The Uninvited (18 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

“Our Own Robert Prager”

A Message from a Murdered Man’s Brother

Six months have passed since three- to four-hundred men and boys wrapped Robert P. Prager in an American flag and hung him from a tree branch one mile west of Collinsville, Ill. Prager, a German-born coalminer, was accused of making disloyal and Socialist remarks to other miners and died at the hands of ordinary United States citizens—citizens later acquitted of the crime of his murder.

In August 1917, vigilantes lynched IWW organizer Frank Little near Butte, Montana. Less than a month before Prager’s death, four men—a Polish Catholic priest included—were tarred and feathered in Christopher, Ill., to Collinsville’s south. Two other men were previously tarred and feathered in the same region. Only God knows how many other attacks upon immigrants and Socialists have gone unreported within this state and elsewhere.

Almost six months to the exact date of the Prager lynching, my own brother lost his life at the hands of vigilantes right here in Buchanan, Ill. The Buchanan
Sentinel
claims that “vagrants” wandered into our place of business and brutally beat and killed him in a random moment of patriotic passion. However, because of the particular condition of our store in the aftermath of the crime and the specific tools and yellow paint carried to the scene, I believe his death resulted from local “superpatriots” hell-bent on driving Germans and other foreigners out of the region.

Since my immigration, I have learned that Americans have belittled, beaten, and killed their black and native citizens for centuries. The recent number of abused and murdered Germans and other foreign-born residents seems relatively small in comparison to the crimes against the non-whites of this country. Yet this added surge of hatred only proves that America has no right sailing to foreign lands in the name of protecting freedom—not when we’re steeped in the mire of violent inequality here at home.

I do not believe my brother will ever receive justice for his death. I could hire detectives and hunt down his killers, yet I know their criminal behavior will not only be pardoned, but also celebrated. I read the accounts of the trial of Robert Prager’s acquitted killers. I know a band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the courthouse rotunda, and after the “not-guilty” verdict was handed out, a juryman shouted, “Well, I guess nobody can say we aren’t loyal now.” And yet I sincerely hope that Buchanan residents will read my words and join together to protect other persecuted individuals from similar deaths by everyday citizens taking the law into their own hands. I am tempted to wallow in drink and pity myself because of what happened; to cower in terror and expect to one day soon find an overzealous mob coming my way, carrying a noose and a flag. I know that’s what my brother’s attackers expect of me, but I refuse to cower.

I pray that my brother rests in peace, but I will not rest until I finish speaking my mind about his brutal and unnecessary death.

—T
H
E
B
U
C
H
A
N
A
N
W
O
R
K
M
A
N
, October 10, 1918

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

Chapter 19

W
ith my bags still in hand, I used my left elbow to knock on the front door of Liberty Brothers Furniture. Across the street, long and jubilant slides of the trombone suggested that the night was meant for celebrating, not for fretting about ghosts and one’s uselessness.

Daniel answered the door in his shirtsleeves and trousers.

I lifted up my bags, and the jeweled bracelets of the wings clanked down my left arm. “How about that glass of German brandy you promised, Mr. Schendel?”

He threw the door open farther and smiled wider than I’d ever seen him do before—wider than I’d seen
anyone
smile before. I stepped across the threshold and lowered my bags, and as soon as he closed the door and latched the lock, he wrapped his arms around my waist and peppered my neck with kisses. “
Willkommen,
” he said near my ear. “Why is your hair all wet?”

“I washed up to ensure I wouldn’t bring any germs into your home. I want to hunker down with you during the rest of this epidemic and make sure you stay safe.”

“You smell delicious.” He planted one more tickle of a kiss on my throat. “Let’s go put your bags away and have that drink.”

We deposited my belongings up in his bedroom, and he grabbed my hand and steered me across the apartment to the kitchen. “Here, before we get comfortable and relaxed”—he led me to an oak table built for two, across from a cream-colored cookstove that smelled of burnt wood—“I have some things to show you.”

He stopped us in front of three photographs, laid out in a tidy little line across the table’s smooth surface. The collection included an image of Daniel himself, attached to the inside of his Alien Registration card, above his inky thumbprint.

“Oh.” I squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to share these if you don’t want to. I know how much you desire your privacy.”

“So”—he lifted the framed image of his parents from the mantel—“this is indeed my mother and father—
Mutter
and
Vater,
as we say over there. They still live in Germany, as you asked, in the same home where I grew up. And this is Albrecht and his late wife, Gertrud, on their wedding day in 1911.”

He laid his left hand next to the unframed photograph of a young man who resembled Daniel, but with straighter hair and larger teeth. The bride wore a high-collared white gown and a rounded headdress that looked like the sun rising behind her fair hair.

“So, that’s . . . that’s how he looked,” I murmured, and I held the rounded edge of the table to steady myself. Putting a face to Father and Peter’s victim, picturing Albrecht Schendel as a real human being and not just a tragic name, caused the entire scene of the murder to flare to life inside my mind. I imagined that face in the photo a little fuller with age, and I envisioned it all—Father pinning Albrecht down on the ground of the store; Peter pummeling Albrecht’s nose and teeth with a fist that swelled and bruised from the force of the impact; Albrecht crawling on the floor to get away, blood pouring from his mouth and nostrils; Father kicking Albrecht in the ribs with his thick farm boots until the bones cracked.

I pinched my nose to stave off a headache. “Did they really beat him to death?”

“I didn’t . . .” Daniel turned over the photo of his brother and his long-ago bride. “I didn’t show this picture to you to make you feel guilty. I assumed you’ve been wondering what he looks like.”

I nodded. “I have been wondering, and before long I would have asked. But”—I flipped the photo back to its upright position—“I want to know, did they truly beat him to death with their own bare hands?”

Daniel traced an index finger down the leftmost edge of the photo. “They beat him badly, to the point where he could no longer move or cry out for help. And then”—he cleared his throat—“they used something else, to finish the task.”

I winced. “Oh . . . Daniel . . .” I covered my mouth and dug my fingers into my cheeks. “I didn’t know there was also a weapon. What did they use?”

He turned the picture over to its back side again, and all I could see were Albrecht and Gertrud’s names, along with a note I assumed to be the date—
18. März 1911
—written in the center of the paper in a lovely display of slanted handwriting.

“I don’t want to talk about what they used.” Daniel moved on to his brown registration card and released a breath from his chest. “And this is me, of course. I wanted to use an entirely different name when I escaped over here, but Albrecht had already obtained papers for me in my own name. So, at the beginning of this year, when they forced all of us Germans to register as alien enemies within five days, I had to indeed use ‘Wilhelm Schendel.’ ”

I picked up his card and smiled a little at his defiant glare in the photograph. His squished-together line of a mouth looked as though he were trying not to spit at the camera’s lens.

“One would assume,” I said, “that the U.S. would have been far kinder to a man who abandoned the army of the enemy.”

“One would assume that.” He gathered up all the photographs in his hands, one by one. “But this is not the fantastical land of liberty that people portray in stories. The melting pot does nothing but scald and blister right now.”

He carried the pictures out to the other room, and I eyed the wine and brandy parked on a shelf below the kitchen worktable, next to the icebox. I longed to dive straight into one of those beautiful brown or green bottles and drown myself in an ocean of brain-stupefying liquor.

Daniel returned with a loud clap of his hands. “Now, the brandy.”

“I have to warn you”—I stood up straight—“I’m not usually much of a drinker . . .”

“As I said”—he reached down below the worktable and sifted through the bottles with gentle clinks of the glass—“I’m sure you have never experienced a glass of real, honest-to-goodness booze. The type that will make you howl at the moon and run through the streets naked.”

I laughed.

“Here . . .” He carried over a green bottle with a red-and-brown label, written in German. “This is from Albrecht’s collection he imported before the war. Sit down.” He scooted out a chair for me. “Make yourself at home.”

He fetched two brandy snifters and a corkscrew from a cupboard. Then he stood over the table across from me and hummed along with the band across the street while twisting the cork off the top of the bottle. An explosive pop shot across the kitchen. The scent of brandy rushed through my nostrils, practically turning me pie-eyed from the fumes alone.

Daniel planted himself in a chair and poured us each a glass of an amber-red liquid that swirled inside the bulbous bottoms of the snifters. “Well . . .” He set down the bottle and kneaded the stem of his glass between his fingers. “What should we drink to, Fräulein?”

“Hmm. How about . . . ?” I lifted my glass into the air and tapped the tip of my left index finger against my lips. “How about to life?”

“All right, then.” He lifted his glass as well. “To life.
Prost!
”

I took a deep breath and braced myself for the sting, and we both leaned back our heads and drank a hearty swig. Fire scoured my throat, and I coughed and cringed and wiped my lips with a knuckle, while Daniel snickered from across the table.

“
Das ist
gut,
no?” he asked with a glimmer in his eyes. “Can you handle it,
Amerikanerin
?”

“
Ja,
Mr. Schendel.” I sat up straight with my elbows digging into the table and asked, “What should we drink to next?”

His smile faded to a somber expression that caused the skin between his eyebrows to crinkle. “To fate.”

We lifted our glasses to our lips, and after another deep breath, I downed a second swig along with him. I then braced my hands against the table and pushed the burning air from my lungs like a fire-breathing dragon—or a woman panting through the throes of labor pains.

He laughed again. “It gets better soon, after you get used to the bite. Keep trying.”

Once the heat settled, I raised my snifter again and said, “To your brother, Albrecht.”

“And to your brother—”

“Billy.” I took a third swig, a deep one that burned with a little less ferociousness, and then I lifted my glass even higher, above my head, and said, “To Wilhelm Daniel Schendel.”

Ah,
that particular sip tasted divine. My tongue tingled, and I delighted in the sensation of running the tip of it across my slippery teeth. Daniel tapped the neck of the bottle against our snifters and topped off our drinks.

“And to Ivy . . .” he said. “Ummm . . . to Ivy . . .” Daniel held up his glass and blinked at me. “Oh,
Scheisse
.” He snickered. “I don’t even know your last name.”

“You don’t? But what about—” I quickly shut my mouth before any references to that damned newspaper article flew out of it. As I remembered Daniel saying, the paper didn’t mention one word about Frank and Peter Rowan. “It’s Rowan,” I said. “Ivy Anne Rowan.”

“To Ivy Anne Rowan, then.” He smiled and brought his glass to his lips. “And all her lovely loveliness.”

I closed my eyes and enjoyed another swallow just as the band across the way switched to a familiar song. “Oh!” I straightened up tall in my chair. “To ‘Livery Stavle—’ ”

“ ‘Stable,’ ” Daniel corrected me.

“ ‘Stavle—’ ”

“To ‘Liberty
Stable
Blues.’ ”

Our glasses soon sat empty.

Daniel poured again.

I planted my elbows on the table and wiggled my shoulders and hips to the rhythm of the music. “Do you know how to dance, Wilhelm Daniel?”

“I haven’t danced since before the war.”

“You haven’t? Do you know how to fox-trot? Or do you just polka?”

“Oh,
Gott
.” He rolled his eyes. “Miss Ivy Anne Rowan, we don’t just dance the polka in Deutschland. Shame on you.”

I laughed louder than necessary and flopped back in my chair. “I don’t know these things. I’m a naïve American, remember?”

“Well, I can one-step as well as any Yank.”

“I think maybe we should dance.”

“I think maybe I’ll need to drink a little more before we do that.”

We imbibed several more sips, and before long we were standing in his living room with my left hand atop his shoulder, his right hand snuggled up to my waist, and our other fingers locked firmly together. He counted to three, and we rocked our torsos side to side while our feet stepped to the beat of a song from across the way.

“ ‘Gun-Cotton Rag,’ ” he said over the horns, “by Merle von Hagen.”

The music increased in tempo, so we sped up our steps and the rate of our turns, and we ended up spinning straight into a table lamp. The poor thing crashed to the floor with a shatter of cobalt-blue glass. Shards scattered across the rug. All we could do was cover our mouths and laugh at the damage.

“We killed it,” said Daniel, and he slung his arm around my waist again. We kept right on dancing.

We stopped between songs for another drink, and the next thing I knew I was dancing in my undergarments, with May’s gauzy butterfly wings strapped to my arms and back and Daniel in just his trousers and his suspenders. One of my black stockings dangled down his naked chest like a necktie, and his hair was all mussed from my hands. His shirt and vest and the rest of my clothing buried the wreckage of the lamp, and we avoided the mess and giggled like children, and then another lamp broke, and before long I was straddling him down on the floor, gripping his shoulders, watching him close his eyes and moan while we both struggled to find some sort of relief. None was to be had, so we yanked our undergarments back up our legs and drank again, and a pistol somehow made its way into my hands. A pair of safety goggles protected my eyes, and Daniel stood behind me, his warm torso snug against my back. He helped me point the silver barrel toward one of the glasses on the table, but my target wobbled and blurred into two brandy snifters.

“You just squeeze,” he said near my ear, his breath hot on my skin, and a thrill of danger surged through me, followed by another loud fit of laughter.

“Squeeze,” he said again, and I pulled the trigger and fired a bullet into a wall, hoping to God no one lived next door.

He helped me fire a second time, and the snifter burst to thousands of pieces before my eyes. Brandy bled across the table and trickled down to the floor in a thick stream of red. I started to think of the flu and nosebleeds, so I took the barrel of the gun and smashed the second glass to pieces, just to hear it shatter.

The music played faster and faster, and we ran our tongues all over each other and climbed on top of each other, and somehow we damaged more of that apartment. Glass kept breaking. Booze stained the floor. End tables collapsed on their sides. I bit Daniel’s neck and clawed his back and howled with a primitive roar.

The last thing I remember of that bacchanalian night was lying on my stomach in his bed, with him on top of me, and I was crying into his pillow. I sobbed for the dead, and for him and me, and he crawled off of me and ran his hands through my hair, begging me not to cry, pleading with me to stay with him.