Jaeger Brecht believed he could be anybody, and sound like anybody; he could preach what he practiced. Hot August of 1944 clamped down around him, three or four miles beyond the fence of the POW prison camp near Houlton, Maine. Jaeger Brecht, escapee, was headed for Oxbow, perhaps fifty miles away through the forest and, hopefully, a girl he had not seen since 1932.

He would become again what she had known.

A stiff breeze put a chill on the back of his neck despite the heat. But he was free and in a thick forest, almost like being at home in Bavaria. Semi-darkness brought solitude and time for thinking. Fragrance from balsam fir trees sneaked into his senses and reality and recognition crept into him; his chest nearly burst with expectation coming slowly in waves. For the last five months he’d been nothing but a kriegsgefangen, a prisoner of war, with no shackles but confined behind a high wire fence, time sitting its weight on his back, but now he was free… Obersleutnant Jaeger Brecht of the Werwolf, the Jagd-Kommando, with a gifted command of languages, an artful eye for mimicry, and free in the world.

It was about time!

When he questioned how he had managed all this, appraising the last dozen hours among other elements of time, Brecht knew the answer… he was a soldier, right down to bone and the marrow, every last ounce. Luck, he believed, had no part in it at all… not in any of this get-away-quick stuff. And, on the plus side, he was more than a soldier; he was a Kommando. He was special. This POW thing was but a momentary disgrace; he’d see to that. Precision, planning and precision, were cut and dried for a soldier. Cut and dried, he’d make his way home.

And all these years in uniform he had remembered Liza Van Dammen, who once in glory days of 1932 visited relatives in Bavaria. She was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. They had spent the summer together, pushed into each other’s lap by their parents. The effects of one war were not over for the mere youngsters while another war loomed across the face of Europe. This new threat was followed by All Things German in general: the Lindberg kidnapping in America, Germany yet smoldering down to its roots from the last war, Hitler and the Nazi party making dire noises in the cellars and byways and back alleys of Berlin, Nazi newspapers inciting riots between Nazis and Communists, Herman Goering being elected president of the Reichstag, and much of Europe holding its collective breath.

With all that background the young German and the young American escaped into each other. They were young and beautiful. At sixteen, under a moon and beside a lake, they made love, each for the first time. In that initial madness they made love every night for a week pending her return home. Imagination carried them to undreamt horizons, undreamt realities. She had never known such passion; he had never seen such whiteness or imagined such hunger, how it carried from one day to the next. World-wide hysterias in the making welcomed their loving, made a place for it even as history gathered speed by the day. A small island with only two trees on it, in the middle of a lake, served as their trysting place; each day they rowed out and back, to and from love, from and to the world. Later, from home, for months on end, passion close in her fingertips, spelling it out, she wrote religiously, letters full of love and poetry, erstwhile promises and mountains of hope, until he replied that he had joined the army and would have difficulty communicating with a girl in America. In due time it would become verboten.

In the army, as his role in it developed, he was too busy to miss her letters. In the states, back in Oxbow, Maine, she was afraid to write; the German touch, and all it promised to carry in the coming years, piled too fully on her.

Part way through his appraisal in the forest, Brecht affirmed his stance, a belief in his rigorous self; he was a soldier, yea und fur immer, who happened to need a change of clothes, a proper walking stick, a knife for protection, different shoes, and a girl who could remember passion. Food would come to the hungry in a straightforward manner, a snare, a club, theft in the night. Survival against all odds had been his army course. The targets and obstacles came listed in his mind. But recently, relayed from the guards at the camp, he heard the hard and unbelievable words that German army officers had tried to kill Hitler. How often would chance intervene in his plans, in other’s plans? Was it luck that Liza’s family had settled in Maine? Was it luck when he said to one snotty American officer, “Please don’t send me to Maine. It’s too cold there.” He could prime the innocents. It was his duty. Acquiescence and good fortune rose from the ploys in his acting.

Again he thought of her at the lake, how he had been suffused with her beauty. For nearly a week the moon had been their bounty, laying its gold on them, touching their blood with a long reach. She had a certain neatness that called on him, but she held to no routine in her lovemaking, nothing neat or coy about her passion. And when he cupped her breasts the first time, he was frozen in place. All the parts stayed with him. It was as though a picture had been taken by his hand, then by his mouth.

Yet he had not taken seriously the poetry that she wrote, and now, bound by forest, he was scrambling to remember some of the lines Liza had written. Not much came back to him, a few straggly lines of little import, a few tender words. Of course, those words now gained new relevance. Perhaps she kept some of that love; he would have to rekindle all of it; it would be required.

After his quick review, hungry, miserable in dirty prison clothes, he headed for thicker woods, the pine scent, sent all the way from Bavaria, drawing him on. On the plus side he was able to count on a few tools: Even in his present condition he had impeccable use of English, which, with a little practice, he could use to modulate a northern New England dialect, also impeccable in delivery. For kicks, he could become anybody. Three of the guards at camp had been perfect targets for him, and he aped them to a “T.” Innumerable times he could hear the echo of his nasal and abrupt rendition of “Ayuh,” the exact way he had heard other service people, “Maniacs,” he was told, who used it continually in his presence. Each time he was imbued with not only a declaration, but a veritable truth: When he was on stage, he was the supreme actor. Comfort normally came to him in solitude, and deep woods meant solitude. It was the best place for thinking; but it was here where the word about army officers planning to assassinate Hitler had freed a small stream of doubt. All of it had to be put together.

Back at the camp, everybody believed he was a plain Wehrmacht soldier, oblivious of the “big picture,” a corporal as dumb as they come. That mimicry he could carry off as well as any role. Yet behind him sat a dozen successful trips behind Allied lines, which had been completed before his capture. And currently a map of Maine sat in his head, where he could see lakes and rivers over the long run of the state, and one small town that might house the only chance he had for true escape. It had been a half dozen years since his parents had received letters from Liza’s parents because of the war, but he remembered looking at a map of the state back then, the romance of far places playing tunes with his imagination.

Brecht kept recounting himself, reforming old strengths after imprisonment, after escape. There was a time he dotted every I and crossed every T that came his way. His uniform, crisp and clean at any hour, could be hung and worn again an hour later, fresh as a newborn. The medals on his chest were lustrous, and warranted; in the eyes of many he’d been a hero, courageous, a courtier of death in any sense, and palatable to the broad spectrum of the Nazi media at home.

Far at home.

He was a product of his times, and now he breathed the air and the scent of the forest, the rush of fragrant balsam fir trees and white spruce, now and then some sugar maple. In a new valley a new smell rose on the wind, perhaps honey bees working their tails off. Hunger, though it would tend to govern his actions, would have to stand in line, wait its turn. He’d live off the land, but shun roads, railroads, the curves and shores of lakes and rivers, even minor streams where anglers might play their secret pools. The balsam fir trees that surrounded him were much like the Norway spruce and silver fir of the Bavarian forests. Here as there, animals would feed off the trees, the moose, the squirrels, the white-tailed deer. He had all ready seen crossbills and chickadees. Sufficient food would be found in his line of march.

Behind him, though, the war was a shambles, had become too messy even in the planning. He had seen it coming, the way little sins were allowed to become cardinal errors in life, positions, even in armor and supplies, all across the face of Europe and in all the battle zones. He’d been behind the lines in North Africa, and Italy, and captured in France; the world was shrinking for Germany, a chokehold growing with daily reports circulating in the camp; the Allies in Paris, American paratroopers in his favored St. Tropez, the vast machine of the German army now susceptible.

The escape from the camp had been a solo effort from the outset. As usual, he had difficulty in finding comrades worthy of chance and charade; they had become too comfortable, too chatty and ingratiating with their wardens. The Americans at the camp were too generous, almost forgiving in their daily work, turning their backs on minor transgressions, letting footholds develop. All this was crucial to him as he planned his escape; he had to trust the Americans’ easy manners, their obscene laziness. Only the sergeant with the hard eyes and the dark birth mark on half his face would be a worthy opponent.

He could remember his first mission, leaving timed explosives in a fuel dump after he had walked right past a dolt of a guard, saying the C.O. had sent him for a battery replacement for his Jeep. “Shit, man, they send me back from my recon outfit because I fucked up and I end up a fucking nursemaid for some asshole 90-fucking-day wonder. Will wonders never cease?” He had slipped his arm over the guard’s shoulder and then slipped the knife in the guard’s gut, twisting it home. War is hell, he had thought as the knife made its way through flesh, encountered bone, turned again in his hand. War is hell. He almost said, “Son,” seeing the young face of the guard as it passed by him heading into eternity. Valhalla, he might have whispered, hearing old brass echoes, Wagner beating about in his own blood. Excitement in the handle of the knife. He’d have to watch the ounce of sentiment that played at his backside, like a dash of condiment long forgotten on the shelf, but holding its true flavor.

Nights were as bad as war, as all the gathered acts mounted for his review. Often he prayed for forgiveness, but he had been commissioned for this, this way of making his way in the world, and the war… he was a sneak, a thief, an impersonator, but an actor who one day would be on the world’s finest stages, his name on marques, in headlines, women aching for his torso. He saw himself in London, Moscow, Paris, New York, stepping out in front of the lights, Hamlet, Lear, old Hal himself, and he would bring all his past with him… every damned ounce of it. Berlin would be his own, a thespian’s town, his town. Yet he was aware the war would never leave him, the scars as deep as blood and then deeper, his knife as keen as the one in a surgeon’s hand, just as sharp and just as deadly.

Immersed in thought, caught up in himself by an impulsive idea, and emerging from a thick patch of brush, he was halted by the sight of an old man slowly plodding on a slightly worn trail twenty or so yards across an open glade. A fishing rod pointed upward over one shoulder and a creel hung on the opposite hip. Across his chest, a bandolier of lures, sat the ammunition of a fly fisherman. Brecht felt a pinch of recognition; the man looked like his grandfather, who might have worn the same gear and the same clothing as he set out for a day of fishing; the lumberjack shirt buttoned to the collar, sleeves cuffed and buttoned, corduroy pants making a music he could almost hear.

How far had the man come on this path? Was there a fishing cabin nearby? Did he have companions? Reluctance overcame Brecht as he withdrew from possible sight; the slight recognition of pleasure was erased. All his training took over; if he made a mistake, relaxed a moment too long, he would end up paying for it. He could not suffer himself to be so indulgent; it would mark him a loser. There shall be no confrontations, were words and beliefs he must stand by; he could not be enticed, pleased, excited by any ordinary contact… ordinary contacts can carry such inordinate revelations. Be ever alert, he affirmed again and again. Ever alert. You are a soldier. A Kommando!

Thoughts of Liza could not be allowed to imperil him, he avowed. Yet the thoughts of her had crossed his mind, at the ends of flighty reveries… on the island, between the two pine trees, her all around him, and their passion buried in the moon’s yellow prison. Her richness came back at a moment’s notice. Those were moments he fell into a beautiful Hell.

Ah, Kommando, he said, Life moves on, and the island disappeared and the twin trees and the yellow moon, and the throb deep inside, the sense of pushing on a body, and the body pushing back.

Some hours later, in a small dale full of shade and sweet smells, he saw a flicker of life, and a doe rose slowly, looking about as if for directions or odor detection. For a short time he felt her sheer and innocent beauty. It was knocked aside by the thought of someone, like himself, feasting on her meat. “Life is made that way, Cookie,” he softly muttered, in practice of his on-stage presence.

One movement of his hand to his mouth, him at full surprise, and the doe bolted off, a white flash leaving her signature. Bird calls came from the orchestra of shade above him, probably set off by the doe, everything in the forest caught up in linkage of one sort or another, life spelling itself out. He thought he’d best be aware of the connections, for he was now in the chain of life that the forest sustained. Animals, like the deer and moose, and every sort of bird, must live on and off the trees and brush and herbs that spread their arms in a thousand ways. Back at the camp, whenever talk about the forest opened up by guards or support personnel, he absorbed all he could, filing it away for later use. Now he was at that “later,” and it was not luck that brought him this far, not in any manner.

Often he wondered how he’d find Liza, or how he’d find her… what memories for her were still vivid, recollective, favored? Too much had passed between them, even in spite of the years without word. Images came at him, forced up from below by her personal richness, which, he had to admit, had never been experienced again. But she was merely an out now, a means to an end, and the weight of that sudden judgment beat its way into his mind. He absorbed his own punishment, yet realized it was a bare rationalization; he could be good at that.

On the other hand, animal life abounded, as part of the forest choir; birds at all levels of the scale were resonant in the thick trees all around, as if he were in a large aviary in Berlin or some other cosmopolitan center; nature’s introduction was progressing with a full texture of song and secret sounds coming from deeper, darker or higher places in copse and thicker growths.

A small stream at one place came into a small glade and he pictured a pond or a lake behind it, pushing at the mouth of this stream. Hunger was stirring in his gut and the black flies were extremely aggravating. Security shot uppermost in his mind, though; keeping out of sight, gambling for food only when absolutely necessary, creature comforts, all in abeyance, being the least of his yearnings. Two hours later he had found a change of clothes in a small cabin at the edge of a pond sitting in a small valley with an L shape. One end of the pond, he was sure, could not be seen from the other end. He found pants with a blue stripe, a blue shirt with a torn pocket, and the treasure of a pair of boots that fit him, though with many miles underfoot. The rutted path to the cabin had been overgrown to a point it looked unused for many months. He had sat quietly behind a row of trees watching it for hours. The wait produced in the cabin, besides the clothes, a can of salt sitting on a shelf, whose contents he wrapped in foil; a bottle of catsup that he left for the next tenant or visitor; and a can of tuna fish. The tuna fish, saturated in oil, was a treat for him. With care he buried the prison garb under a rock a hundred yards away, the empty tuna can was crushed and thrown into a deep pool of the stream.

A day later, a night’s sleep under boughs under his belt, the outlook on escape looked brighter. There was no way she could forget how they had simmered that first night and then burst into week-long flames. And now, he was sure, he was within Oxbow territory. It would not be long.

A week after his escape from the POW camp, Brecht was hiding in the brush behind her house. Everything in sight caught his scrutiny, his measurement. He could have frolicked he felt so good, the fifty or so miles from Houlton were behind him and Maine morning sunlight, the raw power of it, bathed all the structures at this end of a dirt road. In all he counted in proximity of the house a dozen birdhouses hanging from tree branches or sitting atop poles. Three very busy birdhouses sat but a hand’s throw from one window of the house and early feeders, a kind he did not know, bounced about like marbles loose in a jar. Each of the three birdhouses appeared newly painted, some even artistically decorated. Only the entrances of each house were dark, and he saw such entrances near eaves of the main house and at the eaves of a large barn. Liza, for sure, was artistic, and that too made him feel good. The Maine sun added to her color schemes as the birdhouses showed off a sense of brilliance, the way art exhibits are seen by a first-time observer.

From where he stood, sundry paths, other than the one he had used, went off in different directions, their trail marks faintly distinct in grass and low brush. Apple trees, among other trees, were scattered around the house as if the house a hundred years earlier had been built in the middle of an orchard. A new aroma, thin as a sheet of air, made him hungry, though he could not identify the odor source. It was as though its identity was creeping up on him and he looked behind him to make sure nothing was nearing his hiding place.

Nothing moved but leaves and birds and the vapor-like waves of unseen heat. Leafy grape vines clung to a series of thin trees and poles and would provide cover when he approached the house. Other structures sat fully in sunlight, lit up from antiquity, all well-worn, having been long put to regular use. There was a barn with repaired doors but a dipping ridge pole, a henhouse of sorts with wire windows, an outhouse between the barn and the house leaning with an odd tilt, a tire hanging from a tree on a length of rope that a bare wind touched slightly, and, finally, an old car rusting at the far end of a small garden plot, young trees at the onset of embracing it. Before long the vehicle, by slow corrosion and tenacious tentacles, would be absorbed into the landscape. He imagined again an old voice, coming from a long distance in the past, saying, “This too shall be dust.”

The rustic America Liza had extolled in her visit to Bavaria was there in front of him. Earlier, in false dawn, in an upstairs window in the shadowy morning, he had seen her, had seen her for the first time in a dozen years. Her laughter came back in a heady maneuver, and the sense of vibrancy she had unleashed those dozen years past also returned as he saw her nude with a soft light behind her. Parts of the recall had lain hidden for those years, as if their appearance would knock him out of timing or routine. He was a soldier first, trying for a full escape. Yet, in the morning light, there was an eruption at the sight of her bathed in the yellow sunlight.

If he was able to see her alone, what would he say to her? How would he start? Had it been too long for anything to come out of this trip, all this planning? He shut off that thought and put it away. It would happen. It had to happen.

From behind him, as if from nowhere, motion and near-muted sound, a breath beyond a whisper, arrived at the same time. Brecht, in control, turned slowly, afraid to show surprise, afraid to look suspicious, and saw an old man standing practically in his back pocket. He had heard no approach, not a snapped twig, not a rustled leaf. This old man, a native for sure, and at least 80 for sure, wearing glasses, rubber boots as black as bad mushrooms, carrying a bamboo fishing rod in one hand and a metal tackle box in the other hand, was staring at him. Brown-rimmed spectacles were lopsided on his head, sitting over one ear as if pinched in a way, set awry by a frown. A wide, punished nose, extra broad at the bridge, logged with experience at some kind of physical action, crinkled in curiosity. His eyes were almost hidden in wild eyebrows, thick, black, untrimmed, as dark as they must have been half a century earlier. A wicker creel rode on one hip, part of his uniform. A red and black checkered lumberjack shirt, buttoned closely at each wrist and at his throat, marked neatness and long habit. A large Adam’s apple sat atop the neckline button as prominent as a pork loin hanging in a butcher’s window.

If the old man were to fall down, Brecht would not be surprised, but he was a survivor and a history of tenacity showed like a written biography; hard chin and jaw line, three dark marks of age on his forehead bigger than usual freckles, the nose a relic from more than one argument, an old daring hanging about in his face, a daring not all used up by any means, and curiosity by the pound.

“You lost, son?” The old man’s voice was soft and sure, as though he held the answer to his own question. He could have been a teacher at the head of a classroom, knowing everything behind the lesson. “You knowed someone hereabouts? You knowed Liza?” He marked the clothes that Brecht wore, the boots, the belt buckle, then rested on Brecht’s eyes. “You got yourself a name, being for a stranger?”

“Rawlins they call me, whenever it’s not late for supper, and then it makes no difference what I’m called.” A smile came with his humor, easy as aces as part of his new face. “Yes, I know someone here.” He felt he had become a Maine person, and the language and inflections of service personnel back at the camp hung out in whispers for him to cling to. “Never too late for feedin’, you might say if you was asked.” A minor snort of disdain was added, like needed punctuation.

The man repeated his question, with a hint of surprise caught up in his words. “You knowed Liza?” The old man looked back at the house and the window with a light in it, a window on the second floor, obviously a bedroom window. A shadow moved through glowing light morning was catching up with.

There was an art form to the old man’s questioning, as with a teacher at the chalkboard where a poser was marked and the solution salted away for this extreme moment where doubt, question and curiosity were playing games with one another.

Brecht, aware he was the subject of deep appraisal, conjured up an instant liking for the old man, protective of a younger neighbor, unafraid of a younger stranger. He also assumed the old man was a damn good fisherman. The bamboo fly rod was likely as near old as its carrier. Other attributes, maintenance, neatness, proper care of property of any value, came in short order, even as Brecht felt the deep penetration of doubt and curiosity settle into his body.
Carlton Ebbers stood Brecht right up, stiff as a ramrod, when he yelled, “Liza, Carlton Ebbers sittin’ out here with this here gent says he knows of you.” In the bright morning air, his voice carried clearly to the house.

Her head came fully out the window. “Who is it, Carlton? What’s his name?”

“Says his name is Rawlins.”

Brecht jumped in, yelling “Jaeger” as clearly as he could. He looked at the old man and said, “Jaeger Rawlins,” as if explaining himself.

Liza’s voice rang out. “Jaeger! Jaeger! I’ll be right out. Give me a minute. It’s okay, Carlton. I know him! I know him!”

Liza, in a housecoat, bolted from the back door seconds later, and his name came rushing from her mouth, her lungs, her whole body mass carried in her cries. “Jaeger! Jaeger!” Those cries even shook up old Carlton Ebbers. Across the yard she rushed, birds by the dozens flitting and leaping about from the birdhouses, all in her wake. One hand held the blue robe at her waist. When she stumbled and loosed that hand, both men could see she wore nothing underneath the robe. Carlton Ebbers smiled at old mystery and Jaeger Brecht went all the way back to 1932.

Liza was swept up in Jaeger Brecht’s arms, and her arms wrapped around her old lover.
Carlton Ebbers dropped his eyes and then looked off at a piece of the sunrise sitting in the break of balsam firs crowding a small rise. The bamboo fly rod came elevated, then pointed tip first down a path, and he moved off, saying, “I’ll leave you folks to rememberin’, while I go to fishin’.” He was out of sight in a whisper of seconds. Not a note of his departure was heard, as muffled as his approach had been.

They were alone for the first time in twelve years.

Liza strained against Jaeger Brecht, bending against him her whole length, her breath searching for proper space, movement, expression. She inhaled him. Old scents rushed back, imagination running well ahead of them, catching up many of her parts, old touches breathing new life on their own. Came in a maddening rush the magic he once controlled in his hands. “Jaeger. Jaeger, how did you get here?”

“Is anybody in the house?” he said. When he was suddenly hit with her perception of him, he thought caution must be simmered, tempered. “It’s so good to see you again, Liza. You’re still beautiful, like a flower that’s still blooming. May I come in? I need food, I’m famished.” Release and rush hit him at the same time. “I’ll tell you everything, Liza, but I must rest too. I have been running away for a long time now. I want my running away to be over and done with.” Once again he was on-stage. It sounded exactly like the excuse she had wanted, the one that would carry her through dreams, promises, and all accountabilities from the past.

But right then, twisted in the middle of doubt and discovery, Jaeger Brecht didn’t know who he was, didn’t know who he wanted to be, or was trying to be. She was lovely yet, the remarkable face hardly aged a moment from what it had been. And she was directly from morning freshness, a liberating and innocent freshness. She smelled so good and clean, so unlike his own person, so unlike all those confined in the prison camp. This was a dreamt freedom circulating all around him, this freshness, this newness. He had no idea how long it would last.

“Jaeger, where have you been? What happened to you? You know I’ve been crazy for you ever since I met you. And all this time, it’s been agony, years of agony. What has the war done to you? I prayed for you every day. Every day of my life since then.” Her arms had only felt this comfort in that long ago. “Oh, this stupid war.” Total moments from the island had come back to her, though she knew they had never been far away. Want, at last, was flooding her, all that pent up want she had controlled for a dozen years.

His beard was rough on her face, the harsh reality of return softening its impact. The one fist of two hands was solid on her back, like determination, like an anvil, hard like a new promise being made. He was older, of course, she thought, but more handsome. A man now, a full grown handsome man, though tired looking, who had come back after all the loneliness. She breathed him in again, a long and deep breath that plummeted down through her body, finding all the old places, the hidden places. A strong scent of her own forestland also rode on his person; there came the balsam and pine and deep wood solace that rode in such aromas, herself a woods person, who would have loved at another time to have gone off with Carlton Ebbers looking for breakfast brookies.

Brecht, as though reading her mind, looked back to where Carlton Ebbers had disappeared into the woodlands, all the alarm systems within him clicking back on. But not a leaf moved, not a pine needle, not a discarded shadow to show that an old man with spectacles alop, and a bamboo fly pole pointing his way through underbrush, had left the scene.

Liza said, “Oh, Carlton’s just going fishing on the stream, looking for brookies, looking for breakfast. He’ll be gone a few hours, and he usually minds his own business. He was worried about me seeing a stranger here, that’s why he yelled out to me. He’s a dear neighbor who lives about a mile away. He’s always looked out for me ever since.” She did not finish that thought.

She came alert about her robe and closed it, other instincts crowding her mind and body. She took his hand. “Come in,” she said, “please come in. Let me cook for you. You can shower and shave, get a change of clothes. Tell me everything later, the war and all. I hate it. I have hated it since the day it started.” Her hands pulled at him. “Nobody else is home. My parents died within months of each other from the same accident. Five years ago. My aunt and uncle live here with me, in my house, but they’ve gone to visit a son in Vermont and a grandson who is going off to the army next month. He’s just turned 18. He’s a boy, a mere boy.”

He showered, shaved, dressed in comfortable clothes she had found in a quick search. Sunlight poured into the room through two windows facing east, the rays falling across a table with a red and white checkered tablecloth, and spilling onto the floor. She had kicked her slippers loose and they sat in the sunlight, being measured, optioned. He thought about her legs and what he remembered of their shapely presence. Now they lined up faintly behind the fabric of her robe. She cooked at a huge black stove that filled a corner of the room, her feet bare, telegraphic. A vase of flowers stood in the middle of the table. Other vases and potted plants crowded the two windowsills. Their aromas fought their way through bacon odor. When he sat to eat he kept looking at her still in her robe, the bacon rolled into itself, the eggs like sunrise on the plate, coffee kicking him in the gut. But her freshness kept coming back to him. As she stepped near him, he put his arms around her, felt her quickness, felt her shaking as if she had never stopped shaking from the island. He did not eat. They went off to her bed. They loved the morning away. He told her everything. “I’ve been a soldier. If I’ve been nothing else in all this time, I was a soldier. I had a duty. I did my duty. I was good at it. I was very good at it until I was taken prisoner.”

Liza, reveling in Brecht’s arms, still inhaling the now and the past in splendid return, said, “Do you know German army officers tried to kill Hitler, tried to bomb him?” She added, “With complete justification,” as if she was accenting both their stands on the issue. “Do you know what an evil he has become?” There was no way around it, the war had to be mentioned repeatedly, with Hitler right in the mix of it, even as she enjoyed the slightest touch of Brecht’s hands, the smell of him, the corners of his mouth the way he said some words, as if he was trying to relax back into something old, something believable, a lifetime recaptured.

“That has bothered me lately, and a great deal. I don’t know who has betrayed me, my officers, my leaders in the army, or Hitler himself. All these days in the forest by myself, running, hiding from fishermen, stealing property, it has preyed on me. Now I find you again. When they brought me to the camp at Houlton, the day I arrived, I’ve thought of nothing but you since then. Thought of nothing but getting here. To see you. To be free.”

“Oh, Jaeger, you can stay here with me until the war is over. You can be my cousin Rolf from Sweden, a true neutral. We can say you lost your papers, or something. We can fool all of them. My aunt and uncle know all about you. I told them almost everything. They know how much I’ve missed you. You can learn how to farm, tend chickens and pigs, be free, go fishing with me.” She laughed, the joy flooding hers senses. “We can go fishing for breakfast brookies, do them up in corn meal, drop an egg in place, pumpernickel toast, smell morning coffee in the woods like we’re being mesmerized.” Her smile flashed her exposed soul. She had almost said, “Like we’re married.”

All her lost years ran into each other, at the exact same time as Carlton Ebbers was talking to the sheriff in Oxbow. His face was red, he was out of breath and his fishing gear dropped someplace back in the Oxbow forest, thrown aside as he marched his way to the center of town.

“You better shake a leg on this, Harold. Don’t go dallyin’ on me. I tell you now, will tell them in court if that’s what you’re worried about, that this man is probably the escaped German POW from Houlton we been hearin’ about on the radio. He has this here hair cut too short for the likes of Oxbow. There’s a line right across the tops of his ears, like a Marine haircut, like a German Army haircut. Liza probably knows him from someplace, like from a visit back there years ago. Her father used to talk about it at the inn. She has a heart for him, that I’m damn sure of. Near collapsed in his arms. Don’t near do that with strangers, not none of our girls.”

“What the hell do you know about a German army haircut, Carlton, and young love for that matter? You were even too old back there all the way to 1917. Too old now. My god, man, we got to have more than a guess on this. The Flatlanders would laugh us silly if we get smoke out of no fire on such stuff. Besides all the to-do we’d shake out of the trees, I hear we’ll have more than a million people in the state tonight watchin’ the solar eclipse old Mother Nature has planned for us. Be awful crowded for laughs.”

The whole deck of cards was snug up Carlton Ebbers’ sleeve. “Well, Harold, I’ll just have to tell you what kicked it all the way in for me. Comin’ here I went to my Walter’s fishin’ cabin on the Nighthawk, near The Toe Line Lodge, and those there duds that Liza’s friend is wearin’ belong to my son. I gave them to him for extra fishin’ clothes for his cabin, dryin’ out stuff. My old police pants, my old shirt, even my old boots. I’d know them anyplace, with the patch Elbert Derrin stitched in where the ‘coons wanted to eat the fatty sweat outta one a them one night. Them boots’re not where they’re supposed to be. He’s not about to march them right on past me, girl or no girl. No sir, not at all, not with my grandson Alfred over there right on the edge of Germany this here damned minute.”

The sheriff of Oxbow nodded his agreement to the old man.