"Jake," Chris said uncertainly. "Peter wants you."
"Come on up," Jake called.
"I don't' know how," Chris said. "Peter said you had to come now."
"Just start up. The rock will show you how."

 

Chris looked for a handhold on the rock. It was steepest at its base and he could not see an obvious place to start. He felt ashamed that he couldn't find a handhold and looked down at his feet.

 

"Leroy's coming for breakfast," he said. "Peter says you have to come back."

 

Jake made considerations. He wasn't quite ready to get down, but he liked to be there when Leroy arrived because that was generally the time when he would tell some story about his past. Leroy had grown up on the farm, had been there when the Ambassador's father bought it. The two of them, the Ambassador and Leroy, grew up together. After Leroy's wife died and his kids left and the farm went under, the Ambassador had included him in his security detail. They had since traveled the world together. Now they were old and lived in independent solidarity on the same land.

Leroy stood over a black iron skillet dropping spoonfuls of thick batter, chock full of sweetcorn kernels, into hot grease. He always made cornfritters for breakfast if corn had been eaten the night before.

 

"During the war, they used to unload a truckload of German prisoners every morning to help us work the fields," Leroy said. "I guess they figured they didn't have much place to run to but they were wrong on that one. Or wrong on thinking the Germans agreed."

 

His voice was a low growl that had a good-natured ring when he finished a statement. He punctuated all of his sentences with knowing smiles. Leroy was a stout man with a strong, rounded back, bowlegs, a red face, and a big nose that had grey hairs jutting right out of point. His yellow-white hair was combed over in an old-fashioned part and there was still plenty of it.

 

"I got to be friends with all of ‘em," he said. "I was only seventeen and I'd rather have been fighting but farming with soldiers and hearing all their stories wasn't too bad. We supplied half this county with butter, pigs, and corn. It was a big operation back then. Your granddaddy was over in North Africa. He never saw this place work like it could."

 

Leroy laughed in his deep-chested way. He made a remarkable amount of sound and it offended Chris who smiled weakly to hide his distaste. The kids sat around the kitchen. Ellie played with some pinecones she'd found outside that morning. She picked the seeds out of their slots and fitted them into other ones.

 

"What happened to the prisoners, Leroy?" Peter asked.
"They all went home eventually. They were just regular people who had gotten caught up in the thing. Most of them were Navy men who we picked up in the ocean somewhere but some of them had been over there in the heavy fighting in Europe."
"He wants to know about the escape," Jake said.
"What escape?" Leroy said, turning the cornfritters with a fork one by one.
"Come on Leroy," Ellie said, like an adult calling on an old friend.
Leroy laughed loudly again.
"The one fella I got closest to was named Johan," he said. "At the end of the day they all had to line up at the gate and get loaded up into the truck by the security detail, two old guardsmen. Johan wasn't in line. I was the one who was out in the fields with them most of the day and I remembered talking to him at the last water break. He was saying about his wife and kids back in Germany and he thanked me for being so nice to them here. He must have laid down in the corn and slid back into the ravine."
"Did he get away?" Jake asked.
Leroy's face got dark, like it did sometimes. He had a lot of memories and he was good-natured about most of them but there were still some in there that got to him.
"I guess he must have," Leroy said.
"All the way back to Germany?" Chris asked.
"All the way back," Leroy said.
Jake noticed that Leroy was lying about that part of the story.
"I don't think he could have made it Leroy," Jake said.
Leroy was pulling the brown cornfritters from the grease and he turned and looked at Jake closely.
"Don't try to know everything Jake," he said.