“Y’welcome,” Harris replied, looking away. Their gratitude was so effusive that it made him uncomfortable. He felt he hadn’t done anything yet to deserve it. The act of arriving, by itself, didn’t strike him as particularly praiseworthy. It would be a while before he understood that any step toward liberation, however small and insignificant it might seem, proved to these people that they had not given up and would never do so. But their desperate urgency to do something, anything, to get their country back again communicated itself to him from that first night. It made him all the more determined to make the mission a success.
With a final wave Langtot slipped out the barn door, returning to his house.
“I must go also,” Alain said. “The patrol passes soon. I am coming back next night, yes?”
“Tomorrow night?” Harris asked, glancing around at his new accommodations.
“Yes, tomorrow. Exactement. I bring Curel and, to translate, the wife of my brother. D’accord?”
“Fine.”
“Langtot returns in the morning. Sleep now.” Alain opened the door and then shrank back as the patrol car passed along the lane running between his house and Langtot’s. The Germans, defeated by their own punctuality, drove on through the night in ignorance.
Alain glanced over his shoulder and said, “I go. Salut.”
Harris watched as the boy darted through the opening and sprinted across the field to his house. Then, closing the wooden door and bolting it with the crossbar, he climbed the ladder to the loft and settled in for the night.
Forrest was right, he thought. Boys and old men. But tough, you could tell that right away. They could be shot by the Germans for what they were doing yet they didn’t hesitate for a minute to put their lives on the line. And that kid didn’t look a day over eighteen. What had he been doing at that age? Worrying about beating Lake Forest in the Homecoming Weekend game and trying to get Mary Beth Dawkins into the back seat of his father’s precious Packard. It didn’t seem fair. This war was robbing Duclos, and millions like him, of their youth. He nestled deeper into the fragrant straw, his eyes closing.
Inside the Duclos house, Laura seized Alain as he came through the door.
“Is he here?” she demanded rapidly. “Did you get him to Pierre’s barn?”
Alain glanced around routinely to check on the whereabouts of his father.
“He’s in town at the district meeting,” Laura said. “Remember?”
Alain nodded. In his excitement he had forgotten. A fortuitous circumstance had conspired to keep his father occupied with his German friends on the night their enemy was to arrive.
“Well?” Laura persisted.
“He is here, he is well. He’s probably sleeping in Pierre’s hayloft right now.”
Laura let out a sigh of relief. “What’s his name?” she asked.
Alain told her, wiping his face and neck with a dishcloth. He bent and took a drink from the bottle of water in the wooden icebox on the floor.
“Arries?” Laura repeated, momentarily confused by his accent. Then, “Oh, Harris,” half smiling at the wonderful familiarity of it. Harris. That was right up there with Smith and Jones. It spoke of Thanksgiving and Little League and Fourth of July picnics. Harris. She liked the name.
“Why are you standing there like a statue?” Alain demanded, noting her bemused expression. “Help me get some fresh clothes for him. He’s a giant, but I think some of Thierry’s old shirts might fit.”
The two went off together as Harris drifted into slumber several hundred yards away in Langtot’s barn.
Chapter 4
Harris spent the next day sleeping intermittently and wondering what lay ahead. He’d been able to bring so little with him that there was nothing to do. During the long, lazy summer afternoon the sun beating on the roof turned the barn into an oven. He communed with the animals swishing their tails at flies in the stalls behind him, and thought dryly that he had left the Carolina heat for this: more heat, and the company of cows. Chickens scrabbled outside in the dirt, and he could hear Langtot’s wife calling to them softly as she scattered their feed. He didn’t know if she was aware of his presence, but she didn’t come inside the barn, and after a while her voice ceased and only the bird and insect sounds remained.
He stretched out on his back, chewing on a piece of straw, and inhaled deeply, breathing in the intermingled scents of hay and manure and animal flesh that surrounded him. Considering his circumstances, he was curiously content. He had always felt this way before a challenging event; while others choked up, worried and tense before a physics exam or a track meet or a jump, he relaxed in anticipation of the test, conserving his strength. This was the calm before the storm, and he relished it, aware that it might be a long time before he enjoyed such leisure again.
Langtot had been in early that morning to milk his cows, and he returned at dusk, bringing provisions and the message that the rest of the conspirators would be joining them at full dark. Harris ate the food, passing up the old man’s vinegary homemade wine. And as the gray light faded from the sky, the visitors crept in one by one, staggering their arrival time so as not to attract attention.
Curel came first, a swarthy, sharp-eyed man of about sixty, who saluted Harris smartly when they met and addressed him as “capitaine.” Harris decided immediately that Curel had richly deserved his war medals and shook hands with him respectfully. Next came two boys from the factory, a little older than Alain, brothers named Thibeau, who shuffled their feet and glanced at Harris uncertainly when introduced. One of them had the plans of the glassworks in his pocket; his father had helped to build it thirty years earlier and had saved the blueprints. He produced the packet of yellowing onionskin paper hesitantly, as if unsure of his reception. Harris almost embraced him, but settled for thumping him on the shoulder, beaming his approval. The boy, whose first name was Patric, flushed but smiled back radiantly. His younger brother Michel grinned too and produced his treasure: a duplicate of the key to the factory office. Harris stared at it in amazement. These people weren’t wasting any time. He wanted to convey his congratulations, but as none of them spoke English he did his best in French, gesturing with upraised clasped hands to indicate his approval. They got the message, looking at each other and nodding. All was well, the American appreciated what they had done. This was going to work out just fine.
The barn door opened a final time, and Alain slipped inside, followed shortly by Laura. Harris turned to look and his eyes met hers across the distance which separated them.
Laura stopped in surprise when she saw him walking toward her.
This was ‘Arries’? She’d been told he was a captain, and from his rank she had expected someone in his mid to late forties, graying maybe, with a grave, distinguished air. This man was young, thirty perhaps, and moved with the quick, secure grace of an athlete not too long removed from his playing days.
Harris halted a few feet away and they regarded each other for a long moment in silence. The marine was tall, as Alain had said, with cropped hair the color of the ripe chestnuts sold on the Common at home during the Christmas holidays. His eyes were slate blue, almost gray, with brows and lashes a couple of shades darker than his hair. They watched her out of a lean face shadowed by the new growth of a heavy brown beard.
Alain took Laura’s hand and led her forward, saying, “This is Laura, who will translate.”
Laura extended her hand and Harris took it. Her fingers were slender and warm.
“How do you do, Captain,” Laura said. “Welcome to France.”
Harris nodded slightly. It was wonderful to hear comprehensible, unaccented English. Then the incongruity of her greeting struck him and he smiled. Laura immediately noticed his straight, too perfect teeth. She must remember to tell him to keep his mouth shut. Most Europeans his age already had bad teeth.
“Ma’am,” he said, and released her hand. The kid’s sister-in-law was a slender woman of medium height with beautiful auburn hair and a pale,
almost translucent skin. She was wearing a deep green dress with a rounded white collar ending in a large flat tie at the front. Matching white piping decorated the edges of the short sleeves.
Harris continued to stare at her. He didn’t know it then, but he would remember that dress, and the way she looked in it, for the rest of his life.
Curel coughed and Harris glanced at him, taking the sound as a signal to get going with the night’s work. He began to say something in halting French and Laura stepped in smoothly.
“It’s all right, Captain. You can begin in English. I will translate for both sides.”
“Thanks,” Harris said quickly. “It would be exhausting to have to rephrase everything all the time, and I’m afraid some of this stuff is going to be pretty technical.” He unfolded the blueprints Patric Thibeau had given him and spread them out on the earthen floor of the barn. The men crouched down to look, and Laura sat at Harris’ side, tucking her skirt under her legs.
For more than two hours they pored over the diagrams. The Frenchmen pointed out the entrances and exits, the guard stations, the location of the furnaces and the office to Harris, whose mind began to churn and process the information. Among them, they had to devise a plan of entry and then determine where to place the explosives. Then they had to get out again and detonate the charge from a safe distance, all without being seen. It was quite a formidable task, and they had only begun it when Curel glanced at his watch and then caught Laura’s eye.
“We should start leaving one by one,” Laura said to Harris. “The patrol will pass in half an hour and we all have to be gone by then.”
“Okay,” Harris said, straightening and reaching for his cigarettes.
Laura saw him take out the pack and said, “You should be careful smoking in here, Captain.”
Harris hesitated, looking at her.
“It’s all right, go ahead,” she said, as Curel turned to go. “But be careful, the hay is highly combustible.”
“I guess it would be, I don’t know too much about farms,” Harris said, putting the cigarette between his lips. “I’m a city boy myself, from a town right outside Chicago. Ever been there?”
Laura shook her head as Curel lifted his hand in farewell and made his departure. The Thibeau boys hovered near the door after him, waiting for their chance to leave. “Before I came here I rarely left Massachusetts,” she said.
“Where in Massachusetts?”
“Brookline, near Boston.”
Harris nodded, lighting up. “I know it. Went there to pick up a date once, in college. Had a buddy at U Mass.”
Alain watched the exchange between the two Americans with growing annoyance. He didn’t like the way they had been looking at one another during the meeting—or rather not looking, obviously trying not to show a betraying amount of interest. As they made small talk he examined Harris in a new light, considering the picture he must present to Thierry’s young widow. The marine was tall, clean limbed and strong, with that air of unshakable self-reliance that Alain knew from his own experience women found attractive. He was probably a coureur at home, a wolf. And an American, who would represent to Laura everything she missed. Alain was just about to break in when Langtot did it for him, talking to Laura.
“He says that there was no report on the wireless about a plane last night, or a jumper,” Laura translated. “He has a friend with a secret hookup in the guard tower at Vitry and nothing was mentioned. Do you think that means the Germans didn’t spot you?”
“I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on it,” Harris said quietly, staring down at his cigarette.
“Comment?” Langtot said, looking at Laura.
“They wouldn’t advertise it if they knew I was here,” Harris explained. “I doubt you’d hear about it on the radio.” He eyed the farmer with a measuring gaze. “Can your friend get London on his wireless?” he asked.
Laura repeated this to the old man, who nodded and added something in French.
“He can pick it up,” Laura said, “but he has to be very careful. It comes in every night at eight but it’s a capital offense if you’re caught listening to it.”
Harris thought that over, making no comment.
The Thibeau boys left, and Harris said to Laura, resuming their interrupted conversation, “I understand that you’re a teacher here. What do you teach?”
“Well, I started out teaching English,” Laura said dryly, “but with our severely depleted staff these days I’m doing just about everything.” She surveyed him as he took another drag on his cigarette and added, “You’re young to be a captain.”
“You’re young to be a widow,” he replied quietly.
She could see that he wasn’t big on meaningless chitchat. “Young widows are plentiful in France these days, Captain.”
“You hold a grudge, then,” he observed in the same soft, yet carrying, tone. His eyes were fixed on her face.
“Everyone in this country holds that grudge, Captain. And everyone in the world should,” Laura answered.
Their voices were barely audible, the atmosphere between them rife with tension. Alain and Langtot watched the Americans in silence, like an intimate audience at a two-character play.
Harris broke the spell by holding up a placating hand. “Hey, I’m not arguing, I agree with you.” He dropped his cigarette and crushed the butt out thoroughly with his shoe. “Besides, people with grudges work real hard and I’m going to need all the help I can get.”
“I can assure you that you’ll receive whatever assistance you require, Captain,” Laura said crisply.
He winced. “Please stop calling me ‘Captain.’ It makes me feel like I should be saluting you. My name is Dan.”
Laura relaxed a little and smiled. “All right, Dan.”
“That’s better.”
“We should be going,” Alain said to Laura curtly, stepping forward.
“When will you be back?” Harris asked.
“Same time, tomorrow night,” Laura replied.
He nodded. “Okay.”
He was looking after her as she left with Alain. Langtot was the last to go, and the old man took the oil lamp with him, hanging it outside the door as he shut it behind him.
Harris was left in darkness, alone with his plans and his thoughts.
The next morning he was up early, studying the blueprints Patric Thibeau had given him. It was already hot in the barn, and sweat trickled down his arms and between his shoulder blades as he made notes in the margins with a pencil. His back was itchy, and he scratched it absently until he realized that the irritant was random sticks of straw, plastered to his skin with perspiration. Sighing, he bent closer to the drawings, then started when Langtot’s horse, still loose from its exercise, put its wet velvet nose against the nape of his neck.
“Well, boy,” he said, craning his head around to look at it, “what do you think? The side entrance, or the rear one?”
The horse, who apparently spoke only French, stared back at him blankly.
“Ah, what do you know?” Harris muttered, throwing down his pencil and putting his chin in his hand.
The Duclos woman kept drifting across his mind, breaking his concentration. He’d never particularly cared for redheads; the typical combination of carrot top and freckles always reminded him of saucer eyed Orphan Annie in the comic strip. But Laura Duclos’ hair was the color of a well used copper penny, and her skin a flawless, alabaster white. Her green gaze had held his with a guileless candor when she spoke to him, and he felt he’d scored a goal when her serious expression had at last relaxed into that final, hard won smile.
He shook his head and closed his eyes. Stop thinking about her, man, he instructed himself. Her husband has been dead less than a year and you have a job to do. Get on with it.
He picked up his pencil again and went back to work.
* * *
In the hospital at Bar-le-Duc, Becker looked up from his work as Hesse entered his office with a stack of papers for him to sign.<
br />
The colonel rose, as if he’d been waiting for the younger man, and said, “Just leave those on the blotter, I’ll attend to them later. I’m going to have a look around and then take these back to the library.” He indicated two of the books he’d borrowed, picking them up from the shelf under the window. “If DeGaulle arrives with a battalion of the Free French to take over the area you’ll find me at the school across the way,” he added, in the slightly satirical tone that could still confuse his aide after almost a year in his service. It was sometimes impossible to tell whether Becker was serious or not.
“Yes, sir,” Hesse responded, usually a safe reply. He wondered briefly, as Becker walked past him, why the colonel hadn’t given him the books to return, as such errands were usually part of his duties. Then he realized that Becker wanted to see that librarian again.
Becker was obviously drawn to the woman and Hesse couldn’t understand why. She was a plain little thing, hardly the sort that attracted a man’s instant attention. But then Becker was an odd one himself, always thinking, reading, staring out of windows at nothing. When not engaged in the business of running his post he preferred to be left alone, and that suited his aide just fine.
Hesse straightened the stack of correspondence on the large pine table desk and filled the inkwell, lining up the fountain pens in the holder next to it. Despite Becker’s peculiarities Hesse liked the commandant; he treated his inferiors well and, unlike some others of his rank, didn’t expect his aide to be a mind reader. But the corporal often found himself wondering what went on behind his commander’s opaque brown eyes. Becker shared very little of himself with anyone, which made his interest in the Frenchwoman even more difficult to fathom. Hesse couldn’t believe that Becker, who seemed so self sufficient, was lonely, especially married to the patrician beauty whose photograph Hesse had seen. But then, it was a long time between conjugal visits during a war. And maybe Becker just wanted to discuss literature with the book lady after all. He had little enough outlet for his lively intellect in the Meuse; Hesse knew that he was well educated and must miss the cultural pursuits of his usual circle.
Clash by Night (A World War II Romantic Drama) Page 6
