* * *
—
The dealership, right in the middle of Raleigh, had been easy enough to find. Halliday Cadillac said the big revolving sign.
“I’d like to try the blue one,” he’d said to Leo. “The coupe.”
“Very well, sir,” Leo said. “Please wait here, and I’ll go get the keys.” Bruce Halliday was Leo’s father-in-law.
Everyone in Stalag Luft I had nearly starved in 1945, would have if not for the trickle of Red Cross parcels. As the boom of artillery lumbered closer and closer from the east, the Germans had made the kriegies dig trenches and foxholes. There had been rumors these would be their graves.
Then, an American voice over the loudspeaker one May morning before dawn: How does it feel to be free, men? The Germans were gone; the Russians were three miles away. They’d all rushed out of their barracks. Eddie had found Leo in the midst of the commotion, bear-hugged him and whispered that he loved him. Leo hadn’t seemed to hear.
The Russians were wild and drunk and came in wagons piled high with looted linens and china and silver. They went from house to house, taking what they wanted, smashing portraits of Hitler with their rifle butts. They had girls with them who put on dancing shows for the kriegies.
“I’m out of a job,” Leo had said, watching three Russian girls in short skirts spin and spin on a makeshift stage while a man played a concertina, clapping their hands, winding the kriegies’ howl of longing around themselves like thread around spools.
“More for me,” Eddie said.
Leo had given a perfunctory smile. “You don’t think they’ll let us keep this up, do you?”
“Who’s they?”
Leo had looked perplexed, made a vague gesture encompassing the whole world beyond the partially torn-down prison fence and the demolished guard towers.
Eddie said, “I’d say we’ve earned the right to do whatever we want from here on out.”
“That would be nice,” Leo said, and dread had settled in Eddie.
They’d been airlifted to a transit camp outside Le Havre. Leo had turned distant, avoided Eddie. One day he just disappeared, presumably on a ship home. Soon enough Eddie got sent back, too.
How does it feel to be free, men?
A year later, when he was living in New York, Eddie had received a note in the mail. Leo was marrying his high-school sweetheart and going to work for her father. He was sorry he hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.
“Why would you come here?” Leo had said when they’d turned out of Halliday Cadillac in the blue coupe.
“I’m just passing through. I got a job in Florida with the airlines.”
“I mean, what do you want? Turn left up here.”
“I wish you would have told me this was what you were planning. The whole boring charade.”
“You have a wife.”
“Actually, she died. In a plane crash. I didn’t find out until I came home. And you know that was different.”
Leo touched his shoulder, just for a second. “I’m sorry. Eddie, I’m so sorry.”
“We don’t have to get into it.”
“Pull over here. No one comes this way.”
They were on a narrow road lined with forest. Eddie, too tall for the little car, swiveled as best he could to look at Leo in his unfashionable suit, his tie clip and wedding ring and short, almost military haircut. “Does your wife know?”
Leo looked out the window into the trees. “She’s a good soldier. We have two little girls.” He shifted, pulling his wallet from his back pocket and extracting a snapshot: two toddlers in dresses and sandals.
“They’re beautiful,” Eddie said, handing back the photo.
“Yeah.”
“I guess I just wanted to see you again.” Eddie slid his hand along the seat, stopped short of touching Leo. “You were right. Things haven’t changed. Not in the way I’d hoped. Everyone’s so desperate to pretend we weren’t all just murdering each other five minutes ago that there’s no room for anything but the picket fence and baby carriage. We’re all going to grit our teeth and be happy.”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re not surprised. I envy that. I wish I’d never hoped.”
Leo put his hand on top of Eddie’s. “Who would have thought I’d have the most fun of my life in a German prison camp?”
“You couldn’t get away, could you? Just for a couple of days?”
Leo hesitated. Just when he seemed about to answer, a car passed, and he jerked his hand away. He said, “You aren’t really looking to buy a car, are you?”