Cheeky Damn Kraut That cheeky damn Kraut followed Ethel home on the streetcar. He was pretty good looking, but woo her as he might, for many months he couldn’t win her. Only after he took a beating from her kinfolk, only after she pitched in with a mop handle to rescue him, did he slip into bed with her. They were young then. They lived long together and quarreled a lot. He got sick, and during the next nine months they thought back to good times and bad. Out of wooden matches, Willi had once built a log fort for his stepson on Ethel’s bedroom floor, then helped the kid blast it down with more matches finger-flipped like battering rams. Celebrating the birth of their daughter, he made home brew, got royally drunk and sang jolly songs to Ethel: Ich hab mein herz in Heidelberg verloren. They never quite got the sex part right. He had a secret affair—secret so he thought—which he regretted. Oh yes! They built a house. They worked hard all their lives. Nearing the end, he struggled to fix up the house for her. He even tried to teach her how to drive, regretting that too—though it turned out not half bad. Besides, she quickly figured out how to navigate a riding lawnmower to the supermarket. She wasn’t much worried because, don’t you see, Willi was getting well. He just needed care. On nice days she rolled him outside, sunned and aired him like a mattress. On cool days she wrapped him in flannel, rubbed him with liniment, fitted a heating pad into the sore crook of his back. It’ll get better, Willi—just you ain’t eating right. I be glad when your stomach can take solid food again. She insisted he would live. Yet, once, finding him prostrate on the floor, she wailed, He’s gone! Only to hear him bawl out: Like hell I’m gone! Then, not long after, he really was.
