Another Time, Another Place, a combat! fanfic

Another Time, Another Place

TEC4
( )

(A/N: Not mine, not a sou. Set in my Guardian Angel universe (it's coming – be patient), includes dialogue from, and is based on the events of, the episode Forgotten Front, written by Richard Matheson under the pseudonym Logan Swanson. Unbetaed; enter at your own risk. Entry for the Enemies Meet challenge, September 2009.)

"Hey! Buddy! Why donchya watch where yer goin'?"

Paul LeMay waved dismissively at the cabbie, a milder gesture than the one the cabbie offered him. Hey, pal, I had the light. Sheesh. New Yorkers. He dodged an old woman who was moving slowly and stepped onto the sidewalk. He was in New York to talk to a potential buyer about the custom furniture he and his Nonc Pierre handcrafted. Things had been slow lately and this possibility meant a lot to him, his nonc and Amélie. He glanced at his reflection in a store window, adjusted the unfamiliar tie and brushed off the lapels of his suit.

Paul stopped in front of a store and checked the address. The sign read "Dorfmann and Son – Fine Furniture".

As he entered the store, a bell quietly rang. A very young man in a good suit came from a back room. "May I help you?"

"Michael Dorfmann? I'm Paul LeMay, from New Orleans. I'm here representing my uncle, Pierre LeMay. You have been corresponding with him about our providing custom furniture for your store."

"Ah, yes. Mr. LeMay, a pleasure to meet you." He extended his hand. "I am sorry your uncle's schedule didn't permit him to come, but we're glad you were able to."

Paul shifted his briefcase and shook hands. "I know Uncle Pierre was sorry not to be able to be here." Actually, what Nonc Pierre had said was, "I went through New York on my way to the troopships in World War I and that was enough for me. You go, Paulie, okay?" Paul decided this wasn't something the Dorfmanns needed to know.

"My father and I were very pleased with the two samples you and your uncle sent us. We sold them almost immediately. In fact, I have a check for you to take with you when you return to New Orleans."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Please, come back to my office. My father should be here shortly and we can discuss details. Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes, thank you."

As they strolled through the small but elegant store, Paul appraised the furniture offered for sale with an expert eye. The woods were beautiful – none of them appeared to be simple veneers - and the workmanship looked to be first rate. The sale of the samples was good news; it meant that the product he and his uncle could provide would fit right in here.

"Mr. LeMay, do you take cream and sugar?"

Paul walked into the office. "Neither, merci. I got used to drinking it black during the war." He laughed. "Some of the coffee would have been better with cream and sugar – lots of cream and sugar, but there never was any, so we just lived with it."

Dorfmann smiled politely. "Ah, the war. Yes. I assume you fought in Europe? Surely your knowledge of French must have been considered useful by the Army?"

"Yes, Europe. I did translation in France and occasionally in Belgium. I landed on D-Day and was demobbed the following August."

"My father refugeed from Germany during the war. He had a bad experience he has never been willing to discuss with me and decided that the United States was a safer place to be."

"I see." Another person with a history to chalk up to the Nazis. "I'm sorry. I hope his time here has been good."

"Yes, I believe it has."

The two men sipped their coffee and waited, making polite, if sparse, conversation.

The bell rang, and there was a call from the main part of the store. "Michael!"

"In here, vati. Mr. LeMay has arrived."

"Sehr gut! I am glad to hear –" The elderly man who entered the office took one look at Paul and stopped cold.

Paul looked up, surprised, and also froze. For both men, time spun backwards.

"No! No! Why? Why? What is my life to you? I can't hurt you in any way! Please, heh? You think I will say about your offensive tomorrow? I will not! I will not say a thing!"

The young soldier stood, rifle aimed squarely at his target, irresolute, shaking. How am I supposed to kill this man? What am I going to do?

"Caje?"

How can I disobey Sarge?

"Please! What's the use?" The German hid behind his boots.

"Caje."

"Wait. Wait." The older man straightened his hair and put his uniform cap on. He curled in on himself, covering his face with his arms.

"Caje."

Mon dieu! What am I going to do? It was a cri de cœur, a prayer.

'Caje!' From the drain entrance, Saunders called him again. This was no question. It was a repeat of the unvoiced order Sarge gave him earlier.

Caje came to a decision. He raised his rifle and shot into the air. If I don't tell Sarge, he'll never know. What harm can one old man do? I'm not good enough, not sure enough, to play God with his life.

The older man straightened, amazed. He and Caje exchanged a long look, and then the younger man turned and ran out. Carl Dorfmann was stunned. He was sure he was going to die, and yet God moved this soldier to spare him. He put his hands over his face and wept.

"Vati! Mr. LeMay! What is going on here?"

Gradually, the two men came back to the present.

"Mr. LeMay. Caje."

"Mr. Dorfmann, no one has called me that for a very long time." Slowly, he stood and faced the man he had nearly shot more than twenty years before.

"That was all I knew of your name all these years. I can still hear your Sergeant calling you – wondering why you hadn't fired."

"I don't think I ever knew your name. I know Doc probably did, but he would never talk to me about that night."

"I, too, have never spoken of what happened then to anyone. I was not sure it might not mean trouble for you, and I didn't want that."

Paul laughed, ironically. "I told Sarge the very next day. He came to see me, to tell me I had done what I had to do, that there was no other choice. I told him there was another choice, and I made it."

Carl Dorfmann was amazed. "Your sergeant believed in duty, I think. How did he take it?"

"I think he was shocked, but he told me to forget it, that I had done the right thing. Sergeant Saunders was – is, I should say – at the core a very decent man, very honorable. I don't think he felt right about his order."

"I see." He paused. "And the others? The loud one and the kind Herr Doktor. Did they make it?"

Paul smiled. "Kirby made it. He's an alderman in Chicago now. Hard to believe, but in the end we became good friends, although I started off that detail by offering to break his nose for him. Doc Walton, though. Doc –" His smile faded. How do I say this? He and Doc liked each other. "He never developed the thick skin you have to have to get by – he felt everything too much. We found him – I found him - one morning …" Paul quietly mimed cuts across his wrist with one finger, unable to meet the older man's horrified eyes.

"Mein Gott." Dorfmann sat down heavily. "I am sorry to hear this. He was good to me. Well. Some people just aren't cut out to be soldiers." His laugh was sad. "Just look at me."

"Vati!" Michael Dorfmann was in shock. "Soldier! You were a soldier? I don't - I don't understand …" His eyes were wide as he looked between Paul and his father.

"Michael, this was part of what I could never tell you." His father's voice was matter-of-fact. "I didn't know how."

"How did you get here, Mr. Dorfmann?" Paul asked quietly.

"After you let me go, I made my way back towards the coast. By then, there were ways to get out of the country, even for Germans. "

"I'm not surprised."

"My uncle hated Hitler and had evacuated after Kristallnacht. They say that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." He laughed humorlessly. "Good men stood up against Hitler and got run over, as surely as if they had stood in front of a speeding tank. Uncle Matthias saw how things were and came to New York."

"Did he start this store?"

"Yes. I contacted him and he helped me come to America. When I got here, I had dreams of finding an agent and performing again. But there was so much anti-German feeling, I knew I would have no chance. My uncle was getting to the point where he wanted to retire, so I joined him to learn the furniture business. I met Michael's mother, got married – and the rest, as they say, is history."

Caje shook his head. "During the war, I kept putting things off, to think about them at some future 'later'. Then when 'later' got here, I decided I didn't want to think about them at all. But I do know I wondered, sometimes late at night when the war came back to visit, whatever became of you."

"I wanted to find you, but 'Caje' wasn't much to go on. I didn't have anywhere to start, and as I said, I didn't want to cause trouble for you."

"Trouble! What are you talking about?" Michael exploded. "What kind of trouble?"

"Michael, during the war, I was conscripted into the German Army. Shortly after D-Day, I decided to – leave. After some American soldiers were killed by German booby traps, which I did not help set, Mr. LeMay's unit came to carry out the other soldiers' mission, which was to destroy a German gun. They captured me, and I accidentally found out about an American attack the following day. The sergeant leading the patrol decided I should be shot and set Mr. LeMay to do it. For whatever reason, he only pretended to, and let me go." He smiled at the expression on his son's face. "You owe your existence to this man's decency and conscience. Say 'Thank you', Michael."

Michael sat, eyes dazed, his mouth opening and closing like the fish Amélie had landed when they went fishing last week, Paul thought, amused. "That's not necessary. I did what I had to do in order to live with myself. I'm glad it turned out well in the long run."

"Yes. I think I have been a good citizen of America. There have always been temptations to cut corners, and suppliers, government people who want to be bribed to make things easier. When I have faced such things, I thought that I had been given a second chance and that it would dishonor that to do business in such a way."

"That's good to know."

"Speaking of which, the pieces you sent up were of excellent quality. You and your uncle are fine craftsmen. I would be pleased to continue to do business with you, if you wish – now that you know who you are dealing with."

Paul nodded and smiled broadly. "I don't see why that would be a problem." He opened his briefcase and took out pictures of other furniture the two of them had created. "Let me show you some of our other work."

The two men bent over the photos and began to discuss terms.

Two hours later, Paul left, a contract and a check in his briefcase. I can't wait to tell Nonc Pierre. Now we can keep working, and I can help Amélie and les enfants.

As he flagged down a cab, he thought, Wasn't it just last week that Father Brien talked about how our good acts can come back to us? Something from Ecclesiastes about casting bread on the waters? He shook his head – one night more than twenty years ago he decided not to shoot Dorfmann, and now - all these years later – it had come back to him unsought.

"So where you going, pal?"

"Take me to LaGuardia. I'm heading home."

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