ANGELA ZEMAN claims that wit never dies in her stories, but other life forms must fend for themselves. Her work spans several subgenres. In 2012 Otto Penzler reissued her first novel, The Witch and the Borscht Pearl, plus a collection of related short stories as e-books and print-on-demand books. She is published by Mysterious Press, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and various anthologists. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Private Eye Writers of America, and the International Crime Writers Association/North America. Learn more about her and her work at AngelaZeman.com.
COPYCATS
N. J. Ayres
“The stinkin’ rat finks have our uniforms on! They’re sending our troops the wrong way!”
Voices didn’t travel far in the tree cover or under the sledgehammer sounds of explosions. Sergeant Sam Rabinowitz watched as Private Jacobs jumped out of the Jeep and tore up to him to say it again. “Hold on, Private,” Rabinowitz said.
“A truck driver just told me that!” Jacobs had been assigned a forward position to support an intersection with a fellow MP. Their squad’s mission was to direct Allied troop traffic south of the Belgian city of Bastogne.
Sergeant Rabinowitz ordered the squad to fall out. He knew rumors in wartime were often used as strategy by both sides. He had his men park their gear on snow and heaps of fallen branches, then permitted them to pop the hood of the Jeep so they could warm any drinkable liquids by setting their tin cups around the engine.
Rabinowitz sat with Maroney, the radioman, on a large low rock. Communication had been pretty well shot—static, then five words, then two, then static, then nothing. While Maroney worked, Rabinowitz slid his bayonet out of its scabbard on his belt, sliced off a hunk of salami he had in his pack, and offered it to Maroney before he cut a piece for himself.
Wet had entered a separation in Rabinowitz’s boot. The ache was almost smothered by numbness, a sign that it could turn to frostbite. He tried to ignore it. The whole platoon had suffered many more serious casualties than swollen toes in the advance along the eighty-mile front, later named the Battle of the Bulge for its geography.
Private Mike Kelley shoved back into the group from a piss run, along with another soldier they hadn’t seen before. The new man said he was headed back to the front after being separated from his squad. Sergeant Rabinowitz asked where he was from and a few other things, and then he turned his attention back to his communications grunt.
Within hearing distance of the sergeant, Private Kelley offered the new man his half tin of coffee. So, when the soldier smiled his thanks and tapped the bottom of the tin with a certain remark, it was all over. The soldier said, “Up your bottom.”
“Up your bottom” instead of “bottoms up.”
Private Jacobs never swore. He was raised Orthodox. But after subduing the German fink and stripping him of his stolen fatigues and tying his wrists and ankles, Izzy and Mike Kelley shuffled him ten yards out from the encampment and sat him on a fallen tree. Then Sergeant Samuel Rabinowitz cored out the enemy’s heart with the Colt Commando .38 that had belonged to Alfred Herschel Rabinowitz in World War I. Rocking from one foot to the other, Izzy said he wished he could have done the job. The führer himself had ordered any enemy soldier caught in a German uniform executed on the spot. What was good for the goose, Sergeant Rabinowitz said. His squad members went on with their business, but with a fresher fear in their eyes.
It was only five years earlier that Sammy Rabinowitz and Mike Kelley had sat in Izzy’s bedroom listening to the jazz guitar of Eddie Condon on twelve-inch 78s while putting together model airplanes, these boys whose fourteenth birthdays were all less than six weeks apart. Mike said Eddie Condon was deaf in one ear, and Izzy said he was crazy. How could he play like that, then?
Sammy’s model was a B-17 Flying Fortress his uncle with the shakes had given him. He also surprised Sammy with the latest issue of Model Airplane News. The other boys were jealous of Sammy’s good fortune and wouldn’t crack a page. Izzy just plopped the magazine on top of a beat-up issue of Air Trails on the bed next to the card table.
Izzy and Mike Kelley had only gliders to work on. Izzy told Sam they found the glider kits in the alley behind Mr. Gessel’s toy shop on Orchard Street. Mike sent Sam a shake of his head that Izzy didn’t see. It wasn’t the first time their friend had lifted something that wasn’t his.