S a u e r k r a u t   Y a n k e e (a  n o v e l l a)

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1

               My friends and I were at first puzzled, then bemused, when we saw that curious mimeographed petition posted on the sidewalk bulletin board of the Welsh Presbyterian Church. It was an urgent plea for help from a Pennsylvania Dutch church having difficulty signing up volunteers for its charitable endeavor in shipping cattle to war-ravaged Europe. Intended for the sons of Amish and Mennonite farmers in the agricultural county adjacent to ours, it had obviously been misdirected to the sons of immigrant miners in our coal mining community. We laughed when one of my friends remarked that few of us—and probably none of the locals being petitioned—had ever seen a cow. However, it was no laughing matter the very next day when it occurred to me that this Presbyterian posting might well be the long-awaited answer to my Lutheran prayers to save me from the hell I was going through just down the street in my own home.

               “I have to rescue my brother Charlie!” my father howled in the middle of that sweltering summer night in 1946.

In only his pajama trousers, brandishing a butcher’s knife, he shoved open the door of my brother’s and my bedroom. I awoke with a start when he was almost on top of me, the instant my mother, in her nightgown, switched on the bright overhead light. She tried to grab his arm to restrain the muscular six-footer as I bounded out of my bed to stand stark naked, stunned in a state of shock, when the knife came down plunging into my pillow.

               “Can’t you hear him hollering ‘get me out of here’? He’s smothering!” he cried, violently slashing the pillow open, then shaking it high above his red head.

               Within seconds, the room looked as if a blustering snowstorm had whipped through it. I grabbed the spread from my brother’s bed, wrapping it about me like a toga  while  shuddering to think what  my father’s reaction might have been had he noticed what I instinctively attempted to cover with both of my hands.

               “My God!” my mother shouted, “You might have killed him! Does Rick have to phone Doctor Lawlor to come over again to give you another shot to snap you out of it?”

               Spent of his delusion, my father suddenly went limp as my mother turned him around to face the open door.

“Get back to your bed, George,” she said in a hushed growl.

               Had it been a noisier scene, my younger sisters, Cressie and Gretchen, would be peeping out of their bedroom next to my parents’ at the other end of the hall.

               Dazed during his assault upon my pillow, my father didn’t seem to be aware that he was in my room. At the mention of my name, he turned slowly from the doorway, confused at seeing me wrapped in the quilted bedspread. Snarling, his eyes narrowed contemptuously at me, he muttered something under his breath.

               Horrified at the coarseness of his vulgarity, my mother cried, "Disgusting! This is my home, not the Riverside Saloon! And to say something so foul in front of the boy—your own son," she called after him as he staggered out of my room.

               Distracted, as I pulled feathers from my hair, I did not make out what he said. “In front of,” I snapped, “probably directed at.”

               “It’s the drink talking,” my mother said, retrieving her kitchen knife from my bed. “Still, he ought to be ashamed of himself.”

               I don’t know if he heard her from down the hallway, but he repeated his mantra, “I’m not the worst guy in the world.”

               “Yes, he is!” I snarled. “I’m going to put it on his tombstone.”

               “Rick, to say something so mean is not like you,” my mother said, scowling at my gibe.

               Over the past year, my father had singled me out because I was the eldest and most assertive of my three siblings. He had reacted with simmering hostility and resentful intimidation ever since I had phoned the police. I was afraid, during one of his most violent drunken rages that he was about to batter my mother. She collapsed, weeping, after he had turned over the glass dining room cabinet, shattering most of her best china.

               “He won’t remember any of this in the morning. We best not mention it to the others,” the enabling spouse said with a sigh of exhaustion. “Fortunately, Ben’s on another of his sleepovers. Get into his bed until I clean up the mess in yours. Thank God, I can always count on you to handle even something like this better than the others would.”

               “No, Mother, I can’t any longer. So don’t count on me. I’ve finally had it,” I replied as I slumped back on my brother’s bed.

               “Well, mein schotzie, in a family, sometimes we have to put up and bear with one another’s passing stages like your sleepwalking,” she continued in her usual composure. Still, I sensed a hint of hurt at my response at what was a plea for my continuing support in coping with her dysfunctional marriage.

               Before I could object to any reference of my sleepwalking, an apparent diversionary ploy to mollify the gravity of her husband’s latest bout of delirium tremors, she added quickly, “Remember; it was your daddy who led you back to your own bed when—”

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The rest of this novella is available in Volume 1, Issue 1 of Night Picnic.