A New Outlook

Introduction, p.i The world as we know it began, to the best of my understanding at the time, somewhere around 1947 CE, two years after dad came home to stay, and regular hours and days made possible a resumption of business in the meat shop at the front of the house, mom and dad again looking after things in general, especially the customers, with Giel helping them in the store, and Mien keeping an eye on kids and things in the rest of the house. The house cum meatshop was level with the road running along the top of the dike, and the back property sloped down past the orchard and shed right to the edge of the drainage ditch, or sloot, as the Dutch call it. The front part of the shed was white stucco clean, with high counters along one side, and a machine that spun a large bowl affair while flashing rotary knives minced and then made pudding out of the meat odds and ends that would become sausage. That and a big piston press which would push that mix through a short horizontal pipe into sausage casings, were both on the other side of the working area. And pipe racking all over, along which shiny steel hooks hung, as clean as clean could be. The back part of the building was full of junk, and provided unlimited accommodation for countless rats, which never seemed to come to the front section, as far as I could tell. One day I saw dad hunkered at the edge of the sloot, and when I came to see, he was watching a rat he had shot, crawling along the muddy far side. “Why don’t you shoot it again and kill it?” “Oh, no need, he’s as good as gone already.” Yuk. A hard man, my dad. Three times had he been prisoner of war, something to do with the Dutch resistance and the underground -- on special assignment, pursuing another sort of rat, as he was heard to say. How on earth did he survive all that? And more than three times the Hun stompers had gone through the house, searching, while mom sat in a stiff-backed armchair with the six children, five sisters and Erin, close pressed to her intoning the mantra rosary. He knew where dad was, but they never found the hideyhole there, in a cramped spot, squeezing to the outer line of the attic edging over the closet. Hard, not looking there – to not look at the core and tension tip of the crisis minutes. Nor did they find the slaughter space below the shop floor where dad had butchered animals to no end on countless tired nights, making contraband profit all through the war, a desperate black market in a black underground, creating dark investment for a dim and doubtful future. i Introduction, p.ii Later they would be made to leave that money behind, in a trust fund, in grandpa’s keeping. The powers that be had made a number of attempts to confiscate it, as was done in the years after the war to people who could not authenticate funds they had access to. But somehow mom had foiled them every time. By way of technicalities, would you believe – wrong date; wrong time; we were not there that day and here’s the proof… stuff like that. Sometimes, in underhanded ways, underdogs can fight with city hall. It was no underdog that was all set to bite him, on delivery one day. But then a voice said, right beside him, “Don’t look him in the eye; he will think you want to fight him!” Erin, “What should I do, he bloody well wants to fight me!” The voice “Do nothing. Just look at the ground, off to one side a bit, and don’t move.” He looked the proper look at the dog, which worked, then turned to see, but no one was there. A vanishing voice, by his ear. That was the first time she had been so forthcoming, though he didn’t get to see her till some days later. That was really weird – he had climbed into the big horse chestnut tree in the back yard, and hid among the leaves, scoping the whole place as he often did, but this time he noticed this girl only a couple of feet away, doing the same thing. “What, who are you?” “I’m Leukje, that’s who I am, and you are Erin.” He couldn’t believe it. “How do you know that, and why didn’t I see you climb up here?” With a shy little smile “I’ve been around the place for quite a while, so I know the names of the whole family. And you didn’t see me climb because I wasn’t here till I wanted to be here.” Erin “I don’t understand! How can you not be here and then just be here, zoom like that?” She, “Don’t feel bad, cuz I don’t understand it either. Leuk, huh?” “So you are called little joke because you play jokes on people?” “I don’t do that. I just am a little joke, Leukje.” “And you can be invisible the same way, by just deciding to be?” “No, silly, there’s no deciding, it just happens. If it’s better that no one else can see me, then that’s what happens.” Erin “Then what about hearing you? Seems to me I’ve heard you once in a while before that dog growled at me.” “Yeah, now you’re getting the idea. You and I have talked to each other lots, but you just don’t remember too much about it.” “And you do remember, more than I do?” Leukje “Yes. Lots more, complete memory.” “That doesn’t seem fair.” “Sure it does, I don’t have much else to do, just keep an eye on you.” Erin is suddenly called in to supper, so he quickly climbs down. When he looks back up, he sees nothing. “Leukje?” Nothing.