Killer Smile

“So what’s left then, if there’s no plan?” Mrs. Nyquist set down her mug. “What is it that your generation believes in?”

Mary smiled. “You’re asking the wrong girl. I can’t speak for my generation. I’m not even sure which generation I’m in, half the time.”

“So, then, what do you believe in, Mary?” Mrs. Nyquist waited expectantly, and all of a sudden, Mary knew the answer. She had just realized it, sitting in a dark farmhouse, with a very kind stranger, in the middle of Montana.

“I believe in justice. And in love. And in not getting over it, because that’s too much to ask of a human being.” Mary collected her thoughts. “Getting over it is the wrong thing to want, anyway. You should never expect to get over it, the best you can hope is to live past it. And you go on. Your past becomes a part of you, you just fold it into the gnocchi dough and keep rolling.” Mary was surprised to hear her voice break, so she scooped another forkful of pie, and Mrs. Nyquist seemed to let it register, still listening, until her unlipsticked mouth curved slowly into a smile.

“You know, you may be right, Mary.”

“It’s possible. I’m wrong so often, the odds are on my side.”

Mrs. Nyquist laughed. “No, I can’t believe that. You’re a very thoughtful young girl.”

“It’s the huckleberries. They have superpowers.”

Mrs. Nyquist laughed and sipped her tea with the tea bag still inside, and so did Mary, because she felt like they were friends now. “But you came to see my husband, and I’ve gone on and on. What was it you wanted to see him about?”

“I understand from Mr. Milton that your husband was at Fort Missoula, during the war.”

“He was,” Mrs. Nyquist answered, and her voice suddenly echoed the clipped tones of a military wife. “He couldn’t serve because of his heart, which bothered him so much. He always felt he could have served, he felt quite fit and healthy, and took some pride in it. In fact, the doctor said a less fit man would never have survived his first stroke. It was the second that killed him.”

“I’m sorry.” Mary had said it before, but this apology was sui generis. The ultimate apology. “I am doing some research and trying to identify an internee I found in some old photos.”

“Maybe I can help you. I worked at the camp for a time, as a secretary.”

“You did?” Mary asked, surprised. “The cashier at the museum didn’t mention that.”

“I doubt they know, at the museum. I was unofficial, you see. They were so short-handed during the war, Aaron had them hire me. For free.”

“You needed a lawyer.”

Mrs. Nyquist laughed.

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind looking at the photos, I brought them with me.” Mary went digging in her bag and pulled out the two photos.

But she had barely set them on the red-and-white placemat when Mrs. Nyquist emitted a gasp.

Twenty

“My goodness!” Mrs. Nyquist said.

“What? Do you know them?”

“This does take me back. I’m sorry, it’s just so surprising to see these!” Mrs. Nyquist’s aged hand fluttered to her throat. “I do know that man.”

Yes! “Which one? It’s win-win, to me. One is named Amadeo, and I don’t know the other, the man in the cap.” Mary pointed at the mystery man, and Mrs. Nyquist met her fingernail to fingernail.

“I know him, this man, the man in the cap. I recognize him. Everybody in our office knew him. He always wore that cap, just that way.”

“You’re kidding!” Mary edged forward on her slippery cushion. “Do you know his name? I think he may have been a friend of the other man, the shorter one, Amadeo Brandolini. Do you know the short one in front?”

“Let me see.” Mrs. Nyquist picked up the photo and looked at it through her bifocals. “No, I don’t know him.”

“You sure? Amadeo was a fisherman from Philly.” Mary was trying to jog Mrs. Nyquist’s memory. “He committed suicide. He and the man in the cap worked in the beet fields together.”

“Oh, wait, I had heard about that.” Mrs. Nyquist set the photo down on the placemat. “I didn’t know him, but I heard about that. That one of the internees killed himself, sometime after his wife died.” Mrs. Nyquist tapped on the photo. “But for sure I recognize the man in the cap, I knew the one in the cap. We all knew him, the girls in the office, that is. He was one of the youngest internees, very talkative. A wolf, we used to call his type.”

“Really?”

“My, my, my,” Mrs. Nyquist said, shaking her head at the photos. She almost seemed to forget about Mary’s presence. “His English was very good. We used to use him as a translator around the office. He wasn’t really an Italian Italian, like the others.”

It jibed with what Mary knew. Most of the internees at Fort Missoula spoke only Italian, and the inventory sheets she’d found in their files at the National Archives showed that almost all of them owned an English dictionary, apparently for teaching themselves the language. But she didn’t get one thing. “Why would an internee be hanging out in the office? I mean, they were in prison camp, right?”

“It depended. The Japanese, when they came, were always under light guard, and my husband had border guards on them often. We kept an eye on the Germans, too. I have to admit, I’m not proud of that. Those groups were treated different, and they kept more to themselves.” Mrs. Nyquist nodded. “But it was much looser for the Italians, and we all got to know each other. They helped us out in the office or delivered things. They were just a bunch of young sailors, most of ’em from the cruise ships, and they were all so happy-go-lucky.”

Mary smiled. She had never been happy-go-lucky. She was the only unhappy-go-lucky Italian on the planet.

“They helped out a lot at the camp, in town, and with the logging and the sugar beet fields, and the way the camp was set up, the barracks were close to the administrative offices and the officers’ homes. We were always running into them. My husband and I lived in a house at the camp, like the other officers. It was a white house, very pretty.”

Mary flashed on the black-and-white aerial views of the camp, then she thought of something. “If the Italians weren’t under guard, then how come guards monitored their visits?”

“They didn’t.”

“Yes, they did.”

“Did they? That surprises me.”

“I think so, at least sometimes. I found a memo that shows a guard monitored a visit Amadeo had with his lawyer, and they even sent a copy of that memo to the FBI.”

Mrs. Nyquist blinked behind her bifocals, then shook her head. “I have no idea why that was, but I wouldn’t know everything. And I was only there a while.”

Mary made a mental note. “Okay, back to the man in the cap. Tell me about him.”

“As I recall, he’d been educated, too, back where he was from. He could read and write. He’d had a year or two in an American high school.”

“Where was he from?”

“I don’t recall, offhand. Give me a minute.” Mrs. Nyquist lowered her hand, still holding the photo, and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Maybe your husband had some photos around, or papers that could jar your memory?”

“No, no, no.” Mrs. Nyquist shook her head, her eyes still closed. “Aaron wasn’t the sentimental sort. He didn’t save a thing from those days.”

“Not even some pictures?”

“No, none.” Mrs. Nyquist was rubbing her lined forehead, as if she were trying to scratch the answer from her