Passport

Milwaukee, 1960

Inside the garage, Tommy fingers hit the guitar. A moment later, Bernard and Joe joined in on the drums and bass.

"Deep down in Louisianna close to–"

Suddenly, the power in the garage went out, killing the speakers. "Hey, what happened, man?" Joe said, lowering his bass.

"Where's the power?" Tommy cried. He slammed his hand across the strings of his guitar. "Come on."

Sixteen-year-old Bernard threw his head back and groaned. There was only one reason for the power to have gone out just now.

The garage door opened, revealing Bernard's dad standing in the driveway. The stern look on his face meant trouble.

"Geez, Dad, did you turn off the power? Why do you gotta be so lame?"

"Tommy, Joe, out. Go home," Dad said, snapping his fingers and then jerking his thumb behind him.

Both boys rolled their eyes, but unstrapped their instruments and grabbed their cases. "I told you we should have practiced at my house," Tommy grumbled.

"So lame," Joe added.

"Now." Both boys got the message conveyed more in his tone than in his words and quickly scrambled out of the garage.

Bernard shook his head and then smashed his sticks onto his cymbals. "What's the deal? Why are you being such a square?!"

Dad held up a piece of paper. "Care to explain this?"

Bernard rolled his eyes. "Explain what?"

"Your report card. I found it stashed under your bed."

Bernard jumped up. "What the hell? You went into my room?"

"Save it," Dad snapped. "Just how the hell did you fail French?"

"Gee, I don't know, maybe because I haven't spoken it since I was a kid," Bernard spat. "And if it makes you feel any better," he continued with a snotty tone as he crossed his arms over his chest, "I failed English too."

"It does not." Dad's face softened just a little as he stepped towards Bernard. "Come on, Bern, you're better than this. You're smarter than this."

"Whatever," Bernard said as he pushed past his old man and stomped out of the garage.

"Hold it."

Bernard swiveled around. "Why do you even care? You think you just get to disappear for weeks at a time and then get on my case about stuff like this whenever you bother coming home? You know, maybe if you were here every once in a while you could, I don't know, help me or something?!"

Dad pinched the bridge of his nose. "I've gotta work, Bern."

"So get a job in town," Bernard cried. It was the same old argument they had had a hundred times before. And, a hundred times before, Dad had refused to change. "You know, sometimes I think the only reason you chose to be a travelling salesman is so you don't have to be here! You know what, never mind. When's your next trip? Let me guess, tonight?"

Dad crossed his arms. "No… The day after tomorrow."

"Figures." Bernard stormed through the yard and towards the house.

"Look," Dad said, coming up beside him, "whether I work or not, you need to get your grades up. I'm this close to shipping you off to military school."

"Fine. Better than staying here with you."

"Oh, so now you want me gone?"

"Like it even matters, Dad," Bernard said as he marched into the house. He raced towards the stairs and took them two at a time. He entered his room and slammed the door behind him. He turned on his record player and cranked the volume before flopping onto his bed.

A moment later, Dad opened the door.

"Dad! Get outta my room!"

"Uh-uh." Dad walked over to the record player and turned it off. He grabbed the record. "No records. No TV. No band. No nothing until your grades improve."

"Arg! You're so lame!"

Dad ignored Bernard's complaint. "And since your Oma will be staying here while I'm gone, you're gonna tidy this house and make it presentable. Unless you want a seventy year old woman to do it."

"No," Bernard sniped. "I want a fifty-two year old man not to abandon his son every chance he gets."

"Bernard, you're on such thin ice right now," Dad warned. "I'm not going to–" Dad's watch beeped, cutting him off. He looked at it and frowned. "We'll finish this discussion later. I'm going to be late for a meeting."

"Yeah, yeah."

"When I get home, your room had better be spotless." Dad reached down and grabbed a dirty pair of underwear and tossed it at Bernard's face.

"Gross, Dad."

"Clean it up. I'll be back soon." Before he left, Dad grabbed Bernard's stack of records. "I'll try not to drop these."

Bernard just set his jaw, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared up at the ceiling until Dad left. He listened as Dad went down the stairs. Soon, he heard the front door close and the car pull away from the house.

Bernard stayed as he was for a long time. He didn't really have any concrete thoughts. He was just mad. Finally, he sat up and slipped off his bed to kneel in front of his dresser. He pulled open the bottom drawer and dug way into the back. Finally, he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a small kit and got up.

"Turnabout is fair play," he said as he went across the hall to Dad's room. He knelt down and opened his kit– a neat little present from Uncle Peter. Quick as a flash, he had unpicked the lock and turned the knob.

It had been ages since he had been in Dad's room. He remembered a long time ago, when he was little, coming into his room almost every night and curling up into bed with him. His life had been so uncertain for so long that he needed something to anchor him. Dad had been his teddy bear for far longer than Bernard's teenage pride would allow him to admit. But as he had grown, cracks formed between them, and now it seemed like an unbridgeable gulf.

Bernard shook those thoughts out of his head and looked around the room. Everything was in order. It looked… empty. Oh, there were things on the dresser and shirts hanging in the closet, but it felt… it felt more like a hotel room. No, a façade. A stage. A convenient place to sleep, rather than a place someone lived.

Bernard doubted he'd find a report card shoved under Dad's bed. In fact, he didn't even know what he was looking for, or what he intended to do here. He just felt the need to turn the tables.

Bernard poked through the dresser drawers. Nothing interesting. Everything was neatly folded or rolled. On the nightstand, there were a few pictures. One of Oma and Grandfather. One of Dad and his men in the prison camp, Stalag 13. One of Bernard and Dad when Dad had found him in France so many years ago.

Sitting on the edge of Dad's bed, Bernard grabbed that picture. Dad looked so nervous. Bernard, scrawny and small, looked distrustful. It was in stark contrast to the picture beside it, with Bernard on Dad's shoulders, holding up a fish. Just how had they gone from one, to the other, to now?

He set the picture back on the stand and flopped backwards. Bernard grabbed a pillow and dropped it on his face. It smelled like Dad's aftershave. He sighed and then blew a raspberry, knocking the pillow off him. Getting off the bed, he moved to the closet. Shirts, jackets, slacks, ties. All sensible, and boring. Bernard stood on his toes and peeked up at the top shelf. An old glove, bat and baseball, along with some other knick-knacks. He reached up to grab the glove, but knocked over the ball in the process. He tried to catch it, but it fell past his hand and landed on the floor near his foot. It rolled deeper into the closet. Bernard grabbed the glove and knelt down to get the ball.

The ball must have knocked a floorboard loose when it fell. Bernard went to put it back in place when something caught his eye.

"Huh?" Something was in the floor. Bernard reached down and grabbed hold of something. He tried to pull it up, but it was too big to fit through the opening. With a grunt, he pulled up the floorboard beside the hole and the one next to that. He could now clearly see a briefcase. No. Bernard lay on the floor and peeked deeper into the hole. There was three briefcases.

"What the hell?"

He grabbed one and pulled it out. Of course, it was locked. Bernard furrowed his brow. The chances of guessing the correct combination was one in a million. And he wasn't about to break the case to find out what was in it. Dad would kill him. Still, Bernard couldn't just give up; he had so many questions. Why did Dad have three suitcases under the floorboards? What was he hiding?

Putting the case on his lap, Bernard rolled his thumbs along the dials. "Come on, I need some luck."

He didn't know who had listened to him, but when he pushed against the buttons, the clasps popped open. "Holy cow."

With a sense of trepidation, Bernard slowly opened the case.

"Geez!"

Inside there were stacks of cash and over a dozen passports. Bernard grabbed a stack of cash and thumbed through it. British pounds. Another stack looked French. Still another proclaimed it was from Republica Argentina. The passports, too, came from all over. Bernard grabbed a blue one that was marked Deutsche Demokratische Republik, Reisepass. Bernard flipped it open. It definitely had Dad's picture. Sort of. The man's hair was white, and he had a mustache. And his name, if Bernard was reading it correctly, was Wilhelm Langenscheidt.

"What the hell?"

He grabbed another passport, this one looked. Well, actually, Bernard didn't know for sure. It was red with a picture of a fire and a star. Jugoslavija? Yugoslavia? Upon opening it, he once again saw Dad's face, but this time, his hair was dark and there was a scar on his cheek. And his name was– well, it was something Bernard couldn't even begin to pronounce, but it definitely wasn't Robert Hogan.

Bernard leafed through a few more passports before shutting the case. He debated looking into the others, but decided against it. He would likely find more of the same. Carefully, he put the case back into the floor, and replaced the boards.

Just what the hell was Dad doing with all this stuff?

In a daze, Bernard left Dad's room, making sure to lock it back up. When he got back to his own room, he fell onto his bed and looked up at the ceiling, searching for answers.

And then an idea hit him. An idea that was absurd. Ridiculous. But when he thought about it– when he thought about his Dad; when he thought about Uncle Peter; when he thought about some of the stories they had swapped, it didn't seem so ridiculous anymore.

Could it be? Could it possibly be? Dad was no travelling salesman.

"Holy shit," Bernard breathed as it all became clear in his mind.

Dad was a spy.