Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“Her whole family was,” he said. “She’s related to Rosa Luxemburg. They don’t come any redder than Red Rosa Luxemburg.”

“You’re full of it, bub.”

“I wouldn’t take that attitude,” the tall man said. “Your wartime service is being reexamined. There’s speculation that you were actually a deserter. You and Eddie Slovik didn’t take off on your own, did you?”

I could feel my right hand opening and closing at my side. Slovik was the only American soldier shot for desertion during World War II. I looked at the whiteness of the fog at the base of the trees, the bright sheen on the trunks, the water dripping off the canopy. I thought of Tiger tanks smashing through a medieval forest, the tree trunks snapping like matchsticks. “I’d like to know the basis of your statements about me and my wife.”

“The only witness to your flight from the Ardennes Forest was Sergeant Hershel Pine. It’s funny that you two ended up business partners in the States. It’s coincidental that he gave you a partnership in his welding business, a guy with a degree in history and no experience in engineering?”

“I think I’m going to get back to work now,” I said. “There might be some coffee up there in the welding truck. Help yourselves.” I walked away.

“Does your wife belong to a cell here?” said the man in t

he rain hat.

“A what?”

“You have a hearing problem?”

“You keep your lying mouth off my wife.”

“Is that a threat?”

I walked toward both of them, my palms tingling. I could see Hershel strolling along the edge of the trench, a shovel propped across his shoulders, his arms spread on the handle. He smiled as the sunlight broke on the tops of the trees. I cleared my throat and leaned to one side and spat. “That’s my sergeant coming. He lost half his foot walking out of the Ardennes. Show him some respect. Regarding me and my wife, do your worst. We’re not afraid of you.”

THAT NIGHT I couldn’t sleep. Rosita lay inside my arms in our double bed at the motor court, her eyes closed, her breath rising and falling on my chest. The neon sign in front glowed in a red blush through the window shade, and I could hear the sound of the surf in the distance and the dripping of the rain on the camellia bushes outside. I had not told Rosita of my encounter with the federal agents. I finally drifted off to sleep, then woke with a start, the way you do when you dream about a doorbell ringing or the klatch of a Bouncing Betty when a man steps on it.

I sat up on the side of the bed, staring at the red glow on the shade.

“What is it?” she asked.

I told her about the feds and everything they had said.

“Do they want to talk with me?” she said.

“They’re out to harass us. Nothing we say will change their agenda.”

“Why do they care about us?”

“They don’t. They’re just carrying out somebody’s orders. I suspect Dalton Wiseheart made some phone calls. It’s the way he operates. Grandfather warned me about him.”

“What did he say?”

“That guys like Wiseheart aren’t political. They’re just mean.”

She sat beside me and put her hand inside my thigh. “No pasarán,” she said.

“You got it, kid,” I said.

She took my hand in hers. “What do you think they’ll do now?”

“Maybe they’ll go away.”

“You know better.”

“They’ll try to separate us. They’ll smear our names.”

“All because we offended that old man on the balcony?”