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Hans and The American Father Town — PART II
New Fiction, By Jo Neace Krause

      Keeping notes for Klass and Oscar during the day, so I can write them later. Told them I would write, so I am doing it. Left the hospital for a small room in a private nursing home. All day make the notes out of this strange world I have landed in. Have come to one conclusion. It doesn’t take much to make a person feel alone. Make him drink or eat just one little thing he is not accustomed to, and instantly he is in the darkest outreaches of another existence. That’s the way people are. So imagine how I must feel, a kraut to the bone, forced even to drink their hideous weak beer and eat their good home cooking with plenty of ass crumbs and little roach wings floating in every dish.– and you can guess at my isolation.

The leg is mending quite well by the way in spite of the beans and corn bread, and phoney pizza and stale salad plates.

My father is dead and who can blame him? Look at this place! Called my mother with the news. Called and called and finally she answered. By then I had half forgotten what I wanted to say. She was so still, so silent at my voice, and then I heard the tiny, tiny sniffling.

I say I am alone, but I know I am being watched. From all corners their eyes are on me.

This morning I woke to find a man standing just outside my room. A murmurous shadow with its head bowed, and then as if on cue, the head jerked up and in three fell swoops he was next to me with his hand raised, his eyes shut tight, and began to pray for the peace and serenity of one sent among them — the issue of a brother who had gone out to fight for his country and serve his country’s name only to fall between the corrupt flesh of a loveless woman. Couldn’t guess who that was. But the prayer continued in its long and tender endeavor until the chaplain (or whatever he was) opened his eyes to see me gawking at him in amused delight. My hair sticking up around my head like dead weeds. Much taken aback by my rudeness, but then went on to say by way of explanation that this was simply his job. He was paid to do for God, (with resentment accumulating in his large frigid eyes) what God could not bear do for himself. So, I had to take that! Still thinking that over. Ha ha.

So my father is dead. Barely cold when I got here. Imagine such luck! So I must go out and find him in the people themselves. As he existed among them.

Discharged from the nursing facility this morning and took my first real ride around the town. Hired a driver. Stood on the ugly grey little main street. Not a soul in sight. Several drab women , with long stringy hair, in flat heeled men’s shoes with white anklets. . Carrying loaded shopping bags in both hands. Went passed me without looking. Not even a glance although I was dressed in my pilot’s uniform, and stuck out like I was in neon technicolor against the leaden background.

Stood looking in the plate glass windows of a store front, when I noticed a large car carrying a little baldheaded man, then it came back, passed me several times. The same little man who stands in front of the bank like he owns it, his polished tennis shoes glowing. He is obviously watching me for some reason. Did not nod or wave in response to my lifting my chin, very slightly to be sure. Trucks. Convoys of drilling rigs. What can they think when they see me? Quietly they keep their heads averted but I can feel them staring, feel their minds working me over. I keep a smile ready just in case they want to make contact.

For the last few days have made a quick intense study of town society. Find it is run by a snobbish, jealous little in- group , very much determined that no outsiders are coming in here to show them anything new, which would be unbearable no doubt about it. I suspect I have united them further by giving them something to talk about. How can they possibly avoid me? When I walk around the streets dressed in my immaculate uniform. I am very tall compared to them. And very blond of course. While they tend to be short and stubby, although some of the women might be very good looking were it not for the prevalence of that long Scots-Irish jaw showing up everywhere you look., that long -of- jaw, short- of- thigh trait. My god, there are moments of such acute repugnance for these faces...the likes of which might make up a good part of my own genetic material, that a panic rushes upon me, and with such alarm I actually feel I want to castrate myself right on the spot to save the world from further ugliness. But these rushes do not last very long, and I comfort myself with a good harsh Germany cigarette, smoked down to my fingertips, and then flipped into the muddy water of the slow, weed choked river.

Today I have moved from a cramped little room near the hospital to private quarters on a hill overlooking the better part of the town. "Very beautiful", the nurse chimed. "Maybe it will remind you of Germany." She is very polite, but oh, so gross. I do mean gross. I can hear her panting miles away, climbing the steps, while I run ahead of her, even though I am on crutches. Very busy. Very excited. She leaves me to go down into the town for food. If she eats anything except Thrill Food it is a great depravation in her eyes. Must have her Thrill Burgers! Her Thrill Fries! I look at her large breasts with mild pity. She has several like-sized friends who come walking towards me like a city on legs.

I must get in new furniture for although people are slow about it, I know word is out, and that they will be coming to see me. When I appear in the streets it is always with a face prepared to receive even the sleepiest gaze, and to ignore all those other little pretenses of indifference they are so skilled at using., as if nothing could stir them. But I know their ears are up. And I must behave just right, must make the apartment reflect the special image of how I live away from here, in a colorful and urbane dignity.

Sofa removed and new one carried up the hill. Fine silky white sofa and some Queen Anne chairs. Nice little front porch.;. under the stars at night far away dogs bark. Nurse comes twice a week to see to my leg and to run the sweeper and bring what I want from the stores. Cleaning lady hired. Hired another driver. A mere kid who asked me if they have fraternities in Germany. He says proudly that he belongs to one .at the college he attends. "We’re real animals," he says, and I look at him. His small nervous hands and flat round eyes. A marmoset is the animal he resembles. Still on crutches for several more weeks. Everything ready yet not a soul comes to the door. The phone does not ring. Lucky mother warned me how reclusive these hill people can be. Decided to place an add in the newspaper. That will break the ice.

Hans Engers Is at Home At Ten Hilly Uplands To Receive Visitors And Relatives With Information on his father and Late Mayor Verner Heffner. Interested persons may call between hours of lO AM and 8PM. 269-4266.

Waited eagerly all day for the phone to ring. Waited eagerly for the mailman. Listened intently and nervously for footsteps, for the little dog in the next apartment to bark, but all is silent. The rain is silent, falling silently. Town below shrouded in mist .Chill mornings. The population itself has disappeared from the face of the earth, as if swallowed up inside Wal-Mart, or one of the other the great deadly looking shopping malls off the interstate. Obviously they are going out of their way to ignore me. They are into this together. Even the cleaning lady is cunning, sly and evasive. Honey, I couldn’t even tell you who the present mayor is let alone one twenty years ago.

But they won’t get away with any little tricks against me.. Let my lawyers in Pittsburgh know what they are trying to pull, and we went into City Hall this morning to take possession of my father’s estate. The clerk at the desk pretended shock and dismay when we asked for the house keys, her round eyes opened larger and larger until I thought my head would split . "But, but," she said in that babyish drawl they have, "you can’t just go looking around his house. How do we know you’re really Werner Heffner’s son? We can’t open up his possessions to you. Not just anybody can start pawing through his belongings, his things. You’ll have to get a court order for that. Anyone should know that," and she looked at my lawyer. "But before a court order, you’ll have to establish paternity. I don’t want to be unkind, but I hope you understand that this is a legal matter . And that he never married. Heffner was a bachelor. But there are relatives. Other relatives that must be considered."

I looked at the little bug eyed winch as if she must be mad.Of course my father never married! I told her in a whisper that nearly broke my teeth with its hiss. He was in love with my mother. How could she be so ignorant of what went on in this town? She draws back as if she had opened a drawer on a rat and couldn’t sham it shut again. We stare at each other.

And as to the relatives I had heard from them this very morning. I began to smile as I took the note out of my pocket and showed her. It was handwritten on a dirty piece of notebook paper. I know you are one of us. I can tell you have our blood in you. Make them dig your father up and test his corpse. Make them take his leg and place it against yours. I think it would prove you got your bad leg from your father. He always did have trouble with that leg. Varicose veins and blood clots. Make them take his left leg.

"But.... this is not enough to establish paternity," the girl informed me handing back the note and causing me to laugh so loud I nearly doubled up on the floor.

Going back and forth to Pittsburgh now to consult with specialists. But am aware of the note the whole time. Keep it in my pocket, but take it out and read it while bursting out laughing right in traffic. Sent copy to Oscar and Egon. As for the lawyer, he is very good. Thinks nothing of sitting up half the night over drinks discussing the case. It was a very wise move on my part to hire him, someone from out of town. For no one here can be trusted to tell me the truth. They are fighting me at every turn. Obviously my father has money somewhere. Perhaps hidden in the old shabby house they will not allow me to enter.

The house is quite near, a weathered little clap board on the hillside with lopsided steps leading up. Slippery wet path. The windows bare. Naked. Like human eyes smeared over with some kind of queer oily medication that makes them sightless. Pressing my face to the panes I could see someone is using the rooms as recycling bins to store mountains of old bottles of all colors and shapes. And there is a dog house where a dog has been, the grass is still worn off in a circle around it. Worn into nothingness. And then .....

Wondering what happened to the dog. Perhaps it is the same one that barks all the time from the next apartment. Absurdly I stare at this dog when I pass it now and try to talk to it, a grey and white springer that is very friendly and wags its stump of a tail. "Have you had the dog long?" I asked its owner, a little plump boy with a red stained mouth , who stared and did not answer. "Did someone give you that dog?" I heard myself shouting as he turned and ran off. A woman came to the window and looked down at me suspiciously. I lifted my hand in a sort of corrupted salute, a fluttering motion of my fingers. The woman did not smile. Must be more careful. Nerves could send me out of control in a second.

The days run on. The chill spring rains are endless. Silent foggy nights. Dew laden mornings. Went prowling around the town in my long storm coat, looking for clues to father whose presence I feel everywhere. In the wind that sweeps in over the lush spring roused hills. Toured the old psychiatric hospital alone without my driver . Alone. Large misanthropic place. Lobotomy rooms with great worn tables. Torture chambers. Hallways so large they have their own weather patterns, light fog stirred around my feet, water dripping in the basement rooms. Been empty now for twenty years. Teenagers ride their motor cycles in the great hallways at night. Bats and pigeons fluttering about the tall windows. Several derelicts crawling out of sight. Yet here my father worked. Had a job as maintenance man. Walked, walked about thinking of my mother. Wanting my mother. My heart fluttering, pounding Here in this desolation falls my babyish footsteps, racing towards my father, my babyish cries that made him turn in the night as he slept under the courthouse tower striking the hours over the town. I hear it still, striking the hours in the misty air, under the great moon, mingled with voices along the dark thickets of the river bank. I wake and turn, my arms reaching.....woke this morning with a dry mouth and cramps. Drank several bottles of beer to wash my guts. Beer tastes better than at first.

Made my way to the local tavern. Why didn’t I think of this sooner? Place filled with men who knew my father. They almost fall all over me, buying me drinks and laughing at stories about my father whom they all admired. Stumbled home at three in the morning. Couldn’t get up the long steps so slept on the grass.

The new nurse, a woman past middle age looks at me squarely, and speaks so primly only a speck of pink light shows in her dark round face as she opens her lips. I catch her staring at my hair, and later plucking a few bright strands from my brush, curiously touching it with a sulk on her mouth as if finding out I might be putting something on it. "That’s where your father slept half the time," she said in reference to the grass. "He didn’t get along with a lot of people. This here’s a Christian town. When a lot of people tried to close the bars he fought that." she says. I laughed in her face with pride for my father who endured such minds. Went out and bought a six pack in his honor. Decided to go back to the tavern. It was nearly empty, being a slow week day evening. Nevertheless I waited around until closing and again had to sleep on the grass at the foot of the steps.

Now news of my paternity case is in the little newspaper. At last a little attention. At last they can no longer pretend there is nothing between me and the town That for forty. years my shadow has not extended itself over this place, and now it rises , physically crosses their very vision so they must lift their eyes and look . Ah, look!

A fine close-up shot in color on the front page. The deep blue of my pilot’s uniform contrasting strongly with my yellow hair. Maybe a little garish, maybe reminiscent of those old German Youth posters that are worth a fortune these days. Those expensive side jabs from the old insane past. Yet there is something weak about me as well. Or is that imagined? Something overawed and rapt which at times gives a certain uneasy feeling that with one push from behind I would go soaring and screaming against the sky in slobbering terror. No, that is just my mind playing around with itself. Perhaps to save itself from ....what? What is after my mind?. When actually I am very tough, filled with a hard and pushing spirit that never rests.

Sit watching my interview on television. I can see my strength come forth. I am striking, very good looking , I admit. My slow accent, my mouth forming the American words is charming. To watch me is to watch a bit of strange provocative theater. I sit in the dark, in the audience, seeing a man with a cool aloofness, a lofty importance, as if he were an apocalyptic creature, like something out of the Bible, pulling a whole town into his life of sorrow. I wept for the man. I forgot who he was and I jumped up and began to pace about in my room, pacing up and down on my crutches. Wondering what was going to happen to him. That man. Couldn’t sleep. Drank several bottles of warm beer before falling into a stupor.

Sought out the town’s newspaper editor in his office this morning. Head aching. Asked him to have a drink with me. I had a bottle in my brief case and he jumped up like he was in great danger.

As if someone had begun to stip off their clothes in front of him. Ha! What a fool. I only wanted to show him some special photographs, but he placed them aside with hardly a glance and took out some of his own. An enormous stack that he kept in a walk-in safe. I prepared myself. These, I quietly conjectured were old photographs of my father, the former mayor. He has been waiting for the right moment to show them to me.

But they were only shots of the editor himself it turned out who had been a basketball star in high school. He had made more rebound shots than anyone who had ever played for the town. And more hook shots. And more free shots. He had scored sixty three points in the famous game against Milford Hills. The town went crazy, he told me. He married the Homecoming Queen. They have three children. Three oval framed pictures on his desk of three little long jawed girls. Can any bottle of liquor be worse than that?

I tried to talk to him about my mother then. I broke open several of my father’s letters about the town, descriptions of the landscapes of the town, the river, the court house, the old jail, the asylum which was crumbling even then. I wanted him to see I felt I belonged to this place .I wanted the editor to print the letters. He took the packet I held out to him without speaking. He looked insulted, as if he were being overshadowed. Which he is , of course, but that’s no fault of mine. And then I dropped the real bomb. The letter in which my father tells my mother twenty years ago who is taking bribes in the bank. I show the editor the letter and he pretends it is nothing. I repeat the name. Isn’t that a relative of Mr. Goodloe? I ask him. Perhaps his own father?

Monday morning . A registered letter from my attorneys. Some good news at last!

Exhumation has been scheduled. The town sexton ready. Father’s thigh bone is to be taken and sent to a famous laboratory for testing against blood and hair samples I have provided.. Wrote mother. Want her present at the event. For father must be given a proper funeral with hymns and music when the grave is re-closed. Call mother often, sometimes several times a day. Faxed her copies of the interviews, as well as the photographs of me in the little newspaper father mentioned so often. Did not these photographs spread across the front page prove the town has taken me to its bosom? She sounds surprised. Gasping for breath at times at my courage. But did she actually think her only son would allow their lives to pass like music no one wanted to listen to any longer?

Clothes for the exhumation laid out. I shall wear a pilot’s cape. long and dark, swooping around my boots. Bareheaded in the wind. Mother with similar dark cape, darkish red in color with a white lily in her hand. Also in shiny boots. The hired photographer and the hymn singers following discretely. They will sing I’ve Been Looking For A Home. It is not an old song but one I wrote myself. Copies to be handed out to all the press.

Problems. New trouble. Judge won’t let us proceed. Judge pretending outrage at the mayor’s old girl friend, as he refers to my mother. Trying to keep her out of the picture. Judge belongs to that same haughty little group of Big Bodies that includes Tennis Shoe Goodloe, who has fallen in love with me it seems. Can’t get me off his mind. Follows me around the streets, reflecting like a phantom out of the shop windows when I stop to look. He is the one who wrote to the newspaper — or caused someone to write — a suggestion that the city of Cologne purchase the old asylum and turn it into a love letter museum. That’s what he considers humor, the little sick nasty bird doing its droppings.

Now guess what? Old Goodloe’s father, the one with the poison paw, has shot himself in the head. Everyone is saying he secretly had prostate cancer. In the bar a man took a long swallow of beer and said, That’s what you get for being a old buck. But I know and Tennis Shoe Goodloe knows no one shoots himself over prostate, a rather ubiquitous condition in old bucks. Cancer can’t go where I go: deep into the secret bowels of shame. The old thief!

Back in court. Stood before the judge with my lawyers to plead for my mother’s presence. I squared my shoulders as if against all the suffering I had endured in this life. An intense look on my face, hollow eyed, but smiling slightly before speaking, as if musing. Knowing I was very pale. A pale light in the waiting room. They carried me home three times this week. Three times they let me sleep in the rain. Chest congested. Cough very bad. Then asked the judge to think how accidental all life is. He said he had already thought about that. "Think about it," I repeated as if I did not hear him." What if we, each of us, had missed all this?" And my face opened then with a smile that was like an intrusion, like a door slowly opening into the sleeping dark where they all lay. "Whatever we have in this world that is worthwhile," I continued. "We get from women. Let no one tell you otherwise. So I must have my mother beside me when my father is touched again by earthly hands."

Room crowded with spectators, strangers of course, media people. Now I sprang my real secret. The one I had been keeping in my pocket. I announced I would run for mayor in the forthcoming election. I though it would be a fitting end to my struggle . I should love to be mayor of my father’s town. In this way the two of us would be united by the people themselves, our two souls could pass untouched into one life.

Judge very angry. Made accusations. Something about turning this town into a circus. I thought it already was a circus someone yelled snickering in a vile loud noise through his nose, and security had to be called in to quiet the crowd.

At last the storm begins to release itself! I am someone who jabs them out of their unconscious stupor they call existence. I am a pair of low beating wings. All this clumsy hometown stuff is becoming very, very nauseous to me. The people all have body odor I now notice. All these bodies like fat gleaners. Fat storage tanks. All the fat in nature will disappear into coffins, locked underground with them. What a contribution they are making to nature! Yet they need someone like me to expose their ugliness to the light. To make them pay attention to time. To impose order. I will do many things for them when I am elected. I dream of change for them, change that is heavily rolling and ripping, tearing into a new age. I will sit in City Hall with the wind lashing down the river, rain falling against the old buildings, my secretaries and commissioners listening to my ideas that heave and widen in the room.

"You’re piling up on me!" That’s what she said. That little clerk with the popcorn eyes. "Piling up." What an expression. She said this when I objected to the registration fee that must be paid for being on the ballot. She put her fingers on the counter and made them go like horses galloping. Hans-Engers-Hans-Engers-Hans-Engers she kept repeating as if trying not to lose her little temper. Piling Up.. That made me laugh.

Very good spirits. Everything going fine. Spent several hours in the bars with my father’s old buddies. But when I emerged saw Wilson Tennis Shoe Goodloe looking from the end of the street, peeping around the corner, I ran towards him on my crutches, fast, which startled the crap out of him, causing him to turn rump and run like he was shitting bricks for the China wall.

Oh, Klause, you must, must come to me at once. Something very terribly American has happen to me. Too American to repeat just now. But don’t let mother hear a word! I can’t tell you how badly handled your friend has been. Oh, what a bunch of Nazis run these little American towns. How they pretend to be democratic and care for the rights of men. Good lord, here they came and asked abruptly to see my identifications. Right on the street. As if I were a mere tourist. "If your name is Hans Engers," they said, "you’ve got no business in Depot, West Virginia this fine morning. Not with an expired visa."

So I was handcuffed and frisked. Shoved around. They told me to shut up my mouth when I started to protest. But I didn’t go meekly, I tell you. I fought them until I was half dead from exhaustion, so they had to get a straight jacket, bind my arms to my side and stick a dirty filthy rag in my mouth. My eyes rolled around. And there was Goodloe watching me with that bullfrog face of his. They drove me here to this airport and where I remain in special custody. You must come as soon as you receive this!

Oscar, what has happened to Klauss? Why don’t you come! One of you. I beg you, do something! Am I to stay at the mercy of these brutal immigration officials for ever. Today I announced my hunger strike, and at the same time placed an ad in the paper for a wife. With a wife they cannot force me out of the country. Already I have lost twenty pounds. My clothes are bagging off me. I can hardly hold my poor head up long enough to comb my hair which looks like a flatten gold crown, and not one word from any of you. Where is my mother? What’s this crap about her forgetting who I am? Her only son? How can that be? If only I had a drink! One little bottle of beer! But all I get is some talk about the DT’s. You have the DT’s they keep telling me.

What in holy hell are the DT’s, I scream, realizing on a sudden it is a new species of lice. For I could feel them crawling all over me, eating out my ears and eyes, making a dry hard chewing sound. I screamed until my throat ran bloody water. And clawed my eyes and ears half out of my head. Then I grew calm. I don’t know how many days I have been here.

Never mind coming to see me. I don’t care if you ever speak my name again. Today I learned to my surprise I am still on the ballot for the mayor’s race! They cannot force me off without a trial, and a trial will take months yet. So what if I win the election? What ever will they do? Ha ha ha!

My spirits are up again at last. And now this morning two women who claim to be my cousins arrived.

They are bright faced, good hearted girls who tried before to befriend me but I was too busy at the time. Now they are very shy around me, but want to know me. They want to love me, they say. And brought me presents. Stationary and stamps. And a little pound cake they made themselves. To break your fast on, they laughed, cutting a small piece and holding it to my lips so I could take a nibble. I think they were ready to chew it for me if needed.

"Oh, it is nothing." they said. "You are kin. You are supposed to be treated this way. And we just want you to know we feel your pain. We are sorry the world has to be the way it is. So full of traps!"

And yet it leaves me angry. The pride they feel helping someone down on their knees, the thrill of lifting me shows in their eyes. The shrewd quaint insult in it. An insult I had to submerge the moment they stood and held out their arms to me as they were ready to leave. I bent forward and embraced them, holding their warm bodies close as if to receive the love so long denied me. Yet I wanted to say, turn loose of me with your young warm arms. What do you think you are doing to me? But they had such strength I could not push them away.

THE END

About the Author, Jo Neace Krause
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