Page 20 of The Bootlegger’s Bride

J an Nowak sat in a commandeered wooden chair on a side street—Rue de Normandie, the embedded blue oval wall plaque read—enjoying the sun and relative quiet.

No grind and clank of tank treads, no gunfire or explosions near enough to make you jump or burrow into the ground.

Nobody yelling, howling, or crying for his mother.

Just the ever-present scents of wood smoke and gunpowder hanging in the air, or maybe wafting from his fatigues.

Inside the blown-out shop behind him he had found stationery and a fountain pen to write his wife, which he had not had the chance to do since they landed three weeks earlier, but he was having trouble knowing what exactly to say.

He could not very well tell Hazel what he had seen and done or how he felt about it. How truly harrowing, dangerous, and chaotic it was. Nor about the comrades he had already lost. Not without further worrying her. Or himself.

So, he wrote about Long Lake and the peace he found there with her, the freedom, and the joy. Then he crumpled that sheet and started over, writing in present perfect tense—“the peace I have found there with you”—instead of past tense.

He wrote of warm summer evenings rowing their boat over the still lake with her and their son.

Fish leaping to snare insects, cows lowing on the eastern shore.

Whippoorwills crooning, cicadas rasping, katydids scratching, and frogs croaking.

The clean smell of the lake and fields rising as the air cooled.

Jan told how he pined for her and their happy home.

How he longed to shepherd their son into manhood, to make him into a better man than his flawed yet adoring father…

“I hope to guide him and stand by him always, no matter what, to be the nurturing father I never had, embracing and comforting him when days turn dark.” Jan tried but failed to recall any occasion when his father, Joseph Nowak, laid hands on him other than in anger.

A shadow passed over the page and lingered there. He looked up to find Jacob Wolfson, heavy black stubble on his gaunt face, standing over him. Realizing he was interfering with Jan’s sunbathing, Wolfson stepped aside and leaned against the wall.

“Got a minute?”

“My time is your time, Lieutenant. Pull up a chair,” he said, though none were in sight.

Wolfson smiled. Thoughtful and well spoken, he had been a stockbroker before the war and had given Jan some advice on how he might handle his capital when he returned home. Putting it where you get better earnings than in safety deposit boxes.

“Scuttlebutt has it you took a poke at Sergeant Rabee.”

“I wouldn’t call it a poke, Lieutenant. I’d call it a haymaker. He went down like a load of bricks.”

“Didn’t file a charge. Word is he had it coming. Good enough for me. Though I’d like to know if there’s a problem here that needs solving.”

“Thanks. I already solved it.”

“I’d still like to know what the rub was.”

“Sure…” Nowak capped the fountain pen, laid it across the pad of paper in his lap, and shooed away a fly that had landed there.

“We’ve got young guys here, Lieutenant, malleable college kids some of them, who have watched too many government propaganda films. You know, movies whooping ‘kill the Krauts’ and ‘make the Japs into chop suey.’ Personally, I thought that was what we were fighting against, killing others because they’re different, like the Germans are doing to the Jews and Poles, and the Japanese to the Chinese and Filipinos, for starters…

“Putting that aside, these kids swallow that stuff whole, parroting abstractions like ‘honor,’ ‘valor,’ and ‘justice.’ They talk about dying for a righteous cause, going to heaven, and winning the regard of girlfriends and grateful Americans everywhere. In other words, they’re asking for it.

Rabee took advantage of their bravado, endangering them unnecessarily in my opinion.

“Then two nights ago after a bottle of Cognac I got in his face about it. Said that these were human beings. Real people. Not expendable markers in some patriotic table game. Things got heated—well, I was already pretty fired up—and he called me a ‘pig-ignorant Polack.’ At that point I had no choice. I decked him.”

Wolfson fought back a grin then pulled a stern face and said, “I understand. ‘Conniving Kike’ moves me in the same way. But best to keep it under wraps. Particularly with witnesses around. Could cost you a court martial next time.”

Jan brought an index finger to his lips and gazed up at Wolfson. “If I slugged you now, Lieutenant, could you fix me up with a discharge?”

“Won’t do you any good, Nowak. We’re all moving ahead together tomorrow.”

“Damn.”

The lieutenant patted Jan’s shoulder and sauntered off. Wolfson was a good guy. Pity was that the good guys got it just as often as the assholes.

When he finished his letter to Hazel Jan thought to write Father Marek. Prayer and faith had recently reentered his life—a topic they had discussed before he shipped out.

On D-Day, Father, when we were headed to shore in the Higgins boat I noted a lot of praying going on around me. It made me think of the Mark Twain quote, ‘I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.’

In this case, however, nobody knew whether they held a winning hand or not. And none were serene, calm, or confident. Including yours truly, who has once again taken to crossing himself and beseeching the Almighty—particularly when the shells start flying.

Which brings to mind Chaplin Cummings’s field sermon at the Battle of Bataan, where he said, ‘There are no atheists in foxholes.’ True enough, perhaps.

Still, I question the efficacy of prayer after seeing so many true believers blown to smithereens.

God seems so far away or indifferent to human suffering and cruelty, to wrongheadedness and stupidity, to dark irony and senseless death.

Nonetheless I continue to pray for a quick end to all this madness and my safe return home.

In all honesty I must confess that I also rub the rabbit’s foot hanging with my dog tags and tap my cheek so Lady Luck might plant a kiss there. As you see, I am still not so much a good Catholic as a desperate pantheist who has just recently restored The Holy Trinity to prominence in his prayers…

What he failed to tell Father Marek was that when praying in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost he also invited any other gods who might be listening in—Greek, Roman, Hindu, Toltec, whatever—to lend a helping hand if they had an inclination.

Though no mischief, please. By way of expiating that omission Jan added:

And when this is all over, Father, I promise to return to St. Stanislaus Kostka and take the Eucharist. First, though, you’ll need to hear my confession if you can spare a few hours…

Writing of Lady Luck summoned up a vision of the gambler and now navy gunner Bogdan Zawadski, alias Bob Wade.

His best friend and guardian was somewhere in the Pacific.

Jan had heard that the Yanks were giving the Japs hell at Iwo Jima and Saipan.

American ships were being lost as well. So, he said a Christian prayer for his pal, the former altar boy and perpetual Catholic.

He asked for his safe return home as well, in the hope that they would soon be reunited.

That they would embrace and raise a glass together for old times’ sake. He pictured them doing just that.

“ Na zdrowie, Bogdan !” he said aloud. To health. “ Sto lat! ” One hundred years.