Free Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard Page A

American.”
    â€œYou talk to Madi and Rudi.”
    â€œYes, about chickens.”
    â€œRide in front with Walter, he loves to speak German.”
    â€œWalter doesn’t converse, he makes speeches. He says the greatest all-out attack in the history of modern warfare, the Ardennes Offensive, was stopped. What they call the Battle of theBulge. Yes, we were pushed back, but it does not mean we are defeated.”
    Jurgen picked it up saying, “Not as long as the fire of National Socialism burns within us.”
    â€œWalter says ‘burns within our breast.’”
    â€œHe thinks we might want to see an exhibit of war souvenirs at Hudson’s, a department store downtown.”
    â€œGuns and samurai swords?”
    â€œThe usual stuff Americans bring home to show they were in the war. Or what they bought off someone if they weren’t. Helmets with bullet holes. Maybe you’ll see your Iron Cross the Yank took from you. Walter said he’ll drop us off and pick us up in a couple of hours. You know by now,” Jurgen said, “Walter’s a coward. His claim to fame, he looks like Himmler.”
    â€œAnd takes himself seriously,” Otto said. “He snaps on his pince-nez he becomes the lunatic’s twin brother. Walter is as mad as Heinrich but not as naughty. He wants so desperately to be a real Nazi and I can’t help him.” Otto said, “Jurgen, I have to get away from this place.”
    They walked to the back of the house, Otto in his new double-breasted gray suit, his homburg cocked at a conservative angle, the suit and hat Walter’s gifts to him. Jurgen wore a tweed jacket that had cost Walter thirty-nine dollars, the felt hat he got for six-fifty.
    There he was by the car, gunmetal gray shining hot in the sun, the Ford sedan always polished. What Jurgen was wondering as they approached the car, how he might get a duplicate key to the ignition. Though in an emergency he could hot-wire it.
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    From Farmington, in Saturday small-town traffic, Walter turned onto Grand River Avenue, telling them in German the road was astraight line southeast to downtown Detroit, twenty-two miles to Woodward Avenue and the J.L. Hudson Company. From the backseat Jurgen looked out at miles of farmland, pastures, and planted fields not yet showing a crop, the Ford rolling along at thirty-five miles an hour. Gradually there was more to see, filling stations and a few stores, now used-car lots as they passed Eight Mile Road, the city limits, while Walter explained meat rationing to Otto, in German.
    Jurgen was thinking that if Otto insisted on leaving, he should go with him, keep him out of trouble, if that was possible. Or, if he wanted to go, let him, and stop worrying about him. But first, at least try to convince him he should stay here to wait out the war. He did hear what Walter was telling Otto when he stopped thinking and paid attention.
    How the United States produced 25 million pounds of meat a year, the armed forces and their allies, England and Russia, getting eight million pounds of it, leaving 17 million pounds for the 121 million meat eaters in America, and it amounted to two and a half pounds a week for each meat eater, counting a child and a person who was ill as half a meat eater. Walter said, “The motto butchers must live by is ‘Sell it or smell it.’ Meat goes bad. If you hold out meat for good customers and they don’t come in? Throw it away. You have to sell meat on the basis of first come, first served. But if we have enough meat that everyone in America can have two and a half pounds a week, why are there meat shortages? Because when German U-boats torpedo and sink ships carrying meat, hundreds of thousands of pounds of it going to the war in Europe, they then have to send more. And where do they get it? From the seventeen million pounds meant for butcher shops and I put a sign in my window NO MEAT TODAY . The government won’t