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Hans and The American Father Town — PART II
New Fiction, By
Jo Neace Krause
Keeping notes for Klass and Oscar during the day, so I can write
them later. Told them I would write, so I am doing it. Left the
hospital for a small room in a private nursing home. All day make the
notes out of this strange world I have landed in. Have come to one
conclusion. It doesn’t take much to make a person feel alone. Make him
drink or eat just one little thing he is not accustomed to, and
instantly he is in the darkest outreaches of another existence. That’s
the way people are. So imagine how I must feel, a kraut to the bone,
forced even to drink their hideous weak beer and eat their good home
cooking with plenty of ass crumbs and little roach wings floating in
every dish.– and you can guess at my isolation.
The leg is mending quite well by the way in spite of the beans and
corn bread, and phoney pizza and stale salad plates.
My father is dead and who can blame him? Look at this place! Called
my mother with the news. Called and called and finally she answered.
By then I had half forgotten what I wanted to say. She was so still, so
silent at my voice, and then I heard the tiny, tiny sniffling.
I say I am alone, but I know I am being watched. From all corners
their eyes are on me.
This morning I woke to find a man standing just outside my room. A
murmurous shadow with its head bowed, and then as if on cue, the head
jerked up and in three fell swoops he was next to me with his hand
raised, his eyes shut tight, and began to pray for the peace and
serenity of one sent among them — the issue of a brother who had
gone out to fight for his country and serve his country’s name only to
fall between the corrupt flesh of a loveless woman. Couldn’t guess who
that was. But the prayer continued in its long and tender endeavor
until the chaplain (or whatever he was) opened his eyes to see me
gawking at him in amused delight. My hair sticking up around my head
like dead weeds. Much taken aback by my rudeness, but then went on to
say by way of explanation that this was simply his job. He was paid to
do for God, (with resentment accumulating in his large frigid eyes) what
God could not bear do for himself. So, I had to take that! Still
thinking that over. Ha ha.
So my father is dead. Barely cold when I got here. Imagine such
luck! So I must go out and find him in the people themselves. As he
existed among them.
Discharged from the nursing facility this morning and took my first
real ride around the town. Hired a driver. Stood on the ugly grey
little main street. Not a soul in sight. Several drab women , with
long stringy hair, in flat heeled men’s shoes with white anklets. .
Carrying loaded shopping bags in both hands. Went passed me without
looking. Not even a glance although I was dressed in my pilot’s
uniform, and stuck out like I was in neon technicolor against the leaden
background.
Stood looking in the plate glass windows of a store front, when I
noticed a large car carrying a little baldheaded man, then it came back,
passed me several times. The same little man who stands in front of the
bank like he owns it, his polished tennis shoes glowing. He is
obviously watching me for some reason. Did not nod or wave in response
to my lifting my chin, very slightly to be sure. Trucks. Convoys of
drilling rigs. What can they think when they see me? Quietly they keep
their heads averted but I can feel them staring, feel their minds
working me over. I keep a smile ready just in case they want to make
contact.
For the last few days have made a quick intense study of town
society. Find it is run by a snobbish, jealous little in- group , very
much determined that no outsiders are coming in here to show them
anything new, which would be unbearable no doubt about it. I suspect I
have united them further by giving them something to talk about. How
can they possibly avoid me? When I walk around the streets dressed in
my immaculate uniform. I am very tall compared to them. And very blond
of course. While they tend to be short and stubby, although some of the
women might be very good looking were it not for the prevalence of that
long Scots-Irish jaw showing up everywhere you look., that long -of-
jaw, short- of- thigh trait. My god, there are moments of such acute
repugnance for these faces...the likes of which might make up a good
part of my own genetic material, that a panic rushes upon me, and with
such alarm I actually feel I want to castrate myself right on the spot
to save the world from further ugliness. But these rushes do not last
very long, and I comfort myself with a good harsh Germany cigarette,
smoked down to my fingertips, and then flipped into the muddy water of
the slow, weed choked river.
Today I have moved from a cramped little room near the hospital to
private quarters on a hill overlooking the better part of the town.
"Very beautiful", the nurse chimed. "Maybe it will remind you of
Germany." She is very polite, but oh, so gross. I do mean gross. I can
hear her panting miles away, climbing the steps, while I run ahead of
her, even though I am on crutches. Very busy. Very excited. She
leaves me to go down into the town for food. If she eats anything
except Thrill Food it is a great depravation in her eyes. Must have her
Thrill Burgers! Her Thrill Fries! I look at her large breasts with
mild pity. She has several like-sized friends who come walking towards
me like a city on legs.
I must get in new furniture for although people are slow about it, I
know word is out, and that they will be coming to see me. When I appear
in the streets it is always with a face prepared to receive even the
sleepiest gaze, and to ignore all those other little pretenses of
indifference they are so skilled at using., as if nothing could stir
them. But I know their ears are up. And I must behave just right, must
make the apartment reflect the special image of how I live away from
here, in a colorful and urbane dignity.
Sofa removed and new one carried up the hill. Fine silky white sofa
and some Queen Anne chairs. Nice little front porch.;. under the stars
at night far away dogs bark. Nurse comes twice a week to see to my leg
and to run the sweeper and bring what I want from the stores. Cleaning
lady hired. Hired another driver. A mere kid who asked me if they have
fraternities in Germany. He says proudly that he belongs to one .at the
college he attends. "We’re real animals," he says, and I look at him.
His small nervous hands and flat round eyes. A marmoset is the animal
he resembles. Still on crutches for several more weeks. Everything
ready yet not a soul comes to the door. The phone does not ring. Lucky
mother warned me how reclusive these hill people can be. Decided to
place an add in the newspaper. That will break the ice.
Hans Engers Is at Home At Ten Hilly Uplands To Receive Visitors And
Relatives With Information on his father and Late Mayor Verner Heffner.
Interested persons may call between hours of lO AM and 8PM.
269-4266.
Waited eagerly all day for the phone to ring. Waited eagerly for the
mailman. Listened intently and nervously for footsteps, for the little
dog in the next apartment to bark, but all is silent. The rain is
silent, falling silently. Town below shrouded in mist .Chill mornings.
The population itself has disappeared from the face of the earth, as if
swallowed up inside Wal-Mart, or one of the other the great deadly
looking shopping malls off the interstate. Obviously they are going out
of their way to ignore me. They are into this together. Even the
cleaning lady is cunning, sly and evasive. Honey, I couldn’t even
tell you who the present mayor is let alone one twenty years ago.
But they won’t get away with any little tricks against me.. Let my
lawyers in Pittsburgh know what they are trying to pull, and we went
into City Hall this morning to take possession of my father’s estate.
The clerk at the desk pretended shock and dismay when we asked for the
house keys, her round eyes opened larger and larger until I thought my
head would split . "But, but," she said in that babyish drawl they
have, "you can’t just go looking around his house. How do we know
you’re really Werner Heffner’s son? We can’t open up his possessions to
you. Not just anybody can start pawing through his belongings, his
things. You’ll have to get a court order for that. Anyone should know
that," and she looked at my lawyer. "But before a court order, you’ll
have to establish paternity. I don’t want to be unkind, but I hope you
understand that this is a legal matter . And that he never married.
Heffner was a bachelor. But there are relatives. Other relatives that
must be considered."
I looked at the little bug eyed winch as if she must be mad.Of
course my father never married! I told her in a whisper that nearly
broke my teeth with its hiss. He was in love with my mother. How could
she be so ignorant of what went on in this town? She draws back as if
she had opened a drawer on a rat and couldn’t sham it shut again. We
stare at each other.
And as to the relatives I had heard from them this very morning. I
began to smile as I took the note out of my pocket and showed her. It
was handwritten on a dirty piece of notebook paper. I know you are
one of us. I can tell you have our blood in you. Make them dig your
father up and test his corpse. Make them take his leg and place it
against yours. I think it would prove you got your bad leg from your
father. He always did have trouble with that leg. Varicose veins and
blood clots. Make them take his left leg.
"But.... this is not enough to establish paternity," the girl
informed me handing back the note and causing me to laugh so loud I
nearly doubled up on the floor.
Going back and forth to Pittsburgh now to consult with specialists.
But am aware of the note the whole time. Keep it in my pocket, but
I take it out and read it while bursting out laughing right in traffic.
Sent copy to Oscar and Egon. As for the lawyer, he is very good.
Thinks nothing of sitting up half the night over drinks discussing the
case. It was a very wise move on my part to hire him, someone from out
of town. For no one here can be trusted to tell me the truth. They are
fighting me at every turn. Obviously my father has money somewhere.
Perhaps hidden in the old shabby house they will not allow me to
enter.
The house is quite near, a weathered little clap board on the
hillside with lopsided steps leading up. Slippery wet path. The
windows bare. Naked. Like human eyes smeared over with some kind of
queer oily medication that makes them sightless. Pressing my face to
the panes I could see someone is using the rooms as recycling bins to
store mountains of old bottles of all colors and shapes. And there is a
dog house where a dog has been, the grass is still worn off in a circle
around it. Worn into nothingness. And then .....
Wondering what happened to the dog. Perhaps it is the same one that
barks all the time from the next apartment. Absurdly I stare at this
dog when I pass it now and try to talk to it, a grey and white springer
that is very friendly and wags its stump of a tail. "Have you had the
dog long?" I asked its owner, a little plump boy with a red stained
mouth , who stared and did not answer. "Did someone give you that dog?"
I heard myself shouting as he turned and ran off. A woman came to the
window and looked down at me suspiciously. I lifted my hand in a sort
of corrupted salute, a fluttering motion of my fingers. The woman did
not smile. Must be more careful. Nerves could send me out of control
in a second.
The days run on. The chill spring rains are endless. Silent foggy
nights. Dew laden mornings. Went prowling around the town in my long
storm coat, looking for clues to father whose presence I feel
everywhere. In the wind that sweeps in over the lush spring roused
hills. Toured the old psychiatric hospital alone without my driver .
Alone. Large misanthropic place. Lobotomy rooms with great worn
tables. Torture chambers. Hallways so large they have their own
weather patterns, light fog stirred around my feet, water dripping in
the basement rooms. Been empty now for twenty years. Teenagers ride
their motor cycles in the great hallways at night. Bats and pigeons
fluttering about the tall windows. Several derelicts crawling out of
sight. Yet here my father worked. Had a job as maintenance man.
Walked, walked about thinking of my mother. Wanting my mother. My
heart fluttering, pounding Here in this desolation falls my babyish
footsteps, racing towards my father, my babyish cries that made him turn
in the night as he slept under the courthouse tower striking the hours
over the town. I hear it still, striking the hours in the misty air,
under the great moon, mingled with voices along the dark thickets of the
river bank. I wake and turn, my arms reaching.....woke this morning
with a dry mouth and cramps. Drank several bottles of beer to wash my
guts. Beer tastes better than at first.
Made my way to the local tavern. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?
Place filled with men who knew my father. They almost fall all over me,
buying me drinks and laughing at stories about my father whom they all
admired. Stumbled home at three in the morning. Couldn’t get up the
long steps so slept on the grass.
The new nurse, a woman past middle age looks at me squarely, and
speaks so primly only a speck of pink light shows in her dark round face
as she opens her lips. I catch her staring at my hair, and later
plucking a few bright strands from my brush, curiously touching it with
a sulk on her mouth as if finding out I might be putting something on
it. "That’s where your father slept half the time," she said in
reference to the grass. "He didn’t get along with a lot of people.
This here’s a Christian town. When a lot of people tried to close the
bars he fought that." she says. I laughed in her face with pride for my
father who endured such minds. Went out and bought a six pack in his
honor. Decided to go back to the tavern. It was nearly empty, being a
slow week day evening. Nevertheless I waited around until closing and
again had to sleep on the grass at the foot of the steps.
Now news of my paternity case is in the little newspaper. At last a
little attention. At last they can no longer pretend there is nothing
between me and the town That for forty. years my shadow has not
extended itself over this place, and now it rises , physically crosses
their very vision so they must lift their eyes and look . Ah, look!
A fine close-up shot in color on the front page. The deep blue of my
pilot’s uniform contrasting strongly with my yellow hair. Maybe a
little garish, maybe reminiscent of those old German Youth posters that
are worth a fortune these days. Those expensive side jabs from the old
insane past. Yet there is something weak about me as well. Or is that
imagined? Something overawed and rapt which at times gives a certain
uneasy feeling that with one push from behind I would go soaring and
screaming against the sky in slobbering terror. No, that is just my
mind playing around with itself. Perhaps to save itself from ....what?
What is after my mind?. When actually I am very tough, filled with a
hard and pushing spirit that never rests.
Sit watching my interview on television. I can see my strength come
forth. I am striking, very good looking , I admit. My slow accent, my
mouth forming the American words is charming. To watch me is to watch a
bit of strange provocative theater. I sit in the dark, in the audience,
seeing a man with a cool aloofness, a lofty importance, as if he were an
apocalyptic creature, like something out of the Bible, pulling a whole
town into his life of sorrow. I wept for the man. I forgot who he was
and I jumped up and began to pace about in my room, pacing up and down
on my crutches. Wondering what was going to happen to him. That man.
Couldn’t sleep. Drank several bottles of warm beer before falling into
a stupor.
Sought out the town’s newspaper editor in his office this morning.
Head aching. Asked him to have a drink with me. I had a bottle in my
brief case and he jumped up like he was in great danger.
As if someone had begun to stip off their clothes in front of him.
Ha! What a fool. I only wanted to show him some special photographs,
but he placed them aside with hardly a glance and took out some of his
own. An enormous stack that he kept in a walk-in safe. I prepared
myself. These, I quietly conjectured were old photographs of my father,
the former mayor. He has been waiting for the right moment to show them
to me.
But they were only shots of the editor himself it turned out who had
been a basketball star in high school. He had made more rebound shots
than anyone who had ever played for the town. And more hook shots. And
more free shots. He had scored sixty three points in the famous game
against Milford Hills. The town went crazy, he told me. He
married the Homecoming Queen. They have three children. Three oval
framed pictures on his desk of three little long jawed girls. Can any
bottle of liquor be worse than that?
I tried to talk to him about my mother then. I broke open several of
my father’s letters about the town, descriptions of the landscapes of
the town, the river, the court house, the old jail, the asylum which was
crumbling even then. I wanted him to see I felt I belonged to this
place .I wanted the editor to print the letters. He took the packet I
held out to him without speaking. He looked insulted, as if he were
being overshadowed. Which he is , of course, but that’s no fault of
mine. And then I dropped the real bomb. The letter in which my father
tells my mother twenty years ago who is taking bribes in the bank. I
show the editor the letter and he pretends it is nothing. I repeat the
name. Isn’t that a relative of Mr. Goodloe? I ask him. Perhaps his
own father?
Monday morning. A registered letter from my attorneys. Some good
news at last!
Exhumation has been scheduled. The town sexton ready. Father’s
thigh bone is to be taken and sent to a famous laboratory for testing
against blood and hair samples I have provided.. Wrote mother. Want
her present at the event. For father must be given a proper funeral
with hymns and music when the grave is re-closed. Call mother often,
sometimes several times a day. Faxed her copies of the interviews, as
well as the photographs of me in the little newspaper father mentioned
so often. Did not these photographs spread across the front page prove
the town has taken me to its bosom? She sounds surprised. Gasping for
breath at times at my courage. But did she actually think her only son
would allow their lives to pass like music no one wanted to listen to
any longer?
Clothes for the exhumation laid out. I shall wear a pilot’s cape.
long and dark, swooping around my boots. Bareheaded in the wind.
Mother with similar dark cape, darkish red in color with a white lily in
her hand. Also in shiny boots. The hired photographer and the hymn
singers following discretely. They will sing I’ve Been Looking For
A Home. It is not an old song but one I wrote myself. Copies to be
handed out to all the press.
Problems. New trouble. Judge won’t let us proceed. Judge
pretending outrage at the mayor’s old girl friend, as he refers to my
mother. Trying to keep her out of the picture. Judge belongs to that
same haughty little group of Big Bodies that includes Tennis Shoe
Goodloe, who has fallen in love with me it seems. Can’t get me off his
mind. Follows me around the streets, reflecting like a phantom out of
the shop windows when I stop to look. He is the one who wrote to the
newspaper — or caused someone to write — a suggestion that the
city of Cologne purchase the old asylum and turn it into a love letter
museum. That’s what he considers humor, the little sick nasty bird
doing its droppings.
Now guess what? Old Goodloe’s father, the one with the poison paw,
has shot himself in the head. Everyone is saying he secretly had
prostate cancer. In the bar a man took a long swallow of beer and said,
That’s what you get for being a old buck. But I know and Tennis
Shoe Goodloe knows no one shoots himself over prostate, a rather
ubiquitous condition in old bucks. Cancer can’t go where I go: deep
into the secret bowels of shame. The old thief!
Back in court. Stood before the judge with my lawyers to plead for
my mother’s presence. I squared my shoulders as if against all the
suffering I had endured in this life. An intense look on my face,
hollow eyed, but smiling slightly before speaking, as if musing.
Knowing I was very pale. A pale light in the waiting room. They
carried me home three times this week. Three times they let me sleep in
the rain. Chest congested. Cough very bad. Then asked the judge to
think how accidental all life is. He said he had already thought about
that. "Think about it," I repeated as if I did not hear him." What if
we, each of us, had missed all this?" And my face opened then with a
smile that was like an intrusion, like a door slowly opening into the
sleeping dark where they all lay. "Whatever we have in this world that
is worthwhile," I continued. "We get from women. Let no one tell you
otherwise. So I must have my mother beside me when my father is touched
again by earthly hands."
Room crowded with spectators, strangers of course, media people. Now
I sprang my real secret. The one I had been keeping in my pocket. I
announced I would run for mayor in the forthcoming election. I though
it would be a fitting end to my struggle . I should love to be mayor of
my father’s town. In this way the two of us would be united by the
people themselves, our two souls could pass untouched into one life.
Judge very angry. Made accusations. Something about turning this
town into a circus. I thought it already was a circus someone
yelled snickering in a vile loud noise through his nose, and security
had to be called in to quiet the crowd.
At last the storm begins to release itself! I am someone who jabs
them out of their unconscious stupor they call existence. I am a pair
of low beating wings. All this clumsy hometown stuff is becoming very,
very nauseous to me. The people all have body odor I now notice. All
these bodies like fat gleaners. Fat storage tanks. All the fat in
nature will disappear into coffins, locked underground with them. What
a contribution they are making to nature! Yet they need someone like me
to expose their ugliness to the light. To make them pay attention to
time. To impose order. I will do many things for them when I am
elected. I dream of change for them, change that is heavily rolling and
ripping, tearing into a new age. I will sit in City Hall with the wind
lashing down the river, rain falling against the old buildings, my
secretaries and commissioners listening to my ideas that heave and widen
in the room.
"You’re piling up on me!" That’s what she said. That little clerk
with the popcorn eyes. "Piling up." What an expression. She said this
when I objected to the registration fee that must be paid for being on
the ballot. She put her fingers on the counter and made them go like
horses galloping. Hans-Engers-Hans-Engers-Hans-Engers she kept
repeating as if trying not to lose her little temper. Piling
Up.. That made me laugh.
Very good spirits. Everything going fine. Spent several hours in
the bars with my father’s old buddies. But when I emerged saw Wilson
Tennis Shoe Goodloe looking from the end of the street, peeping around
the corner, I ran towards him on my crutches, fast, which startled the
crap out of him, causing him to turn rump and run like he was shitting
bricks for the China wall.
Oh, Klause, you must, must come to me at once. Something very
terribly American has happen to me. Too American to repeat just now.
But don’t let mother hear a word! I can’t tell you how badly handled
your friend has been. Oh, what a bunch of Nazis run these little
American towns. How they pretend to be democratic and care for the
rights of men. Good lord, here they came and asked abruptly to see my
identifications. Right on the street. As if I were a mere tourist.
"If your name is Hans Engers," they said, "you’ve got no business in
Depot, West Virginia this fine morning. Not with an expired visa."
So I was handcuffed and frisked. Shoved around. They told me to
shut up my mouth when I started to protest. But I didn’t go meekly, I
tell you. I fought them until I was half dead from exhaustion, so they
had to get a straight jacket, bind my arms to my side and stick a dirty
filthy rag in my mouth. My eyes rolled around. And there was Goodloe
watching me with that bullfrog face of his. They drove me here to this
airport and where I remain in special custody. You must come as soon as
you receive this!
Oscar, what has happened to Klauss? Why don’t you come! One of you.
I beg you, do something! Am I to stay at the mercy of these brutal
immigration officials for ever. Today I announced my hunger strike, and
at the same time placed an ad in the paper for a wife. With a wife they
cannot force me out of the country. Already I have lost twenty pounds.
My clothes are bagging off me. I can hardly hold my poor head up long
enough to comb my hair which looks like a flatten gold crown, and not
one word from any of you. Where is my mother? What’s this crap about
her forgetting who I am? Her only son? How can that be? If only I had
a drink! One little bottle of beer! But all I get is some talk about
the DT’s. You have the DT’s they keep telling me.
What in holy hell are the DT’s, I scream, realizing on a sudden it is
a new species of lice. For I could feel them crawling all over me,
eating out my ears and eyes, making a dry hard chewing sound. I
screamed until my throat ran bloody water. And clawed my eyes and ears
half out of my head. Then I grew calm. I don’t know how many days I
have been here.
Never mind coming to see me. I don’t care if you ever speak my name
again. Today I learned to my surprise I am still on the ballot for the
mayor’s race! They cannot force me off without a trial, and a trial
will take months yet. So what if I win the election? What ever will
they do? Ha ha ha!
My spirits are up again at last. And now this
morning two women who claim to be my cousins arrived.
They are bright faced, good hearted girls who tried before to
befriend me but I was too busy at the time. Now they are very shy
around me, but want to know me. They want to love me, they say. And
brought me presents. Stationary and stamps. And a little pound cake
they made themselves. To break your fast on, they laughed,
cutting a small piece and holding it to my lips so I could take a
nibble. I think they were ready to chew it for me if needed.
"Oh, it is nothing." they said. "You are kin. You are supposed to
be treated this way. And we just want you to know we feel your pain.
We are sorry the world has to be the way it is. So full of traps!"
And yet it leaves me angry. The pride they feel helping someone down
on their knees, the thrill of lifting me shows in their eyes. The
shrewd quaint insult in it. An insult I had to submerge the moment they
stood and held out their arms to me as they were ready to leave. I bent
forward and embraced them, holding their warm bodies close as if to
receive the love so long denied me. Yet I wanted to say, turn loose of
me with your young warm arms. What do you think you are doing to me?
But they had such strength I could not push them away.
THE END
About the Author, Jo Neace Krause
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