Stephan Clark - Sweetness #9

No one stopped for samples, and I paused needlessly only once, after reaching into the open-trough freezer for a thawed twenty-pound Butterball. As I turned to drop the turkey into our cart, I saw the corner display of Sweetness #9 facing me. They were selling two five hundred — count boxes for $8.99, the shrink-wrapped packages stacked twelve high and twelve across and just as many deep. I tried calculating the number of packages in all, but then I saw the two unpacked crates, both still wrapped in cellophane, that were stacked on the shelves high over the product on the floor. How many now? A million? Two?

Ernest hurried toward me like a man with a bum leg. He carried a large white bucket by the handle, but he struggled with its weight. I rushed to his side after seeing him drop his golf club and almost fall.

“What’s this? Where’s the milk? We need it for the mashed potatoes.”

He picked up his long iron and pointed it down at the bucket. “For emergencies,” he said.

I dropped to a knee and read the label: Family Emergency Kit.

“Ninety servings of dehydrated food.” He counted it off by tapping the golf club against the bucket. “Western stew. Potato soup. Oatmeal. Cacciatore.” He was out of breath. “Good for everyone, too.”

“Vegan?”

“Not sure. Vegetarian, though. Kosher, too.”

“Excellent.”

He smiled proudly. “Last one.”

“You got the last one? Excellent job, young man.”

He continued tapping against the bucket. “Nylon ropes, waterproof matches, a compass, safety masks.”

“That’s all in here?”

“Even a crank flashlight/radio/cell phone charger.”

“You’ll get a medal for this.” I heaved the bucket up into our cart, then tousled his hair. “Let’s not forget that milk now, okay? Two percent!”

I found Betty a couple of aisles over, studying a crate of boil-and-ready Indian dinners across from the oversized bottles of salsa and the economy-sized cans of matzo ball soup. A sudden swelling panic swept through me. Because if a xenophobe was to bring violence to this store, some man desperate to call attention to a hopeless cause in Palestine, Chiapas, or Kashmir, this would be the first place he’d strike. Ethnic Foods.

“Betty!” I waved her away from there. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! We’ve already been here too long!”

She started toward me the same moment a voice turned me round.

“David!”

The man looked like Benjamin Franklin gone to seed: bald on top but with long greying hair around the sides, a landslide belly pushing out beneath a lurid Hawaiian shirt, and a pair of khaki shorts that gave a clear view of his prosthetic leg.

“David Leveraux?” he said.

I reacted like the fencer I wished my son had become, pulling my garbage can lid close to my chest and holding my 5-iron out as if it were a foil. “What do you want, Hickey?”

He took a step back, raising his hands. “Whoa there, tiger!” In one hand he held a jug of Canadian whiskey. “I just came here for a little drinky-poo and a tub of mayonnaise.”

“Likely story,” I said, still at the ready.

“Are you on drugs?” he asked.

I lunged at him, causing him to recoil with something like genuine fear.

“You can tell your handlers it won’t work,” I said.

“Let me rephrase my question: Which drugs are you on?”

“Play dumb all you want, Hickey. I know it’s you. I don’t see you for twenty years, and now twice in a matter of months?”

I lunged at him again, going for his shoulder. He shielded himself with his jug of whiskey and laughed as he spun away.

“Christ, David, that must be some good shit you’re on. Why don’t you share a little with your old friend? I’ll give you a taste of the hooch.”

Betty stepped up behind me then, holding her own garbage can lid out in front of her.

“Your wife, I take it.” Hickey backed away from us, keeping one hand in the air. “I’m feeling a little outnumbered,” he said, “so I hope you won’t mind if I just play through.”

Only after he had turned the corner of an aisle and was gone did Betty stand at ease.

“I’d like one of those lorazepams about now,” she said.

That evening Betty came down into the kitchen, yawning and saying she craved “something mushy” for dinner. We still had to prepare the turkey, so I made an executive decision to open the Family Emergency bucket. After we had all reached inside it for the pouch of our choosing, we went into the dining room to eat, and Betty walked around the table to pour boiling water from the kettle.

Only Priscilla refused to grab a packet of dehydrated soup. While everyone else commented on the flavor of the Western Stew or Potato Soup, she drank from a glass of water and ate a slice of brown bread.

“Can I spend the night at Sarin’s?” she said.

“Of course not,” Betty answered. “Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving.”

“And besides, I don’t think you should be spending the night over there anymore.”

A whole conversation passed between us with only a look.

“Why’s that?” she said.

“I think you know. It’s just not appropriate anymore.”

“Can I have Ryan Johnson over then?”

“Who’s Ryan Johnson?”

“The sports editor for The Campus Crier. He’s a real peach.”

I spooned soup into my mouth. “You’re too old for sleep-overs. Now eat your bread and water like a good prisoner of conscience.”

Ernst could sit silently for hours at a time; sometimes whole days would pass and he barely said a thing. But every now and then his eyes would brighten and his whole body would radiate with a new spirit. This was just such a moment. “I once served a very important man that same meal,” he told Priscilla. “Bread and water. Did your father ever tell you?”

He set his napkin down, and then his voice was sending us back, all the way to Berlin in April of 1945.

It started after midnight, when a guard shook him awake in the room he shared with four others. “Herr Bormann?” Ernst asked, thinking or hoping he was about to be given new orders. But the guard shook his head no, then commanded Ernst to follow him down a narrow concrete stairway to the bunker’s bottommost floor. Here a lounge had been set up outside the door to Hitler’s personal quarters. When the guard left him, no one stood between Ernst and it.

He feared he’d spoken in his sleep. He feared he’d said something about what had happened earlier in the day, when Speer had visited him and tried to convince him to do what Von Stauffenberg had already attempted — but not with a bomb this time; with a clear colorless liquid. “You could mix it in with the Führer’s food or drink,” Speer had said. “You could be far away from here before it ever took effect.” It didn’t matter that Ernst had refused any involvement in this plan. Just being asked was treasonous enough.

Ernst tightened the belt of his bathrobe, then stiffened as Hitler entered from his bedroom with his dog Blondi following at his heels. Hitler sank into a chair, holding his lame arm tight against his chest. “A drink,” he said, and because Ernst wasn’t sure if it was a question or a command, he nodded eagerly and crossed to the bar trolley, where he fixed a soda water for Hitler and a brandy for himself.

When they were thus fortified, Ernst settled down onto a black leather divan beneath a Manet that had been hung on the wall.

“Fräulein Braun,” Hitler said, as Ernst looked up over his shoulder to inspect the painting. “Such a merry homemaker, even here.”

Ernst looked to the painting facing him now, a sentimental portrait of a mill house that he knew Hitler had completed in his youth. He complimented its use of color and artistry, then was relieved to have Hitler carry the conversation from there. His mind drifted this way and that, fluttering about like a bird in its cage. First he addressed his betrayals and his legacy, then he moved on to the Jews and the Norwegians, before at last saying something about suicide.