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The lock-keeper approached Lenert and squatted by his side. He was handsome and fair-haired, slimmer than Lenert, though about his age, early twenties. He had a kind face and an open smile.
Lenert was embarrassed that he had noticed how much more handsome this man was than the other lock-keepers along the canal, what a strong body he had. His first trip through the lock it had been pouring down, and he remembered the lock-keeper’s shirt and pants had been plastered to his skin, a vision that had fueled his fantasies.
The man said something in English, startling Lenert from his reverie, and motioned to Lenert’s leg.
Lenert assumed he wanted to see how bad the break was and nodded his agreement. His touch was gentler than Lenert had expected from the sight of his narrow yet calloused hands.
“This is nicht gut,” he said, in mix of English and German. Then he used both hands to mime breaking a stick.
“Sheiẞe,” Lenert said. “Bist du sicher?”
“Sprechen sie Deutsch?” the man said.
It was close enough to Lenert’s language that he could say, “Ja, aber aus Preußen.“ Yes, but I am Prussian.
The lock-keeper nodded. “I am sure. Ich bin mir sicher.”
Then he stood, and with surprising strength helped Lenert haul himself up. He put Lenert’s arm around his shoulder and grasped Lenert’s waist with one arm.
“Komm mit mir,” he said. “Come with me. I will fix you.” He mimed the action of a needle and thread, but Lenert knew this break would take more than such a simple repair.
The man led him slowly toward the cottage, a square building of local gray stone with a peaked roof. Though every bit of weight he put on his left leg sent waves of pain through his body, Lenert could not help enjoying the feel of the lock-keeper’s arm around his shoulder. It had been so long since another man had touched him with such tenderness that his heart was about to split open.
The lock-keeper pushed open the plain wooden door and helped Lenert inside. He appeared to be muttering to himself, and though Lenert couldn’t understand the words, he got the tone. The lock-keeper wasn’t happy to have to take care of him. He probably felt bullied, because Frau Anderson argued and haggled with everyone until she got her way.
He had seen her confront a coal dealer in Easton once, getting up into his face to argue and wag her finger, and though she was shorter than he was, and a woman to boot, he had eventually given in. He’d seen her argue the same way with others who wanted to ship their goods up or down the canal.
At the time he had been proud of her, that she was his captain. Then other times, when she wanted to push on for the night after Lenert and the mules were tired, or when he was sure she had shorted his wage, he had hated her.
But she was the only person he knew on this whole long stretch of the canal, and he hoped she would take care of him, even if he was less to her than Hannah or Elsa.
Though she didn’t know the names he had given the mules, and only knew his name because she had signed the papers to hire him.
He struggled to follow the lock-keeper inside, dragging his leg painfully. The cottage was only one big room, with square four-on-four windows that looked out to the canal. The central feature of the room was a large double bed, while the elements of a kitchen lined the side wall.
The lock-keeper led Lenert to a single wooden chair and released his arm. “Sitzen.” He pressed his hand downward, and Lenert sunk into the chair, stretching his left leg out at the angle it preferred. Then, as the man went back outside, Lenert leaned back and closed his eyes, just for a moment.
He must have dozed, because he opened them again to the sound of the lock-keeper returning. Through the open front door, he saw the King Arthur at the upper gate, Frau Anderson on the towpath leading the mules forward.
No! he wanted to shout. Don’t leave me here!
Lenert struggled to get up but the lock-keeper put his hand on Lenert’s shoulder. The hand was warm and firm, and Lenert’s skin tingled beneath the touch.
“You will stay,” the man said. “Du bleibst hier, ja? I don’t want you to stay but I don’t have any choice.”
Lenert didn’t understand those last words, but he got their meaning from the man’s tone. He wasn’t welcome.
Lenert realized there was no arguing. Frau Anderson had moved on, abandoning him to the care of a stranger who didn’t want him either. All he could do was wait.
As the lock-keeper walked out of the room, Lenert’s heart beat so rapidly he thought it might crash out of his ribcage. He was on his own, somewhere out in the Pennsylvania countryside, miles from either Bristol or Easton. What was going to happen to him? He was as lost and alone as he had been when he was seventeen.
That was the year his father had caught him having sex with a neighbor. He had banished him from the family farm on the outskirts of Cloppenburg, sending him off with only his clothes in a bag, and a loaf of bread his mother smuggled to him at the last minute.
He set out for Bremen, some sixty kilometers away. He had learned in school that Bremen was a great city, and that ships left there for America. Naively, he thought he could walk up to the docks and trade work on a ship for passage to the New World.
He was a strapping young man, having reached his full height, and his arms and legs were strong from years on the farm. He could read and write and do basic sums.
His first surprise came outside the town of Wildeshausen. He had already walked for nearly six hours and he was tired when a farmer pulled up his wagon and offered him a ride. Lenert was delighted, and jumped up onto the wagon. Only a few miles passed, however, before the farmer pulled the wagon to the side, unbuttoned his trousers, and pulled his stiff cock out.
He motioned Lenert to suck it. “Wenn Sie kein Geld haben, zahlen Sie mit Ihrem Mund,” the man had said. If you have no money, you pay with your mouth.
Lenert’s first emotion was shock—that a man would approach him so boldly, when he was fleeing the law after just such an act. Did the man see something in him, something the neighbor had, that said he was a sexual deviant?
Then the shock turned to fear, and he had trouble drawing breath. All the farmer had to do was cast him out of the wagon, travel to the next town, and make it seem like Lenert had approached him. He doubted a second magistrate would be as kind as the first.
Then his body was filled with a kind of obedient lassitude. Just as he had with his neighbor in their last times together, he went about his business like a workman, disassociating the act from any emotion.
When he finished, he sat up, wiped his mouth, and swallowed until the vile taste was gone.
And so it began. The farmer carried him a few more miles, and Lenert learned that by leaving a flap of his shirt open, he could attract men of similar desires. It took him three more sucks to reach the docks at Bremen.
For the last few miles before the city, the wagon he rode in paralleled the Weser river. The quay along the river where the steamers and river craft docked was lined with trees. He was excited to see the magnificent city, its mansions and towering Rathaus. He was disappointed to learn that he had another hundred kilometers to travel, to the port of Bremerhaven, where the sea-going ships docked.
By then he had spent little of his money, and he was tired of men, of their smells and their demands. He spent a few coin on the cheapest barge fare up the river. The city soon gave way to farmlands on both sides, and when the breeze flew south he caught his first scent of salt water.
When the barge docked in Bremerhaven, it seemed that everyone knew where they were going but him. People queued in front of the offices of Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen while others headed directly for the huge ships docked there. Roughly dressed men moved cargo while mothers and fathers trailing steamer trunks held the hands of their children.
The air was nearly stifling, despite the nearness to the ocean—unwashed people around him, foul smoke belching from stacks, the presence of bird shit and the heads and bones of dead fish.
He pushed through the crowds, examining each ship, and it took him quite some time to find the first one going to America, and when he went up to a dockhand to ask about a job the man laughed at him. There was a guild, he was told. He couldn’t just waltz onto a boat and get a job.
And passage? More silver Vereinsthaler than he had ever seen in his life.
What could he do? He walked up and down the docks asking for work and was turned away everywhere. His country accent marked him as an outsider, and either there was no work, or he was too young, or they simply didn’t like the way he looked or spoke.
By the time it turned dark he crept into an alley and curled up to sleep. But a policeman roused him an hour later, and he had to keep moving. Eventually he found himself on a disreputable street where heavily rouged young women stood in front of old buildings, beckoning men to them.
An older woman stood outside one old building, smoking a cigar. She looked him up and down. “You don’t want a woman, do you?” she asked.
“I only want money,” Lenert said. “To buy passage to America.”
“I can help with that,” the woman said. She smiled. “You can suck cock, can’t you?”
Lenert nodded.
“Here, men will pay for that.”
Her name was Frau Weber, and she took him in, and though she collected part of everything he earned, she gave him a warm, clean, dry place to sleep—and showed him how to stand outside, to bring in customers. She combed and cut his hair, bought him tight-fitting pants and shoes.
At first he enjoyed the attention. He had never considered himself handsome—good looks had no use on the farm. He had never had fine clothing, and he loved the way the linen of his under drawers felt against his skin. Frau Weber bought him a silk scarf and taught him to wrap it around his neck in a rakish way.
Quickly, though, he descended into depression, and it was hard for him to wake each afternoon, clean himself, dress, then force himself to eat something. He lost weight, which Frau Weber applauded, because she thought it made him look more like a boy than a man. She could do little for the hair that covered his body, though she forced one of the young women to shave his arse-hole and then regularly remove any stray hairs.
That was demeaning, as if this girl and her razor were stripping away a part of his masculinity, but soon he accepted even that.
A few of the men who came to him were kind, but most of them treated him like little better than the animals on his family’s farm—there for use and nothing more.
And so he earned the money for his passage. Each few pfennigs, each silbergroschen, added to his fund. The thought of money brought him back to the present. How would he pay for his stay here with the lock-keeper? Would he demand the same terms? And would it be any better because he was so attracted to the man? At least he was handsome, Lenert thought, and when he smiled there was kindness in his face.
Those thoughts swirled through his brain as he sat in the hard chair in the lock-keeper’s cottage. Once again, he drifted into an uneasy sleep, and when he awoke the lock-keeper was sitting at the table, reading by the light of a candle.
The man pointed to himself. “Isaac.” He pointed to Lenert. “Lenert?”
Lenert nodded.
“Ich spreche nur ein wenig deutsch,” Isaac said. I only speak a little German.
“Es reicht,” Lenert said. It’s enough.
For the first time since he’d left Jonas behind in Philadelphia, Lenert felt a sense of connection to another human being. So what if his leg was broken, he had no money and no job. For this one moment, he was understood.
