Copper Star Read online

After a few minutes of palpable discomfort between us, I said apologetically, “Sometimes I think living in a country at war has left me with a feeling of urgency, as if everything has to be done right now, or the moment will be lost. Of course, you’re right. The time will come for William.”

  Robert gave me a conciliatory half-smile.

  Then I just had to say it. I just couldn’t keep my mouth closed. “But, Robert, would you object if I tried to learn how to communicate with William?”

  He shot me an aggrieved look. “I have a feeling it wouldn’t matter if I did.”

  This was not going very well. I’d only been in Copper Springs a few days, and I was already irritating him. It had taken months before I irritated Dietrich.

  We stopped for a snack at the Prospector’s Diner near Bisbee. The outside of the diner was a large, steel railcar, with big neon lights on top. Inside, there were stools by a counter and booths with bright red vinyl cushions. I found it entirely charming. I hoped the lingering awkwardness of our conversation in the car would dissipate in the cheerful atmosphere of the diner.

  A weary looking waitress came up to our table, snapping gum in her mouth. Her hair looked like yellow cotton yarn, bleached one too many times. “Cup of joe?” she asked.

  “Yes. No cow. For you, Louisa?” Robert asked.

  “Pardon?” My eyes were wide with confusion.

  Robert smiled. “Would you like a cup of coffee? With cream and sugar?”

  I nodded, even though I preferred my coffee black.

  Then the waitress turned and hollered to an overweight man in an undershirt with a white cook’s cap on his head and half an apron tied about his round belly who stood behind the counter. “Hey, Vern! A pair of drawers. One no cow. One blond with sand.” She turned back to us and blew a bubble from her gum. “Anything else?”

  “I’d like to order one Eve with a lid on. In fact, put a hat on. Hmmm, let’s see. One Black and White for my son. How about something for you, Louisa?” Robert asked.

  I shook my head. I was starving from the long hike around the pit, but I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying. The waitress seemed to know exactly what he meant. She went to get our coffees from Vern and brought them back, slamming then down on the tabletop without spilling a drop. Soon, she returned with a piece of apple pie with ice cream on top for Robert, and a chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream for William, who started licking the spoon with a pleased look on his face.

  “Is that what you ordered?” I whispered to Robert.

  “Whatsa matter, dollface? Did ya just roll off the turnip truck?” the waitress asked me.

  Turnips?! Never one to ignore mockery, especially when I was its object, I scowled darkly at her.

  “No, she just hasn’t been to a diner before,” Robert answered for me, amused and kind.

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  He grinned, humor lighting his eyes. “Here, Louisa, share my apple pie with me. I can’t eat the whole piece,” he offered, handing me his fork.

  After taking a bite, I said, “sehr gut! This pie is delicious! It tastes like Apfel Strudel.”

  “I’ll say. I’m all for rationing and doing my part for the war, but I sure do miss sugar. Aunt Martha keeps us on a strict diet.”

  The rude waitress brought over some crayons and a tattered coloring book for William, but I wouldn’t look up at her. I was still annoyed with her for questioning my intelligence. I took my intelligence very seriously. Too seriously, my father often remarked. I picked up a crayon and helped William get started coloring a page.

  “Louisa, I never really learned how you had met Dietrich,” Robert said, stirring his coffee.

  “Oh, I’ve known the Bonhoeffers since I was a child. My father is,” I paused, “my father was an excellent piano tuner. The best in all of Berlin. He even tuned the concert pianos for the Berlin Symphony. The Bonhoeffers are a very music minded family. Father worked at their home frequently and took me along with him. They were very kind to me. They all play the piano, though Dietrich is probably the best musician in the family. He plays the cello and the violin, and can sight read any kind of music, no matter how difficult. He is a big man, yet he has such delicate hands. Perfectly designed for the piano. I think he can reach an octave and a half.” I looked down with dismay at my own small hands. I had trouble stretching comfortably to a full octave.

  “Did you know that Dietrich has been here? To Arizona,” Robert casually mentioned, as if it was an everyday occurrence.

  “Really? No, I didn’t know.” I looked at him, expectantly, hoping he would elucidate. He didn’t, so I added the prompt, “when?”

  “At the end of the year he spent in New York at the seminary, he drove all of the way out to Mexico with a friend. They stopped in Copper Springs for a few days while they passed through. That must have been in 1931.”

  So Dietrich had been to this dry, forsaken land. Why would he think that I could live here? My conscience started stinging; I silently rebuked myself for being ungrateful. What was the matter with me? This man was kind enough to provide shelter for me, a total stranger, because of his friendship with Dietrich, and I was complaining about the landscape.

  But I missed the country of my childhood, and its seasons, sights and smells familiar to me. Oh, the colors of Germany. Velvety lawns, trees the color of dark jade. So many shades of green!

  I had to stop this train of thoughts. Did I miss the sound of the Nazi boots as they goose-stepped through town? Or screeching police sirens as they hunted out innocent people in the night? Hideous shrieks of “Heil Hitler?”

  It worked. Arizona was already looking better to me.

  “Did you know that Dietrich is engaged to be married?” I asked Robert. “To a lovely woman named Maria. She’s young, very young, but quite well suited to him.”

  “You’re kidding me! I thought that maybe you and he, well, I just thought...” His cheeks became flushed as he looked down at his coffee cup.

  “Pardon? Dietrich? And me? Oh no!” I laughed at the thought. “He’s like an uncle or a brother to me.”

  Just then, we heard the woman sitting in the booth next to us shriek, “mouse! There’s a mouse under the table! It tried to bite my ankle!” Other people started to jump up as the rude waitress ran to the woman’s booth with a broom to swat the mouse.

  Suddenly, Robert sprang into action, as if accustomed to this scenario. In one deft move, he scooped William up from under the table. William held a feather in his hand and an enormous grin on his face. Robert tossed two dollars for our bill on the table and nodded his head towards me, indicating we should leave. Fast.

  We got in the car and Robert headed back on the highway towards Copper Springs. “See what I mean about his intelligence?” I said smugly.

  “Intelligent? Or mischievous?” he answered, but I noticed he was grinning.

  No sooner had we arrived at the house but Miss Gordon marched out to greet us, eyes blazing. “William! Go wash up for supper.” She scrubbed her hands together as if she held a bar of soap.

  Obediently, William hustled inside.

  “Robert, I expected you back hours ago. Mr. Mueller stopped by, mad as hops. He says that William stuck bubble gum on his office chair at the bank, and it ruined his favorite pair of trousers. Now, Robert, I know that man would complain if he was hung with a new rope, but if William really did put bubblegum on his seat—”

  “That’s impossible! Mueller wasn’t even in the bank when we were there. And William was with me…or with Louisa the entire time. Unless…” Standing on the porch steps, he turned back to me. “Louisa, did you see William put gum on a chair in the bank while I was in the vault?”

  Now that I thought about it, William wasn’t chewing gum after we left the bank.

  Just then, William came outside after washing his hands. He looked at Miss Gordon, who glowered at him. He looked at his father, who eyed him with suspicion. And then he looked at me
, wide-eyed.

  “No, Robert. I did not see him do that,” I answered in truth.

  ”Well, there you have it, Aunt Martha. Mueller just doesn’t like kids. He blames William for everything. I’ll talk to him tomorrow…” Robert’s voice faded away as he and his aunt went into the house.

  I slowly closed the car door, stopping for a minute to watch the waning sunset. Lord, thank you for bringing me here and providing safe keeping for me. Please watch over and care for those I love in Germany.

  I felt a small hand reach for mine. It was William’s, wet and soapy. Together, we stood and watched the sun go down. “Going, going, gone!” I looked down at him and smiled. He looked back up at me with luminous eyes.

  Chapter Two

  Come Sunday morning, I attended the service at Robert’s church. It was the first time I had been inside the building. Humble, like its exterior. I inhaled the consoling fragrance of old wood, lemon oil, and beeswax. Along the sides were rows of hardwood pews, with a center aisle that led up to the steps that ended at Robert’s wooden pulpit. Behind Robert’s pulpit sat the choir, like plump pigeons on a telephone wire.

  Above the choir was the feature I liked the best: A beautiful stained glass window of a figure of Christ, hands outstretched, and the words below it: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The window was situated so that the eyes of the congregation were drawn to the Christ figure. As the sun hit the window during the morning service, it splayed the colors of stained glass into rays like a rainbow. Someone had planned that well.

  The pews were half-filled with an assorted sundry of faces, as oddly diverse as the town buildings. Mexicans with sun-kissed skin, Eastern Europeans with pale skin and dark circles under their eyes, even two tiny elderly Chinese ladies. Later, I learned that these two ladies’ parents had emigrated from Canton, China, to work on the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1800s. Oh, it felt a welcomed contrast to the bestial ethnic cleansing of Hitler’s Germany.

  We sang a few hymns, accompanied by a portly woman on the organ whom I soon learned to be the judge’s wife. To my enchantment, an elderly man whistled, loud and in tune, a perfect accompanist to the hymns.

  Robert dismissed the children for Sunday school in the fellowship hall right before his sermon. William didn’t make any motion to run off with the other children, but I did notice he had been casting covert glances at all of the small boys within view, a look of longing on his face.

  Then came Robert’s sermon. Dry and dusty, just like Arizona.

  He had more enthusiasm giving me a lesson on copper than he did while preaching the word of God. His theology was sound, but something in his delivery was lacking. Conviction? Yes. That was it.

  Perhaps I expected too much. I was accustomed to ministers who preached like Dietrich, who spoke to the heart of his congregation. I never left church after a sermon of Dietrich’s without feeling inspired.

  Next came a baptism. Robert invited a beaming young couple with a dimple-chinned baby to come up and join him next to the baptismal font. Robert held the baby in his arms, introduced her to the congregation, and asked the proud parents a few questions of their intent to raise this child to know and love God. He looked surprisingly comfortable with the baby as she peered solemnly at him.

  As Robert lifted the lid of the baptismal font, he jumped back, startled. A large greenish-brown frog leaped out. The mother screamed, the baby cried, Robert looked stricken, and the congregation howled in laughter. The judge’s wife jumped up off of the organ bench and ran to change the water in the baptismal font. Someone else chased down the frog. Miss Gordon glared at William from her seat in the choir loft as he slunk low in the pew, a rather culpable look on his face.

  During the announcements, Robert introduced me. Why hadn’t he warned me? I could feel my cheeks burn as all eyes turned to me. Afterwards, a few church ladies came up to greet me, curious about the new houseguest at the preacher’s home.

  A dangerously handsome man with a closely trimmed beard worked his way through the clump of women. “Fräulein Louisa, allow me to introduce myself.” He took my hand and didn’t release it. “I am Friedrich Mueller, and this is my wife, Hilda.”

  Standing next to the man was a tiny woman who looked as if she might jump if I spoke to her. I had a fleeting impression of a large proud peacock with full plumage displayed, standing next to a small brown sparrow. I smiled politely at the woman and turned to her husband, pulling my hand out of his tight grasp. “Grüss Gott. Where in Germany are you from, Herr Mueller?”

  “Nowhere important. And you, Fräulein? Where are you from?”

  There was something oily in his voice. I didn’t trust this man. “From Berlin, Herr Mueller.”

  Robert came up and told me, wearily, that he was ready to go. On the walk back to the house I asked him if he knew where Herr Mueller had lived in Germany.

  “Berlin, I believe. He’s been in Copper Springs for over a decade or so. Came for the mines. And he owns the bank in town.”

  “Odd. Most people are quite proud to tell you that they are Berliners. It’s a highly cultured city. Herr Mueller didn’t seem to want me to know he was from Berlin.”

  “Why does that seem odd?

  “A Berliner named Heinrich Mueller is head of the Gestapo.”

  “Louisa, this is America,” he said, giving me a fatherly sideways glance. “You don’t have to feel suspicious of people here.”

  Perhaps he was right. Mueller was a common German name. But I still felt uneasy.

  * * *

  As long as I stayed out of Miss Gordon’s sight, she seemed to mind me less. Taking William on outings pleased her; at last I had found a way to make a contribution to the household.

  Each afternoon we walked to the library and went straight to the children’s department. I picked out a few picture books, sat next to William and read to him, pointing to the pictures. He peered at the pages with such rapt attention that I wondered if anyone had ever read to him. Miss Gordon was busy with her housework and Robert was preoccupied with the church. I glanced fondly down at William’s little blond head. He and I were going to be good friends. We needed each other.

  I asked Miss Bentley, the librarian, if she could find any books on deaf education for me and if she could locate the address of this new clinic in Los Angeles that the family on the train had mentioned to me. She promised to contact the traveling libraries and see if she could find the information.

  I wanted to learn more about what options William might have. I would worry about Robert’s reaction to my research project later. For now, I was just gathering facts. Certainly, he couldn’t object to fact-gathering.

  One morning, Miss Gordon asked me to pick up her groceries at Ibsen’s General Store, so off William and I went, grateful for an excuse to get out of the house.

  Rosita Gonzalves, an olive-skinned, well-padded Mexican woman with fruit earrings that dangled down to her shoulders, bustled right up to us as we came through the store door. “Hola, Louisa. ¿Como estas? Hola, Guillermo,” she stroked William’s head, obviously familiar with him. “I am Rosita. I live two doors down from Father Gordon.”

  I thought I had noticed her as she walked past the house now and then. “How are you, Rosita?” I couldn’t help but stare at her earrings. Bananas, grapes, strawberries, all hanging in a cheery row. They reminded me of my father’s fishing lures.

  “Today, I am very sad. It is your hair. Your hair makes me sad. We must do something about your hair.”

  I put one hand on the lone, fat braid hanging down my back, wondering what she meant.

  “Is too…too…antique,” she rued.

  Oh, that.

  Rosita was probably right. The more accustomed I became to modern American fashion and hairstyles, the frumpier I felt. American women wanted people to look at them. In Nazi Germany, it was prudent not to be noticed.

  As Rosita chattered on, my mind wandered to a story Dietrich told once abo
ut his twin sister, Sabine. In 1938, as anti-Jewish regulations started to escalate in Germany, all Jews were required to carry the letter “J” in their passports. As a result, many Jewish families made a last-minute dash for freedom before it might be difficult to leave the country.

  Sabine’s husband was a believing Jew and, like me, would be affected by those new regulations. They decided to leave Germany before the borders were closed. I would never forget Dietrich’s recollection that Sabine wore a long, brown suede jacket to placate the German officials. I understood it perfectly.

  Reluctantly, I asked, “What do you suggest, Rosita?”

  “A bob. All of the Hollywood movie stars have a bob now. You are young and pretty. You should not look so antique. You come into my shop, and we fix you up. Maybe we find you a boyfriend, sì?” She winked and smiled a wide, toothy grin.

  No thank you to the offer of finding me a boyfriend, I thought to myself. But the bob, that I might consider. First, I had to find out what a “bob” was.

  William and I took the long way home and walked past the school. The children were having recess. I watched William’s face as he stared at a group of boys playing kickball. He looked so wistful, longing to be included. Just to be a normal boy. Suddenly, one of the boys blasted the kickball out of the schoolyard. It bounced in the street and landed on the ground near William. He picked it up as a boy ran up to him to retrieve the ball.

  “Hey, you’re the preacher’s dummy that don’t talk. Thanks, dummy,” sneered the boy, as William smiled benignly and handed the ball back to him, unaware of what the boy was saying to him. I recognized the boy from church last Sunday.

  When the boy returned to his circle of friends, he told them something, then turned and pointed back toward William. The group of boys laughed, mercilessly, before returning to their game. I looked protectively at William, but thankfully, he hadn’t noticed the boys. He was already walking ahead of me, kicking a can up the street.

  In a flash of blinding insight, I understood why Robert was so reluctant to let his son face the outside world.