350
PARTISAN
RE",!!W
the knack of belly-wiggling. Now that's fatal ignorance in a German.
Why, you've got a fine belly for wiggling, Maggie. Do me
<II
favor.
Do yourself a favor. Wiggle, slink, cower, and disappear."
She calmly considered me. "You are very rude."
Later I saw Smitty watching her. She was moving her clothes
into the factory where she had set up quarters.
"Smitty, you don't want to fool around with that fat babe.
She's not your type at all. Get yourself a skinny, hungry woman."
"That one got to be taught a few things," he drawled. "She
got to learn manners."
"Character
is
formed
in
the first seven years of life, Smitty.
Afterwards it's hopeless."
Smitty gave me the first cold look he'd ever turned my way.
And it was chilling being at the end of a stare that had been directed
at murdered men. "Doc, you been givin' me a awful lot of sermons.
Why, Doc? What you find so special about me? Is there somethin'
about me doesn't strike your fancy?"
"Smitty, you're one of my favorite people. I just want to show
you the ropes."
"You been doin' nothin' but followin' me around complaining.
How come you always stick up for the krauts? What's it to you how
I am with krauts? How come you make it your business?"
"I'm just interested in learning from you, Smitty. Trying to
figure you out, buddy."
He was appeased, but a little suspicious. He told me that he
liked me, that I had always come through. "But why don't you
speak plain, Doc? You tryin' to confuse me?"
I attributed my obscurity to my college training. He slapped
me on the back. "You're a good guy, Doc. You're my boy."
It was a little embarrassing being on such good terms with a
murderer. But better on good terms than bad. Well, I'd warned the
girl.
If
she persisted in tempting Smitty, I'd have to write her off.
That wouldn't disturb my stomach greatly. It would be another
load of guilt I'd have to dump when I reached my dumping grounds.
The nature of women is to be single-minded. A man with so
narrow a view would be diagnosed as a case of tunnel vision. In
the landscape of corpses, of Germans driven in herds to barbed wired
enc3JIDpments, a landscape dominated by rough aliens, Margaret
could only see the world as a setting for her factory. She worried
