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The pills made my next meal a lot more tolerable. The ache was still there, but much more manageable. I even slept most of the night. The pharmacist had emailed me that I should take the pills regularly rather than only when the pain was bad. I wasn’t about to argue.
Wayne was booked up solid, so I called for a regular cab. I had to get out of the apartment and decided to do a drive-by of the local Nazi offices, the so-called NMA, the “Nazi Movement of America.”
For the trip, I pulled out my old uniform, the yellow thunderbird centered on a red shoulder patch. I pinned both medals on the left chest. The old suit hung on my bony frame, and I felt like a twelve-year-old wearing his dad’s clothes.
A blast of a horn signaled that my ride had arrived. Reaching the street, I settled into the rear seat of the cab, my folded walker across my knees. Twenty minutes later, after paying the driver, I stood across the street from an older, two-story brick building, on an ordinary street in an ordinary part of town.
There was no sign on the building signifying that there was even an office within. No swastikas graced the windows. I was wondering if the address I’d found on the internet had been wrong or outdated. Maybe they had moved locations.
Frustrated, I sat on the bench of the walker and stared at the structure. With no sign of my enemy, I felt ridiculous sitting on the street in full regalia. I was getting an eye-full, from each vehicle that passed me like I was an exotic creature on display at the zoo. The public gives vets our one day a year, but then it was business as usual. The public no longer remembers or cares for what we did so many years ago.
I pulled out my cellphone to recall the cab to bring me back home, when I spotted two men walking towards the building along the sidewalk opposite where I sat. A familiar gray hoody pulled my eye, and I glared at the young man, who looked like he was maybe twenty years of age. The hood shadowed his head and he’d stuffed both hands within the folds of the sweater’s front pockets. I wondered if the spray can was tucked inside.
His companion was a larger man with short-cropped, dark hair and a long, unkempt beard. He was wearing jeans and a light blue windbreaker.
I don’t remember standing, but whether it me rising or my uniform that caught the man’s eye, he almost tripped on his own feet as he stumbled to a stop. The punk in the hoody kept walking and only stopped a few feet further on when he realized his companion was no longer beside him.
As the shadowed face within that hood looked first at his friend and then over at me, I raised my finger and pointed it at him.
“What your problem, old man?” the hooded man yelled across at me, his voice harsh.
“You,” I called back, “are my problem.”
The two men looked at each other in confusion. It was obvious he didn’t know me from Adam.
The punk looked like he would explode. His body was rigid with constrained anger. He stepped forward toward me, but his companion grabbed him by the arm and said something in a low voice that I couldn’t hear. The two glared at each other and I could see the younger man was ready to ignore the larger man.
Finally, the bigger man, after checking for traffic, crossed the street towards me.
“What’s this all about, Pops?”
“That son-of-a-bitch painted a swastika on my building. Took me over a week to clean if off.”
The man looked at me as if I had just slapped him. The surprise looked genuine.
“How did you know to look for him here?” he asked.
I nodded at the building across the street. “Is that not the office of the local NMA Nazi bastards?”
“That’s pretty harsh. We have the same right to express our beliefs as everyone else in this country,” he said, his chest rising as if he asserted that right.
“I know what you people really stand for,” I spat back. “I’ve seen it up front at Dachau and remember Nazis only as evil, cowardly bastards. When I was with the 45th Infantry, when we liberated Dachau, we saw what your kind are capable of. I’m not scared of you people. I killed plenty of Nazi vermin when I was overseas.”
He stared at me, taking in my uniform with a studious glare. His eyes traveled over the two large medals on my chest. He might not know what they stood for, but their weight and size would at least suggest they were important.
“Well,” he said. “The Constitution allows you to voice your own opinions as it does me. And while we might disagree, I would be very careful when dealing with our young friend across the street. He has a habit to be...” He paused for effect. “Quite volatile.”
“If he wants to have a go at a ninety-five-year-old,” I said, “tell him to have at it. It would give me the excuse to have him arrested and put in a cage where he really belongs.”
The man’s lips pressed tightly together, and he huffed. He leaned over me in an almost companionable manner. “Trust me,” he said in a hard tone. “He doesn’t care about the law or the police. If he comes for you, it won’t be just to slap you upside your head.”
His cold, hard eyes bored into mine, and I saw that he was being brutally honest. I don’t think he was warning me out of the kindness of heart, but just telling me the way it would work out. Of course, from his perspective, any confrontation with a medal-winning veteran would bring attention to his organization, and not the good kind.
He spun on his heel and marched back across the street. Grabbing the younger man by the arm, he steered him to a door between the two business fronts and they disappeared inside.
Tension bled out of me, and I sat down hard on my walker, only now recognizing the old body tremors that always followed a hard battle. It was fear and adrenalin slipping away. I sat there for more than a few minutes, regaining my composure. Finally, I reached for my cell and dialed the number of the cab company. They told me that my ride would be by shortly.
I had mixed feelings about the day’s events. Yes, I had confronted my old foe, but nothing came of it. There was no solution. I had changed nothing.
I stayed sitting, not knowing just how long it would take my ride to get here. Movement across the street caught my attention and I focused as the young punk in the gray hoody emerged from the building. He stopped and stared at me. With his face in shadows, I couldn’t see those eyes, but I could feel his hatred and maleficence.
If looks could kill...
It was his turn to point his finger at me, and then he drew it across his throat in a gesture that needed no explanation.
I recalled what his companion had said about this one’s volatility. But at ninety-five with six months to live, I just didn’t give a damn. I pointed my own finger at him. Then I twisted my wrist, lowering my index finger and raising the middle one.
His reaction was instant, and it gratified me. I had shocked him, and he stepped back as if I had fired a shot at him. With a curse, he came at me in a steady stride. I could feel his hatred and rage.
It wasn’t a death wish, but I knew that if he did kill me, I wouldn’t have to worry about dying a little each day as cancer ate through me. And if the cops did their job, they would put this bastard away for a very long time. Not a big win, but one that I could accept.
As he closed on where I sat on my walker, I could make out his features. Dark hair swept down to his hate-filled eyes. Other than rage, the boy seemed normal, handsome even. His skin was pale, probably from hiding in his hoody all the time. But evil feared light, and he seemed to embody that mantra.
He was three paces away when his clenched fist rose over me. I knew I was in trouble. There was no way I could defend myself, let alone combat one so young and energized.
I rose to my feet, wanting to meet him on equal terms; and for a second, I saw confusion replace the hatred. He was not used to having someone stand up to him. It unsettled him, but only for a second. His eyes hardened, and the fist began its descent.
It was then that a police siren ripped across the quiet street, startling both of us.
A cruiser pulled to the curb not ten feet away, both doors flung open.
The punk took off running without looking back as I sank back onto my walker with no more strength in my legs.