“No. But we Americans don’t hold much with fancy titles.” He felt like telling the man he’d ask the questions, but reconsidered.
“Well, Yankees don’t, but you might want to ask your Mama why she calls your oper ‘the Colonel.’” His accidental knowledge of the Casey family made Jerry mad as hell, at first. But, as first meetings went, it seemed to validate his opinion about Heineman’s potential. The next time he got a pass to Morganfield, he called his Mama and asked about his Grandfather.
“Why, everybody back home called Corporal Jeremiah Casey ‘the Colonel.’ He served with Colonel Crittenden during the War of Northern Aggression. They was both born in Russellville—years apart of course. Your Granddaddy weren’t more than fourteen when he put on a grey uniform. Most every family has a black sheep somewheres, and like Crittenden, Granddaddy Casey liked the drink. He was a brave boy, but not a very brave man you might say. Long-lived for a sot. And mighty lonely too, I reckon, because he was married to somebody or the other ‘til the day he died. I think he had at least four wives. I know he had at least eight children.”
Odd, Jerry Wayne thought, that he’d never heard the story. Maybe his parents told it to Earnest and just never got around to telling him. He spent the rest of the weekend wondering how a German flyer knew he had Southern roots and looking at pictures of wedding gown ads Gloria had clipped from old fashion magazines. THIS ONE, she’d noted on one of them. She was a confident, forthright somebody.
“How did you know my kinfolk hailed from the South?” he asked Heineman at their next meeting.
“Your Mama’s Christmas menu. Pecans in everything—green beans, dressing and desserts, sweet tea, and pickled okra. I haven’t had food like that since my father taught German at the Norton Military Academy in Georgia. We returned to Germany when Hitler came to power. My parents joined the Party and I joined the Hitlerjugend like all good German boys did.”
***
That’s how their verboten friendship began—the outcome of a conversation about Southern cooking that had much in common with German cuisine. Fill-your-belly kind of food. Biscuits and gravy. Heavy on the meat and grease in everything.
Jerry started to pick up some German, and Kurtz practiced his English as they’d walk among the prisoners, most of whom were 18-25 years old, and talk about home and sports and their kinfolk. Women mostly. Wives, sweethearts, aunts and sisters. Occasionally, they’d talk about their offspring. That topic always ended in tears. One man had two sets of twins, which he