Summer of My German Soldier (17 page)

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.

“What
happened?
”

What does he want from me? It isn’t like him to get excited about a little cheese and a couple of oranges for a starving man.

“Are you gonna tell me!” His mouth smelled like yesterday’s ash tray. “Tell me who he was.”

“A man, a hungry man. I told you.”

“White or colored?”

It wasn’t the food that bothered him, but what? “White,” I said, hoping this would give him some reassurance. “He was white.”

My father sucked in a deep breath. “How old was he?”

Where were we going? I searched Sister Parker’s face for a clue, but the only thing I could see was interest and, maybe, fear. “He wasn’t too young. He had whiskers that were turning gray; I guess he was at least forty.”

“And this man, you gave him something too, didn’t you?” My father’s voice had become calm, almost confidential.

Then it came to me what this was all about. Sure. That must be it. I thought about the time I sneaked into the movies without paying and later when I told him about it, he made me go back with the money. He’s a regular Abraham Lincoln. My confidence reappeared.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I sure did.”

“What was it?”

Maybe he did care about the oranges, which might be kind of expensive, coming all the way from Florida. “I gave him what I told you. Bread and cheese and—and two little oranges that were overripe and about to go bad.”

“What did he do to you?”

What does he want me to say? “The only thing he did was to thank me. He was very polite.”

“You’re lying, you dirty girl.”

“No, sir, I’m telling the truth.”

“Liar! He touched you. You let him put his hands on you,
filthy, fil-thy
girl!” As he raised his hand I clamped my eyes shut.

“Awww!” I fell backward against the magazine stand and slid down while a landslide of periodicals tumbled across my chest and legs.

As he walked away I spoke to his back. “And I don’t love you. Nobody does!”

15. A friend who loves you

S
ISTER
P
ARKER LED ME
by the elbow toward the back of the store and then up the steps to the balcony. “You’re gonna be all right,” she said.

From below came my mother’s voice. “What did she do? Why did you hit her?
Harry?
”

Sister guided me past large cartons of unopened merchandise and my father’s polished pine desk to the brown studio couch. A couple of times a day my father whispers to my
mother, “Watch out for things. I’m gonna go rest my eyes on the couch.”

“Now lie down,” said Sister. “I’ll bring you a cold towel for your face.” There? She wants me to lie down there where his head has rested?

“No, it’s too soft. Here on the floor, where it’s cool.” Sister Parker stooped to place the couch’s tired brown bolster under my head before turning to leave.

From downstairs I heard the rapid cranking of the phone. “Mary? Is the sheriff in his office? All right, then try his home. Hello? Sheriff Cauldwell? ... This is Harry Bergen. I want you to come down to the store right now. ... I don’t know whether it is or not. Come over and find out.” The receiver was slammed down.

“What did you call
him
for?” I heard my mother’s voice go hysterical. “Harry, tell me what’s wrong!”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, something is.”

“Damn you, woman, don’t you go calling me a liar! Your mother may lead your old man around by the nose, but you’re not gonna do it to me!”

Damn them! Damn them both! Must they let the whole world see them fight?

Where he hit me my face felt bruised and hot. My stomach, though, felt the worst. All the food I’d eaten, all the food I’d ever eaten, moaned and churned, growing putrid and decayed.

“Anton,” my voice whispered, “why did you have to go and leave me?” Hiccupy sobs came to keep company with my body shakes. God, I wish I could shut up and sink deep and unnoticed into the ground. Die. Yes, die with the mark of
his hand still across my face. Explain that to people, to the sheriff, to the judge.

Outside, a car made a sudden attention-getting stop, and within moments I recognized the guns-and-bullets voice. “What’s up, Harry?”

My brain felt too bruised to even think about a plan. How long did I have? Not very. Remembering my source of strength, my right hand went rushing across left fingers. Then I remembered that I didn’t have it anymore. I didn’t have my ring!

Footsteps, like cannons, ascended the balcony stairs. Beat me! Kill me! Not one thing am I going to say till I get back my ring. “Remember,” Anton had said to me, “... you have a friend who loved you enough to give you his most valued possession.”

The footsteps stopped at my head and for a moment all was quiet. Then my father broke the silence. “Get yourself off that floor.” As I rolled over on my stomach he spoke again. “The sheriff is here. There’s a lot of things he wants to know. Do ya hear?” I stood up and looked him in the eye.

“Answer me!”

The words struck wounds that hadn’t even begun to heal and the crying started anew.

“Go on downstairs. Let me talk to her, Harry,” said the big voice.

“Talk to her,” said my father. “Go on, but I’m gonna stay right here.”

“Now, Patty, we’ve been knowing each other for quite a long spell now.” The big voice was speaking softly. “And you’re a smart girl, and I respect that. I want you to respect
the fact that I’m a big old two-hundred-and-fifty-pound sheriff who’d never raise his hand against you.”

“Ask the questions,” demanded my father.

“Harry, which one of us is the sheriff of this here county? If you let me be the sheriff then I’m gonna let you be the merchant.” Sheriff Cauldwell sat me down on the couch and he settled into my father’s desk chair. “Patty, if some man did something to hurt you, you gotta tell me about it so I can stop him. So that he can never do it again to some other young girl. Now, you tell me, Patty, ’cause you ain’t got a thing to be afraid of.”

I looked past the sheriff’s elbow to see if my father had disintegrated. He hadn’t. “Sheriff Cauldwell, please, may I have my ring back now?”

“Why, shore you can. Harry, give her back her ring.”

“I’m keeping it for evidence.”

“You being the sheriff again, are you? Give Patty back her ring.”

I heard the air rushing like a powerful vacuum through my father’s nostrils. I prayed that if God wouldn’t protect me, surely Sheriff Cauldwell would. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I opened my eyes to see my ring pass from my father’s fingers to the sheriff’s and finally back into my waiting hand.

“Oh, thanks. Is it mine to keep? Is anybody going to take it away from me?”

Sheriff Cauldwell turned a steady gaze on my father. “Anybody touches that ring gonna have to answer to me first. Now, you want to tell me where you got it?”

“Yes, sir. There was this man—he was kinda old ’cause his
whiskers were white—and he told me that he hadn’t eaten in quite a while. So I told him that if he would follow me home and sit on our back doorstep I’d bring him some food from our refrigerator. And so I did and so he gave me the ring.”