John Brady - Poachers Road

Frau Himmelfarb undid her scarf then. Felix imagined her careful braids golden yellow again, a younger Mrs. Himmelfarb dancing, laughing. It would have been centuries before she became mother to a retarded kid way up here in the middle of nowhere.

“Well,” said Gebi. “Fair enough. But I wish Hansi were here.

We could show him our toys. It’s too bad.”

The door handle went down and Hansi Himmelfarb stood in the doorway. He was holding a kitten. Felix thought he heard Gebi sigh.

“Well, Hansi,” he said in a voice Felix hadn’t heard before.

“May we meet your kitten?”

Felix didn’t want to stare. He’d seen Down’s people before.

Who hadn’t? But there was the look of a deer or something to him.

Maybe it was the stubble hair or freckles. He could be 20, or 40.

Gebhart was on his feet now. He was allowed to scratch the kitten’s belly and have his fingers chewed a little in return.

Hansi was suddenly unsure of something. He walked away, and stopped by the sink. He closed his eyes as he stroked the kitten.

Gebhart sat down again and looked at Himmelfarb.

“The boy is up at night,” said Himmelfarb. “He is afraid to sleep, he says.”

“Regressing,” said Frau Himmelfarb, and glanced at her son, who seemed oblivious to their words. She began pouring hot water from the kettle into a jug. Instant coffee, Felix believed. It was better than nothing: a little.

“Well what has he told you? You said ‘puppets,’ was it?”

Himmelfarb hesitated.

“‘Puppets.’ Mostly that. Puppets, forest.”

Hansi opened his eyes and looked at his father, before turning his eyes toward Felix.

“The woods? He likes to go in there, you told me before.”

“He’s regressing,” said Mrs. Himmelfarb again. “Something bothers him.”

Felix spooned out some cream. When he stole a look back at Hansi, the eyes were closed again. Frau Himmelfarb carried over the tray. The Thermos jug had that scorched smell of instant coffee, all right.

“That’s too bad,” Gebhart said. “It must be hard on you.”

“All he says is ‘sleep’ when I ask him. “‘Sleep’ or ‘sleeping.’”

“Do you need a sleep, Hansi?” Gebhart called out. “A nice sleep?”

Hansi shook his head several times. He did not open his eyes, but held the kitten up closer to his face. Frau Himmelfarb sighed.

“He won’t leave the house,” she said. “Coffee for you both?”

“Three days now,” she went on, as she poured the coffee.

“I haven’t seen him at the club,” said Gebhart.

“Won’t leave the house,” said Himmelfarb.

“And he cries,” Frau Himmelfarb added. “He never cries. He is as happy as the day is long. Even when he is ein bisschen krank even when he’s a bit sick.”

Nobody seemed to want to say anything then. Felix blew on his coffee, and took sly looks around the huge kitchen. The walls were nearly a half-metre thick by the windows. Hansi stood by the sink caressing the kitten. He was looking out the window now.

“It’s been a long winter,” Gebhart said quietly.

“It’s always long,” said Himmelfarb.

“Hansi is always out,” his wife said. “We blow a whistle, he comes back.”

“We wonder,” said Himmelfarb. “Did he meet someone out there? You never know these days, the terrible things. People they take advantage of kids it’s happened, I know it. It’s on the news, nicht war, Mutti?”

She nodded.

“Oh, the crimes these days,” Himmelfarb went on. “People behave worse than animals. You see it every night.”

Felix hadn’t noticed a satellite dish on their way in. He’d remember to look when they left. What sense could an older couple like the Himmelfarbs make of all the crap pouring down from satellite channels now?

Gebhart turned in his chair.

“You’re a good boy Hansi, aren’t you? I’ll bet you are.

Everybody knows that.”

Felix became aware of Frau Himmelfarb’s gaze on him. When he turned toward her, a smile ready, she quickly looked away.

“Hansi,” said Gebhart. “Do you like the police? Wah wah, the siren?”

Hansi met his eyes for several moments. Then he nodded.

“I thought you did, yes. Well, will you meet my friend? I have a new friend, yes.”

Hansi glanced over at him. Felix noticed that Hansi’s eyes were mostly directed toward his beret. He began to believe that Gebhart could well have predicted, and even planned, every move here.

Somehow he worked up a smile for Hansi.

“Come over here, Felix,” said Gebhart. “Felix likes kittens.

Don’t you, Felix?”

Felix reached out and got a gnaw from the kitten on his knuckles.

“Felix will do the wah wah for you, Hansi. Go with Felix.”

Felix tried a hard stare and his best ESP with Gebhart. There was no go there. What if this boy/man throws a fit with the siren?

“Go with Felix, Hansi. Felix is a good boy, just like you. But he doesn’t know anything about farming. Or the woods, either. Do you Felix?”

“No,” said Felix. “I know nothing.”

Gebi gave him a measured look before turning back to Hansi.

“See, Hansi? But I hear you know all about the farm. Show poor Felix. Felix lives in town. He’s kind of lost, you know.”

A look of concentration crossed Hansi’s face. Then he walked to the door, and put the kitten in a basket there. He looked at his father, to Gebhart, and then to Felix. With a sinking feeling, one made up of pity and annoyance, and now a clear desire for some sort of revenge on Gebhart, Felix saw that Hansi was keen now.

“Wah wah?” said Hansi.

“Atta boy,” said Gebhart.

Hansi held out his hand.

“He does that when he’s bothered,” said Himmelfarb.

Felix fixed Gebhart with a glare. Gebhart knew better than to look over. He had already begun to compliment Frau Himmelfarb on the strudel.

Hansi grasped Felix’s hand and tugged on it. Felix opened the door out onto the cement step under the wooden balcony where the window boxes had already swollen with blooms. He heard a cowbell, then others. He heard the talk about the strudel stop, the quiet, before he closed the door.

Hansi had the huge hands of his old man but they were soft.

Felix tried to take his hand back, or at least switch to his left, so he’d be unable to get at his restraints or his pistol even, if this Hansi made a grab for it. Hansi grabbed tighter.

What if he screamed, or threw a fit, Felix wondered. Or crapped his pants or something?

“Wah wah.”

“Oh, I’ll give you wah wah, all right, Hansi. Is that what Gebi does for you?”

Hansi frowned and nodded, and pulled harder.

“Easy, Hansi. I need my arm for later, okay?”

Felix let himself be towed toward the patrol car. He looked over his shoulder, but saw no faces in the window. They could still be watching from somewhere. For a moment he wondered again if this was some joke of Gebhart’s. Had Gebhart or some others at the post come up with this initiation rite, a way to show the new recruit up?

He tugged back a little. Hansi slowed, and looked at him with a blank expression.

He had frightened this big lug? For the first time, he stared into

Hansi’s face. He couldn’t read it at all. He became suddenly ashamed at the thoughts that had come tumbling into his mind along with the resentment and the low burning desire to get back at Gebhart for this crazy things like a cannibal family luring people here, like some dark Grimm tale. If he’d heard right at all, Gebhart had a kid with Down’s, and he and Himmelfarb seemed to know one another because of that. And that was why he’d come all the way up here. Just to help, a bit.

“Wah wah, wah wah.”