Jay Lake - Rocket Science

“A head injury,” she said. “That’s the last thing he needed.”

“I know that, too.” I suddenly wished I had been a lot nicer to him all along. He needed me at least as much as I needed him. His leaving me for a bottle was no excuse for me to run away in turn. The smoke from the fire stung my eyes as I thought about him.

Lois touched my shoulder. “Does it have anything to do with that plate in his head?”

“He got hit right on the plate, actually. Doc Milliken sent him on to Wichita for X-rays. That’s when he disappeared, on that trip.”

“Oh, Vernon, this is so terrible.” Lois hugged me, tight. I could feel her bosoms pressing into my side. She wasn’t a very demonstrative girl, and we’d never been that close, so I must have been very obvious about needing a hug.

Heck, I hadn’t even told her about Doc Milliken’s hitching post and Mrs. Bellamy’s kitchen door.

After a minute Lois leaned over to whisper in my ear. That about made me jump out of the car, startled with a ticklish pleasure. “What are you doing in Doc Milliken’s car?”

“He loaned it to me,” I said. “I had a problem with the Hudson yesterday.”

“Think we could go for a ride?” She ran her hand across my shoulder. “I want to let you know in person how I glad I am that you’re safe and sound. And you had such a rough day yesterday.”

It was just liked I’d imagined. The convertible had an effect on Lois that my ratty, faded-black Hudson sedan had never managed. I looked at the fire. Sheriff Hauptmann was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Bellamy was chopping down a tree near the flames, looking quite spry for a man with a near-fatal chest condition. Amazing what stress could do. Floyd pulled yet another hose from somewhere down the street.

There was nothing for me except to be miserable and worry about Dad. Except go for a ride with Lois.

“Sure thing,” I said, starting the Cadillac. It was early enough in the day that I even if we did a little mugging I might get her back in time for church. Though probably not Sunday School. I drove down Broadway, away from the fire, a smile stealing across my face despite my woes.

A voice spoke in my ear. “ Wer ist dort ?”

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Lois, stroking my arm.

The voice spoke again. It was definitely masculine. “ Sprechen Sie Deutsch ?”

“ I’ve had enough of you damned Germans!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. I slammed on the brakes, bringing the Cadillac to a screeching halt in the middle of Osage Street.

“Vernon, honey, are you okay?” Lois leaned across the big front seat to lay a hand on my shoulder.

There was no way I could answer her right then. My entire body twitched. I turned around and looked in the back. No Germans there, just an axe and a shovel. Mr. Bellamy was using the other axe on the willow tree, I remembered. I opened the door and got out, walking around the car to inspect it, careful as a pre-flight. I knew perfectly well there wasn’t anything to find, but I had to do it. Hidden loudspeakers. Trick wiring. Some bizarre practical joke on the part of Doc Milliken and maybe Sheriff Hauptmann.

Lois trailed behind me, arms folded across her chest and her face set.

With a grunt of frustration, I yanked open the trunk. Nothing there but a spare tire and some blankets. No bodies, thankfully. I stuck my head in anyway, studying the back of the trunk, where it met the rear seat of the car. Just some flecks of seat insulation. Pulling myself out of the trunk, I grabbed the bumper and used it to ease myself down to a kneeling position, weight on my good leg. I bent my head to scan the underside of the car. Nothing under there either.

I hadn’t expected to find anything, but I really wanted to. Standing up, hands on my hips, I looked around the block of Osage where we were stopped. Not a soul in sight — everyone was down the street and around the corner at the fire. I put my hand in my pocket. The twisted thing I’d taken from the f-panzer was just as warm as it had been before. It hadn’t lost the static tingle that it had acquired after I started messing with the buttons.

Such a fool I had been to do that.

My stomach flopped, and my skin crawled, the scabs on the back my head from Mr. Bellamy’s birdshot itching terribly. I tugged the little piece of equipment out and studied it again. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen — too small, no power source — but this little doo-dad had to be a radio. The Nazi agents were talking to me over the aircraft’s own equipment. Of course they would know their own frequencies. They were tracing me.

Taunting me.

Threatening.

I was certain that I hadn’t turned on any of the electronic equipment in the f-panzer. I wondered if Floyd had done so, if they had gotten to me through him.

“Vernon?” Lois’ voice interrupted my paranoid line of reasoning as she hit a rising pitch — a bad sign, with women. The loving concern of a few minutes earlier had evaporated. “Vernon Dunham, you are acting like a crazy person.” She grabbed my elbow, yanking me off balance.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I caught myself against the raised trunk lid of the Cadillac. “It’s just that I thought—”

“I don’t care what you thought.” She was all the way into shrill now, shouting, her face flushed under her makeup. “Either you’re too upset to be out driving around, or you are inexcusably rude. Now which is it?” She tapped her foot, the very picture of a Woman Waiting for an Answer.

And this was one of those female questions to which a mere man like me had no correct response.

“ Was geschieht ?” said the masculine voice in my ear. He was definitely speaking German.

“Shut up!” I yelled.

“Don’t you tell me to shut up, Vernon Dunham.”

Lois had gone from shrill and angry to hard and quiet. I was really in the soup now. I stared at my feet as Lois continued to yell at me.

“I don’t have to take that from you or anybody else. I don’t care what kind of fancy car you swiped.” She kicked the fender of Doc Milliken’s Cadillac.

“ Was ist die Bedeutung von ‘shut up’?” asked the voice.

I pled my case, reaching to take Lois’ hands in mine, but she shrugged me off. “Honey, you don’t understand. I’m not trying to shut you up. This is so much more complicated, about my dad and everything else that’s been happening.” The airplane, it was the airplane that stood between us.

Lois turned on her heel and walked away, tossing her hair.

“Lois,” I called after her. “Please.”

She stopped and glared at me over her shoulder. “You are obviously very distressed right now. I will make a point of forgetting what happened this morning. But the next time you call for me, Vernon Dunham, there had best be a dozen roses and an extremely sweet apology or that will be the end of that.”

She walked up Osage toward Broadway without looking back again. I sat down on the rim of the open trunk of the Cadillac.

“ Wer sind Sie ?” asked the voice.

Where are you? Who are you? My college German refused to be dredged up sufficiently to remember the list of question words. And this was an awfully retarded Nazi agent, I thought, to be in the middle of America and babbling away in German. The old bat down at the library would have understood, I was sure, but not me.

“Speak English!” I yelled into the thin air. “If you’re going to ruin my life, at least let me understand you while you’re doing it.”

“ Englisch ?”

“English.”

“ Sie sind Engländer ?”