Up in Honey's Room

He missed the first part of the announcement, the bus-schedule voice saying, “It is our sad duty to inform you that at three thirty-five this afternoon”- Walter waiting to hear where the bus was going, thought, Three thirty-five? Knowing it was almost six, looked up at the clock and saw he was right. Now he listened and heard the public- address voice say:

“Death gave the sixty-three-year-old president of the United States short notice. At about one o’clock this afternoon, in the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, the president felt a sudden pain in the back of his head. At the time he was having his portrait sketched in preparation for a painting. At one-fifteen the president fainted, never to regain consciousness. At three thirty-five p.m. Franklin Roosevelt died without pain of what his doctor called a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Funeral service for the president will be held in the East Room of the White House . . .”

That was enough for Walter. He got up and walked over to the ticket window, the PA system sounding as though it was starting over again.

“Today, April twelfth in Warm Springs, Georgia, death took Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States, and left millions of Americans shocked and stunned.”

Walter turned in his ticket to Griffin by way of Atlanta and was given his refund. He began to wonder if any of the people at Vera’s the other night, when they heard of Roosevelt’s death would immediately say, “My God, was it Walter?” Or would they say, “My God, it was Walter.” Remembering his determination. Vera comes up to him. No, first Honig. She touches his face and asks in her soft voice, “Walter, how in the world did you do it?”

“My dear,” he would say, “you don’t believe his brain hemorrhaged?”

“Yes, but what caused it to do so?”

They’ll consider he used some type of poison and he’ll tell them, “Believe what you want.”

“He must have used poison.”

“But how was it administered?”

“He couldn’t have done it. Walter is still in Detroit.”

“Walter’s clever. He sent it.”

“What?”

“Let’s say a cake. Delivered to the Little White House bearing the name of the president’s lady friend, according to Joe Aubrey, Miss Lucy Mercer. Oh, that Walter is clever. Even if the president has a food taster like kings of old, a cake said to be from Miss Lucy Mercer would arouse no suspicion. The president has a piece while having his portrait sketched, takes several bites and slumps in his chair in a coma. The time, one-fifteen, as he finishes his lunch.”

It was the kind of cloak-and-dagger plot Vera would think of. Or something like it. He could hear Vera say, “By whatever means the president met his end, you can be sure our Walter made it happen. We are not surprised at the cover-up, the White House saying his death was of natural causes. I doubt that Walter will ever reveal how he brought it off. For as long as he lives people who know this cunning fellow will offer their own theories and each will ask, ‘Is that how you did it, Walter?’”

His reply would remain, “Believe what you want.”

Twenty-seven

Honey had an apron on over the bra and panties she wore straightening the living room, picking up newspapers, emptying ashtrays, dusting here and there with a feather duster, showing off in front of Jurgen on the sofa with Life, his favorite magazine. He could not believe she had saved every issue since Pearl Harbor, 163 copies of Life in the storage room, seven missing consecutively from the winter of 1942.

She astonished Jurgen. She was always her own person, a jewel, a diamond in the rough that was her own style of rough, listening to Sinatra’s “Ill Wind” and saying “Fucking effortless” in her quiet way. He wondered what happened to her in the winter of 1942, when he was in Libya. He loved her. He would be in wonder of her for as long as he lived, Honey dusting in her underwear, arching her back to aim her pert rear end at him. He had told Honey he would become a bull rider on the rodeo circuit. “You know from the radio how they announce the contestants? ‘Now here’s a young cowboy name of Flea Casanova from Big Spring, Texas.’ Soon you’re going to hear, ‘We have a young cowpoke now name of Jurgen Schrenk from Cologne, Germany. Jurgen’ll be atop a one- eyed bull full of meanness name of Killer-Diller. Ride him, Jurgen.’” He told Honey, “The first-place bull rider at the Dallas Rodeo-it’s in Life magazine-made seventy-five hundred dollars for staying on three bulls for eight seconds each. I rode a Tiger in North Africa. I can ride a bull.”

Honey looked over her shoulder so her butt was still aimed at him. “I knew a boy on the circuit was injured one time,” Honey said. “He’d write on a notepad to tell me how hungry he was, his jaw wired shut till it healed.” Now she was dusting the bookcase, dabbing the feathers at the shelves.

“I forgot to tell you Eleanor wasn’t there when he died. She was in Washington. Roosevelt had a full schedule today, planning to attend a barbecue where country fiddlers were going to play for him. So he wasn’t thinking about dying, was he? You like hillbilly fiddles? I don’t. At all. Did you know Roosevelt was president longer’n any of the others? Since 1933. He was sixty-three years old.”

Now she was taking a book from the shelf, holding it toward him so he could see it was Mein Kampf. “Never read and no longer a conversation piece,” Honey said, and tossed it in the cabinet she opened, beneath the shelves.

Jurgen said, “Isn’t that where you put Darcy’s pistol?”

She stooped to bring out the Luger. “Right here, I want to ask you about it.” She laid it on a bookshelf and moved to her record collection in another part of the cabinet. She said, “One of the radio reports said Roosevelt was sitting in an armchair and seemed comfortable when, the guy said, ‘A piercing pain stabbed at the back of Roosevelt’s proud, leonine head.’ You think Roosevelt had a head like a lion? I thought he was suave with his cigarette holder, but never thought of him as leonine. Now Truman’s president.”

She stood up with a record and put it on the Victrola. “He’s a Kansas City politician they say plays the piano. We’ll have to see what we have here, Harry S. Truman. I doubt he’ll make much noise.”

The record came on and Jurgen said, “What is that?”

“Bob Crosby.”

“I mean that instrument.”

“Bob Haggart whistling through his teeth while he strums his bass.” Now she was singing, “‘Big noise blew in from Winnetka, big noise blew right out again.’”

“What’s the name of it?”

“‘Big Noise from Winnetka.’ What else can you call it? The drummer’s Ray Bauduc, with his wood blocks and cowbells. Ray’s fun.”

“You know him?”

“I mean the way he plays is fun. I did meet him one time I was in New Orleans. Had a drink with him.” Honey picked up the Luger from the shelf and brought it to Jurgen on the sofa. “I think Darcy said it’s loaded, if I’m not mistaken.”

“He did,” Jurgen said as Honey let herself fall into the sofa close to him. He was fooling with the Luger now, pulled up on the toggle that exposed the breech and a nine-millimeter cartridge ejected. He added the cartridge to the magazine, popped it back inside the grip and handed the pistol to Honey. “Loaded, ready to fire,” Jurgen said. “Is there someone you’d like to shoot?”

“Are you kidding?” Honey said, raising the pistol and closing one eye as she aimed at the mirror in the hallway to her bedroom. “I wouldn’t hesitate to plug Hitler, I ever had the Führer in my sights.”

“You don’t want to see him tried for war crimes?”

“What if he gets off?”

“You’re not serious. He’ll hang, if he doesn’t kill himself, which is a distinct possibility.”

Honey lowered the pistol and raised it again saying, “What about Walter’s look-alike, Heinrich Himmler?”