The Moon Above: Part 18

Chapters 35 and 36

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THIRTY-FIVE

It Gets Better and It Gets Worse

THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE. At least, nothing else that could use my technical skills. But I needed money, so I took to mowing lawns, shoving the blades across the yards of white folks. After all this time, I was like my mother, doing things for white people that they didn’t want to do for themselves.

Willie went to work for the arsenal, working on engine valves for some motors they were developing for mysterious purposes. And then, sure enough, the Germans came. They weren’t coming as captured enemies, either. The local white paper had it all over the front page, treating them like they were heroes. I couldn’t believe it. I read the story about ten times, and it always said the same thing. The Germans were going to revitalize this town and build the country’s missiles against the looming Soviet menace. I felt my face burn and my pulse pound in my head, and the white paper darkened before me. These were the very same Germans who built the V-2s that blasted London back to the Bronze Age. The paper said so. But it didn’t say anything about how they were built. They were just miracles that assembled themselves. And these Germans were being treated better than I was.

Virginia didn’t understand why I didn’t get a job with Willie. I never answered her and eventually she stopped asking, but she would look at me when I came home bathed in sweat and I knew she was trying to figure it out. She knew it had something to do with the war, but I wouldn’t discuss it. She didn’t need to know there was such evil in this world, especially not while carrying our son. I didn’t want those thoughts to leak down to him and affect his mind.

And so it went. The Germans arrived in Huntsville and became absorbed into the fabric of the city, eating at fancy parties, being fed at the best restaurants. I knew this because the white newspapers reported on their every move, who they talked to, where they went for fun. They never reported on what the Germans did during the war. Never that. From reading the papers, I learned that many of the Germans had settled on the slopes of Monte Sano Mountain because it reminded them of the green hills of Germany. So, I knew where they were. Sometimes I walked outside the house and looked toward where I thought the mountain was; it was smallish as mountains go, and dark. I looked up there and just wondered what they were thinking. They were probably blissfully asleep.

I was mainly angry because I knew that before long, I was going to have to work for them again. I would get paid this time, and would not be worked to death, most likely, but I would have to work with them. The shadows were lengthening, our baby was getting more due by the minute and there was no way I could make enough money cutting grass to support even myself, much less a wife and child. I had mentioned moving back to Montgomery a time or two, but Virginia always changed the subject. She loved her parents but, as it turned out, was quite happy living several hours away from them.

I held out as long as I could. I want the record to reflect that.

Our son was born on October 1. It was a beautiful fall day. The humidity had taken a vacation and gone further south, but the leaves were still hanging on, showing their colors. The sky was a deep blue. The sun, which had been roasting us all summer long, turned down its intensity a little to let us enjoy the day. And James Scott Nicholas chose this fantastic day to arrive, at 10 a.m., a courteous time for a courteous boy. It gave us all time to get to the hospital to greet him: Me, the Reverend Scott, Mrs. Scott, Willie and Eileen. My mother sent her regards but couldn’t make it; she didn’t have time enough. She requested a photograph of her only grandchild.

He arrived loud and crying. He was tall, twenty-two inches, and heavy, nearly seven pounds. He yelled his head off, as if we had disturbed his sleep, which I guess we had. We all looked at him and laughed with joy as the nurse cleaned him up. Eyes were gleaming all around, even Virginia’s, although she was exhausted from hours of labor. I had never felt such love flowing around me before, love that transcended each of us as individuals and brought us all together. I think even the nurse felt it; her eyes were shining. I want to keep the memory of that feeling for as long as I live, and maybe beyond. It was that strong. I believe that most people never get to feel it at all. I am lucky that I did.

Like I said, I held off working at the arsenal as long as I could. I had managed to scare up some roofing work in addition to the grass mowing, which brought in more money and was picking up just as the mowing season was winding down. But after we brought little James home, I knew those days were numbered. Virginia made the apartment as fit for a child as she could, but suddenly what was big enough for two wasn’t big enough for three. Babies are tiny but they seem to come with a lot of attachments and extras. James was squeezing us out of our place. Virginia began giving me those long glances that carried a lot of meaning.

So, finally, I had to ask Willie if he knew if something was available.

“Man, do you not read the papers? We can’t get enough people in there. Just tell me what you want.”

Of course, what he meant was, just tell me what you want, and I’ll see what’s there out of jobs they might give to Race men. Our jobs at the Keller Motor Company, such as they were, were the exception, especially for Alabama. The dumbest white man in North Alabama would get a better job at the arsenal than I would. We had proven ourselves in war, but that would never be enough. Ironically, I would probably never have a job as technically demanding as what the Nazis had given me.

“I don’t want to work on missiles.”

“What? Are you kidding? That’s like saying you want to go to Chicago in December, but you don’t want it to be cold. That’s like saying you want — ”

“All right, I get it. I just don’t want to work on them.”

He found me something in the motor pool. The Army was pouring into Huntsville and they needed jeeps and trucks and transports for the assorted bigwigs coming through, not to mention the missile parts. They also needed someone with mechanical experience to keep those engines and transmissions running, and I had experience in that. My time working in the motor pool at Buchenwald was no less hellish than my work on the missiles underground, but for some reason it didn’t affect me the same way. I didn’t swear off using cars or trucks or working on engines. I’m not sure exactly why this was the case. I think maybe I was used to trucks and cars and engines. I understand them; everyone understands them. But working on a missile, something you’ve only ever seen in the comics pages, was a whole different thing.

It was something out of a nightmare, one from which I never woke.

The end of the war had alerted the United States and everybody else that things were going to be different now, and worse. Hitler showed that death could rain from the sky from far away and hit you before you knew it was coming. We showed we could create a weapon that would turn entire cities to glass. And not only did we have it, we would use it.

I was vague to Virginia about what I was doing. I knew I could do better, and she would, too. But little James was occupying her time and my income went up dramatically, so she didn’t push too hard. We needed to get out of the apartment, so we saved up over the next couple of years and bought a little house a little further north of the arsenal. We bought a car when James arrived, in case he suddenly needed to be whisked off somewhere. Virginia, being the worried mother, pictured him needing to rush to the hospital in the wee hours of the night, and we’d have to go out of our way to get to the Race hospital. I figured he would be a fighter and would be healthy, but I bought the car anyway.

It sure as hell wasn’t a Keller Super Chief! Not that what we bought was much better. It was a 1938 Ford Fordor Deluxe. The Deluxe — or “dux,” as James started to call it when he could talk — had been a nice dark green at one point but now it was various shades of green, brown, tan and black, like it was trying to camouflage itself. Its V-8 engine ran on six cylinders most of the time and it liked to mark its passage through the world with a modest cloud of black smoke. Virginia had the car most of the time, but I brought it into work with me now and then to try to improve it when I had a little spare time in the shop. There was something deeply wrong with the car. I replaced all the parts that I could without taking it completely apart, but it steadfastly refused to perform up to specs. I got a couple of the dead cylinders going again but it then dropped a pair of the other ones. Six cylinders was enough for it, thanks.

Life settled down this way for a long time. They weren’t the best years, but they certainly weren’t the worst. We made more friends and started attending the Bethel Baptist Church. It was just a little way down the road from our house but we drove there more often than not just to show that we could. I have never known Baptists who didn’t like a little financial competition. Our car was nothing fancy, but it was not the worst in the parking lot, and after I painted it one spring it looked pretty presentable. I was surprised how fast those years went, though. Even though nothing was happening — we were just growing older together — it seemed that the planet had picked up speed and was whirling around the sun at a dizzying speed.

James sprouted from a tiny grasping infant to a rangy boy who could nearly outrun me. I started slowing down and spreading out, and my clothes reflected it. My pants didn’t get any taller, but they did get wider. My time in the war had been much more exciting, too exciting sometimes, but it seemed to crawl compared to the way things move now. I wondered if that was why old people walk with canes. The planet must be spinning so damned fast by then they can hardly stand upright.

THIRTY-SIX

Memories

OCCASIONALLY, I saw the Germans. They would suddenly appear in the corners of my eyes, walking together, speaking German. I think my ears would pick up their language before my brain was even aware and I would begin to tense. When it got colder, they wore long black leather coats, just as they had back then, and walked around like vultures. I would walk the other way when I saw them. I didn’t have access to most of their buildings anyway and didn’t want it.

One day I was elbow-deep in an eight-cylinder Ford truck when I heard that unmistakable sound, the one that made the hairs on my arms stand up: German. Someone was speaking German and they were close by. I extricated myself from under the coffin-length hood and found a thin man standing before me. He wore round black glasses but, aside from that, nearly everything about him was khaki colored. He wore khaki pants, khaki shoes and an off-white shirt that was almost khaki. Even his face and hair were close to khaki. He looked like he had been modeled out of clay.

He stood there looking at me as if expecting me to do something, and so I just stood there and looked back at him. After a few seconds of this, his khaki face started to darken.

“Oh, my goodness,” he said. “I spoke to you in German, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” I should have said, “Yes, sir,” but I didn’t feel like it.

“I must apologize. I talk to my colleagues in German all day and sometimes I forget.”

His English was good but heavy with accent, so I had to concentrate to be able to understand him.

“I know this is unusual, but I was wondering if you had a few moments and could look at my car.”

“What’s wrong with your car?”

“I don’t know. I study rocket fuel. I’m not really good with mechanical things. That’s why I wondered if you could take a look at it.”

“I’m not really supposed to work on people’s personal cars.”

“I know. Please. It’s causing me a lot of trouble.”

He looked so upset that he might cry, and I didn’t want to see that. I told him to drive the car into the shop and be quick about it. He pulled in behind the wheel of a wheezing Studebaker. I expected something German, so I could excuse myself by saying I didn’t have the parts for it.

But I could probably fix a Studebaker.

“Keep it running,” I told him.

He got out and I popped the hood. He hovered over me like I was a doctor operating on his child. His child was a mess. The valves were clacking, the timing was off, there was an oil leak somewhere down below and the excess was burning off in sharp puffs of smoke, and the remnants of a bird’s nest poked out from behind the engine block. I was surprised he was even able to drive it into the garage.

“Where did you get this?”

“I bought it in Texas.”

“When were you in Texas?”

“They brought us from Germany to Texas. Fort Bliss. Then they brought us here. I bought this from an Army guy.”

My guess is he bought it from an Army guy who was still mad about the war and who didn’t like Germans. Nobody would sell a heap like this to anyone they liked.

“Well, this thing is a mess. You need to take it in to a shop. It’s going to take a lot of work.”

“Is there — is there any way you can do it? I could pay you — over time.”

He looked very nervous now. I was really starting to get irritated.

“This is the arsenal motor pool. I’m not supposed to be working on employees’ cars. Just take it in to a shop.”

“The problem is — the problem is I don’t have much money. I send a lot of my money home. Most of my family is still there. I bought this car because I thought it would be reliable, but it’s terrible.”

“I thought the government brought your families over here.”

“Most of them. But not all. Not mine. I have a big family. I’m one of the younger scientists. Not so special.” He stood before me, rubbing his hands in worry like a cartoon character.

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. I leaned against the Studebaker’s dented fender and looked back at him. “Where did you work over there?”

“In Germany? In Peenemunde. A little town on the coast.”

“What were you developing?”

“Some of it is secret.”

“Some of it is secret, and I’m not supposed to work on employees’ cars.”

He got my drift.

“We were working on rockets and aircraft. Then the Allies bombed us and most of the work was moved somewhere else.”

“Underground?”

His handwringing wrung even more. He was worried about talking too much, but he also wanted his car fixed.

“Yes, underground.”

“Did you work at the underground plant?”

“No. Some of us stayed at Peenemunde, even after the bombing. I was one of them.”

“Did you ever go to the underground rocket plant?”

“No. I heard about it. I heard it was not a fun place to work.”

“Did you have any slave laborers in Peena — penna — ”

“Peenemunde. Slave laborers? I don’t know what you mean by that.

We had some prisoners of war who worked there, but I didn’t work with them. Why do you ask? How do you know so much about this?”

I wasn’t going to answer that. “When you’re with the other Germans in there, do they ever talk about the rocket plant? That underground plant?”

“At work? No. I have never heard it spoken of. We just talk about technical problems. The rate of flow needed for the fuel, the best mix of fuel, that kind of thing.”

I didn’t think they would be riddled with guilt.

“I’ll fix your car. Just this once. I probably won’t get everything fixed but I’ll make it run smoother. But I want you to do something for me.” “Anything,” he said. “Anything legal.”

WHAT I DID WAS, I WROTE DOWN NAMES. ALL THE NAMES I COULD remember.

I started simply. I wanted to write the names of the people from Dora. In neat, precise, easily readable handwriting, I put down the name: JEAN. Poor Jean, hung up before me in the camp, swinging for an act I was also committing. Now he was gone wherever the dead go, to Heaven or Hell or Valhalla, and I was alive and free, with a family, working on a German bastard’s car.

I then wrote ZELLER. Zeller, who steered me on the path to sabotage, to what good end, I do not know.

I realized there were so many more people there, so many more members of the gray walking dead that had surrounded me, and I did not know their names, or if I had heard them, I did not remember. So, I wrote down the names of anyone I could think of.

KLAUS (ENGINEER). That should get their attention. Klaus might even be here, for all I knew, but I had never seen him or heard anyone mention the name.

GEORG. SEYMOUR. (KAPOS). They would know that term, too, and I pictured them nervously looking at each other as they read it.

I even wrote MARIANNE. ANNAMARIA. JULIE. Those names would make no sense to them, but I realized the list was really not for them. It was for me. I was going to remember one more time and then I

was going to let them go.

And then I wrote: DORA.

I gave the note to the German with the broken Studebaker. His name was Franz.

“Is there some place where you and the other engineers gather?”

“There are lots of places like that.”

“Take this paper and leave it in one. Leave it in one of the more popular places. Don’t let anyone see you. But make sure you leave it somewhere it will be found.”

“I don’t see — ”

“Just do it. And if you connect it to me, I will guarantee you that your car will never run right again. It will fail you just when you need it most.”

He looked at his battered transportation nervously, as if there was some magic spell I could cast on it.

“I will do it.”

He took my paper, and I felt a sense of lightness in my chest. My war was finally over.

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