She liked that one particularly because it had no th’s.
When Mr. Henry, the mailman, marched off to war—a Mr. Jeremiah took over his route. A somber man given to endowing the delivery of mail with a holiness that bordered on religious fanaticism, Hannah never warmed to him, never worried about his health or his love life, even doubted that he could have one.
“De Pope should have dat man for his letters!” she would grumble—as she concentrated on good toughts to keep her Mr. Henry safe from flying bullets and Oo La La French floozies.
Later in the war when “How You Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree” became all the rage and Ebbely loved banging it out on her parlor piano, Hannah would nod her head in rhythm commenting that song illustrated exactly what she had always feared from the very beginning for the future of her Mr. Henry the mailman-soldier.
Easter was long gone and as Rudy had not come back for a visit as promised, Hannah began to worry. It was already the end of August when Hannah answered the ring of her doorbell and there looking lost stood her Casanova Rudy. Pulling him into her house and into her arms, she held him welcoming him to safety. As he cried, she wondered what had broken him and why.
“Sorry, Hannah.”
“What is sorry? Nobody home yet—so upstairs mit you. Remember Stan’s room? Well dat’s de one I keep always ready for whoever. You go now, sleep. In a couple of hours I wake you to wash, den you eat. Like a skeleton for Halloween you look. No, no argument. Later is plenty time for talking. Now, you go!”
And Rudy the broken man was shooed upstairs like the sad child Hannah knew him to be.
Through the efficient Ford wives’ grapevine, Fritz was informed of Rudy’s return—told to bring only John and Zoltan back for supper. The others would have to wait, for Hannah suspected Rudy would not be able to handle the curiosity of all of his friends as yet.
“Special good supper, Hannachen.” Fritz, stretched out in his parlor chair, fanned the lit match across the bowl of his pipe. “Rudy? … You ready to tell us what happened?”
“Fritzchen …”
“No, Hannah—let him speak.”
His voice monotone as though without its controlled bloodlessness he would bleed anew, Rudy began.
He had been late for work that day—why, he couldn’t remember, but he was. Standing in the open door, clutching her shawl, Frederika shivered—so he told her to go back inside the house and get warm and left … without kissing her good-bye. He never left without kissing Frederika good-bye. But that day … that day he had. Rudy stopped—the silent room waited. “It was already dark when I got home. I opened the front door and called her name. She didn’t answer. I called again. The house was still. I went to look for her. After a while … I found her. She must have been there all day—all alone—then … then I cut her down.” His haunted eyes searched the room. His cry raw. “Was it only the baby’s death? Hannah! Was it?”
Hannah ran, crouched before his chair. “No, my Rudyle. No! It was to be; a long, long time ago already, it was to be.”
Though they all knew complete healing was an improbability, still within the ministering safety of their compassion, they gave him time in which to heal. Each day Rudy’s friends tried to help him find his way back to life as he had found his way back home. Weeks later, deciding to visit his uncle Rudy, Michael ran the three blocks over to his second mother’s house and found him sitting on the front porch staring at nothing. Receiving no hello, the little boy stared in return but seeing nothing that could demand such undivided concentration asked, “Uncle Rudy, what are you looking for?”
Rudy forced to acknowledge his presence tried a welcoming smile, “Hi, Michael—my God you have grown.”
“Yes—I’m a big brother now—so I have to be growed.”
“Makes sense.”
“Uncle Zoltan say you are very sad and my Papa says so, too—why?”
“Because my wife has died. Do you know what death is, Michael?”
“Oh, yes—Mama says it’s when someone is gone forever and ever. But I don’t think so.”
Rudy motioned Michael to sit next to him on the porch bench.
“Why don’t you?”
“Well, when I was little …” That made Rudy smile. “… I found a big fat worm and he was dead and I buried him in the flowers—then I went back to look and he was gone! I think when you die you don’t. You just stay living—not in the same place maybe and maybe you don’t look like a worm no more—but that doesn’t mean you’re dead like Mama says forever and ever.”
Like two sage men on a park bench, they sat and talked of life and its many ends until they both agreed they alone had solved the riddle—that longing for what was actually never ever gone was just wasted sorrowing.
Knowing her firstborn very well and where he usually could be found when he disobeyed her, Jane arrived at Hannah’s house to scold him and found Rudy playing pick-up sticks with her offspring. She didn’t say a word—just walked into the house to announce to Hannah that a small miracle was in progress on her front porch, shocking herself that the thought, even its designated word, had come from her.
Although Michigan had voted for Prohibition the year before—the law was not scheduled to go into effect until 1918 so, when on the fourth of September young Mr. Edsel became a father they all could toast his son properly—Fritz approved that he had been given the illustrious name of Henry.
“Now we have a Henry Ford the Second—how about that? Like real royalty, eh, Hannahchen?” to which his wife agreed it was the proper thing to do and Stan remarked that now the Boss’s son couldn’t be conscripted.
“Mr. Edsel’s no shirker!” Fritz growled.
“No, but I bet the Boss is relieved he can now stop pulling strings.”
John frowned. “He’s been doing that?”
“Sure.”
“Not easy for the boy.”
“Never has been easy to be the only son of a great man.”
“Yeah,” Peter drained his glass. “A father! Just think of it!”
“Seems like yesterday he was a schoolboy in knickers home for the holidays,” Fritz agreed.
Carl held out his glass. “Remember, Fritz, how he used to label the machines?”
“Sure …” Refilling his glass, Fritz smiled. “What a boy. And his little notebook …”
“Jotted down anything and everything that came into his head.”
“Just like his father, Zoltan, just like him.”
“Can’t call him young Mr. Edsel no more, eh, John?”
“No, I suppose not—but now we have a young Henry.” And all the Ford men agreed theirs was an American dynasty to be proud of.
17
Out of breath—eyes wide with outrage tinged with fear, Hannah rushed into Jane’s kitchen. As the screen door banged shut behind her she gasped, “Through de window it came—BANG—CRASH!” and sank down on the kitchen chair, trying to catch her breath.