Kathy Little Bird Read Free Page A

kept telling Jason it would pass to him some day, just as Jellet himself had inherited it from his father. The Eight Bells gave him a chance to get away. I don’t think he was fond of any of us, not even Mum, because, as he said over and over, she’d saddled him with us kids. The pub, that’s where his life was.
    The Eight Bells was strictly off limits. On the few occasions when I’d walked into town, I plastered my face against the glass and peered in. There was nothing to see, a lot of tables and upended chairs. Jellet didn’t get home until one or two in the morning, and he slept in. The family was careful not to wake him. If that happened he’d come roaring out, and whichever boy he caught got a licking. Being nearly grown by now and a girl, I was immune.
    Once the evening meal was over, Jellet consulted his watch, declared he was late, and left for the pub. Mum took the opportunityto lie down. I’m sure he had no idea there was anything wrong. She didn’t want him to know and he didn’t. She kept the door to her bedroom open so we could talk as I did the dishes.
    Now that I was older Mum told me more about my real father. His name was Erich von Kerll. I’d known that. He was Austrian. I’d known that too, and even looked up Austria on the world map in the library.
    The library was one of Abram’s special places. It wasn’t one of mine. By now I’m sure Abram had read every volume in the library. “Bookworm,” I’d say under my breath. But then he’d tell me some interesting fact. One interesting fact was that Navajos were code-talkers in the signal corps during the war. The Germans never figured out what they were saying. They didn’t know it was a language; they thought it was a new code.
    When Abram took out books on World War II, I looked up
wolf pack, U-boat, enemy alien.
I worried about my father having been a Nazi, and asked Mum about it. She countered with what it meant to be an officer in the German navy. “He was never a Nazi. He was second in command of the U-186 when it crossed the Atlantic, raided the coast of Nova Scotia, and got all the way up the St. Lawrence to Montreal.”
    I looked at her in amazement; she sounded almost proud.
    She caught my glance and flushed. “Anyway, eventually they were sunk by a British destroyer. I tell you this about your father, Kathy, so you’ll know he was a brave man and a fine officer…”
    “In Hitler’s navy,” I added.
    “Austria itself was overrun and declared a province of the Third Reich. And he came from a naval family. You should have seen him, Kathy; tall, blond, and his eyes were gray.”
    “It’s embarrassing that my father fought on the wrong side.”
    “Please be grown up about this, Kathy. It was that or a firing squad.”
    I plunged my hands deeper into the sudsy water. “I do want to know about him.”
    “He went to sea in forty-one. The U-boats owned the North Atlantic in those days. For months no Allied shipping got through their patrol. It extended all the way to Iceland. Then we started using convoys and there were tremendous sea battles. Your father was found floating in waves of oil, holding onto some wreckage. Six hours was the most they lasted in those waters. He was brought in suffering hypothermia and third-degree burns.”
    “And you fell in love,” I said, wiping an already dry bowl.
    “Not straight away. At first he was just a patient. In fact, I didn’t want him assigned to me, being an enemy and all.” Mum coughed and asked for a glass of water. As I handed it to her she motioned toward the old bureau in the corner of the bedroom. “Bottom drawer,” she said hoarsely.
    The bottom drawer was where she kept her Bible. I picked it up and brought it to her. A small scroll of paper had been tucked between the pages, along with several documents. “Our marriage certificate, your birth certificate, and…a copy of the annulment.”
    “What happened? Are you sure it wasn’t because you got