A member of the medical team at his local draft board had told him, “If this war lasts, more manpower will be needed and physical standards will be lowered. Your chance may still come. Meanwhile go back to your teaching and coaching job knowing you’re needed there. With so many male teachers being drafted, there will be a dearth of masculine presence in the classroom.”

Chris thought that all very high-sounding and noble, even if true, but the medic’s counsel did little to assuage the insult at his rejection. The rub now was that he had no idea how long his teaching job might last. That question would be answered in tomorrow’s meeting with his principal.

“I’ve heard nothing at all from Dirk since war was declared,” Ernst answered Chris’s question, “and I doubt he’s received our letters. He wrote in his last letter that he had been assigned to Paris with that German intelligence agency he was so keen to join. We may not have another word from him until the war is over. His mother and I are terribly sad and worried.” The man’s strained smile betrayed regret that things had come to this miserable pass.

Chris felt a jab of pity for him. Dirk’s zeal for Nazi ideology had cost the Drechslers their standing in town, nearly all their friends, and his father’s law firm many clients. The “celebration” this evening was on the occasion of Ernst’s forced, early retirement. The large group that in 1936 had gathered around the radio in the Drechslers’ living room to applaud Germany’s stunning reentry into the world community by way of the Olympic games in Berlin now had appalling reason to regret their enthusiasm. Based on the disturbing radio broadcasts and the few letters coming out of Germany to New Braunfels involving Jewish relatives and friends, only a handful of the original celebrants were still enamored with Adolf Hitler. They were the ones in attendance tonight.

The lawyer glanced over his shoulder at the paltry gathering. “I should never have agreed to this travesty of a party,” he announced mournfully. Silently, Chris concurred. Tonight, only one long table was required to accommodate the number of guests. Then, like now, Chris had seen the clothed rectangle as a small island isolated in a sea of darkness, the guests self-exiles huddled together for comfort and safety. He sighed. He might eventually become an exile himself, or rather a castaway for being German, but not willingly, and never for being a Nazi. His loyalty was to America. He could never be a part of the group at the table, no matter that he might live out the war on his own isolated island of the forsaken.

“It does seem unfair that the sins of the son should be visited upon the father,” Chris said.