A Good American by Alex George Read Free Book Online Page A

we go over,” she said.
    He held her hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “With two horses, we’ll be in Rocheport before you know it.”
    By then, of course, Frederick was getting used to making mistakes.

SIX
    The carriage clattered westward, mile after mile. Frederick stared out the window at the fields of crops that stretched away to the horizon. Occasionally he saw men in the distance, solitary workers toiling beneath the sun. The land went on forever. Jette lay with her face turned to the wall. Every bump in the road, every uneven bounce of the wheel, made her wince. Frederick wished there was something he could do. He wanted the driver, a sour-faced man called Childs, to hurry the horses on to Rocheport, but he didn’t want Jette to suffer the discomfort that a speedier journey would cause. As it was, their progress was steady and unspectacular. At midday they stopped to rest the horses and eat the lunch that Reina Wall had packed for them. Childs preferred his own company, standing near the horses as he ate. My grandparents stared silently at Jette’s stomach, wondering how long they had.
    That night they stayed in a small inn. Childs had declined Frederick’s invitation to join them for supper with a terse shake of his head. Frederick had seen him later in the tavern, alone at a table, staring silently into a glass of beer.
    The next day they set off at dawn. As they traveled west, the quality of the roads deteriorated. The carriage shuddered as it jumped crevices and hurdled ridges. By the middle of the morning, Jette’s face was shining with perspiration. She lay with her eyes tightly shut, her belly cradled in her hands. Frederick stroked her forehead, promising that it would soon be over.
    Halfway through the afternoon they felt the carriage slow to a standstill. Childs clambered down from his seat. His face appeared at the window, and he motioned that the horses needed water. Frederick opened the carriage door and looked out. They had stopped in a small town. Single-story buildings lined both sides of the street, a wooden sign hanging outside each one. Dirty-faced boys in torn shirts ran back and forth across the road. In front of one shop, boxes of fruits and vegetables were displayed on a long trestle table. Frederick watched a woman with a basket on her arm bend over and inspect some pears. The sign above the shop read lebensmittel .
    “Jette,” he whispered. “The grocer’s sign is in German.” When she did not reply, Frederick looked around. Swamped by the sudden bliss of stillness, she had fallen asleep. Frederick climbed down from the carriage. At that moment a man walked by, singing softly to himself in German.
    It is hard to imagine the effect on my grandfather of hearing the familiar cadences of his native tongue at that particular moment. For the last two days he had been brooding about being hoodwinked by the Polish barman. Not even Joseph Wall’s kindness had been able to soften the sting of his humiliation, and with that humiliation came a new, unfamiliar suspicion of those around him—now he saw a rapacious glint in the eye of every native, an unscrupulous trick lurking up every foreign sleeve. So when he stepped out onto that street, he was vulnerable to the faintest echo of home. He hurried after the man. “Excuse me,” he called out in German.
    The man stopped and turned to look at him.
    “Forgive me for interrupting you,” began Frederick. “My name is Frederick Meisenheimer. My wife and I have just arrived in this country.”
    The man studied Frederick. He was well over six and a half feet tall. A scar ran across his right cheek, casting his face in a shadow of violence. The bruised ribbons of torn tissue had grafted themselves back together in an uneven crest of ugliness, a scabbed exclamation mark. His hands were calloused slabs of leathered flesh. Long, thick fingers were interrupted by knuckles the size of walnuts.
    “Where are you from?” asked the man, also in