The Losing Role (7 page)

“Hey Mac, how’d you all score a shave?”

They were clean-shaven, too. So many blunders.

“Good luck,” Zoock said. “See how lucky we are?”

More laughs. The four kept walking, determined as if
walking was the only thing not giving them away. Max patted Zoock’s
back, pushing him along. A couple men were shaking their heads.
They picked up the pace, passing barracks 8, 9, 10, and the
gauntlet thinned.

Barrack 13. The door was open. They strode up the
steps and in. The long and vast one-story structure was so crammed
it looked like the inside of a messy closet after a great quake.
Zoock charged on into this mess and the other three followed,
dodging the many obstacles. The double wooden bunks of cheap,
splintering wood. The chairs and tables so undersized they could
have been built for
Kinder
—these stood everywhere, at every
possible angle. Laundry hung on lines strewn in all directions,
forcing them to duck every few feet. Piles of blankets and cans and
boxes, so many rough edges and barriers. Max caught a shin on a
bunk corner; Felix held onto a bunk ladder and got a sliver; Braun
staggered into a pile of wood scraps and sent them flying.

The barrack was empty of occupants as best as they
could tell. No one had followed them. “Where are we going?” Max
said finally, and Zoock stopped them about halfway through. They
stared at each other.

Felix threw up his hands. “Where does one
sleep?”

“I am so tired,” Braun said, his eyes wide, his face
ashen. “I am Roger-er.”

The clop-clop-clop of footsteps and the front door
swung open with a grating creak. The barracks’ occupants filed in.
Max and the three turned to them showing broad smiles that felt
strained and sickly on their faces.

A short and wiry American with black curly hair led
the line of prisoners, which seemed to number at least forty and
they kept coming. The curly-haired prisoner touched and stroked
every angle and corner he passed as if this grim barrack was his
beloved submarine and he the commander. Max thought of saluting but
saw no visible rank on the curly-haired one, so he waved. The man
nodded, kept coming. His jaw had hard angles, just like the bunks.
His skin was pocked. His exact age, unknowable—somewhere between
mid-twenties and late thirties? Five feet away now. Max held out a
hand and the man shook it. Max held up the card with “13” on
it.

“Morning,” he said. “Mike Kopp. It would seem we’re
your new guests.”

“That it would. How-do, Kopp. Cozy, huh? These huts
were built for twenty. With you boys, that makes it about sixty.”
The curly-haired man had a strange accent to Max—it was slow and
rich, taking its time. He placed it somewhere in the American
Southwest.

“At least sixty,” Zoock said, staring at the men
still filing in.

“Say, could ya try the next hotel?” a prisoner said
from behind the curly-haired leader. It was a joke. Satire. Irony.
American jokes were like that. Max blurted a laugh and the rest
followed, overdoing it.

The curly-haired one never gave his name, Max
realized. It seemed very un-American. The prisoners gathered around
the four, filling the barracks and cutting off the only exit. If
trouble started there’d be little chance of calling for guards, for
showing the blue hankies. Then again, the
Amis
would have to
be smarter than just attack them. That would only bring greater
punishment. All these thoughts raced through Max’s head as the
curly-haired one asked the standard questions. Where ya from? How’s
the front? They rough you up any?

Braun’s accent was showing, so Max explained that
the private was from a German community in Minnesota. “Braun, that
bumpkin,” Zoock blurted, then something about Braun being Amish,
and Max hoped that didn’t make the curly-haired one suspicious,
since most Amish people lived in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana.

“What’s the word? We really home by Christmas?” a
prisoner said.

“I cannot see why not,” Max said. “Look, we have the
krauts on the run. We took back Aachen, the last I have heard.
We’re in Germany now. Must be only a matter of time.” Max played
this up, smiling and slapping his hands together.

Zoock, Felix, and Braun stared, grimacing. It wasn’t
widely known inside Germany that the war was going that badly.
Pielau had told Max. Pielau listened to the BBC.

“Let you get settled some,” the curly-haired one
said and stepped aside. Prisoners were clearing off a double bunk
for Max and the other three. It meant they would have to double up
or find places on the floor. Depressing. Were they going out of
their way to keep them together? Could they be isolating them?

The Americans left them to their new bunk, and the
barrack routines began. Men played cards, read, napped, wrote
postcard letters. Many knitted, to Max’s wonder—it turned out the
Red Cross sent balls of yarn and needles, of all things. And Max
noticed the smell of this place—a gritty, oily, greasy aroma that
had worked itself into everything. At least the odors of the front
were different every day, while this place had the same stale reek
all the time.

Soon Zoock was sleeping up on the top bunk, and so
deeply that he snored. This seemed to bother no one but Max. Braun
curled up on the floor before the bunk, like an old dog. Before
long he slid under the bottom bunk facing the wall, which also
seemed to bother no one. Meanwhile, Felix flipped through old US
magazines and spoke with Max in English, but they found little to
talk about that was harmless. Max thought it best to be interested
in the POWs’ world, so he called a young private over and started
asking questions about life in a prison camp. The private was
helpful, but most of his answers involved slang not even Zoock
could have known. “Ferrets” were guards who came at unexpected
times and searched the barrack for contraband or tunnels. “Readers”
were select POWs who listened to the BBC secretly and visited
various barracks, updating the men on the war. “Goons” were the
German guards, most of whom had wacky nicknames such as “Schmuck
Mug” and “Turkey Neck.” And Max asked about the smell—POWs only got
showers twice a month and usually cold water at that.

At mess the four endured more questions and avoided
the petrified stares of the other German undercover GIs. Their meal
was a thin gray soup and some dry brown bread. Back in the barrack
Max pretended to nap on the bottom bunk, his eyes cracked just
enough to watch the prisoners. Men stared and studied them, and
others seemed to talk about them in dark corners. All the while,
the barrack seemed to have many visitors who sat with the
curly-haired one.

Evening came to the barrack, at long last. The
electric lights came on, brown and flickering. Braun was back on
the floor under the bunk. Zoock and Felix watched prisoners play a
card game called Blackjack. Prisoners tossed an oblong American
football down the long room yet managed to hit nothing, not even a
clothesline. Someone put on a record—Django Reinhardt playing
“Stardust,” of all things, and other men began dancing. Max thought
of joining them. That could be fun.

The curly-haired one was standing before Max. He was
not smiling. Max opened his eyes fully and smiled.

“Have a seat,” the curly-haired one said. He nodded
toward a table two bunks down—well out of earshot of Zoock, Max
thought. Men had been knitting at the table. Now they were clearing
away their yarn and needles.

Max stopped smiling. “All right.”

Max’s knees banged at the bottom of the table. They
sat opposite each other. “Must be your office, I take it,” Max
said.

Curly-haired nodded. “Espinoza.”

Was this a slang word? Max nodded.

“I never told you my name. It’s Espinoza. Manny
Espinoza.”

“Oh, right. Kopp. Mike Kopp.”

“So you told me. I’m a First Sergeant too, Kopp. Not
that rank matters much inside Thirteen.” Espinoza lit a Lucky
Strike, and aromas of fine Virginia tobacco filled Max’s
nostrils—better smokes in here than Germans had at home.

Espinoza handed Max the cigarette. “Splendid,” Max
said. “Thanks.”

“Thank the Red Cross.” Espinoza watched Max smoke,
then hand the Lucky back. “You new kriegies are always cause for
excitement. And some head-scratching.”

“Kriegies?”

“Short for
Kriegsgefangene
—POW—just another
kraut word that’s about three syllables too long.”

Back over at the bunk men had gathered around Zoock
and Felix, peppering them with questions. A couple others were
talking to Braun, who was still under the bunk.

“I can’t imagine why heads are scratching,” Max
said. “We’re just average Joes.”

“Yeah.” Espinoza picked tobacco from his front
teeth. He watched the men talking to Zoock, Felix, and Braun.

Say something, Max. Anything. “Say, what’s your
unit?” Max said.

“Super Sixth.” Espinoza added a smile—the tobacco
still between teeth.

Super Sixth?—Max needed more, a clue. He smiled.

“Sixth Armored,” Espinoza said.

Max slapped a knee. “Hey, I’m from the Armored
Forces too.” The Armored forces? What was he saying? “I’m a tanker,
I mean. Second Armored—‘Hell on Wheels.’” It said it on his sleeve
patch. “See here?”

“Knew a lug in that outfit,” someone said, off
behind Max. They had good ears in here. “Oh?” Max said, not looking
back. “Swell.”

“Knew a couple guys,” Espinoza said. “More than a
couple, fact. Lot a guys come through here since ’43. I been in
that long. On account a Tunisia. That and a wily kraut named
Rommel. You?”

“Siegfried Line,” Max said. Hoping it was vague
enough.

“What’s yer hot box?”

Max stared.

“Your hot box. Tank. Panzer, krauts call it. You
know.”

“Sure, sure. Hearing’s not the best, sorry. It was a
Sherman.”

Espinoza stared. Now he needed more.

“Drove the goddamn, mothersuckin’, thing,” Max
added. “It was hot in there, boy. Steamy.”

“Steamy. Right . . .”

How long was this to go on? Max gazed over at the
men dancing. “You probably got a theater in camp? I would like to
help out. Keep my mind off things.”

Espinoza didn’t answer. Someone had handed him a
metal mug. He passed it to Max and nodded. Max drank. It burned and
Max’s eyes welled up and his head became light, as if a woman’s
hands were cradling it. Someone laughed, a piercing cackle—probably
the cad who brewed this swill, Max thought.

“Potato likker,” Espinoza said. “Well?”

“Think it tastes of petrol,” Max said, swallowing
hard. “But she’ll do the trick.”

Espinoza drank. “Petrol? You mean gasoline.” He
smoked and inhaled deep, and he leaned forward, across the table.
He exhaled as he spoke, into Max’s face. “Here’s the thing, Petrol.
We’re having a little ball game tomorrow out on the
Sportplatz
. Why don’t you play?”

“Ball game?”

“Baseball. That’s the kinda game for us tankers, all
we ever played and I’m sure it was the same in your outfit.”

Baseball. A small white ball and a club-like hitter
called a bat. Some men hit the white ball and others stood around
waiting to catch it. Lou Gehrig. Babe Ruth. Brooklyn Dodgers.

“Your friends are in,” Espinoza added. “My pals are
making sure of that right now. Fact, it’s something of a tradition
here for the new Kriegies.”

A crowd had surrounded the other three. New York
Yankees. Home run. How many bases were run, Max wasn’t sure. But he
knew one thing: Americans played their baseball in the summertime,
not in the winter.

He reached for the potato schnapps. “Baseball, hey,”
he stammered, “That sure beats the dancing, doesn’t it?”

Six

The next morning after roll call Max, Zoock, Felix,
and Braun used the cover of a heavy fog to meet outside behind the
latrine shed. Icicles hung from the roof. Steam puffed out their
mouths as they spoke, and they hopped in place for warmth—all
except Braun. Dark thoughts must have oppressed him during the
night. He moved lazily, as if a zombie, and his blond locks hung in
his face, a truly wretched version of the model Hitler Youth he’d
likely been once.

“It’s no use,” he blurted in German. “These brutes
had us fingered the minute we come through the gate.”

Zoock punched him hard on the arm. “Where’s your
English? What the fuck’s wrong with you? Don’t you wanna make it
outta here in one piece?” Braun muttered something. Zoock lunged at
Braun. Max and Felix jumped between them.

“It’s not here I’m worried about,” Braun said,
slumping against the gray, frozen planks of shed wall. “It’s what
comes after.”

“Gentlemen! We need whispering,” Max said in
English.

“All right, all right.” Zoock turned to Max. “So.
What kinda questions that Espinoza ask you last night?”

“The standard things, you know. Seems he only wanted
to hear me talking—”

Zoock spat. “He wanted confirmation, you mean—that
there’s something fishy. Probably takes you for our leader. You got
that look, sure. All spiffy-like. That’s why they isolated you.
They’re targeting you.”

“Me? My God.” Again, not what Max wanted. Obscurity
was the plan. Yet he had certain gifts, and what can one do about
nature? He threw up his hands.

“Don’t give me that. It’s that way you talk,
too—like the swell in some picture show.”

“The what?” Felix broke a smile. Max gasped at him.
Zoock took a deep breath and faced the three of them. His bushy red
eyebrows had thickened with an icy frost. “Now look, boys, this
baseball thing has gotta be a trick. A test. Luckily, I’ve played
some ball in my time, so just do what I do. Got me?”

“I got you, yes,” Max said.

“Got ya,” Felix said, his beanie pulled down low on
his forehead. He too knew baseball, he’d whispered to Max during
the night. In America, with the circus, it was all the men did
between shows besides drink, play cards, and make passes at the
midget women. He’d said, “This baseball is strange, an agonizingly
slow game marked by rare—and not nearly enough—moments of extreme
excitement and panic. It’s a taunt and I despise it.”