Stars Over Clear Lake Read online

  And then he’s gone. I blink and look around as though I’m coming out of a trance. Or was it a dream? I’m left with the sensation of being touched on my face, the words “Take care, my Tangerine” echoing in my head.

  Eleven

  2007

  I’ve always been a light sleeper, but I feel as though I’ve pulled an all-night shift at a Walmart. My poor old bones are sore and I have a splitting headache. I left the Surf shortly after dancing with Jimmy Dorsey, but what little sleep I was able to get was interrupted by vivid and disconcerting nightmares. I dream of the night the Surf burned down, and half expect to smell smoke when I wake. I’m relieved to be in my own bed, looking out at the lake, not in a burning building. My dress is a clump at the end of the bed. I didn’t even bother to hang it up.

  I get up and make myself some tea and toast, humming the music from last night. I should be more concerned. But whether Jimmy was a ghost or a hallucination or a dream, either way, it was a wonderful evening. For a short time I felt like a young girl again.

  After eating my breakfast, common sense sinks in. I wonder if I even left my booth the night before. The music was so therapeutic that perhaps I dreamed the whole dance. I decide to take a walk to clear my head. I stroll along the sidewalk winding around the lake. Our move to the condo had been a good decision, and necessary once we got Sid’s diagnosis. The condo was a great place to enjoy life again. Sid and I often took long walks and stuck our feet in the water. In the winter we watched from our window as ice houses appeared on the frozen lake.

  I pass through the walkway between the two beige brick buildings that angle away from each other, apparently so that more units have a view of the lake. I live on the second story of the second building near the center, close to the elevator and a neighbor I barely know, a young single man named Garrett who once helped me get Sid from the hall into the living room when his strength had given out. He said to call on him anytime, but he’s never home and is always in a hurry when I do see him.

  I stop at the bench we christened Little Way after I encouraged Sid to walk just a little way each day to keep up his strength. I sit down and stare at the water lapping against the rocky shore, its steady rhythm comforting. The water stretches out beyond my vision, meeting the sky somewhere out in the distance. Clear Lake isn’t that big, but it has bends and twists that make it appear larger.

  This is my favorite spot. It’s “our” spot, where we spent hours together. Sometimes I would read to Sid. He’d close his eyes and I wouldn’t be sure if he had fallen asleep, but then he’d make a remark or ask a question—“What happened next?” or, “Is that the end?”—when it was obviously not the end, but he wanted to kid me. And sometimes he did fall asleep and I’d hear him snore and pretty soon he’d lean into me.

  Just last year I sat here with Sid beside me. I miss not only his voice and presence, but the physicality of having someone close. I miss his touch, and almost a year later I still take his sweaters out of the drawer to inhale his scent. I still break down, not as much as before, but when something hits me just right, like when I read a piece of news that I know he’d be interested in, or when I hear his words in my head.

  But I’m also angry at Sid. I’m angry that he died and left me alone. And I never agreed with his philosophy that the past was past, something to be forgotten. If he hadn’t made me promise, none of this would have happened. If he hadn’t left me …

  “Thought I’d find you here.”

  Harry stands in front of me. He’s wearing a striped golf shirt, khaki pants, and his country club hat. I’m struck by the fact that he knows where to find me. I wonder if Daisy would have had that same inclination.

  He holds two cups in his hands. “You still like a latte with extra milk?” he asks, handing me one of the cups.

  “I do, although I don’t have it very often. It’s not good for the figure,” I say, accepting the cup. “As if I should be concerned with that at my age,” I add with a laugh.

  “Hey, you’re as young as you feel, Lorraine. What was Sid’s motto? Live each day to the fullest? No reason to stop now.”

  “I won’t,” I promise, although with Sid’s death, life hasn’t felt as full or worth living.

  He sits down next to me on the bench and stretches out. Even though he’s starting to look older, his thinning hair more gray than brown now, he still has boyish good looks.

  “I was headed out to the golf course anyway, so I thought I’d stop by. When you didn’t answer the door, I decided to look here. Kind of warm out today.”

  I hadn’t noticed the heat yet. I’ve been too deep in my own thoughts to take in much of my surroundings. There are a few boats on the lake that I now observe: two sailboats, a fishing boat, and a pontoon boat in the distance. Funny how they suddenly appear in my line of vision as though they are ghostly apparitions, too.

  “Do you miss the farmhouse?” he asks.

  “Sometimes, but life is easier here. The condo is newer and smaller, and all on one level. I can walk around the lake and watch the fishermen, or hang my feet off the dock, or wade in the water. It’s like being on vacation. We didn’t travel much, you know.” I don’t add that even the smaller condo feels huge and empty without Sid in it, that it’s no fun being on vacation by myself.

  “You can still travel.”

  “It’s harder now,” I say, sounding like those women I detest, who think that life stops when you reach a certain age. But I also don’t want to be one of those people on the cruise ship who needs a walker just to get to the pool and back.

  I reach across and lightly touch his arm. “Why are you really here? Other than to discuss my travel habits.”

  He sighs. “You know me too well. I was going through some of the pictures we have on file at the firehouse. Pictures of the Surf Ballroom fire. There’s one that I want you to take a look at.”

  He pulls a folded sheet from his pocket. “This is a copy of an old newspaper article. The picture’s not the best quality, but I think there’s a remarkable likeness.”

  He hands me the black-and-white photo, one taken from the top of Curly’s Café, which used to be next door to the ballroom. It shows the ballroom being consumed by black smoke and flames. The picture was taken at night, but some of the spectators’ faces are visible, highlighted by the fire.

  “Here,” he says, pointing to a woman in the far right corner of the photo. She’s huddled beneath a blanket and the picture captures her profile, the upturned nose I’ve always hated and the high cheekbones that have dropped over the years. But the resemblance is still undeniable.

  “Is that you?” he asks.

  “I’ve never seen this before.” I’m paralyzed for a few seconds. The evidence in front of me unnerves me so. What else does Harry know?

  “So you were there at the fire?”

  “I guess I was. I must have forgotten.” Even to my own ears, my excuse sounds hackneyed.

  “I’m surprised you forgot. This was a pretty big deal back then, wasn’t it?”

  I hand the picture to him. “There were a lot of ‘big deal’ moments back then. The war, and all that. And when you’re as old as I am, they tend to run together.”

  He frowns and cocks his head to one side. “I suppose so. I was hoping this photo might jog your memory a bit.”

  I can barely look at it, the memories are so strong. I didn’t know anyone had taken my picture, but I remember the cold biting into my ankles, feeling distraught and helpless. “I’m sorry. It was so long ago.”

  “That’s too bad. I believe we can learn a lot from reexamining the past.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I say. “I mean, what can you learn from a sixty-year-old fire?”

  “Many things. It’s becoming somewhat common to question conclusions now that we know more. For instance, have you ever heard of ‘spalling’?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “It’s the breakdown of concrete during a fire thought to be caused by flammable li
quids. Many people went to jail over concrete spalling because it looked like arson. But science and testing have discovered that crumbling is a normal phenomenon from moisture in the concrete overheating during a fire, and is unrelated to a flammable liquid. That’s just one example of how things have changed.”

  “That sounds terribly complicated. And to my knowledge, no one went to jail when the Surf burned down.”

  “I know,” Harry says, standing up. “But that’s the point. Maybe someone should have.”

  Twelve

  August, 1944

  The truck with the white star on the door arrived at six in the morning. We loaded jugs of cold well water onto the back and wrapped them in burlap. By noon the August heat gleamed off the pitchforks and Daddy’s cap was damp around the edges.

  “You’re to wear pants when delivering food to those men,” Mom chastised me as I grabbed the basket of food. I reluctantly ran up to my room to change into my overalls. Her words followed me up the stairs. “I’m not allowing my daughter out there in a dress. I don’t want to encourage those men to think of you in inappropriate ways.”

  Mom didn’t understand. All the men, with the exception of Helmut, were kind and gracious. Helmut acted disgruntled much of the time, and he learned only enough English to say things like “Water” and “More” and “Eat.” One day when I brought the food basket, Norman refused to let him eat.

  “He didn’t want to work this morning. No work, no eat,” he said, nodding at the prisoner. Helmut clicked his heels and gave Norman the Nazi salute, then handed him an apple with a swastika carved into it. He said something in German to Günther and nodded at him to translate.

  “He says to tell you he went long periods on the Russian front living on leaves and roots. This does not bother him.”

  Norman took a bite of one of Mom’s biscuits and smacked his lips. “Fine and dandy with me. Tell him if he doesn’t start working I’ll tell the camp commander to put him on another detail. He’ll be putting asphalt on roofs instead of working in this field. And there won’t be any biscuits or chicken or pie.”

  Günther translated. Helmut said something that sounded like a swear word, then sneered and lit a cigarette. Norman smiled and winked at me. Later, when I came back out, Helmut was working alongside the other men.

  Daddy gave me a look that said Don’t mention this to Mom. I nodded. Of course I wouldn’t tell her. Because Mom was right in this case. We did have a Nazi on our farm.

  *

  A few days later, Daddy came to find me after I had just finished hanging a load of laundry on the line. I wondered if the clothes would dry in the humid heat.

  “I need your help,” Daddy said, pointing at the distant horizon, which until moments ago had looked sunny. There it was: a looming thundercloud that threatened rain. No storms had been in the forecast.

  “We have to finish getting the pitched hay into the barn,” he said. “I need you to go out with the other wagon and collect the rest of the cut hay. Take two of the men with you.”

  I started tearing down the clothes from the lines, the ones I’d hung with painstaking care, tossing them into a pile. I threw the basket down on the porch and followed Daddy to the barn.

  Daddy had a wagon attached to the back of the tractor. “Get as much as you can and we’ll park the load in the barn. Günther, you and Jens go with her. Norman, do you want to go along?”

  Norman shook his head. “I’ll stay here. You might need my help.” He nodded at the large grappling hook that Daddy used to lift the clumps of hay from the wagon up to the second-story haymow in the barn. It took three men to work the rope and lift, to distribute the hay above, and to handle the horse that pulled the rope.

  Daddy had taught me to drive the tractor when I was thirteen, although Pete learned at eleven. Still, I had to practically stand on the clutch to push it in. Jens and Günther got on the wagon and I drove them out to the east fields. They jumped off and started pitching the piles into the wagon. I tamped down the hay, keeping one eye on the gathering clouds. Then I put the tractor in low gear. Sweat poured off Jens and Günther as they kept up with the moving wagon, running from pile to pile.

  I caught my breath as a clap of thunder shook the ground. Jens looked at me, his eyes wide. We still had a quarter of the row left to pitch. We wouldn’t make it that far.

  After five more minutes, I yelled at them to stop. The rolling thundercloud loomed just beyond the field, followed by a darkened sky. Flashes of lightning threatened more than rain. We’d seen twisters drop from those types of clouds.

  I revved the tractor as Jens and Günther stood on the giant pile of hay in the wagon and tried to keep their balance. The cloud chased us to the barn, where Daddy was pulling up the last of the hay.

  I stopped the tractor near the door and we unhooked the stacked wagon. The men pushed it into the barn. That’s when I noticed the empty stalls.

  “The cows are in the far pasture!”

  Daddy was working with the grappling hook and didn’t hear me. I knew he would say to leave the cows. But we usually left them close to shelter, where they’d trot to the barn when the weather turned, letting out a low moo as though to warn us. The sky held an eerie, dark glow.

  “I help,” Jens said as he followed me to the cow pasture behind the barn. The clouds burst open. I could barely see through the downpour and almost ran smack into the gate. Daddy usually kept it open so they could wander back and forth, but they’d been too lazy to seek out the new grass on the far end of the pasture, so he’d been forcing them down there for the past week.

  The cows were just on the other side of the gate, huddled together under a tree. They made low mooing sounds as if to berate me for locking them in. I tugged at the latch and Jens added his strength, then together we pulled the wide gate open. The cows didn’t move, so I cupped my hands and tried to imitate the sound Daddy used to call them home. “Here Bossy, Bossy,” I yelled.

  Petunia was the first to come, and the rest followed her. After the last one had passed, Jens closed the gate. The cows hurried toward the safety of the barn. The rain fell in torrents around us, and the wind was picking up. I could barely take a step without being pushed back. Jens took my hand and pulled me toward the barn.

  A large crack blasted the air, and a branch from a nearby tree fell not twenty feet from us. Mom would usually herd me down to the cellar in bad weather, then sit and worry about Daddy and Pete until they showed up dripping and cold from the fields.

  We finally made it to the side door of the barn. I could hear the men’s voices on the other side. It took both of us to open the door against the strong winds. I knew it wasn’t safe here; I’d heard of barns blowing down, trapping the animals inside. But we were too far from the cellar. The cows had moved into their stalls. Daddy was probably standing at the open barn door, watching the skies for a funnel cloud that might ruin his crops.

  I looked at Jens, whose shirt was completely soaked and streaked with strands of golden hay. The shirt clung to his body, showing off his muscular physique. Water dripped down his tanned arms. It was then that I realized he was still holding my hand. His wet palm was a natural fit in mine, as if meant to be there.

  “Thank you for your help.” I was suddenly aware of my drenched dress that stuck to my skin, of what it might reveal.

  He blinked away the water that was falling from his hair onto his face. “Bitte schön. Welcome?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “That’s the right word.”

  The storm raged outside and another clap of thunder shook the door. His hand tightened around mine.

  “Unheimlich. Der Regen!” He widened his eyes and pointed at the door.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Lorraine!” Daddy’s voice called out. Jens quickly let go of my hand.

  “Over here!”

  Jens sighed and looked toward the other side of the barn, as though he was reluctant to go back to work. I thought of h
ow hard he’d been trying to learn our language.

  “I could help you learn English.”

  “You help?”

  “Yes. Help. Teach you.”

  “Ya,” he said. He looked unsure, but then his dimple deepened as he grinned at me.

  “Okay?” I said.

  “Okay!” Jens repeated. “Help.” Then he laughed and shook his head like a dog, splattering me with wetness.

  Thirteen

  1944

  “Where are you from?” I asked him. “What part of Deutschland? Munich?”

  He shook his head. “Emden, Ostfriesland.” He opened his dictionary and turned the pages. “North,” he said, although it came out sounding more like “nort.”

  I made a mental note to look it up on Pete’s globe later.

  I’d been tutoring Jens every day for the last week. He was quick to learn, better than I was at picking up German. I reasoned that he’d helped us so much during the storm that it was the charitable thing to do. A good Christian act: helping out a boy who wanted to learn. Maybe he’d also discover that Americans were kind and generous. Daddy said that was part of the intention of putting a POW camp in the middle of Iowa: to show them what good people we were, and to discount all the propaganda they’d been fed by the Nazi party. But part of me also worried that Mom was right and that Jens was a Nazi, and no amount of good treatment or home-cooked food would change that.

  It surely hadn’t worked on Helmut, who glowered at Jens during our tutoring sessions.

  “Brothers or sisters?” I asked.

  Jens put up two fingers. “Edward und Herman.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Wehrmacht. Ah, Deutsche ar-mee. Edward and Herman fight.”

  “Oh.”

  “You?” he asked.

  I put up one finger. “One brother. Pete.”

  Jens looked around. “Where Pete?”

  “France. Fighting,” I replied.

  “Oh.” He sighed.

  We looked at each other for a long moment. The irony of the situation filled the space between us: my brother and his brothers could be shooting at each other right now, and here we were, sitting in the middle of a freshly mown field sharing food and talking.