Dorothy Garlock (5 page)

“I’ll get your bag,” his father said as he got out of the truck.

Robert moved quickly up the rear walk without waiting. Cole followed slowly behind, neither one of them saying a word. At
the back door, the screen opened with a squeak and they stepped into the small kitchen. The room was nearly dark in the fading
light of day, but familiar shapes surrounded Cole. Sparsely furnished with an iron stove, icebox, attached pantry, and a small
table under the lone window, the room was as comfortable and recognizable, even if it looked a bit more worn than he remembered.

“Are you hungry?” Robert asked.

“A bit. It was a long train ride.”

“There’ll be something in the icebox. I’m going up to my room for the night. I’ll put your suitcase in your room,” he said
matter-of-factly and stepped toward the door that led to the front of the house.

On that cold day Cole had been only twelve years old, each year having been more difficult than the last. His sort of problem
had kept him from doing the things that boys his age did; he didn’t play baseball, didn’t splash through creeks chasing frogs,
or climb to the tops of trees. Most of his time was spent indoors, and the burden of raising him fell squarely upon his mother.

“Actually, I was hoping that we might have dinner together,” Cole offered. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other
and just talked. You could tell me about all the things I’ve missed. About what’s going on in Victory and at the store, about
Jason and his plans. I could fill you in on Chicago. What do you say?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“Then just sit with me while I eat.”

As they silently stared at each other, Cole could see that his father was actually weighing the idea. With every passing moment,
faint hope grew that his offer would be accepted. If they could just get off to a good start, if they could just talk to each
other without all of the baggage between them, they might be able to start over with a clean slate! He wanted nothing more
in the entire world. But as quickly as his hope had grown, it all fell away. His father’s shoulders slumped and his eyes dropped
to the floor.

“I’ll be in my room.” Robert turned and walked away.

At that point in his life, frustration had been Cole’s closest companion. At twelve, he’d still been a child; unable to grasp
the reality of the life into which he had been born. His mother met that frustration with patience and understanding. They
spent hours talking, reading, or listening to phonograph records, the classical music she loved floating around the house.
To her son, she was infinitely dear.

For a moment, Cole could only stand dumbstruck in the kitchen. How many times had they done this? How many times had he said
nothing as his father walked away from him? Was this the way it was
always
going to be? If he refused to act, nothing would ever change. As quickly as his bad foot allowed, Cole followed after his
father.

Leaving the kitchen, he limped down a short, darkened hall that ended at the foyer at the front of the house. The foyer was
more elegant than the rear of the house. A mirror sat atop an antique table inside the front door. A tall grandfather clock
ticked in the near corner, its deep bell ready to chime the hour. A long, dark staircase rose to the second level. Lights
along the stair’s wall shed a soft glow. By the time Cole reached the foyer, his father was nearly at the top of the stairs.

“Wait!” Cole called. Robert stopped and turned to face his youngest son. His face was emotionless. “Is this the way that it’s
going to be between us?”

“Everything between us is fine,” his father said coolly.

“You know that isn’t true. Things have never been fine and no amount of lying to ourselves about it is going to change that.
I’ve been gone for six years,” he declared, his voice rising with emotion. “Six long years and now I come home to find it
the same as when I left!”

“Nothing is wrong with how things are.”

“Damn it, there is so!” Cole snapped. “You still walk away from me as if it sickens you to be near me. No matter what I do,
no matter how hard I try, you refuse to acknowledge me as your son. Don’t you want to know what I’ve been doing? Don’t you
want to know what I’ve become?”

“I know exactly what you are, Cole.”

“No, you don’t!” he protested. “All that you know for certain is that I graduated from college and that I’m going to be a
math teacher, but you don’t know anything about the real me. You’ve never taken the time to ask.”

At twelve, walking was still difficult. As his feet continued to grow, his clubfoot required constant care and it seemed that
he always needed new shoes. On that particular sunny winter afternoon, he’d been upstairs in his parents’ room, looking at
his newest pair in a tall mirror, when he’d heard a crash. He’d called out to his mother, his voice sounding small and frail,
but he’d gotten no reply.

“I tried to be the best parent I could, given the circumstances.”

“Those circumstances have defined everything about us for the last twelve years!” Cole couldn’t stop himself from speaking;
words were coming out of his mouth almost before he could even think them. He heard himself giving voice to things he’d wanted
to say for years but had always been afraid to speak. “When are we going to get past this? It’s been twelve long years and
we still can’t talk about what happened. It was an accident! I shouldn’t be punished for this for the rest of my life! She
would hate for us to—”

“Stop!” Robert thundered from the top of the stairs. He was usually a quiet man, but the sharp tone of his voice split the
air like an axe. “You stop right there! Don’t you dare speak of her!”

“We have to speak about her if we are ever going to let this go!”

“How can I let it go? Everything that I ever truly cared about in this world was taken from me! Forgetting that is impossible!”

“But why do we have to—”

“You don’t have the faintest idea of what it is like. You don’t know!” In his anger, Robert took a couple of steps down the
stairs. He punctuated each exclamation with a jabbing finger as his hands shook with rage. “Each and every day I am reminded
of her! I walk around this house and remember all of the dreams we shared, hopes that we had for the future. All of it is
gone, lost to me forever! It’s not something for me to forget!”

Anxiously, he’d stepped out into the hallway and called again. There was still no answer. He’d strained to hear something,
anything, some familiar sound, but instead only heard the cold February wind as it moved through the trees. It was at that
moment that he’d felt a fear that bordered on panic. He and his mother had been alone in the house; Jason and his father had
been working at the hardware store. He’d hurried as best he could to the steps, anxious to get downstairs, and it was then
that he had seen her.

“I’m not asking you to forget her, Father!” Cole argued, the pain of his loss as acute as it had been that February day. “None
of us will ever forget what she meant! But you need to forgive!”

“That’s not something that I can do!”

“Why not?”

Suddenly, the anger that had clouded his father’s face calmed as if sunlight had broken through a stormy sky. But Cole’s slim
hopes were soon dashed; it wasn’t that Robert Ambrose had had a change of heart but rather that he saw no more reason to argue.

“If you wanted to come back here, back to this house and to Victory, that’s your business,” he said evenly. “You can stay
here until you find somewhere of your own… I can do that much for you. But don’t think that I will ever forgive you.”

“She would not have wanted it to be like this between us.”

“All that she would have wanted was to have lived, but you took that away from her that day, took it away from all of us,”
his father said, the words spoken flat and cold, each of them jabbing at Cole’s heart as if they were knives. “It was because
of you that she’s gone. It was your fault.”

His mother had lain at the bottom of the steps, her body twisted at an angle that seemed, even to his young mind, unnatural;
it was as if she had been a doll, a toy tossed haphazardly down the stairs to lie as she had fallen. Blood had begun to pool
near her head, coloring her blonde hair a deep crimson. What had happened was clear; by some accident she had fallen down
the stairs. His mother had been badly hurt and her very life was possibly hanging in the balance. His heart came up into his
throat.

But it was then that fear had overwhelmed Cole. When his mother had needed him the most, he’d crawled to the nearest corner,
pulled his knees to his chest, and cried. He had been too afraid to act. Though he had been but a child, a handicapped child
at that, his father had not understood. With his leg, Cole knew that he likely wouldn’t have reached help in time, but that
knowledge did little to erase the sting of what had happened to his father.

“Don’t ever forget that it was your fault.”

Robert Ambrose stared down at his son for a moment longer before going up the stairs, entering his room, and shutting the
door behind him. Alone at the bottom of the stairs, the same stairs where he had discovered his mother, there was no cold
February wind to keep him company.

There was only silence.

I
WILL NOT BE FORCED
from my own home!” Hermann Heller punctuated his words by slamming his closed fist into the open palm of his other hand.
The purplish black bruise on the side of his face grew even uglier as he turned a deep crimson with anger.

“But Hermann…” Maria anxiously pleaded.

“There will be no more running! This is where we belong!”

Sophie sat silently on the dining room windowsill as her parents argued the merits of leaving Victory. It was a scene that
had been repeated every day since their barn had been burned; her father refused to be cowed by fear, adamant that they would
stay on their farm as if nothing had happened, while her mother, the memory of her husband’s vicious beating still as fresh
as his wounds, thought otherwise.

Wiping fitfully at her eyes, Sophie stifled a yawn. No one in the house had had much sleep since that horrible night. At every
creak or night sound, she bolted awake, searching for the men she was sure had returned. She was gripped by the conviction
that
if the men did return
, they would almost certainly do far worse than burn a building.

And who would there be to protect her family?

Sophie looked out the window at the wreckage of the barn. Her father had cleared away some of the debris but much remained;
coal black wood charred into ruin, warped nails scattered about like seed, and the somehow still standing framework of one
door littered the yard. It had been many days since any smoke had drifted from the rubble, but Sophie kept expecting to see
tongues of orange flame once again burst to life. Thank heaven, her father had been able to lead the animals out before they
had been burned alive.

“You should have told Sheriff Carter what happened,” Maria said.

“It would not have done any good.”

The day after the fire, Sheriff Allen Carter had driven out to the farm to assess the damage. He had walked around the still
smoldering barn, taking off his hat and wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief as Hermann spun the lie the family
had all agreed upon. As Sophie had watched from the porch, she’d felt the urge to run to the lawman and tell him everything
about the men and their threats. In the end, she had reluctantly stayed silent. Ever since that day, she’d wondered if she’d
made the right decision.

“He could have helped us,” Maria continued. “He’s a good man.”

“Even if he were to believe what I told him, we would be no safer,” Hermann explained. “Would the police stand watch over
this house forever? No, they could not and they would not. The moment that they left we would be in even greater danger.”

“They would catch the men who did this to us! That is their job!”

“How would they do such a thing?” Hermann asked incredulously. “There was nothing about the men that I recognized. We could
not see their faces, nor did I find any of their voices familiar. Did you?”

“No, I did not,” Maria admitted.

“If we go to the police, they’ll kill us!” Karl paced nervously next to the doorway that led to the kitchen. Like his older
sister, he’d had little peace since the fire and constantly wrung his hands. The previous night, Sophie had heard the sound
of crying through the wall that separated their rooms.

“No one will kill us,” Hermann reassured him.

“You don’t know that for certain,” Maria contradicted. “The sheriff—”

“There would be nothing for me to tell Sheriff Carter,” her husband cut her off. “Nothing that would lead us to those who
are guilty. I’m sure that he could think of men who could do such things, but there wouldn’t be any proof. He could not simply
lock these suspected men in his jail and hope that nothing happens to us. Besides, it is too late. To change our story now,
to tell him that we had lied about the lantern, would be impossible. We have always taken care of ourselves. This will not
change.”

“You can trust a man like Allen Carter,” Gitta said solemnly from her chair, her English even more heavily accented than her
son’s. Though now small and frail of body, Gitta Heller’s youthful spirit shone in her cool blue eyes. It had been many years
since her straw blonde hair had turned white, but she appeared nowhere near as old as her true age of eighty. In most family
discussions, she was happy to sit and listen, only interjecting her thoughts when she believed them to have special merit.
She had watched the tragic events unfold from her bedroom window. Although struck with horror, she’d been unable to turn away.
“This is not Germany.”

“It most certainly is not,” Hermann agreed. “That is precisely why we must help ourselves! That is why we will not run! In
Germany, danger was lurking everywhere. People that I had known my entire life, people that I considered my friends, began
to turn on their neighbors, to accuse them of horrible things the moment they had the chance. Here it is just three men! Three
men will not drive us from the home that we have built in America. We have already run enough!”