Chapter 4: "Interlude"
Kinch saluted his colonel and LeBeau in turn. He downed the liquid in Doktor Falke's cup and shook his head in disgust.
"Brandy and Apfelsaft. I don't think I care for mixed drinks." He turned his head to the ruckus in the emergency tunnel.
Colonel Hogan laid a hand on his sleeve. "I think they've had enough fun. Don't you?"
Kinch nodded and left the 'room' to the colonel and LeBeau.
"Quite a little hellcat for a pacifist, eh mon Colonél?" LeBeau looked up at Colonel Hogan.
"She just does not know how to hold her liquor, Louis." Colonel Hogan chuckled as he gently chided him. Then the laughter broke through. "But you're so right. She is a little hellcat."
Both men laughed heartily.
Kinch propelled Newkirk back into the room, his firm hand clutching the back of the English corporal's collar. He gave Newkirk a shake. "O.k., Peterkins. Say you're sorry to the nice colonel."
Newkirk looked down. "I'm sorry, nice Colonel," he mumbled like a mischievous little boy. Kinch shook him again. "I am sorry, guv'nor," he said in his normal voice.
"Be better if he said 'sorry' to the nice doctor," said Colonel Hogan. "Did you?" When Newkirk did not reply, he nodded to Kinch, who tightened his hold on Newkirk's collar.
Doktor Falke and Carter came through the doorway behind Kinch's broad back. "It's all right, Colonel Hogan. Please, Sergeant Kinchloe. Let him go. I'm just as much to blame – flying at him like I did."
"You had provocation, Doktor," Kinch replied. He twisted Newkirk to look at him. "So do I, as a matter of fact. For spoiling my toast to my sister. I won't push the matter of how that cake got here from London."
Newkirk looked contrite.
"I'm sorry, Doktor. I'm sorry too, Kinch. I really am. I guess I just had too much to drink and thought it would be a good joke."
"Kinch, getting the cake here was not Newkirk's fault" Colonel Hogan added. "I wanted to surprise you, so I put him up to sending the message."
"And the way he went about it?"
"My fault as well."
Kinch sighed. He looked at Doktor Falke. "I'll forgive them if you wish to forgive Newkirk."
Doktor Falke looked at the English corporal's hangdog expression.
"Then I'll forgive him with all my heart, Herr Kinchloewen." she replied.
"Done, then."
"Done indeed, mein Herr."
Kinch let Newkirk go with a final warning shake.
Newkirk sagged like a boneless scarecrow; but caught himself before he collapsed to the packed earth of the tunnel. No one gave him a single laugh.
He looked so crestfallen that Doktor Falke smiled. She hugged him and kissed his cheek. "Dearest Peter. What would I do without you?" she whispered in his ear.
Startled, Newkirk slowly put his arms around her waist. "Just keeping you human, angel." Then, thinking of how much he had quarrelled with his sister Mavis, and how much he missed her, he squeezed the doctor close to him. "What would I do without you either?"
"Good." Colonel Hogan replied. "It's Christmas, children. We shouldn't be fighting tonight. Especially among ourselves."
Kinch and Doktor Falke lagged behind as the others resumed their places on the stools around the map table.
The doctor looked hard at Colonel Hogan, startled at how quickly he had dismissed the matter. "I suppose he is used to drawing the lines himself," she whispered to her companion as they lingered in the shadows of the emergency tunnel.
"And I'm used to forgiving him, and obeying him. But I'm afraid that one day he'll cross a line he did not draw. Or order us to cross it. What will happen then?"
They reached their stools and sat down.
Since the colonel evidently wanted the subject changed, Doktor Falke attempted to do so. "I wish Herr Schultz could perform his family's ritual this Christmas. So many of the children here have lost their parents. They are frightened and without love. A toy, something they could hug, would mean so much to them."
"I wonder what happened to the toys Herr Schultz hadn't sold when the war started," she mused. "There must have been some, packed away somewhere. I know he'd want to give them to the children at the Krankenhaus or the orphanage."
Colonel Hogan looked at her with sudden attention. His eyes gleamed as he pondered what she had said.
"Oh. Oh. I think I sense another of the Colonél's schemes coming on." LeBeau rolled his eyes.
"Let me brood about it, guys. Entertain Doktor Falke while I think it through."
Kinch shook his head. He knew what the colonel was like once he got one of his ideas knocking in his brain. Oh well. His plans usually work. Maybe the one he's got now will too. "I've got a legend for you, Doktor Fledermaus."
"It has to be a family legend, Kinch. Schultz's was a family legend," said Carter.
"It is a family legend, Andrew. One that Doktor Falke might like to hear, since it involves the region she grew up in."
"Well, then. Let's hear it," said Newkirk impatiently.
Sergeant Kinchloe paused a moment to gather up the threads in his mind. "Doktor, do you know how Upper Canada got started?"
"You mean, with the Loyalists settling there after the American Revolution?"
"Yeah. There were too many squabbles due to the differences between the way the new arrivals were used to being governed and the French system that the British had promised to keep in Canada after they conquered the place."
"A promise they reneged on if I know les Anglais," LeBeau grumbled. Newkirk shot him an angry look.
"No, LeBeau. They tried to keep their word, but the new arrivals complained too loud. England was already demoralized from losing thirteen of their colonies to a bunch of upstart colonials. Rather than fight another war and probably lose the whole works, London split the colony in two. The French half they called 'Lower Canada' and the western half became 'Upper Canada'."
"If it was anything like the fights Newkirk and LeBeau get into … Whew!" Carter said. LeBeau shied his cap at him.
"Upper Canada got it's own Lieutenant-Governor – ."
"It's prounouced "Lef-tenant", Kinch." Newkirk interjected.
"Doktor Falke knows that and I'm telling the story to her."
The doctor hastily intervened. "Yes. I know from learning it in school. He was Governor Simcoe."
"Right. Lieutenant-Colonel John Graves Simcoe. Mark that, milady. Colonels are good for something, as I'm about to tell you."
"You certainly know my country's history, Herr Kinchloewen."
"That part of it I should know," he said quietly. "I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for him. In fact, you might not have been a Canadian citizen, but for him and for another colonel, a Colonel Butler. That colonel sold a lot of his land grant in Niagara to a bunch of Pennsylvania Mennonites. Weren't they the ancestors of those Mennonites that sponsored your folks when they emigrated?"
"Yes. They were," Doktor Falke said with a rueful twinge.
"Then don't rail at Colonel Hogan as much as you do. Colonels are good for some things, and you owe your life to ours."
Doktor Falke sighed. "I guess I do. I am sorry, Colonel Hogan, for the way I sometimes act."
The colonel leaned back in his chair. "It's all right, Marlena. Don't stop needling me. I need the humility. Sometimes I also need the humanity. Go on with your story, Kinch."
"Well, Governor Simcoe wanted to pass a law forbidding slavery in the new colony. His advisors who owned slaves opposed him on that. Slaves were property, and they didn't want to lose more property. They had left enough behind back in the States.
"Colonel Simcoe was convinced that slavery was immoral, but he didn't want another revolution, so he compromised. Any slave already in the colony stayed a slave. Any slave brought into the colony stayed one; although there would be no buying and selling on the British side of the river – at least, there would be no auctions – and there would be restrictions on how many you could import. But he got this into law: Any child of a slave born in Upper Canada would be free on his or her twenty-first birthday. It wasn't much, but it was a crack of light through the clouds.
"It created a problem for the slave owners, though. They were used to slaves. What would they do when the supply eventually ran out?
"A baby born to a slave in the United States was a slave for life, and the British respected that at the time. Some slave owners among the Tories decided to 'loan' their pregnant bondwomen to friends across the river until the babies were born. As no decent person would want to deprive a mother of her child, when she was brought back to her original master in Canada, so was the baby – in bondage."
Kinch paused. "That's what happened to my grandmother's great-grandmother."
"What a horrible thing to do!" whispered LeBeau. The others nodded.
"My grandmamma's great-grandmamma…" Kinch looked at Marlena Falke. "We'll call her Lily. I don't know what her real name was. Lily was determined that her child would be free. Her new 'master' and his friends carried her across the Niagara River in a boat – kicking and screaming if I know the women in my family – to his home in a place now called Lewiston, New York."
Colonel Hogan leaned forward. "But I thought slavery was outlawed in the North."
"Not in the 1790's, Colonel. It was still going strong then.
"Lily played the docile darky to lull suspicion, but she looked for her chance to escape. Months passed. She grew clumsy as the child inside her grew bigger. She exaggerated her awkward waddle to make her captors let down their guard even more. They'd think 'How could she escape if she could just manage to make it across a room?'
She knew she had to escape soon, or her large belly would not let her escape at all. Her child would be born a slave like she was. But how, and when, could she do it?
"December came. Christmas. Big parties. Lots of merry making and lots of drunkenness. Lily's chance had finally come. She sneaked out of the house during one of those parties and made her way in the darkness to the river. She found a rowboat, untied it, heaved herself in, and started rowing for the opposite bank."
Kinch looked at Marlena. "Doktor Fledermaus, have you seen the Niagara River at that point? I mean across from that tall statue of the general with his arm outstretched."
"General Brock's monument? Yes, I have." Doktor Falke struggled to remember what the river looked like. "It's quite wide…"
"And there's a strong current from the Niagara Falls. A very strong current. Imagine that you're about to give birth, and you are rowing for your life and for your child's life and freedom across that icy water. And it's night. And you are all alone and frightened."
There was not a sound in the tunnel but tense breathing from the five people listening to the tale.
"Lily couldn't control the boat in that current. It tipped over. She fell into the water. She began to freeze. She held onto the upturned boat as best she could, but she was heavy with child and her hands were getting numb. Maybe she tried to swim. I don't know. I'm sure she knew she'd be swept into Lake Ontario if she didn't try to make it to the bank. Maybe she didn't care by then. All I do know from the legend is that she started to drown.
"Another boat came then. The three men inside it pulled her in. She was too weak to resist them. They bundled her into blankets and rowed her to the Canadian side. One of the men grounded the boat while the other two got her to the nearest farmhouse. The farmwoman – she may have been an ancestor of the people who sponsored you, Doktor, because the legend is that she spoke Dutch – she got Lily inside and into a warm bed.
"The woman and her husband hid her away and protected her from the slave catchers. She had her baby boy the following week: born free. Lily and her protectors named him 'Moses', because he was pulled out of the water, like the biblical Moses."
"And they took care of Lily?" Carter asked anxiously. "She didn't have to go back, did she?"
"No. I guess everyone concerned thought she had drowned in the river. Her protectors sent her to friends inland, where there was less chance of her being caught by her old masters. No one ever knew what became of the three men. The legend is that the farmer found no marks of their feet on the snow the next day. Just Lily's footprints, his wife's and his own. I don't know if angels did rescue her; but whoever did, I certainly owe them my existence.
"My great-great grandfather Moses became a cooper. He fought with other black men at Queenston Heights during the War of 1812. He helped other fugitives adjust to the new country. When land near Chatham was turned into a settlement of fugitive slaves from the South, Moses Cooper was in his sixties. He sold the cooperage business he had built up near the Twelve Mile Creek and he and his family went west to help settle in the newcomers.
"His grandson was my grandfather, who's daughter met my dad when he came through from Detroit on business. They married and that's how Jessie and I came to be."
Colonel Hogan looked at his sergeant. "We owe those three angels quite a debt. I don't know what we'd do without you."
"That's quite a story, Kinch."
"Yeah. I was just thinking. There are a lot of determined women in my family. My mom had a hard life, but she kept us going. My grandmamma Kinchloe never bent her standards; but she loved us and saw us all through a lot of grief and trouble. And it goes back a long, long way. Jessie comes from the same good stock."
"As does her brother, Herr Kinchloewen," Doktor Falke said softly.
Kinch smiled a gentle thanks to her. "So perhaps I'm worrying needlessly about her."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," said Newkirk. "It's a brother's right to worry. But it doesn't mean that they'll put up with it, chum."
"Yeah," Carter added. "Save your worrying for us."
"What do you know about sisters, Carter? You don't have one."
"I think I do, Newkirk." Carter said softly. "Don't I have a sister, Doktor Falke?"
Marlena Falke took his hand in hers. "You do indeed, brother Andrew."
"Have you thought through your plan yet, Colonél?" asked LeBeau.
Colonel Hogan shook his head. "Not yet. Kinch's story was too interesting."
"Well, I don't know if this counts as a family legend; but I have a story," said Newkirk. "Have any of you lot seen a panto?"
"A what?"
"A 'panto'. A pantomime. It's a sort of combination farce and fairy story done in the music halls at Christmas time." Newkirk grinned wickedly at the lady doctor. "To drive the pious crackers."
"You don't give up, do you, Newkirk?"
"Can't afford to, Kinch. Got me reputation as a troublemaker to uphold. Besides, if the doctor can needle the colonel, and the colonel's too much of a gentleman to needle the doctor…."
"Oh, I'm not so sure of that!" Doktor Falke interjected.
"You don't give up either, do you, Fraulein Doktor?"
"I can't afford to, Colonel Hogan." They grinned impishly at one another.
"You've got your reputation as a troublemaker to uphold too. Continue, Newkirk; while I think of a way to involve the good doctor in my fiendish plans."
"Right, sir. Well, every panto has a dame – a fat man dressed in women's clothing."
Carter nudged LeBeau. "I bet Schultzie would look good in a dress." Everyone laughed but Newkirk.
"As I was saying," Newkirk mock-glared at his comrade in arms. "Every panto has a dame – except for the troupe that booked the Orpheum one Christmas to play 'Cinderella'. Our man caught the flu and there was no replacement for him about."
"Except you."
"Do I look like a fat man, Carter?"
"You've played women's parts here."
"We've all played women's parts here – well, almost all of us," Newkirk amended, looking at Kinch.
Kinch shrugged. "I've been spared that indignity at least."
"So have I." Colonel Hogan said, crossing his fingers. "So far."
"'Indignity', Sergeant Kinchloe?" Doktor Falke gave him a look. "Is it so bad to be a woman, gentlemen? You should try it sometime. You may learn something." She turned to Newkirk with a smile. "Please, Peter. Go on with your story."
"Well, I was playing the Prince's dimwitted lackey – or rather, the lackey that everyone thought was dim but who was really brighter than his master. I did my magic tricks and impressions. Got great reviews too. They're in my trunk back home or I'd show them to you.
"But we needed a panto dame. You can't put on a panto without one, but they were in short supply. Everyone who could do it in a wink was already booked up. We thought we'd have to close down the show before it started, which meant we wouldn't eat that Christmas, let alone buy presents for the kiddies."
Newkirk stopped speaking and looked at his hands.
"So what happened?" Carter asked after the pause lengthened unbearably.
The English corporal smiled, pleased with his sense of timing. "I needed the quid, so I went back to my secondary trade." He held up his fingers and flexed them. "I had them in one gent's pocket when I see this old geezer staring at me. I didn't know what to do. If I took the wallet in plain sight of him, he'd call the coppers. If I didn't, I'd lose out on the money.
"I decided to play the honest cove and hoped the old geezer would leave me alone. I slipped my hand out of the gent's back pocket and began to saunter off. What did the old geezer do but follow me?
"I was in a sweat; but what could he do? I didn't have stolen goods on me. Still, I'm a man who has not always kept to the straight path. I was all nerves that he was a plain clothes copper, bent on collaring me for past misdeeds.
"We get around the corner, and the guy said, 'You were going to rob that gent, weren't you?' I didn't want to say yes or no, so I look at him non-committal like.
" 'What if I was?' I says. He says, 'I hear you're looking for a panto dame.' I says 'What if I am?' He says 'What about trying me out?'
"I look him over. He's the right size, but I don't know him from Adam. He says, 'Look, mate. I know what you was doing to that gent and you know I know. And you know what? I'm going to stick to you so you can't do it again unless you make me your panto dame.' Seems the old geezer was an actor down on his luck. He had seen me around the Orpheum and had heard the gossip.
"What could I do? I was down to my last quid and I needed food and drink. I took him down to the Orpheum and introduced him to my guv'nor there. Well, the old geezer was the best panto dame there ever was. He looked funny and he acted as funny as he looked, simpering and cavorting in the 'Fairy Godmother' rig like he was born to play it.
We didn't have much business the first matinee; but the customers' word of mouth brought in others, who brought in still others. We were held over for weeks. When we finally closed, we had money and to spare.
"He told me his moniker was 'Charlie'. I never knew his last name and I never saw him again. No one else did, but he was the best panto dame I ever worked with."
"I don't know if we should accept your story, Newkirk. It's not a family legend," said Carter doubtfully.
"When I tell it to my kiddies someday, it'll become one, won't it?"
"Yeah. I guess so, the way you add things on. When they tell it to their grandkids, it'll probably be a legend."
"Well, it's the best I can come up with. Can you do better?"
Carter thought this over. He shook his head. "No. I don't have any Christmas legends. Something strange did happen to me once."
"Only once?" asked LeBeau, sceptically. "The way you walk about with your head in the clouds?"
Kinch held up his hand. "Can't you see the Colonel's still thinking? Hold the insults and let Carter tell us his story."
Carter shot him a grateful look. He marshalled his thoughts and took a deep breath.
"When I was a boy, my cousin Paul and I had this pony."
"Is that your cousin named 'Angry-Rabbit-with-Thorn-in-Cottontail'?" Newkirk shot in sarcastically.
Carter glared at him. He was about to shoot off an angry retort when he caught Kinch's reproving glance.
With a look to Newkirk that said, 'I'll mind my manners even though you won't', Carter replied mildly, "Yeah. That's Paul.
"Where was I? Oh, yeah. Our pony. We called him, 'Wise-and-Patient-Horse-that-Takes-Us-Everywhere-We-Want-to-Go.' It's shorter in Sioux language. He was all that his name said he was, and we loved him. He was old, though. One day, my uncle said that he was too old to earn his keep, and that he was going to shoot him. We begged him not to do it, but he said he must and he made us watch while he did it."
"That's terrible!" said LeBeau. "Making little boys watch while he killed their pet!"
Carter shrugged. "Yeah, well, my uncle wasn't really being mean. He wanted to teach us a lesson: that bad things happen and we have to learn to take them without crying."
Carter looked as if he was now about to cry. Marlena patted his sleeve. Newkirk put his arm around his shoulders and gave him a sympathetic squeeze.
"How old were you when this happened, Carter?" Kinch asked quietly.
Carter swallowed. " Thanks, fellas. Stupid of me. After all, it happened so long ago. I was about nine, Kinch. 'Horse' was very old and sick. Uncle Stan did the right thing, and he let us pet him and say good-bye before he shot him.
"At the time, though, I didn't think he did the right thing. I was sore at my uncle, and so was Paul. My dad was on my uncle's side. He said that it was the best thing for 'Horse', that he wouldn't have to suffer anymore and that Paul and I should grow up and face the fact that no one lives forever.
"This made us really angry. We decided to run away, into the Black Hills. They're very sacred to the Sioux people. They say the spirits of the brave and mighty ones live there, and that they come to people in dreams and whisper wisdom in their ears. Sometimes, the spirits have even taken people away with them forever, to hunt with them across the sky. Paul and I, we wanted to be with 'Horse' again, so we ran away, hoping that the spirits would take us too."
Carter paused, his thoughts pondering his memories. The other sat in silence, and as each of them waited for him to continue his story, they thought about the times when they too had wanted to run away.
LeBeau thought of the day his wife slammed the door behind him. Good riddance to her. Gizelle had been a shrew. It had been a relief to leave her and start living again. But oh, the money he had had to pay her over the years! It was a relief to be here, where she could not get at him.
Kinch thought of the days after his father's death – when everyone around him was crying and his heart ached so sore. He had longed to run away to where things were normal and carefree, like they were for other kids. He was only six then, and bound by his father's promise to take care of Jessie. He had felt so bewildered. So angry at his father for getting killed and at the Krauts for killing him. A lot of that anger had spilled over into his adult life. Schultz was the only German he had even slightly opened up to, if he did not count Marli Falke, who wasn't really German. He wanted to run away right now, back home to Jessie. He wanted to see this guy she was getting hitched up with and he wanted to share in her joy. He had missed her so much, and he was missing her happiest day. Sometimes duty could feel heavier than the heaviest chain.
Newkirk thought of the day he first left home, in handcuffs. All because he got careless breaking into that posh house. His first imprisonment. He was thirteen then, and mad as hell. He had wanted to escape the East End of London, and to get back at those snooty rich City men who looked down on working class lads like him. But this wasn't the way he had intended to leave it. He soon learned all the tricks of the escape trade, because of that one slip up. They served him well here at Stalag Thirteen, but not in the way he thought they would. Instead of himself escaping, he was stuck here helping other blokes to escape.
Doktor Marlena Falke thought of her own first days in Toronto. The big, wicked city. A place as alien to her as China. She was seventeen, and she was scared. She wanted to escape. But where could she go? Back to her father's beatings? She knew that God had given her a fine mind. She could not subdue the restless urge to learn all she could and to do something important with her life. Her church had given her that. They had seen what her father had done to her. They had hid his faults to outsiders – after all, they were supposed to show a light to the world – but they tried to make it up to her by sponsoring her education in medicine. They had given her a calling and the means to escape him. She had to be brave and endure.
At first, she had hated the city. It was worldly, wicked, all she was taught to abhor. But, gradually, she noticed its riches as well as its garbage. She read her first book for pleasure in the large public library on College Street. It was a magical retreat. Never had she seen so many books, all in one place. One day she listened in on the children's story hour. The tales the librarian, Miss Lillian Smith, had told enraptured her. After that, she came every Saturday: first to listen, then to earn a little money by shelving books. Miss Smith left the door slightly ajar as she read to the children, so that the shy medical student in the next room could better hear her. Marlena Falke saw her first play – the operetta 'Die Fledermaus' – at Massey Music Hall. She found herself laughing hysterically at that Doktor Falke, so different from herself. She opened herself up to the world of the imagination. Through it, she discovered the courage to laugh and survive. She discovered streaks of grey running through her black and white assumptions. She was still learning those lessons, even now, with these dear men.
Colonel Hogan looked at his men, and at Doktor Falke, his 'thorn in the flesh'. He sensed how much Kinch wanted to escape and be with his sister on her wedding day. He realized how vulnerable the lady doctor was: trapped between opposing armies and neither able nor willing to belong fully to either side. He thought of LeBeau and Newkirk, chafing to be fighting openly for their respective countries, and of Carter, trying so valiantly to overcome his ineptness and be of real use to the team.
The colonel also wanted to escape: to be with his loved ones and to do useful work under the open sky. Subterfuge was fun, but it was getting burdensome. He wasn't bored with his men or with the dangerous work, but he was fed up with prison camp life. He had to juggle so much: the men, the operation, Goldilocks, the various underground cells, Marlena. Thank God for Donovan, but Donovan couldn't go cap in hand to Klink. The Geneva Convention stipulated that was the job of the most senior officer among the POW's. His job.
He was also worried about how long their luck would last. Their run of over two years was miraculous when the life expectancy of a guerrilla cell was less than three months. And Hochstetter was increasingly suspicious of them.
Maybe next year they will all be home free. He hoped that with all his heart.
At last, Carter shook himself and resumed his narrative.
"We were gone at least five days. At first, we weren't worried. We had camped out lots of times with our dads. They had taught us lots of useful stuff about wild plants and taking care of ourselves. I guess they thought they'd see how well we learned those things, as well as learn not to run away again.
"It was fun at first, but the fourth day it rained. We were cold and hungry. We missed our folks, but we didn't want to admit it, not even to ourselves. And I was scared that they didn't want us anymore. After all, why didn't they come looking for us?
"That evening, just before sunset, I looked up at the rolling dark clouds and had a dream. I dreamt the lightening we saw were spears and that the spirits were throwing them at the buffalo thundering ahead of them in the clouds. You should've heard the thunder of their hooves as they passed over the hills! It was terrific!"
Carter looked at his friends, thrilled by his memory and anxious to share it fully with them.
"And then I saw 'Horse'. There he was, galloping with the other horses, his mane and tail just flying wildly. He wasn't clop, clopping like he did when he was alive with us. He was really enjoying himself.
"I think he saw me. In my head, I thought I heard him say, "Look at me go, 'Little Deer'!" I watched him gallop across the sky. I couldn't wish him back. I didn't want to. He was having so much fun.
"I looked at Paul. I was afraid to tell him my dream. He'd think I was crazy. But then Paul looked back at me, and it was like we had seen the same thing. We decided to hike back home the next day.
"Dad and Uncle Stan were waiting for us when we got to the main road. They had set up camp there when they found out we were missing. Dad said they thought they'd give us time to ourselves, before they started looking for us. I remember Dad saying that no matter how much sympathy he gets, a man has to grieve all on his own. It's the way of nature. I found out later that he and Uncle Stan had been watching over us all that time, just a little ways away, so that the animals that prowled around there wouldn't hurt us."
"Did this happen at Christmastime?" Doktor Falke asked.
"No, ma'am. It happened in August. But when Kinch talked about those three men who saved his great-great grandma, and Newkirk spoke of a man he never saw before who saved him and his troupe from going hungry, I just thought about this. I don't know why."
"Maybe you hit upon it just now," Kinch said. "People who came, rescued, and then disappeared. My ancestress' 'angels', Newkirk's 'Charlie', and your 'Horse'."
"How did 'Horse' save Carter?" Newkirk asked.
"'Horse' appeared to him to tell him he was happy where he had gone. Carter no longer had to feel guilty or sad. Carter, what happened to you, alone with Paul in the hills for four days?"
"Not much. We talked about 'Horse'. We talked about a lot of things. We hunted our food."
"You relied upon yourself. You relied upon each other. You became better friends with your cousin. That letter that made us tease you about your name – it was addressed to 'Sergeant Little Deer Who Goes Swift and Sure Thorough Forest', right?"
"So?" Carter asked defensively.
Kinch crossed his arms. He looked steadily at the younger man. "So, why didn't your cousin address it to 'Sergeant Andrew Carter'? 'Angry Rabbit' must be proud to be a Sioux."
"Yeah. He is. Very proud."
"And he should be. He has every right to be proud of his heritage, and of his cousin Little Deer. Both came through for him when he needed them. Both your ancestral lore and your cousin came through for you and you learned self-reliance as well."
"I never thought of that." Carter's face burst into a smile. "Thanks, Kinch."
"Well, I hope you take the lesson to heart," said Newkirk, just a little acidly. Then he ruffled Carter's hair, to show he didn't mean to be nasty about it.
LeBeau cleared his throat. "I have a confession to make. Mademoiselle la Doctrice, I met you once before, one Christmas eve."
Doktor Falke's eyes widened. "I don't recall it, Corporal LeBeau."
"It was without your knowledge, and it was three years ago. In 1940, before Colonél Hogan was shot down and this operation was begun. In a way, perhaps I have you to thank for my being here."
"1940." Doktor Falke mused. "I had just moved here from Heidelburg. Like Sergeant Schultz's ancestor, I was trying to hide who I was and what I did, but I journeyed in the opposite direction from Grandpa Gunther Schultze."
"1940 was when France fell to les Boches and was torn in two by them. I had been captured, had escaped, was re-captured, again escaped and was again re-captured. I was determined even then to join the Resistance, but as I was always recaptured before I was able to do so.
"I was still in uniform. I was not a spy or saboteur – not until Colonél Hogan recruited me for this. Since I was still a soldier in uniform, I was sent not to a concentration camp but to a prisoner of war camp.
"That December, I endeavoured to escape again. Again I was re-captured; but I was injured in the shoulder and taken to the hospital."
"I did not dig out that bullet. I would've remembered," Doktor Falke said. "You are impossible to forget, Corporal LeBeau."
"Merci, Mademoiselle." LeBeau bowed and blew her a kiss. "So determined was I to get back to France and to join the Resistance forces that as soon as I awakened, I plotted again to escape. I was very weak, but I am what le capitan d'groupe Donovan calls 'a game cockerel' – all talons and fire.
"It was Christmas Eve. My guards celebrated the holiday a little early. I had hoarded my sleeping syrup. I added it to the beer they drank and – voila! They fell on their faces snoring, the animals."
"I picked a resourceful man to be our chef," Colonel Hogan remarked with a slight smirk.
"Merci, mon Colonél," LeBeau replied with a bow.
Kinch smoothed his moustache, hiding his mouth with his hand. He remained silent, but he looked speculatively from LeBeau to his commanding officer, and then to Newkirk, who suddenly looked down at his hands. His lips curved upward slightly behind his palm as he watched his comrade's neck flush crimson. At least one of them feels guilty for putting me out of action.
LeBeau continued. " I rose from my bed during the midnight hour and slipped through the corridors until I passed through the door to the outside world. And there you stood outside it, mademoiselle.
"At first I thought you had seen me and would sound the alarm. I had the pistol of one of my guards in my hand. Had you seen me, I would have used it. I did not want to shoot a woman, but I was so desperate to be free.
"You did not see me. Instead, you were looking at the tower of the church. I still can recall how sad and lonely you looked, and how weary.
"Suddenly, I too felt weary. Perhaps I was still too weakened from my wound and loss of blood. I returned to my bed and from there I went to Stalag Thirteen. I tried to escape again three times during the next year, but I was always recaptured. Then Newkirk came. Then le Colonél and Kinch. Then Carter. Then we started this. Whatever you may think of it, mademoiselle, we have done good work here. Very good work, and I am glad to be a part of it."
"I remember looking at the church tower," Doktor Falke recalled. "I was thinking of the bells. If there had not been a war, I thought, the bells in the tower would have been ringing in Christmas Day. I remembered a song that I learned to sing back home and I thought how apt it suddenly had become."
"Was it this song, Doktor Falke?" Carter asked. He began to sing softly:
'I heard the bells on Christmas Day / Their old, familiar carols play, / And mild and sweet, / The words repeat / Of 'Peace on Earth, Good will to men.'
"Yes, brother Andrew. That was the one."
Carter sang the second verse.
'I thought how as the day had come / The belfries of all Christendom / Had rolled along the unbroken song / Of 'Peace on Earth. Goodwill to men.'
Doktor Falke began to sing in a whispery voice:
'And in despair I bowed my head. / 'There is no peace on earth,' I said. / 'For hate is strong, / And mocks the song / Of 'Peace on Earth. Goodwill to men.'…
Her eyes and her voice filled with tears.
Then, looking gently at her, Sergeant Kinchloe's deep baritone took up the next verse:
"'Then pealed the bells more loud and deep. / 'God is not dead, nor doth He sleep. / The wrong shall fail. The right prevail. / With peace on Earth, goodwill to men.'
"Someday, Doktor Falke. Peace and goodwill will come. Believe in that. Don't despair just yet."
"Do you believe in it, mein Herr?"
"With such friends as mine, and with such people as you, yes Doktor Fledermaus. I begin to believe it will happen."
Colonel Hogan took up the song:
"Then ringing, singing on its way, / The world revolved from night to day. / A voice, a chime, a chant sublime / Of peace on earth, good will to men."
Newkirk said, "I can hardly wait to hear the bells again. But we won't be together when that day comes."
"Where will we be?" asked Carter.
"Try not to be so daft, Carter. We'll be in our home countries. Louis will be in France. I'll probably be in some pub in London. You and the colonel and Kinch will be in America. Doktor Falke will be either here or in Canada."
"Then let us make a pact," LeBeau replied. "When we hear the bells each Christmas Day, wherever we are, let us think of each other."
"And raise a glass." Newkirk mimed the action. "Of cider, in Doktor Falke's case. Mine will be gin."
"Molson Export for me," said Kinch, grinning. "An old tradition of my own from Prohibition days," he added, thinking of the times he had smuggled beer across the Detroit River from Canada.
"Champagne for me, of course," said LeBeau. "André?"
"Lager beer. It seems right, being German and all. Colonel?"
Colonel Hogan looked at his cup. He swirled its contents meditatively. "Brandy. Just like this. To remember tonight. With perhaps just a drop of apple juice."
"Colonél! It would ruin the taste!"
"I don't think so, LeBeau. Not on Christmas Day. Not while remembering this night and all of you."
More explanations:
"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day": words by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe and Colonel John Butler actually lived.
Colonel Butler's sale of parcels of his grant of land established the first Mennonite settlements in Canada from Pennsylvania – refugees from the American Revolution. And their descendants sponsored those who arrived from Ukraine and Eastern Europe to settle in the West as well as among them in Ontario. Together, they now sponsor refugees from other races and backgrounds. Who in turn sponsor other refugees.
Military men and pacifists. English and French and everyone else under the sun. All human beings. In many ways distinct and divergent – in many ways the same. Amazing the way God works through people of good will, no matter who they are.
Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe's proclamation was enacted. Unfortunately, the circumstances that created and surrounded it also existed. One woman who was carried off across the Niagara River to New York State did drown herself rather than bring her unborn child into a life of bondage. Moses Cooper is fictional; but settlements of black people did exist in Niagara, Chatham and elsewhere in Ontario. Black men fought at Queenston Heights in 1812 as elsewhere in other wars. The stories of these settlers and their descendants deserve wider recognition and greater respect than they get. As do those of Carter's people – the natives and the Metis.
Miss Lillian Smith, Head of Children's Services at the Toronto Public Library in the 1920's-50's, also lived. Her commitment to her profession and to the literacy of Toronto's children in very troubled times is an awe inspiring and lasting legacy that its present citizens sometimes undervalue. Toronto Public Library had the first children's library services in Canada, and the first immigrants' literacy services.