AT A RED LIGHT, I REACHED OVER INTO THE PASSENGER seat and flipped quickly through my calendar. It had been one day more than exactly five weeks, I saw, since I had uncovered the items under the wax myrtle behind my house.
The light turned green. I made a right turn onto Highway 59 and headed to Foley. The whole thing—the unearthed objects, the Internet searches, the conversations—was bothering me more than it should have. In effect, I had stopped trying to write at all, causing my editor and business manager to share in my consternation.
I simply could not concentrate. Not my greatest attribute under the best of circumstances, I now found myself staring at the computer screen only a few seconds before giving in to the Google button that beckoned me from the top of the page. Kriegsmarine, U-boats, Gulf of Mexico—I ran them again and again in every possible combination and read the same material until I knew it by heart.
Driving north, I looked at the businesses and billboards and tried to imagine what the area looked like back then. Would it have been possible, I wondered, for a submariner to come ashore and elude capture? Possible, I decided, but not likely. But what if it could have been done? I continued to ask myself. How might it have been accomplished? Only with help, I determined.
The week before, I had begun to feel as though there were something unseen just beyond my grasp—something maddening—as if there were an answer available, but first I had to articulate a question. Yet I didn’t know what to ask. The feeling had crept up on me as I recalled a comment by one of the old people with whom I had spoken. We were finished with our conversation and were walking to the car when his remark had been thrown my way in passing.
At least, I thought it had been in passing. Now I was not so sure. In any event, I could no longer think of anything else. I was determined to find the truth. Or insult some very nice people.
“WELL, HELLO, ANDY! COME ON IN.” SHE GLANCED AROUND me. “Is Polly with you?”
She doesn’t even know I’m here, I wanted to say. And she wouldn’t have let me come if she had known I didn’t call. “No, ma’am,” I answered. “Not today.”
We walked straight on into the kitchen. “How was Louisiana?” I asked, which is how we, in the South, ask someone about a trip, as if we cared about the whole place.
“Oh, fine,” she said. “We had a wonderful time. We stayed with the Wooleys—you know them—and saw all their people.” Another Southern thing. We don’t have families. We have people. She stopped, perhaps a bit confused about why I was there. “I’m sorry . . . were you here to see me? Or did you want—”
“Both of you. I apologize for dropping in like this . . .” But I did it on purpose, I wanted to add. I didn’t.
“Oh, don’t think a thing about it. Let me get him, though. He’s in the backyard.”
Soon she was back in the kitchen. “You want coffee or a Coke?”
“A Coke would be great,” I answered. “Regular,” I added, anticipating her next question. She nodded. She knew exactly what I meant.
In Alabama, we drink Coke. It’s all Coke. In Chicago, they drink pop. In New Jersey, it’s soda. But in Alabama, it is Coke.
“You want a Coke?” one person might ask.
“Sure,” comes the response.
Second question: “What kind?”
Final answer: “Orange.”
Translation: It’s all Coke. This is how it’s done here.
“Hey, Andy,” he said, coming through the sliding glass door. “What’s got you out and about?”
“You know,” I said with a smile, “just doing some running around. Got my hair cut at Bozeman’s, saw Dr. Surek . . . my throat thing still going on . . . and . . . what else . . . oh, I stopped at Patty Cakes Bakery for Polly. Anyway, I was in the area and just wanted to say hello.”
We all sat down at the table, talked about their trip to Louisiana for a while, our boys, the church, the possibility of an undefeated season for the Crimson Tide . . . Were they nervous? I couldn’t tell.
Then I said, “Hey, I have something I want you to see.” Holding hands, both were sitting across from me. I removed a manila envelope from the leather writing tablet I always carry and opened it. Slowly, one at a time, I removed the silver buttons I had found under the wax myrtle from the envelope and slowly, one at a time, placed them in a line across the table.
Without speaking, I took the ring out next. I placed it in front of the buttons, careful to set it upright, straight, and symmetrically in the display I was creating. Next, the Iron Cross was situated beside the ring and the UB badge next to it.
I must admit that my hands were shaking as I forced myself to move even slower. Neither the old man nor his wife looked at me. They were still holding hands . . . watching mine . . . and made not a sound.
I put the picture of Hitler and the officers inspecting the sailors above the buttons and the photograph of the Kriegsmarine cadet in front of her. Then I brought out the small photograph—the one of the man, the woman, and the baby in the wagon. For a moment, I held it and watched the old man and old woman in front of me.
They were frozen, barely breathing.
Did I really want to do what I was about to do? Was this right? Would it serve a purpose beyond the satisfaction of my own curiosity?
As gently as I could, I laid the tiny family portrait in front of him and quietly sat back in my chair. For a moment, nothing happened. Both of them were seemingly deep in thought, but calm . . . motionless. Then the old woman haltingly reached across and picked up the family picture with her right hand. She had been holding her husband’s hand with her left, but let go and put that arm around his shoulders.
At that moment, as close as they were to me physically—emotionally, they were miles away. I can only describe what they did for the next several minutes as a huddle . . . she with her left arm around him and continuing to nestle the family portrait in the palm of her right hand. Holding it close, they whispered to each other—the old woman doing most of the talking—and pointed to several details in the picture. I do not know what they said to each other during this time, for I did not try to hear.
When they were finished and looked up, both had tears in their eyes. “Mrs. Newman?” I said softly. “When did you bury these things on the island?”
She took a deep breath. Her lip quivered, but when she spoke, her voice was strong. “I did it one night before the war was over. Folks were getting real worked up about people from other countries . . . they were suspecting everybody and his brother as a spy. Newman spoke with an English accent back then, and, well . . . I didn’t want to take the chance. Some had already had their homes gone through by the authorities, their yards dug up by suspicious locals. I didn’t want to just throw the things in the Gulf . . .” She glanced at her husband. “. . . though he said to.”
She shrugged. “We were hoping to have children one day. I wanted them to have something of their father’s . . .” She looked at the things on the table. “Right there . . . that’s everything he had. I canned it all up . . . even this picture.” She held up the one of the family and frowned. “Seems crazy now to have buried this one. I mean, what could it have hurt to keep this one? But we were so scared. You can’t imagine . . .” I nodded. She was wrong. In fact, I could only imagine.
“Anyway, I rowed over one night to that little island you live on now. It was trash land then. They grazed cattle on it. We never thought in a million years anyone would ever live there. As time went on, we tried occasionally to find the spot I had chosen that night, but, you know, storms and all . . . we just never found it.”
“Until now,” I said.
“Until now,” she agreed. “How did you know?”
I paused, trying to get my thoughts in order. I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask, but I knew it was important to answer this one. Indicating Mr. Newman, who had not raised his head, I said to her, “He told me.”
Still he did not move. But she did. Her mouth dropped open; her eyes were wide. She was as flustered as anyone I’ve ever seen. “What? I don’t . . . What?” She looked back and forth between her husband, who still wasn’t moving, and me, sputtering, “I just don’t understand . . .”
“Mr. Newman?”
He looked up. “Call me Josef,” he said.
“All right.” Then, looking back to Mrs. Newman, I gave her the answer both needed to hear. “Mr. Newman . . . Josef . . . walked me to my car the last time we got together . . . right before you went to Louisiana. Before I got in, he said, ‘Those things all held up pretty good, didn’t they? After all those many years sealed in a vegetable can?’”
Mrs. Newman was confused. “But I don’t—”
“I never told anyone—anyone—that the things were buried in a can. I only said that they were buried.” I looked over at Josef, slightly stooped now with snow-white hair. “I have an idea that you knew that.”
She turned to him. “Honey, why did you . . . ?” She turned back to me. “I mean, it’s all right . . . I just want to know why he—”
“Helen,” he interrupted gently, “I’m an old man. Danny’s gone. We’re alone. I’m not ashamed of the life we’ve built—”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said quickly, “I never meant to say—”
“Hush,” he said, covering her hands with his own. “Listen to me now . . .” He stopped abruptly, remembering I was there and smiled at me. “I’m sorry to be doing this in front of you . . .”
I held up my hands. “No,” I said. “I don’t mean to be in the way. Do you want me to leave? We can talk later . . .”
“No,” Josef said. “Stay. We’re fine.” Mrs. Newman nodded, then focused her attention on the man she had loved for more than fifty years. He said, “Helen Newman, you are the wisest woman I know. You are as beautiful now as the night you beat the daylights out of me on the beach. You have taken some unforgivable beginnings, some unforgivable situations, some unforgivable people . . . and forgiven them all.
“Together, we have struggled and learned to live life as it should be lived . . . except for one thing . . . one secret we have hidden for more than half a century. I am tired of hiding. You are, too, woman,” he said with a grin. “Night before we left, I heard you on the phone”—he motioned toward me—“telling him about a spy that got shot in the woods near Fort Morgan.” He noted his wife’s embarrassed expression with a laugh and turned to me. “By the way, that’s a story you need to hear.”
Back to Helen, he said, “Don’t you think people will forgive us? I’m not saying we make an announcement, but I think a few people . . .” He looked at me. “Helen, I want this young man to ask some questions. I want him to find out what you know. There’re a lot of people who need to take an unhappy life and turn it into a great one, like you’ve done.”
I spoke up. “I already know what my first two questions are . . .”
“All right,” Josef said.
I took that as my cue. “Number one, who is Danny? Number two . . . did she really beat the daylights out of you on the beach? I want to hear that story!”
They laughed, but Helen immediately got up and returned a moment later with a framed photograph. “This is Danny Gilbert,” she said. “He was our son. He had Down syndrome.”
I took the picture and saw that the subject was a grown man. His affliction was evident, but the light in his eyes was undeniable. “He was your son?” I asked.
They smiled. “He was,” Josef said. “Danny was actually the biological son of some very dear friends of ours, Billy and Margaret Gilbert. They owned a café down what is now Highway 59. When Margaret passed away in 1954, Billy was lost. He missed her terribly, of course, but was really concerned about Danny. Billy was getting up in years, and we all knew Danny couldn’t live by himself . . . so Danny came to live with us. We never had any other children, and he called her ‘Mama Helen’, so we called him our son. He seemed to like it.”
“So did we,” Helen said.
“So did we,” Josef agreed. Pointing into the den toward the back of the house, he said, “All those things are Danny’s in there. Danny did those.”
Leading me into the den, Helen turned on the overhead lights and stepped back. I was in awe. The entire room was filled with carvings. And they were stunning. Mostly birds and animals, here and there a flower, there was even a bust of Abraham Lincoln.
“You have got to be kidding,” I gasped. “These are . . . they are incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this. How many are there?”
“We have about six hundred left,” Helen said proudly. “There’s a store in New Orleans that we allow to sell two pieces a month. They haven’t gotten less than fifteen hundred dollars for one in more than three years now. The money goes to education for children like Danny.”
“Hey, look at this,” Josef said, digging in his pocket. “This is my favorite. It’s the first thing he ever did. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for it—not even for charity.”
I took the small item from the old man and recognized it immediately as a speckled trout. The piece was small. Worn and nicked from the years spent in Josef’s pocket, it did not possess the sophistication of the artist’s later work, but because it was the very first “Danny Gilbert” and treasured by the owner, its value was indeed priceless.
I didn’t want to make the old couple sad, but I was curious. “When did Danny . . . ahhh—”
“Danny died in 1961,” Helen said, smiling. “He was forty-nine.”
WE TALKED FOR HOURS . . . THROUGH LUNCH, WHICH WE ATE on the back porch, and on into the afternoon. It seemed I actually did have a thousand questions. “Is your name really Newman?”
“No,” he said. “The fishermen at the docks all called me the ‘new man’ for a long while. Then it was ‘Josef the new man’ and finally just ‘Josef Newman.’ When Helen and I got married, I put ‘Josef Newman’ on the certificate, and no one ever questioned it.”
“So you are really married?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” Helen replied, “but not until 1947. It was well after the war before we felt safe enough to try to get the paperwork.”
“Wan made that happen,” Josef said.
“Wan was your best man, sweetheart.”
“That’s true. That’s true.”
As the afternoon wore on, I found myself attempting to keep all the stories straight. The conversation was moving in ten different directions at once. I thought then, and still do, that it might have been the first time Josef and Helen talked about some of this. “Wait,” I said. They looked at me patiently. “You mean Wan . . . the same guy who shot at you with the pistol?”
“Yes.” They laughed.
“What about the English accent?”
“What about it?” Josef asked.
“What happened to it? That’s such a great part of the story.”
Josef grinned. “I kept it up for years.” He shrugged. “But it faded away. Along with all the people who remembered it, I suppose.”
I asked permission to change the subject and started down another path. “Can I ask what you did with Schneider’s body?” Josef grimaced, and Helen looked very uncomfortable. I backed up. “That’s okay, I just—”
“No,” Josef broke in, “You’re fine, it’s just . . . you know . . . not really anything I ever thought I’d be talking about.”
“I understand.”
He looked at his wife. “You okay?” She nodded, and he turned back to me. “We just dragged him off and buried him. I mean, we got out a ways from my little cabin.” I must have been frowning. Josef continued to explain, “You got to understand. That was a different time. No forensics, a deputy in on it . . .”
“In on it?” Helen said. “Wan shot him.”
Josef nodded toward her. “You know what I mean. Like I said, it was a different time. Anyway, I still feel like Wan did the right thing.”
“I do too,” Helen was quick to add. “I didn’t mean to intimate that he didn’t.”
“And it wasn’t like anyone was looking for Ernst Schneider.” Josef shook his head as if to rid himself of a nasty memory. “He was a bad one.”
“And nobody ever found out?” Neither spoke. I asked again: “So you don’t think anybody ever knew?”
Helen couldn’t stand it. She answered, “I think Billy knew. I think Wan told him.”
I looked at Josef, who nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” he said, “I think so too. I think Wan felt like he had to tell him.”
“How so?” I asked.
“After we buried Schneider—that very day—Wan went and arrested Harris Kramer. He found the radio Schneider had been using up in Kramer’s attic and pinned it on Kramer. He’d been trying to get Kramer for a long time anyway. And he was guilty . . . Wan just got him for something else.”
I shook my head in amazement.
“Anyway, when Wan took old Kramer in, Billy put two and two together—connecting one German spy with another—and was about to make a big stink about it—you know, get the posse, let’s go find this other one—but nobody else knew there was another one . . . much less that he was already dead. So Wan told Billy what happened in order to keep him quiet.” He paused, then added, “Kramer yelled bloody murder about another Nazi ashore, but everybody figured he was trying to save his own skin. Nobody believed him.”
“And Wan never said anything about you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nope, never did. Probably as much out of respect for Helen as anything. He’d heard me through the window that day, telling Schneider that I loved her . . . I don’t know. Maybe that was it. He didn’t take his eye off me for a long time, though. He loved Helen too.”
“Oh, Josef . . . ,” Helen scoffed.
“It’s true. You know it.”
“Well, I’m just glad Shirley came along for Wan.”
“Who’s Shirley?” I asked. My mind was swimming.
“Shirley was a local girl,” Helen said. “From Robertsdale anyway. She and Wan were married before we were. Nineteen forty-six, I think.”
“Sounds right,” Josef agreed.
“Is Wan still alive?” I asked.
“No,” Josef said. “Wan got cancer. Passed away about fifteen years ago.”
“Shirley’s still alive, though. She’s not a Cooper anymore.” Helen smiled mischievously. “She’s a Warren now.” She waited for what she’d just said to sink in.
It did. “Oh, come on!” I exclaimed, as Josef chuckled. “Seriously?” I said. “Shirley Warren that works at the state park? That Shirley Warren?”
“That’s the one.” Helen grinned.
I couldn’t stand it. I had to ask, “Does she know that you—”
“Nooo. Nooo,” they said. “Wan never told her.”
I was curious about Josef’s friends and family left in Germany. “Did they ever know you made it off the sub?”
He shrugged. “No family left. And as for friends, there was Hans Kuhlmann, of course, but everyone else in Germany was so displaced by the fighting that when it was all over, people just assumed that the friends they no longer saw—were dead.”
“What about Kuhlmann . . . your sub commander? Did you ever see him again? Or communicate to him in some way that you were safe . . . alive?”
Josef spoke softly to Helen, then turned to me. As he continued to talk, she slipped from the table and out of the room. “I never saw Hans again. Neither did I hear anything about him for years.”
Helen walked back into the room and handed me a copied article from a newspaper. It was an Associated Press article, carried by the Birmingham News, dated June 9, 2001. The headline read: “Remains of Sunken WWII German Sub Found in Gulf.” I glanced at Josef, who remarked, “Hans never made it home.”
Reading just the first two paragraphs gave me chills:
New Orleans. A sunken World War II submarine has been discovered 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, rerouting a planned oil company pipeline and rewriting a bit of wartime history.
BP and Shell Oil Company, which had been surveying the Gulf floor for a joint pipeline project, announced the discovery Friday of the U-166, which was sunk in 1942 after it sank an American ship.
“She was sunk by depth charges dropped from a navy patrol boat,” Josef said. “The U-166 attacked and sank the Robert E. Lee, then was herself attacked and destroyed from above.”
“Tell him about Gertrude,” Helen prompted.
“Gertrude?”
“Gertrude was Hans’s wife,” Josef said. “Beautiful girl. I was in their wedding. I talked to her as recently as last year.”
“She’s still alive?” I asked incredulously.
“She was last year,” Josef said. “After the sub was found, I made an effort to find her, and did. She is still in Cologne . . . invests quite heavily in the stock market. All blue chip American companies, she says.” He laughed as I shook my head in wonder.
At one point, I asked Josef what he had meant when we first started talking and he made a comment about what his wife could do. “You said that Mrs. Newman could help people take an unhappy life and turn it into a great one.”
“Helen understands and harnesses the principle of forgiveness in an unbelievable way.”
“Can you explain it?” I asked.
Josef pointed to his wife and smiled. “Let her explain it.”
An expectant smile on my face, I turned to Helen.
“Very simple,” she said. “It wasn’t so simple for me a million years ago, but time and experience have given me an honest grasp on the concept, I truly believe.”
“Shoot.”
“All right . . .” She paused an instant, collecting her thoughts, then laid it out in a way I’ll never forget. “Remember this,” she said. “Forgiveness allows you to lead your own life and choose a joyful existence rather than giving it over to the control of others less qualified.
“For years, I was reluctant to forgive because I did not understand the difference between trust and forgiveness. Forgiveness is about letting go of the past. Trust has to do with future behavior.
“I believe,” Helen said with a beautiful smile on her face, “that Josef and I are an example of the incredible power of forgiveness.”
“I believe it too,” I responded. “How do we harness this power?”
“By deciding to harness it,” she said simply. “So many people allow their emotions to dictate their decisions rather than the other way around. When we decide to forgive, our lives begin anew.”
I remained silent in hopes that she would continue. She did. And in a direction that surprised me. “Have you heard of the new method being touted with which to deal with our bitterness and resentment? ‘Anger management,’ I believe it is called?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have. Companies, professional sports teams . . . everyone is using it. It’s a big deal.”
“It’s a big crock.”
My eyebrows rose about an inch. “Excuse me?”
She smiled calmly. “You heard me. I said, anger management is a crock. Ridiculous. A waste of time.”
Obviously I was curious, but just as obviously I did not understand. “Go ahead,” I prompted.
“Imagine this,” she began. “Suppose you say, ‘I have this deep-seated bitterness . . . this resentment, perpetual anger . . . this consuming rage that exists inside me. It causes me to do things that are ruining my reputation, destroying my marriage, ending effective communication with my children . . . This anger might result in the loss of my job or even a prison sentence . . . But still,’ you say, ‘it’s my anger. It’s part of who I am. So I’ll just keep it here inside me and learn how to manage it!’”
I laughed as she asked, “Andy? How crazy is that? Anger management? Forget anger management. It doesn’t work. We need anger resolution. We don’t need to deal with our anger . . . we need to get rid of it!”
“Forgiveness?”
“Exactly. How many times have you lay awake at night imagining the aggravation someone put you through during the day . . . thinking about what he said . . . what you should have said . . . what you’ll say if you see him again?”
I chuckled and admitted that, yes, I had done that more than a few times.
“And, of course, that person is sleeping peacefully without any idea that you are awake, thinking about him! So, at that point, whose life is being ruined, consumed, and wasted?”
Helen looked at Josef and said, “It’s something we’ve discovered together . . . this secret.”
“What secret?”
“The special secret of true forgiveness—anger resolution. Here it is: For you to forgive another person, it is not required that he ask for your forgiveness.”
My gaze narrowed.
She said, “For you to forgive another person, it is not required that he deserves your forgiveness.”
Helen paused, looking me right in the eye, and added, “For you to forgive another person, it is not even required that he is aware he has been forgiven.”
“So you’re saying . . .”
“What I am saying,” she interrupted, “is that there is not a shred of evidence from experts or books—including the Bible—that demands a person ask for, deserve, or be cognizant of the process before you can forgive him. Forgiveness, it turns out, is a gift that means more to the giver than it does to the receiver.”
I was amazed at the wisdom of the beautiful old woman, but she wasn’t finished.
“Incidentally,” she said, “it is important that we forgive ourselves. Most of us over thirty years of age have had plenty of time to get good and mad about the things we’ve done or haven’t done. We made promises that we didn’t keep, or we had intentions that were never fulfilled. We set goals we didn’t reach, and now, we’ve disappointed ourselves so many times that somehow—sometimes without realizing it—we’ve decided that we just won’t make any more promises, have any good intentions, or set any goals. Our failures have paralyzed us.
“The answer for you and me is the same as it is when we deal with someone else who has offended us . . . forgive the offender and move on.” She must have noticed my expression. Helen smiled wisely and asked, “Have you ever felt this way?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “I just never knew what to do about it.”
“You tried to manage your disappointment in yourself?”
“I guess I did.”
“Well, don’t manage it; resolve it.” She reached across the table and took my hand. “Andy,” she said. “I am not mad at you. Josef is not mad at you. God is not mad at you. Who are you to hold a grudge? Forgive yourself and move on.”
IT WAS DARK WHEN I FINALLY LEFT WITH A PROMISE TO RETURN. I was exhausted, my mind still reeling from what I had discovered in the lives of these two extraordinary people. That day was a conclusion of sorts—the unveiling of a mystery whose answers for so long had remained just out of reach. But it was also a beginning. And I am encouraged by what I find and what I feel when I put the principle of forgiveness into practice.
Josef had already said good-bye when Helen walked me to the door. She hugged me and told me how much she had enjoyed the day. “It is a bit strange to talk about that time,” she said thoughtfully, “. . . after all these years.”
I stopped on the front porch. Now that Josef wasn’t around, there was something else on her mind . . . I could feel it. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Just . . . tired, I suppose.” I waited. “Andy?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Are you planning to write about this? Our lives, I mean?”
So that was it. “Well,” I answered carefully, “I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
She thought a moment. “Do you think our story could help? By that, I mean, could we make a difference somehow?”
“Mrs. Newman,” I said earnestly, “I believe that there are people who struggle every day with the challenges you and Josef have conquered. And frankly I am one of them. Yes, I think your story will help. Who benefits when we come to understand and harness the power of forgiveness? Children, marriages, careers, nations . . . the list goes on and on.”
“I don’t want Josef to be hurt. He’s lived in America for so long now. What if there are those who don’t understand?” Then she brightened. “I have an idea . . . if you write about this, can you change the names?”
“Sure.” I nodded. “That won’t be any problem.”
Helen sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to act scared. I’m an old woman now, and I just get like this sometimes.” She hugged me again and wiped what I hoped was a happy tear from her cheek.
“Listen,” I said in farewell. “I promise, you will not have cause to be fearful or embarrassed by anything I write. And besides,” I added, “I will make sure the publisher classifies the book as ‘Self-Help’ or ‘Personal Growth’ or one of the other ‘Fiction’ categories. No one will ever believe a word of it.
