Chapter 18
“Miss? Miss, your ticket?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I know it’s here somewhere.” I fumbled in my pocket for the ticket stub. “Here it is.” I tried to smooth out the wrinkles before handing it over, but it was no use. I had unthinkingly crushed the little slip in my pocket over and over, until it was so creased the conductor had to squint just to read the destination.
“Oklahoma, eh?” He smiled and rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “I got a cousin used to live in Oklahoma, but she and her family moved off to Utah when the dust came. Can’t see where that was much improvement. I been through to see her a time or two. Just as barren as Oklahoma was. A regular desert. Can’t think why anybody’d live there to begin with.” He spoke cheerfully, but then his cheeks reddened as he remembered where I was headed.
“Sorry,” he sputtered. “No offense intended, miss. I’m sure Oklahoma must have its good points, same as anywhere,” he added seriously.
“No offense taken. Every place looks like heaven to someone, I suppose. Though you’re right about it being flat, and the dust was terrible. But if you live somewhere long enough, flat starts to feel like coming home.”
“Well,” he said with a laugh, “at least can’t nobody sneak up on you there. You can always see what’s coming.”
“I guess so. Anyway, that’s what we tell ourselves.”
He laughed again as he punched my ticket. “You have a nice trip now. You’ll probably be glad to get home. Looks like you didn’t get too much sleep in the big city.”
I smoothed a hand over my hair, thinking how awful I must look. “Not used to all the city noises, I guess.”
“You just close your eyes and we’ll be there in no time.” He winked and held out my ticket. As he moved on to the next passenger, he looked back once more. “No place like a train for a nap. Those wheels thump so regular, you’ll sleep like a baby.”
I was looking forward to that sleep the conductor promised, for I hadn’t slept at all the previous night, and when morning came, I looked for the first train back to Dillon. There was no reason to stay longer, not after what had happened.
Slim had been waiting for me in a small office near the auditorium. The room looked sterile and unused, housing only a gray metal desk and two folding chairs that faced each other straight on, as though they were ready to square off for battle. Slim stood near the desk with his back turned, his hands shoved in his pockets, tapping his foot nervously on the mottled linoleum, his impatience echoing through the empty space like a drum cadence. He cleared his throat when I came in and took care to make sure the door was closed after Mr. Hodges excused himself. Neither of us sat down or moved toward the other. It seemed safer to stand at a distance. I clutched the soft paper-wrapped package to my breast like a shield.
After an uneasy hesitation, Slim spoke first. “You’ve caught me by surprise, Evangeline. You should have let me know you were coming.” He sounded uncomfortable.
“And just how would I have done that?” I said, more archly than I’d intended. “Contacted Mr. Ashton? Who would have contacted some faceless lawyers in New York, who would have sent me a carefully worded letter suggesting that I stay home?” I checked myself and murmured an apology. This wasn’t how I wanted to start off. “How are you? How are your children?”
“They’re fine. Growing like weeds, of course. I can’t think where the time has gone.” He paused for a moment. “How is Morgan?”
I couldn’t help but smile. I would have made the trip again, just to hear him say Morgan’s name. “He’s away at college. University of Oklahoma. He almost quit before he got started, though. He wants to fly more than anything. I guess he got that from you.”
“And did his valedictory speech go well?” he asked. “I was proud to hear he was first in his class. He’s obviously a much better student than I was. He must get that from you.” He smiled, and for a moment I was stunned into silence.
“My letters ...” I faltered, uncertain of what to say next, but my heart beat a little faster.
“I read them all,” he said. “Even before you began writing I had people check up on him from time to time—anonymously, of course. Though I much prefer your letters. I’m sorry I can’t answer them, Evangeline, but you understand.”
“No, of course. You couldn’t risk ...” I agreed, but, truthfully, I couldn’t see that the risk was so very great. If he could anonymously make inquiries about Morgan, couldn’t he have anonymously responded to my letters? Still, I was pleased to know he’d read them at all, I didn’t want to push the issue. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too,” he said. His face seemed to relax a bit. “Do you want to sit down or anything? At least take off your coat.” He came nearer and held my coat while I extracted my arms from the bulky sleeves. I put the package on the desk and covered it with my coat and handbag. We turned and leaned side by side against the edge of the desk. “I meant that, about it being good to see you. You were about the only friendly face in the crowd.”
“That’s not so. They cheered you like the star quarterback of the high school football team.”
He snorted derisively. “The ones who weren’t booing, you mean. Government plants, most of them. Roosevelt is out to label me as a coward and an anti-Semite. The crowd cheered me because that’s what crowds do. They act like one big, mindless mass and follow the guy in front because it’s easier than actually thinking for themselves. They cheered, but they didn’t understand. Not a one of them.”
He shoved his fist into his palm and ground it as if he were milling pepper, working hard at a task with no purpose. I wanted to take his hands in mine and let them rest, cool and soothing on my cheek, forgetting all about the speech, bathing him in comfortable words and assurance, but I couldn’t.
“Neither do I,” I confessed. “I can’t imagine you really believe those things you said. Even if you do, how could you say them? You had to have known how people would react.”
“You sound just like Anne,” he said, pushing himself up off the desk and beginning to pace the room nervously. “She begged me to leave out the last part. Said it was ‘like lighting a match near a pile of excelsior.’ She even rewrote it, but I changed it back.” He ran his fingers through his hair, that old, unconscious gesture that had always seemed so boyish and appealing. Now it just spoke of age and fatigue.
“That’s why Anne didn’t come. She said she couldn’t bear to watch, so here I am alone.” He stopped his pacing, and for a moment I thought he was going to reach for my hand, but then he stepped back, shoved his fists in his pockets, and resumed his restless pacing.
“It felt pretty lonely walking into that hall, knowing no one was truly on my side. All the reporters were circling like vultures, waiting to catch me out, hoping I’d trip, or have a heart attack at the microphone. Or better yet, walk in wearing a swastika on my sleeve. Anything so they’d have a good headline in the morning. Well”—he laughed ruefully—“I guess I gave them one: ‘Lindbergh Attacks Jews!’ That’s how the morning editions will read. Never mind what I actually intended. None of that matters. Even if there were a reporter who would explain what I said in logical, rational terms, no one reads past the headlines, anyway. People always want to believe what’s worst about other people.”
“I don’t,” I said plainly. “Ever since I met you, I wanted to believe the best about you. I confess, listening to you today makes it harder. Slim, you want people to understand you? Start with me.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he took a step back, pulled up a desk chair, and perched himself on the back of it. Though his arms were crossed casually across his chest, I could tell that underneath his palms were clenched defensively, ready for a fight. “All right.” he said coldly. “Ask me anything you want.”
I took a step closer to him, hoping to break through the wall of suspicion that divided us. “Slim, I’m not here to attack you. I’m not a reporter looking for a headline. There was a time when I understood everything you thought before you said a word, but things are more complicated now. If you knew that saying these things would make people think you were anti-Semitic, why did you say them? You made it sound like the Jews who live here aren’t real Americans, as though they are some isolated group of foreigners who are with us, but not of us.”
A picture I’d seen flashed in my mind: a German street, a rainy day, a black and gray sea of overcoats, each like another, but here and there a glimpse of yellow star, the space that opened in the crowd between stars and sea. It seemed a strangely familiar scene, as though I’d walked there myself and knew it all well, especially the empty spaces.
Slim growled, obviously irritated at my lack of understanding. “Of course they’re Americans, but they ought to start acting like it! Anyone who has America’s best interests at heart can see that we should stay out of this war. Germany has air power that we can’t even begin to match. If we get into this fight, a fight that isn’t ours to begin with, it will cost of millions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives, and in the end, we will probably lose! Anyone with an ounce of sense and loyalty to this country should see that.”
“And you don’t think American Jews are loyal to this country?” I asked slowly, not really certain I understood his meaning, hoping I didn’t.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he snarled. “Awful things are happening in Europe. I’ll be the first to admit that Hitler has abused his power. War inevitably brings terrible consequences, but when I weigh the cost of a war that’s happening an ocean away against the potential cost in American lives, it’s just not worth the price.”
“But, Slim,” I said dubiously, “you click your tongue and say, ‘What a pity,’ as though we were talking about a little feud between disinterested parties. How can you dismiss Hitler’s tyranny as a mere abuse of power? Slim, the man is a murderer! He’s crowned himself a god and filled the foundation of his temple with bodies! We can’t just stand by as though it doesn’t concern us.”
Slim thumped his fist impatiently against wooden chair, “Now, this is just the sort of hysterical rhetoric I’m talking about, Evangeline. A few people, putting their ancestral loyalties before the interests of their adopted country, start these terrible rumors about wholesale murder of Jews. They prey on the emotions of the American people.”
“But,” I insisted, “these aren’t just rumors—”
“No, you’re wrong!” He nearly shouted and was back on both feet again, stabbing the air with his finger at the beginning of every sentence, a static punctuation to underscore the experience which was his alone. “I have been to Germany. I have met the German people and men high up in their government. They are not the barbarians you are describing!
“I fled this country, running for my son’s life, the only son I had left, because the press hounded us like a pack of wild dogs! They showed no respect for our privacy. They sold our suffering for a nickel in the early edition and made it so dangerous for my family that we had to escape to Europe. Even there, I was always looking over my shoulder. I’ve never slept through the night again, always lying awake, listening for the scrape of a ladder against the wall of the house, or the creak of a window opening in the nursery.” His voice broke for just a moment. I looked into his eyes, expecting to see tears, but all I could see was rage. He continued speaking, more softly, but with smoldering intensity.
“In all those years, in all those countries, the only place I felt safe was Germany. No reporters hounded us, no one asked questions they shouldn’t. We were treated with respect. Everyone knew his business and kept to it. The government wouldn’t have tolerated anything less. If the war tensions hadn’t been so high, we probably would have stayed. I’d asked Anne to look for a house. It was the only peace I’ve had since ...”
My heart melted for him. The pain, the terrible, unimaginable pain I’d felt come upon him the night Baby Charles was taken had scarred him even more than I’d feared. It had left him blind.
“Oh, Slim,” I mourned, wanting to cry, if only because he couldn’t cry for himself. “I am sorry, so very sorry for all that you’ve been through. I’m glad you found some healing in Germany, even if it didn’t last. Maybe you were right about Germans at that moment in time. Maybe they were a civilized society before the war. Maybe Hitler has been only recently corrupted by power. But maybe not. Has it occurred to you that they may have been using you, filtering what you saw and manipulating you so you would go back to America and say just what you did—that Germany was too strong to be contained so we should just stay out of it?”
For an instant I thought I saw a flicker of doubt in his eye, but I don’t know for sure. If I did he quickly extinguished it and left my question unanswered. The implacable mask was back.
“Slim,” I said urgently, pleading for him to listen, “these rumors about what is going on in Europe aren’t just stories. A friend of mine has a brother who lives in Holland, and he writes the most awful letters. He has seen it with his own eyes. Thousands of people have disappeared! When Hitler’s army conquers a city, it brings soldiers, tanks, guns, and boxcars. Mile after mile of freight cars roll into the stations, and the soldiers fill them with whoever they consider undesirable, mostly Jews. They stuff them in like so many cattle going to the slaughterhouse. Then the trains pull away, and no one ever hears from the passengers again. Their names are removed from the mailboxes and painted over on the shop windows. New people move in: good, loyal members of the Nazi party. They live in empty Jewish houses and sit in chairs that don’t belong to them, and people forget who used to live there, just like they never existed. No one knows how many. No one even bothers to count.”
Slim stood, silent and unmoved as I spoke, the same maddeningly blank expression on his face. I couldn’t help myself. I shouted at him. He had to acknowledge me. He had to hear me. “Thousands of them, Slim! Whole villages! Don’t you wonder where they went?”
The door opened, and Mr. Hodges, who had been standing guard outside, peered in and glared at me.
“Do you need anything in here, Colonel?”
Slim shook his head. “No, Ben,” he said gruffly. “Thank you. I’ll be out in a minute.” The door closed again, and he turned to me and frowned. “For God’s sake, Evangeline! Lower your voice. You’re not being reasonable. I’m sure your friend repeats all sorts of third-hand stories in his letters, but I doubt there is more than a grain of truth to it. Of course there are terrible things happening to Jews, terrible, but it’s nothing as bad as you say. The German people couldn’t be willing to engage in such barbarity.”
“Would they be willing to look aside while someone else did it for them?” I asked archly, wanting to wound him with doubt and, if only for a moment, pierce the wall of self-righteous certainty that he wore like a coat of armor. But it was an impossible task. My questions ricocheted unanswered off him and bounced back to me, echoing starkly through the room, leaving me as bewildered as ever.
“I can see there is no point in discussing this further,” he said stiffly and picked his hat up off the desk, preparing to leave. The interview was over. “You’re obviously not willing to listen to reason and are taking this all too personally.”
“You’re right,” I answered more softly. “I do take it personally. I’ve got reason to. It could just as well be me, you know.
“How would I fare in Germany, Slim? Where does Hitler stand on the question of cripples? Would someone as twisted as me qualify for membership in the Master Race? Or would I be loaded into a boxcar, too? What about Morgan? Of course, he is your son, so his lineage is impeccable, at least on his father’s side. Do you think that would be reason enough to overlook his unfortunate maternal heritage?” My voice dripped with sarcasm, and I knew I was being cruel, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“On the other hand, he might never have been born in the first place. That’s what they do with the genetically undesirable in Germany today. They take them to the hospital against their will and perform operations so they can’t reproduce and pollute the populace.”
“Stop it, Evangeline!” he barked, the impenetrable mask finally pierced. He was furious, and I was glad. I wanted us to share one honest emotion, even if it was only anger. “They don’t do any such thing,” he hissed defensively. “All this emotional drivel obscures the truth! You’re not looking at the facts.”
I cut off his argument with an emphatic shake of my head. “The Slim Lindbergh I know never used to be bothered by the facts; he worked on instinct. If you’d looked at the facts you’d never have landed in Paris.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “I made that flight because I did the calculations and they worked. The facts supported it. It was science. Just like what you’re talking about—excuse me, what you’re dramatizing—is a science. It’s known as eugenics.”
“Yes, I know all about it,” I countered and snorted. “Even in Dillon we still hear about a few things. That Dr. Carrel, the French researcher you worked with on the artificial heart pump, is a big proponent of eugenics.”
Slim’s eyebrows lifted slightly, and he seemed taken aback, surprised, I suppose, that I followed his activities so closely. “Voluntary eugenics,” he said more calmly. “It is a simple fact that if you can control reproduction, making sure that only the strongest bloodlines are joined, you can create a people who are physically superior, more intelligent, and unplagued by feeblemindedness or criminal tendencies. What is so awful about that?” he asked simply, seeming certain I would agree with his position once he laid it out so logically.
“A tidy argument, but it seems that in Germany they are having trouble finding enough volunteers.” Slim’s brow creased into a frown again at my words. “Slim,” I continued, “who is going to willingly chop down their own family tree? Who do you suppose would despise themselves so much?”
“Anyone with any sense,” he retorted incredulously. “Wouldn’t the world be a better place if children weren’t born disabled or mentally slow? If you could have planned it that way, Evangeline, wouldn’t you prefer to have been born with two straight limbs?”
I stared at him, shocked to realize that the man I’d lived my entire life for knew so little about me. His eyes were the same grey-blue, his skin as tanned and healthy as it had always been, if slightly more lined near his eyes. He looked as he always had, and yet the man I had known was dead inside. I had been worshiping a ghost.
The realization so stupefied me that it was impossible to speak. He mistook my silence for assent. “You see, Evangeline”—he took a step closer and spoke softly, almost enticingly—“you’ve got to look at all the facts. You’ve been oversimplifying things.”
“No.” I shook my head and whispered, “No, Slim, it’s just the opposite. I’ve overcomplicated things, and for a long time. For months—no, make that years—I’ve been trying to piece together who you are instead of asking the one question that matters, though I didn’t realize it until just now.” I took a deep breath and plunged ahead.
“If you were to meet me today, would you still want me?” I locked eyes with him, ready to see him full-faced and unfiltered. “Would you turn off your mind and listen only to your heart, lay down next to me on the new wheat, and forget yourself inside me?”
The air was dead between us, the silence long and eloquent.
He couldn’t deny the accusation in my eyes, and his gaze shifted uncomfortably away from mine. “I’m not that optimistic anymore, Eva. I’m not that careless. I can’t afford to be. Be honest; neither can you.”
I grabbed my coat and threw it over my arm, my emotions so thick and foggy I forgot about the package lying underneath. “My name is Evangeline,” I whispered, blinking back tears. “I don’t know who you are. Maybe I never did.” I walked to the door and closed it behind me.