Season of My Enemy, page 26
Liza arrived in time for dinner, and together their family relived old stories and shared a mountain of laughter while they ate beef stew. Then they moved to the living room with plates bearing huge wedges of apple pie. Dale wanted to know about everything since he’d been gone. How Jerry’s high school football team was looking, whether Patsy had read any good books lately, all about Fannie’s work at the library and whether she’d be able to return to school in the fall, if they’d had trouble with potato beetles last year, and when Calvin and Liza planned to tie the knot.
He told them a few stories too, but not the kind she expected him to share. He mostly skirted the frightening, horrible, painful things that Fannie was positive he stored away inside. He told of brighter moments among his comrades and spoke about men whom he’d grown to feel were family too.
Dale cut into his pie. “There was one fellow in particular. Michael Rosen,” he said. “He was about forty years old. A family man. Said he owned a restaurant before the war. Jewish though, so he lost it. A man of greater faith I have never met.” Dale took a bite and seemed to drift momentarily while he chewed. They gave him time to think about his friend. Fannie wondered what became of Michael Rosen. “And there was another man too. We were never family, not like Mike and me, but he was a Christian man. Max, his name was, or so I learned. We only called him Herr Meisner.” Dale took another bite.
“Why’d you call him that if he was your friend?” Patsy leaned forward, balancing her empty pie plate on her knees.
“He was a German guard.” Dale’s eyes lifted momentarily and swept past Fannie’s. “Not all of them were true Nazis.”
Cal grunted as he pressed crumbs onto the back of his fork. “So I’ve heard.”
Fannie frowned. Why’d Cal have to say that? Now she felt compelled to respond, but then Mom spoke up. “The Germans working here have been hard workers and nothing but polite. I don’t believe there’s a Nazi among them.”
“Not anymore,” Calvin said.
“Since the surrender, you mean?” Dale asked.
“They never were.” The answer leapt from Fannie’s lips. “There was one man we couldn’t trust.” She gave Jerry and Patsy a quick glance. Hopefully, they caught her warning not to mention what Leo had done. “But he was sent back to Fort McCoy.”
“Something happen?”
Jerry stretched his long legs and belched. “Nothing worth mentioning.”
Mom stood. “Jerry’s right. Nothing worth mentioning.”
“Some of them are only Fannie’s age,” Patsy said. “One of them isn’t much older than Jerry.”
Mom took Dale’s empty plate. “Students mostly, and their captain is a teacher, if I understand right. Patsy, let’s scrape the dishes, and we can go visit Dad. We’ll wash them later. Fannie, there’s two whole pies left. Why don’t you cut one of them up and take it out to the workers? They’ve been hoeing all day, and it’ll be another hour before they finally get their supper back at camp.” She glanced toward the living room window. “I see them coming up to the yard now. Probably getting a drink before they leave.”
Fannie stiffened inside, but after what they’d just said about the Germans not being Nazis, she couldn’t disobey. Certainly that must be her mom’s reason for giving her the task.
Then Dale rose to his feet and reached for his cane. “I need to stretch. I’ll come with you, Fannie.”
Why not let the boys out there get a good look at what their countrymen had done to her brother? She raised her chin. “All right.”
CHAPTER 27
Wolf doused his head at the water pump then tipped his face beneath the spout to catch draughts of water into his parched throat. Refreshed, he stood and swept his damp hair back from his forehead in time to see Fannie and her brother step off the porch.
Fannie stiffened as their eyes met, and Wolf offered her a small nod, but then she dropped her glance and smiled at Rudy instead. Wolf hadn’t seen her smile in a long time. Now, even though it wasn’t directed at him, he was glad to see it. Someone said the word pie, and he realized what it was she was handing out to each of them.
Wolf waited a little apart from the rest. He’d like it if she came to him. Maybe he could finally speak to her. The guard happily accepted a piece of the dessert and joined the rest of the men to chow it down. The past couple of days he’d finally begun to relax with them.
She looked Wolf’s way again and spoke to the thin man who had to be her brother Dale. Now she would have to bring Wolf his serving apart from the others. But it wasn’t Fannie who approached him first. Rather, her long-lost brother walked over while Fannie lagged behind. The man looked him over as Fannie finally stepped close enough to stretch her hand out with the pie tin.
“Help yourself,” she said, her brown eyes flashing momentarily at him but not alighting long enough.
“Danke, Fannie.” He accepted the entire tin since only one piece remained, but he didn’t remove the pie.
“I take it you’re their ranking officer,” the brother said.
“Ja.” Wolf shrugged. “I was. Now I will once again be only a teacher. You are the missing brother who was prisoner in Germany.”
The man’s brow lifted. “I am Dale O’Brien.” He tipped his head to Fannie. “Fannie’s brother.”
“We heard you had come home. I am glad for you and for your family.”
“That so?”
“You will find it hard to believe, Herr O’Brien, but I have prayed for your safety as I prayed for the safety of my own friends and family.”
Stilted silence filled the space for a moment. “My family tells me you’ve helped significantly here last summer.”
“Ja. We hope so. Your family has treated us well. Much better, I fear, than you were treated at the hands of my countrymen, or so I have come to believe.”
Then the American looked at the ground while he seemed to consider Wolf’s sincerity. Finally, he cleared his throat and held out his hand. Wolf moved the pan to his left hand. “No hard feelings,” O’Brien said.
“Dale,” Fannie murmured. Her brow wrinkled.
“I regret your suffering and that of so many others,” Wolf said.
“Yes, I do too. But it wasn’t your fault.”
“Dale,” Fannie whispered, “you don’t have to say that.”
O’Brien looked at his sister. “Don’t you think it would be better if we started moving on now?”
“The war isn’t even over,” she murmured.
“It’s over for us … and for them.” He dipped his head indicating Wolf and the others. “I don’t want to keep reliving every moment.”
A rush of relief trickled through Wolf, but he tried not to let his feelings become obvious. “I understand if Fannie does not feel the same. She worried for you greatly, and she was often given tasks heavy for her. Much too heavy to bear alone.”
“I wasn’t alone.” Her eyes flashed at him, and to see her come to life before him, even in her anger, made him glad.
“No. Never alone. You had faith in God.”
“I had my mother and Jerry and Patsy and then Cal.”
“Ja.”
“Dale suffered, and it’s the Germans’ fault. It’s …” Her face reddened, and she dropped her gaze. “Take your pie. Let’s go, Dale.” She turned her shoulder away.
Wolf couldn’t let her go. “Fannie. Wait. May I speak to her?” he asked her brother.
The man squinted, then nodded.
“Dale.”
“Talk to him, Fannie. He isn’t asking for much.” He limped away with his cane, and Fannie stood before Wolf, flipping back a strand of hair before moving her hands to her apron pockets.
“Go ahead.”
Wolf glanced over to the boys resting, quenching their thirst, and talking. He took a step toward the silo at the far end of the barn. The move encouraged her to walk beside him, farther from the others. Walking several slow paces, he finally halted when they were well out of earshot.
Fannie looked back at the others. Her brother stood speaking with the guard, but he didn’t glance their way.
“Danke, Fannie. I have hoped to speak to you for a long time, and now that your missing brother is found …” He shook his head, unsure how to continue. She seemed ready to bolt, and he didn’t want to lose her. “I know you have suffered greatly, and in some ways, we are indeed all to blame. All of us who brought you this war.” He searched her face, but she would not look at him steadily. “If I could take the hurt from you and from your family and bear it personally, I would. If I could have prevented you from losing your father or if I could have set your brother free sooner, I would have. If I could have stopped Hitler himself”—he clenched his hand at his side—“I would have done anything in my power to do so.”
Her eyes came up now, and they shone with unspent tears. She swiped them away, her aggravation obvious.
“Please forgive us, Fannie. Forgive me.”
“I want to,” she whispered. “But …” Her hands gripped her upper arms, clutching her body.
“But you are angry, and just-justified to be so.” It took a moment to find the correct English word.
“I am not your judge,” she whispered.
He looked to the house, but no one was watching, so he did the unthinkable. He reached up and wiped away a tear that had slipped to her cheek. Her intake of breath shot straight to his heart, and such a pounding began that it took all his willpower not to pull her into an embrace. But to supply comfort or something more?
“Fannie.”
She shook her head, but at least she didn’t step away.
“I am sorry.”
“No.” Her voice choked. “You’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve always done your best for our family. You even saved me from Leo.” She sniffed, and a new shed of tears began. He felt his pockets, but there was nothing he could give her. She lifted the edge of her apron and wiped her eyes. “Come with me.” She strode purposely around the side of the silo.
With one backward glance, Wolf followed. Dale O’Brien’s glance caught his, squinting again, but he didn’t move toward them. Would the man tell Calvin, and would Calvin follow with his gun blazing? It didn’t matter. Fannie asked him to follow, and follow he would.
She halted out of sight around the silo and faced him. “I didn’t want them all to see me crying.” Now she wiped her tears more adamantly into the soggy end of her apron. Then she reached back, untied it, and pulled the whole thing off, using it to towel her face. “There,” she said through a final sniff. “That’s better.” But her voice still sounded clogged.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I’m just so … so sorry. And so confused. Dale is here. He’s going to be okay. But …”
“Ja. I know. I saw the papers and the films. It is terrible what happened to him and all those other men. And the women too. If something like that happened to someone I cared for, I would feel the same.”
“Have you heard from your family?” She pushed her hair back, a move that always showed she was in command of her composure.
He nodded. “They tell me things are hard, but they will get better eventually. For some there is not that hope.”
“Wolf …” Her hand came to his shirt front, but she quickly drew it back. “There is so much to say to you. I’ve wasted weeks.”
“We have time. Perhaps not today, but—”
“Do we?” Her face lifted and her eyes begged for a full answer.
“The war is not over yet. They have not spoken of sending us home for some time still.”
“And when you do go, what then?”
He shrugged. “I cannot answer.” A thought leapt into his head. It had been there before, creeping in and out as he lay on his bed at night, sometimes while he hoed corn or thought about the pea crop they’d soon be picking. But dare he speak it aloud? He might offer her a lie. Would it be a lie though? What would happen once he was sent home? For he would be sent home eventually. “Hermann hopes to emigrate. He would like to come back to Wisconsin someday.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and her lips parted in surprise. “He could do that?”
“I do not see why not. He will need to find a sponsor, from what he tells me.”
Her breath hitched. “A sponsor?”
“Someone willing to house him and help him until he finds work and is able to become established here.”
“Anyone?”
“Possibly.” Wolf shrugged. “He thinks perhaps he can find a relative. A cousin.”
Her chest rose and fell a little more rapidly, enough for him to notice and to catch the way her pulse jumped in the hollow of her throat. “You would never do so yourself.” The way she said it held a question—perhaps one she was afraid to ask. Perhaps one she’d set herself against. Perhaps a question that he himself had allowed to whisper in the recesses of his consciousness.
“I have not fully considered it.”
“I see.” Her eyelids fluttered.
“Until recently.”
She seemed to capture her breath then, allowing him the opportunity to hold her gaze, to study her as he’d long wished to. And he did wish to. He wished to imprint her not only into his mind but into his very being.
The guard’s sharp whistle beckoned him. Fannie touched him then, her fingertips grazing his arm, lighting there and sending shock waves through his body. Then she dropped her hand. “I think you would have no trouble finding a sponsor … should you decide to return to America. To Wisconsin,” she amended.
Wolf smiled and Fannie returned it, however demurely. “We will speak of this further. We will not be sent away for a long while yet. I must return now. I do not want to anger the guard or your brothers,” he said.
“No, of course not.”
She gave him the correct answer, but her face broadened into a smile that told him that the past was behind them and that her real concerns had been replaced with peace.
CHAPTER 28
August 1947
Two years later
Peace—flooding her, taking over the world in its topsy-turvy manner.
Though Japan’s defeat was a foregone conclusion in the summer of ‘45, it was September before they surrendered and the war finally ended. Tears were shed again, and Mom laid another cobblestone. Yet all that season long, the Germans still worked for them. Whenever Fannie’s schedule allowed, she labored in the field alongside her three brothers and the PWs. Only she didn’t think of them as PWs now. She thought of them as the boys. Except for Wolf, though she did think of him. Often.
When they found themselves picking beans beside one another or eating lunch together that her mother provided out on the lawn, they talked of what he would do if he came to America. How he would find work. Where he would live. How long it would take. That had been the hardest part to imagine. Wolf always spoke forthrightly, pointing out that there would likely be a long process and that he had his parents’ needs to consider. She could see that the idea of going home to Germany only to leave them again agonized him. So, would he ever come?
That there was something deeply personal growing between them she could not deny, yet never did he try to claim her heart or any other part of her, even though there were times she wanted only to reach out and hold his hand. Sometimes the boys went for a short swim in the creek and came back to the house with wet hair and damp shirts, and Fannie would admire Wolf from a vantage point where he might not notice her staring. Once he did, however, and her skin had heated, but he smiled, and she suspected he might wish for something more too.
Now, nearly two years since V-J Day, Fannie sat on the tractor seat, the setting sun warm on her brow as she drove it across the field toward the lane. She’d been cutting oats while Dale, Calvin, and Jerry bound them into shocks. Then Patsy rang the dinner bell, a brand-new installment since newlyweds Calvin and Liza learned they were going to be parents. With Liza’s time coming in only another six weeks or so, Calvin wanted to make sure he could hear if his wife needed him. Liza assured him that even if he didn’t hear the bell, someone else would, and they’d be able to fetch him in plenty of time.
As the men headed toward home with their tools, bellyaching about how ready for supper they were, Fannie left them and drove the tractor down the lane to the mailbox. She squinted into the sunset while she inhaled deeply of the earthy smells—of fresh-cut oats, waving green cornfields, and even the smells of dirt and warm skin and old tractor oil. She would miss this when she put her newly acquired teacher’s certificate to use and took up her teaching position at the Greenwood School in just a few weeks. She could still help around the farm on the weekends, but now her elder brothers would run the place without the three siblings who’d kept it operating while they were overseas.
Jerry would be off to his second year of Wisconsin State College in River Falls, where he was pursuing agricultural courses, so things would be left solely up to Calvin and Dale. Dale had gained almost the entirety of his strength back, just as he’d assured them he would. Only now and then was he plagued by a little cough and knees that occasionally ached. Even so, he never made much of it. Patsy would be back at school in a couple of weeks too. She was a high school junior this year and would no doubt make the most of the experience.
Fannie parked the tractor at the end of the drive and climbed off the seat to retrieve the day’s mail. She flipped open the lid on the rusty box, and her heart skipped a familiar beat when she discovered a letter postmarked Heidelberg, Germany. She would have recognized Wolf’s neatly angled handwriting even without the mark or return address. She tore open the envelope.
Over the past year and a half, soldiers came flooding home looking for work again, and just before Cal and Liza’s wedding last year, the PWs were sent back to Fort McCoy. Eventually, they were repatriated to Germany. Wolf and his boys weren’t finally shipped off until late spring of last year.
During those weeks and months as the world struggled to return to normal, and while Fannie’s heart screamed for joy that the killing had ended, she also wondered whether all the things she and Wolf had spoken of during the waning summer and if Wolf’s decision to return to Wisconsin someday would change. He had family in Germany. Parents to care for. And surely he would be needed in the role of teacher again, once his country regained its footing.
