Comfort to the Enemy (2010) (2 page)

McMahon said, Well, you know him better than anyone else. How do you see him?

Carl said, you hear of prisoners around Sallisaw picking cotton, doing that stoop work all day for eighty cents? That's what the government pays them. You can't tell me there aren't girls out in the cottonfield.

You think that's the case with Jurgen? Seeing some girl could be all he's after, Carl said. Still, I imagine him looking at ideas
, dreaming up ways to use his energy. I see him as the kind of guy can't sit still. What I'll have to do is find out where he goes and see what that tells us.

They talked about Willi Martz, the suicide, 28, unmarried. He might be a homosexual. McMahon said. We know the Nazis like to pick on those fellas.

What we have to do, Carl said, is separate the hard-nosed Nazis from the ones who don't take seriously but go along. We weed out the bullies and send them to Alva, that camp in the western part of the state reserved for hard-core Nazis. See, the way we find out if a Kraut's a bona fide Nazi, we tell him a joke. The one, Adolf Hitler wants to know when he's gonna die, so he asks his astrologer. The astrologer tells him he's gonna die on a Jewish holiday. Hitler gets excited. He says, 'Tell me, which one.' The astrologer says, 'Mein Fnhrer , any day you die becomes a Jewish holiday.' And if the guy we tell it to doesn't laugh, we send him to Alva.

A young deputy by the name of Gary Marion, wearing an old-timer narrow-brim Stetson, stepped into the doorway to McMahon's office.

They're picking up the Kraut, the one escaped name of Jurgen? Gary saying the name with a J sound, like Jergens Lotion. He's waiting in that cafT in his PW shorts.

Chapter
2

Shemane+s Lincoln Zephyr

Norma, the waitress who'd spoken to Jurgen this time, waited for Carl Webster to drive down from Tulsa.

They sat in a booth to talk about Jurgen always coming to the OK
Cafe
in Okmulgee, four times now, to give himself up.

Carl said, Why you suppose he come
s h
ere?

He likes the coffee? I don't know, Norma said, smoking a cigarette. I waited on him 'cause I didn't get to talk to him the other time and I had something I wanted to say. The manager called the camp right away and that's all there was to it, the MPs came and picked him up. I been thinking, he must come here 'cause he knows he'll be safe. Nobody's going to come in and shoot him.

What'd you talk about?

As soon as he sat down I went to the counter to wait on him, I was anxious to tell him something. Here he is, Carl, the enemy, but doesn't look anymore like a foreigner than you do. His hair seems different, but that's about all. I planned to tell him, if we got to talk, my husband was with Patton's Fourth Armored racing through France, but I didn't. I was polite and asked him how he liked Oklahoma. He said fine, but had expected to see mountains, Oklahoma being out west. The MPs came in pointing guns at him, but all they did was kid around, like they're sure he's seeing a girl. But you know what he told me? I have pretty eyes.

Yeah...? Carl smiling now.

He and Norma had graduated from Okmulgee High the same year, Carl a Bulldog in three sports while Norma hung around with guys behind the stands smoking cigarettes.

Before the MPs came in he said, 'Come here, closer,' motioning to me. I leaned my arms on the counter right in front of him, and he reached over and pretended to pull a coin out of my ear, a dime, and gave it to me, with a nice smile you could see in his eyes.

Wanting you to trust him.

He said, 'Thank you, Norma, for the coffee.' He said my name.

It's on your uniform.

I know, but he took the trouble to say it, 'Thank you, Norma,' making it sound natural, like we'd known each other a while, or maybe were even pretty close at one time.

Carl said, You got all that out of 'Thank you, Norma?' He was giving you his ten cent magic trick.

With the smile, Norma said.

I've seen the smile. He's sure of himself, isn't he? But without sounding cocky. He doesn't put on any airs. He tell you anything about himself?

He wanted to know about me, if I lived alone. He didn't ask if I was married, only do I live alone.

Wants to know if you're available.

I told him my husband was with General Patton's armor right this minute heading for Germany. You know what he said? 'Patton, yes, with the discipline.' He said when Patton came to Africa to command the Second Corps he made all his tank crewmen and infantrymen wear neckties. He said, 'You know of course George Patton is German.' I said, 'That's funny, I read he's Scottish and his people go back to the time of George Washington.' You know what Jurgen said? 'Yes, one or the other.'

You catch him making something up, Carl said, it doesn't bother him. Like it isn't important anyway.

I didn't know they had to wear ties, Norma said. Bobby wasn't with Patton till after Normandy and never mentioned wearing
a t ie. If he did he wouldn't of told me anyway, knowing what I think of George Patton.

How do you see him?

Carl, the man's a showoff, he wears a pair of six-shooters with ivory handles. But he can get guys like Bobby willing to die for him. She kept tapping her cigarette in the ashtray. How come you weren't interested in Jurgen before?

We're starting to wonder if he's up to something?

Like what?

Some kind of sabotage. Set fire to storage tanks.

Born on an oil lease she knew what he was talking about. Norma said, On his own? He'd need help. I told you the guards think he has a girlfriend and the only reason he escapes, it's to get his ashes hauled. They're sure of it.

How come?

'Cause whatever he's up to must be the kind of thing nobody ever sees you doing anyway. If you know what I mean.

Carl said, You know the girl would have to live around here.

Course she would.

Carl said, You might even know her.

Norma said, Or you might if I don't.

*

During the first World War young Wesley Sellers showed he was alert and like
d b
eing in the U
. S
. Army and made it up to captain without leaving Camp Polk, Louisiana. For this war he was brought back as a colonel in the Provost Marshal's office and appointed commander of the Deep Fork camp. He had told Carl sitting in his office he had 500 German officers in one compound of 30 barracks and 1700 non-commissioned officers and enlisted men in the other three compounds. All Carl could see, looking out the window and through the wire fences, were rows of tarpaper barracks down the left side of the road and gun towers around the perimeter. Wesley said he wanted the noncoms, not just the enlisted men out working during the day, even though it was up to them if they worked or not. So he made a deal with the staff officers: send all your boys out to work and the officers could have a soccer league and put on plays and musicals, have three-two beer served in the canteen and officer's club and their own chefs in the messhalls.

Oh, they can look down their nose at you, Wesley said, and make demands, chew you out they think you aren't living up to the Geneva Convention. I run this place like they're guests of my hotel, the Fritz Ritz, as long as they don't break any of the house rules, like hanging around near the fences. I tell my boys in the gun towers, you see a prisoner approaching the fence, yell at him twice to halt. He doesn't back off, shoot him. I tell the officers this is the way it's gonna be, and the y u nderstand, nod their Kraut heads, 'cause these people operate on unconditional discipline. They give an order, it's obeyed. I said to an officer I can speak freely to, 'The war's over for you people, why do you keep playing soldier? Why do you let a few hardcore Nazis push you around?' This Kraut I can trust says, 'because they could be taking names, making a list of the ones aren't arrogant enough.

Your guards shot any of 'em?

One. Held on to the fence and dared the tower guard to shoot him, so he did. Other camps they've had to shoot prisoners. Up in Kansas a Kraut ran out of bounds after a soccer ball and was shot. He was told to halt, but kept going. Colorado, a guard back from combat shot three Krauts he said were coming for him.

Wesley Sellers said he didn't worry about prisoners escaping. He had reports that listed eleven hundred sneaking out of camps or from work details during the past two years and nine hundred of them were picked up in a couple of days. Some of them, soon as they're hungry, they head back to camp.

Carl said, What about Willi Martz?

I asked several of the highest ranking officers here why they thought the man killed himself. They all said they didn't know, or 'How would I know?' Showing me they didn't care. I asked some lieutenants and they said he was ashamed of himself, a moral pervert who could not stand living with men who refused to speak to him. I asked if Martz was anti-Nazi.

They said of course he was. I asked if he'd had any help hanging himself, since there wasn't anything he could've been standing on he kicked out from under him. I said it looked like some of you held him up while you put the rope around his neck and then let go of him. One of them said that would be a way to do it. They all said yah, nodding their heads, grinning.

Be hard, Carl said, to keep your composure.

When I was sheriff, Wesley said, questioning an offender, say a stickup guy, and he grinned at me like that? I'd punch him in the mouth. Why I always had leather gloves on me I was investigating a crime. But I can't punch any of these Kraut officers, can I? All dressed up in their uniforms with their medals and gee-gaws, their Iron Crosses.

I don't know if you can or not, Carl said, I know the SS always beat up people they have in to question. Or pull out their fingernails.

I don't believe in torture, Wesley said. All a punch in the mouth's for is to get their attention.

You talk to Jurgen since he's back?

I got him in what passes for solitary here, a room with a cot and a bucket, a narrow window that doesn't give much light. I could leave Jurgen in there till he tells me where he's been. Or, I could beat him up, I suppose if I cared enough, but I don't.

I have to talk to him about the suicide.

Come back tomorrow, Wesley said. Meantime, since you're close to home, go visit your old dad and sit on the porch with him.

*

It's what Carl did, drove around to the big California bungalow in the pecan orchard, his dad 70 years old now but had not changed much in Carl's memory. They sat in wicker chairs on the porch, Carl and his dad Virgil with bottles of Mexican beer, a pile of newspapers on Virgil's lap. The beer and the newspapers were from the oil company that leased a half section of Virgil's property, Virgil's share of the royalties an eighth of whatever the oil company made.

They'd finish their beers and Virgil would raise his voice to say, Honey, what're you doing? and Narcissa, 54 now, would come out to the porch with two more of whatever they were drinking. Narcissa Raincrow had been living here since she was 16, hired to wet-nurse Carl when his mother Graciaplena passed away two days after giving birth to him. That was in 1906. Virgil had married Grace and brought her here from Cuba after the war with Spain. Narcissa wasn't married but had delivered a child stillborn and needed t o g ive her milk to a newborn infant, so it worked out.

When Carl first brought his wife Louly to the house he told her that by the time he ha
d l
ost interest in Narcissa's breasts, his dad had acquired an appreciation, first keeping her on as housekeeper, then as his common-law wife for the past 38 years. Virgil thought she looked like Dolores Del Rio only was older, and heavier.

Virgil was telling Carl he wanted to hire a POW as a handyman for cleanup work, painting, whatever was needed done around the place. But the guy at the camp in charge of labor says I have to take three guys. He says the way it works, it's one guard for every three prisoners. He can't send a guard to watch one man. I said you don't have to send a guard, I'll watch the Hun myself. I'll give him a bottle of beer with lunch, he won't think of running off. The labor nitwit said it's one to three and wouldn't budge from it.

Carl said, You remember Jurgen Schrenk? He worked here when you were gathering and shipping to wholesalers, the one I mentioned escaped every couple of months for a few days?

Yeah, and I spoke to him. I asked Jurgen if he wen
t o
ut to find something of a military nature he could sabotage. I told him I was aboard the USS Maine when the dons blew her up in Havana harbor, February 1898. I said I doubt he could cause an explosion as earthshaking as the Maine going down with two-hundred and fifty-four hands. It got us hurrying to go to war with Spain. Jurgen said he just liked to get away from the camp, walk down a road with n o p lace to go. Oh, is that so? What do you bet he's got some farm girl thinks he stepped out of a dream in his short pants? The Huns look pretty much like us, except there's something different about them. People'd come by to watch them work. One time -they're swatting pecans along the county road -I noticed a car stopped nearby. Pretty soon a guard come along and told the woman in the car to keep moving. The reason I know it was a woman, Narcissa's coming from town in our car and slowed up going past the car stopped there. She said it was a girl with blonde hair but didn't recognize her from anyplace.

Carl said, What about the car?

I thought it was a green Hudson with whitewalls. Nacissa says I don't know cars, it was a thirty-nine Lincoln-Zephyr. She reads the car ads and tells me what we should get after the war. But listen, the guard that told the girl to keep moving? I saw him a few times while he was around here. His name's Larry Davidson. From West Memphis, Arkansas, the poor soul. Young guy, sees himself as a hotshot the way he wears his overseas cap. Talk to Larry. See what he says.

*

Yeah, it was a green Lincoln, Larry said. I went over and told her she couldn't stop there.

Larry Davidson was telling this to Carl outside the camp administration building where you could smoke, a big tin can for butts fixed to the rail along there. I told her she had to keep moving as these were enemy soldiers, German prisoners of war working here. She said, 'Oh my, are they really Germans?' Sounding like she was surprised.

Was she?

I thought she was putting it on.

She ask about any of the prisoners?

What she asked me, Larry said, if they tried to run would I shoot them? I told her it's why I had the carbine. She said, but they were just like us, they come from nice homes, they miss their wives and sweethearts--She ask if you're friends with any of them?

She did. I said, 'Are you nuts? Why would I want a Nazi for a friend?

Carl liked this boy from West Memphis, Arkansas. He asked him, How old would you say she is?

She's twenty-six, Larry said, according to her drivers license. Here's a good-looking girl my age drives a Lincoln-Zephyr. I'm thinking, Hmmmm, what have we here? I asked to see her license to get her name and address, but then talking to her she didn't seem like a whole lot of fun. She takes care of her mom, says she keeps her from becoming depressed. They live on Seminole Avenue i n t his great big house must've cost her, so I'd say she has money.