Up in Honey's Room

Six

"You know what you’ve become?” Jurgen said to Otto. “A pain in the ass.”

“Because I want to be German and speak our language and hear it?”

“You’re acting like a child.”

Otto spoke only German to Walter, when Walter was here, and to the old couple who kept house and were afraid of him. They answered questions and that was all, they refused to carry on a conversation.

Jurgen and Otto sat at the white porcelain table in the kitchen having their morning coffee.

If he spoke German to Jurgen he got no response.

Jurgen said if they spoke only English and tried to think in English, there would be less chance of their being caught. He said, “You want to go out. So do I. But if you intentionally speak German and pose the way you do, daring people to stare at you- ‘Look at me, the destroyer of British tanks in the desert’-or whoever you are, they will. And if you attract attention to yourself, it won’t be long before you’re back in the camp.”

Otto said, “You want English? Why don’t you fuck yourself?”

“It’s ‘Go fuck yourself,’” Jurgen said.

Two years in the war prisoner camp and now another kind of confinement, months in a house on a farm owned by Walter Schoen: the house standing for a hundred years among old Norway pines, an apple orchard on the property, a chicken house, a barn turned into an abattoir where cattle entered to be shot in the head by a .22 rifle. Otto wouldn’t go near the barn. Jurgen couldn’t stay out of it, fascinated by the process, three meat cutters who spoke German among themselves cutting and sharpening, cutting and sharpening, reducing the thousand-pound cow to pieces of meat.

This morning Jurgen waited for Walter to arrive in his 1941 Ford sedan, a gray four-door with a high shine, always, anytime Jurgen saw the car. The Ford came through the trees along the drive that circled to the back of the two-story frame house that at one time, years ago, had been painted white. Walter came out of the car and Jurgen pounced on him.

“Walter, it’s of the utmost importance that you drive Otto into the city. He wants to see for himself the destruction made by the Luftwaffe. If you don’t, Otto tells me he’s going to run away and look for it himself.”

Walter frowned. He did it all the time, no matter what you said to him, he frowned.

“But there have been no air raids here.”

“In the prison camp,” Jurgen said, “Otto listened to the reports on shortwave radio from Berlin. They open the program with Der Blomberger Badenweiler-Marsch and then report on the latest bombing forays on American cities, war plants too, by the Luftwaffe.”

“It could be true?” Walter said.

“Not unless bombers can cross the Atlantic Ocean and return without stopping to refuel,” Jurgen said. “But Otto believes it. You know if he leaves the house by himself he’ll be picked up within a matter of hours. He’ll tell the police he’s SS and demand they treat him with military respect. You realize Otto’s not familiar with the independent ways that Americans have. He’ll become arrogant and tell them he escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp, bragging about it, saying it was easy, nothing to it. Saying he has German friends here. Walter, he’ll give you up the same way the Luftwaffe pilot gave up the man who helped him and was convicted of treason, Max Stephan. Otto could give you up without realizing what he’s doing.”

Walter Schoen, more dedicated to the Reich than Jurgen would ever be, said, “Your comrade is an SS man, one of Himmler’s men of honor with a pedigree, his family pure Aryan going back for centuries. There is not even a remote possibility Major Penzler would ever betray a German soldier. Let me say also, you sound very American when you speak. More so than I, and I have had to live here more than thirty years.”

Jurgen said, “Let me explain something to you about Otto. He joined the SS because at the time he felt it was an honor, it gave him position. Not because he wanted to be a guardian of racial purity, or to lead a crusade against the Bolsheviks. That’s something he told his SS fellows. But, he has said more than once he never took the political indoctrination seriously. I believed that of him. He managed to hook up with Rommel and quite possibly was the only member of the Waffen-SS in North Africa. During the time in Oklahoma he never posed or put on airs. He commanded panzers and was known as the Scharfrichter, the executioner of British tanks. Walter,” Jurgen said, “what Otto wants right now is to feel once again a sense of war. It’s what he is, a warrior. He wants to relive the excitement of crushing Poland. He wants to see buildings the Luftwaffe destroyed on its raids. You say it hasn’t happened, you’re still waiting for the bombers. I don’t know, maybe he needs to bludgeon some poor wretch and kick him senseless. He might do it because his frustration has brought him to the point of going mad. Then he’s arrested, and talks and talks. I’m hoping a drive into Detroit will relieve the tension, expose Otto to the way Americans live and he’ll see how much we are alike.”

Walter Schoen was squinting again, confused. “You believe that’s true?”

Something strange was happening during the past six months: people coming to Walter for his assistance.

First Rudi and Madi, both seventy-five, good Germans but destitute, left with nothing when their home burned to the ground. It was in the Black Bottom, the Negro section of Detroit. Rudi said it was Negroes who set the house afire to make them leave. Madi said it was Rudi smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey until he passed out. Walter had no choice, they were family, Madi his aunt, one of his father’s sisters. He drove them out Grand River to the property he had bought at auction and told them they could live here and provide for themselves, raise chickens, plant a vegetable garden, see if the apples in the orchard were worth selling. Walter said he would see them once he got his home-kill business going and would be here to supervise the butchering.

He was working on the barn, fashioning the interior with chutes and hooks to become an abattoir, paving the floor and putting in drains, when the next one appeared, Honey’s brother, my God, coming in Walter’s market, extending his hand over the counter and saying he was Darcy Deal.

“I always wanted to meet you, Walter, but that goofy sister of mine cut out on you before I got the chance.” Darcy saying, “I know your trade, Walter. As soon as I got my release from prison, where they stuck me for making moonshine and where I learned to cut meat, I got this idea and come directly to you with a moneymaking proposition. You ready? I bring you all the meat you think you can sell and give it to you, no money up front. What are you paying now for beef, around seventeen dollars a hunnert weight? What I deliver won’t cost you nothing. I bring you steers stripped of their hides and bled out, packed in ice. All you do is cut steaks and sell ’em and we split the take down the middle.”

Walter said, “Where do you come by this meat you deliver free of charge?”

“Out of pastures. I rustle ’em up.”

Walter asked Honey’s brother if he was aware of the rules and regulations imposed by the government on the sale of meat. How it has to be inspected and approved or they don’t put a stamp on it.

Darcy said, “Jesus Christ, don’t you see what I’m offering you? Fuck the government, I’ll get you all the meat you want to sell at whatever you ask, not what the government says to charge. You sell it without your customers having to use any ration stamps. Don’t you have German friends dying to serve a big pot roast every Sunday? Aren’t you tired of the government telling you how to run your business? Having days there isn’t any meat to sell?”

“You’re breaking the law,” Walter said.

“No shit.”

“You can go to prison.”

“I’ve been there. You want the meat or not?”

“How do you kill the animal?”

“Shoot her between the eyes with a .45. She throws her head, looks at you cockeyed, and falls down.”

“Are you serious?”

“Don’t the cow have to be dead before you skin her?”

“I could show you a way,” Walter said, “that doesn’t destroy the brains.”

“That mean we have a deal?”

It was tempting. Not only make money, take care of Vera Mezwa and Dr. Taylor. Send a few double sirloins to Joe Aubrey.

Walter said, “But I don’t know you.”

Darcy said, “The hell you talking about? We was brother-in-laws for Christ sake. I trusted you with my sister, didn’t I? You ever hit her I’d of come here and broke your jaw. No, me and you don’t have nothing to worry about, we’s partners. The only difference, you’re a Kraut and I’m American.”

Walter said, “Well . . .” and asked Darcy if he’d seen his sister or spoken to her lately, curious, wondering about Honey, what she was doing.

“I ain’t seen her yet or called,” Darcy said. “I’ll drop by sometime and surprise her.”

Walter said, “Oh, you know where she lives?”

Now the ones were here who needed his help the most, coming at the worst time. Or, was it the best time, if they were to play a part in his destiny?

The Afrika Korps officers walked in the shop and he knew Jurgen immediately from 1935, still youthful, smiling, the same beautiful boy he had known ten years ago. Walter wanted to put his arms around him-well, take him by the shoulders in a manly way, slip an arm around to pat his back. Ask why he had stopped writing after Poland. Ah, and Otto Penzler, Waffen-SS, of that elite group who chose combat over herding Jews into boxcars. He said to Otto, “Major, your bearing gives you away. The moment you walked in the door I knew you were Schutzstaffeln, ready to dispose of your suit, one I see was crudely made from a uniform.”

Walter stopped. He didn’t mean to sound critical of the suit, made under duress in a prison camp, and said, “Although I must say the suit did serve you. It brought you here undetected?”

They couldn’t stay in the rooms upstairs. No, on that day in October they entered the butcher shop he knew he would drive them to the farm and have to let them stay, of course, until they decided what they would do next.

Unless, fate had sent them here-not for Walter to help them. The other way around, for them to help him. Why not?

He could explain who he was and what he intended to do without giving the whole thing away. Tell them his mysterious connection to Heinrich Himmler and their roles in the history of the German Reich, their destinies. They knew Himmler’s destiny. By now he must have rid Europe of most of its Jews and was the Führer’s logical successor. Walter, meanwhile squinting at his destiny, knew he would not be dealing with the Jewish problem. The press here portrayed Himmler as the most hated man in the world. Even people Walter knew who were vocally anti-Semitic said it would give them an incredible sense of relief if the Jews would go someplace else. There was talk about sending them all to live on the island of Madagascar. You don’t exterminate an entire race of people. We’re Christians, the Jews are a cross we must bear. They’re pushy, insolent, think they’re smart, they double-park in front of their delicatessens on Twelfth Street-also on Linwood-and what do we do? Nothing. We make fun of them. Someone says, But they do make the movies we go to see. Well, not Walter. The last movie he saw was Gone With the Wind. He thought Clark Gable the blockade runner was good, but the rest of the movie a waste of time. Walter had better things to do, work toward becoming as well known as Himmler, perhaps even a Nazi saint. He had finally decided yes, of course tell Otto and Jurgen what you intend to do. They were Afrika Korps officers, heroes themselves. Tell them they are the only ones in the world who will know about the event before it happens.

The only ones if he didn’t count Joe Aubrey in Georgia, his friend in the restaurant business who owned a string of Mr. Joe’s Rib Joints, all very popular down there. Though lately Negro soldiers from the North were “acting uppity,” Joe said, coming in and demanding service, and he was thinking of selling his chain. Joe had an airplane, a single-engine Cessna he’d fly to Detroit and take Walter for rides and show him how to work the controls. Walter had come to consider Joe Aubrey his best friend, an American who never stopped being sympathetic to the Nazi cause. He would fly up to Detroit and take Walter for a spin, fly around Detroit, swoop under the Ambassador Bridge and pull out over Canada and Walter would say to his friend Joe Aubrey, “What a shame you aren’t in the Luftwaffe, you’d be an ace by now.” Joe Aubrey thought he knew what Walter had in mind, but no idea how he’d pull it off. The prospect got him excited.

“Goddamn it, Walter, I can’t wait.”

What was today? The eighth of April. Twelve days to go.