Chapter 20
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When I was sent back to Milwaukee I was assigned to colonel Palmer. By this point, Milwaukee still had a democratically elected mayor, but general Gardner ran this town in all but name. He let the mayor do things like collect taxes and garbage, but Gardner's people took care of food distribution, the courts. My first day back Palmer asked how my leg was doing, I said it was fine. Palmer told me I should say it limped sometimes, and I could be relieved from active duty. If that happenned, I could get a civilian job, although I would still be expected to train with the local militia two days a week. And I might be in a position to report what I heard around town. As I mentioned earlier places like Milwaukee offered sanctuary to aliens who deserted, and to civilian refugees. The point was to have far less aliens actually shooting at us. We did provide food and housing to them, if we didn't we would have a lot of angry, desperate aliens with nothing to lose by killing us. But, with over 100,000 aliens in Milwaukee, there were almost certainly some who wanted to help Etocles and Polyneises take this city. If I were living in the general area, people might think I faked an injury to get out of active duty, or they might think I was unfairly dismissed for being jewish. Either way, the aliens might think they could talk more freely around me. There was a myth that circulated after the war, that many jewish soldiers were dismissed to act as spys. I doubt that more than ten percent of those discharged were meant to be spys, but some of us were. Whether one chooses to call my actions patriotic or cowardly, I tool colonel Palmer's offer to become a spy.
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After my official discharge, I got a job at a local diner, run by a woman named Meg. Some diners refused to hire or even serve aliens, but not Meg. Like the rest of us she knew that eventually we'd all have to learn to live together, might as well start now. This was the first time that I worked and lived around aliens. I got along with my coworkers, was polite to the customers. I quickly learned that customers could be rude whether they were human or alien, but I tried to be as polite as possible. I remember one customer in particular, an old alien woman I called Esther. She still missed her old world, but had made the journey to Earth to keep her family together. Four of her grandchildren had fought in their army, two were dead, she didn't know about the other two. When she arrived in Milwaukee she was given an apartment. They told her that the family who once lived there had evacuated, tried to find a safer city. Esther said she believed her new home was haunted, but I believed it was just her own imagination, her old guilt. I had to help Esther to her seat a few times. I wasn't just hoping for tips, I genuinly felt bad for her.
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Although I had been discharged from the army, I was still expected to train with the local militia two days a week, and to go to the firing range one night a week. This militia was commanded by major Baldwin. You need to understand something about these local militias. They were mainly private citizens, more concerned with protecting their own families than with the war overall. Polyneises and Etocles hadn't breached the city's walls just yet, but they wanted to be ready should that happen. They agreed to help the army when possible, but made it clear that if a massive invasion came, they would be given leave to protect their own people. Whether Gardner would really honor this commitment when the time came was anyone's guess. The alien desseters had their own militias here, largely just protecting their own families as well. In a few cases, like my militia, there were both human and alien members. The aliens realized that, if the enemy breached the walls, they might not look too kindly on deserters, or their families. So men like Baldwin took them in, said he was proud to fight alongside those who were fighting for their families. It felt weird to be training and preparing to fight alongside aliens, but then it was weird to them as well. I had hated the aliens not so long ago, but for the first time I began to really know them. To see them, for lack of a better word, as human.
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My 18th birthday came and went with no fanfare. I worked at the diner that day, then went home and watched some television. I was still trying to contact my mother and Willow back in Israel, but communications between continents was still very difficult. By this point I was settling into my new life. The tv stations were mainly playing old reruns, new shows were nearly non existent, except for the news. I enjoyed old reruns of my soap opera "On her own." I still looked back nostalgically at the time when I couldn't wait to see new episodes, when that mattered. There were also baseball games in Milwaukee that I sometimes attended. Obviously the teams couldn't travel to other cities, but there were four teams in this city who played each other. Other cities like New York, Boston, Los Angelas, they all had their intra-city leagues as well during the war. It wasn't unusual to see humans and aliens in the crowd. There were still old signs in the outfield, encouraging us to buy war bonds. That was awkward for the aliens in the crowd. Over the summer they eventually took those signs down, perhaps just to temporarily create a few jobs. One night, I helped Esther walk back to her apartment, and she had a surprise waiting for her. It seemed that her grandson was waiting for her. He had been a P.O.W. in Kentucky, but escaped and found his way back to her. Esther was ofcourse overjoyed to see that her grandchild was alive and made it here. To my great shock, her grandson was David. It began to feel like fate was bringing us back together.