Stars Over Clear Lake Read online

  I remembered Günther’s letter. “Right. You were in England after you left Algona. How was it there?”

  “Not as good. Very hard work. A different kind of cold. Less to eat. We did not get any pay for our work there. People were not as nice as Iowa people.”

  “I’m sorry about my mom,” I said. “She’s never gotten over losing Pete. She shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

  “I understand. Günther said that loss hardens hearts. He helped me. He was still in prison camp when I was released. I don’t know where he is, or the other men who worked on the farm.”

  “Daddy got a letter from Günther. He’s back in Hamburg. I can get his address for you.”

  “I would like that. I want to thank him.”

  “Helmut died when a land mine exploded. I don’t know about Jakob. Ludwig’s hometown was bombed. He is searching for his wife and daughter,” I went on.

  He shook his head. “Poor fellow.”

  “There’s always hope,” I said.

  “He lived in Pforzheim. Nothing left of city.”

  Ludwig had already survived the war and two prison camps. His wife and daughter had kept him going. They couldn’t be dead. But then again, I had been wrong about Pete. I’d been certain he would come home. Instead he became a statistic, a casualty of what would be hailed as a victorious battle.

  An awkward silence followed. I thought of that first day I’d met Jens in the fields on the farm, of his persistence in talking to me despite how I continued to ignore him. And now we were both free to talk, or touch, or take that walk, or dance …

  The band was warming up with a slow tune. “Dance with me?” It was the first time I’d ever asked a boy to dance.

  He hesitated. “Okay.” He stood and held out his hand. I got up and moved toward him. He took my hand in his. I shivered as he put his arm around me on the empty dance floor. We moved slowly, not talking, just taking in the feel of being this close, of it being permitted this time.

  “When we danced so long ago,” he said, “I thought it would be the only time I ever danced with you.”

  “Is that why you told me not to wait for you?”

  “Yes. I did not want to cause more grief.”

  “You never wrote to me. I had no idea if you were dead or alive.”

  Jens stopped dancing and furrowed his brows. “But I did write. Many times. You did not reply.”

  “I didn’t get any letters.…” I closed my eyes and winced. Mom always insisted on getting the mail herself. “My mom must have intercepted them.”

  “I thought you did not want to hear from me anymore. Maybe to ask you to wait was selfish.”

  “But I did wait.”

  His finger touched the ring on my hand. “You don’t have to explain. I understand.” His voice held pain.

  “No,” I insisted. “You don’t understand. I waited and waited. I thought you didn’t care for me anymore.”

  “Time has not changed how I feel about you,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “But I have no right now. Perhaps I never have right. I was enemy of your country.”

  I remembered the shame I’d felt when Lance Dugan accused me of having feelings for a POW. How we had let everyone else tell us our feelings were wrong.

  “You were never my enemy,” I said.

  The band was playing Bing Crosby’s song, “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

  Jens smiled. “I remember this song.”

  He pulled me close, gently brushing his lips across my ear. Every part of my body lit up, like his kiss was electric. The floor was ours alone, as though the Surf had locked its doors so we could have this dance.

  Jens sighed. “Who is your betrothed? Your school boyfriend?”

  “Yes,” I said, wishing I could just forget about Scotty right now, pretend that the last few weeks hadn’t happened, that I wasn’t engaged, so Jens could kiss me and I could kiss him back.

  The song ended too soon. I wanted to keep dancing like this forever, just the two of us.

  Jens still held on to me. I looked into his soft eyes. “I wish.…” I couldn’t finish the thought. I didn’t want him to leave me. Then my ring pinched my finger beneath his hand. I was about to move away when his lips covered mine, a sudden kiss that I’d dreamt about for two years but was still unprepared for. It was a kiss of longing and regret, a kiss that melted the years and the pain. It was our own private armistice.

  When he finally lifted his head, I could barely breathe. “You came back,” I said, trembling. “I thought you’d marry a German girl and forget all about me.”

  “Never,” he said.

  People were now starting to arrive.

  “Can you get away for a while?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I can get someone to cover.”

  Jens borrowed a band member’s car and we drove to Mason City, ten miles away. I sat in the passenger seat, still tasting his kiss, trying to make small talk about his band. Just last night I’d sat next to Scotty and agreed to marry him, and now I’d thrown all common sense out the window. But I couldn’t stop myself, any more than I could stop a speeding train. We found a small café that was nearly empty and slid into a private booth.

  I still felt as though we were on uneven ground, as though our future was tipping one way or the other and I couldn’t tell which way it would go. Two years apart had made us strangers again.

  “Tell me about what happened after you left,” I asked him. “Tell me about England.”

  Jens took out a cigarette, but then started to put it away. “Sorry. I know you do not like. Hard habit to stop, especially when nervous.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You can smoke.” Daddy still had his Lucky Strikes in the evening on the front porch. He called it his daily vice.

  Jens lit his cigarette and blew out white curls as he told me about life in the prison camp in England. I felt as though he was keeping a lot from me, though. His voice sounded different than when he spoke of our farm.

  “Memories of you and farm made prison camp bearable. The British hated us. Our rations were cut. It was difficult time. Some POWs were sent to France. After I was released from the camp in England I returned home. But my home was gone. My mother sold it and move in with her sister. So I stay there with them, but they don’t have much room. Then last year she died.”

  “What about your brothers?”

  “They died in the war. I was the only one to return.”

  “Oh, Jens. I’m so sorry.” So much loss. So many lives ruined. And Jens had no one. I was lucky to still have my parents.

  “Ya. There was nothing left for me there. I did farm work to save up money to come back here. And I wrote Mr. Kerns to sponsor me. He heard me play in the camp band. Tell me I can play anytime with his band.”

  “You’re doing what you always wanted to do,” I said. “You’re playing in a band.”

  It seemed the stuff of fairy tales, that Jens would make his way back here.

  “And you go to the university?” he asked.

  I told Jens about school and the choir, about how Mom had arranged for me to see Scotty just a few weeks ago and how I’d lost hope of ever seeing Jens, and that that was why I’d started dating Scotty again. I’d thought I needed to move on.

  “Things would have been different if I’d gotten your letters,” I said.

  “Or perhaps you would have tired of waiting for me,” he said. “Two years. When I was in England I was not sure I would see you again. I dreamed of freedom, of being outside those barbed wires.”

  I thought of Scotty, of how dependable and kind he was. How, yesterday, it would have been easy to plan a life together. I hadn’t even known whether Jens was still alive.

  “I thought I was happy until I saw you again,” I said.

  “I did not come back to make you unhappy.”

  “I know. But you’re here. I can’t just forget about you.”

  He reached across the table and took my hands. “So what are you going to do? Y
our mother does not approve, I know.” There was a bitterness in his voice.

  I shook my head. Two years was a long time. I barely knew Jens now, didn’t know what he’d been through, or how it had affected him. I had changed, too. I wasn’t a kid anymore. “I need time to think,” I said.

  The café owner was sweeping the floor, piling the vinyl-backed chairs on top of the tables. It was getting late. Jens paid the bill.

  “What accent is that?” the man asked as Jens handed him the money.

  Jens flinched. “German, sir.”

  The man narrowed his eyes. “That’s what I thought.” He pushed the money back across the counter toward Jens. “I don’t need your business and I don’t want to see either of you in my place again. Understand?”

  My throat tightened. Jens nodded and pulled me out the door, leaving the money on the counter.

  He drove me home slowly, as though he feared this was the last time he’d see me. His band was going to play one more night at the Surf before leaving for South Dakota. I was still in awe that he was here next to me. I couldn’t think about Scotty or my parents or school. Everything fell away, now that Jens was back. I sat close to him and he put his arm around me.

  Jens opened my car door for me and walked me up the narrow path Daddy had shoveled last week. I knew I couldn’t invite him in, so we huddled near the back steps. Neither of us wanted this night to end.

  Jens pointed at the apple tree in the distance, its crooked, bare limbs reaching up out of the snow in stark contrast to its hardy summer bloom.

  “I remember our dance beneath tree,” he said. “We made promise not to forget.”

  “These last two years I’ve sat under that same tree and thought of that dance,” I confessed. “It should have bushy leaves and be full of fruit.”

  “In winter? That would be miracle.”

  “No less a miracle than you being here with me right now.”

  “No miracle.” Jens shook his head. “Determination.”

  My voice broke. “I’m sorry, Jens. Somewhere along the way I lost hope that we’d ever see each other again.”

  “But we are together now.” He leaned over and kissed me. His lips were warm and the kiss was soft. It was like opening the barn door on a hot day, feeling a rush of cool air sweep through me. He pulled back and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, I grabbed his coat and drew him closer. I kissed him as though I couldn’t get enough of him, as though I’d been starved these years without him.

  When we finally pulled apart, our heavy breathing formed tiny swirling clouds in the winter air.

  “I never forgot you,” I said, desperate to convince him.

  Jens’s brows furrowed. He pointed up at the stars, which seemed twice as bright on this clear, cold night.

  “When I was in prison camp and could not sleep, I look up at stars and think of this farm, of you under same tree, under same stars over Clear Lake. And I was happy. No matter what happened to me. No matter if we never see one another again. You give that to me.”

  I looked down. I had given him something to hang on to during those two years and he was thanking me for it, even as I’d moved on with my life. I still felt ashamed.

  Jens had memorized the constellations and he pointed them out, saying the names in both German and English. “Kassiopeia looks like the letter W. I think the name is similar in English.”

  I followed the line of his finger in the sky. “I wonder what the name means?”

  “Kassiopeia was beautiful woman, but vain. When Poseidon sent a monster to her land, she sacrificed her daughter Andromeda. But before the monster ate the princess, Perseus saved her and she became his wife.”

  His blue eyes focused on mine with such intensity that I was certain he was talking about us. I tilted my head. “Andromeda was lucky to have someone love her so much.”

  His face, already flushed from the cold, went from pink to crimson. “Perseus was lucky. He only had to save her from a monster, not fiancé.”

  “Jens…”

  “I give you time,” he said quickly, then let out a frustrated breath, “but I have only one day left to make up for two years.”

  I put a finger to his lips. “Two years have done nothing to change how I feel about you. I know things aren’t easy, but please be patient. I don’t want to lose you again.”

  He slipped his hand around my neck and tilted my chin up. He kissed me, a hot, passionate kiss that took my breath away. “You won’t lose me,” he said. “I promise, mein Shatz.”

  “My treasure,” I repeated. He’d called me that when he was a POW, when speaking like that had held danger for us both. There was still risk involved, I reminded myself. Just a different kind of risk.

  We held on to each other until our fingers and toes were numb. “We still have tomorrow night,” I said, reluctantly opening the door.

  Jens kissed my hand. “Until tomorrow, my fair Andromeda,” he whispered.

  I watched him leave through the windowpane etched in ice. My blood warmed at the thought of his kiss.

  I started up the stairs when I heard a noise. I turned. Mom was sitting on the sofa in the dark. She was still having trouble sleeping, and spent many nights going up and down the creaking stairs. By the look on her face, I could tell she’d been watching us.

  “You’re an engaged woman now,” she said. “I don’t know what college life is like, but that’s not appropriate behavior here in Iowa. Do you want Scotty knowing that you’re kissing boys behind his back?”

  There was no denying what Mom had seen. I was tired of tiptoeing around her. I had claimed my own life in college; it was time to claim it at home.

  “I was with Jens.”

  “Who?”

  “The boy you sent away when he came to see me,” I said accusingly.

  She sucked in a breath. “You mean the Nazi?”

  “He’s not a Nazi.”

  Her lips puckered up. “He’s a German.”

  “You say that like it’s a nasty word, like you don’t know plenty of Germans right in our own town. He said he wrote to me. What did you do with his letters?”

  “I burned them.”

  How easily she admitted it, as though I had no rights or considerations. “How could you?”

  “Because I needed to protect you, Lorraine. Do I need to remind you that he was in a prison camp, and an enemy of our country? Why would I want my teenage daughter to correspond with someone like that? And it’s unacceptable to see him now. You will not throw away a marriage proposal from Scotty Bishop! I won’t let you disgrace our family in such a way. Have you forgotten what happened to your own brother?”

  “I’ll never forget Pete. But the war is over, Mom.”

  “Do you really think people will forget what they did? You think he could be accepted here or anyplace else? He’s an outsider, Lorraine.” She stood and crossed her arms. “And as far as I’m concerned, he’s as responsible for Pete’s death as the one who buried that mine.”

  “No, Mom. He’s not. He’s just a boy who was caught up in the war, and your hate isn’t going to make him something else. And I didn’t say I wasn’t going to marry Scotty. But you had no right to keep Jens from me.”

  “I had every right!” she spat out. “They took my son. I wasn’t going to let them get my daughter, too. That boy should never have come back.”

  “Well, he’s here now. And you can’t keep him from me.” I turned and ran up the stairs, leaving my mother behind.

  Thirty-five

  January, 1947

  The next morning Mom waited until Daddy went to the barn to start in on me. “Do you realize what you’re doing, Lorraine? First it was college, and now this? You love Scotty. How can you do this to him?”

  “I haven’t done anything,” I said, but I knew that wasn’t true. And I didn’t want to hurt him.

  “You have a future with Scotty. Can you say the same with this other fellow? What can he offer you?”

  I put up a hand.
“Scotty and I are fine, Mom. Stop worrying so much.”

  “Of course I worry. This is a small town, Lorraine. It won’t take long for word to get around if you take up with that man.”

  She was right, of course. I planned to see Jens again that very night. And I didn’t want Scotty to hear rumors about me. I didn’t know what I wanted.

  When I got ready to go out that evening, Mom stood in front of the door. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I just have to talk to him one last time.”

  She raised her eyebrows as though she didn’t believe me. “You start brewing trouble and you know what you’ll get?”

  “Mom, please…”

  “Pregnant and alone for the rest of your life. Think about your choices.”

  I walked around her and out the door.

  She hadn’t told Daddy, who must have sensed the tension between us and retreated to the barn to milk the cows. That was his way. Leave things be. Don’t discuss unpleasantness. Perhaps Mom was right when she said that he lived with his head buried in the sand.

  One thing I knew for certain was that Mom would never forgive me if I broke off my engagement with Scotty.

  And so much of what she had said made sense. As much as I hated to admit it, when seen through her eyes, it would seem she was protecting me by burning those letters. Scotty was a wonderful man. I knew he’d make me happy. And yet, all of that was background noise in my head when I was with Jens.

  “Are you okay?” Jens asked when he saw me. I wore a blue dress; the shade nearly matched the color of Jens’s eyes.

  I scooted next to him in the booth he’d reserved. Number 110, the number of days he’d spent in the Algona POW camp, he told me. He took my cold hand and filled it with his warmth. I knew it was reckless of me, this public display, especially after Mom’s words of caution. But I couldn’t help it.

  “Fine,” I replied, although I was anything but. “My mother knows about you. She’s not very happy.”

  “I am sorry. I do not want to cause problem between you.”

  “The problem between me and my mother is my mother,” I replied.

  “Sound like German mother,” he said.

  “Remember when you escaped from camp to come see me? Did you get in trouble when you returned?”