Fear Itself Read online

  So he kept going towards home, heading north on the Oshkosh Highway. He could do an easy 40 mph in the Ford pickup truck he had bought two years before, and he made it to the edge of Fond Du Lac by eight that night, then turned west onto the smaller roads of farm land. It was dairy country, with far more cows than people, and the biggest buildings were barns. Not that he could see in the pitch black of a moonless night. He felt rather than saw the flat terrain of the southern part of the state give way to gentle rolling hills, and could only imagine the shock of green peeking out beneath the melting snow. The car’s headlights were feeble, half-charged as if the battery was paying more attention to getting him there than lighting the way. He didn’t know what he would do if he had a puncture, except pray his flashlight held out long enough to let him see the lugs he’d have to turn.

  He always felt half-sad heading home, through the landscape of his childhood, now home only for his nostalgia. Because he knew he had left it behind for good.

  He was also nervous. He had been brought up to tell the truth, so to lie to the people – his parents – who had taught him not to was uncomfortable and then some. As far as his folks knew, he still worked for a bank on La Salle Street, in an unspecified position that paid okay and, most importantly, had prospects.

  It was not entirely invention, for he had worked there for the first six months after dropping out of college. But the job itself had almost killed him from its boredom – he’d once spent four straight days collating serial numbers of Treasury bonds. He’d been rescued by Purvis, by then already a local legend – even before he had led the shootouts with the Barker gang. Purvis had taken him on as an assistant, halfway in the pecking order between the (all-female) typing pool and the FBI agents reporting to Purvis.

  ‘You’re going to have to learn fast, young man,’ Purvis had said, in the velvety tones of the Deep South. ‘Ah haven’t got time, nor the patience, to be teaching you. But if you’re half as quick thinking on your feet in an office as I hear you were on the gridiron, you should do just fine.’

  He must have done all right, since it was Purvis who after his first two years pushed him to apply to be an agent. He’d needed every bit of Purvis’s clout even to be considered – he was under the minimum age of twenty-five, and he’d never got his BA, much less the law degree or accounting qualification the Bureau liked its agents to possess. There were enough irregularities to his application, in fact, that Hoover himself would have to approve it. But Purvis had been reassuring: ‘You’re applying from the inside, Jimmy, which helps a lot. And there’s a dispensation for athletes – not official, but it does exist. Hoover’s nuts about them. When he sees you were second team all-American in your sophomore year, he won’t care if you were twelve years old and never graduated high school.’ Though not even his football stardom would have saved him if he had been caught lying after filling out the medical questionnaire. It wasn’t his only omission; he also hadn’t listed his sometime girlfriend Stacey Madison on his list of close acquaintances, knowing her former membership of the Communist Party would not go down well with his vetters.

  He’d got through, and after training received his badge – and his gun. Not that he ever expected to use the latter outside a firing range. For all its gung-ho reputation, the Chicago office had only a few agents who had ever drawn their weapons in anger. And none of them boasted about it, or acted like it was a notch on their career bedpost others didn’t have. There had been one agent, a certain Mueller, who had been known to be too eager to use his gun (two of the robbers he’d cut down had been shot in the back). He’d been transferred within a month of Purvis taking over – the SAC told Tatie that he didn’t want trigger-happy agents on his staff.

  Nessheim’s luck with his tyres held, even on the sharp gravel of the road north of Green Lake. Two miles south of Bremen he came down the hill into the small valley, where white snow banked on one side of the road helped light the way as the dusk moved close to dark. He pulled onto the rough drive that moved left around the old farmhouse, set back a hundred yards from the road. It was two storeys, white pine, built by a farmer in the 1880s, with an attic and basement, four bedrooms, and the standard layout of Midwestern farmhouses everywhere – big kitchen, pantry, small dining room, formal parlour, and the second smaller sitting room where he had spent evenings as a boy reading and listening to the radio with his parents.

  He came into the kitchen through the back door, to find his mother at the stove. She heard the outer swing door slam behind him and looked up, beaming. Wiping her hands on her apron, she held out both arms and he crossed the room and enveloped her in a hug.

  ‘Oooh, don’t crush me, Jimmy,’ she said with a laugh. She was a small woman, with thin arms and a brittle frame; her hair, once a rich chestnut brown, was starting to grey. She was a worrier.

  ‘You made good time,’ she said, looking at the clock on top of the wall cupboard.

  ‘Not bad. Where’s Papa?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s resting,’ his mother said, trying to sound matter of fact.

  ‘Is he all right?’ It was just after eight; his father never went to bed that early.

  ‘Sure he is. Just a bit tired. The car’s in the shop. The walk takes it out of him.’

  So his father was walking two miles into town and two miles back to work in someone else’s store.

  ‘You should have told me, Mom. I’d have paid Karlsen to fix it right away. You know that.’

  His mother gave a resigned smile. ‘You know your father.’

  ‘He’s just being stubborn.’ His father was reluctant to let his son help, not that Nessheim had been able to do much when it really mattered. Like save his store, or the farm.

  ‘I’m making good money now. You know that. I hope you’re using the money I send you.’

  She avoided his look. ‘You should save your money. There’s night law schools I’ve read about. Why—’ she was starting to say, when his father appeared from the back stairs.

  ‘Hello, Papa,’ said Nessheim, as his old man ducked under the old low doorway and came into the kitchen. He was tall, almost as tall as his son, and broader – with the wide shoulders that came down from generations of Swabian farmers. His hair was the colour of bleached wheat, cropped short with none of his wife’s curls or his son’s waviness, and his features were unwittingly handsome – he seemed to have no idea how he appeared to others. Unusually in these parts, his eyes were brown. They shook hands, as awkward a greeting as a kiss on the cheek. His father was not a cold man, his son had long since realised, just an uncomfortable one, his feelings held in check by a caution based on experience. As a boy Jimmy had found his father a pillar of quiet strength; now he just seemed tired, even after a nap that was meant to refresh.

  ‘Gut geschlafen?’ his mother asked, and his father nodded quickly.

  They had Spätzle and Hasenpfeffer for supper, fried rabbit his mother made with chopped onions and sour cream. The heavy German comfort food of childhood; in Chicago Nessheim’s meals were snatched affairs – sandwiches and hot dogs and diner food, except when his landlady, Mrs Schneiderman, bullied him into one of her suppers.

  While they ate they talked, though Nessheim was reluctant to say much about his ‘job’. His mother described a letter from Nessheim’s sister, Kathy, who lived in the northernmost reaches of Upper Peninsula of Michigan with her husband, a Lutheran minister, and their three children. They were effectively snowbound up there each year from November until April, and Kathy was planning to visit the following month, snow melt allowing.

  While Nessheim cleared the table and his mother put out an apple cake, he asked his father how business was at Merlin’s store. His father sighed. ‘Not too good. Money is tight again. Alberg at the bank says they’ve cut back their lending fifteen per cent in the last three months. Not that I’m looking to borrow,’ he said with a smile that contained a wince, like a sweet apple enveloping a worm.

  In the morning he went with his father into town,
for Nessheim’s aunt and uncle were coming to lunch and they needed supplies. They drove in silence, punctuated only by his father’s laconic remarks on the neighbouring farms they passed – the Enschafts were selling up, Godberg’s daughter had polio. It was the local news – and these days it seemed news was never particularly good.

  Bremen was a pretty town of late-nineteenth century establishment, with high-gabled white pine houses, and shady maple-lined sidewalks. The main street was three blocks long, and had threatened in the prosperous twenties to expand, but had now contracted, with six or seven For Sale signs hanging over the windows of unoccupied shop fronts. Nessheim stopped by Stimpson’s hardware store but didn’t park.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of things to do myself,’ he said.

  His father arched an eyebrow. ‘Your mother wants some special rye bread from the bakery,’ he said. ‘Your uncle likes it,’ he added, the flatness in his voice suggesting what he thought of Nessheim’s uncle. ‘You want me to get it?’

  Nessheim knew his father was trying to make it easy for him, but he shook his head. ‘I’ll go get it, then pick you up here.’

  He stopped first at Karlsen’s, where he paid eighteen dollars to have Henry Karlsen fix and return his father’s car. Then he walked towards the bakery, two blocks down the street. Town was always busy on a Saturday morning, and after the anonymity of city life, it was a jolt to know most of the people he passed. Even those he didn’t recognise seemed to know him, saying, ‘Hey, Jimmy.’ He’d forgotten that once he had been a Big Man in a Small Town, thanks to a game he’d never play again.

  As he neared Kretchmer’s he could see people lined up for bread and sweet rolls – the cinnamon pecan ones were a speciality. He stayed outside, staring through the big pane window until he caught Lou Anne Fisher’s eye, and saw the big-boned girl nudge Trudy.

  He walked around the side of the bakery into the small yard behind the building and waited until Trudy came out, hurriedly but empty-handed – in the past she would have been carrying a warm cruller for him, fresh from the oven. Her blonde hair was tied up and covered in a headscarf, accentuating the size of her blue eyes and the crooked pout of her lips, which were cracked from the heat of the bakery. Nessheim noticed flour marks streaked across her lilac baker’s blouse, and felt as if they were meeting on business. But then, in a way they were – unfinished business.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said.

  ‘I wasn’t sure myself,’ he said.

  She looked around to see if anyone was watching, something she had never done in the past. It was he who had always been nervous, ducking out of sight when Mrs Fosdick came out to hang up the wash in her yard.

  ‘I’m glad to see you,’ she said, and for a brief moment he wondered whether maybe things hadn’t changed after all. But of course they had.

  ‘It’s good to see you too.’

  ‘You still working for the F … B … I …?’ She gave a small titter, though she had been proud when he had first told her where he was going to work.

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘Your folks know yet?’

  ‘No,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ll have to tell them, but—’

  She interrupted with a knowing laugh. ‘I know – the time’s not right.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d keep my secret.’

  She looked at him, uncertain whether to agree or take offence.

  ‘Well,’ he said, thinking of what to say.

  But she wasn’t listening to him. ‘There’s something I want to tell you.’

  ‘What’s that?’ He didn’t think she was going to announce she was pregnant, since in five years of going out together she had never slept with him. He remembered Stacey Madison’s louche reaction when he’d told her that: she’d said, wheezing with laughter, ‘What do you expect from a girl named Trudy?’

  ‘I’ve been seeing someone, and it’s serious.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. He couldn’t claim the news was unexpected. She was lovely, ziemlich und zaftig as his mother had been too fond of saying, a real catch for any man willing to spend the rest of his life in a small Wisconsin town.

  ‘The thing is, Jimmy,’ and he realised she was covering one hand in a pantomime of coyness, ‘I’m engaged now.’ She blushed as her hand slipped down and he saw on her finger a single stone, fiery ruby red, set on a thin gold band. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Not dismayed, just startled. He had always assumed he would be buying her an engagement ring, though he had never got as far as imagining what it might look like.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said, trying to put energy into it. ‘Who’s the lucky Joe?’

  ‘It’s Alex, Jimmy. Burgmeister. I know you were never friends, but I hope I have your good wishes.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ he said mechanically, but he was taken aback by the news, though it made sense: Alex Burgmeister was a big, beefy fellow who’d gone to high school with Nessheim and Trudy, where he’d followed a work ethic noteworthy for its admirable intensity and less attractive joylessness. He didn’t have sick days, he never flunked a quiz, and he didn’t make jokes. His father ran the local grain cooperative where Alex worked now; one day he would take over that farming hub. He was a safe, good bet. Nessheim smiled at Trudy now with authentic goodwill, along with some regret. Not much regret – he knew he had escaped.

  When they got home Uncle Eric was sitting in the parlour in the rocking chair, laughing in the loud way he had. A relatively recent émigré, arriving in the early twenties rather than starve in Kaufbeuren, he showed neither gratitude nor admiration for his new country, remaining a reconstructed German burgher at heart and, bosomed by a German-American community, unafraid to show it. His deprecating views of his adopted land were expressed with gusto. By implication he seemed to regard his wife’s relations, grateful for their Wisconsin lives, as hopelessly timid.

  Nessheim pecked the cheeks of his aunt, a shy woman who seemed to shelter in the large shadow her husband cast, and then shook hands with his uncle. They were drinking iced tea, and Nessheim held back when he poured out a glass for himself, since he knew Uncle Eric would want a refill before lunch was served.

  The meal prepared by Jimmy’s mother was immense even by her German standards. There was schnitzel, with fried potatoes and sauerkraut, and two kinds of sausage (liver and spiced pork chopped roughly), and a basket of the bakery rye bread passed around with butter churned at Dreigenberg’s dairy farm down the road. Once it would have been their own butter, but the cows had been sold three years before. There was corn relish, too, pickles in a glass dish, and green beans in brine, all bottled the summer before by Nessheim’s mother.

  ‘So how is the life in the Big City?’ asked Uncle Eric as he tucked in. Fifteen years in America had only partly subdued the fruity yodel-like tones of his native Bavaria, and his occasional difficulties pronouncing W gave an oddly child-like cast to his booming cadences.

  ‘It’s good,’ said Nessheim and kept it at that. He knew Uncle Eric’s views of the metropolis.

  ‘We weren’t sure what you might be bringing back with you. Were we, Greta?’ said Eric, giving his wife a sly look. ‘A Schwarzer for Easter maybe. It could help your mother with the house-vork.’

  ‘Eric!’ said Greta, trying to sound shocked. Nessheim’s mother smiled cautiously, while his father did his best to ignore his brother-in-law.

  ‘The boy knows I’m joking,’ said Eric without concern. ‘But is it true, Jimmy? There are clubs where nigger men dance with white women?’

  ‘Of course, Uncle Eric,’ said Nessheim brightly. ‘But I gather in Berlin it’s been standard practice for years.’

  Eric gave a forced, fleeting smile to show he too could take a joke. ‘That was the case, I admit. But not since the new regime.’

  ‘Well, we haven’t advanced that far in America. FDR has had other priorities.’

  ‘Ja. Putting riff-raff to vork while honest men struggle.’ He was
no longer smiling.

  ‘A lot has been built,’ said Nessheim’s father quietly.

  ‘Badly built,’ Eric declared, puffing out his cheek. ‘Of course we Germans are the best engineers in the vorld.’

  Nessheim said, ‘Americans seem to do okay.’

  ‘Bah!’ Uncle Eric crinkled his nose.

  ‘The Empire State Building – there’s nothing like that in Germany, Uncle Eric.’

  ‘Bah!’ his uncle said again, slapping a fat hand through the air as if swatting a fly. ‘Americans have all this space, and yet they want to go up. Ridiculous. There is no Lebensraum in a skyscraper.’

  ‘What about the Golden Gate Bridge? It’s going to open this spring – the longest suspension bridge in the world.’

  ‘A bridge. Who can be excited about a bridge, when Germany has built the Autobahn?’

  After lunch they sat and had coffee in the parlour, then Uncle Eric looked at his watch. ‘You know what time it is?’ he asked rhetorically.

  ‘What’s wrong, dear?’ his wife asked with concern.

  ‘Three o’clock. Can we listen to the radio?’

  ‘What for?’ asked Nessheim’s father. He usually had it on in the evening, for concerts broadcast from Milwaukee or Chicago. And he had liked listening to Roosevelt – at least at first, when his fireside chats were cheering.

  ‘Father Coughlin is speaking,’ said Uncle Eric, as if they all should have known.

  ‘Must we?’ muttered Nessheim, and his mother gave him a sharp look. They’d listened a few times to Coughlin several years back, when he’d been an ardent supporter of Roosevelt. Lately, his politics seemed to be turning slightly kooky – his talks alternated between disquisitions on the iniquity of the Federal Reserve and more conventional pieties about God’s purpose in putting men on this earth.