door, there was only silence. A feeling of loss swept over me. “Anton!” I cried, hitting the door with my fist. “It’s me! Patty!”

  Abruptly the door opened. “Quiet!” As he led me through the blackness I tried to find my voice. “I thought, I thought you had gone,” I said and then from somewhere came crying. Only after my tongue had tasted saltiness did I know its source.

  Anton squeezed my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know I was going to do that.”

  Anton brought my hand to the slightly moist inner corners of his own eyes. “Just wanted to point out that the biggest difference between us is that you cry more noisily than I.”

  I laughed, feeling grateful for the darkness which concealed my eyes.

  “We both knew that I couldn’t stay. It had to happen, P.B., you always knew that.”

  “No, I didn’t!” I breathed in deep. “Anton—” I needed to say his name aloud again as though it were a magical incantation. “Anton, I won’t even be that much trouble. What I’m trying to tell you is—” The hurdle felt too high for vaulting.

  “P.B., I don’t think—”

  “Don’t talk. Listen to me.” It was my hurdle, and I had to clear it myself. “I don’t think you oughta leave me, not now. I haven’t learned all those things you were going to teach me—things about Emerson and—and—Oh, Anton, let me be with you, go where you go.”

  His thumb pressed against my palm. “You know what you are asking is impossible, but if you’re saying that you love me—”

  “Yes,” I answered, wondering if it came out audibly. “Yes.”

  “Then know this, Patty, it’s not completely one-sided. I love you too, and in my own way I’ll miss you.”

  He opened the door, climbed quickly down, and offered up his hand to me.

  Outside, the moon, almost full-grown now, threw soft illumination on his forehead and cheeks while leaving the deeper recesses in shadows. Then it struck me that if someday I grow old and forgetful, forgetting even friends’ names and faces, his face I could never forget.

  He looked down at the luminous hands of his watch. “The train comes by about ten fifteen.”

  “Yes,” I replied and then, thinking that my answer sounded curt, I added, “Yes, it does.”

  “Let me help you back into the house,” he offered. “There’s still time.”

  I began to feel jealous of time and trivia. Of last moments consumed in pass-the-salt type of comments. “No thanks. My bedroom window screen is unhooked and the water spigot is there, makes a good foothold.”

  “Well, I must say good-bye now.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” I dug into the right-hand pocket of my jeans. “Here’s some money—only four dollars and sixty-five cents. It’s all Ruth and I had.”

  He took the money. “Thanks for this, for everything. And I have something for you too. It belonged to my father and his father and even his father before that.” Anton looked down at his hand. Then warm metal encircled my finger. “This ring was made by Germany’s most famous goldsmith for my great-grandfather when he was president of the University of Göttingen. The crest represents the office of the president.”

  A thing of value! He’d give it to me? “Maybe you’d better keep it, Anton. I mean, it has been in your family for so long.” My tongue! I could bite it off. The ring had been mine for only a moment, and now I would lose that too.

  “The greater the value, the greater the pleasure in giving it. The ring is yours, P.B.” Then in the darkened silence, I heard him breathe in deeply. “Am I still your teacher?” Without pausing for an answer he continued, “Then I want you to learn this, our last, lesson. Even if you forget everything else I want you to always remember that you are a person of value, and you have a friend who loved you enough to give you his most valued possession.”

  “I will, Anton. I’ll remember.”

  I saw or felt it coming—my chin tilted up as my eyes closed. Then our lips touched, lingered together briefly before going their own separate ways. When I opened my eyes Anton was gone.

  Time passed. I stood rigid and unmoving, wanting nothing new to happen to me. New time was nothing except a way to determine how long he had been gone. From under the weight of my foot I felt a chinaberry being pushed into the damp ground. My finger passed over the indented crest of the gold ring.

  Then from down the distant tracks came the ten fifteen.

  14. Dirty filthy girl

  FOR A WHILE I carefully kept track of time without Anton. One day, one day and a third, five days, seventeen. Then abruptly I stopped counting. For one thing I didn’t like the time being long or the distance great. And marking off time struck me as something like counting empty spaces—spaces you know can’t ever be filled.

  “Patricia Ann.” A voice came intruding into my world. “Do you find the schoolyard more interesting than our little problems in fractions?”

  A classroom of heads turned to stare at me. Quick, answer the question. About fractions, was I interested in them?

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” I said, trying to put real conviction in my voice. “Yes, ma’am, I sure do.”

  Miss Hooten’s head tilted slightly to the right while Edna Louise led the class in snickering. “Are you sassing me, Patricia Ann?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am, I only meant that I do like fractions, and I apologize for looking out the window.”

  While Edna Louise attempted to revive the snickering, Miss Hooten’s face gradually relaxed. “Boys and girls, you have just heard a proper apology, and I hope that the next time any of you are called down that you will be able to do as well. Hear me talking, Edna Louise?”

  It had to be a dream. Who would dare call Edna Louise Jackson down?

  Edna Louise let out a wail. “I don’t know why you’re picking on me. I wasn’t looking out the window.” Her index finger pointed at me. “Patty was!”

  I found myself focusing on that finger aimed at destroying me. You would never have loved her, Anton. Never given her your ring. Pulling the yellow chain up from around my neck, my finger
s passed across the heavy crested ring. “Oh, you’re weak, Edna Louise,” I whispered to the ring. “And you’re no person of value either.”

  Juanita Henkins between, “Well, uhs,” was trying to remember the principal crops of Brazil when the three-fifteen bell sounded. “Saved by the bell!” called out one of the boys. C.J. Peters I think it was.

  By the time I had walked the block to the store I had come to a decision—a ring of such power and beauty has no business being hidden away beneath some dress front. It should be worn proudly for all the world to see.

  In the store there was a small gathering of people. From their backsides I recognized Gussie Fields, Sister Parker, my father, a couple of women customers, and my mother. They were all the approving audience of a single performer, little Sharon, who was dancing and prancing around as she sang: “They’re either too young or too old. They’re either too old or too grassy green.”

  When she finished, Sharon dropped her head and gave her fans an adorable little curtsy.

  “Oh, Honey,” cried Gussie Fields, “that’s just wonderful.” She gave her boss a congratulating pat on the shoulder. “I didn’t know such talent ran in your family. Bet she takes after you.”

  My father laughed and then, finding a remaining Lucky in a flattened pack, he said, “Now, Gussie Mae, you’re gonna think I’m crazy when I tell you this, but to my mind Sharon is every bit as good as Shirley Temple. And remember, Sharon hasn’t had anywhere near the training that Shirley Temple has!”

  “Mr. Bergen,” said the clerk, “you’re not one little bit crazy. No, sir! I’ll tell you the truth. When I saw that child sing and dance in Sue Dobbins’s dance recital, well, I said to myself right then and there she’s got that special something—that movie-star sparkle, I guess you’d call it.”

  “I’ve never in my life told this to anyone before,” said my father, pausing to blow out a blue-gray puff of smoke. Was he about to make a confession to Gussie? He mustn’t see I’m listening. I bent down to tie a shoelace before realizing that I was wearing my brown loafers. “But one night, I sat up till almost midnight,” he said, “thinking that I oughta take Sharon, now don’t laugh, right out to Hollywood. All they’d have to do is to see her sing one of her little songs or do one of her cute dances. Well, in my opinion, it would put Jenkinsville right on the map.”

  My sister a real name-in-lights movie star?

  Sharon spotted me and came running over, pointing to her left elbow. “Look! It’s skinned.” What’s she always bothering me for with her tiny scratches? Little big shot. My hand became a hard fist that wanted to ram itself into her pretty face.

  In my meanest voice I said, “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  I ran to an out-of-sight place between counters stacked high with blue overalls and burrowed my head between two stacks of denims.

  I felt something pressing into my chest bone—the ring! Pulling it up, I gave it a wet kiss before making a prayer-wish: “Oh, God, please don’t ever let Anton find out that I was so hateful and mean. Help me to become a person of value.”

  Funny that I could forget about my ring. After all that’s why I came into the store. I wanted a piece of tape to wrap around it.

  Sister Parker dropped a jar of Royal Peach Hairdressing into a tan sack, handed it to a colored woman, and rang twelve cents on the cash register.

  I asked, “Want me to help you do something?”

  “Well,” she said, “you can staple the candy bags closed if you want to.”

  More than a hundred cellophane bags of orange slices, chocolate-covered peanuts, and peppermint discs lay on the counter waiting for the staple gun. As I stapled, Sister tore open a fresh fifty-pound box of my favorite chocolate-covered malt balls.

  “That’ll make up into lots of sacks,” I said.

  “I reckon.”

  “About how many, do you think?”

  After a long pause Sister said, “A lot, I know that.”

  I stopped my stapling, got pencil and paper, and in less than a jiffy came up with the answer. “Now you give one ounce to each sack, so that fifty pounds will make up into eight hundred sacks.”

  Sister Parker didn’t say anything, so I asked, “Isn’t that interesting?”

  “I guess. It’s interesting enough for folks who have nothing better to do than to think.”

  “But, Sister,” I protested, feeling like Anton was here borrowing my voice for his thoughts. “A person’s got to think, otherwise that person’s no better than a trained seal balancing a ball on his nose. If only that seal could think, he’d know he was making a thousand children laugh.”

  “What do you want me to think about?” asked Sister, sounding more tired than unfriendly. “Eight hundred bags of candy?”

  “Maybe you could think about eight hundred people who are going to enjoy the candy you sacked. After all, work should have relevance,” I said, borrowing one of Anton’s words.

  My ring was dazzling me with its closeness and its power. Sister seemed receptive (another of his words), so I decided to slide into the subject like it was the most natural thing in the world. I extended my left hand. “Did you see my ring?”

  Sister looked up. “Did your boyfriend give it to you?”

  “Boyfriend?” I asked, confused. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “You oughta know who your boyfriend is.”

  “It’s a real solid gold ring.” I dropped the ring into Sister’s hand. “Feel the weight?”

  “Where did you get it?” She was really interested all right.

  “Well, I’ll tell you the truth,” I said, interested myself to know what the truth was going to be. “It happened on Monday. Now, I know for sure it was a Monday ’cause that was the day school started, you remember?”

  Sister nodded.

  “Well, as I was walking home from school, it was only about noontime. School let out early that day, remember?”

  Sister answered with only a “Hmmm.”

  Then it came to me—my vision of the truth. “Well, I saw this man walking down the road. He looked like an old man ’cause of his whiskers—white whiskers. He asked me if I lived nearby and if I could spare a piece of bread with maybe a bit of butter on it.

  “I took the man home and he sat on the back doorstep, and while Ruth was busy vacuuming the living room I kept bringing him our best food. Well, after the man finished eating he thanked me and said that because I was obviously a person of value he was going to reward me with his most valued possession. And so he slipped that very ring on my finger.”

  Sister Parker’s hands had forgotten their work and her eyes looked slightly larger than I remembered. I felt powerful, like I finally had something somebody else wanted even if it was only the rest of the story. Well, I’d give her an ending —a great motion picture ending.

  “But it was what happened next that was the most surprising thing of all. I mean—” I said, stalling. “It was what he said next.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me that he wasn’t really poor. He only pretended to be to find all the good people in the world. He said that he gives his wife—want to know her name?”

  “All right.”

  “Agnes. He said that Agnes could buy this whole town and everything that’s in it with just the money he gives her weekly.”

  Sister began shaking her head. “Now tell me another.”

  I felt annoyance rising in me. “I guess you also don’t believe that Jesus walked on water. I mean you don’t seem to believe in anything unless you see it happen. Haven’t you any faith?”

  “I have faith, plenty of it. But, well, why don’t you tell me the rest.”

  “All right, it might be helpful to you. The man told me that because I was able to show such good faith towards a stranger I would be rewarded on my eighteenth birthday. No matter where I might be, my present would reach me on that day.”

  “And this ring,” said Sister, holding
it between her fingers, “is yours for a remembrance?”

  “Mine for a remembrance,” I said, thinking of Anton. “You know, it’s my most valued possession.”

  “Hey, Mr. Bergen,” called Sister Parker across the store. “Is this ring really solid gold?”

  “What? What are you talking about?” He strode over in his save-the-nation gait. “Whose ring is this?”

  Sister looked surprised. I held hands with myself to keep them steady. “Why it’s Patty’s—I guess it is.”

  I didn’t say anything; my brain felt like Jell-O left too long in the heat. Why did I have to tell anybody? Why can’t I keep my stupid mouth shut? He examined the ring by squinting his right eye and then his left one. Suddenly he jerked away the tape.

  “Twenty-four carat,” he said slowly. “Whose ring is this?”

  “Mine—”

  “How did you get it? Where’d it come from?”

  “Well— You know how we got out of school early on Monday ’cause it was the first day of school?”

  “Get to the point!”

  My last year’s dress suddenly felt too small. “I’m trying to tell you if you’ll please be patient.”

  “You better tell me in one hell of a hurry!”

  I noticed that the stuff that the drug store had sold him for those tobacco stains on his teeth wasn’t helping. “Well,” I said, “I met this man who asked me to give him some food because he was very, very hungry. I told him to follow me home, and he did, and he sat on the back doorstep while I brought him—you want to know what I brought him?”

  I didn’t see how my father responded because my eyes were fixed on the SHOE DEPARTMENT sign at the back of the store. “Bread and butter and some slices of American cheese—and I think two oranges.” I forced myself to look him in the face. “And so—that’s what happened,” I concluded.