Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [124]
"About family." Cray pushed the tines aside and stepped to the workbench. "And what it's like to lose a son."
Katrin said, "We know your son is gone."
The sergeant snorted. "Not just one. All three of them. All dead within a year."
"What's this?" Cray held up a jar of clear fluid.
"Made of apples. Apple peels and cores, actually."
Cray sipped from the bottle, then sharply drew in air through his teeth. "Could use another ten or fifteen minutes of aging."
Kahr glanced at the pitchfork in his hands. He had heard tales of German commandos, how they trained and how rugged they were. And the legendary Otto Skorzeny had visited the Führer in the bunker, and everyone down there had talked about Skorzeny and his men, how they had rescued Mussolini. This American was much like Skorzeny, must be, with his operation against the Vassy Chateau. And he looked as tough as Skorzeny. Kahr decided a pitchfork was useless against the American, would have all the effect of spitting from a flatcar. He hung the fork back on its pegs.
Cray wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Where I'm from, we call this applejack."
"I tried to make it taste like schnapps." Kahr returned to his upturned barrel. "Sometimes I add spices to the mix, when I can find them."
The woman was staring with disapproval at the American. Finally she said, "We didn't come all the way out here for you to drink liquor."
Cray took another swallow. "There's a taste of lead in it."
"From the automobile radiator. I flushed it out as well as I could, but the lead flavor is still there."
With the bottle still in one hand, Cray dragged a sawhorse to the circle of warmth around the boiler. "Drink enough of this, the lead will make you blind." He passed the bottle to Kahr.
"I'm not going to live long enough to worry about it." The sergeant took the bottle and brought it to his mouth. "No survivors where I'm posted. We're all going to fall, right to the last man. That's what my Schutzstaffel friends tell me, not that they're really my friends." He added happily, "The Russians are going to kill every one of them when the Red Army gets to Berlin. I only hope they run out of bullets before they get to us regular army folks."
"I ever tell you my father once made a barrel of this stuff?" Cray leaned back, bringing his feet to the fire to warm them. "Tasted about like yours."
"Yeah?" Kahr sipped from the bottle again, then passed it back to the American. "I'll bet he didn't have the problems that I do finding yeast for the mash."
Katrin cut in, "What is this talk?"
Cray took another pull from the bottle. "He'd use Red Delicious apples from our farm, in the state of Washington. Place called Wenatchee, right on the Columbia River. The best apples in the world, some of them almost the size of my head, their color as glorious as a sunset."
"I used to grow those big red ones myself, between the wars. Right out there." Kahr waved at a wall. "Sixty-four trees in perfect rows. A lovely sight. But when I was called up into the army in 1943—an old gent like me, so I knew the Wehrmacht was getting desperate — I didn't have the time to work the orchards. Prop up the apples. Do the culling."
"My dad even had an apple press." Cray smiled at the recollection. "And I'd help him by turning the crank…"
She interrupted again. "Two men, sitting around a fire, drinking, having a fine time, like in some beer hall. That's not why we came out here."
Sergeant Kahr stared morosely at her.
So did Cray. He said to the sergeant, "She's been a lot of fun, you can tell." He passed the spirits back to Kahr.
"To business," Katrin insisted. Her hair reflected the fire like obsidian.
Cray rubbed the side of his nose with a finger. "You've lost three sons, Sergeant." Colonel Becker had reported Kahr's missing sons to Cray.
Kahr nodded. "No one to leave the farm to now. I can't think about it much. I... I don't have..." His voice was just audible above the crackling of the fire. "So I sit out here in the goat shed."
Cray smiled broadly. "I'll give you one of them back."
The sergeant's brow furled.