Word started going around that morning about the rowdy celebrations that took place in Europe overnight, how a million Parisians cheered as doughboys marched the Champs-élysées. All those Frenchies were elated about reinforcements coming over on boats. In Omaha, a place those boys came from, the reality of what America was in for on the Western Front was starting to hit home. Conscription had begun. Over two million young Americans would be selected for service. Meanwhile people read aloud from front-page digests and marveled at the calamities that would soon involve their sons and neighbors. Long-range German railway guns shelled London in June, with mortars blasting sixty miles distant; meanwhile the English tunneled under enemy lines at the Messines Ridge in Ypres and killed thousands of Germans when they detonated six hundred tons of explosives in the mines. The war had already been going on for three years and nobody knew when the fighting would stop. The only certainty was that Americans would soon number in the dead.
Jake hadn’t wanted to go this far uptown, he’d wanted to see a big wrestling match that sounded more entertaining. No-neck Marin Plestina from South Omaha was going to face the handsomely coifed Henry Ordeman of Minneapolis in an auditorium that wasn’t all that far away from where the annual Interrace Game was to be played between Northside and Southside baseball squads. Jake was outvoted by his friends, though, because there was no price for admission to the parade (the wrestling and baseball were two dollars each) and the tunnelers wanted to save money for drinks later on. Jake had spent most of his time in clubs and saloons after what happened with Karel, feeling he should avoid the Miihlsteins until any hard feelings blew over. Even though Karel explained it was just near beer he drank in Mecklenburg’s, and Jake confirmed this, Herr Miihlstein kept the boy under lock and key for the rest of the summer. Jake felt bad about that. It didn’t occur to him until later that Mecklenburg’s operated illegally during the state prohibition. “What if there was a raid?” Herr Miihlstein had asked. “How would you feel if the boy had been arrested?” Jake shouldn’t have promised to look out for Karel. That’s where he went wrong.
There was food at the parade, near the courthouse steps, so Jake ate. He bought a grilled hotdog and a Nehi cola, then a scoop of pistachio ice cream and some roasted nuts. No matter how he passed the afternoon he’d go to the Potsdamer later, a dancing club. Jake couldn’t lose. He wore a gray cap, wool trousers, a whitish shirt. He was excited to be up where the important buildings were. The six-story clock tower of the post office, banks with marble festoons, municipal shrines where politicians did business. Just the year before, President Wilson gave a campaign speech on this spot. Jake stood where the grandstand had been.
He looked to the parade, to the crowd. He smoked to pass the time. That’s when he spotted the girl, the one who was raped in Riverview Park. That Doreen. She was only twenty yards away, steadying herself against a light pole. She wore the same red dress, torn and dirty now, not so red. Her hair was thin, unpinned and breezy about her face.
Street kids surrounded her. You couldn’t stop and talk to a kid like that or else a bunch would move in. That was how the girl screwed up. Now she was in trouble. Maybe she asked what occasion it was or if they’d buy her a lemonade from one of the vendors. Then the street kids noticed her. They pulled at the loose seams of her dress. Called her a tidbit, a chippy. Asked who she worked for, or if she was looking for a mack.
Jake shouldn’t have been bothered—she wasn’t his sister, she hadn’t been his fiancée—but he wanted the kids to leave her alone. She screamed, but it only egged them on.
“We should do something,” Jake said to his friends, the other tunnelers. “We could drive them off if we tried.”
“Cut it out,” Charlie barked back. “It’s not our business.”
Jake turned red. “We can take them. If we have to fight, I know we’ll win.”
“Think a second,” Meinhof said. “Remember where we’re at, Herr Jakob. It would be Huns attacking the boys. They’d have us hanging from a tree before you know what.”
The girl shucked off into the crowd anyway and the gang left her alone. They were just picking on her, reminding everyone of her misery. Street kids were the least of her problems.
It was a relief to see dancers take the stage at the Potsdamer, once Jake and the tunnelers arrived at the club. They spoke their mother tongue here. Smelled and tasted and handled their own food, at the pinnacle of culture as they knew it. A sensational concurrence of music and communion. There was five-cent beer, and the price of admission included a glass of Rhine wine, or something like it. Even though Nebraska was officially a dry state now, little had changed on the River Ward. City authorities made no effort to enforce the law. Many saloons stayed open and, at least in Omaha, the prohibition flopped. Barkeepers kept the beer flowing, moving quickly so the taps rarely closed. A glass was filled with frothing amber then replaced by another before much could spill. Patrons moved at a corresponding pace, they had to, trading dimes for beers in a single motion, their combined mass a cloud of felt hats and rosy faces. The pitch smell of the mills lingered in and out of clothes and skin. Oompahs pealed joyously, openly, by a brass band that throbbed the crowd with dance music until the well-greased hustled to an opening and circled recklessly with their fellows. On stage the girls were lithe and graceful with long kicking limbs, except for one who had short, strong legs, the most athletic, who leapt with rousing quickness. The routine was disorganized, but Jake liked it. The girls were pretty. The skimpy outfits they wore looked like tiger pelts. Furry ears rounded out of their hair. It was nice to watch a band play, to lean into a balcony rail and enjoy music, to watch a twirling baton spin between the drummer’s carousel fingers, and smile as the stick, snatched midair, made the bass drum boom.
More friends showed up. They all got drunk and took up the news that was parsed near constantly in places where they could speak freely—politics, war, the Cypriot.
Joe Meinhof was already exasperated. “I knew this would happen. It’s no coincidence this all started once the Cypriot showed up. And a bunch of Schwarzers moving in to take jobs. What’s happening to those girls. It’s the Cypriot! I know it.”
Jake focused below, where the crowd was busy. Young men looking to get sauced mobbed the kegs of beer and pushed each other around, the same brand of street kids who harassed the girl at the parade. They were out of place, with their tilted hats and clipped English, and that they didn’t dance. They didn’t even sway or tap their feet. They weren’t German.
Meinhof went on, his back to the room. “It wasn’t like this before. Blackies with their paws on a woman. It’s chaos they want. That’s why they’re here.”
Joe Meinhof was the kind of guy who had a dozen theories for any debate, who existed beyond logic. His face had a nervous quality because of the wrinkles in his forehead, that odd fop of hair on his head. He was a small, bewildered person.
Charlie, Meinhof’s half-brother, didn’t buy these kinds of conspiracies. “Don’t make yourself crazy,” he said, moving closer until both brothers leaned on the railing. “What a stupid thing to say. How does having women raped help anybody?”