The Kiss: An Anthology About Love and Other Close Encounters(29)

She licked her lips. She pulled up her knee socks up. She wrapped her yarn around her hands and looked at her feet.

“Yes?” The taller gray haired man had a young face and gentle eyes.

Heidi cleared her throat. “May I use your rest room?” She chewed on her bottom lip. She had hoped to demand the bathroom with a strong voice instead of petition for it with a quaver.

The kind-eye soldier held the door open. “Of course.”

The other soldier frowned.

She passed through to the recruiting office. She went straight to the bathroom. Her knees shook. Her whole body shook.

She stood at the door for several minutes before she went back out. The man with the kind eyes didn’t seem at all like he was going to arrest her.

When she summoned up enough courage to leave the bathroom, he was sitting in a waiting chair. He smiled at her. “I hear a little accent…can I guess where you are from?”

Heidi nodded.

“Stuttgart?”

Heidi smiled. “Yes. How did you guess it in one try?”

“I’ve spent some time in Germany.”

“You’re a very lucky man.” Heidi held her knitting limply at her side.

“I went with the Army, of course.”

“Of course. We German girls love the US Army men.” She looked at her fingernails. She had always loved them, anyway.

“Then why protest? If you have fond feelings for my brother soldiers, why protest war?”

Heidi looked to the heavens. Why indeed? “It’s complicated.”

“Go ahead.” He inclined his head towards the crowd outside his building. “We’ve got time.”





Step 5


Heidi sat in the chair opposite the soldier and crossed her legs. American skirts seemed so short on her long, German body, and she was very aware that it crept up even higher whenever she sat.

“I’m in America working on my PhD in the Economic History of British Columbia.”

A look of confusion crossed the soldier’s face, but he nodded.

“There is no such program of study in Germany.”

“Sure.” He nodded again.

“And I am homesick.” She let her needles drop.

Wolfgang.

It was more than homesickness. It was heartbreak and ennui.

“Stuttgart is a beautiful city.”

Heidi rocked her head back and forth. “I suppose so.”

“You’re missing someone back home?”

Heidi nodded. “Yah. I am.”

“Tell me about him.” A very brief look of disappointment crossed the soldier’s face.

“He’s three years old.”

The soldier sat up, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“Pureblood.”

Confusion crossed his face this time.

“A huge, hairy furball, but I love him so much. I thought I could leave him with my sister while I studied, but I can’t take it much longer. I really can’t.”

“A dog?”

“Yes. Wolfgang. My St. Bernard. I raised him from a pup.” She dabbed at the tears forming in her eyes, glad that she hadn’t worn gloves after all. Rubber gloves were cold comfort to a broken heart.

The officer leaned forward. “But what does that have to do with the protest?”

Heidi leaned forward and lowered her voice. “War is an economic necessity. Of course it is, but if I protest the war, someday I will be arrested and then they will deport me. I can go home.”

The soldier laughed, his hearty tones rocked Heidi back in her chair. “Why not just fly home for a visit?”

Heidi held out her empty money-sock. “The program I study with has been cut by the government. No more funding. I’m out of money and stuck here. My visa is good for two more years. I’m legal, but broke.”

The officer held out his hand. “Hello Legal but Broke, I’m Captain John Banks. After this little shin-dig can I take you out to dinner?”

Heidi looked down then up then down again. Then up. Her face was thirty degrees hotter than it had been two seconds ago.

“”I’m Heidi.” She shook his hand.

“Nice to meet you Heidi. How about dinner?”


Heidi fanned herself with her knitting needles to cool down. “That sounds very nice, thank you.”

Captain Banks pulled a little table between them. “In the meantime, I think we’ll be here a while. Do you play cards?” He opened a deck of cards and shuffled.

Heidi dropped her needles. She’d get back to Germany and Wolfgang somehow. All of a sudden she had no doubts about it at all.





*


Traci Tyne Hilton is the author of The Mitzy Neuhaus Mystery Series, The Plain Jane Mystery Series, and one of the authors in The Tangle Saga series of science fiction novellas. She was the Mystery/Suspense Category winner for the 2012 Christian Writers of the West Phoenix Rattler Contest, a finalist for Speculative Fiction in the same contest, and has a Drammy from the Portland Civic Theatre Guild. Traci serves as the Vice President of the Portland chapter of the American Christian Fiction Writers Association.

Traci earned a degree in History from Portland State University and still lives in the rainiest part of the Pacific Northwest with her husband the mandolin playing funeral director, their two daughters, and their dog, Dr. Watson.