Escape Artist

when she hurled him away, he…he lost his focus.”

“This older man…”

“A myth, let me tell you. Because even after that…that abandonment I saw them together. She was toying with him. We are Methodists and we’re not into such shenanigans, young woman.”

“Her family was going to send her to Germany. To a nunnery.”

“Catholics!” he erupted, venom in his tone. “Germany has no place for her. She was what America does to young people. Germany is a distant memory.”

I remembered an interview Herr Professor had given Byron Beveridge for the Crescent: He was a noted orator and writer on the topic of “Honor the German Language,” part of a Wisconsin-based group of Social Democrats whose essays in the Deutsch- Amerikanische Buchrucker-Zeitung protested the loss of the German language as detrimental to their culture in America. The war cry was “German at home!” Deutsch in Amerika. Herr Professor had made it his cause and often dropped his leaflets at the Crescent office. One leaflet oddly blamed a recent diphtheria epidemic on the moral decline of America. He’d also protested the Oneida Indians casting votes during municipal elections, claiming they were all drunkards and fools. Jake had never mentioned his father’s zealotry, and once, when someone brought it up as we sat with sarsaparillas in the drug store, he walked away.

Herr Professor went on. “I thought her death would solve our family problem.”

That was a horrendous sentence, cruel. “Frana Lempke didn’t deserve to die…”

Herr Professor was walking toward the door and I followed. “Sometimes one death can redeem other lives. Sacrifice.”

“You think she had to die?”

“Her behavior made it her destiny.”

“I think…”

He held up his hand, signaling an end. “But she seems to have taken our son with her.” He actually stomped his foot on the floor. “As you can see, he’s not here. Thank you for your visit, Miss Ferber. I trust we will not find ourselves quoted on the front page of the Crescent.”

The housemaid was holding the front door open, and I walked out.

Wrapped in a woolen jacket, Jake Smuddie sat in the gazebo in the gathering twilight. “What?” he said as I approached.

“I stopped in to see you at your home.”

“That must have thrown the house into a panic.” He barely managed a wan smile.

“Sort of.”

“We only entertain Methodists.”

“They told me you weren’t there.”

“I only go home late at night…to sleep.”

“Your father allows this?”

“He doesn’t know. My mother sneaks me in.” He shrugged those football shoulders. “Where else can I go?”

“This isn’t an answer.”

“It is for now.”

“You left your classes at Lawrence?” I slipped onto the bench, inches from him. In the fuzzy fading light I saw a tired face, the sharp, handsome features washed out, pale.

“What do you want, Edna?”

“I’m concerned.”

“Why?”

“You running away?”

“My father’s presence covers that house like a layer of…of, I don’t know, stone. I can’t breathe there.”

“What happened, Jake?”

“What happened, Miss Reporter”-it was actually said gently-“is that my father has condemned me and said some awful remarks about Frana. She’s dead and doesn’t deserve it.”

“Well, he’s afraid for you.”

“No. He fooled you. He fools everyone. He’s afraid for himself. His name in Appleton, at the university. His place in the center of the universe. His image as part of that group of fanatical lunatics. You know, Edna, I have to speak German at home. English is for visitors. If I lapse into English, which I do rarely since I never have friends visit there, I’m banished to my room. Me, a college freshman. A right tackle on the football team. I’m still a child.”

“But is this the answer?” I waved my hand around the dim park.

He looked at me, coldness in his voice that reminded me of Herr Professor. “You don’t understand the…the fierceness of my father. Unyielding, a rock.”

“He’s afraid what Frana’s murder will do to your future.”

“Maybe, but I’ve had my eyes opened. I’m looking at myself…”

“And?”

“I don’t like what I see. I’m a son who kowtows to a cruel man, a boy trapped in a man’s body. I’m a man who refuses to build his own character, drifting in his family’s shadow, and, you know, a man who left undefended a girl who died.”

“Frana’s death…” I had to know.

He looked at me. “Do you think I killed her?” His voice was brusque.

The question stunned me. “Of course not.”

“My father does.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“He insinuated as much. In one conversation. My own father.”

“But the heat of the moment…passion…”

He let out a fake laugh. “My father has never indulged any passion.” A baffled look spread across his face. “Maybe I did hurt her. There were times when she infuriated me, her flirtations, her lies about running off with other men, her…”

“She left you, Jake.”

“But lately she’d see me and we’d talk.”

“You didn’t kill her.”

A long silence. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember much, I’ve been in a fog…”

“You’d remember that!” I felt chilled now.

Another long silence. “I suppose so. Who knows? There are times, this past week, I can’t remember what I’ve said or done.”

What was there about him that so captivated me? The handsome face, so much the matinee idol, so striking, like one of the young actors in the stage melodramas. A young fair-complexioned Edwin Booth with those mesmerizing eyes, the square jaw, the authority of movement. But with Jake there was an unexpected softness, almost a feminine pliancy, gentleness…and gentility.

We sat there as darkness fell. I found my heart beating wildly; Jake had charms that alarmed me. Not good, this.

He was intelligent and aware, not the common boy I’d sometimes thought. A smart boy. A contemplator. I liked smart boys. Crazily, I thought of my father as a young man, the dreamy poet who fled one land and lost his way in another.

“There’s something you’re going to hear whispered in town,” I began.

Jake’s lips trembled. “Now what?”

I hesitated, trying to find words I’d never used before. “Frana…was carrying…a child.”

Jake seemed not to have heard me. “What?” Then, the recognition sinking in. “My God. I…”

My heart stopped. “You knew it, Jake?” I watched his face but I didn’t know what I expected to see.