"I know, I know. I hear this from you before," Gerd followed him and put his bottle in the recycle bin. "What we have for dinner?"
Dave, relieved that Gerd moved onto another subject, smiled. "We're about out of the usual." He scratched his chin, then pointed at Gerd. "We will feast like men! Wait here!"
Dave left Gerd standing in the kitchen, waiting and looking slightly confused. Scooby, either picking up on the conversation, or just happy to be in the kitchen, started pawing at his bowl.
Dave returned with a shotgun in one hand, and a scoped rifle in the other. He tossed the shotgun to Gerd. Gerd fumbled and almost dropped it. He held the shotgun gingerly, as if Dave had handed him the fire of the gods. Scooby, seeing the weapons and knowing meat was coming, grabbed his bowl in his mouth and sat at the sliding glass door, pawing at it.
"We will stalk our prey like cats, strike like eagles and feast like pigs!" Dave shouted, thumping the rifle to his chest. He laughed at the look on Gerd's face. Dave handed him a box of shells. "Guess you'd better have a lesson first." Dave walked out the sliding glass door and into the woods behind the house.
Gerd followed, carefully holding the weapon as if expecting it to start firing off dozens of rounds at the slightest touch. "No more vegetables for dinner, thank God."
* * *
"So you ended up shooting your dinner?" Mathias asked, tugging on a branch as Gerd sawed away.
"Yes. I think Dave was looking for deer or something. A boar charged, and I dropped it with one blast from the shotgun," Gerd replied, with the last word in English. The limb broke free and fell to the ground. "A very impressive weapon; it stopped the boar cold. We had it cleaned and cooking within an hour."
"Nice! Mr. and Mrs. Sizemore haven't needed to go hunting yet. They had plenty of food stored away. I sure hope they eventually let me try, especially with one of his firearms," Mathias replied as Gerd helped him drag the branch over to the pile of detritus. "I think, however, that Mr. Sizemore would rather I save ammunition and use the bow he has. The damned thing looks like some torture device. Pulleys and wires everywhere, rails for holding the arrow, and other parts I can't recognize. It is extremely quiet and easy to use, though. An intriguing weapon." Mathias was staying with an older couple that took him in as a son.
"You'd love the shotgun. Smooth and very powerful. Not that I needed to, but I had it reloaded and ready to fire before the boar hit the ground. It's a wonder any of us survived the battle," Gerd said, remembering the leg wound he received that frightful day. "I wonder how bad the Americans chewed up the men marching on Jena."
"The way I hear it, not too bad, actually." One of Mathias' hosts, Mrs. Sizemore, was also an excellent source of rumor, gossip and news. Gerd found that Mathias wasn't shy in sharing any of it with his coworkers. "There is some girl who is supposed to be an incredible shot with a rifle. She apparently took out most of the officer types before anyone knew what was going on. They folded before really going nose-to-nose with the Americans."
"Lucky for them." Gerd started sawing on another limb. "When are the prisoners coming here?"
"They're already here, but not as prisoners," Mathias replied.
"How do you always know these things?" Gerd asked, a little exasperated.
"I suffer through hours of conversation with Mrs. Sizemore to get a few details. Mr. Sizemore says he let me stay with them just to 'run interference on the wife' as he put it."
Gerd laughed, understanding the meaning if not the translated idiom.
* * *
Hermann sipped his beer slowly, keeping his eyes on the crowd. Pieter and Jan were also eyeing the crowd. Most of the men from Jena were packed into Thuringen Gardens for their first night off after being inducted into the American Army.
"What an unusual place," Pieter said softly.
"What an unusual week," Hermann added. A few days prior, he had barely escaped death. Most of the other men on horseback, especially those with plumage on their heads, were swatted down by an unseen and unheard weapon. Hermann had immediately sensed the trend, dove off his horse and hid among the men. In short order, they had all surrendered under the best of terms. At the time, he actually looked forward to fighting with the obviously wealthy and powerful Americans. His first impression was fast changing. "Naïve bastards."
"Sir?" Pieter asked, cocking his head to the side.
"The Americans, naïve," Hermann repeated. "They could take any city, crush any army, and here they are, letting us sit on our asses and drink beer while they worry about refugee camps."