“Donny, I am so much sorry”—if spoken words ever shed tears, it happened now in his broken apology—“for what is happened. Miles from anywheres, we are, and money gone, trip kaput.” In that moment he looked so much older, the way people do when they are terribly sad. I felt as awful as he looked.
“Hey, it wasn’t just you,” I felt compelled to take my share of the blame, “it was my bright idea for us to go to sleep to get rid of the goddamn minister. If I hadn’t thought that up—”
“If is biggest word there is,” he saved me from myself. Or maybe himself along with it. As I watched, he dry-washed his face, holding his head in his hands while trying to think. For some moments I held my breath, until he came up with “No sense beating ourselfs like dead horse, hah?”
Just like that, he straightened up, unhunching his shoulders for the first time since the words enemy and alien, and tipped his cowboy hat back, if not the Herman of the dog bus again a pretty good imitation of it. “We got to git in for the night”—cocking his good eye toward the fancy Inn—“into the Waldorfer, someways, Donny.”
“But what are we gonna do after that?” I spread my arms helplessly.
He gazed off into the distance, as he must have gazed countless miles that way since that night in a Munich beer hall. “We take a leap of fate.”
Believe me, I have looked this up, and the roots of fate and faith are not the same. Nonetheless, I picked up my wicker suitcase to follow Herman the German into the Old Faithful Inn.
? ? ?
EVER STEPPED into an aircraft hangar? The lobby of the elaborate old Inn was like that, only roomier, largely higher. In the big open area I had to tip my head way back to count balcony after balcony held suspended by beams thick as logs, the supports all the way to the towering roof peak positioned each on top of the one below like those circus acrobats standing on one another’s shoulders. Incredibly, except for a mountainous stone fireplace, every single thing in the Inn—walls, balcony railings, chairs, benches, ashtray stands, light fixtures—seemed to be made of timber, actual trees, freaks of the forest according to the fantastic twists and turns of some of the trunks and limbs. Dimly lit only by old electric candles that threw about as much light as Christmas tree bulbs, the place struck me as creepy, as in those fairy tales where bad things happen to travelers in shadowy old inns.
Herman seemed unperturbed. “Like the Kaiser’s hunting lodge, but built by beavers” was his estimate of the pine-forest lobby as we entered, baggage in hand.
“So, Donny, do like I told,” he whispered as we headed toward the front desk. “Pretend you own the place, whole schmier is your vacation palace.” Before coming in, he had dug down in the duffel bag and found his tie, the out-of-date one with mermaids twined coyly in seaweed, but a tie. He similarly dressed me up by making me put on my moccasins. “Now we are not looking like hoboes so much,” he appraised us with a lot more confidence than I felt.
Or for that matter, the sleepy night clerk, who blinked himself more alert at the sight of us, glancing with a growing frown at his reservation book and our approach. He did take a second look at my impressive moccasins, although that may have been canceled out by his beholding Herman’s dangling mermaids. Whatever he thought, he cleared his throat and addressed our coming:
“Checking in late, sir? Name, please?”
“No, no, got room this afternoon.” Herman waved a hand at the first question and simultaneously erased the second. “Der Junge can’t sleep, so watched the geezer go off and off, and now we are bringing his souvenir collection from the car and laundry bag along with,” he accounted for our conspicuous odd suitcase and duffel. “Back to room we go, everything fine and jimmy-dandy.”
“Oh, say, Grandpa,” I spoke my part, as we had to march right by the clerk’s still inquisitive scrutiny, “did you lock the Caddy?”
“Ja, don’t want bears in the Cadillac, hah?” Herman laughed in such jolly fashion it infected the clerk.
Chuckling, the man behind the desk all but ushered us past. “You’re a hundred percent right about that, sir. Good night and sleep tight.”
Up the plank-wide stairs we went, climbing to the absolute top and darkest balcony and passing by rows of rooms until reaching a far corner, as Herman had calculated, out of sight from the front desk. Also as he had counted on, there was more of that wildwood furniture, massive chairs made out of lodgepole, along the balcony for lobby-watching. Grunting and straining, between us we wrestled two of those into our corner and tucked the duffel and suitcase in behind. Ourselves we tried to fit into the rigid wooden seats in some semblance of bedtime positions. “Beds a little hard tonight,” Herman tried to joke, patting the tree limbs under the not very thick cushions.
“About like sleeping on a lumber pile, yeah,” I muttered, squirming in vain to get comfortable at all, missing the upholstered seats of the dog bus as if they were the lap of luxury. But I had to admit, we were in for the night, flat broke though we were.