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
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.
