Buttons and Bones (19 page)

Jill and Betsy obeyed, edging behind a blond maple coffee table.

“May I get you something?” he asked. “A cup of coffee, perhaps?”

“No, we had breakfast just a little while ago, thank you,” said Betsy.

“Very well,” he said and went to sit in the recliner, which seemed to fit him like an old glove. A floor lamp with an angled head peered over the back of it, and Betsy was reminded of the lamp that used to stand behind the upholstered chair in her apartment to light her needlework.

“Now, what was it you wanted to ask me about my wife?” he inquired.

“We’re looking for family stories,” said Betsy. “For example, how did you meet?” Betsy got a notebook out of her purse and prepared to write in it.

He smiled. “That’s a good story. It was in the early fifties. I was the manager of a restaurant in Chicago and she came in when we were about to close. It was winter and her car had broken down. She was cold and tired but without funds to pay for a meal, and my waiter was going to turn her away. She started to cry and I told him to let her stay. I fed her while she waited for the tow truck to come—it took a very long time because the towing orders were all backed up on account of the weather. She had blond hair and a red wool coat that set it off so nice—she was like a movie star. By the time the driver of the tow truck arrived, I had her name and address, and we started to write to each other.” He smiled and lifted his arms in a big, happy shrug. “In less than a year I moved to New Ulm—she had this house, you see, and I only had an apartment—and in a few more years I was manager of the Kaiserhof, the finest German restaurant in New Ulm.”

“How long were you married?” asked Betsy.

“Only forty-five years,” he said with real regret.

Betsy smiled appreciatively at the “only” in his reply. “Did you have children?”

“Yes, a son and three daughters, and now eight grandchildren. They have got their own lives and moved away so I don’t see them except two or three times a year.”

He was proud to give Betsy their names and addresses, and Betsy was careful to write the information down.

“What did Helga do?”

“She was a receptionist and bookkeeper for a dentist when I met her, and when the children were all in school, she worked as a secretary at Martin Luther College. She was still working there when she had the stroke that took her life.” The light went out of his eyes for a moment.

“Is she buried here in New Ulm?”

“Yes, we have a double plot with a double headstone.”

Jill said, “You’ll pardon me for saying so, Mr. Ball, but how did your wife manage to buy a house on a secretary’s salary?”

He looked at her, surprised at the edge he detected in her voice. “She was a widow who owned some lakefront property in northern Minnesota. It was the proceeds of selling that she used to buy this house.”

Ball had a precise, almost eloquent, way of speaking that made Betsy wonder where he’d been educated.

“Did you know your wife worked at a German POW camp up in Cass County during World War Two?” asked Jill. There was still an edge in her voice.

He looked at her for a long moment, frowning very slightly. “Yes,” he said at last. “She told me about that. They hired her because she could speak German. She worked for the camp commandant.”

Anxious to smooth the harsh edges of the conversation, Betsy said, “There are some wonderful things in this room, beautiful examples of crochet. I’m just learning how to crochet myself, but I can tell these are extremely well done. Did your wife do them?”

Ball turned his face to her and suddenly showed an impish smile. “Every one. Plus more things I have put away. Winters in Minnesota are long and neither of us was much into winter sports, so she and I would sit in this room, I with a book and she with her crochet. Of course, sometimes she would read, too. But I never learned any of the needle arts.”

There was a set of shelves against a wall full of well-used books.

“Mr. Ball,” said Betsy, “may I change my mind about that coffee? I can smell it and the smell is delicious.”

“I do make a good cup of coffee,” he said, getting to his feet. “How do you take it?”

“With cream and sugar, I’m afraid. Thank you.”

“I take mine black,” said Jill.

The moment he was gone from the room, Betsy got up and went to the bookshelves.

“What are you looking for?” asked Jill in a low voice.

“Just testing a theory that you can tell a lot about people by the books they own.”

Among the books were modern best-sellers, some biographies, fifties-era books on American, British, and German history, three old books in German—novels by the look of them—a complete works of Shakespeare in one volume, an elderly dictionary, a collection of Norwegian humor—Ole and Lena jokes—and several mystery novels of the noir variety.

“What do they tell you?”

“Nothing much,” said Betsy, quickly resuming her seat on the couch, just ahead of Ball’s return.

He carried an old wooden tray on which rested three heavy steaming mugs. “Here we are,” he said, handing them around before resuming his place in the recliner.

“Were you born in Chicago, Mr. Ball?” asked Jill after taking an approving sip of her coffee.

“No, actually I am English,” he replied. “I was born in Canterbury in 1926, and came to America with my parents when I was fifteen.”

“
Twenty-six
?” said Betsy. “But that would make you . . . eighty-six years old!”

“Thank you,” he said with a pleased nod at her incredulity. “Yes, I am eighty-six and still going strong. I hope to make it to the one century mark.”

“I feel sure you will,” said Betsy. “Congratulations, and continued good health to you. Now, may we ask you some more questions about Helga?”

“Certainly.”

“Do you know anything about how she met and married her first husband?”

“Only what she told me. She grew up on a farm near Longville, Minnesota, and didn’t finish high school. She got a job as a waitress and this Army officer used to stop for lunch every day and flirt with her. She started flirting back, fell in love, and against the wishes of her parents, married the man, who was an Army major named Matthew Farmer. He was quite a lot older than she was, and divorced with two or three children, the oldest of whom was nearly as old as she was. It was quite a scandal, I believe, but they were very happy together. He bought a small house on the shore of a lake and she loved it. Then, after they’d been married less than three years, he disappeared. This was during the war. He’d gotten a promotion to lieutenant colonel and orders to someplace in the Pacific, she told me where ...” He paused to think, then continued, “Sorry, but I don’t remember. He was permitted to come home to see her for just a few days, to say good-bye and make sure she had everything she needed while he was gone. She took him to the train depot and he got on the train to Chicago, where he was to take another train to San Francisco. But apparently he never arrived in California, and he was never seen again. She wasn’t frightened at first, until several weeks went by without a letter. When he was away from her, he wrote her every week, very faithfully. The Army searched for him and called him a deserter and stopped his pay. What happened to him was never found out, and finally, after seven years, a judge declared him dead.”

“What a terribly sad story,” said Betsy.

“What did you do during the war?” asked Jill.

“I was drafted into the Army but they found a spot on one of my lungs during boot camp and sent me home. I believe I still have the spot, but it’s never given me any trouble. I got a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher, then was promoted to waiter. My parents were killed in a bus crash when I was twenty. They were poor and could leave me nothing. I was an only child, and all my other relatives were in England, so I was on my own. I went to night school to learn restaurant management, and I was never unemployed right up to when I retired six years ago. The owner of the Kaiserhof, by the way, is two years younger than I am and still working.”

“Do you like living in New Ulm?” asked Betsy.

“Yes, very much. The German culture here gets into your blood, I sometimes think I’m as much German as English after all these years.” He nodded toward a glass-fronted cabinet. On the top shelf was a narrow-brimmed Bavarian hat with rows of striped cord for a hatband, several medallions shaped like coats of arms attached to the crown, and a hairy feather on one side. “I wear that during Oktoberfest every year, but I gave up wearing lederhosen because I can’t dance like I used to.”

Betsy smiled and asked in singsong rhythm, “Where did you get that hat?”

He smiled broadly, showing strong white dentures. “Would you believe there’s a shop in town that sells them?”

Betsy said, “Well, thank you very much, you’ve filled in some important gaps in the von Dusen family history.” She made a mental vow to contact Larry von Dusen with this information.

They said good-bye and pleased to have met you, and left.

Sixteen

As they got back into Betsy’s car, Jill asked, “What do you make of him?”

“He seems like a nice old man who misses his wife.”

“Cute story of how they met.”

“Yes indeed. Now what?”

“So long as we’re here, want to look around? Have you been to New Ulm before?”

“No. I know the owner of the local needlework shop, however. Cindy Hillesheim—I’ve met her at the Nashville Needlework Market a couple of times. Sweet lady, if a little excitable. I want to see her shop. It’s on the main street and has a German name.”

“Nadel Kunst,” said Jill. “I’ve been in it.”

“Jill!” said Betsy, mock shocked. “You’ve been going to other needlework shops behind my back!”

“You bet,” said Jill. “She has some things you don’t have— just like Stitchville USA does, and for that matter, Needlework Unlimited and Needlepoint Cottage. Not every shop can have every single thing, though Stitchville comes closest, I think, so far as counted cross-stitch is concerned.”

“Well, I never!” said Betsy.

“Oh, I think you have, and probably fairly recently.” A corner of Jill’s mouth twitched. “Anyway, let’s go see Herman the German first. It’s such a pretty day, and he’s an outdoor attraction.”

“Is this a statue we’re talking about?”

“Yes, though there’s also a structure.”

It was Jill being enigmatic, which she did very well. “Okay, tell me how to get there,” said Betsy.

“Go up to the corner and turn left and turn left again at the next corner. That’s the main street. Then go to Center and turn right.”

“Right.” Betsy did as directed, and as she drove down Minnesota Street, they passed a tall rectangle with bells visible in its lifted top. She’d seen churches without a steeple—her own was like that—but never a steeple without a church. “What’s that?”

“They call it their Glockenspiel, but I think it’s also a carillon.”

“I thought a Glockenspiel was one of those Renaissance towers that had figures coming out onto a high stage to strike the bells with a hammer.”

“Actually,” said Jill, “a glockenspiel is also a xylophone. The word means a lot of things. Watch out, here’s Center Street.”

Betsy quickly hung a right. In a block or two the street widened into a boulevard and then climbed a very high hill. At its summit, on the right, was a tall, freestanding cupola on pillars, and on top of the cupola was an immense bronze figure of a man in a short tunic and cape holding a sword over his head.

“Herman the German,” said Jill, nodding at the statue as Betsy slowed and turned into a short street leading to a park. She found a small parking lot and pulled in facing the monument.

“Wow,” said Betsy. “How big is he anyhow?”

“I think the whole thing is about a hundred feet high, which would make him about twenty-five feet tall, including the sword.”

“He looks taller.”

“That’s probably because of the wings on his helmet.” Jill’s mouth twitched again.

“Who was he, really?”

“Armanius, to the Romans. In the year nine, over two thousand years ago now, he led his German troops to a great victory over the Roman legions.”

Betsy, suddenly enlightened, exclaimed, “‘Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!’ ”

Jill said, “
I, Claudius
on PBS, right?”

“Right.” Though Betsy remembered reading the book, too, the old television series had been popular viewing back in the 1970s.

They walked around the monument but didn’t pay the modest fee to climb the stairs. “What, all those steps for a close-up look at his sandals?” said Betsy. “I don’t think so.”

And Jill didn’t want to climb up alone.

So they headed back to Minnesota Street, found a parking place, and stood for a while on the sidewalk, listening to the pretty music from the Glockenspiel.

“Say, here’s the Kaiserhof,” said Betsy. The exterior was wood and stucco in imitation half timbering. “I’m hungry and it’s lunchtime, so how about we go in? Maybe we’ll learn something about Peter Ball that he didn’t tell us.”