Read Online The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler - Free Book Online

vision. Krüger was already stiffly upright in his chair.
    Behind him hung a large, framed, color lithograph of the Kaiser, beribboned, bemedaled, and with a massive eagle sitting on his helmet.
    â€œHave you spent time in Chicago?” I asked.
    â€œSpent?” I could see his brain sorting through his American idioms. “Ah. Yes. I am in Chicago for one year when I am a boy.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œIt was not the Fatherland,” he said. I got the feeling he had just clenched that right fist under the desk.
    â€œNot yours,” I said.
    â€œNot the Fatherland for my uncle and my aunt.”
    â€œI understand,” I said, filling a brief pause.
    â€œNot for my three cousins,” he said, not wanting to let any of his family escape his disapproval.
    â€œThey were your drei Vetter, ” I said.
    I was aware that sometimes my reflex, low-grade sarcasm undercut my full effectiveness as a newspaperman. I should have wanted to smooth this guy’s Germanic feathers, not ruffle them. This remark could go either way. But almost at once he smiled. “Just so,” he said. “Just so.”
    Captain Krüger was without irony.
    We looked at each other a moment. I was still improvising here, as I often did when I was seeking a thing in someone’s head and I wasn’t quite sure even what category of thing it might be.
    â€œHow may I help you, Herr Cobb?” he asked.
    â€œYour country is a good friend to Mexico. For my readers—­Germans in America and all my other American readers as well—I would very much like to get the German point of view about my country’s invasion of Mexico.”
    It is important to stress at this point that I am an American, through and through. I am a patriot. If I think Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan are a couple of ninnyhammers, they are our democratically elected and legally appointed ninnyhammers, respectively, and my right to think and say these things about them is part and parcel of my being a patriotic American. But I am also a reporter. I would not normally have been speaking loosely about the ninnyhammerness of my country’s leaders to a foreigner, especially a German, but there was a journalistic goal here that could eventually better inform my fellow patriots, which is also part of being an American, having the right to be well and openly and vigorously informed.
    So I leaned hard on the word “invasion” in spite of Woody’s sudden disavowal of further hostile intentions, which, actually, was a worse sin in the opinion of a lot of patriotic Americans, which was, indeed, the reason he had every American military man—not to mention all us news boys—fidgeting and fretting and fuming in Vera Cruz. Wilson’s public pose was that this was a simple operation to stop the German ship from unloading its munitions. But I figured every German official in Mexico thought otherwise. Krüger eyed me carefully for a moment. Finally he said, “You should be speaking to the embassy in Mexico City.”
    â€œNo American can go farther than El Tejar without being arrested,” I said.
    â€œOr shot.” Krüger surprised me with this addendum, delivered quickly and with a little too much intensity, accurate though it was. A very faint smile brisked across his lips and vanished. He may have had no irony, but he thought he had a sense of humor.
    â€œYou understand the problem,” I said.
    â€œI am not authorized to speak,” he said.
    â€œForgive me, Kapitän, for not knowing your chain of command. Is there no one here to consult?”
    I knew, in fact, that there was a civilian consular officer at the end of that chain.
    Krüger looked me in the eyes for another long moment. I returned the gaze steadily. If I flinched, if I looked away, I suspected he would say no. He might have anyway. Our gaze went on for another beat and another.
    Then he rose from his