“Donny, listen one minute.”
Something in his voice warned me to prepare myself for what was coming. Not that I possibly could, because what he was leading up to saying was:
“I am not American on paper.”
That took some digesting. At first I didn’t know what to make of it. “Then what are you?”
“German.”
“Well, yeah, sure, we been all through that. But who cares about something of that sort anymore?”
“Citizen of Germany, yet,” he spelled out, his voice growing strained. “Here I am something called alien.”
Giving this news what I thought it deserved, the French salute, I asked what was wrong with being one of those, whatever they were.
“Enemy alien,” he fit the two words together with a grimace.
That hit me where it counted. It put things right back to when I learned he was Herman the German and feared he was one of the Hitler demons who shot my father’s legs to pieces at Omaha Beach. Was I right the first time?
Fearfully I trembled out, “How—how are you an enemy?”
He threw up his hands. “By not showing my face when World War Zwei”—wincing, he corrected that to Two—“got America in. Some big danger I ever was, hah?”
? ? ?
I LISTENED DUMBSTRUCK to the rest, how having had enough of war in the first one, the second time around he quietly shipped out on ore boats like the Badger Voyager where no questions were asked as long as you could shovel heaps of coal, keeping himself at sea or whatever the Great Lakes were, and, beyond that, essentially hiding out in plain sight. “Manitowoc is German sort of place, you maybe noticed,” he said whimsically. “Government was not going to declare whole town an enemy.”
The meaning was sinking in on me now, all right. “You’re not supposed to be in this country at all? They’d kick you out?”
“Not at first,” he raised my hopes. But then: “Put me in prison, they would.”
I was horrorfied, as Herman’s word best said such a thing. “You’re that much of an”—I couldn’t bring myself to say enemy—“alien?”
“By stupid law, ja,” he spat out. Given how law enforcers seemed to automatically side with Sparrowhead against me, I couldn’t blame him for feeling picked on. “But if you’re still stuck being a—a German,” I was back to circling in confusion, “how’d you get here at all?”
He laughed, the hollow empty kind.
“Took French leave.”
Unsteadily I told him I didn’t quite know what that meant.
“Long story, Donny.”
? ? ?
“HITLER, PAH. Too bad I did not break his neck when he was close as me to you, that night.”