Flight of Dreams (37 page)

T
he sun has been up for hours when Werner finally wakes. He hasn't moved all night, hasn't even rolled out of fetal position, and his right arm is rubbery and asleep. The strange clothes he's wearing are clean and dry—it takes him a moment to remember where they came from—but he can smell smoke in his hair and on his skin. Everything comes back to Werner. He drops his face into his hands and takes a few deep, shuddering breaths between his splayed fingers.

When he lifts his head again he sees that the barracks are empty. Every bunk but his has been made, the blankets are stretched smooth and tucked tightly beneath the mattress. The air is still and warm, but he can hear muted shouts and the rumble of machinery outside. He doesn't want to leave his bunk a mess, so he pulls the covers as snug as he can.

The cabin boy steps blinking into the sunlight. The airfield looks different during the day. The clouds are gone, the sky is crisp, and the wreckage sprawls before him, unavoidable. Werner does not understand why the airship looks larger than it ever did, now that it is burned and broken. But it does, lying there stretched beside the mooring mast.

He is still standing there staring at the
Hindenburg
sometime later when a hand rests on his shoulders. Wilhelm Balla passes him a newspaper and says, “Telegram your parents. Tell them you're not dead.”

The front page shows the airship falling and consumed by flames. The headline screams:
HINDENBURG BURNS IN LAKEHURST CRASH: 21 KNOWN DEAD, 12 MISSING; 64 ESCAPE
. All eight columns are devoted to the tragedy, and one of them lists the names of known fatalities. The last name reads: Werner Franz, cabin boy.

It is a strange thing to see yourself pronounced dead while you are still in possession of a beating heart.

“Where?” Werner asks, but his voice cracks so he clears his throat and tries again. “Where can I send a telegram?”

“The office in Hangar No. 1.”

The boy doesn't move immediately. He's staring at the paper still grasped in his hands—hands, he notes, that do not tremble at all.

“Why do they think I'm dead?”

“Probably because they couldn't find you last night.” Balla waves an arm around the chaotic scene.

Werner feels ashamed. He didn't mean to cause anyone to worry. Especially his parents. “I was sleeping.” The admission feels juvenile.

Something ripples across Balla's usually impassive face. A stray, unguarded emotion. Compassion. His eyes soften and he lays a comforting hand upon the boy's head. “As well you should have.”

S
tiff. Cold. Devoid of all emotion and thought and logic. This is Max as he sits beside Emilie's still form. She has been laid straight on the cot, arms at her side, her head turned slightly to the left. Covered with a thick wool blanket. He has not seen what lies beneath. He has been told he does not want to. And yet he sits here, as he has the entire night, his eyes fixed upon her chest, willing it to rise and fall beneath her shroud.

It has not.

It will not.

He knows this somewhere, in the deeper parts of his mind, but he won't admit it to himself yet.

Because he can hardly breathe himself.

Max Zabel does not move from her side. He cannot move at all.

He marks the passage of time by the sun at his feet. The rectangular patch from the window far above his head has moved three feet when someone drops the lockbox beside the cot. Later he will remember that it must have been last year's postmaster, Kurt Schönherr, because a key is pressed into his hand as well. He squeezes Max's shoulder and then leaves. There are no words to fix this, and the helmsman is smart enough not to try.

Max looks at the lockbox, charred but perfectly intact, and then at the key in his palm. The part of his mind that controls thought and reason and choice wakes up and pushes aside the instinct he has been surviving on for the last nine hours. He looks up. He sees people going about their work. The smell of smoke and disaster still hangs heavy in the air, but something else is present as well: spring. The hangar doors are open and a southerly breeze brings an occasional breath of fresh-cut grass and warm pine. Max turns his face to the light and breathes deeply and long through his nose.

Emilie was pronounced dead last night, but she was only positively identified an hour ago. He had held out hope, of course, that he had been keeping vigil over the wrong woman. That there was some mistake. That Emilie was simply on another part of the airfield, asleep or unconscious. But in the end it was Xaver Maier who took his last shred of hope and ground it to dust. Max had not even known that Emilie had fillings in her teeth. But the chef did, and the medical examiner confirmed the size and location that Maier described to him. And all the while Max sat beside her, his gaze on her still form, and prayed for a miracle that would never come.

So far Maier is the only one who has been brave enough to acknowledge his grief, and this one small gesture enables Max to forgive the chef.

“I am so sorry,” Maier said when the medical examiner pulled the blanket back over Emilie's body.

That's all he said. And yet it was enough. Max nodded at him, and then the chef was gone, puffing away at his damned cigarette, leaving Max alone to say his final good-byes.

It is the lockbox that finally draws his attention away from Emilie. The burned chunk of metal and its contents give him something to do, something to focus on besides the black hole of his grief.

Max reaches out one trembling hand and lays it on top of the blanket, cupping the side of Emilie's face. She is still beneath his touch. She is gone. Max rises slowly from the chair beside her, his body groaning in protest as joints and muscles stretch beyond the point of comfort.

“I love you,” he says, then chokes back a sob when she does not answer.

Max stoops to lift the lockbox from the floor, wincing at the twinge in his back, then tucks it under one arm. A pause, short and filled with yearning beside the cot where Emilie lies, and then he turns toward the hangar door and limps out into the sunlight.

The sight that greets him on the field is surprising. It is orderly. It is controlled. The images of death and carnage from the night before have been replaced by order and discipline. The airship is there, of course, but the smoke and fire and screams are gone. As are the spectators—they have been cordoned off, a mile away at the outer edge of the base. Crewmen and soldiers pick through the wreckage, like scavengers, looking for clues, for souvenirs. But not survivors. That hope is long past.

Max grabs a passing naval officer by the sleeve. He has to order his rusted mind to search for the words in English. Finally they come. “A quiet room.”

The young man is busy and impatient. “Why?”

He lifts the lockbox. “The mail. I have a job to do.”

“Right. Okay. This way.” He leads Max toward one of the smaller hangars where survivors gathered the night before. It's mostly empty now. The healthy passengers have fled and only a handful of the
Hindenburg
's crew loiter about.

“Max!” As always Werner's voice is bright, his expression wide open.

“I need a room. To sort the mail.” He clears his throat. “And something to drink.”

“Have you eaten yet?”

Max has no idea what he looks like, but it must be alarming. Werner's eyes rove over his uniform in amazement. The boy is too polite to comment.

“This way. There's an office at the back where they keep the telegraph machine.”

Werner leads him to the small windowless room and helps him lift the lockbox onto the table. “Do you want a shower first? A change of clothes?”

“No. That can wait. I need to do this now.”

He
has
to do it now. This is his anchor.

The door closes with a soft click, and Max sits at the table beneath the single hanging lightbulb. He opens his palm and studies the key.

The lockbox opens easily and Max pulls out the package that Colonel Erdmann paid him to keep. It is addressed to his wife, Dorothea, and the very way he has written her name—the gentle, sloping letters—suggests an adoration that makes Max wince.

He will not open the package, but his curiosity is aroused. He gives it a gentle shake, then presses his ear against the brown paper wrapping. Within he can hear the faint chimes of a music box, a few random notes let loose by the movement. Erdmann could have given his wife this gift in Frankfurt when he'd had her paged. But no, he had waited. And Max believes he had done so purposefully. This was to be a gift she would receive in the event of his death. A farewell. He slides the package carefully to the side, incapable of sorting through his emotions.

Erdmann's is the only package in the box. The rest are letters and postcards. He pulls them out and places them in two large stacks to be counted. There are 358, but this is not something he will be able to say with any degree of certainty for at least an hour. Because he has counted half of the first stack when he finds the letter.

There is no stamp. No address—return or otherwise. Just one name written hastily in black ink.

Max.

His own name. And he recognizes Emilie's direct handwriting.

The letters blur before his eyes, and frantic blinking does nothing to clear his vision. He lays the envelope on the table and presses it down with a trembling hand.

Max Zabel drops his head to the table and weeps.

W
erner won't back away from the cordoned-off wreckage despite orders from the gruff soldier. The man can't be much older than Werner, but he's had the fear of God put in him and he won't let Werner near the airship. American soldiers stand at regular intervals guarding what's left of the
Hindenburg.
They hadn't moved quickly enough the night before, so spectators made off with bits of the ship and various objects. Now they don't know if important clues were lost. Commander Pruss blames this on the Lakehurst leadership. They blame it on him. Tension sweeps through both ranks, and the finger-pointing and the whispering have already begun.

In theory Werner could move down the line and try his luck with the next soldier, but he doesn't see the point. The base commander has given him permission to search for his grandfather's pocket watch, and he intends to do just that.

“My name is Werner Franz—”

“I don't care who you are,” the soldier says but then hesitates when he notes the heavy German accent.

“—And I'm cabin boy on this ship.” Werner chooses words that he knows. Simple, clear words. He speaks them loudly. With confidence. “Rosendahl gave me permission.”

He doesn't break eye contact and he doesn't betray any emotion. The soldier looks uncertain, but Werner stands there, hands clasped in front of him, waiting. He'll go back and get it in writing if he has to.

“Let him through, Frank!” someone shouts from twenty feet away. “That's the kid I told you about last night.”

Werner turns to see the soldier who had so kindly lent him a coat. He waves a greeting and then ducks under the rope before anyone else has a chance to object.

The ship has burned its mark into the field; a patch of scorched earth the exact length and width of the
Hindenburg.
Werner stands at the edge, unsure how to enter. It's only when he catches a glimpse of Max picking his way through rubble at the rear of the ship that Werner finds the courage to step in.

He goes first to where the officers' mess was located. Even with nothing left but ashes and blistered metal, he finds the place by instinct, making turns where corridors would have been, imagining the steps down to B-deck. Werner knows the pocket watch could not be here, but he doesn't think he'll get another chance to look around. Besides, he wants to find a souvenir if he can. Perhaps a bit of the fine china on which he used to serve meals to the officers. He wants proof—something he can hold on to with his own hands—that he was on the
Hindenburg
and that he survived. Seeing his name in print this morning has made him fear his own mortality. But it has also made him proud of his service.

There is nothing left of the officers' mess. Not a dish. Not a table. Nothing but bits of broken metal and melted glass. So he moves on toward the crew quarters and the room he shared with Wilhelm Balla. He has a sinking feeling in his heart that the watch has been lost forever. How will he explain that to his father and his grandfather? They gave the watch to him, not Günter. He should have taken better care of it.

Werner is mentally berating himself when he steps through what is left of the doorway to his cabin. The fabric-covered walls, the carpet, the beds have all been burnt to ash. But he sees a glimpse of what used to be the closet. He kicks at it with his foot and it crumbles further, revealing the corner of a burlap bag. Hope trembles in his chest. Werner squats to pick through the bag. Bits of burned clothing and the heel of a shoe are all that's left. Or at least he thinks so until his fingers touch the unmistakable links of chain.

He lifts his grandfather's pocket watch from the ruins with the tip of one dirty finger. He sits back on his rear end, right in a pile of ashes, astonished. Had he been forced to wager, he would have said the watch was lost. Yet here it is, cradled in the palm of his hand, its survival as improbable as his own.

Werner sets the watch in his pocket and dusts the soot from his pants. He isn't certain what to do with himself now that he has no duties to perform. The officers and crew members who survived are either in the infirmary or meeting with the base commander to figure out what happened,
how
this could possibly have happened, and what they will do about it now. There is no place for Werner, so he wanders away from the wreckage, circling it aimlessly.

He has seen the small clumps of flowers, but it's not until the toe of his boot catches one for the third time and he stumbles forward that he stops and looks at them. The petals are small, but they are bright and open and they smell like spring.

Werner Franz has something to do after all.

He picks a messy handful of the white starbursts and jogs back to the main office where he left the newspaper earlier that day. He scans the list of names more thoroughly this time now that the shock has worn off. He finds the one he's looking for and reads it three times, just to make sure. He sounds out the letters carefully, using the tricks that his mother taught him.

It is not a pleasant task but Werner will keep his promise. He finds Irene Doehner laid out beside her father, arms crossed over her chest, a blanket laid across her body. Their names are written on cardboard signs at the base of their cots. There are almost three dozen bodies in the room, and hers is the smallest of them. Werner does not see her mother or her brothers, either on the cots or anywhere else, and he wonders where they might be. He wonders, but he doesn't go in search of them to offer his condolences because his business is with Irene alone.

“I told you that I would bring you flowers today,” Werner whispers over her still, slender form. He lays them on her chest, then presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubs. The tears spill around then. Down his cheeks. Over his chin. Werner stands beside the body of Irene Doehner and cries until his throat is dry and his nose is red.