Olympia by Dennis Bock Page B

when my mother’s understanding of her uncle’s life draws silence. And when my parents disagree about stopping, which is most of the time. Maybe it’s just being back in the German world that’s affecting my mother this way. The weight of the pavement a few inches beneath our feet fills the car with the illusion of purpose and destination. Sometimes my father drives with the radio on, tuned to a station that plays out the American music we all know, something that binds us, a something we can all sink our teeth into.

    My father and I don’t mind the driving. We’re used to it from our storm-hunting when we spend whole days in the car searching out tornadoes. This visit to the Old World will cut into our severe weather season, I think. But for a time the trade-off seems fair. Until my mother’s sick uncle comes into the picture. By mid-morning my mother and Ruby begin pestering my father to pull over. They want to get out and stretch their legs. The few times there hasn’t been anyone to stay with, we’ve slept in bed and breakfasts. When it comes to that my father calls ahead. But usually we stay in the cramped apartments of their old school friends. In the north, a high school chum of my father’s showed us fistfuls of money from the Weimar Republic and told Ruby and me that back in his father’s day a wheelbarrow of the stuff didn’t buy you a loaf of bread.

    I don’t question my father’s need to drive. I’d rather be back home scouring the province for tornadoes or stuffing my pockets with chocolate bars at the back of Ramsey’s Drugs or fishing the Joshua for black bass and catfish. But the sheer volume of road seduces me. The world, I’m finding, does not end. I don’t care where we go. Ruby suffers car sickness and takes little white pills to ease her stomach. Sometimes she lays her head on my lap. I wiggle my toes to stop the pins and needles and tap my father on the shoulder. Then I lean forward and whisper in his ear that Ruby needs to stop, maybe it’s a good idea to pull over next chance we get. We’re half an hour from Fürstenfeldbruck. After a pee-break we climb back in. Ruby’s sitting up now, refreshed, less nauseated. My mother starts knitting again. For a time only the clicking of the needles fills the car. Ruby’s looking out her window for deer, eager to catch up. I’m winning, ten to two. Then the needles stop and my mother turns around in her seat.

    â€œI only told you about the gas so you won’t make a big deal about it.” She looks at me, her eyebrows raised. “Got it?”

    â€œRoger dodger,” I say, and it occurs to me that this is the summer I’m going to play tricks on my mother’s sick uncle.

    â€œI’m serious,” she says. Then to Ruby: “Don’t ask Uncle Willy any funny questions, okay, honey?”

    â€œWhere do Germans keep their armies?” she sings, rubbing her eyes with the small heels of her palms. She’s heard this one from me. She says it a hundred times a day now. She can’t wait for the answer. “In their sleevies!” she screeches and laughs.

    â€œI mean the other funny, remember?
Strange
questions about how he moves. Remember it’s not polite to stare.”

    â€œYou heard your mother,
Junge
,” my father says, looking at me in the rear-view mirror. “No wisecracks.” He winks, then starts in on a long bend.

    â€œThere’s one! There’s one!” Ruby shouts. “Deers!”

    Willy must be in his mid-seventies. A great grinding question mark hooks under the skin of his back. They stand on the sloping grass beside the farmhouse. Willy leans on a mahogany cane. My mother stoops and hugs him. They’re talking quickly in Bayrisch, the Bavarian dialect unknown to my father. He waits respectfully, a little off to the side, until they switch back into German. He’s never met Willy