Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online

money to finance his war machine, sir. Actually, the Krupp family are Jews, aren’t they?”
    “Lose the rhetoric, and lose it now. Are we clear about that?”
    “Yes, sir,” he replied. He didn’t look up. His eyelashes were as long as a girl’s, his cheeks as bright as apples under his whiskers. I could hear him breathing, trying to hide his anger and distrust of those he would call people of privilege.
    “What do your folks do on Christmas Day, Pine?”
    His eyes met mine, uncertain. “Pick pecans out on the gallery.”
    “What else?”
    “My mother usually bakes a fruitcake, and my daddy fixes a big bowl of eggnog and puts red whiskey in it, not moonshine. Me and my little brother and a colored man who works for us go squirrel hunting. The weather is almost always mild on Christmas.”
    “That sounds like a fine way to spend the occasion,” I said.
    “I need to tell you something, sir.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “Last night on patrol, Steinberg got the heebie-jeebies when we ran into a listening post. He could have got us knocked off. It’s the second time it’s happened.”
    “I’ll talk to him.”
    “Sir, there’s something else I need to say.”
    I waited.
    “I can smell money. That’s the honest-to-God truth, sir. I can smell old coins buried in the ground. I can smell oil and gas before the drill punches into a pay sand. You ever see a well come in? The pipes sweat all over just before the drilling floor starts to vibrate.”
    “I’m not sure what you’re telling me.”
    “I got a second gift, Lieutenant. I sweat when a situation is about to hit the fan. Maybe Steinberg has a right to be worried. I think the Krauts might try to bust through right where we’re at. I’ve been sweating inside my shirt for two days, sir.”
    His eyes were red along the rims, the bone structure of his face as lean and pointed as an ax. He was breathing through his nose, his nostrils white with cold, waiting for me to speak, clearly wondering if he had said too much. “Sir, I’m not crazy. I don’t go to fortune-tellers or anything like that. I just know things. A nigra midwife delivered me. She was a voodoo woman from New Orleans. She said I was touched. She meant I had a gift. Nigras got a sense sometimes.”
    “Maybe you’re right and we’re going to have Krauts in our lap before dawn,” I said. “Whatever happens, we’ll do our job. I don’t want to hear any more about Steinberg or clairvoyance or somebody sweating inside his clothes. Now get back to your position.”
     
    A HALF HOUR LATER, as the last gaseous, silvery remnant of sun died on the horizon, I heard the sound of small arms popping on our flank. From a great distance, the sound was like fat raindrops dropping on lily pads. It grew in intensity until the sporadic popping became an uninterrupted, self-sustaining roar, followed by the coughing of a fifty-caliber machine gun down the line, the tracers streaking like bits of neon into the winter darkness.
    I climbed out of my foxhole just as I heard the creaking of tank treads, then tree trunks snapping, their snow-laden boughs slapping against the forest floor. The visual and auditory effect of a King Tiger tank’s intrusion into an area defended by light infantry is difficult to describe. Its weight was almost seventy tons. Its Porsche engine could generate speeds of over thirty miles an hour. Its 88mm cannon could hit and destroy a Sherman tank at twelve hundred yards. Bazooka rounds and even the French 75mm often ricocheted off its sloped sides. Forty yards out, beyond a knoll, I saw giant trees crashing to the ground. Then the King Tiger topped the knoll, its front end jutting into the air, not unlike a horse rearing in a corral. I could feel the earth shake under my feet when the full weight of the tank slammed down on the incline, grinding boulders into gravel. For a moment I saw the head and shoulders of the tank commander sticking out of the cupola, its sides painted with the Iron