The Carpenter's Wife Read online

  “In a way,” Tom confirmed diplomatically.

  “That’s an insult.” Consternation swung in the speaker’s voice, who fell silent quickly so as not to stick out.

  “I can’t help it,” Stark said.

  “Young man, you’re overdoing it.”

  But Tom continued unfazed. “You know me; I don’t mean to insult anybody, but Hitler really did come up with the Konkordat of Thirty-three and it stinks, that’s all there’s to it.

  “And nobody can argue that the money didn’t achieve what Hitler intended for it to do. The Church was mighty silent during the Third Reich—but not individuals,” he added hastily. “There were many great believers who got persecuted back then. Bonhoeffer, for instance. Or Parson Niemöller.”

  “Lutherans,” a man said.

  Tom racked his brain for a Catholic.

  “Maximilian Kolbe?” Romy said. A Schweinfurt church was named after him.

  Her comment was received with an approving murmur and several “Yeah, yeah”s. People nodded thoughtfully. She was sweet. It was her husband who was so—

  “You don’t like our Church, then,” Mr. Deters inquired.

  “I don’t like church taxes,” Tom clarified. “They sedate the Church, make it dead and powerless, but I’m repeating myself. Guaranteed money does that to you. The clergy has a cushy, guaranteed job, and—” He saw Gina’s eyes glaze over. She took on an air-heady look and Stark remembered the butterfly on her rump. He laughed and shook his head.

  She smiled at him. “How can you remember all that… stuff?”

  He cast his eyes down in humility.

  “Donations,” Ralph said. “Does that work?”

  “Just fine,” Tom replied. “Our believers are givers. You all are welcome to come visit our church sometime, see how we’re doing it.”

  Mrs. Gillich’s mustache spread again. She giggled. Then she lifted her mug and threw back her beer.

  The brass band started playing again.

  “Since when are you into guns?”

  “You like them, so they’re bound to be interesting.”

  “Come on now.”

  “No, really.”

  Andreas glowed, sincerely happy about his brother’s visit. Not since the argument at their father’s birthday party three months ago had they spoken to one another—and now his brother had even apologized for starting the spat. Andreas wondered why, given his brother’s usual reticence. But today was Sunday, by definition a day of peace, and maybe that had something to do with it. His brother was already 43 and not exactly given to change, but he’d mentioned church twice in the fifteen minutes since he came. He’d never done that before, and Andreas was a believing Catholic.

  “You were always such a peacenik,” he said over his shoulder, remembering his brother’s involvement in the demonstrations against Reagan and Star Wars and nuclear power and Nato and Startbahn West, and atomic waste and... The list was endless. He’d mellowed since, but maybe he’d just become a better talker. Perhaps the wolf had eaten chalk. The man could be charming if he wanted to.

  “Times change,” his brother said, “and not everything that looks evil is evil.”

  “Like a good gun?”

  “That’s right.”

  They were on their way to the basement, to the small range where Andreas kept his arms. He’d noted with pleasure that his older brother was going out of his way to talk about subjects in which he, Andreas, was interested. Today he wasn’t his usual self-absorbed self.

  Maybe he was serious about church? God knew, his brother needed all the help he could get to put his life back together.

  Andreas’s chain clinked, his stubby fingers turned a key, then a steel door swung open and they entered a dark room smelling of vaporized gunpowder. A row of neon lights came on and he found the range cool and pleasant in comparison with the heat outside, which was still oppressive, even though the sun had already set.

  An assortment of rifles and pistols, large and small, littered the counter and the rack off to one side. Handfuls of bullets lay in otherwise clean ash trays and spent shells crunched under their feet.

  “Sorry about the mess.” Andreas grinned sheepishly. “If we had kids I’d lock everything up, of course.”

  His brother eyed him. “You two still trying?”

  “No.” Andreas pinched his lips, hoping no more would be asked.

  “Cool stuff.” His brother nodded in approval as he reached for a pistol on the counter. He studied the engravings on the slide. “Colt forty-five. Wow. Didn’t Dirty Harry use one of those?”

  Andreas smirked. “I thought you weren’t into action movies.”

  His brother clicked his tongue as if at a loss of words and laid the gun back. “Say, don’t you have a bathroom down here?”

  “You know we do. Down the hall, last door to the right. Can’t miss it.”

  “It’s been a while. I’ll be right back.”

  The steel door fell shut, and Andreas was just finishing loading the Colt’s magazine—the bullets cost four euros a pop, but then again, he had only one brother—when his wife called from the stairwell.

  He cracked the door. “What is it?”

  “Telephone!” she said.

  He jogged up to take the call on the corded phone, wondering whether the dog had eaten the mobile unit—they hadn’t found it in two days. But when he finally stood in the first-floor corridor, phone by his ear, the call simply disconnected. Andreas frowned, staring at the receiver in his hand—when his brother hurried up the stairs.

  “Got to go.”

  Andreas’s cast him a questioning glance.

  “Forgot that I have a meeting at nine; can’t miss it. I’m really sorry to leave you like this.”

  Andreas was perplexed.

  “Hey, don’t make a face. I’ll be calling you. You’ve got to teach me how to use that forty-five. I mean it. And all the other stuff. Take care now.” He turned toward the kitchen. “Bye Elvira!” Then he let himself out.

  The front door was clicking shut when she entered the hallway, drying her hands on a towel.

  What’s the hurry? Andreas checked his watch. His eyebrows rose. It was already 9:27.

  25

  Sunday, 20 July 2003, Night, 26°C

  “Something terrible happened after you left,” Gina wrote later that night. “My mother came with Alfred. We all had a good time, laughing and carrying on, until she invited everybody to a drink at the bar. Tom! She invited the whole table! All but me! Even Ralph went. I sat there like an idiot, left behind and all by myself.”

  “Stuff like that happens,” he replied, tenderly mindful of her spiritual babyhood. He didn’t tell her drinking was wrong and that she was lucky not to get invited. God in her had to do that. Instead he focused on her immediate hurt: rejection. “Jesus said that sometimes those closest to us rise up against us after we become Christians.”

  “But why?”

  “Because they love us and are afraid we’ve gone off the deep end. They don’t want us to get mixed up with a cult or a sect. Even Jesus’ own brothers and his mother called him crazy for a while.”

  “I’m not sure my mother loves me.”

  Brother… Stark decided not to get into this tonight. “I’m sure she does.”

  “Bert sent me a text message,” Gina wrote close to midnight. “He’s suffering so. He said, he’ll kill himself if I don’t see him anymore. Or he’ll kill me. He is really strange. I have never seen him like this before. Tom, I’m scared.”

  “It’ll blow over.”

  “Hope you’re right. It was wonderful to sit next to you today. I hadn’t expected you to stay so long. Ralph liked it too. And my! How you’ve shown Harry, and Frank too. Nobody’s ever done that.”

  “He had it coming.”

  “I just hope he doesn’t destroy something that’s valuable to you, now that you’ve humiliated him in public.”

  “You know him?”

  “Everybody knows him.”
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  “But you know him better than others. You were his fiancée.”

  “No!”

  “Then why does he call you that?”

  “He drove me home once from the Nil in Schweinfurt,” a local discotheque.

  “I gathered that much. There’s more. Tell me.”

  “Well, if you insist. Sigh. On the way he asked me if I wanted to see his coolest tattoo. You’ve seen him, he’s wrapped in ink from head to toe. We were both drunk and, frankly, I didn’t think anything of it when he asked me. When I said yes, he grinned and parked the car under a tree. He’s a beast…”

  Again Stark felt that searing pain, blunt-fingered stabs into the tender spots of his soul. He felt betrayed again. A wave of jealousy and hurt broke through his defenses. He clenched his teeth, knowing he had neither right nor obligation to feel that way.

  “Tom, what could I have done? He’s a man. He can be ruthless, and I was just a frail eighteen-year-old. Ralph hates him for it. Don’t mention that I told you.”

  Stark frowned. Poor Ralph. Some love was bitter as gall.

  On Monday night she wrote, “Tom, how was your day? Mine held some tremendous challenges. Bert called during lunch hour—I don’t know if you’re aware that we’re colleagues at Sachs. That’s were we met. Later he sent me a text message. Tom, I’m concerned. Says he hasn’t slept in a week. Sits around and mopes, drinks and smokes and calls in sick, won’t move back in with his wife and kids. He says it’s either me or the pit.”

  “Gina, he’s melodramatic. He’s trying to rouse your sympathy. He knows what makes women tick and talks accordingly. He’s got a great understanding of people. I admire him for it.”

  “You tell me that every time. Maybe it’s true that he thinks like a woman, but I’m really concerned for his soul. (Isn’t that something Christians are supposed to do?) Says he’s done meditations in the monastery at Münsterschwarzach over the weekend and that God has shown him that it’s love and that we’re meant for one another. I laughed of course. I think that hurt him, but, well, we’re through. Why doesn’t he leave me alone?”

  So, Müller was still on her mind. Too much so. “He’s fighting for you,” Stark replied. “That’s natural. You’re his life. He was victorious with you, and now he wants to keep his booty, that’s you. I understand him. The way you described him, the guy should have never got you, but he did. And now, by doing what’s right and leaving him, you hurt his ego. You’ve got power. Need to use it wisely.” He knew he was flattering her. But as long as he fed her praise, she’d come back, and she had to keep hanging around long enough so he could turn her back to Ralph and banish Müller from her mind forever. What a job.

  “Tom, I still have one question.”

  “Lay it on.”

  “I still don’t know what exactly you want to be for me.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you want to be my friend or my pastor?”

  “I don’t see a discrepancy between the two. I’d like to be both for you and Ralph, if that’s okay.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” He imagined her clapping her hands like Sarah. “You make my life so much richer!”

  Women…

  26

  Tuesday, 22 July 2003, Evening, 26°C

  On Tuesday afternoon the birds suddenly flew low. Then yellow storm clouds towered in the west, lightnings flashed, and it poured for about twenty minutes. Immediately, the fields began to smell of cabbage and old socks. The grass steamed, and the humidity which the squall created lingered until late that night.

  At 9:30 PM Tom glistened like a Greek wrestler as he threw another bucket of water over the sleek back of the Beamer, something he didn’t have to do very often this summer. Metallic silver was a good color. It gave a car that permanent clean look; accumulated dust and specks simply blended in. But now the fine powder of the fields had congealed into a net of auburn arteries. The 735 looked too messy for a pastor’s car, and presently Stark sponged it off.

  Gina said that Ralph had announced he was going to learn English, prompting her to ask if he, Tom, could spare the time for a bonfire; she needed to lose all those English-language e-mails her “father” had sent her over the months, so Ralph couldn’t read them. She’d invited Stark to peruse the file, but Tom had declined. No need to sample other people’s romantic gibberish, especially in a case like this one. The insights he might have gleaned were better gained in direct conversation with her. Besides, the past was past and she had to focus on the future. God lived in her now, her possibilities were infinite, and her job was discovering Christ. She needed to gain a solid understanding of her new position in life.

  Opening up ever wider, she’d told him about her first boyfriend. She’d just graduated from her boarding school and the lad had complained about her nunnified prudishness, when—

  Stark suddenly felt cold steel pressing into the base of his skull. A click and the gun was cocked. He tried to turn around, but a hoarse voice warned him, “Don’t move,” and so he froze.

  “Up with your hands.”

  Stark lifted his arms. He hesitated. “Frank?”

  There was breathing into his left ear—but no answer.

  “Harry?”

  More labored panting, until the voice said, “Got a lot of enemies, my friend.”

  Tom said nothing. Instead, he leaned back gently against the metal in his neck, trying to feel the contour of the muzzle. Sensing an upright rectangle and not a simple round aperture, he concluded that he was facing a pistol, not a revolver or a rifle, and that it wasn’t a big one, a .22 maybe.

  Which was bad news.

  As a former Green Beret, Tom knew the truth about handguns and the wounds they produce, that their bullets simply cannot knock a man down. All that talk about “high-velocity nerve shock” or “one-shot stopping power” was a bunch of baloney. You’d have to score a direct hit on the brain, the central nervous system, or explode an artery to incapacitate a man—and even then he might just go on operating until he bled to death. Handguns were painful but harmless. That said, a close-proximity headshot with a 9 millimeter was probably lethal. Depending on the ammo, such a shot might even mess up his newly-toweled BMW.

  But you didn’t die from a .22.

  He once knew an officer in Tulsa who’d survived no less than seven hits with .22-caliber bullets, one of which he’d felt in his mouth, spit into his hand, and pocketed for evidence. The officer not only lived, but drove himself to the emergency room after the shootout. He still retired, since the shock to the soul, evident in nervousness and permanent agitation, proved worse than the pummeling of the body. Tom knew, .22s were weapons for maimers, not to killers. A killer would use a .45.

  A .22 also meant, his assailant would shoot if pressed. He wasn’t just threatening. Tom had to be careful.

  The kids were in bed, Romy upstairs. Where was Coco?

  In the house, he remembered.

  “What do you want?” Stark’s tone was steadier than his nerves.

  The basement door stood open.

  “Let’s go inside,” the voice growled.

  In the living room, Stark’s wife stood by her ironing board, folding clothes, her head sloshing with ruminations; she wondered if she could ever make a man’s head turn. Gina could. On Sunday, she’d entertained the tables while pulling jokes on Tom.

  “Watch out, guys! He’s killed people!”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen his scar.”

  She’d seen Tom’s scar.

  Romy knew he got wounded in Saudi during a Scud missile attack. He never spoke much about it, considering it negligible, saying the scar looked worse than the original wound. 28 U.S. soldiers had died when the rocket blew on their barracks. Maybe that shaped his view.

  Sunday’s voices drifted through her head.

  “Where did you see him without a shirt?”

  “In his garden house.”

  “Did he wear pants?”

  “No!” Laughter. “Me eithe
r.” Guffaws and rolls of laughter.

  Gina had cat-pawed the whole crowd, steering it like a ball of wool. Deciding she could never do that, Romy dropped a folded shirt into her basket. She didn’t even find the idea appealing; it was vulgar. But she recognized that Gina had wielded power. A peculiar kind of power. Flirt power. Romy acknowledged that wielding some of that power a little bit might have its appeal. She didn’t want to go on anybody’s nerves. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to make people laugh at will? With better gags than Gina’s, of course.

  Tom sat in front of his computer for so many hours each evening. Arousing his interest, turning his head, making him notice her seemed an impossible task. A little authority over him would be wonderful.

  The swimsuit last week hadn’t done the job. Wearing less would; like, just a shirt. But she couldn’t… He’d told her—many times—that he liked her twins.

  She blushed faintly.

  He liked them best about her. He never said that, but…

  But what if he’d turn her down? Just glanced at her and then turned back to his screen, without as much as a remark?

  But he’d never been snide when he’d seen her without, and she’d never come on to him like that. The likelihood that he’d turn her down was minuscule, considering that the last time they’d made love was two and a half weeks ago. And she didn’t plan on doing it every night; she just wanted to know if she could still make his head turn like on that first day at Hope—where she’d been fully dressed. But times changed. You got used to one another. She remembered her talk with Betty about the Song of Solomon. The wisest king in the Bible—no less—had praised his lover’s twins…

  She determined that she’d surprise Tom one of these days—better, evenings; the kids had to be in bed, and the shades lowered—unless the light remained off, then the shades could stay up—and when it wasn’t as hot, and—

  The telephone rang.

  She walked into the kitchen, took the phone off the counter, and said hello. A female voice sobbed on the other end.