Summer of My German Soldier

  She looked at me, not liking what she saw. “Well,” she said, “I’m very sorry you don’t think Miz Reeves is good enough for you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. A girl your age going around looking like you do.”

  I guess what she really was trying to tell me was that it shouldn’t have happened to her. A beautiful woman—everybody says she’s beautiful—has an ugly baby girl. Me. A wave of shame flooded over me followed by another wave of full-grown anger. Shame and anger, anger and shame mingled together, taking on something beyond the power of both.

  “You listen to me!” My voice was pitched high. “I absolutely will not go and you can’t make me. And another thing, if Mrs. Reeves is so good then why do you have to drive all the way to Wynne City to have your hair done? Can you answer me that? And one more thing,” I said, looking her straight in the eye, “I don’t even like you!”

  She pushed my hand away, releasing the hook, and within moments she was smiling her saleslady smile into the mouth of the phone. “Hello, Miz Reeves, how you getting along on such a hot day? ... Well, you drink yourself a cold glass of iced tea and that’ll perk you right up. Miz Reeves, you know who this is, don’t you? ... Yes, that’s right. I was just wondering if you could possibly give Patricia a permanent wave right now? ... Oh, fine. I’ll send her over. Bye-bye for now.”

  A permanent. She did say a permanent. For months and months, a frizzledy freak. Mother walked away, not bothering even to glance at me. From across the store I heard her voice soaring above the other noises. “And you’d think she’d be ashamed of herself going around like that. A girl of her age. And poor Miz Reeves just sitting there waiting for her too.”

  “Let’s just see if she refuses me!” answered my father, coming closer.

  Mrs. Fields and her customer, Mayor Crawford’s wife, didn’t even pretend to be interested in house shoes anymore.

  “Har-ry, now don’t you hit her!” My good old mother was pleading for me. “She’s nervous enough from you as it is.”

  “Don’t you tell me I make her nervous. That’s a God damn lie and you know it!”

  Mrs. Crawford, what would she think of us? Her pinched little face tilted a bit to the right while her dark owl eyes stared.

  Then there he was, standing over me. He just looked down without saying anything. Was he waiting for something? I will not beg or cry—and he won’t even be completely certain that I’m afraid.

  He looked at his watch. “I’m going to give you exactly two minutes to get yourself over to Miz Reeves’s or else you’ll get a licking like you never had before in your life. Understand?”

  Nod Yes.

  “You answer me!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The most direct route to the door was straight past my father. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of walking around him. But carefully. There! My arm whispered past his sleeve. When I finally reached the door my breathing came back.

  Out on the sidewalk my thoughts jostled and bumped each other fighting to be heard. Break a leg or an arm. Catch a cold or a train. Hide in the hide-out above the garage or under the railroad trestle at the edge of Nigger Bottoms.

  Mrs. Reeves’s house sat on the corner of Silk Stocking and Main. Its dull brown paint had been flaking and peeling for as long as I could remember. A front screened-in porch sagged toward the center and dusty wooden steps had been waiting a long time for the good, honest feel of a broom. For a while I just stood there, trying to remember the names of men who died fighting for their liberty.

  Then, from within the house, a phone rang. My father! I took the three front steps with a single leap, pushed open the screen door, allowing it to slam closed.

  “Oh, howdy, Clara,” said Mrs. Reeves into the receiver. “How are you a-managing on such a day? The temperature is near about ninety-six degrees, and wouldn’t you know it, I’m giving a permanent wave today. ... The Bergen girl. ... No, Patty, the oldest one.” She laughed a conspirator’s laugh into the receiver. “I reckon I can’t hardly say you is wrong. Well now, Clara, I’ll ring you a little later on. You try and stay cool, you heah?”

  She placed the phone back on the hook and turned to greet me. “Ooh-whee, it’s too hot for the niggers today. Ain’t it awful?”

  I sat down in the red plastic chair in front of the washbasin without answering. She droned on, not seeming to notice that I wasn’t talking.

  Her sharp little fingernails scoured into my scalp. I wondered if her other customers ever objected to those nails, but then I remembered that the kind of customers Mrs. Reeves was used to working on were long past objecting.

  “You tender-headed, Patty?”

  “No—ma’am.”

  “You finding much to do with all your friends gone off to camp?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Miz Henkins told me that Juanita was having the time of her sweet life. Just a-swimming, and horseback riding, and making the prettiest handicrafts that you’d ever want to see.”

  “Well,” I told her. “My father and mother probably might take Sharon and me to Overton Park.”

  “How come your daddy didn’t let you go off to camp with all your friends?” She really wanted to know. Wanted some new little something to spread around about my father. Once I happened to overhear Edna Louise’s mother talking about my father—“He’s a peculiar man. Even for a Jew he’s peculiar.”

  Mrs. Reeves’s lips were sucked together in anticipation of my answer, and I wondered if it were possible that she lived on a diet of persimmons.

  “Well, Miz Reeves, I don’t know if I should tell you this or not, but—” I wasn’t sure myself just where this was going to lead—“somebody told me that they have more mosquiters and black moccasin snakes at that camp than almost any other place in the whole United States of America.”

  “That so?” she said, impressed as all get-out. “Well, I sure didn’t know that—”

  I guess she was busy thinking about mosquitoes and snakes because things got quiet. I drifted into myself. Hold me here, old lady, if you must. Imprison me and disfigure me, but my thoughts are all my own.

  “You want me to give you a nice cream rinse?” I opened my eyes to stare into her withered face. “It’ll give your hair a real nice luster.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’ll call your mother at the store and ask her, it only costs a quarter.”

  “I don’t want it!”

  By eleven the heat from the permanent-wave machine was sending steady runs of perspiration down my forehead. And when she finally cut the current at a quarter to one the only dry area on my middy dress was near the hem.

  A few minutes later I knew that my hair had come out exactly as I had feared. A hundred frizzledy-fried ringlets obstinately refusing to flow into one another, refusing to do anything but remain separate and individual wire coils of scorched hair.

  7. Forbidden Meeting

  I WATCHED THE late afternoon sun play with rectangles of light against the blue walls of the hide-out. The two rooms and bath had undergone a real clean-up, fix-up. And with the single exception of Ruth’s dyeing that worn chenille bedspread a cherry red, I had done it all myself. Not even Ruth could have made the wood floor of the living room or the linoleum in the kitchen and bath any cleaner or shinier. A couple of times I was close to asking her to come see how I had fixed it up, but I never did. Partly it had to do with the problem of the missing steps. The other part was that I liked to think Ruth didn’t know about the secret place. If she did, it wouldn’t be so much of a secret anymore.

  At the hide-out’s back window, the one overlooking our Victory Garden and the railroad tracks beyond, a desk made from two sawhorses and an abandoned board held all my best books. I sat down, letting my hand prop up my head, and feeling the hair that Ruth had taken scissors against when I had come home from Mrs. Reeves. At least the worst of it had been cut away. “Messing up something beautiful,” she had said when first seeing me in my frizzled state.

  Soo
n my mother and father would be home and Ruth would be on the back porch calling me in for supper.

  Then from outside the window some movement caught my eye. A man with dark hair, denim shirt and pants, running below the railroad embankment. Soon the five twenty to Memphis would be coming down those tracks, stopping at the Jenkinsville station only if there was a passenger wanting to get on or off.

  But this man, and even from this distance there was something familiar about him, was running away from the depot. Maybe some poor fellow hoping to jump aboard at that point where the train slows before rounding the curve.

  Then it struck me who he looked like. But it couldn’t be—he’s at the camp. It had to be him! Just like I prayed. God went and sent Anton to me.

  The train blew a long whistle. In a single leap I took the steps. I won’t lose you, Anton. Not now. I ran through the field faster than I was capable of running.

  I could see the black-stenciled P on the back of his shirt. I called out, “Anton!” But my voice was canceled by the great engine. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I tried again. “Hey! Anton!”

  Still he didn’t hear. But just before the train approached, he stopped and hid against the grassy embankment. I ran my labored run, waving my arms like an overburdened windmill.

  “Anton!” His head swung around. He looked at me and then up the embankment, and for part of an instant I knew he was about to bolt across those tracks to his death.

  “Anton, it’s me—it’s Patty!”

  His face registered shock and then pleasure. An open palm reached out, waiting for me while overhead the train sounded like a thousand snare drums beating in four-quarter time. Our hands touched; I didn’t let go till the train passed.

  Directly in front of my father Ruth set down the platter of freshly fried chicken along with a skier’s mountain of mashed potatoes. On the second trip from the kitchen she carried a basket of hot biscuits and a bowl of mustard greens. I wished that Anton could join the feast, invisible to everyone but me.

  My father was saying, “I told him I might not be your biggest account, but I’m not your smallest. Not by a long shot, and when I order six dozen I want seventy-two pairs.”

  “You should have kept the six dozen you ordered,” said my mother. “We’re running low on men’s dress shoes.”

  “Don’t you tell me what I should’ve done—not when I can get all the shoes I want at B.J. Walker’s.”

  My mother blotted her lips with a paper napkin. “Oh, sure, you can cut off your nose to spite your face if you want to, but B.J. Walker or any other jobber is going to charge you another fifteen per cent. Then where will your profit be?”

  He jumped to his feet, sending the chair to the floor with a crash. “Don’t you dare contradict me! Think you’re gonna treat me the way your God damn mother treats her husband?”

  “Now, Harry, I don’t know why you’re getting so excited.” Her face was a study in martyred innocence.

  The insides of my stomach began swirling around. Did I overeat? I looked at my plate. With the exception of a hole that I had excavated in the potatoes, nothing had been touched.

  “You know, God damn it. You know! And I hope to hell you croak on it!” His lips were pressed into a thin blue line and his hands were trembling with a rage beyond his ability to control.

  “I don’t know!” screamed my mother. “And I don’t know why you’re so mean and miserable.”

  My head began its circular rotation, matching in r.p.m.’s that of my stomach. Suddenly it came to me—I had a race to win. I reached the toilet bowl in time to see the mashed potatoes turned green gushing from my mouth, splashing down to the water below.

  Since seven thirty I had been listening to the sleep sounds of Sharon. Sometimes I think she’s the wisest of us all. She isn’t tactless like our mother or nervous like our father and she certainly doesn’t always go rushing into trouble like me. I thought about all the trouble I could get into over Anton. My father would beat me, and if other people found out they’d never speak to me again unless it was to call me bad names.

  Why did I have to see Anton running to catch that train? Twelve hundred people in this town and it had to be me. Why can’t I be more like my sister? Sweet and nice and neat and with enough good sense to stay out of trouble.

  Once I figured out that the only thing that Sharon didn’t have was enough words. But I could teach her. All kinds. Thin ones like ego and ode. Fat ones like harmonic and palatable. And I’d teach her some beautiful ones like rendezvous and dementia praecox. Maybe (just for variety) throw in some ugly ones like grief and degrade. And when Sharon knew enough words she could teach me all those things she was born knowing.

  At exactly nine thirty the yellow ribbon of light from underneath my parents’ door went off. And less than ten minutes later the hard, grating snores of my father carried from the bedroom across the hall.

  I put on my house shoes and robe before tiptoeing to the kitchen. He must be starving. In the fridge I found a bowl of leftover chicken that would make the beginnings of a great feast for Anton and me. How about mashed potatoes served cold? I placed everything into one of those brown grocery sacks Ruth is always saving, threw in some biscuits, tomatoes, and apples, and turned the door latch.

  “Who’s in the kitchen?” my father called out.

  “It’s nobody, just me.”

  “Get something and get back to bed.”

  I unpacked the bag in the darkness and found my way back to my room. Then from a distance a train whistle sounded.

  8. Nazi Saboteurs

  I WAITED TILL I heard my father’s car accelerate out of the driveway before getting out of bed.

  “Well, if it ain’t the Sleeping Beauty!” said Ruth. “Morning to you, Miss Beauty.”

  I yawned a smile and then yawned again as I dropped into my chair at the table.

  “How about a nice hot bowl of oatmeal?”

  I nodded a Yes and then, thinking of Anton, asked, “Could I please have a couple of hard-boiled eggs too? And leave the shells on.”

  Spotting the Memphis Commercial Appeal on the table, I saw the biggest, blackest headline I’d seen since Pearl Harbor.

  FBI SEIZES 8 NAZI SABOTEURS

  LANDED BY U-BOATS ON FLA. & N.Y.

  COASTS TO BLOW UP WAR PLANTS

  ——————

  Explosives Hidden by Nazis on Fla. Beach

  Plan Against Alcoa Plant in Tenn.

  Carried $150,000 Bribe Money

  Two groups of saboteurs, highly trained by direction of the German High Command at a special school for sabotage near Berlin, were seized by the FBI. The men, all English-speaking, were carrying cases of powerful explosives and $150,000 bribe money.

  Under cover of night one submarine released its saboteurs at Amagansett, Long Island.

  In possession of the men was a list of special industrial plants they were to sabotage. Sabotage of department stores during their rush hours was also planned, to create panic and to break the morale of the American citizens.

  The eight captured saboteurs are thought to be part of a larger underground network already operating within this country. The FBI has rounded up 27 men and 2 women from the New York-New Jersey area. Director J. Edgar Hoover says that many more arrests are imminent.

  In Washington, Attorney General Francis Biddle said, “The Nazi invaders will be dealt with swiftly and thoroughly. The Justice Department will try the men for treason.”

  Articles of War proclaim, “Any person acting as a spy in wartime shall suffer death.”

  I felt my heart striking against the inner wall of my chest. I’m no spy! I’m not giving information to the Germans. But then again I suppose the Justice Department wouldn’t stand up and applaud me for hiding a Nazi? He’s not a Nazi! A technicality. A captured German soldier is close enough.

  I turned to the inside pages in search of “Li’l Abner” while consoling myself that after darkness came Anton had probably hitched a ride on a fre
ight train.

  Opposite the comics there was a smiling soldier from Wynne City with a row of colored ribbons on his chest. He wore his hat at a slight angle to show the world he wasn’t afraid.

  S/Sgt. Clarence C. “Red” Robbins, son of Mrs.

  Mary G. Robbins, of 18 School St. in Wynne

  City, Arkansas, died on June 26 from injuries

  received at Corregidor.

  “It wasn’t Anton’s fault!”

  Ruth brought in a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of milk. “It wasn’t whose fault?”

  “Nothing. Just something I read in the funnies.”

  She went back into the kitchen wearing a look of disbelief, and I went back to Red Robbins.

  S/Sgt. Robbins was a member of the 1941 graduating class of Wynne City High School where he was voted “Mr. Personality.” He earned his letter playing football.

  His commanding officer, Capt. Simpson B. Graves, wrote in a letter to Mrs. Robbins: “Your son was a brave soldier and a splendid patriot.”

  A brave soldier and a splendid patriot. They were stirring words all right. When you help your country you’re a patriot. But if you help the enemy then you’re a—Fear pierced the calm of my stomach.

  Ruth stood over me, hands on hips. “What you gonna do, girl? Eat it or meditate on it?”

  I looked into her face deep below the surface of her eyes where the wisdom is stored. There are answers there all right. Good sturdy answers fashioned by Ruth to fit Ruth. Nothing there in my size.

  “I don’t know, Ruth,” I said. “I just don’t know.”

  By eight thirty the vacuum cleaner was roaring in the living room and the kitchen was all mine. I filled the paper bag with the best pieces of fried chicken, the mashed potatoes, two apples, hard-boiled eggs, and hot coffee tightly sealed in a Mason jar.

  Outside the sun was beginning to warm itself for another sizzler of a day, and from the sandbox side of the house shrill sounds of Sharon and Sue Ellen made everything seem like always. I prayed to God that the hide-out would be empty too like always.