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“Or they got Jurgen a new identity, birth certificate, and 4F card. He might even have something working he thinks is fun, while he’s teaching Otto to speak American. Jurgen told me one time the Escape Committee, the hard-ass Nazis that run the camp inside, wanted him to study blowing up an ammunition dump they heard about, out in the country south of McAlester. Jurgen telling me about it shows what he thought of the Committee. He said, ‘Even if I could blow it up, this place in the middle of nowhere, who would hear the explosion?’ He’s saying, What good would it do? Working some kind of sabotage now, this late in the war, makes no sense at all. The Battle of the Bulge was Germany’s last full-out assault. They pushed off the sixteenth of December with a thousand tanks and by the twentieth of January they had a hundred thousand casualties and lost eight hundred of the tanks. We lost a lot of good soldiers, but we pushed the Krauts back to where they’d started, pretty much done. It was their last assault but, boy, it cost us.”
Virgil said, “If the war over there ends pretty soon, what happens to Jurgen and Otto?”
“I take ’em back to the camp. The Committee’s had prisoners killed, ones they saw as weaklings pretending they’re faithful Nazis. Had ’em hanged in the washroom to look like they committed suicide. Jurgen said in a statement he left with the camp commander, he and Otto had to get out of there or they’d be the next ones strung up. In the meantime the Committee guys have been sent to Alva in the western part of Oklahoma, the camp where they keep the thugs, the super-Nazis.”
“By now,” Virgil said, “you must have this Detroit FBI agent in your pocket.”
“He’s a good guy, Kevin’s helping me out. He’s still new, doesn’t know he’s not supposed to talk to strangers, like marshals.”
“You tell him there’s a book written about you?”
“Kevin says it wasn’t in the library so I sent him one.”
“You started out, you musta had a hundred copies. How many you got left?”
“I still have some. I call Kevin, ‘You find my Krauts yet?’ Five months they’ve been looking, no luck. They’re working to get the goods on a Nazi spy ring and have different ones under surveillance. I asked him where the spies got their secret stuff, from the paper? He said I sound like a girl he’s been talking to, Honey Deal. She was married to one of the Detroit Nazis for a year, divorced him in ’39. Kevin says Honey’s single, good-looking and smart, keeps up on the war-that impressed him-without having anybody in it to worry about. Kevin has our sheet on the two guys, so he knows Jurgen lived in Detroit at one time and should have friends that are still around. Kevin said, ‘Fourteen years old when he went back to Germany, in ’35.’ He says Honey Deal thinks there’s a good chance her ex-husband knew him. Walter Schoen. Kevin said they asked Walter about him. All he did was shake his head.”
“I imagine,” Virgil said, “you want to talk to this guy yourself.”
“I’ve been thinking about it, and his ex-wife, Honey. I asked Kevin if he thought Walter Schoen was attractive to women. He said, ‘You think Heinrich Himmler is? That’s who Walter looks like.’ What I wanted to know was why a smart, good-looking girl from East Kentucky would care to marry him? Kevin said, ‘Honey thought she could change him, turn him around.’ I said, ‘Hell, that’s what all women try to do.’ He said she told him marrying Walter was the biggest mistake of her life, so far. I’ll get with her first,” Carl said, “then Walter Schoen. Kevin talked to his boss and he talked to the Bureau office in Tulsa, and they vouched for me, so I can do pretty much what I want.”
“Since the Hun was a friend of yours.”
“He could be, once the war’s over. I hope he stays alive.”
Five
Narcissa Raincrow, Virgil’s common-law wife of thirty-nine years, called out supper was ready and served them fried chicken and rice with gravy at the round table in the back part of the kitchen. Narcissa, fifty-four now, had been living here since she was sixteen, hired to wet-nurse Carl when his mother, Graciaplena, died giving birth to him. This was in 1906. Virgil had married Grace and brought her here from Cuba after the war with Spain. Carl was named for Grace’s father, Carlos. Narcissa, unmarried, had delivered a child stillborn and needed to give her milk to a newborn infant. When Carl first brought his wife, Louly, to the house he told her that by the time he’d lost interest in Narcissa’s breasts, his dad had acquired an appreciation, first keeping her on as housekeeper and cook, finally as his common-law wife. Virgil thought she looked like Dolores Del Rio only heavier.
Narcissa said to Carl eating his chicken, “I got a letter from Louly you can read if you want. I write her, she always answers my letter.”
Carl said he talked to her on the phone every week.
Virgil said, “You tell the FBI agent your wife’s a marine?”
“I tell everybody I meet,” Carl said, “Louly’s a gu
“He misses the war,” Virgil said.
“He would still be in it,” Narcissa said, “he wasn’t shot that time.” She said to Carl, “You lucky, you know it?” And said, “Virgil tell you the FBI man called?”
“I tried him, he was gone for the day,” Carl said, busy with his chicken and rice. “I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“How come he asked for Carlos Webster?”
Carl saw his dad stop eating his supper to watch him.
“I told Kevin I was Carlos. I’m thinking of using it again while I’m in Detroit.”
“Nobody’s called you that since you were a boy,” Virgil said. “Or up to when you joined the marshals and they started calling you Carl. You’d tell ’em you’re Carlos and come near having fist-fights over it till your boss calmed you down. You recall why you wanted to stick with Carlos?”
Carl said, “’Cause it’s my name?”
“Still a smarty-pants,” Narcissa said.
“You were wearing it like a chip on your shoulder,” Virgil said. “You know why?”
“I know what you’re go
“’Cause a long time ago that moron Emmett Long took your ice cream cone and called you a greaser. I told you he couldn’t read nor write or he wouldn’t be robbing banks.”
“He said I was part greaser on my mama’s side,” Carl said. “I told him my grammaw’s Northern Cheye
Narcissa shook her head saying, “Don’t you want to hug him?”
“He told you it would make us breeds,” Virgil said, “me more’n you. Six years later with a marshal’s star on your person, you shot Emmett Long for insulting your ancestry. That’s how I tell it to the soldiers in the bar, the ones from the camp they got the Huns in. Then I say, ‘Or did the hot kid of the marshals shoot the wanted bank robber for taking his ice cream cone?’”
“The soldiers buy the three-two and the shots,” Narcissa said, holding a cold bottle of Mexican beer in each hand. “He tells one story after another and comes home looped.”
Carl said, “First he tells how he was blown off the Maine and held in the Morro for being a spy.”
Virgil said, “Once that’s out of the way I tell how you shot the cow thief off his horse from two hundred yards, with a Winchester.”
Carl said, “You remember his name?”
“Wally Tarwater. I got all their names written down.”
“I see him moving my cows I yelled at him.”
“You were fifteen years old,” his dad said. “The marshals were ready to hire you.”
“I could see he knew how to work beef without wearing himself out.”
“Later on,” his dad said, “I asked if you looked at him as he’s lying on the ground. You said you got down from that dun you rode and closed his eyes. I asked did you feel any sympathy for him. Remember what you said?”