Chapter Three
Already, the trip to Germany was turning into an adventure. For starters, Cole had never flown on a massive, wide-bodied, Boeing 767. Each row of seats sat seven people, with groupings of two seats, then three seats, then two seats, separated by two aisles down the middle of the jet.
“Big as this plane is, I’m amazed the damn thing can take off,” he said.
“I’ve got a window seat!” Danny exclaimed, fiddling with the shade. “Pa Cole, do you think we’ll see the ocean from up here?”
“Gonna find out,” Cole said. “Once we’re in the air, look for a lot of blue water underneath us. That’d be the ocean.”
“Very funny. I think I’ll know it when I see it.”
Danny’s enthusiasm felt contagious. They hadn’t even gotten into the air yet, but Danny bounced in his seat like a puppy, taking in all of the sights and sounds. He had never flown before and was excited about the experience.
Cole had to admit that he was pleased to see Danny so excited. He realized that Norman Jean had been right all along. If nothing else, this trip would be memorable for their grandson. Although they saw each other every day, this trip was a chance to spend some one-on-one time with Danny; soon enough, the boy would be heading off to college or all his attention would be focused on a girlfriend. Cole knew well enough that time passed and things changed, even when you were standing still.
Maybe he ought to get out more and travel, but he felt content at home in the woods and mountains, hunting, or working on his knives. At first, the hurly-burly of the massive airport, along with the crowded plane, felt almost overwhelming. But Danny’s excitement helped him see the trip through the boy’s eyes and made him realize that he was just being what Norma Jean would have called a grumpy old man.
Besides, Cole reminded himself that all he had to do was sit back and relax for the eight-hour flight to Munich.
Most of the passengers appeared to be well-heeled tourists, some of the women wearing skirts and the men in dress slacks and sports coats. This being the early 1990s, anybody who wasn’t a college kid or teenager still dressed up to get on an airplane. His grandson had on jeans, a polo shirt with a little alligator on it that cost more than Cole’s first pickup truck, and Nike sneakers. Gran had taken Danny shopping before the trip and bought God knows what else that the boy wanted.
Cole’s needs were simpler. Hell, as a boy he’d gone whole summers without wearing shoes. He wore a dark brown corduroy sports coat with elbow patches that Norma Jean had found brand new at a thrift store, along with his best pair of Levis, freshly ironed, and sturdy brown shoes.
More than a few of his fellow passengers were Germans close to Cole's age. He found it jarring to hear them speaking in German, the sound of the guttural language taking him back to memories he hadn’t visited in a long time. More like dredged up, he thought. He told himself that he had better get used to it. He’d be hearing a lot more German spoken during the next couple of weeks.
Cole’s German consisted of a few phrases that were still stuck in his head, such as Surrender or Don’t shoot or even his personal favorite, Stirb, du Nazi-Bastarde. Loosely translated, this meant, Die, you Nazi bastards.
Somehow, he didn’t think those phrases would be a whole lot of use in the next few days.
He couldn't help but wonder if he had faced one or two of these German passengers from the wrong side of a battlefield. It was a strange thing to think about, but he reminded himself again that the world was always changing.
Several people had brought along books to read on the plane, including a World War II novel by Ken Follett called Night Over Water, which was a current bestseller. Appropriately enough, it was about intrigues during a transatlantic flight. The in-flight movie was going to be Quigley Down Under, a shoot-‘em-up western starring Tom Selleck that was set in Australia, of all places.
Other passengers had newspapers and magazines with them to pass the time on the flight. Several of the headlines focused on the recent fall of the Berlin Wall. For more than forty years, Germany and Berlin itself had been divided. Western Germany operated as a free democracy. The people and the economy thrived in the post-war years. Eastern Germany found itself behind the Iron Curtain, as part of territory seized by the Soviets. There, people were forced to live under Communism, a highly dysfunctional system of government that treated the needs of its population as an afterthought.
That repressive system had finally collapsed under its own weight, helped in no small part by the efforts of President Ronald Reagan, who had been determined to win the Cold War for once and for all, famously declaring, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Prompted by many other calls for change from every quarter, the Soviet premier had listened. The opening of the border and the demolition of the wall were justifiably headline news. The Germany that they were visiting was being reunited for the first time in decades.
To Danny’s delight, they caught a few glimpses of the endless sea before the jet climbed above the clouds. The sky darkened as the sun went down; this was an overnight flight and they would awaken in Germany the next morning.
Once they were well out into the Atlantic, the free drinks flowed. These tourists set about drinking like it was their job.
“Something for you gentlemen?” the stewardess asked.
Danny looked at Cole. “Can I have a beer?”
“No.”
“I’m sixteen! The drinking age is fifteen in Germany.”
“We ain’t in Germany yet. Besides, if your Gran finds out I let you drink beer on the plane, won’t neither one of us get any older.” Cole looked at the stewardess, who had known better than to get involved in their beverage decisions, and said firmly, “Two Coca Colas, miss.”
With a sigh, Danny accepted his plastic cup of soda. “Well, when we get to Germany, does that mean I can have a beer?”
Cole thought about that. He didn’t intend for this to be one of those exhausting trips that parents and grandparents knew all too well, where Danny kept asking to do things or buy things, and Cole would be forced to say no. After all, his grandson wasn’t eight years old anymore.
He knew that he had to let the boy off the leash sometime to make his own discoveries — and mistakes. Hell, Cole hadn’t been much older when he shipped out for the war. But he had been a different person. Danny seemed a whole lot younger in Cole’s eyes, even a little naive. As for allowing his grandson to drink beer, Cole himself mostly steered clear of alcohol, knowing what it had done to his father. It wasn’t a habit he wanted to encourage in his grandson, but he knew that forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter.
“You know what?” Cole finally said. “You are sixteen years old. I ain’t gonna hold your hand every minute of this trip. You may want to go off on your own and explore, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”
Danny nodded, grinning. His grandfather hadn’t come out and given him permission to hoist a tankard, but he was saying that Danny could make some of his own decisions.
“That’s a deal. Just so long as I don’t have to keep you out of trouble,” Danny said.
“I’m an old man. What kind of trouble would I get into?”
“Gran told me not to let you shoot anybody.”
Cole snorted. “Your gran always had what I’d call a dry sense of humor, ever since she stole my clothes from that swimmin’ hole on Gashey’s Creek.”