Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene Read Free Book Online

seemed relieved. “No great credit to me.” He showed fine, white teeth. “My mother was born in Manchester, in England, and my father was educated in London.”
    “Gee, that’s something,” I said, immediately regretting my“gee.” “Being born in one country,” I went on, “and then having to go clear over to another to get educated.”
    “Keep in mind the relative smallness of European countries. It’s like being born in Arkansas and going to a university in, say, Tennessee.”
    “Oh,” I answered, still feeling the grandeur of it. “What did he study in England?”
    “History. He’s an historian.”
    “I never met an historian. What do they do? Teach?”
    “What is your name?” he asked, quietly.
    “Well, my real name is Patricia Ann Bergen,” I said, grateful that I was able to remember. “Mostly, though, my friends call me Patty.”
    “And my real name is Frederick Anton Reiker, and when I had friends they always called me Anton. So I hope you will too, Patty.”
    “O.K.,” I said, feeling too shy to speak his name.
    “Back to your questions.” He sounded very businesslike. “My father is a professor at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Before the war he wrote two books and a great many articles, but not any more. Now nobody is allowed to write.” Anton sighed as though he had just run out of energy.
    “And did you teach too?” I asked, wanting to know everything there was to know about him.
    Anton moved his head from side to side. “Before I became a cotton picker I was a private in the German Army and before that a medical student.”
    “Someday when the war is over,” I heard the sound of conviction in my voice, “you’ll go back to school, become a doctor.”
    Anton shrugged. “Someday—perhaps.” Then with a grin calculated to banish heaviness he said, “I believe it’s here in the cotton fields of Arkansas that I’m destined to find fame and fortune.” My smile joined his.
    “Yes,” I agreed. “You and Mr. Eli Whitney.”
    “Eli Whitney?” Anton repeated. “Should I know him?”
    I searched his face for fraud. Surely a man as smart as he would know what every third-grader knows. “Well, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin; it sucks all the seeds out of cotton like a giant vacuum cleaner.”
    “Clever of Mr. Whitney. Perhaps even genius. What is genius, anyway, if it isn’t the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge?”
    “I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to think about that.”
    “I hope you do, Patty. Next time we meet you can tell me your conclusions.”
    A distant voice intruded upon us. “All right, boys, the truck is leaving. Let’s go.”
    Anton took a dollar bill from a cocoa-brown wallet made of the smoothest calfskin. A fine wallet, better even than our very best ones and they sell for five dollars. I counted back the change.
    “Good-bye, Patty.”
    “Good-bye Anton. I hope you’ll be all right.”
    As he turned to go, my eyes closed. I found myself carrying on a silent conversation with God. Oh, God, would it be at all possible for Frederick Anton Reiker to become my friend? I understand that it’s not an easy request, but I would be so grateful that I’d never bother you for another thing. But ifthis is something you can’t arrange, then could you please keep him safe so that he can return to his own country and become a doctor? Thank you, dear God.
    “Patty!” Anton’s voice. I opened my eyes. He was pointing to some object behind the glass-enclosed jewelry counter. “Sell me this pin. The round one in back that looks like diamonds.”
    I followed his pointing finger. It was big and gaudy, nothing that Anton would in a million years buy. “Not this one?” I asked, expecting to be embarrassed by so obvious a mistake.
    “Exactly right!” he practically shouted, as he took the pin tagged a dollar, dropped the money into my hand, and went off grinning a different, more jaunty kind of