DOES THE BOY MISS HIS MOTHER?
(still in the editing process)

Due west as the crow flies and down off the craton you have a hell of a mess kicked up by mine tailings and a tipsey surface made worse by the afterbirths of tunnel calving: Lucy, Montana, first spot after big slide down Homestake Pass. Listing somewhat into the maze of copper mine below was the Irish Spike Saloon. Place a marble on its floor and it rolls right way to the far wall.  A doppler of shouts and whoops crossed over the snaking wash within range. Shrapnels of dry snow were piled there by sure winds, the soft flakes in the gully’s bed embossed by Vilho's moccasins, Coyote paws at his heels.

Enough scenes of the great director. Vilho was thirsty for the wild and wooly of the human west, laughter, the distraction of discourse, the spin of yarns. Beer. Vilho talked some more to Coyote, “Listen to the sound of Irishmen, my Shekina, Hear the loudness and laughter. Pan* May says the Irish laugh loudly. They are known for what is called malarky which means improbable tales meant to entertain, you know. They come from mean lands as we do and may, as these people say, hanker for retribution as we do. Do they believe in new stories? Do they shoot strangers to even up with fate? A barking dog doesn’t bite and a laughing man doesn’t kill. Does he? You are right. They will kill you not even for fur but I am safe because I am was a mother’s son. As Westernmann says, I will be OK and hunky dorry.” Coyote stands in place before she trots side step back to where she came from. Vilho goes toward the men, still half a kilometer stepping away a turn in the rambla, a copse of willows, scurry of rats, fallen branches.    

             Vilho spoke to himself now, practicing a phrase with the crunch of each stride though the rock till. His words are for people he could see now not imagined but flesh and blood – unpredictable ears.  He rehearsed a fable in the making that bests the cruelties of Vlad the Impalor six million times over, a true tale, becoming truer with each standing room only cattle car on series of a starts and stops say to Konzentrationslager at Buchenwald a short drive from Paul Klee’s art school, Bauhaus, they called it, and a thousand temporary sub camps visible to villages across the marshes of thin ice. Lieber Herr Gott, make me dumb, that I may not to Dachau come. The housefraus knew of these places.

 “Of course there were little rumors about the camps, but no one believed them. We thought that the prisoners might be working hard that they might not be getting plenty of good food, and we even imagined making some prisoners shout in chorus “Heil Hitler. We heard nothing aside from that.”

         An audience to listen must be corralled. The Westernmann uses western words. The men meandered toward the spike in a diligent way, as a scholar might. So go now, inside, tell them rote from the books written by Karl May. Wrap his words of Columbia and its great plains and mighty mountains around the of memory of Europe's great plain of ashes and Westernmann may listen then to these stories that are not about heros, stories that are true beyond death and have no birth, only endless recountings that can have no summation, no total.

          Perhaps start with something comforting such as a greenhorn hero just blown in to these parts, the way Pan* May would. On a tall tailing mount growing wild flowers nested on by a cloud of white moths, Vilho mulls over something about the best part of stealing a U Boat is that you get away. He arranges his voice, ahem ahem Sings do re me and begins his story - legs a straddle, thumbs looped in his vest. He has no vest, Only the tunic of the dead Kreigsmarine with insignias pulled off.

             Vilho begins the first steps of his story, a tale that speaks for the silent. First walk in big, shove open the cafe door, it is solid not swinging. Very wise. This Montana like the Carpathians, or Polish highlands of the birch forest the birkenwald. But birkenwald of Vilho's story is gone, inalhiated along with towns,swapping Poles to Auswitch, for Volks from Weimar and SS farms,  a ten mile swath to make way for ten thousand barracks, four to a pallate, plus lice and those rats taste gamey, of the final solution, where the Hoary Borga winds blow in ice without stopping. There is no stop to this wind. This wind knows no bounds - swagger in, or sautner, flash search for a friendly face, smile, no laugh and look away and then back again out of thr corner of your eye, no shake hands vigorously, or give a wack on the back. Is that how they do it here?  Begin over a bier, no, beer that curious mead of wild and woolly of the Amerikan west. Vilho will assure you, (Are you listening?)  And no, my accent is not really German. And I am not a spy. But he will be Bill not Wilhelm not Vilho. “Names Bill, Old Bill to you. That’s what they call me, yesiree Old Bill.” Almost as if it mattered to you. Which it won’t if you’re sensible, because he stinks and is crazy from being alone in the wild even though yesterday he lobbed off his many month’s of face scrag with his eagle belt handle still kept sharp for such things like skinning another rabbit or whistling marmot shared with Coyote.

For now he rehearses his story for you since your eyes on on him and you jut might be listening:

“On this exact day three years ago, it was the first day of September thirty nine, the American School had remained open despite distant rumblings but the streets were still and a west wind blew in odd debris already sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Thus, our mothers didn’t race after us with school sweaters like she did when I usually forgot. Her name was Sarah, you understand; in three months every female would have the middle name of Sarah typed on her identification card, even Helen whose chest was barely budding. Helen Golden my golden girl. She is saying,

“Those signs look ugly on the quarter walls. The Polish People this The Polish People that.

“Yes I understand. In Model it’s the same only it’s the Germans” Slovakia, yes?

“My grandmother says it’s not so bad there. The propaganda is in pamphlets dropped on them from planes. Tanta was told they flew so close you could see the pilots. The pamphlets said Slovaks support the Germans against Fascism.

“And the Jews?”

“No one worried. We are used to threats are we not?  Rebbe says it’s God’s will. Father is taking the train to cross into Bratislavia to see my Tante. She lives on the border of Tatra Mountains.

“What if the Germans really do invade? The border is right there.

“Invade the mountains? That’s propaganda. Posing like all you men do

“Not me” Volho pushes Helen. She pushes him back. They laugh. They grab and hug for a second. He smooches the top of her head on the yellow brade. She pushes away slightly as in obligation not desire,

“Stop, what if we are seen? You silly boy!

He loves her even more.

Sirens. Loud speakers. We are under attack.

The sun was bright; the sky is famous blue. Across it crosses cut, thousand upon thousands of black crosses, that’s what they were, a sacreledge of shadows over the still forms and runnings on Bankowy Square. Terror from the sky spreds faster than sound, you understand. More coming in, an even flow from hell. Clusters fell out of them, flat then pointing down straight at us, bombs twice a man’s reach, pivoting tail fins to exact targets, in endless series most dropping behind sight and then flew on to the same on the eastside of the Visula River. They straffed slavs racking haystacks. Cows listed then dropped. And death rained on to the shtetls east and further east, Nowy Sącz of Uncle Rubin, Brody of Sigmund Freud’s mother, wedding parties, Torahs and yeshevas alike.

So close they dived, I made out the spred eagle on the pilot’s cap and eyes in his fear face fixed on his target, me. Does his mother miss the child? I rolled one with Helen away in anticipation of fate. He veered. His engine choked and quit. There was no time to cheer when they fell, no cheer at all when the bomber and our homes shared the same fate, with those screaming wheels, fear wells in the throat. your Irish Banchees raising damnation. We remembered in ourselves, spoke sparingly, sought the Resistance, and kept up mundane tasks. The Golden family packed their valuables and necessities in trunks and barely caught a packed troop train bound for Bratislavia. Others ventured east toward Stalin’s Russia where everyone was equal except workers and property owners. Then it happened again.
* Pam: Slavic word for mister. A formal word denoting respect.