Blood of Vipers (4 page)

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The gray of pre-dawn stained the horizon
before they reached
the grandmother’s house, and Cal was growing anxious about
finding a safe place
to hide from the revealing light of day. The nearest he could
tell they had
outrun the fighting, but the front was a fluid concept and
almost nothing would
surprise him at this point.

As if to punctuate this worry, the clank of
tank treads
caught his ear. He grabbed Hans-Peter and lifted a finger to his
lips, and then
pushed aside the bushes and told the three Germans to hide until
he got back.
He took the rifle and the binoculars he’d grabbed from the dead
Russian, and
then left the farm road and pressed through the trees and brush
that marked the
windbreak until he reached the farm itself. Beyond lay the road,
where a column
of soldiers pressed east. Cal dropped to his stomach and lifted
the binoculars.

He looked at the tank first. It took a moment
to pick out
details in the gloom, and then his hopes fell.

He’d hoped to see the big white star on the
tank. Instead,
it was a
panzer
. Tiger tank, he thought. And though
there wasn’t a
single other mechanized vehicle in the group, it was a larger
force than he’d
expected, perhaps as many as several hundred soldiers marching
toward the
front.

He was on low ground, shadowed by trees that
grew alongside
a ditch to his right, and since he couldn’t resist getting a
closer look, he
used the cover of the trees to crawl forward as the men
continued past. And
wondered. Surely they knew they were marching to their deaths.
Why didn’t they
drop their weapons and return home to their farms and villages?

He stopped again a hundred yards or so
distant from the
road, and raised the binoculars. The tank was past now, leaving
only the
trudging men and a few horse-drawn carts with ammo and supplies.
The soldiers
had a ragged, disorganized look and slumped with exhaustion.

The majority were teenage boys or older men.
The few regular
soldiers with them clumped together in knots apart from the
others. All of
them—young, old, experienced, and green—wore new uniforms.

And why not? The Third Reich might be
desperately short on
petrol, low on ammunition, and unable to field a single
full-strength division,
but spare, barely used uniforms? Those were in plentiful supply.

When the column had passed, he returned to
the farm road and
told Greta what he’d seen. She explained to her parents, and
then translated
back what Hans-Peter told her. “
Volkssturm
, national
militia. They are
taking boys, old men.”

Hans-Peter spoke again and Greta listened and
then repeated
it for the American.

“They stick a
panzerfaust
in your
hands—that is an
antitank gun. It shoots only once. If you are lucky, you have a
gun, too, but
they have not had any training in how to shoot.”

“That’s how the Soviets held Stalingrad,” Cal
said. “Forced
men across the Volga at gunpoint. Gave them a rifle and a few
bullets. March
forward or get a bullet in the back.”

“That is different. We Germans have always
been surrounded.
We are few and our enemies many. The Russians could win that
way. There is no
end of them.”

“There are a million Russian widows who would
say
otherwise,” Cal said.

Greta didn’t reply. It was light enough now
that he could
see the petulant way that she scrunched her mouth when she was
uncomfortable.
It reminded him of a girl named Betty he knew back home, the
daughter of one of
the railroad engineers whose family lived in town. Her father
was always away
and her mother had six younger children to watch and so Betty
ran a little
wild. More than once he’d stolen kisses in the dry gulch behind
the Mormon
chapel until her family moved away in early ’42, when the war
disrupted the
railroad industry.

“If they’re giving guns to old men now, why
didn’t they take
your father?”

“I have three brothers. The oldest fell in
Egypt in ’43. My
younger brother Gerhard fell in Latvia last year. The army
stopped us when we
crossed the Vistula last winter. My mother explained about my
brothers, and
they said they would take my father for the
Volkssturm
instead of her
last son. But Father’s eyes were too bad, so they took Werner
and gave Father papers.”

“Is Werner still alive?”

Greta glanced at her mother, whose face
pinched in pain at
the sound of her son’s name. “We do not know. No letters since
we saw him last.
We do not know if he fell or if he is a prisoner. We know
nothing.”

“How old is he?”

“Last week he is fifteen.”

Fifteen. The same age as Cal’s kid brother,
Mike. Except
Mike was back home, frustrated that the war would end before he
got his shot.
Cal knew the feeling. After Pearl Harbor, he was sure they’d
lick the Japs by
summer and the Krauts by ’43 when he turned eighteen, and he’d
never get his
chance. Oh, he’d had his chance all right.

He rarely thought about death while he was
out on the hunt,
but it was a different story when he returned to the barracks,
first in
England, then Belgium, and finally, across the Rhine from a
forward base in
Germany itself. On the nights when they didn’t have missions, he
would lie in
his bunk and the images wouldn’t go away. He would see row after
row of the
bombers they escorted, until the sky was black with their
formations. He’d see
a B-17 spiraling out of the sky, engines burning. He would see a
German pilot,
so close that he could study the expression on the other
fellow’s face as his
Messerschmitt roared past. And after he shot the man’s plane
down, he would
imagine the other guy’s mother, his dog, and his kid brother.

He would see these things in his sleep, too,
and Germany
burning beneath him. Would imagine the screams from the great
firestorms that
swept over the cities they destroyed. Who was it who said that
war was hell?
He’d thought it was a figure of speech—he didn’t understand that
it was very
nearly literal.

Cal thought about Greta’s younger brother
Werner as they
continued their march along the dark, muddy farm road. It was
dawn before they
reached Grandma’s house. When they arrived, Cal learned why
Greta refused to
answer questions about her grandmother.

The old woman was dead.

Oma lay on the bed on top of a handmade quilt.
Her eyes were
open, her jaw slack. They had folded her veined hands with
crooked, arthritic
fingers neatly in front of her. She wore a dress, not a
nightgown, so Cal
figured they must have brought her up here after she died. A
clear vase sat on
the nightstand, filled with daisies, slightly wilted.

Greta explained that her father wanted Cal to
help carry her
downstairs. “We dug a grave in the backyard, but before we could
bury her,
soldiers from the Waffen-SS came and told us they were taking
over the house.
They sent us to the village for evacuation.”

Helgard said something and Greta added,
“Father was angry.
He said it would only take a few minutes, but the officer
threatened to shoot
him if we didn’t leave at once.”

“What did this guy look like? Shorty, nasty
fellow with a
mustache like this?” Cal held a finger to his upper lip.

“How did you know that?”

Cal let out a snort. “I should have guessed.
Little Hitler.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. You say the grave is already
dug?”

He didn’t care to stick around burying
Grandma, but from the
way Hans-Peter was asking, it was clear they wouldn’t go
anywhere until the
task was accomplished. Good thing nobody had mentioned Germans
requisitioning
the house before—and the blasted Waffen-SS, too—or he’d never
have come near
the place.

No sign of soldiers now, except for a filthy
kitchen and
empty tin cans of beets and beans strewn about the front room,
where muddy
boots had trudged over the wood floors.

Hans-Peter got his arms under the dead
woman’s shoulders and
Cal took her feet. He backed his way out of the room and down
the stairs,
trying not to look at Oma, who stared back with a death-shrouded
gaze. She
weighed almost nothing, and her skin was thin, dry, and cool
where his hands
took her ankles. They brought her outside, to where someone had
already dug a
grave, midway between the empty chicken coop and a pair of apple
trees in
bloom.

Oma’s farmhouse sat on a rise in the middle
of a larger farm
field, together with several cottages that Greta said had once
held farm
laborers. Poles before the war, and later Russian prisoners of
war. Grandpa had
died the previous fall and the Reich took back the farm workers
and gave a
neighboring property owner rights to farm her land. But then the
neighbor was
shot and robbed and nobody had planted this year.

They wrapped the old woman in her sheets and
put her in the
ground. Helgard came out of the house with a Bible, which she
handed to
Hans-Peter. He thumbed through the pages and read what Cal could
only guess was
one of the Psalms. Meanwhile, daylight was upon them and an
ominous buzzing of
aircraft sounded in the distance. To the east, the artillery
that had continued
throughout the night now increased in ferocity. Cal looked
around warily.

It was obvious why Little Hitler wanted to
take over the
farmhouse. It sat on a rise and looked over the surrounding
countryside. From
the upstairs, observers could watch the road.

But he wondered what would make the SS
officer drive the
family out before Hans-Peter could bury his dead mother. Did
Hans-Peter
question the decision, or did he even now expect the Germans to
make a heroic
stand and drive the enemy from the Fatherland?

Hans-Peter read on and on. A rifle cracked in
the distance,
answered by a burst of small arms fire. And yet still Hans-Peter
insisted on
reading to the end, and then led the family in a prayer. It
dragged. What the
devil was taking him so long?

Cal studied the sky while this continued. No
American
aircraft, which was not a good sign. By this time yesterday he’d
been buzzing
over this same countryside, looking for the enemy. He’d spotted
several other
Blue Noses throughout the day. And today they should be out in
equal force.

It meant that HQ had intelligence about the
Russian advance.
They wouldn’t want to push too close to the front, where they’d
come into
contact with Soviet ground forces and Yak-9s and Pe-2s in the
air. Mistakes
happened that way. Incidents. Nobody wanted to end this war
today only to start
a new war tomorrow.

Hans-Peter’s eyes glistened with tears when
he finished
praying, but his voice didn’t break. He went to the toolshed and
came back with
shovels, one of which he handed to Cal, who took it and started
shoveling dirt
into the grave as fast as he could.

When they finished, Cal tossed the shovel to
the ground and
wiped the sweat from his forehead. “How did your grandmother
die?” he asked
Greta.

Greta shifted from one foot to the other,
frowned, and
looked to the mound of dirt over the grave. “When we saw we
would have to run,
Vater called the doctor. He came with a black bag.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oma is eighty-two. We have no horse to pull
a cart. She
could not walk to the village.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying...?”

“We explained to Oma. She agreed. It was
time. The doctor
made her some warm milk and—”

“You poisoned her? Are you serious? You
murdered grannie?
What’s wrong with you people?”

“It was the kindest way, you must understand.
In Silesia, my
aunt stayed behind with her children. She had too many nice
things, and she
said she wasn’t going to let the dirty Russians have them. But
when they came—”

“And your pops was reading scriptures like it
was a proper
Christian burial. What would the priest say about that? Isn’t
murder—suicide,
whatever—against the church?”

She fell silent.

Cal thought about the daisies on the
nightstand, and
imagined someone taking the care to cut them, and place them
just so in a vase.
Look at these, Grandma, while you drink your milk. There,
doesn’t that feel
better? Get some rest, now.

He felt on the verge of hysteria. It was like
he’d fallen
into a nest of poisonous snakes, and they were all biting him,
their venom
burning through his veins, but he couldn’t so much as climb out
of the blasted
pit. Dammit, he couldn’t take any more of this.

“You’re all out of your minds,” he said.
“That’s it, I’m
gone. Owf feeterzayn, or however you say it. Give the Führer a
goodnight kiss
for me, will you?” He snatched up the Russian rifle and turned
to go.

They surrounded him, grabbed at his sleeve
and wrist.

“
Nein, nein,
” Helgard pleaded.

“
Helfen
Sie uns,
bitte
,” Hans-Peter said.

“Cal, please, I beg you,” Greta said. “Two
brothers are
dead, my other brother missing. My aunt murdered by Russians,
and with her
children. My other grandparents vanished after the Hamburg
bombing. If you
leave us, the same thing will happen to us. Please, try to
understand. We are
desperate. Do you know what that means?”

Two days earlier he would have said yes, of
course he knew
about desperation. Now, he was not so sure.

It wasn’t like he’d skated through life; the
Jameson family
had fallen on hard times in the Great Depression. In 1930, after
his father
lost his job as an accountant, he’d pitched around for
work—somewhere,
anywhere. In late December, with four mouths to feed, Father
grasped at a
letter from a cousin working the rail yards in Carbon, Utah, who
promised him a
job shoveling coal. Six months earlier, Papa might have scoffed
at such a
low-paying, backbreaking job, but hunger had a way of clarifying
one’s
priorities. They scraped together their last few dollars, bought
train tickets
for Utah, and carried with them only two steamer trunks of
clothing and
possessions.