TEN DAYS OR so after Ellsworth returned from Meade, Eula told him that she wanted to go see Mr. Slater, the teacher at the schoolhouse in Nipgen. “Why would you wanta do something like that?” he asked.
“Well, if Germany’s where they’re a-sendin’ Eddie, I’d like to have an idy of where it is, and I figure if there’s anyone around here who could show us, it will be him.”
Ellsworth frowned. Ever since the embarrassment with the stolen magazine six years ago, he had done his best to avoid Slater, but he couldn’t think of a good excuse not to take her; the man didn’t live but a couple of miles away. It was only after he’d agreed that Ellsworth began to see it as an opportunity. He could let him know that the boy had turned out all right after all, that he wasn’t locked up in a hoosegow somewhere for larceny or something even worse. It was the first time in ages that he actually had something to be proud of when it came to Eddie, and by the time they left for the teacher’s house the next afternoon, he was actually looking forward to doing a little bragging.
They found Slater, a pale, skinny man with wiry red hair, lounging in a hammock tied between two chestnut trees in his front yard. He was playing a wooden flute, one much the same as a shepherd stuck with his flock on a lonely hillside might have passed the time with in olden days. A wide-brimmed straw hat covered his rather small head.
When he saw them approaching, he rolled out of the hammock and set the flute atop a rusty overturned washtub. “Mr. and Mrs. Fiddler,” he said, taking off his hat as he walked up to their wagon. “What a surprise.” Ellsworth noted a little disdainfully that he was barefoot and had a yellow dandelion stuck behind his ear. Not only that, he didn’t appear to have on any underclothes beneath the baggy nightshirt he was wearing.
“I hope we’re not botherin’ ye,” Eula said.
“No, no, not at all. What can I do for you?”
“Well, we was wonderin’ if you might have a map of Germany.”
Slater thought for a moment as he fanned himself with the hat and scratched at a deerfly welt on his neck. “Not Germany specifically,” he said, “but I do have a map of the world, if that would do you any good.”
“Does it have a picture of Germany on it?”
“Well, it’s more like an outline, Mrs. Fiddler. Showing the boundaries.”
“Do you think we could see it?”
“Yes, of course, but if you don’t mind my asking, why the interest?”
“That’s where Eddie’s a-goin’ to fight,” Ellsworth said, puffing out his chest a little.
“Eddie? My God, is he in the military? I wouldn’t have thought he’d be old enough.”
“Neither did I, but they took him just the same.”
“Have you tried to get him back?”
“He’d already signed his name by the time I found out.”
“Yes, but Eddie can’t be more than…what is he, fifteen?”
“Sixteen this past spring.”