An Airship Affair

By Lawrence Uri

He's too good to be true, but is he good enough? In the desolate Dust Bowl of 1935 Kansas, a handsome stranger offers down-and-out lawyer Maddie Hecker a way to escape the slavery threatened by a husband the judge won't let her divorce. The mystery man's promises come couched in secrets. He leads her to the German airship Graf Zeppelin, which has flown a clandestine mission to Kansas on orders from Germany's new Nazi government. Aboard with her daughter and her lover, Maddie must use her wits in a desperate contest for survival amid the clashing loyalties of hard-edged men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lawrence Uri
• Release date: Oct 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310617461

Lawrence Uri

Lawrence Uri works as a lawyer and city manager. He is a happy husband, a proud father, a lifelong English major, a constant writer, a Vietnam veteran, and a connoisseur of India Pale Ale. [e-mail]

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AN AIRSHIP AFFAIR

by

Lawrence Uri

Published by Storywright Books at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 by Lawrence Uri

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. With the exception of historical personages, whose parts in this novel are entirely invented by the author, no character is intended to depict any actual person.

Graf Zeppelin illustrations by William F. Kerka, courtesy of his daughter.

Cover photo of the Graf Zeppelin courtesy of ModelBuffs, makers of custom mahogany models. www.modelbuffs.com.

Cover photo of dust bowl scene courtesy of Morton County Historical Society Museum, Elkhart, Kansas.

Cover by Riley Evans and Leah Martin

To My darling Therese

and to

Richard, Christi, and Ike

and especially to

Edith

Oh, must we dream our dreams, and have them, too? Questions of Travel, Elizabeth Bishop

The Graf Zeppelin

1. Control Room

2. Passenger Gondola

3. Lower Corridor

4. Central Gangway

5. Ladder Shaft

6. Tail Section & Auxiliary Control Room

Passenger Gondola Interior

7. Control Room

8. Salon

9. Maddie’s Cabin

AN AIRSHIP AFFAIR

Chapter One: Here the bitch comes

June 8, 1935

Skye County, Kansas

Maddie Hecker rubbed the heel of her hand against the hot glass of the back seat window, clearing a circle from the dust. Through this grimy porthole she watched men shuffle past. Windbeaten straw hats shaded their stubbly jaws, grim mouths, and downcast eyes. Hard shoulders sagged under frayed cotton shirts. Worn shoes kicked up the dust. The sun bore down from a naked sky, lording over a barren land.

None of the men shot a glance her way. She figured some were put off by the gold star on the door of the Model A Ford she was sitting in. Others wouldn’t want the trouble that could come from taking up with Warren St. Clair’s run-off wife. And her unwashed hair and tired eyes didn’t help her chances of turning a head.

Anyway, nobody in this bunch looked ready to take on a woman. The drought and the Great Depression had destroyed livelihoods, snapped spirits, and plagued the county with a mob of unemployed and dispossessed drifters. They’d come in worrisome numbers to watch the auction of the Crawlic farm.

A rising shadow on the horizon caused Maddie to chew her lip. She saw men gaze warily across the distance.

Dust storm rising, Widow Crawlic. Maddie nudged the sleeping white-haired woman who sat slumped against her in the back seat.The widow mumbled Polish.

Maddie fanned her hem, getting no release from her crawly awareness of the grit in her hair and on her skin, the grainy dirt like river sand dry in her shoes, and the sweat collecting below her neck and between her legs. She settled the hem above her knees. What the heck, girlie, nobody’s looking. Why should these boys risk their lives for a peep?

Widow Crawlic smelled of lye soap and jail stew. Her hands, joined by handcuffs, rested on the lap of her county inmate smock.

Poor honey. Maddie patted the sleeping woman. Your husband chokes to death farming in a dust cloud, you sit with his corpse for a week, and then the banker nails a foreclosure notice to the fence post. I’d of taken a sickle to the stingy bastard, too.

The widow’s eyes fluttered. Maddie stroked her temples. Having me as your lawyer didn’t solve much.

Yesterday the widow’s wild hair had shone like a pitchy badge of vigor. A single raving night in the county jail bleached the leathered farm wife into a ghostly crone.

A bit more Dust Bowl, widow, and we’ll pass for sisters. Silently, Maddie questioned why she cared. Stay sane if you can, girlie girl. Surely there were reasons. The face of her daughter floated in her mind, bearing strength like a salvation along with the bite of unending worry.She sidled away from the widow and from the temptation of a quick slide into the dangerous, stony universe of secret judgments, clinging for Jill’s sake to what hard bits of balance she could grasp.

The men in front of the sheriff’s car parted, allowing her a view of the hay wagon where auctioneer Willis Swenson, round and pink with sleeves rolled to the elbow, barked through a megaphone.

Do I hear five? FIVE gimmenow, FIVE gimmenow, FI-FI-FIVE? Three gimmenow, THREE?

Working up a sweat in his effort to sell a pile of tools – pitchforks, shovels, axes – all pretty well useless with handles eaten thin by locusts. No one was buying. More than a hundred men watched the auctioneer. Maddie could feel their bad temper thicken.

Some in this crowd had socialized with her in her earlier life as the farm wife of Warren St. Clair, before she ran away. Thinking of Warren made her shiver and rub her jaw along the fault line of the break he put in the bone. She worried about her daughter, on the cusp of becoming a woman driven by her body to mate, with no outlet except hardscrabbles like these. Oh, Jill, oh, honey, she whispered, how can I make you tough?

An eddy of air through the Model A cooled her face. All this spring the wind had been a threat, howling in with massive dust storms, hiding the sun, ruining fields and prospects. After so much, the slightest breeze carried a whiff of craziness. She lifted her hair off her neck.

Why, ain’t she Maddie St. Clair!

Maddie tried not to wince at the sound of her married name. She had dropped St. Clair and returned to Hecker, but the county refused to hear.

A square face with a glistening toothy smile inserted itself into the opening of the front seat passenger window. You’re lookin’ sweet as usual today, Maddie, but this ain’t no spot for a woman.

Hello, Jim.

He glanced at her legs.

She tugged the hem of her skirt and offered a piece of flattery. Congratulations on your appointment to the legislature.

Jim Bramledge shrugged, the movement seeming to lengthen the stretch of loose-featured face between his collar and his spotless Panama. Dad’s doin’. Damn fool McCready loses his purse in the stock market and blows out his brains, leaves a vacancy on the elephant aisle of the statehouse. Old man pulls the strings, I’m waltzin’ to Topeka.

His mug hung in the car, giving her strong scents of tooth powder and pomade. Contriving to dodge this odorous advance without seeming obviously put off, she glanced aside and noticed a man dressed in gray trousers and a white shirt. Undoubtedly a stranger, though her angle of vision presented only his back. No resident of Skye County could afford so sharp a crease in his pants.

Jim nodded in the direction of Widow Crawlic. Heard tell you latched onto a client.

His twist on client summed up for Maddie how lightly people regarded her law practice.

He asked, You keepin’ the mad woman pacified?

I think so, Jim, but thanks. Hating her manners, she clung to her smile, because Bramledge was a young comer, a thirty-five-year-old bachelor, a man with money in a town with none, and the son of the district judge.

The stranger approached the car. His tailored pants draped strong hips. Eyes off the nice hams, girlie, she scolded silently while freezing her lips until her smile became as rigid as a death grin. He’s a man, and men hurt.

Jim sniffed at the widow, who was chewing her cheek. Why’s Ol’ Lady Crawlic still a burden to the county taxpayers? Thought Dad sent her to State Hospital. He paid no attention to the rising anger in the shouts thrown at the auctioneer or to the gust of wind that flapped the edges of his hat.

Maddie matched his calm, and attempted to command his attention eye to eye. They wouldn’t let her, none of them, no man willing to take a woman straight on unless she deigned to twinkle and flirt. Her smile made her jaw ache in the spot where her husband had broken the bone. She wondered if her face would set in stern wrinkles, and if, like the widow, she would conclusively go mad.

She caught her fingers checking her skin for softness. The gesture had seemed coquettish, and set Jim quivering. As an antidote, she squared off in her lawyer manner. Doc Owen told Judge Bramledge the widow might snap out of it when the sale’s over, she said. He thinks maybe she’s putting on an act. So the judge ordered me to bring her out, make sure she sees.

Jim winked. Dad don’t let ’em slide, does he? You’re comfortable? Anything I can fetch?

Maddie held herself still as Jim’s gaze traveled her from hairline to ankle. Her father, Sheriff Buck Hecker, had propped his twelve-gauge shotgun against the seat, stock resting on the floorboards and barrels on display for the consideration of any fellow who might take a turn toward rabble rousing. Bramledge’s chin swayed above the double muzzles. The voice in her head asked, When did you start loving triggers, girlie? She said, Stuffy in here.

Jim retreated an inch. Canadian lemonade and jazz at the Elks tonight. See you there? Cut the rug?

Why, thank you. She wedged her smile more firmly into position, disgusted with her charade, thinking of scratchy gramophone music, Bramledge’s palm pressing on her back, those teeth in her face.

Her occasional evenings in adult company draped her with guilt. Being a single parent meant never feeling right about leaving your child. Lately Jill had seen this, and had started to push her into what passed for society. Maybe Jill’s got a point, she thought, at the same time wishing Jim would introduce the well-pressed stranger. I’m afraid I haven’t an escort.

Jim sprang to the bait. I say! Lucky me. If I may —

An outburst at the auctioneer’s wagon created an excuse to look past him. Someone had thrown a rock. Willis Swenson dropped his megaphone and squeezed a handkerchief against a bleeding temple. Maddie felt the mob’s disquiet ratchet, as if the red flow fueled the pent-up rage of the dispossessed farmers. Her father climbed onto the hay wagon and stood beside the auctioneer, glaring at the crowd.

Jim’s face hovered over the shotgun. One more honeyed smile would buy a night away from her uncle’s house, dinner at the Kountry Kitchen, spiked lemonade at the Elks Lodge, and if she got drunk enough without throwing up or passing out, a grope in a back seat or under the shadows of the porch.

Feckless Jim was one of the few men in the county who possessed the means to pay for a real date, and who would risk being seen in public with a woman estranged from her husband. His political occupation excused him from the higher notions of morality. And either he believed his social position made him immune from danger, or he hadn’t heard of her husband’s threats to kill anybody who dallied with her.

What if Jim could convince his father, the judge, to grant her and Jill freedom from Warren? The old man had refused her petition for divorce four years before, a month after she graduated from law school. He was probably getting ready to crush her hopes forever when her second attempt came to trial on Friday.

She wondered whether young Jim had any pull with his father. The related inconvenient question, the one she couldn’t postpone, was how far she would stoop to reach him. Thinking of her future, and her daughter’s future, she stretched her smile until her jaw throbbed, and flicked her wrist to whiff the hem of her skirt.

Too late. Jim had backed his face out of the car to talk to the stranger. Maddie heard fragments. The guy in the swell pants spoke with a foreign accent.

Widow Crawlic rested against Maddie, weightless as a bag of air. Draft horses strained to pull a six-blade plow meant for a tractor into the sale ring. Men surged toward it, shouting curses. The auctioneer’s cant eddied on the breeze, reedy but defiant as he nursed the knot on his forehead and lifted the megaphone to his lips. Do I hear a hunnert? HUNNERT-gimmenow-HUNNERT-gimmenow-HUN-HUN-HUNNERT?

The widow’s head came off Maddie’s shoulder. Sell dat! Sell da son of a gun! Intent on the plow, the widow leaned over the front seat.

Auction’s almost done, Mrs. Crawlic. Maddie patted her.

Oh, you shut up, girl. My old man, he killed hisself pullin’ dat damn plow tru dis damn dirt. Dat damn plow.

Maddie opened her mouth to rebuke the woman and then checked herself. Today was the widow’s funeral. Let her mourn.

Widow Crawlic fazed into to her stupor, muttering, Sell da damn ting.

The whining wind swept away what Buck said to the milling crowd. Maddie unsnapped and folded the cracked canvas top of the Model A, stood on the seat, and became a wheeled centaur, the car her lower half, her torso emerging through the roof.

She watched men push and catcall amid battered corrals and farm buildings stripped of paint by blown grit. A windmill with broken vanes revolved unsteadily in a useless effort to suck water from a dry well. Sand dunes covered the fence lines like snowdrifts.

The dusky band on the horizon had widened to cover the lower quarter of the sky. Maddie thought of old man Crawlic stubbornly cross-plowing his fields through a dust storm in a futile attempt to keep Oklahoma wind from chasing his topsoil to Nebraska, riding his tractor until dust clogged his lungs.

Jim squinted under his Panama at the display Maddie knew she was making. Arch’em, girlie. Show this fool your wineglasses don’t sag.

His companion had definitely noticed. The stranger’s face reminded her of the professors at law school, the younger ones with their smug frowns. He must be her age, she thought, or maybe slightly older. He was taller than Jim by several inches, and severely upright in his posture. An old-fashioned thick brown moustache curled over his upper lip. A gentleman’s gray hat shadowed his forehead.

This moustache, would it tickle?

He raised the fine hat, showing brown hair slicked to freeze its wave despite the wind, and blue eyes at once friendly and guarded. So hot in the sun, Madam. Will you accept my chapeau?

She placed his accent from the movies. For months the newsreels had featured reports on the political party taking charge in Germany, the Nazis. Maddie had become tired of having her popcorn soured by the antics of the funny little man, Hitler, who strutted in front of the Berlin crowds.

The hat would cover her face to the nose, making the stranger’s gallant offer silly. No, thanks. I’m accustomed to the heat. She raised an eyebrow at Jim, pushing him to cover his social oversight.

Oh. Jim laid a hand on the stiff-shouldered stranger. Maddie, this is Professor Hermann Raeder, from Munich, Germany. He’s looking after family business interests, and he’s staying with Dad and me at Brownstone.

Maddie couldn’t imagine any business in Skye County substantial enough to draw such an evidently prosperous foreigner across the Atlantic.

Madam. Hermann Raeder bowed from the waist, sweeping his felt hat across his chest.

The display of courtliness, which would have come off as insulting or idiotically comical if attempted by Jim, charmed Maddie into momentarily playing the lady. As the German unfolded from his bow she tilted her chin and kept staring, letting him see he’d caught her eye, disconcerted to find herself wondering whether he could glide a woman across a dance floor with equal grace.

He returned her attention with a smile both polite and curious, leaving her cautious but interested while she broke her gaze into the distance and tried to recall his name. Raider? Probably spelled funny. Harry? No, Hermann. Handsome Hermann. Hermmy. Herm. Whoa, girlie. Strange men bring strange problems.

A hot gust of wind threw sand into her face. Shaking off the sting, she saw the dust storm, a low sable cloud with streaks of sickly yellow, roiling across the outskirts of Pawnee Bend. The crowd fell into a quiet she found sinister. A fellow in overalls stirred as if to signal a bid. They stared him into silence.

Roosevelt ruffians, Jim confided to Hermann Raeder. We’re stuck with a capitalist-hating dictator in Washington, and these drifters are his Brownshirts. Slap an armband on F. D. R., we’d have ourselves a homemade Hitler.

Hermann withdrew his smile. Maddie again saw the attitude of scholarly contempt. The German’s manner of fixing his glower was intimidating if you were his object, but slightly amusing if you were looking on. He lectured Jim, Your comparison of the politics of your country and mine is perhaps strained. The times require a strong leader.

Jim reddened, out of his depth.

Maddie wadded into the debate, despite the caution chimes ringing in her brain. These men believe Roosevelt will be their savior, if they can hang on.

She aimed her argument over Jim to avoid confronting him, the idea of a restaurant dinner and a chance of more contact with the stranger beguiling in spite of Jim’s diehard Republican politics and those teeth.

Another swat of air-blown sand in her face made her eyes tear. Tumbleweed-nettled fields of drifting soil dominated the landscape to the limits of her vision. Five miles distant, a spindle-legged water tank and a clutch of steeples spiked above the trees and roofs of Pawnee Bend. In minutes, the storm would assault the town.

She hoped her daughter hadn’t skipped afternoon classes on the final week of school. When the dust began blowing, the eighth graders would wet towels to tuck in the cracks of window sills. Jill loved a sense of emergency. She’d scurry to the head of the line and pretend to lead. The girl’s enthusiasm for turning problems into romantic adventures filled Maddie with terror. Somehow, she had to make Jill crusty enough to survive in this arid wilderness.

From the foremost rank of the crowd, Maddie heard a shout. I bid ten cents, and nobody bid nuthin’ more. Plow’s mine.

The auctioneer wagged his head.

Maddie’s father, bareheaded in the heat, the work shirt he used for a sheriff’s uniform buttoned to the neck, stood amid the trash of pitchforks and hoes on the bed of the hay wagon. No deal. There’s collusion, and the law won’t allow.

A man hollered, Move the sale along, sheriff. Storm’s comin’.

Not long ago they wouldn’t have dared to shout at Buck, Maddie thought, but the lines of his face had softened and his hair had lost its pepper and faded to snow. And the failure of everything they had relied on made men desperate.

Buck crossed his arms. The authority in his bearing had been Maddie’s rock and tree since childhood. He said, The dime bid ain’t valid.

Fists were shaken. No one took the first step toward the wagon where Buck and the auctioneer held their ground.

At Buck’s nod, the auctioneer started again, holding the handkerchief to his bleeding temple. Do I hear a hunnert? Weaker. Hunnert, gimmenow, hunnert, gimmenow. Hun-hun-hunnert?

The man who had bid ten cents for the plow elevated his coin to glint in the sunlight.

Jim scratched beneath the brim of his Panama. You read about this sort of thing, never figure it’ll happen here. These ragtags are gangin’ up to ruin the sale, bid in pennies and scare off the folks with dollars. Lawbreakers.

Maddie sensed this would be his last grab for her attention. She batted her eyes in the direction of his upturned face.

He stuck his hands in his pockets. Buck’s right, he said. Can’t let ’em get by with their shenanigans.

Still tempted to yield to his invitation, Maddie rounded her eyes for him. Conniving hussy. You’ll sink as low as there is if you figure he can coax a favor from his father the judge. But how else is a girl supposed to cope?

Dust storm or no, the Elks would dance until bootleg gin made them stagger. She was so tired of drinking alone. As she watched, the giant, ground-hugging cloud of dirt rose like a tidal wave over Pawnee Bend. Sheet lighting flashed from the rolling storm, and thunder spread across the plains.

A whimpered Polish curse and the creak of leather and worn springs as the car seat sagged around her shoes drew her attention to the interior, where she saw the widow straining to get her cuffed hands on the shotgun.

No, Mrs. Crawlic! Maddie caught the widow’s arm, expecting frailty.

Sell dat plow or I shoot ’em. I shoot ’em every damn one.

Howling in Polish and powerful as a farm horse, the widow elbowed Maddie and dove for the trigger. Maddie landed on the floorboards. She braced her feet against the widow’s stomach and pushed. The widow collapsed in the seat, still clawing, but her strength spent. Maddie cradled her while she cried. Damn ’em. Damn dose men.

Jim toed dust. Maddie was aware of her dress twisted and hiked to her hips, and of Hermann Raeder gallantly looking elsewhere.

Cat fight, one man laughed.

From the hay wagon, the auctioneer announced, Storm’s blowin’ in fast. Sale’s canceled.

No it ain’t, a heckler insisted.

My plow? demanded the man waving his dime.

Plow ain’t yours, Buck retorted.

Hell you say, sheriff. Hell you say.

As if this had been a signal, the crowd’s rage exploded into a riot. Rocks flew at the hay wagon. Fists filled with boards. The auctioneer dropped to his knees and hid behind his crossed arms. Buck stood alone.

Men rocked the hay wagon. Hermann pushed into the melee, shoving toward Buck. Hands grabbed the hoes and pitchforks scattered on the wagon bed.

Maddie lifted the shotgun through the open roof of the Ford and rested the butt of the stock on the canvas car top, barrels pointed skyward. She pulled the first trigger, the roar filling her ears while she counted to three, then pulled the second. The men froze. Amid them Hermann’s white shirt blazed like a beacon. Jim had disappeared.

She rattled out the spent shells, loaded more, and lifted the gun into position. Point, don’t aim, Buck had taught her. She leveled the barrels at the fellow who held the dime aloft. He lowered his hand.

Let’s haul out, boys. Buck’s growl laid the line. Get gone before the storm catches us.

The ungainly heft of the shotgun pulled at Maddie’s arms. She pressed the stock to her shoulder.

Widow Crawlic cackled, Shoot dem guys, lady. Shoot ’em dead.

The long double barrels began to waver. Maddie crouched, rested the gun on the car top, and pointed steadily at the men nearest the hay wagon. They retreated, flowing around the car but avoiding Maddie, making footprints in the dust of the widow’s blown-out garden.

Maddie sensed a relief in them, as if most hadn’t really been spoiling for the fight. Buck stood with his hands on his hips until all of them had departed, jalopies bouncing along the rutted road. He eased off the wagon in a stiff-jointed way, helped the auctioneer to the ground, and crossed the empty farmyard, grinning at Maddie. You can unload, Mistletoe.

The blasts echoing in her ears made him sound distant. His use of her childhood nickname embarrassed her. Buck lived more in the past lately, often mentioning his wife, who had died at Maddie’s birth.

Hermann Raeder approached, as calm as if nothing had happened, holding one of the unsold rakes and musing over the elongated gouges that plaguing locusts had eaten in the handle. Nodding at Buck, Hermann smiled for Maddie, tossed aside the hoe, and reached for the shotgun. His manner assumed she would naturally give it up.

She tightened her grip on the stock, then with an equally sudden impulse she surrendered the gun into his waiting hands. Buck’s curiosity as he noted this exchange left her thanking the sun for a tan thick enough to hide the glow of her blush. To quiet her shaking, she laid her palms on the burning-hot car.

The scene beyond the Crawlic farmstead dissolved into flatness, like indecipherable geometries splattered on a Frenchie artist’s canvas. Human figures distorted into jumbles of color. Oh, girlie, girlie, hee, hee, hee. She shook her head violently. The voice flew into nothing and the landscape reinflated. Had she been on the verge of fainting? Huh-uh.

Unsure of what to do with the quiet German, she spoke to Buck. "Maybe now