The Star and the Shamrock by Jean Grainger

Author:Jean Grainger [Grainger, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2019-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Bud and Erich sat at the kitchen table, and Erich was explaining how the definite article changed in German depending on whether the noun was masculine, feminine or neutral. The weekly German lessons consisted of about fifteen minutes of German, followed by lots of joking around and, finally, Bud eating with them.

At first, Elizabeth was wary. Why would someone like Bud want to be friends with two German children? But she soon realised Bud was homesick. He wasn’t cut out for the military life, and he missed having a family around.

‘But, Erich, how am I supposed to know what gender every single thing is?’ Bud complained. ‘Like, if I say the dog is brown, then it’s der Hund ist braun, but I can’t say, “Ich sehe der Hund”?’ He ran his hands through his copper-coloured hair in frustration.

‘No.’ Erich giggled. ‘It’s Ich sehe den Hund.’

‘But why, lil’ man?’ Bud leaned back and groaned. ‘This is sure one hard language you got here. I ain’t never gonna get it.’

‘I dunno,’ Erich admitted. ‘You just don’t say it that way.’

Liesl looked up from her homework. ‘It’s because in the first sentence, the dog is masculine and is the subject of the sentence, so it takes der as the definite article. But in the second sentence, the dog is the object, and it is accusative case, so der changes to den.’

Bud looked over at her and grinned. ‘How come y’all are so smart? When I was your age, I could jes’ about catch a fish or say my prayers, but y’all know so much.’

Liesl and Erich giggled. They loved to hear Bud speak with his drawling American accent. He would tell them about Biloxi, where he was from, in the state of Mississippi.

‘Tell us about the beach,’ Erich begged, bored with the grammar lesson. He also hated to be outdone by his sister – Bud was his student. The stories of the seaside fascinated Erich; he’d never seen a beach before he left Germany.

‘Oh, the beach in Biloxi is the most beautiful beach in the whole wide world.’ He told the story the same way each time. He’d get all wistful and the children would giggle. ‘You can sit and watch the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico and eat an ice cream and swim in the sea, and I tell you, it’s God’s own country. It’s so lovely that I hated to leave, but I knew there was a job to be done. And I used to watch the seagulls and think to myself, boy, imagine what it’s like to fly. I went and told my daddy I was gonna be a pilot over here in Great Britain, and you know what he says to me?’

The children knew this story by heart but loved hearing it. They parroted back, in a perfect Mississippi drawl, ‘Boy, the only way you’s gonna fly is if you stick some of them there turkey feathers where the sun don’t shine and take a long run off a short pier.

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