Upon reaching the driver’s scheduled break stop where passengers might stretch their legs as well as grab compressed bites to eat, that was while letting off those who’d reached their destination but before boarding any joining the journey, strange thoughts of oxidation and reduction struck Matt Pfarrer. He hadn’t needed to consider the processes since high school. He wondered why they arose on the way to Near the End of Argentina.

The motorcoach to Selknam had steadily emptied southward bound. Watching the transport’s rows open up after every arrival, he noticed replacement passengers never equaled the departures. Standing in the midst of one of those towns anywhere in the world that solely seem to exist, no, to serve as way stations for long-haul busses, modern-day stagecoaches really, Pfarrer asked himself did those boarding them ever balance or, better, exceed the departures.

He asked himself had there ever been a full bus whose terminus was Selknam.

Standing off in a short distance, eying him quizzically, Lisa McKenzie-McKenzie called out. “Matthew. You still with me? Let’s eat.”

Her voice broke a long-ago science theorem that had somehow become a present-day quandary. Pfarrer shuffled near her and she led the way into a restaurante.

A short stride between vehicle and eatery obliged neither to put on heavier mantles. Long-sleeved shirts under sweaters sufficed keeping late Southern Hemisphere autumn at bay. Both toted empty water bottles intending to refill them inside.

At noonish, the interior was brighter and kinder than outside. Cloud cover had muffled sunlight several hours north. That clearly had contributed to the early June temperature drop.

Inciteful aromas filled his nostrils. Coffee weaved in with whatever fried on the parilla. Certainly, there were baked goods to be offered, but meat and eggs rendered them imperceptible until that plate containing them sat directly under patrons’ noses.

The background music underlying Spanish spoken at all volumes was cumbia. Which let Pfarrer question whether this a Colombian-run establishment. Pfarrer laughed to himself. Had the music been sung by Ray Price or Wanda Jackson would he have asked if the owners transplants from the Southeast US. Or blues. Would they then have been migrants from the Mississippi Delta, St. Louis, or even Kansas City?

Seated now across from McKenzie Squared, his musing prompted her. Grinning, she asked why he smiled.

Spending a moment to consider, Pfarrer joked, “The possibility of hearing gutbucket music in the most unexpected places.”

If only the perplexed Canadian had known what “gutbucket” meant.

Una camarera swooped by their table. Pfarrer saw she girded her ears for basto, duro Spanish from the mouths of these two Yanquis. Exactly what the poor woman would’ve heard hadn’t he intercepted McKenzie Squared.

After greeting the waitress, Pfarrer suggested they order simply. Lomo y huevos. Papas fritas. Refrescos rather than coffee or water. McKenzie Squared agreed. He spoke to the waitress. As she transcribed his order, la senora smiled involuntarily at his accent.

When she departed, McKenzie Squared remarked, “Well, she seemed in a good mood.”

Pfarrer demurred. “Probably because we asked for bright colored soft drinks instead of water or coffee.”

Fortunately, his dining partner did not have a moment to comprehend what he said. Her celular rang. She stuffed a hand into her purse, clawing the item into the open. She inspected the number on the screen, smiled goofily. Engaging the device then placing it against an ear, McKenzie Squared lost Pfarrer heartily exclaiming, “Bonjour Tresor!”

For the next several-to-10 minutes, his traveling partner elided French. By the tone of her voice, no, by the warmth throughout her voice, Pfarrer knew McKenzie Squared’s conversant dear. The conclusion sounded sweet. So tender she regrettably ended the conversation.

Putting her handheld back into her bag, McKenzie Squared announced she’d just spoken to her son. Reg. Then like any mother, consciously or otherwise, revealed facets of her child.

That was after the waitress brought their sodas. McKenzie Squared resumed seamlessly.

A man in his mid-20s, impulse alone made Reg break off from his workaday to check up on his “mum.” Her shy involuntary grin charmed Pfarrer.

So much so she retrieved the phone and proudly scrolled though an album containing every iteration of Reg from his big-headed infancy into the sturdy good-looking young man who stood an inch or two above his parents.

Pfarrer hoped he admired appreciably.

Reg toiled in Toronto. His occupation filled some nexus between Canada’s financial sector and government. Of late he’d found a girl. Another one. A woman McKenzie Squared foresaw as his “the one.”

Pfarrer asked what validated this judgment. Or was hers just strong maternal instinct?

McKenzie Squared replied, “He’s actually teaching her French. Reg never went to that length with any of his other babes we presumed serious prospects.”

“Well,” Pfarrer said, “send your best dress to the cleaners and shine dad’s shoes.”

“It’d be a prairie soiree,” McKenzie Squared said. “Don’t sweat the shoes too much.”

Pfarrer asked what her husband thought of Reg’s “prospect.” His dining partner made a curt admission. She was a divorcee. That would’ve sufficed for Pfarrer. There for him the topic could’ve moved onto another lane or a whole different road. He supposed proximity and time together gave her confidence enough to relax with him. Why not? When he’d once had to file articles by daily deadlines, putting interviewees at ease had become his second nature. Although Pfarrer hadn’t needed to sweat any deadlines in years, maybe he still emitted the trait. He let McKenzie Squared unfold her saga.

She got married late. Late for a farmgirl.

Had she been an urbanite, encroaching upon 30 and still single, it would’ve remained unremarkable. Living and working in Vancouver, McKenzie Squared was not an exception. Who among her female colleagues and acquaintances didn’t share that state? Who among them wasn’t delaying stampedes down the aisle in order to establish careers? Themselves. This was their time. And while, yes, it would’ve been possible to wed, create a family, as well as develop professionally, the first two would’ve stymied much of the third. Or to succeed in the last, she might’ve needed to have stinted on the first two.

After all, she wasn’t a man.

As her 20s deepened, those visits back to her pool-table flat Saskatchewan homestead incrementally became less unbridled. The McKenzie-McKenzies, parents and siblings, never pressured her. Really none of them must. Just re-immersion in their no signal lights necessary crossroads town applied it tacitly.

Classmates with whom she attended school were seemingly in perpetual states of motherhood during each of her visits. Toddling infants. Newborns. Or imminent births. One of those states, or God help them, simultaneously experiencing the first and third, regularly greeted her. The sole saving grace? None asked when she’d jump the broom and crush the glass.

But inside whose minds didn’t this thought circulate?

The acute problem then was finding a man who’d be her partner, not just husband. Or a “master.” As a single professional woman, McKenzie Squared dated a lot of fun guys in Vancouver. Each of whom she could see ebbing liveliness and buckling under husbandly expectations of becoming provider and protector – even of she’d already amply proven she could provide for and protect herself.

None of them exhibited the further qualities of men around whom the girl Lisa McKenzie-McKenzie had grown. Tough to quantify precisely, but easy enough to distill.

“They are solid men,” McKenzie Squared said. “I don’t know how to explain but you see it and you know it. Sure. The obvious. They project that physical thing. Don’t have to be big. Don’t have to be monsters. Fact is my own dad is wiry. Kind, too. But he has it. Or gives it off. From somewhere inside. The core? I guess it’s confidence. The thing other men, other people recognize that makes them react favorably.”

McKenzie Squared surprised Pfarrer by using him and James Hueffer as examples. Before she could clarify, la camarera set their plates before them.

Pfarrer scanned his meal. Of course, the meat had been charred to perfection. And he knew the fries while crisp on the outside held dissolve-on tongue fillings. What intrigued him were the eggs. Like McKenzie Squared, he’d ordered scrambled. Thing was they were buzzing yellow. Almost electric. A commonality in foreign countries.

In the States, even when sunnyside up, the yolks appeared washed out. He wanted to ask McKenzie Squared what she knew about chicken feed. But then reconsidered. Rustic as she was, might she have been offended if he simply presumed her expert in chicken feed?

Pfarrer took a roundabout tack. He wondered aloud what local farmers must feed their fowl to have hens lay eggs with such dazzling yolks.

She’d already dug in. Barely stopping chomping long enough to speak, McKenzie Squared said, “Corn. All kinds of mixtures on the markets. But corn is the best.”

Pfarrer smiled to himself then joined her noshing. They reduced their plates’ portions to grease and gristle in no time.

Finished, plates cleared away by the waitress, both leaned back in their seats. Each had been keeping eyes on the driver. He ate, drank his coffee leisurely. When he stirred, they would move.

McKenzie Squared picked up the thread eating had snapped.

“Both you and Jim, tall husky guys. You take up a lot of space by just being. That’ll intimidate a lot more people than either of you will ever realize. Maybe unconsciously you do. Seeing how you casually deal with people in Buenos Aires like at our workspace or on the walk to the Italian place, or even in Las Asturias with the maté guy, you literally did not shove your weight around. You are considerate of others’ space and proximity.

“And you don’t bellow! And you look people in their eyes! Too few of us know how important that is.”

Pfarrer surmised. “So, we’re solicitous? Reflexively solicitous?”

McKenzie Squared commended his nutshell evaluation.

“Brevity,” Pfarrer replied. “The soul of something or another.”

“I admire your drollery,” she said.

Her former husband possessed the qualities she described. Outwardly. At first. Not that she had a checklist. But men she met in Vancouver and elsewhere on assignments while comfortably sophisticated, though at times even cosmopolitan, nonetheless they lacked “substance.” No, those fellows lacked “command.” Therefore, in her estimation were unlikely to command.

Both trained sights on the driver. He remained comfortably immobilized in his seat. She continued.

Her ex-husband had been a hometown boy. A year her senior. They’d dated for a while in high school. Something serious might’ve developed but during that year between them he went off to college. The gap and absence let each chase new pursuits.

A small town such as theirs made it difficult not to know what occupied the other. Besides, during holidays each answered the summons of “home” by obeying the call. In these times, the strongly attracted pair circled and swirled in one another’s company. But then at the end, it was off again to their respective lives.

In their earliest 20s, she’d latched onto a satisfying anchor in Vancouver; he a year or two in a Winnipeg IT department. During one of those later Saskatchewan holiday home obligations, both broached romance from opposite directions.

Meeting in the middle meant they’d each be in Saskatchewan. Thus, an LDR. A long-distance relationship. At first, it was Canadian awkward. He’d go west but they’d couple in Victoria. She’d venture east, but so desirous of escaping Winnipeg, they’d meet in Toronto.

After a time when both finally believed it’d “work” between them, McKenzie Squared set the parameters, established the terms. She was rising inside Film Board Canada. Then explained to him the importance of a woman being on a course that might lead to helming. If there would’ve been an early dealbreaker, that ought have been it.

She knew what kind of man he was. Or thought she knew. She was asking him to cede himself for the notion of them. If he’d rejected her terms, McKenzie Squared would’ve understood completely. He’d be yielding plenty. A good deal of himself. He must follow her lead. A prospect that made insecure men shy.

Years later in Vancouver, before their lives together fluttered apart, she wondered if his had been a leap of faith or a sincere eyes-forward decision. Years after that, she had her answer.

Once more, both Pfarrer and McKenzie Squared eyeballed the driver. He luxuriated in another cup of coffee. She related her hope he’d announce to the room “this is a damned fine cup of coffee!” And maybe an intriguing brunette encased in a powder blue cardigan, plaid skirt, and saddle shoes might sit across from him to either confess to or confuse him.

Pfarrer answered, “I doubt that show got broadcast down here. Too twisty for American audiences. Can’t imagine it going over any easier with Spanish subtitles.”

“Wonder if it was dubbed?” she asked.

Pfarrer shook his head. McKenzie Squared resumed her marital dissolution.

A family by then with a young adolescent Reg, her future ex-husband finally declared big-city living confounded him. He’d made his Winnipeg years “manageable.” He thought all Vancouver might’ve required was more effort on his part. Instead, the Pacific Coast metropolis broke him.

McKenzie Squared did not regard his honesty as weakness. She wasn’t angry. Just disappointed. In him. Herself.

In the end, she retained custody of Reg. After the end, and with only slight surprise on her part, her then ex-husband went back to ground in their hometown. Though some would judge him, her too, there he’d be welcomed back into the fold. The best salve for his kind of wound.

Naturally upon his arrival single local women considered him a catch. Okay. Prey. McKenzie Squared didn’t have to envision hard whether that hunting party teased its hair high enough to scrape clouds, the expanses of exposed cleavage, their air-brushed applied jeans. She knew those women. She might’ve been one of them once.

Her ex developed a job that let him work remotely. So instead of being in contact with Canadian dirt growing lentils or wheat, fiber optics kept him connected worldwide. A nice comfy, clean, lucrative gig. McKenzie Squared saw the backbiting and skullduggery involved among the contenders to land him. Elbows up – talons out, indeed!

Barely 10 months passed before his just tenuously into womanhood second wife produced their first issue. A girl. As would be the next two. Girls. That revelation let McKenzie Square grin smugly. No. Snidely. She confided in Pfarrer.

“Men up there, they adore their daughters. But they want sons more than anything else. His young stuff wasn’t filling her part of the bargain. Perhaps there was, ah, tension for a while.”

Pfarrer laughed. “I bet you hoped there was.”

“I bet you know you’re right,” she burbled.

The bus driver stirred, stood. His voice cut through cumbia. The trip south would resume in 10 minutes. That announcement jostled the room. For the several traveling patrons who’d eaten but had yet to settle bills, the waitress became a harried, though smiling, dervish. She reached the Pfarrer-McKenzie Squared table. He handed her a banknote that more than covered the tab. He told her to keep the change, a larger amount than the accustomed rounding off for una propina. The waitress’ smile became “extra genuine.” Pfarrer asked where they could refill their water bottles. She demanded their containers. She would fill them herself.

McKenzie Squared spoke. “I see that and am reminded of a Yank saying.”

Pfarrer asked her to tell him. She did.

“Money can make water run uphill.”

While the waitress replenished their water bottles, the pair freshened themselves in their respective restrooms. Upon return, la camarera stood ready at their former table, containers in hands. Pfarrer made sure to thank her graciously, particularly after McKenzie Squared’s meal break estimation of him.

Outside, beyond the warmth of the restaurant the environment firmed them as well as quickened their steps. Both gave little nods to the bus driver who stood at the vehicle door before hopping onto the idling coach. The farther they walked into the bus, the more comfortable it became. Their seat row was the temperate zone itself.

The driver spent several more minutes waiting for possible stragglers. A kind of polite futility on his part.

Pfarrer surveyed rows and rows of empty seats. Having finally read the timetable he knew at least two further stops in the trip’s five remaining hours of travel were scheduled. Somehow, he didn’t expect dozens to pile on at either. He pulled Hueffer’s collected notes from his seat’s sleeve. Instead of resuming his place beside McKenzie Squared, he intended taking the aisle seat across the row.

She saw his plan. Lightly indignant, she remonstrated.

“Hey. Did I all of a sudden get cooties?”

A bit befuddled, Pfarrer said, “Plenty of seats. Don’t you want more room? To spread out?”

“Matthew, we’ve eaten several meals together. Can’t get more crowded than that.”

Understanding her inference, Pfarrer recrossed the aisle and retook his seat beside her. They side-eyed one another and sneaked small grins.

The driver shut the door, sat behind the wheel then put the vehicle in gear. The coach lurched around several short streets before gliding onto the highway.

Pfarrer was about to start reading the second half of Hueffer’s notes when McKenzie Squared interrupted him. She asked if he’d been close to his father. Her question had him double-clutching for a moment. Finally, he answered.

“We were father and son. We were never going to be ‘pals.’ He was old school. Make of that what you will. He had my respect. I think I may’ve earned his. Which if you’re a father and son is a pretty good place to be. How about Reg? Your ex-old man a martinet or buddy to him?”

“I don’t want to admit this,” McKenzie Squared said, “but I let Reg and his father go for all the right reasons. And they worked out.”

As Reg aged from adolescence into his teens, his nascent development into this period disturbed McKenzie Squared. Nothing she could absolutely categorize. It was gut feeling. Intuition. Her son was beginning to either misstep on right roads or trod along on altogether wrong paths.

He was soft his mother said. Around too many women, her friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Or men, again friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, whose lack of proximity coupled with their infrequent appearances offered shallow at best male templates.

McKenzie Squared decided Reg at 13 needed to be under her ex’ guidance.

Since the marriage’s dissolution, father and son hadn’t been strangers. During a great many school breaks, McKenzie Squared had sent the boy off to Saskatchewan. There with his father, her in-laws, and naturally other McKenzie-McKenzies, Reg could lead the sort of inventive life which had fired her own imagination. Out there, unlike urban, busy, distracting Vancouver, the country canvas was blank. How to fill it? Particularly in summer with its long uninterrupted golden passages of quietude.

The ex-husband reacted to his son’s relocation as if it answered prayers. His second wife’s input immaterial. Reg transferred at the end of his sixth school year.

Initially, McKenzie Squared missed him. Of course she did! Phone calls and awkward letters between him and “mum” notwithstanding. But when that first holiday came to pass, and she visited “home,” Reg’s transformation, swift as it was, more extensive as his teens passed, justified the switch.

Reg stood straighter. Had a greater sense of himself. Of assurance. Of whom he should become. He was in that process. While his maturation would’ve occurred under McKenzie Squared’s aegis in Vancouver, results produced there wouldn’t have been as strong as those with his father in Saskatchewan.

She loved listening to this burgeoning man describe those months apart. Especially in autumns when Reg and his father went fowl hunting. He spoke and McKenzie Squared easily visualized. After all, along with her three brothers, their father allowed his daughter to accompany them stalking on these most formative of masculine expeditions. Among their family’s acquaintances her father was quite the outlier in this. A fifth-generation farmer, he continued the family line by growing lentils. It’d take the generation after McKenzie Squared’s before girls and women bearing long barrels became familiar – and accepted – presences over those fields and in copses.

“And if his father and I made any kind of bargain, maybe tacit, mainly unspoken but firmly grasped, Reg wouldn’t be like the majority of the local boys,” McKenzie Squared said. “Too many of them figure the farm will be their lives so why dedicate much trouble to schooling? ‘Don’t need art appreciation or literature to plough and plant crops.’”

She looked away. The sigh trialing her turned head was despondence itself.

That pact they reached for Reg was made easier since the ex-husband drove from behind his desk. From there he harvested 21st century technological commodities.

Of course, some of the tried-and-true upbringing of the boy’s parents remained irrevocable and unchanged. These continued through their son. Yes, Reg played hockey. From pee-wee through college. Still skated on a Toronto club team as an adult. His father also taught him boxing basics. Not so much for hockey, but life. McKenzie Squared explained.

“Never know when a fight will break out at a wedding reception in Saskatchewan. You want to be one of the ones giving out fat lips and black eyes. Not catching them.”

Unlike earlier in the trip when passengers slumbered, Pfarrer could then – and did – whooped a loud sustained laugh. McKenzie Squared even chuckled after her “funny.”

Once the pair’s merriment subsided, McKenzie Squared broached his own marital status. No way Pfarrer’s recount would be as thorough as hers.

He’d been hitched a long time ago. And that for too short a while. The train wreck didn’t dissuade him from a second try. But finding the right woman after having been scorched; having burned himself … Then years became decades through which his search waned.

“Our marriage was bad from the jump,” Pfarrer confessed. “We succumbed to tradition. To convention. To expectation. Before all that we should’ve been a solid couple first. Fortunately, there were no children. Even better, we maintained separate bank accounts.”

Whatever McKenzie Squared’s response might’ve been, it tripped at her lips and dropped away. Subsequent moments might’ve become maudlin, or, worse, awkward. Instead, Pfarrer calmly suggested she might perhaps wish reading what he already had of Hueffer’s notes.

“I’m getting ready to tackle the second half of them,” he said. “The conclusion. I don’t know. Maybe by the end you and the Film Board might see them as source material for a documentary of some sort.”

Pfarrer gave her the sheaf he’d read. Seeing his annotations along page margins, she acknowledged he wrote with a neat hand. As McKenzie Squared started reading of events in Germany April 1945, he returned himself to May of the same year in the South Atlantic.

What man topside didn’t have his spirit enliven upon seeing the verdant bulge of Brazil pushing into the Atlantic? The green unbroken southwest diagonal led nearer to safety, closer to the end of the war.

Captains cautiously had helmsmen parallel the Brazilian coast. Despite the conflict’s conclusion, Germans still needed to remain wary. Who knew how vengeful the Allies would be? And Brazil was aligned with them. Not until Uruguayan waters could any captain chance any true proximity to the landmass off his starboard.

However, the wireless could be tuned to samba stations all along the coast. Very few to no Germans at all understood Portuguese, so spoken content rumbling from the speakers was lost on crews and passengers. Yet the percussion and sung lamentations Germans heard as soulful entertainment nevertheless shed tensions borne across the seas.

At nights, lights blazed the coastal cities. Particularly the farther south ships sailed. After years of seeing great cities blacked out, coastal Brazil’s undimmed night lights alerted crewmen and passengers that perhaps they were the ones who’d emerged from a strange world.

The long stretch of lights shining in their faces from Rio de Janeiro saddled many of the Kameraden with ambivalence. Early during the Battle of the Atlantic, i.e., “The Happy Time,” such thoughtlessly provided backlighting which silhouetted Allied freighters along the American Eastern Seaboard. Then, many submarine captains were aware the merchantmen were unarmed. Instead of expending torpedoes, ships would surface and the defenseless freighters then sunk through deck cannons fire.

Sinking ships. That was their job during wartime. For too short a period, all thought, they excelled at this. Their proficiency made them proud.

Sometimes this alone wouldn’t satisfy crueler commanders. Some had their ships drawn close enough to the enflamed sinking vessel and strafed floating survivors with machine guns. Decades later, no submariner could be found who approved of these measures. Yet disciplined as they were, what German sailor would’ve contradicted his captain? In the end all the living could offer the slaughtered were prayers as well as for themselves.

Somewhere when the waters became those of Uruguay, Portuguese faded from airwaves and Spanish dominated. Commercial radio broadcasts were strong out of Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Both cities could not be seen from the Atlantic. Each sat too deeply inside the cavity of the Rio Plata.

With evenings’ arrivals once somewhere south of the seaside town of Mar del Plata, ships’ radio operators started churning out call signals for Argentine contacts. The responses often were prompt. After all, the Germans had been expected.

Both communicants having satisfactorily verified the other, only then were rendezvous coordinates sent. Meaning cutters bearing pilots would meet the ships at dawn. These locals could guide the submarines into what would be peculiar harbors. Ones inside innocent estuaries whose broad but shallow channels had solely been dredged for the drafts of those unique vessels.

Out of easy sight from the shore, the submarines glided to jetties where ropes thrown to waiting men moored them. Germans aboveboard always surveyed the terrain suspiciously. Even had they’d been entrapped, what could they have done? Habit was all. It would remain so for the longest in Argentina.

Delegations, such as they were, greeted the mariners. Argentines, they spoke fluent German nearly without accent. Usually, three or four rumpled men who didn’t carry themselves with the utmost officiousness. Heel-clicking types would arrive in a day or two.

This never failed: the delegations always asked for permission to board the ship. Somehow such courtesy always pleased captains as well as whoever else stood topside alongside them. Once aboard, delegates shook skippers’ hands then commended theirs and the crews’ seamanship. Their service to Germany regularly came through as reluctant mentions of the afterthought variety.

The delegates never inquired of cargo or passengers. Every seaman assumed they had the crew, cargo, and passenger manifests down by heart already. Instead of business, the strangers were offered then provided rough accommodations. Tents with camp beds. Outhouses and showers, though at this point only cold water flowed through taps.

A mess tent had been set up but, alas, it merely served simple fare.

Captains could be nothing else but satisfied. What other recourses existed? Grasping microphones that had been plugged into conning tower sockets, they announced shore leave. Response was instantaneous. No, response was rats pouring out of holes. Hatches up and down the boat popped open and sailors launched themselves out of them. Many didn’t bother with the gangplank. Instead, they vaulted from the decks onto the jetties. Even the sternest captains grinned at their men’s reflexive joy. The Kameraden didn’t know where they were. Or care. But they did know their feet stood upon solid land. Solid peaceful land. They roamed the tree dappled grassy ground in meandering fashion. They congratulated each other on the miracle of survival.

More than a few stopped, became silent, and stood still. They hadn’t been hexed. Instead, they’d been captivated by long-ago sounds thought lost. Yet immediately recognized. Chirping birds. In the noisiest though most welcome cacophony.

As always, the last to reach topside into sunlight were the passengers. So indoctrinated these men they suspected fresh air and nature.

They beelined to the delegations. After the brusquest of “pleasantries,” they interrogated their present hosts. Answers to their satisfaction nonetheless, none of the middle-level types relaxed appreciably. They demanded wheels in motion – immediately! Only grudgingly did they realize wartime, war responses, an ocean behind them.

Now ashore, they behaved bewildered.

Simple meals as the delegates proclaimed mess tents’ fare, to the sailors these were repasts. Made even more comforting after laundering clothes nearly worn into threads, barbering, lengthy showers – cold water be damned! – and opportunities to shave off sea-voyage beards. Both acts along with eating leisurely regained them some of their dormant humanity.

Best of all, their hosts never failed providing cigarettes. American cigarettes! Those who smoked might’ve worshipped Virginia tobacco blends if each hadn’t been so enthralled while inhaling them.

Quiet nights sounded strange. No Allied bombs busting earth. The thrum of the boats’ engines barely audible outside and away from the ship. Gratefully exhaustion overtook nerves producing the first untroubled night of slumber since …?

A day or two later, the henchmen got their wishes. Bigger, self-important, soulless, heartless functionaries appeared. They arrived in sedans. A truck always accompanied them. Climbing from the truck beds, squads of rough characters bearing machine guns.

The men of importance were groomed to within whistles. They attired themselves in well-tailored business suits. Their shoes had been shined into mirrors.

Continuous exertion the force keeping each man’s posture ramrod straight.

Obviously, they’d spent the war as spies badly masquerading as low-level diplomats at the German Embassy. From every man’s appearance no one could’ve mistaken his “active duty” service as having been arduous.

The only explosions these house mice might’ve heard were popping Champagne corks.

Kameraden noted the disdain by which their “superiors” regarded them. Riding out depth charge attacks could’ve cured such conceits. No one surviving concussive events like those retained unbent self-esteem, much less the magisterial sort displayed by any grandees who’d descended from Buenos Aires.

Hard to stay haughty after having thoroughly soiled oneself.

Chiefs of the new arrivals barely withheld contempt of the captains. Especially when the officers refused returning the party greeting. Instead, professional military men preferred and snapped crisp salutes.

Formalities brushed aside, the new men sought and found their equals. Members of the respective committees flung the harshest party hails which cruel men could summon. Afterwards, both sides continually measured the other to assure themselves of the reflection of their own hardness.

Their chat was brisk on the way to curt. Ascertaining all was in order, that the treasures brought from Germany could be safely transported to more secure locations, one of the passengers lowered himself to again confer with a captain. Masters then summoned petty officers to have men fall in and form details which would unload the ships’ cargos. Once offloaded these would be stacked inside the trucks.

For small crates most of the wares hefted were unusually weighty. These boxes the gunmen eyed sharply.

The precious goods removed and stacked, the gunmen and at least one functionary who’d arrived by car boarded the trucks and sped off. The headman of these assemblages then gestured to whoever served as subalterns. They knew what to do. These men walked to the car. At the vehicles, each withdrew a bulging shiny, soft-sided, black leather attaché case. Returning to the captains and their bosses, each man handed bags to chiefs who then conferred them upon skippers.

Short, snapped words passed from former to latter. None were ever laudable. That done, the henchmen always signaled their farewells through gunfire sharp party hails. As before, captains resorted to appropriately military salutes. More than a few were delivered elegantly. Did that ever fail to bring sneers from the recipients?

The detestable part of the task behind them, all the authorities hurried to sedans. Without a single look back, the whole gang sped off. Once pestilence had vanished, did local delegations reappear by captains’ sides.

One of the dignitaries then explained exalted personages and cargoes would fly from nearby airfields to Buenos Aires. There, whatever “treasures” the sailors had transported would be secreted in bowels only known to an extreme few. Presumably this wealth should go towards refinancing, reviving, and restoring a stronger Reich. A worldwide network.

That last fillip never failed earning incredulous looks – from listeners or speakers.

Captains always needed being told to open the bags in their hands. Jammed inside were envelopes. In them packets of Argentine dollars. Small fistfuls for every sailor. Enough, one hoped, for strangers to start gaining new footing in Argentina.

Officers were unfailingly grateful on behalf of themselves and those crews whom they commanded. Too many couldn’t remember the last kindness which had befallen them.

After dinner beneath early evening light, delegations gathered sailors together. The dignitaries informed these men of what their next steps might consist. Of course these weren’t orders, just suggestions.

For senior officers, plenty of opportunities awaited men like them. Argentine merchantmen hungered for experienced executive maritime personnel. And if not Argentina, then freighters shipping out of Uruguay or Chile. They’d need to converse with the speaker or an associate in order to arrange transportation and necessary introductions.

For the lower rates, it wouldn’t be as easy or smooth. Freighters didn’t require more mates to sign on. Therefore, the Germans were urged to find positions inland. Factories and farms, and yes, even rancheros, continually sought men mechanically handy. Or even as men who could start out as laborers of some sort then perhaps rise into specialty fields.

Finding work for the masses would be nowhere as easy as slotting executive officers on ships. Possibilities were raised that summiting might be harder for the seamen because of language gaps. But each and every man was assured he would not be abandoned. Steps had been taken. Arrangements made.

Inevitably encouragement wound up on words similar to these: “You made it through a hellish war. Finding plain work, keeping plain work, won’t be that hard.”

Before leaving this remote place, one final goodbye. Dynamos which had propelled these vessels across seas were powered down. Hatches were closed and latched. A detail hoisted the ships’ ensign, which was given a salute before being lowered for final honors.

Flagbearers transferred banners to captains. Sometimes a master presented it to his most junior officer.

As during wartime, officers still rated. Cars arrived at makeshift camps. In these stuffed captains and commissioned subordinates bearing recommendations. Each group would be whisked to local terminals. There, they’d board trains to Buenos Aires.

The separations of command and crews ought have been poignant. But the nature of these musters had undercut that. Theirs were thrown-together crews on unfamiliar boats. Cohesion normally formed among men who’d served together over time, over cruises. That didn’t exist. Conditions created through exigent circumstances made it impossible. Good captains proclaimed pride in knowing each and everyone of their crewmen. In those fleeing from Germany cases, that bond couldn’t form. After a month or so aboard, masters still remained vague about who served under them.

The sole sentiment passed between departing officers and seamen heading down different roads was, “Viel Glück!” “Good luck!” Remaining unsaid but wished for, “And might it last our lifetimes.”

Officers gone and the dignitaries itching to get back to their lives, the Kameraden idled however they could before policing the grounds, then stuffing what could be stuffed into their rucksacks. Gnarled Kriegsmarine caps carelessly pushed back on heads, two obvious questions for delegation members.

“Where to?” And “how?”

No ready transportation for sailors. Their feet would need to carry each man over dirt roads until the nearest towns with bus or rail connections. Yet they were assured to be directed properly once reaching the means for extended travel. Having nothing else to guide the sailors, the dignitaries’ words were accepted on blind faith.

If any of the vagabonds were lucky, open-sided trucks or horse carts passed and loaded what hitchhiking men they could bear. Fortunately, throughout the soft ordeal of landing and gaining some kind of bearings in Argentina, the South Atlantic autumn lingered mild.

Some of these passages naturally yielded to speculation. Much of that unpleasant. It concerned what retribution the Allies would exact from Germany. World War I had been contested beyond the country’s borders. Psychic ruin aside, the nation had been spared substantial structural damage. Now Germany laid in devastation. It had been completely shattered.

Every sailor knew the Allies would squeeze blood from stones. Especially the Russians.

Rather than lengthy brooding silence lingering at the end, a fortunate group would have that one Klugschwätzer among them. The wise guy would lob a left-field question.

“I wonder what they’ll do with the boats?”

After a number of them voiced rude ideas for their former sardine cans, a sailor somehow focused on today and tomorrow might reply, “They’re early Christmas presents for the Argentine Navy.”

The men’s subsequent chuckles lessened fears for Germany’s future. Their own, too. On that tack, another man might’ve even added, “And I left them a big present on the galley deck. Let’s see if they find that pony!”

Often such little attempts at levity sufficed to brighten the dark.

In towns, the men recognized immediately how they stood out from the locals. The Germans were uniformly skinny. On the other hand, the Argentines were robust. Their sun-basted complexions and black lanks set them far apart from the strangers. The sailors’ pallor made it appeared they’d worked to avoid sunlight. That and hair on each German’s scalp had been shorn short. Moreover, though plain, the Argentines wore sturdy clothes and footwear. Upon every wanderer hung some versions of faded threadbare garments. They trod in worn out boots.

Plenty of sailors spoke suitable Spanish to inquire about directions to the various towns imputed them. Most of the residents inquired knew enough for possible station-to-station journeying. But exactly? No. Sorry. People in the upcoming destination would need to provide further guidance.

It usually took a ride or two by bus or train trunk lines then by bus before entering Argentina’s interior. The Pampas. Beneath blue skies, towns there sprung up amid grass waves and cattle. Although they worked, gauchos put on horsemanship displays that reminded the Germans of American cowboy films. There wasn’t a man watching these scenes outside their conveyance who wasn’t catapulted back to a simpler, easier, prewar day; a listless lifetime ago when the catastrophe which had engulfed them and created the smashed present seemed impossible.

Even on movie screens.

The towns in which sailors ultimately deboarded were middle-sized. Bustling, yes, though never big. Not big enough for anyone to become anonymous. Tabernas usually stood easy steps away from the depots. Nothing like getting one’s bearings over a few cold beers.

‘Probably the first steady go-to since the development of brewing,’ Pfarrer mused.

Sailors never realized the outside warmth until entering a taverna. Cooled inside the shade, gently eyed by patrons, Gardel likely crooning off the radio, these bars became full-length vertical pillows. Only the proffered cervezas made them more dream-like.

The newcomers thought about asking questions. But preferred quaffing cold beer. Eiskaltes Bier!

A round or several was all it took. Somewhere between bending elbows and sipping or bending elbows and placing glasses or bottles atop bars, strangers who “knew” them would appear. Argentines as they must’ve been, to Kameraden they weren’t obviously Argentines.

The South Americans seen thus far were darker complected. Such as the delegations who met the submarines. Or the gunsels accompanying Germans from Buenos Aires. Or townspeople encountered along the way into the interior. Swarthy like Italians or Spaniards. Their hair black, dense, and plumb.

These genial people before them now could’ve stepped directly from Saarland, the Tyrol, East Prussia, or Helgoland. Men and women. Their features, eyes, noses, lips, hair shades and textures, so commonly observed yet unnoticed in Germany, appeared misplaced there on the other side of the world.

Moreover, they were hale. Hearty. The women honey-brown. The men tawny. Flesh tones which cast the visitors in paler light.

No ears pricked for Allied bombers before air raid sirens wailed. No faces made rigid by nightly exploding 500-pound bombs. Or incendiaries. No twitchy legs anticipating jackrabbit lopes to dugouts or bomb shelters. Sparks, Argentine eyes looked into sailors’, not through them for avenues of possible escape.

Furthermore, to a man and a woman, the Argentines struck leisurely poses. They stood at loosely. They exhibited comfort with themselves and their surroundings. Few sailors could immediately recall their last instance of such blithe relaxation.

Argentines also grinned effortlessly.

However, what really startled came from the locals’ mouths. Among themselves they nattered Spanish. When spotlighting the sailors, these Argentines switched into flawless German. German so smoothly spoken, more than one sailor must’ve remarked, “Jesu! Das Bier hier ist gut!”

Quickly, the Argentines ingratiated themselves with the strangers. Through beer, of course. A few innocuous toasts first.

Both increased bonhomie between the men. Perhaps even wakened the lightest stirrings of flirtatiousness between die Männer and las senoras.

These exchanges entered into conversations then questions. Which gathered answers whose compilations became further queries. Mostly along lines of “What did you do before joining the navy?” “Were your shipboard tasks similar?” “Mightn’t have you learned additional skills at sea?”

Drinking with pleasant people always loosened tongues. At the end of these “introductory meetings,” it should’ve been difficult to have found a sailor who wasn’t feeling better overall. Not only because of the copious brews enjoyed, but because interlocutors mentioned this business or that avocation, or this farmer or that one, or this rancher or that one, or this factory and that needing a man who could _____.

A few, several, more beers, more questions further ascertained qualifications. By that hour the sun had set. The Argentines always found accommodations for the newcomers, usually in a Herberge/posada operated by fellow German speakers. Full pension, too. Imagine that! How marvelous!

There, sailors could stretch out on real mattresses. To wake and gorge at the board. After getting a bellyful, instead of presenting selves to a potential employer, they might spend the day investigating town. Or let heads clear from the prior day. Then a day later whoever with whom they’d chatted in la taberna would collect and escort them into futures.

Throughout this initial process, no sailor ever recalled being asked about the war itself. Whether from Argentines’ disinterest in a faraway conflict or belief one never invited the Devil inside by asking about Him, World War II remained distant until it became oblique.

The remainder of what Pfarrer read concerned accommodating oneself. Apparently, the sailors had been shunted to mainly German enclaves within Argentina. Into settlements established during that nation’s 19th century immigrant wave in which Germans predominated.

For single men, the transition was easy and speedy. For married men, the path split.

Remain faithful to perhaps a wife who’d been a ghost for the longest? In the hope that maybe after life resumed semblances of order (none of the Kameraden ever said the word “normal”) she the wife, also their children had there ever been any, might somehow emerge from the destruction and rubble alive. That they all might be rejoined.

Or did a man completely discard the old? Slide off the ring. Leave it behind. Start anew.

In both instances, the uncertainty was torturous. Also in each instance, every man found his own particular way, his own particular answer, if necessary, his own particular deviation.

Over 50 years later, old on brittle paths to ancient destination pensioners stepped carefully out of the past once the “Hueffer’s U-boot” in Puerta Asturias became public. Maybe not on that particular vessel had the survivors served when young, invulnerable, and made to believe themselves invincible. But couldn’t it be a screen upon which to project memories? Did it matter? What man didn’t want returning to that day? At least for a few minutes.

Seeing that boat would fulfill such yearning.

Pfarrer looked up. Other than the motorcoach’s headlights illuminating asphalt ahead and the light shaft from his personal seat lamp, the passing night world was new moon black.

Pfarrer restored Hueffer’s notes sequence by sliding the second segment’s last page to the back. So intent had his reading been, he never noticed that McKenzie Squared had finished her portion. Of course. The pages he shared with her were fewer than those occupying him. He considered exchanging sections but decided “later.” Instead, he took her part and merged the two then returned the whole into its envelope.

He further darkened surroundings by switching off his light.

McKenzie Squared said, “From what I’ve read, this isn’t the war we were taught in school.”

Matter-of-factly he replied. “We got the victor’s version. As we should’ve. Our side won. Victors write history. Read The Iliad. Losers can only lament. Like in The Trojan Women.”

In the short void ahead of them, a few dim lights became several more. Kindled low as wattage was, eyes started tracing gray outlines of structures. The vehicle slowed upon a slope. Going forward, mankind’s presence gained significance over the dark.

“This must be the place,” Pfarrer said.

“Here is Selknam,” McKenzie Squared confirmed.

(Continuará)

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