August 1939
Near Woodstock, Vermont
NESSHEIM TOOK HIS copy of the Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, house organ of the German-American Bund, and shoved it into the trash. What a mouthful, and what a terrible paper. Amidst its unread pages he had placed torn-up bits of the letter he’d received from the post office. C/o P.O. Box 172 – the address made him feel transient, as well as phoney. Phoney went with the job, he supposed. If there was a war, and he was starting to think there couldn’t help but be one in Europe soon, would he really have to go through it under the name Chug? That was what all the girl campers called him. For Christ’s sakes, it was as bad as Chip.
Membership in the Bund gave him a subscription to its newspaper. Joining had been at Guttman’s insistence, as had Nessheim’s adoption of a phoney name – this time a surname. He couldn’t really fault the logic when Guttman said, ‘We can’t have you up there under Nessheim, just in case somebody’s seen you play football.’
At least he’d been allowed to keep his first name. Guttman had said, ‘That way, you’ll react if somebody shouts “Hey, Jimmy”.’
Only nobody did. They shouted, ‘Hey, Chug’ instead.
If Nessheim didn’t like the subterfuge much, God knows what his mother would make of it. She must have been puzzled to be writing to a P.O. box, and mystified that his new employer, which he’d told her was the US Treasury Department, had him working in Vermont. Small-town Vermont, to boot, though from what he gathered there wasn’t really anything but small-town Vermont.
He turned the corner onto Central Street, a straight stretch of neat shops that were well-preserved and freshly painted. There was money in this town, though from what Nessheim had seen, it was a different story in the countryside. For all the picture-postcard beauty of Woodstock – the elegant Episcopal church, the town green with its iron railings, the quaint covered bridges – the country around it was poor farming land, rocky and too broken up by mountains to allow large crop conversions. It was as green as Wisconsin but without its lushness, and there was a flint resilience to the people here that suggested the good life for them would always have to be a hard life. It seemed fitting that the place was full of quarries.
Now Nessheim saw the girls gathered on the pavement outside the drugstore, excitable as moths. They wore the camp uniform of green shirts, brown skirts, and green socks. He could also see the gangly figure of Frances Stockton, hair pulled back, corralling them, and he went to help her herd the girls onto the camp bus. There Emmet Hale, who drove the local school bus during the rest of the year, sat yawning in the driver’s seat as they trooped aboard.
Nessheim plopped down next to Frances in the front row, from which they could both turn and stare down any misbehaviour in the rows behind. Not that there was much to deal with – the ‘campers’ ranged in age from eight to twelve. They were all German-American, and likeable kids for the most part, though Nessheim didn’t even pretend to understand the ways of young girls – all giggles one minute, tears the next.
He found Frances hard to make out, too. She was not much older than Nessheim, but acted like she had a decade’s worth of living experience over him. Assertive, often prickly, Frances was a modern woman – smoking cigarettes, professing a fondness for gin (though there was no drinking allowed at Camp Schneider), and always wearing trousers. She was a sharp-featured Yankee from a genteel family that had fallen on hard times, and she made it clear she found the sheer Germanness of Camp Schneider repellent, and was working there only because it was close to her parents’ home in New Hampshire. Nessheim was for some reason exempted from her disdain for German stock, though he failed to meet her high standards on other counts – especially education. She let him know early on that she had graduated from Wellesley, and viewed ‘Rossbach’s’ failure to graduate from college with ill-disguised compassion.
If she could be cutting to Nessheim, she could also be coy. ‘Some people say I look a little like Katharine Hepburn,’ she’d confided one evening, but though Nessheim had watched the movie Holiday the year before he couldn’t see the similarity himself. True, Frances was also tall and uncurved and wore her hair up, but except on the tennis court, she moved awkwardly, with legs and arms that were all sharp angles. Sitting next to her he was always worried he’d get clocked by an elbow.
‘Get your business done?’ Frances asked now, slightly peeved.
‘Yes, thanks. Had to mail a letter.’
‘You always do.’ She paused but didn’t let it go. ‘Who’s the lucky girl, then?’
He smiled with a dutiful amusement he didn’t feel. ‘My aunt, actually.’
‘Good boy,’ said Frances, managing to sound as patronising as an older sister. ‘You’re on the aisle, so you can do the count.’
He got up and faced the back of the bus, counting quickly to himself. A minute later he declared, ‘I’m one short.’
‘You can’t be. Everybody was with me outside the drugstore.’ Suddenly the bus door opened. Nessheim turned and saw Emmet gesturing at someone outside. Nessheim saw to his surprise that it was Adele Kugel, running towards the bus, looking pale as a sheet. She was a nice girl, if a little docile – this was unlike her.
He went down the steps. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked, more in relief than anger.
She avoided his questioning eyes, saying, ‘Sorry, I had to buy something.’
‘Okay, hurry up and get on the bus,’ he said. He turned to follow her on board when something caught his eye, and he stared down the street to where a car was parked in front of the post office. It was a Dodge Roadster, and its driver sat in front with his feet up on the dashboard. The pose was familiar to Nessheim, as was the fedora tipped down over the driver’s eyes.
‘You comin’ then?’ Emmet shouted out crankily.
‘Just a minute,’ said Nessheim, his eyes focused on the car. He took a few steps towards it, feeling adrenalin start to surge through him. He remembered the menacing voice back in Milwaukee – Like I said, beat it. Then as he peered at the car he relaxed. The plates were green and white – Vermont plates. Besides, there were plenty of Dodges around, and plenty of fedoras.
Nessheim went and sat down next to Frances as the bus started up. They moved north onto Route 12, passing a vast mansion on the outskirts of town, its bricks the colour of burnt oranges. He felt jumpy about the fedora false alarm, and realised it was the first true nervous moment he’d experienced since arriving in Vermont. What an anti-climax this assignment was proving to be, for all of Guttman’s strictures on secrecy and his insistence that this undercover work was of critical importance. It was hard to see anything critical about teaching little girls how to swim. Just why had Guttman placed him in this backwater?