Chapter 171: Who Can Withstand Such A Test?
In July’s Los Angeles, the sun scorched the gray-brown wooden bungalow.
A middle-aged man in his forties sat on a faded porch rocking chair, one of them rubbing his left knee with calloused fingers, where a shrapnel wound remained that ached faintly on rainy days.
His gaze swept over the withered yellow lawn in front of the door, his wife wiping the sweat from her forehead with a patched bedsheet from the clothesline.
In the neighboring yard, another middle-aged man about his age was repairing the leaking eaves.
His twenty-year-old eldest son had just been drafted into the army last month, yesterday’s newspaper spread out beside the toolbox, with photos from the Spanish Civil War on the front page.
When he bent down to pick up the hammer, the copper bell hanging on the doorframe suddenly rang; it was his daughter returning from the night shift at the cannery. The girl’s uniform was stained with tomato juice, and she clutched a crumpled pay envelope in her hand.
The man in the rocking chair suddenly coughed violently; this was the lung disease he had contracted in the trenches during World War I, which had never truly healed after all these years. Hearing his violent coughing, his wife, who was hanging clothes, hurried into the house and soon came out with a bottle of medicine and a glass of water, placing them beside him. “Hodel, take your medicine first.”
“I’m not taking it.” The man named Hodel looked disgustedly at the medicine in his wife’s hand. “I’ve been taking this stuff for years, it has no effect at all, and now the smell of it makes me want to vomit.”
Seeing her husband’s stubborn expression, his wife looked helpless. Just as she was about to persuade him again, a voice sounded beside them: “But at least it can save your old life, right?”
“Shit… who said I’m relying on it to stay alive.” The middle-aged man angrily turned his head, only to see a tall, silver-haired man with a smile on his face. At that moment, his expression instantly changed from anger to surprise, and finally to delight.
“Oh… God,”
Hodel couldn’t care about anything else, stood up and strode toward the visitor, hugged him tightly, then carefully looked him over for a while, shaking his head in shock repeatedly: “Fuer Lancaster, you’re still alive?”
“Nonsense, I’d outlive all of you even if you all dropped dead.” Fuer grumbled irritably.
Hodel turned to the man repairing the house next door and shouted loudly: “Hey… Frant, you bastard, what are you still fixing the house for, get down here quick… look who’s here.”
“I’m not blind, I’ve already seen…” The man named Frant replied, already starting to climb down the ladder.
Though he grumbled with his mouth, his actions were not slow at all; he soon ran over from next door and hugged Fuer tightly.
“Damn it, you bastard, it’s been over ten years since you last contacted us, how did you suddenly show up?”
Fuer shrugged: “Because I missed you guys, and recently a certain guy got in touch with me, so that’s how I found you.”
“Who?”
“Here… it’s him.” Fuer pulled a photo from his pocket and handed it to the two.
“God… it’s John the bastard.”
The two exclaimed in unison; in the photo, John was lazily sitting on the turret of an unusually large tank, smiling at them.
“Damn, when did this guy join the Nazis, and he’s even wearing a major’s rank?”
“And what model is that tank under him? I’ve never seen it before.”
The two chatted back and forth.
“Alright… what’s wrong with you two?
Fuer just arrived, and you don’t even invite him in to sit, standing at the door asking this and that, what exactly are you trying to do?” Hodel’s wife was the first to react, scolding the two.
“Oh… right right right… come on… let’s go have a few drinks together. Valerie, hurry and buy some food; tonight us old buddies will drink together.”
That evening, the three comrades sat together drinking heartily; they reminisced about their old comrades from back then, cursed the Germans together, and cursed the current state of the world.
“Damn world, we’re all starving to death, what the hell is this damn government doing?” Hodel angrily cursed the government while coughing.
Watching Hodel cough from time to time, Fuer and Frant looked at him worriedly.
“Hodel, why hasn’t this illness of yours gotten better?” Fuer asked with a frown.
“Old ailment, don’t worry about it. I think it’ll follow me all the way to hell.” Hodel said nonchalantly.
“This illness can be cured.” His wife hesitated before saying: “The hospital doctor said there’s a new drug invented now, something called penicillin. If we use that medicine to treat it, there’s a good chance it could cure Hodel’s cough. But this drug is too expensive; we can’t afford it.”
Fuer asked: “Too expensive… how expensive?”
“How expensive? One shot costs five hundred dollars!” Mentioning this made Hodel furious.
“My son and daughter both work at the auto factory, their monthly salary is only about fifty dollars, but one shot of this drug costs nearly a year’s salary for them. Those bloodsucking devils, they’ll go to hell sooner or later.”
Everyone fell silent. Since the Great Depression, countless people had lost their jobs and become hoboes wandering everywhere; even those who barely kept their jobs had seen their quality of life plummet.
The capitalists weren’t so kind; they’d rather pour milk into the river than give a drop to the poor.
It was already hard enough for Hodel’s son and daughter to have jobs.
Fuer glanced at his two old comrades and suddenly said: “Hodel, Frant, do you two want to find some work?”
“Work?” The two looked at each other in surprise.
Hodel asked puzzled: “Can you introduce us to work? What kind?”
Fuer smiled faintly: “What else? Our old profession, of course.”
“You mean have us go to war?” Both men’s brows furrowed; they had participated in campaigns like the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which was like a meat grinder, so they naturally understood the brutality of war.
“Nonsense.” Fuer said bluntly, otherwise why would the boss pay you two hundred bucks a month.
“Two hundred bucks a month?” The two were shocked; such a salary was absolutely top-tier at this time.
“But my illness?” Hodel was still hesitant.
“Perfect timing.” Fuer smiled slightly: “John said in the telegram that his boss has a large stock of penicillin. If you go, you can get it for free.
And John also said that as long as you go, everyone can get two hundred dollars in settling-in allowance.”
“Shit…”
The two cursed in unison; this damn capitalist, are you tempting us with this?
Who could withstand such a temptation?
