Opa Hitler, Chapter 1

In one hand, he palmed a cyanide pill. In the other, a Luger pistol.

He tried to accomplish so much in his 65 years, but his plans failed. Too many had battled his ideas and beat him back.

In the end, everyone decided he was just a little too insane.

His fingers, holding the gun through the trigger, glided along his basement’s cold stone walls. Built as a fortified shelter to save friends and family in case enemies struck hard with bombardments, or another worldly disaster hit the town, now he stood inside alone.

It was March. And cold outside.

A disaster had struck, but it bypassed the structure and already held his throat. His heart beat, but only to keep the cadaverous body alive.

It was a body undergoing a soldier’s pains. Mistakes and the unseen within chased him into this bunker. The migraine crushed his head as if the concrete walls surrounding him were compressing his temples. He pulled slick black hair against his skull with battered fingers.

The walls were doing nothing to prevent the internal affliction. Cancer ate away at his brain and liver, the doctors told him. Ulcers had sawed his stomach lining for years.

His finances were organized like soldiers trying to escape the dropping of a nuclear weapon – they kept running, but as soon as it detonated, they would burn.

If he didn’t make a quick exit, medical and financial troubles would kill him slowly.

Not too different from what ended his father’s life.

 “Heil Hiller,” he joked – his punchline echoing in the empty room.

Rudolf Hiller wondered if his father breathed similar words prior to his 1945 suicide more than 50 years earlier. Perhaps. Some things were different, Rudolf realized.

The entire world wasn’t out to kill him and he hadn’t persecuted anyone in his lifetime, unlike his infamous father. And Hiller wasn’t with a lover, or any kind of mistress.

Then again, his father hadn’t killed himself with Rudolf’s mother. He had killed himself with Eva Braun, a wife of 48 hours.

Rudolf’s mother had been a 17-year-old Jewish prostitute when selected as one of her country leader’s lovers. Of course, she didn’t reveal her faith – or lack thereof – in his Christian-bizarro beliefs. To tell him she was a rabbi’s niece would have meant a railway trip to Dunkirk.

It all worked out. When she became pregnant, he sent her to Brazil. He would meet her there later, he said. They would meet in New York, after he conquered America.

At her lover’s urging, she changed her name to Hiller as she floated to Brazil on a cargo ship.

Rudolf looked at the package he was leaving, to show the world Hitler’s bloodline outlived many Nazi hunters who hated his father and the followers. The documentation and DNA evidence were there. A lock of hair Adolf gave his young lover before she embarked on the ship.

A blitzkrieg of pain assailed his head – the cancer chewing away at his nervous system. The cyanide would take too long, he decided. In white boxer shorts, with a matching T-shirt and a red swastika emblem wrapped around his left arm, Hiller put the barrel of the German weapon to his left temple. Rudolf gritted down on his teeth and commanded his final voluntary muscle movement. His index finger pulled the trigger back, the hammer collapsed on gunpowder and a bullet erupted into his gray matter.

His body collapsed, falling to his left side and onto the only piece of furniture Hiller had in the basement.

Blood quickly bubbled from the exit wound. Mental processes shut down, his heartbeat started to flutter and the cyanide capsule from his right hand dropped to the concrete floor, rolling two feet before stopping.

In moments, it was drowning in Hiller’s blood.

Blood descended from Adolf Hitler.

 

***

 

March 1999
Hillside High School
Roosevelt, Indiana

               

The instructor was trying to teach his students, but he had other things on his mind. His wife was late in her cycle. Maybe pregnant.

Were they ready, now, to have a child? How is it they tried for years and nothing happened, and yet, apparently, a seven minute encounter during a TV rerun was all it took? They’d become so distant the last year … maybe this would reconnect them.

Alfred looked up from his book on Western Civilization to his class. He concentrated his efforts on the subject at hand. He challenged his C- student – a kid with the last name Lanter.

 “So why do we study world history, Maxwell?”

He hated when people called him Maxwell, and answered accordingly with a pissy albeit typical teenage response.

 “To graduate on time.”

 “Think a bit deeper please. Even past high school graduation: scholars, priests, world leaders, mathematicians and astronomers read up on events from before their lifetimes. Why?”

 “I don’t know. Most of them were geeks.”

 “No, Maxwell. Well, not all,” the 12-year-veteran Hillside High School educator rebutted. “It’s a cliché answer, I’ll give you that much of a hint.”

Max thought briefly, then tried to remember what “cliché” meant. He was currently maintaining a D+ in English.

 “I don’t know. To avoid having the mistakes of the past repeated,” he finally mumbled, now slightly embarrassed at other kids staring at him.

 “Yes – partially that is the correct answer. There’s another reason, too. Why would astrologers – scientists who study the stars – be curious about the past of the night sky? Beyond most of them being geeks.”

 “Well, like, for comets and stuff. Stuff that was here – like Halley’s Comet – it comes back once in a while – and they want to know what they can expect.” Max jotted down This Suckz on the inside of his red History notepad.

 “Exactly,” Hiller smiled.

He thought of a follow-up question for Maxwell, the student he described with “much potential” on the last grading periods report card, then dismissed the idea. Lanter had provided a good answer, and Hiller never liked students feeling extended moments of pressure.

Slipping his hands into his khaki pockets, the educator – who kids nicknamed Professor Jaundice due to his pasty white skin and wet-looking black hair – turned around to pick another student to answer questions. Someone perhaps more confident than Maxwell.

That wouldn’t be difficult.

Maria Jones, Hiller decided.

 “Maria,” he breathed, and then noticed the sheriff’s deputy standing outside his classroom door, peering in. “Um. Hold that thought.”

Whispers shot silently like lasers through the classroom. Everyone perks when police are near, even when they are sitting in the relatively safety of a schoolroom. And this one seemed as safe as any. It was decorated with maps on two walls; 232 covers of Newsweek magazine on another; and Hiller’s own sketched drawing of “The Perfect Classroom” behind his desk. Designs of rooms and buildings had long been a hobby Hiller exposed his kids too, but that wasn’t something they were thinking about with the uniform at the door.     

Cops don’t show up to school without a reason. Someone’s going to jail. Someone’s screwed.

The classroom preppie, Andy Myers, leaned over to Max.

 “You’re busted, Maxwell-dude,” Myers snickered, trying to anticipate the loser’s swinging arm.

 “Fuck you,” Max whispered, looking straight ahead. While he tried to appear poised, Lanter feared the police officer was there for him. He was the dirtbag of the group, and authorities had arrested him a year ago drunk at school.

Lanter remembered the three joints he’d let his buddy Larry store in his locker.

Crap, he bitched to himself as Alfred Hiller opened the door.

 “How can I help you, officer?” Hiller questioned Deputy J.P. Stone. He hated the idea of seeing one of his students carted off in cuffs. Yeah, sometimes it was probably necessary, but the teacher liked most of his students.

 “You’re Alfred Hiller, right?” Stone quietly asked.

 “Yeah.”

 “Could you come outside for a moment, sir?”

 “Okay,” Hiller responded, looking back to his classroom. “I’ll be right back, people. Open up and look to the Bill of Rights section starting on page 243,” Hiller commented as he closed the door.

Myers leaned back over to Lanter.

 “Better learn those fast, dude. Might want to catch up on the Fifth one,” the prep smiled.

Max edged toward losing his cool, but decided while a misdemeanor drug charge was shit, accompanying that with felony battery was a bad idea.

 “Mr. Hiller, Rudolf Hiller is your father, right?” Stone asked.

 “Yeah, why?” Alfred responded, wishing the questioning was about a student.

 “When was the last time you talked to him?”

 “Um, Thursday, I think. What’s wrong?” Hiller asked, his stomach began to slowly ache.

 “We’re not sure. We had a request for a welfare check on him by his postal clerk. Says no one has picked up his mail in three or four days. Said usually when he delivered the stuff your dad was on the front porch. Said he knew you worked here ‘cause your father talked ‘bout you a lot. Do you know if he was going on vacation?” Stone asked.

Alfred looked down and started walking down the hall. Stone set a pace and walked with the thin, lanky man. “No. He isn’t in very good health. I’ll go check on him,” Hiller said, starting to walk toward the teacher’s lounge down the hall as the deputy followed him.

He pushed open the carpeted lounge and saw first-year English teacher Lisa Henderson sitting on top of fifteenth-year (and three-time divorcee) physical education instructor Ross “Butch” Romesburg. They giggled watching a soap opera on the television.

 “Lisa, can you go watch my classroom?” Alfred asked.

 “Hey, we’re on our planning period,” Butch responded, annoyed by Professor Jaundice.

 “Lisa, I need you to watch my classroom,” Hiller requested again. “I’ve got to go check on my father. Something’s wrong,” he continued. He wasn’t in the mood for the thick-necked and thick-brained mentality of Romesburg. Lisa stood up, somewhat embarrassed pushing her dress down and rearranging her thong, and moved toward the door.

Romesburg bit his lower lip. No nookie this period, he thought angrily. The little geek had frightened his latest piece away – for the moment.

***

 

Alfred called for his father throughout his house, but quieted down as he stepped into the basement. The cold, damp walls and dimmed light absorbed by the gray concrete gave the grave atmosphere the bunker had virtually become. Hiller’s heart sank when he looked onto his father’s cold corpse, no longer bleeding.

 “Oh Dad,” he breathed. It surprised – and somewhat hurt him. The lack of shock in his emotions. His own reaction to his father’s body sprawled across a dilapidated couch, the gun still in his hand.

Stone grabbed Alfred’s shoulder. “Hold on,” he said, and walked passed him kneeling down by the senior Hiller’s arm, quickly fingering for a pulse. “He’s dead,” Stone confirmed.

No kidding, Hiller thought, annoyed by the deputy’s action.

 “Roosevelt center: Nineteen-eight. I have a ten-zero, possibly self-inflicted,” Stone talked cop into his radio attached like a pirate’s parrot to his shoulder. It squawked back the county coroner would be en route.

Surrounding his father’s lifeless corpse, the room was empty besides the couch – and a bulging manila folder.

It was about an inch thick with dozens of documents.

The envelope sat on a small table above the suicide victim. A dark splotch of blood covered a corner of it from the violent splatter three days earlier.

Alfred Hiller noticed the package at the same time of the deputy.

 “Mr. Hiller, I’m going to have to investigate this, sir ... just to conclude it is, um, what it appears to be,” Stone said. He knew he had floated into a situation where even sensible law-abiding citizens sometimes tell authorities to fuck themselves.

 “Do what you have to do,” Alfred uttered picking up the package.

The envelope, which looked as old as Alfred, had Rudolf’s scribbling on it. FOR MY SON, ALFRED HILLER, OF ROOSEVELT – FOR HIM ONLY the package said in green ink from what normally is a children’s Crayola marker.

His father had always used kid’s markers to write notes – even on small scraps of paper. It was a habit that always annoyed his only offspring.

Alfred reached in and scooped out the majority of the papers. Some caught hold of the edges and crumpled, jamming themselves inside. Other half-sheets avoided the teacher’s fingertips.

 “Don’t touch that,” Stone said, looking up from his thus-far futile search to discover an empty bullet cartridge on the floor.

 “I’ll tell you if there’s anything you need to know about,” Hiller responded.

 “I need to check that for prints,” the wannabe-detective deputy huffed as Alfred flipped through the sheets.

Hiller remained quiet and ignored him. He looked through the variety of paperwork: bills, overdue bills, nastygrams from collection agencies and tattered notarized documents in a foreign language.

What is this? German? Hiller thought.

Initially, he paid little attention to foreign papers. He had taken Spanish in high school and college because, well, everyone else had.

He could read the billing statements. The German documents said nothing he understood at a glance.

Not initially.

Folded up in thirds, he found a letter with the familiar green marker on the top of it. FOR ALFRED, it said. There were three sheets of yellow pieces of paper from a faded legal pad. On the first, a coffee stain near the top looked like a crescent moon at midnight – albeit a dark brown moon in a yellow sky.

The stain sent through a memory. Rudolf always drank coffee black.

 “You really shouldn’t be looking at that,” the officer reminded him.

Hiller started reading his father’s final diatribe.

Alfred – let me begin this by telling you I’m much happier now.

Hiller glanced down to Rudolf’s carcass. You don’t look it, he thought.

He continued reading, wanting to know the full story. Hiller had been addicted to the full story since he was a teenager in history class.

I did what I did because I am in constant pain. It hurts two move, hurts two sleep, hurts two think - it hurts two breath. When I do think, it’s usually about the creditors I can’t pay & the useless treatments that would be pointless even if I could afford them.

Rudolf never spelled the word “to” correctly, a fact his son understood, but one that others always found as quite a strange little habit.

I am sorry I leave you my debt. Hopefully judges & lawyers will be kinder two you then they & others (doctors, creditors) were two me.

Along with my debt, I leave you something you probably want but will regret receiving: the truth.

Yes, your mother did die in a car accident in 1967 – but it wasn’t completely accidental. She had left us a month earlier & drove out to Calif., where she drove my dodge off a cliff.

That happened six weeks after I told her what she wanted but regretted receiving. The truth about the Hiller family.

Our last name is really Hitler. You are the only surviving member of the leader of the Third Reich – I’m sure you’ve heard of it being a history teacher and all. The evidence is all within this package.

Like I said – I think you want to know. Again – I’m sorry, but I’m much better off now. Love, Dad.

Stone had been talking on his radio to dispatchers, other cops, ambulance workers, and the Owen County coroner – the coroner for the town of Roosevelt and its surrounding area.

 “Mr. Hiller, the coroner has an ETA of about ten minutes. I will have to make copies of all that ... for my investigation,” the deputy said to a mentally spinning Alfred.

Hiller swallowed. And then he did again. He felt his pasty white skin lose more of its color. The pores of his body filled and then overflowed with a cool sweat. Stone worried the realism of the moment was overcoming Hiller like searing smoke in a burning home.

 “Mr. Hiller?”

 “Wha...what? What did you ...?” the words barely forming on his lips.

 “Sir, the doc is on his way. I’m going to need copies of that – that package – in order to properly rule this violent death a suicide. So, Doc Evans can properly rule it, that is,” Stone corrected himself.

The implications started gnawing on Hiller’s spine like a hyena on a discarded antelope. Sharp teeth pulling away every ounce of flesh left dangling from the lions’ slaughter.

He glanced back through the decaying certificates, shuffling through some antiquated black-and-white photos. The Fuhrer standing side-by-side with a young girl – a girl Alfred recognized as his youthful grandmother – circa 1943.

The law-abiding citizen visualized himself spitting on his now dead father. How dare you kill yourself and leave me with this shit, you son-of-a-bitch.

Son of a whore.

Son of a psycho.

Alfred couldn’t feel his knees or his feet ... hell, it felt like his whole body numbed as if a boa constrictor cut the blood flow at his spinal cord.

He wanted to destroy the documents, while this police officer was talking about making copies of it for an official report.

 “I’m going to burn this,” Hiller announced, balancing the package in his palm and looking at the officer. So much for law-abiding.

 “You’ll do no such thing, sir,” the deputy blurted stepping forward. “If you burn those papers, we’ll have to open up a homicide investigation right now – and you don’t want that.”

Yeah, I’m the obvious suspect, you ass. Like I want to kill my father so I can inherit thousands in debt and the fun little fact that granddad has been burning in Hell the last 50 years because he made a nasty little habit out of genocide.

 “This is our personal life,” Hiller responded, hoping to sound more like a despondent son and less like a president with his pants down in front of Roman Catholic altar boys.

 “Well, it’s public record now, sir. Give me those papers now, sir,” Stone demanded.

Hiller was habitually a bit of a wuss.

 “Okay, listen, I won’t burn this stuff, but please ... don’t make this stuff known beyond your investigation. Read it, then flush it out of your memory.” Alfred was amazed how little he now cared about his father’s death.

That lack of compassion began to grab Stone’s interest. He took the papers from Hiller’s hands and lodged them back in the packet, not glancing at them other than pounding them together to fit the mailer.

 “This is just to finish out the investigation. What are you worried about, Mr. Hiller? Did your father confess, or accuse others, of some hideous crimes?”

 “Um, no,” Alfred honestly responded, now worried he had throttled a can of worms with a firecracker.

 “He just talks about some family history I don’t want made public. Not to the media. Not to lawyers,” Alfred requested, his eyes glaring down at the underwear clad corpse.

Stone looked at Hiller, but said nothing as he flipped the package so the green marker writing was back on top. This side up, he thought.

In the eleven years he’d worked, he’d seen or heard everything, so the documents didn’t worry the deputy too much, Stone knew how to keep secrets. It was a source of pride to him. Still, Hiller acted odd about the situation.

 “Well, Mr. Hiller, I highly doubt I’ll have to make it known to the general public. In my years with Owen County, we’ve only thought about doing it once. And even then, we didn’t,” Stone explained.

J.P. looked down to the odd clothes Rudolf had decided to use as his death garb, and noticed the Nazi emblem, partially soaked in blood. Okay, that’s strange.

 “Can I have the originals back when you’re done with the investigation?” Hiller asked.

 “Certainly,” he said, his eyes trying to focus on the badge of the dead man’s arm. It is a swastika. That is peculiar, Stone repeated to himself.

 “The envelope is addressed to you, then you can burn it, sir,” Stone added.

Even this bit of news did little to appease Alfred’s feeling. He had just gone from thoughts about a possible baby – to a happy-go-lucky day teaching – to anguish of losing his only surviving parent. To confusion of the family history’s new rendition. To anger of finding out his father’s perpetual lie. One he could have – perhaps should have – taken with him traveling into death with the slug bulleting through his brain.

 “When can I get those back?”

 “By next week, if this all checks out,” Stone said. “I suppose it should. I doubt there’s anything to worry about,” he added, feeling awkward about this Hiller character.

 “Just do me a favor, sir. Keep this confidential,” Alfred said.