Past Lives

War made for odd couples. To Private Jim Mclellan, Sepp seemed a good man; better at least than some of the monsters he heard stories of deeper into the Reich. Real monsters. This Sepp almost reminded Jim of his uncle; the one from Wisconsin he met a few times at Weddings.

“I vas un...er, policeman before. Thank you fur das,” Sepp said, accepting the cigarette. The Americans made good ones, a welcome reprieve against the cold.

The Private stamped his feet, shaking the frost loose off his standard issue boots. All had gone quiet across Europe, yet here they stood, watching the road in the dark. Some hold outs existed, and who knew what churned in the minds of the Reds, so to keep the peace, Sepp and Jim defended together the road outside a small town in southern Germany. Ironic, Jim thought.

His watch ending without incident, Sepp walked home to his quiet house; the streets emptier than they were a few years ago. He didn’t mind it. Peace had come, and, most importantly, he was on the American side. The Reds, those were the ones he feared. Rumors of what they had done–what they were doing even now–spread like Spanish Flu. Sepp knew they would shoot him, not hand him a cigarette.

Sepp passed a house down his street, empty now, where the banker once lived. Sepp wondered what would become of it. Several of his neighbors had notes in the former homeowner’s bank against their homes, notes they burned along with the books. No one batted an eye. No one would be coming back that knew any better. Money owed became money for food, for rebuilding. Was it such a bad thing? Sepp wondered every now and again as he walked past.

***

“Almost ready, dearest,” Griselda said from the kitchen. Sepp’s stomach growled. The stew would do good against the cold in his bones. He was a good man, in a good home. He wondered if his daughter Sophia would return from safety in Spain, if she would understand.

Something nagged at him, and he opened the cigar box on his mantle, feeling around below the rolls of tobacco until… he pulled his old party ring from its depths. Sepp had not lied to the American, he had been a policeman in a way. A memory of himself standing in the tower, rifle strung around his shoulder, as the emaciated, pale human herd lumbered into the factory below flashed across his mind. He had been a younger man then, but not so young. Not so young. It wasn’t his responsibility to think where the needed labor came from. They gave him a job, and he did it.

He knew, instinctively, he should toss the ring, but if someone saw him tossing it into the river then it would raise even more questions. Better to keep it secret, for now at least. Germany needed men like himself, Sepp thought, tracing his pointer finger along the right angles. The world was changing, quickly.

“Dinner!”

He put the ring back into the depths of the box, and gave one last look at the embers smoldering in the bottom of the brick fireplace, on the verge of extinguishing, yet simmering, lying in wait to consume more fuel, to reignite.

Sepp ate his dinner in his warm home beside his wonderful wife.

In the empty house down the street, no one sat at the dining room table, still set for three. No fire burned over the stove. The war was over, yet strangely, had someone cared enough to feel the oven deep in the heart of that empty home, they’d swear it still smoldered in the darkness.

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A/N:

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