Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-One
27th August 1979
Youth Correctional Facility Neustrelitz
After spending the last month in the Giant Mountains, Sepp had returned home to find his usual lack of welcome the night before. Everyone had other things to do, so there was note from his mother telling him that there were leftovers in the refrigerator and that he knew how to heat them up. With this being the last week of the holiday, going to see Hagen seemed like the best use of his time. Just like during past visits, Sepp’s younger brother wasn’t inclined to talk at first.
“So Ma is getting married again” Hagen said with a smile, “The way that Didi described it, I guess she is really trading up.”
At that moment, Sepp wanted nothing more than to strangle his brother. His feelings regarding their mother’s impending marriage were generally negative, mostly because he hated the idea that his father was being replaced. Thomas Ott had been his youngest brother’s mentor which is what had brought him into contact with their mother. As an Emergency Surgeon at the University of Berlin’s Hospital, Ott was everything that their father could never have been.
“Didi also said that you joined the Forest Service” Hagen said, “That isn’t the sort of thing I ever imagined you doing.”
Sepp didn’t ask what Hagen imagined he would be doing. What was tragic was that Sepp had never once thought that his brother would end up anywhere other than exactly where he was, in prison. As it stood, the State was obligated to release him when he turned twenty-five in eight years after he had already spent nearly five years in Neustrelitz.
“That is something that I sort of fell into when I applied for a job through the University” Sepp replied.
“Lucky you didn’t join the Army by accident then” Hagen said not knowing that was exactly what Sepp had done, though indirectly.
“I think you might like it” Sepp said, “So far they have sent me to the Riesengebirge, I heard talk that I might be going to Berchtesgaden next year.”
“Where’s that?” Hagen asked.
“The Alps” Sepp replied.
“Oh” Hagen said with a shrug. The Alps might as well be Narnia as far as he was concerned.
“Would you believe that I learned to ride a horse this summer?” Sepp asked.
Hagen gave Sepp a look.
“What would they have you do that for?” Hagen asked in reply.
“There are places you cannot drive to” Sepp said.
It was funny that was the highlight of the summer and much of the time, it had been spent on a horse that was trained to follow the horse in front of it. For some reason it seemed like the horse in front of his always had gas.
Fort Meade
The smell of late summer was different here than it was in Los Angeles. There it seemed like there was always brush fires burning somewhere in the mountains, which added to the infamous smog that choked the sky of the LA Basin. Instead as August had progressed the thunderstorms had grown more frequent, which had been welcome after how hot and humid July had been.
School started next week and Stevie was not looking forward to it. It was not as if he had ever looked forward to the end of Summer Vacation, but this year was worse than others. He was going to be starting at a new school where he wouldn’t know anyone. At least back in Los Angeles he would have the Soccer season to look forward to, but here it seemed like no one had heard of Soccer. The upcoming tryouts for Peewee Football had been suggested, which Stevie had absolutely zero interest in. He remembered playing pickup Football during recess in prior years and how that had been little more than an excuse for the bigger kids to beat up on the smaller kids.
There were pickup Baseball games that took place in one corner of the athletic field of what he had discovered was the local elementary school, the same one he would be attending next week. It was far cry from the organized league games that would take place next year, but Baseball tryouts were not until next spring which was forever from now. Mostly though, he had ridden his bicycle around the base. Even going so far as to explore the edges of the “No-go” zones he had been warned about.
Not that there had been much to see.
The expansive parking lot and the big black building that belonged to what was referred to as “No Such Agency” by the people who lived on Fort Meade was surrounded by a double chain-link fence topped with razor wire and there were armed guards patrolling the perimeter. Stevie was many things but had seldom been called stupid. He had taken one look at that place and had decided that whatever was going on in there, he wanted no part in it. The Military Installations, like where his father worked, had similar level of security. It was also incredibly obvious that no one thought that he could get past the fences, so he had free run of the rest of the base.
It was then that Stevie saw Doud coming the other way. His introduction to Doud had been as their mothers had chatted at the PX and he had not known what to make of the other boy his age, whose family’s involvement in the Army went back to the beginning of time. He had asked what sort of name Doud was and Doud had just said that it was his grandfather’s. As if to drive in how weird Doud was, the bike he rode was black No-Name 10-speed with drop bars. “Like they ride in the Tour-de-France” Doud had said when Stevie had asked. As Doud had smiled and waved as he passed, Stevie knew that he was cursed to have him as a friend from the instant he got to class next week.