Time of the Singing of Birds

by Grace Livingston Hill

  He stuffed the cans inside his shirt and groped on. There was a crude chair. He almost fell over it, and there was a garment of some kind lying across it. It felt like a coat. It had pockets. He deposited the next can he found in one of the pockets. Then it came to him that he was rifling somebody’s house. But he had to do it to save his own life, if he would get away. His mission was important. He must not stop for anything. And if he lived he could someday come back and pay the man for what he had taken, provided he could find the man and the place. Oh God, are You here?

  The late moon was peeping over the rim of the world and suddenly looking into the high dusty window, revealing a clutter of other articles.

  Now, if he could only find some water, or a can opener, or something that he might drink. He felt as if he could not stand up another second, and to lie down there, with perhaps the owner, or worse still the enemy, not far away, was certainly sure death.

  He groped again and his hand came into touch with a pail half filled with water. He lifted a handful to his face, put his lips to it. Even the thought of it was refreshing.

  Then suddenly, feeling back along the shelf above the water pail, he found a tin box with three matches in it. Dared he light one? No, better not venture. He stepped over to the door. He must go. Far in the distance he heard a sound. He must get out and into shadow.

  Outside the moon had slipped behind a cloud. It was heavily dark, and he had three matches, but he dared not use them. He crept on hurriedly, his heart palpitating until it almost choked him. It occurred to him that he was probably following those who had earlier found escape down this same path he was taking. Would he find them later, in case he was able to go on?

  After a little he crept within a group of stunted bushes, back from the path he had been going, and tried one of the eggs, breaking the end open against a stone he found by the wayside. He smelled it. It wasn’t bad. Not too bad. He was not in a condition to be squeamish, anyway. And he sucked the eggs as if they were the very breath of life, as indeed they were to him. Then he dropped his head down on his arms and closed his eyes for a few minutes. He mustn’t go to sleep. No, he must get away from here as soon as possible while it was still dark.

  He opened his eyes and attempted to go on. He was lame and sore in every joint and sinew, but he felt new vigor from the eggs he had sucked, and now before he started out again he ventured to knock a hole in one of the cans he was carrying. What if it should be tomatoes or some kind of fruit juice?

  A sharp stone was not hard to find, another blunt one for a hammer, and soon he had a hole in the top of that can. He applied his nose and got the smell of tomato juice. He tipped up the can and drank, long deep quaffs of the life-giving liquid. It seemed to go through his starved veins and to put new vigor into his faint heart. And after he had drunk the juice, he started on again.

  Still a great empty country, no town or even distant visions of a town. What had those cabins been where he had found the cans? Were they hastily built to harbor refugees as the enemy came into the land and then abandoned as the internment camp was placed so near them? It was as if he was looking back and trying to read the story of what had happened along that way.

  But even with the refreshment he had found in the cabin, his limbs were still very shaky, and it did not seem to him he could go on any farther.

  But the stars were coming out again and reminded him that he must keep on while they would guide him where he wanted to go. So he compelled himself step by step, making scarcely any progress, yet persisting.

  At last he dropped down. Just a minute. He must sleep a minute.

  And so he slept, on and on, and the night grew old, and the dawn crept on stealthily.

  The baying of a distant hound burst suddenly upon the air, and though it was very far away, it startled the weary man into quick frenzy.

  He sat up sharply. He looked around him and up. The stars were gone. Clouds had obscured them. But the hound kept on, and he came to himself and his caution.

  There was no time to stop to consider. He must get on.

  So he struggled to his feet and straggled on.

  Of the three cans he still had with him, two of them were canned milk, and the third was another can of tomatoes. In the morning he drank a can of milk and lay down in a shadowed place in the woods to sleep once more. When he woke again his hands and head were burning, and he was shivering as with a fever.

  “H’m! Trying to get sick!” he murmured to himself. “Can’t afford to do that. Got to get on while the getting is good. When is this blamed desert going to be done?”

  But he blundered up and stumbled on, more because his body was accustomed to the motion perhaps than because he quite knew what he was doing. Only with that one steady idea behind it all that he had a job to do, to get his information back to the right sources in spite of anything, live or die, before it was too late. The same spirit with which he would have fought if he had been out on the battlefield, obeying combat orders from his officer.

  There came a time when he finally fell, stumbling over some root or stone of which his tired senses had not warned him, and when he fell he lay still. Perhaps he had struck his head. He was never quite sure afterward, and when he came to semiconsciousness and wondered where he was, and how much longer this thing was going on, all he could really think about was the terrible burning heat of his head and body. His hands were like red hot furnaces as he lifted them to touch his face. He still gave a passing thought to his job, but he had to do something about this awful heat of his body before he could go on. So he lay and slept again at odd intervals.

  And the next he knew he opened his eyes in a little wooden shack, on a bed of pine boughs, and a gruff man with a beard was bending over him and giving him water to drink. He couldn’t quite make out what this meant, for he didn’t recognize the man as one of his own outfit, so he hadn’t reached his destination yet.

  “Oh, God, are You there?” he cried out at intervals. “If You’re still there, it’s all right with me.”

  But the man who was attending him said nothing. Perhaps he spoke a foreign tongue. The fever and the dim light made it impossible to tell of what nationality the man came. He seemed only present as a vague shadow, perhaps one of those angels God sent sometimes. Certainly there could be no relation between him and the girl whose face had haunted him earlier in his journey. But sometimes this attendant brought him water to drink, and at times there was broth. Strange broth. He wasn’t sure what it tasted of, but its warmth in his stomach and its filling quality brought a little relief from the gnawing pain that had gripped his vitals.

  Once in the night he looked around him to try to identify something, but all was strange. Just a blank wooden wall. The semblance of a small window, a door beyond. There was a fitful fire burning on an infinitesimal hearth, and there was smoke in the room. He was cold, and he was hot, yet once the old man bathed his face with an ill-smelling rag and that seemed to help, until he got to shivering again.

  “Oh, God, are You going to take me Home now?” he cried out once, as if the old man were not there. “But couldn’t I first go by way of my own outfit and give the message I went over the line for? They need it, Lord. But You know that. And if I don’t take it, and You want them to have it, You’ve other ways of getting it to them. I’ll just stay here till You tell me what to do.”

  Weird talking for the old foreigner to hear.

  The old man went out one day for several hours, and Stormy thought he was deserted. But then he came back with some herbs and began to brew a concoction on the hearth, using a tin can for a cooking vessel. Later he administered it, a vile bitter mixture, and the sick man drank it because he could not help himself. Then he slept again, and when he woke there was more of the bitter medicine to swallow and he too weak to resist.

  He had no means of measuring time. He had long ago sold his wristwatch to a fellow prisoner in return for a garment he needed. But as time went on he felt a decided change. Some of the heat
in his body was gone, the chills had stopped. He could swallow the tasteless broth because it appeased the terrible emptiness. And then he became aware the old man was speaking to him in a foreign tongue. He wasn’t just sure what nationality it was, but there were parts of words that conveyed a vague meaning, and as he roused to the world again and his need to go on living became more urgent, he began to try to utter words himself. He tried a number of languages of which he knew a smattering, and at last struck a few words the old man seemed to understand. Simple, basic terms, but with feeble gestures he could ask for drink and food.

  As the hours passed they talked a good deal, these two, so strangely brought together. They talked each in his own tongue and understood but little.

  But now and again when the sick man would cry out to God and look above, the old man would seem to understand that he was praying and would pause, whatever he was doing, and stand, head bowed, his hands crossed upon his breast. And afterward he would point up and jabber something of which now and then Stormy thought he could cipher out a bit of meaning. He concluded at last that it was some dialect the man spoke, but his brain was too tired to try to figure out what it was. So with a method of his own, pointing to an object and saying a word over and over, he managed to make the other man understand a few primitive ideas.

  He had lost all sense of time, but one morning he woke, knowing he must get up that day and must go on as soon as possible.

  The old man looked sad when he pointed that he must go, and shook his head, but the next morning they separated. He could not make the old man go with him. He gathered from their meager communication that he was waiting for someone to come for him and must not go away until his friend came.

  So, with a bit of hard bread in his shirt and his one remaining can of condensed milk, he started out alone, both pointing up and waving quiet hands. After he had thanked the old man with a warm grasp of his hand, he started off down a hill in a softly gray morning, before the sun had quite decided what to do about shining that day, and now Stormy was out on his own, a little rested from his hours on the resinous bed of pine boughs and much weakened by the fever that had taken its toll from his already weakened system.

  He knew when he started that he would not be able to go far, and he must stop and rest shortly, but before he turned into a woodland stretch where there would be hiding, he turned and looked back and saw the dim figure of the old man standing where he had left him in the gray of the morning. So he lifted up his hand and pointed to heaven, and the old man lifted his arm and looked up.

  Oh, God, You take care of him and keep him safely till his folks come, please. This is Stormy asking, for Christ’s sake.

  The old man must have understood that he was praying for him, for when Stormy looked back he saw the old man still standing with bowed head and hands crossed on his breast.

  Chapter 13

  How frantic Barney Vance would have been if he could have known that, even as he took the elevator up to the office where he was hoping to meet his friend the admiral in behalf of a scheme to find Stormy Applegate, that Stormy at that very moment was toiling, weary and footsore, and nigh unto despair along an unknown way. For Stormy was entering the first smart-looking village he had seen on his journeying from the detention camp, and he had just seen signs that it was enemy-occupied.

  But Barney had thought so long about this desire of his to find Stormy that it had come to seem almost a dream that might take years to accomplish. It was something he was working out to satisfy his own desire, foolish and not worth the attempt, because they felt that Stormy was out of the running. He was either dead or so hopelessly a prisoner that no one but God could save him, and Barney met so few in his questionings that even counted on God to do anything about such things that sometimes he questioned whether he might not be losing some of his own faith, too. But still he felt he must make some attempt. If he found the admiral inclined to take this discouraging attitude and say it was out of the question, he didn’t know what other earthly help he could try for. Perhaps it was all wishful thinking, this belief of his that Stormy was still alive. Perhaps he was just being foolishly sentimental, as several men and more than one girl had already told him frankly. Well, time would tell.

  Oh, God, he prayed in his heart, won’t You work this thing out for me? This is the only thing I know to do. If it fails, I won’t know what to do next. I’ll just have to let it rest with You. But, please, if that’s the way You want it, if I should make no further effort, please make me know somehow. Help me to be rid of this tormenting urge to go after him.

  Then the elevator stopped at the floor he had named, and he got out and walked down the corridor to the door where he had been told to find the admiral.

  And back in the schoolhouse where she presided over a restless throng of various-aged children, a golden-haired girl was earnestly praying in her heart as she listened to Skinny Wilson stumbling over his reading lesson. And while he read:

  “A soldier of the lee-gy-on lay adying in Al-gy-ers—”

  “That is leegion, Tommy,” corrected the gentle voice. And it is Aljeers, not Al-gy-ers. Read it again, Tommy.”

  Tommy read it again rapidly before he should forget the accent:

  “A soldier of the leegion lay adying in Aljeers—

  There was lack of woman’s kindness, there was dearth of woman’s tears—”

  But Sunny was praying in her heart: Oh, God, please don’t let him have to go. Anyway, not now before he is strong again. But if he has to go, please go with him. Guide him, bring him safely back again, and please help him to find Stormy—if he has to go.

  Tommy was reading on:

  “But a comrade stood beside him, as he took that comrade’s hand,

  Said he, ‘I never more shall reach my own, my native land.

  Take a message and a token to some distant friend of mine,

  For I was born—for I was born. . .’ ”

  He paused, but the teacher was praying frantically: Oh, Father, please bring him back to his native land. If he has to go, don’t let anything happen to him.

  But Tommy’s hand was raised.

  “Miss Roselle, how do you say the name of that place? I can’t pernounce it. The R-H-I-N-E. Is it Ro-hi-nie? Wasn’t that guy one of our enemies? It sounds to me like the name of an enemy town.”

  Sunny suddenly roused to her job and set the young student straight both on his geography and his pronunciation as well.

  And over in a distant city another sweet girl named Cornelia was reading a letter from her brother “somewhere overseas.” She paused and looked troubled over one paragraph and reread it:

  Our whole company is worried over Stormy Applegate. You remember I told you he was with us several months ago. I guess you met him once at home before we left, didn’t you? Well, he was sent off on some very special mission among the enemy somewhere, a very dangerous errand. Perhaps to get information. But he’s a long time overdue now. The guess is that he’s either a prisoner among those worse than fiends, or else he’s dead. We don’t know which, but they’ve about given up hope he’ll ever be heard from. One thing is sure, no information has come from him and everyone is sure if he’s alive he’d find some way to send us word. He’s one who’s never failed so far.

  Then another girl bent her head and prayed for Stormy Applegate: Oh, God, couldn’t You find him? she prayed. You ought to know where he is. You could set him free if he’s a prisoner, couldn’t You?

  She wasn’t a girl who was very used to praying, not for definite things like that. Not for lost soldiers whom she’d only met once, and that casually. So, instead of the formal “Amen” that another might have added, she spoke the one word “Please!”

  It was about then Stormy Applegate came in touch with a man from an “underground” outfit. Like a shadow he grew out of the darkness one night and suddenly seemed to have been there a long time before Stormy was even aware there was a man.

  Deadly weary, Stormy had been trying to fo
rge ahead, hoping against hope that he could get around this occupied town by the determined method of pushing on and trying to make it appear that he belonged in that region, hoping nobody would notice him. But suddenly he heard harsh footsteps ringing on the smooth road, loud voices, arguments, unmistakable accents of the enemy. Raucous laughter. Without a doubt, if he was seen he would be hauled to the authorities and instantly his game would be over, the long hours of his weary journey traveled for naught, his mission lost. True, the information he carried was all in his memory. He carried nothing convicting on his person. Even if he languished in prison, or died, the enemy would never know what deadly knowledge he carried against them. But neither would his own outfit know the thing that would mean so much to the cause of righteousness if it could once be told them. Ah! He could not stay here. Less than a minute now and they would be upon him.

  Quickly he turned, took a step to the left across a ditch, and dropped flat to the earth in the dark, holding his breath until the noisy enemy passed by, and lay wondering which way he might turn for safety. Having seen those arrogant men who dared to take another’s country from them and march around assuming to rule it, he knew now that it was useless for him to try to go alone through that town. He must somehow go around. And yet so confused, so weary he was, that he would have liked to lay right where he was and call it the end. He could not drag himself up and try to keep going on.

  It was then he felt the presence of that shadowy person who had been watching him for some time from a little distance.

  He looked up, and the shadowy figure seemed to draw nearer. It wasn’t God. The man wore rough garments, like a laborer. Reaching out, he touched the rough shoe and then drew back. It was after that the stranger drew close and dropped upon one knee beside him.