A Good American (22 page)

There was no money anywhere. People were staying home to eat. The restaurant became a sea of empty tables. Worried, Joseph slashed his prices. Then he slashed them again, and he kept slashing them until it was cheaper for people to eat at Frederick’s than to buy the food and cook it themselves. Slowly, customers began to stop by again. Joseph was barely making enough to live on, but as businesses across the country went into bankruptcy, my father managed to keep the restaurant open, but only just. Over the years he had amassed a respectable nest egg, which he kept in the safe in the back room. He had inherited Jette’s distrust of banks, and preferred to keep his money where he could see it. From time to time he liked to pull out the bundles of notes just to feel their heft. He loved the smooth feel of the paper beneath his fingers.

Cora’s father became the busiest man in town, reluctantly repossessing farms across Caitlin County. Every week there was a new foreclosure. Martin Leftkemeyer was a compassionate man, and his new line of work made him miserable. Proud farmers begged him for one more week to make payment, and he could only shake his head in regret. There was nothing he could do. Up and down the country banks were going under. The order had come down from the boardroom to call in every defaulting loan.

It did not take long for Martin’s unpleasant duties to take their toll on him. People did not understand that he was only following instructions, and they blamed him for the bank’s unyielding position. At first men grumbled behind his back, but as the foreclosures multiplied, they no longer hid their hostility. Former friends and customers coldly turned away from him as he walked down the street.

Reverend Kellerman, who had developed a keen sense for crowd-pleasing topics, began to use his sermons to harangue the mortgage lenders for driving families to ruin. Martin sat stiff-backed in his pew, his face flushed red with anger and shame. His gentle temperament left him ill-equipped to withstand this sort of vilification. He did his best to make amends, inviting the families who had lost their farms for dinner, but these invitations were ignored or angrily declined. By 1931 he bore the undeserved resentment of the entire town on his weary shoulders.

During the fall of 1932, the handsome and urbane governor of New York crisscrossed the country in his campaign for president. Rosa persuaded Jette to travel with her to Jefferson City to hear Franklin Roosevelt speak in front of a cheering crowd on the steps of the Capitol. The result of November’s election was never in doubt. Roosevelt took office the following March. He cajoled and bullied Congress into passing bill after bill to provide relief for the country’s starving poor.

It was a monumental effort, but it was too late for some.

One evening in the late summer of 1933, Joseph heard cries in the street outside the house. He opened the door to see people hurrying past, talking excitedly to one another as they went.

“What’s happening?” he called out to a young boy who was racing by.

“Fire,” the boy yelled back. “At the Kliever farm. The barn’s gone up.”

Joseph went back inside to fetch his hat. Cora and her father were in the kitchen. “Johann Kliever’s barn is burning,” he told them.

Martin went very still. “I was there this afternoon,” he said. “We foreclosed on the property. It belongs to the bank now.”

Ten minutes later Joseph arrived at the farm. A crowd had gathered, watching the flames that engulfed the charred frame of the barn. The screams of terrified livestock could be heard from inside the burning building. In front of the silent crowd, standing alone, was Stefan. Joseph approached him.

“Stefan, thank God you’re all right. What happened?”

“They took the farm,” said Stefan, not taking his eyes off the flames.

“I heard. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all gone. There’s nothing left.”

Joseph looked at the burning building. “Where’s your father?”

That was when Stefan turned to stare at him, his eyes full of sorrow.

Suddenly there was a mighty crack as one of the barn’s twin doors collapsed off its hinges. The huge slab of burning wood fell forward, sending a cyclone of sparks cascading into the evening air. A wave of heat rolled outward through the hole where the door had been, sending the crowd scuttling backward.

Joseph and Stefan did not move. They stared into the blazing interior of the barn. Behind the wall of fire, half-hidden by the dancing flames, was a long, blackened body, dangling from the end of a rope.

TWENTY-FOUR

Johann Kliever’s suicide nearly finished Martin Leftkemeyer off. It was one thing to withstand the scorn of his neighbors, but having a man’s death on his conscience was another matter. My grandfather became ashen-faced with guilt. From the haunted look in his eye one would have thought that he had set a torch to the place himself.

Stefan disappeared after the fire. Every day Joseph walked to the Kliever house and banged his fist against the door, calling his friend’s name. There was no response.

Then one evening Stefan appeared at Joseph’s house. A week’s beard shadowed his hollow cheeks. His eyes were darkened with grief.

“Stefan,” said Joseph with relief. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I know,” replied Stefan. “I heard you knocking every day.”

“Then why didn’t you answer?”

“I couldn’t come to the door. No fit state.” He paused. “Nobody else came,” he said. “Nobody else stopped by.”

“Perhaps you didn’t—”

“And now they’ve taken everything.” Stefan’s voice was empty. “It’s all gone. The farm, the equipment, the lot. They came by today and took the keys to the house. As good as threw me out onto the street.”

There was a long silence. “Tell me what I can do,” said my father softly.

“I need a job. And somewhere to stay.”

That night Stefan Kliever slept on the sofa in my parents’ living room. Early the next morning he followed Joseph and Cora through the town’s empty streets to the restaurant. Once he had eaten a plateful of eggs and sausage, Stefan sat on a stool at the end of the counter and watched Joseph cook breakfasts for the next several hours.

There was something beautiful about watching my father work. He moved with exquisite precision between the pans as he juggled multiple orders simultaneously. Joseph used to tell me that being a short-order cook is like dancing with ten girls at once, but he always made that complex choreography look effortless. He worked with his back to the room, filling plate after plate, fueling the town for the long day ahead. Occasionally he would look up from the grill long enough to welcome a customer with a cheerful greeting over his shoulder, but he never took his eyes off the arsenal of bubbling pots in front of him.

When the breakfast rush ended, Joseph turned to Stefan with a tired smile. “Still interested?” he asked.

His friend sipped on the cup of coffee he had been nursing all morning. “Think you can teach me how to do all that?”

Joseph handed him an apron. “Only one way to find out,” he said.

Stefan spent the rest of the week standing in front of the hot plate, flipping burgers. Joseph showed him how to move the patties around the cooking surface to speed up or slow down the meat’s progress, and how to press down on the beef with his thumb to see if it was cooked right. Each morning Stefan ground up pounds of seasoned chuck steak and sculpted the meat into neat disks. He cut thick slices of tomato, washed the lettuce, and split open each bun. He sliced and fried mountains of onions for garnish. His sandwiches were juicy, architectural wonders, gravity-defying edifices of meaty goodness. Cheeseburgers quickly became the most popular item on the lunch menu.

Joseph was delighted. “You’re ready to learn something else,” he told Stefan one day, but his friend shook his head and gestured toward Joseph’s pots and pans.

“I don’t know if I could do what you do, and cook a thousand things at once. I’d rather do one thing well.”

Joseph grinned. “All right, then. I’ll be the jack-of-all-trades. You can be the master of one.”

During breakfasts Stefan helped by grilling toast and cooking the bacon and sausage. The two men moved easily around each other in the confined space behind the counter. Joseph was pleased to have Stefan by his side, but Cora and Jette were not so enthusiastic. “Times are so hard,” Cora told him. “Now isn’t the time to take on a new employee.”

“We won’t pay him much,” said Joseph. “Food and a bed is what he needs most right now, and we can give him that.” Stefan had taken up residency in Lomax’s old room at the back of the building. “Besides, think of how good his parents were to us when we arrived in town. Who knows what would have happened if it hadn’t been for their kindness. Don’t you think we owe him this, after what’s happened with the farm? Stefan has lost everything.”

“We hardly make enough to survive as it is,” said Cora.

“He’ll make us money in the long run, you’ll see,” said Joseph. “Everyone loves his cheeseburgers. Takings are already up.”

“Hmm,” said Jette. She had tried one of Stefan’s cheeseburgers, and it had been delicious, but she would have preferred schnitzel and sauerkraut.

Rosa was also doubtful about Stefan’s arrival, but for different reasons. It was Stefan who had first taken Joseph away from her when they embarked on their boys-only adventures in the woods, and she had never trusted him since. Throughout Rosa’s childhood Stefan barely noticed her, but she had always been pitched in undeclared war against him. She had instinctively known that he was her adversary—even before he shot her raccoon. Now when Rosa saw Stefan working at the grill next to her brother, she thought of poor Mr. Jim, murdered while sunbathing on the outhouse roof, and a flutter of uneasy excitement arose from somewhere deep within her.

T
he economic situation continued to worsen over the next few years. Not even Mr. Roosevelt could work instant miracles. Families who had lived in the town for generations packed up and left, looking for work and a square meal. Most of them never returned.

The restaurant continued to survive, but only just. Stefan’s cheeseburgers helped. As time went on they acquired an enthusiastic local following. Soon he was busier than my father during the lunchtime rush, and Joseph found himself helping Stefan, rather than the other way around. They put up a large sign outside the building:
cheeseburgers our specialty
.

Jette thought wryly that at least her husband would have approved: Frederick’s was all-American now. She and Cora continued to take orders and pour coffee all day. Each night Jette and my parents would walk wearily home, leaving Stefan alone in the small room at the back of the restaurant.

Joseph did not know how Stefan spent his evenings, but he sometimes smelled stale alcohol on his friend’s breath in the morning. Stefan never spoke much while they worked; instead he bent over the grill, completely focused on his work. Joseph did his best not to mind. He supposed that Stefan was trying to bury the pain of recent events beneath all that ferocious industry.

During that time, Jette grew increasingly worried about what was going on in Europe. A long shadow of terror had fallen across Germany as Adolf Hitler reshaped the country in his ghoulish vision. Jette read the newspaper every day, shaking her head. Hitler was building an
army
. What did these people think he was intending to use it for? She wrote to the president, explaining the threat to world peace posed by the Nazi regime. Her letter received a polite response, assuring her that Mr. Roosevelt was grateful for her thoughtful analysis. Encouraged, she wrote again, and again, and then again.

She did not receive any more replies.

I
n late August 1935, Joseph and Cora crossed the path to Jette’s house. Cora’s hand rested gently over her belly. Their faces were stunned starbursts of hope.

After all the years of heartbreak and disappointment, Cora’s pregnancy took everyone by surprise. Jette gave up writing letters about the Nazis and took up knitting instead. Channeling the energy that had previously been directed toward bringing down the leader of the Third Reich, my grandmother produced more tiny sweaters, cardigans, and hats than one child could ever need.

Those months of waiting for the baby to arrive were the longest they had ever known. Cora bloomed and suffered in equal measures, shuttling between disbelieving happiness and wretched fear that her body would betray her yet again, but finally she allowed herself to believe that this time she would become a mother.

The regulars at Frederick’s were delighted by the news, and congratulated my parents warmly. The horrors of fatherhood immediately became a favorite topic of conversation among the men who ate at the counter. Joseph listened to their stories of paternal suffering with growing anxiety. He wanted to hear about the hope, the unending parade of love, all that, but his mischievous customers continued to serve up a diet of unremitting gloom about the trials that awaited him.

It was left to Stefan to break my father’s heart, just a little. He would not share Joseph and Cora’s happiness. It was as if their joy was more than he could bear. Instead, he turned coldly away. He scowled through every jolly conversation about fatherhood, a jagged fault line of grief and resentment running just beneath his angry silence.

But not even Stefan’s hostility could dampen Joseph’s joy for too long. He even discovered the first cautious flickerings of faith within him. After so many years of bruising despair, Cora’s pregnancy really
did
seem like a miracle. At church he bowed his head in prayer, and offered up his thanks.

My brother, Freddy, arrived into the world in much the same way as he would carry on thereafter: obligingly punctual, and without undue fuss or drama. Cora’s labor lasted all of an hour before the baby slithered out into Dr. Becker’s waiting hands and lay there, staring up at the old physician with an apologetic look in his eye, as if he were sorry for causing all this trouble.

That night, the family crowded around Cora’s bed and gazed in wonderment at the infant as he slept peacefully in his mother’s arms. Jette and Martin stood at the end of the bed, blinking at the grandchild they had believed would never come. Rosa knelt by Cora’s side and silently stroked the baby’s soft head. Joseph watched them all, becalmed by a new, profound contentment. Finally, he had a child to adore. His world was complete.

Or so he thought.