Gentlehands Page 11

  Most citizens interviewed asked not to be named, but the overall feeling exists either that it could not possibly be Trenker (“Not that man—he wouldn’t hurt a fly!”), or that if indeed Trenker was an officer in the SS, and all that the article claims, “It was a long time ago. The past is over. Let the poor man be. He’s not hurting anyone.”

  I was still standing on the sidewalk, finishing the article, when my father pulled up in the Toyota.

  “Get in!” he said. He reached across and opened the door for me.

  Streaker was in the backseat.

  “I’ve got three more hours, Dad.”

  “Get in, Buddy!” He pounded the empty seat beside him with his fist.

  I still had on my apron, and my sweater was hanging up in the employees’ room, but I got in, and my father took off I’d left the copies of The Citizen outside Sweet Mouth, except for the one I had in my hand.

  “Did you read it?” my father said.

  “It’s a mistake, Dad.” I started to explain that I couldn’t just walk out on Kick, either, during the lunch hour, and my father cracked his fist down on the steering wheel this time, and told me to keep my mouth shut.

  “We haven’t been mentioned,” my father said, “yet. But your mother’s a wreck!”

  “It isn’t Grandfather,” I said; I almost laughed at the idea, but my father punched the steering wheel again and barked, “The hell it isn’t!”

  “That damn Nazi,” Streaker said.

  “Shut up, Streaker!” my father said.

  I had to look out the window to get control of myself. I had to try to talk to myself the way Grandpa would talk something through with me, staying cool, figuring it out rationally: it was a fact people were often unfair and mean, and my father was certainly a person who leaned far over in that direction, so what did I expect him to react like after he read that article? And now I just had to concentrate on keeping my head.

  “What do you think of your grandfather now?” my father said, as though he’d never heard me say it was a mistake, it wasn’t him. “Are you proud of him?”

  I knew he wasn’t really looking for answers to his questions.

  “Did you take his jeep this morning, Buddy?”

  I nodded.

  “Answer me, Buddy!”

  “You’re not interested in my answers,” I said. “You listen because you want to hear that you’re right, so you can’t hear that you’re wrong.”

  “Did-you-take-his-jeep-this-morning?” my father said, very slowly, his eyes bugging out with rage.

  “I take it every morning.”

  “You used to take it every morning!” said my father.

  “You stop taking it,” Streaker said.

  “Leave it where you left it,” my father said.

  “Leave it where you left it, Buddy,” Streaker joined in.

  “I won’t need any transportation after today, anyway,” I said. “I’ll be fired for this little number, leaving Kick during the lunch rush.”

  “That story just breaks my heart,” my father said. “After what I just read in The Citizen, your story just breaks my heart.”

  I said it very softly. “It’s not Grandfather, Dad. Don’t you think I know Grandfather by now?”

  “No I don’t think you know Grandfather by now, or anything else! You were interested in producing a fancy relative to impress Miss Gottbucks from Beaublahblah, well, you produced one for her, didn’t you?”

  “We can’t talk,” I said.

  “You’re damn right we can’t!”

  “Is Buddy going to live with us again?” Streaker asked.

  “Buddy is going to stay home from now on,” my father said, “whether Buddy likes it or not!”

  16

  THE ONLY THING MY MOTHER SEEMED TO CARE ABOUT was whether or not our name would be brought into the “scandal.” She wasn’t interested in anything I had to say about Grandpa Trenker’s innocence.

  “He was there, in Germany,” she said. “None of them were innocent.”

  “He didn’t have anything to do with those concentration camps,” I said.

  “Oh Buddy, he was a German!”

  “Loyal to his own,” I said, “just the way you claimed you were loyal to your own, the other night in Montauk, when we were talking about the Vietnam war!”

  “Loyal to his own?” She gave a snide hoot. “His own were over here in America scratching for a living!”

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “He was loyal to his country.”

  “Some country!”

  “You once said you’d have disowned me if I’d refused to go to Vietnam!”

  “Buddy, this is not the same thing,” she said.

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry I ever went to Montauk and sat down at his table!” she said, ignoring my question. “I did that for you, Buddy. Now you do something for me. Stay away from him! I don’t want to hear his name in this house!”

  “We’re great Americans!” I said. “He’s guilty before he’s had a chance to prove he’s innocent!”

  “You heard your mother,” my father said. He was strapping on his gun, getting ready to leave for work. Big deal, I thought as I watched him; a lot he knows or cares about the law!

  Streaker was curled up on the couch biting his nails, pretending he was watching a rerun of Sesame Street.

  This time I didn’t even try to reason with my mother, or try to make it all right with Streaker that I was leaving. I waited until my father drove off, and my mother carried a load of wash down to the basement. Then I took off for Fireplace Road, hitching a ride to the parking lot behind the A&P where I’d left the jeep.

  It was about two thirty when I got to Beauregard. It was one of those fantastic summer days, and I didn’t wait for Peacock to let me in. I knew everyone would be sitting around the pool. I walked down the side of the house, and called Skye’s name. I had no intention of staying there that afternoon. I wanted to be with my grandfather, and I wanted Skye to go to Montauk with me.

  Og Pennington saw me coming, got up from a chaise, and walked toward me. He was in swimming trunks, rubbing some Bonnie Bell Sure Tan Gel into his chest. “Skye isn’t here, but I’d like to talk with you, Buddy.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She rounded up some kids at the beach to take to Sweet Mouth for sundaes. Did you get off early?”

  “Sort of,” I said, and he put an arm around my shoulder, an unusual gesture for him, and steered me down the walk to the pool. “You’d only miss Skye if you tried to connect with her now. I’d like to say something.”

  Lennie Waterhouse was down at the other end of the pool. He looked up from a copy of some paperback he was reading, gave a wave, then flopped over on his stomach and fixed the book under his nose.

  “We can talk privately,” Og said, pointing to a director’s chair. “Sit down, Buddy, would you?”

  “I can’t stay.”

  “I don’t blame you for being upset. I read The Citizen.”

  I sat down.

  “It isn’t my grandfather,” I said. “It’s a mistake.”

  “I can see why you’d want to think that, Buddy.” He stretched his long legs out in front of him, and ran his fingers through his coal-colored hair.

  “I think that, because it isn’t my grandfather,” I said.

  “Buddy, you might not like De Lucca, I don’t like him, either, but I respect him because he’s sharp, too sharp to get The Record or The Citizen into a libel suit.”

  “Well that’s what he’s done.”

  Og reached out and picked up a folder from the wrought-iron table in front of him. “I just read a copy of his article in The Record.”

  “I don’t care what you just read.”

  He slapped the folder across his bare knees. “A man can’t print this kind of material without being absolutely sure, Buddy! Don’t you think The Record checked the story out?”

  “There’ve been mistakes like this before,” I said.


  “I wish you’d read just a few things. I’ve marked a few things.”

  “Why should I read lies?”

  “Read this,” he said, “unless you’re afraid to read it. Here, where I’ve marked it in red.”

  I took the folder from him. Halfway down the first page, he’d drawn a line beside this paragraph:

  Ninety-nine persons had been squeezed into the cattle car, including many youngsters younger than Roselina De Lucca…. A scorching sun beat down on the roof, and the inside of the car became suffocating…. The passengers were mostly families of good standing in the community, people of culture, but as the hours passed the pressure built. Those who had to relieve themselves had no facilities, no choice but to urinate and defecate where they stood. The stench was unbelievable. Babies cried and old people moaned, and the sick begged for water, air; and fear increased until there was a bedlam inside the car, speeding out of Rome, out of Italy, their destination unknown to them.

  “This hasn’t got anything to do with my grandfather,” I said.

  “All right then, read it,” Og said. “It won’t take long. I’ve marked some passages.”

  I glanced at another on the second page.

  Immediately after they left the cattle cars at Auschwitz, they were marched past Renner and Trenker who sorted them with a glance. Condemned to death were: all mothers together with children up to age thirteen, the pregnant, the deformed, invalids, the sick (even the exhausted who only seemed sick after the torturous ride there), and all men and women over fifty.

  I let out my breath and said again, “It wasn’t him.”

  Og pointed to a passage at the bottom of the page.

  A group of naked women, some pregnant, some carrying babies, were about to enter the gas chamber. Somehow Trenker learned that one of the young girls had been a singer. He ordered her to sing for him, and dance to her song. As she did, she seized Renner’s gun and shot him in the leg. Renner survived. Trenker sicked his dog on the girl. It was his favorite death sentence.

  I handed the folder back to Og. “I’m not going to read any more.” I thought I might get sick, and I felt like just puking in their pool.

  “Buddy,” Og said, “if there’s a chance, as you claim, that this Trenker isn’t your grandfather—”

  I didn’t let him finish. “It isn’t!” I said.

  “Let me finish—even if it isn’t, this is very strong stuff. There’s more, much more. How do you think people are going to react when this comes out on Sunday?”

  “What do you want from me?” I said. “I’m telling you my grandfather had nothing to do with that!”

  “What I want from you is some consideration for my sister.”

  “How about some consideration for my grandfather?” I said.

  “We’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, innocent until proven guilty,” Og said, “but why drag Skye into this? Skye could get hurt, do you realize that?”

  “Your family doesn’t want me to see her, is that it?”

  “We don’t want her going there,” Og said. “Don’t take her there, even if she wants to go.”

  “I wouldn’t let anything happen to her,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t be able to prevent it,” he said. “Don’t take her there.”

  “All right,” I agreed.

  “We like you, Buddy,” he said.

  “Oh thanks,” I said.

  “Don’t be sarcastic. You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

  “He never did anything to Skye,” I said, “but try to please her; make her dinner, play tapes for her.”

  “She told us all that. That isn’t the point.”

  “The point is now he’s in trouble because some friend of your family’s made a mistake, so the hell with him!”

  “De Lucca’s not a friend of our family’s,” Og said. “Mother hardly knows him.”

  “But you all believe him.”

  “We believe Skye could be in danger going there,” he said.

  Then Peacock appeared to see if I wanted something cool to drink, which I didn’t, and I stood up. I could see Mrs. Pennington, in a blue-and-white sundress, stepping out from the pool house, glancing up in our direction, then moving back in, out of sight.

  “Tell your family not to worry,” I said.

  “Let’s shake on it,” he said, and he pumped my limp hand up and down, let go, and I left.

  When I arrived in Montauk, my grandfather was working in the rock garden, down by the steps to the ocean. There was a copy of The Citizen on the table beside his chair.

  I watched him for a while, from the window. I wanted to go out and say something to him…that I was there for once because he needed me, not because I needed him…and that all the way out there I’d been remembering a poem I’d memorized once for English. At the time I’d thought it was a little hysterical, or heavy—it certainly wasn’t something I automatically identified with. Suddenly it had meaning, and I knew it by heart, and I wished I could just for once in my life use something I’d learned for school, for real. It was called “If” by Rudyard Kipling.

  If you can keep your head when all about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

  But make allowance for their doubting too;

  If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

  Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

  Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise…

  That was the first verse. The point of the poem was that if you could manage to do all those things, and a lot more described in the other verses, you’d come out a man. A lot of the guys thought it was too macho when I read it. I’d really just picked it out because I knew it was the kind of thing my teacher, Mr. Kersen, would go for. But that afternoon I was glad I still knew it, because it said a lot to me about Grandpa Trenker.

  The only thing I could think to do, since I couldn’t say the things I wanted to say to him, was carry on the way we always had. I took a shower and changed into clean clothes, and I played with Graham. When the phone rang, I answered it for him. I could see him through the window as he heard the ring and headed up to the house. He probably didn’t know I was there.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “I hope you burn in hell the way you burned the Jews, you filthy Nazi!”

  There was a click, then the dial tone. I put the phone down.

  “Well, hello, Buddy! Who was that?” he said as he came inside.

  “Wrong number,” I said. My insides were still twisted with shock.

  “Another one of those calls, hmmm?” He took off his gloves and sighed.

  I nodded.

  “Take the telephone off the hook,” he said. “Put the pillow over it.”

  He rubbed his eyes with his fingers a moment. “Does your family know you’re here?”

  I lied and said they did.

  “They don’t approve of your being here, do they?”

  “They left it up to me,” I said, wishing that were true, wishing they were any way but the way they were. As far as I was concerned, right then and there, my grandfather was the only family I cared about anymore, and I cared about him a whole lot. I wanted to try and give back a little of what he’d given me, even if it just meant being with him as much as I could, letting him know that way I was sticking by him.

  We sat around for a while talking about letting Graham go. He wanted to do it right away, that night. I knew we should, but I hated putting Graham out at a time when everything seemed to be going against my grandfather. Graham had become like his lapdog, and he followed him around and watched him, and even carried over tapes to my grandfather for him to play, and stroked his cheeks sometimes when he listened to opera on the back of my grandfather’s chair.

  “We must do it, Buddy,” said my grandfather. “There’s something else, too.” He stood up to let Mignon out,
then paced around the room as he talked. “If anything should happen to me, remove the animal feeders. It’s still summer, and there’s still time for them to look in new places for their food. When it gets colder, there isn’t time for that, nor for them to find new territories. Do you understand?”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you,” I said flatly. It was as close as I could come, I guess, to telling him I loved him.

  “I said if, Buddy.” He smiled and touched my head gently with his hand. “There’s an if in all our lives.”

  My grandfather broiled some flounder for dinner, which we had with fresh corn from his vegetable garden. He poured me a glass of white wine, and we didn’t talk a lot, but listened to music and watched the ocean. We were just finishing when we heard a car horn honking.

  “Skye?” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, but even though I knew the sense to what Og had said, I hoped it was her.

  There was a more persistent honking then, and both my grandfather and I went to the back door. It kept on, and we walked out into the yard together. The sun was setting, turning the sky bright pink and deep blue.

  “That sounds like the horn on my Alfa,” said my grandfather.

  As we went down toward the driveway, we heard tires squeal, and a car took off.

  I think we both thought someone had stolen his car. But as we walked closer we saw both the jeep and the Alfa Romeo. The door of the Alfa Romeo was open, and its sides were soaped with swastikas.

  In the front seat, her fur soaked with blood, was Mignon. Her throat was slit. Her dead eyes stared back at us. Above her, attached to the steering wheel, a crude sign hung: NAZI DOG!

  17

  AFTER WE FOUND MIGNON DEAD, MY GRANDFATHER insisted that I pack my things and go home immediately. He was afraid for my safety.

  “What about you?” I said.

  “I’ll take care of myself, but I can’t do that as well worrying about you, Buddy.”