Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  It can’t be.

  I tried to say something, but I couldn’t because my throat was closed up tight, like someone was choking it.

  From the shadows, Eleanor hissed, “Clementine.”

  The figure walked up closer and took my chin in his hand and turned my face this way and that. I couldn’t breathe or talk, just stood there blinking back the tears. He whistled long and loud. He said, “Great Holy Moses, girl. I thought you was French. What the good God almighty did you do to yourself, Velva Jean?”

  Everything faded away right then—the fire in the distance, the stench of smoke, so thick it felt like my nose was burning, the gunfire, Eleanor, the Germans, Germany, the war.

  He said, “I’ll be goddamned.” And there was something in his voice that made him sound worlds older than the last time I’d seen him, when he was running off from Nashville to join the war. He started blinking fast, which he’d always done, his whole life, ever since I could remember, when he didn’t want to be caught crying. “What in hell are you doing here?”

  Finally, after what felt like two centuries, I could feel my throat loosening up and my mouth starting to work. I said, “Johnny Clay Hart, don’t you ever go off and leave me again.” It came out as a kind of croak. And then I punched him right in the nose.

  He swore and wiped his nose and there was blood on his hand, which made me feel good and mean and happy. And then I jumped on him and started squeezing him as tight as I could, and he picked me up and swung me around while I cried right into his neck.

  When I opened my eyes I could see another man standing behind Johnny Clay. Even in the darkness, I could see the dark gypsy eyes and the heavy mouth that could be cruel and also sexy, and the smug set of his face. It was a good face, I thought.

  His eyes moved to Johnny Clay and then to me, our arms still around each other. He said, “Clementine,” and in that word I could hear a question, but I could also hear all the worry that he’d been carrying.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  We ran toward the blackness ahead. I said, “Barzo was back there. I saw him in the crowd.” He’d shot the German chasing us. He’d saved our lives. “We have to go back for him.” As I said it, I craned my neck around to look at Johnny Clay, to make sure he was still there.

  Émile said, “He’s gone, Clementine.”

  “No, I saw him. He was there. He shot the German who was chasing us.”

  We were running but in the wrong direction. We should have been running back toward the train wreck and the rail lines. Barzo might be hiding in the woods or the field. He might be lying in a ditch, Germans surrounding him, waiting for us to come.

  I turned myself around and said, “I’m going back there.”

  Suddenly Émile was in front of me, grabbing my arms. For one minute, I thought he was going to slap my face, but instead he said, “He’s gone.” He shook me like he was afraid I was hysterical. I knew what his words meant by the tone of his voice, but I’d just seen Barzo. He was alive. I wanted to ask what happened, if it was the German guards, but then I didn’t want to know, not really.

  I looked at Eleanor and she looked back at me, her face pale and drawn. I thought, Now that makes sixteen men who have died for you.

  Émile took my hand and dragged me on and I let myself bump along behind him for a while before I started running again on my own.

  We didn’t know how many of the Gestapo were behind us or if anyone was chasing us at all, but Émile said it was only a matter of time before the Germans called reinforcements from the nearby villages, and we couldn’t be caught in the area. The Gestapo knew someone had blown the rail line. There had been two other men besides Émile and Barzo and Johnny Clay, but they’d been shot by the Germans before they could get away. The Germans had seen their faces, all of them.

  The great darkness ahead was a forest—I could see it now, long and unending across the horizon, trees and mountains rising up like something in a murder song. Émile and my brother and the other two agents, the ones on Johnny Clay’s team, had blown up the rail line on the outskirts of Kaiserslautern, and now we were headed south, away from the city, toward the forest and France, which Émile said was about two hundred kilometers away, maybe less, over the hills and mountains. He said if we were lucky we could cover the distance in two weeks. We didn’t have enough food to last us, so we would have to hunt when we could and take our water from the mountain streams and rivers. This was different than being on the run in Normandy because this time someone was chasing us and this time we were escaped prisoners and criminals, wanted by the Germans.

  My head whirled from everything—freedom, Barzo, Émile, Johnny Clay. I turned and looked at my brother, who was running behind me, strangely silent. His silence made me nervous because it wasn’t like him to be quiet unless he was in a temper. I hoped the war hadn’t changed him.

  Johnny Clay’s alive. He’s okay.

  I had to keep looking back at him to make sure he was real.

  Johnny Clay is an agent too.

  It hit me then, like a knock in the head. The thing that smarted most was that he’d felt he couldn’t tell me. He’d been sworn to secrecy by the OSS and ordered not to tell a soul, but rules like that had never bothered him, and they’d never applied to me. Our whole lives, we’d always told each other everything, and suddenly he’d gone behind my back and lived a whole other life.

  I was suddenly so tired. I thought: Maybe they should go on. Maybe it’s enough to know Johnny Clay’s okay now. My leg and arm hurt from being thrown around inside the boxcar. My knee was bleeding and also my hand. I thought: I can just stop here under one of these trees and rest for a while.

  As if he could read my thoughts, Johnny Clay ran up beside me, flashing me a challenging sort of grin. Even in the pale moonlight, his skin was like gold dust, and it was almost like we were back on Fair Mountain again, racing each other home. My feet and legs picked up speed like they always did when we raced. I wanted to stop and catch my breath and ask questions like where had Johnny Clay come from? Where had he been? How did he know Émile? Did he know him from before the drop in France? I wanted to tell Émile that Johnny Clay was my brother, the reason I’d come to France in the first place. But there wasn’t time to stop because my legs were pushing forward, the pain forgotten, trying to outdistance my brother, trying to beat him for once and let him see how it felt to be left behind.

  I heard him say, “Clementine? What’s he mean, ‘Clementine’?”

  I said, “Don’t call me Velva Jean. Do you understand me? Velva Jean doesn’t exist out here.” She doesn’t exist anywhere.

  “Suit yourself.” And then he sprinted ahead so I had to catch him.

  After crossing the field, we entered the woods and I felt at once as if I’d passed into another world. There was something ancient feeling and gloomy about those woods. The air suddenly changed and went darker, and the night grew blacker. You could tell just by stepping into it that it was a mighty forest, as large as a country, and filled with mystery and legend. The weather misted and fogged even more and the clouds rolled in overhead like a ceiling. I felt a raindrop on my cheek and then two more, four more, six more, until the rain was falling, splashing against the leaves above our heads, making a soft, clean tapping sound like a thousand far-off hammers. I could tell we were in some sort of valley and that the valley grew up into hills. We would have to cross over these to get to France.

  As we began to climb, first Émile, then Eleanor, then Johnny Clay and me, I could see the red of the fire in the distance, see the smoke still hovering in the sky, and hear the sound of gunfire.

  We couldn’t risk building a shelter or a fire, and so we kept going. Émile said we were in the Palatinate Forest, the largest forest in Germany. He said it spanned some eleven hundred miles from Germany to France, and that it ended at the Vosges Mountains, which was where we were heading. He said that General Patton and his Third Army were heading there too, that they were preparing for a battle with the Germans
who were fleeing France, that Gossie had told him so because she’d listened in on a telephone conversation between the President and Patton himself.

  Gossie was okay. She and Cleo were fine, and now they would be celebrating the Liberation with the rest of Paris.

  Émile said that above anything else, we had to get Eleanor back to England.

  We were walking, not running, now, and as we walked I stared at the back of her head, small and wet, and tried not to resent her just because the military thought she was more important than my brother or Émile or me.

  We took stock of our injuries—Eleanor had bruised her arm. At first she thought it was broken, but Johnny Clay said it was only a bad sprain. Émile had gotten another aid kit from somewhere, and he wrapped a bandage around my leg to stop the bleeding and one around my hand. Johnny Clay and Émile were both banged up and bloody with cuts and scrapes, but otherwise we were in good working order.

  We crept through the undergrowth and through the trees and we climbed up and down the mountains, which were rolling and steep and green, like our mountains back home. At some point, the rain stopped, leaving behind a warm, wet fog. In some places we could hardly see two feet, and so we felt our way up through the forest. When it became too thick to see anything we stopped and Johnny Clay said, “Shit.”

  Émile said to me, “Do you have your compass?”

  “Here.” I pulled Ty’s compass out of my bag and handed it to him. As I did, I felt the initials carved into the back: N-E-T.

  Émile turned it over to look at the initials but didn’t say anything. He held the compass flat in his hand and we all peered in to see. “This way,” he said, and we began to walk again.

  Half an hour later, the fog was as thick as gravy, and we took shelter in the ruins of what Émile said must have been a castle, built right into the side of a hill. He said the forest was littered with castles, or what was left of them. He said, “If we can’t see in this fog, the Germans won’t be able to see either. I think we can stop until it clears and keep going then.”

  We found a stone staircase going up, and we climbed it, feeling our way. At the top of the stairs was a room that was almost completely whole—stone floor, stone walls, and a great, high ceiling. Émile stood in the doorway, taking the first watch. I let Johnny Clay and Eleanor go inside ahead of me, and then I said, “I’ll watch with you.”

  “No,” he said. “I think I will find a higher place. There must be a tower that will let me see more. You must rest, Clementine.” He wasn’t looking at me, just staring away into the trees. I stood waiting for something, I wasn’t sure what, before following the others into the room.

  Inside, without any moonlight to see by, it was dark as a tomb. I felt around on the floor, and then I sat down in a small clean space and hugged my knees in. I heard the others settling around me.

  Someone was just to my right, and I reached out my hand. Johnny Clay said, “You almost poked my eye out.”

  I said, “Why did you tell me you were in England? Why did you write me that letter when you weren’t ever there?”

  He was quiet a good long time, and finally I heard his voice: “I did go to England. That part wasn’t a lie. I was supposed to go to Upottery. I had my bag all packed, but then I heard in a roundabout way of this opportunity, and it was one of those opportunities you can’t pass up. Top secret. Dangerous. Only the toughest men. I said, Yessir, that’s for me. Only thing was they didn’t want me at first because I don’t speak French and I ain’t all that educated, but I let my record speak for itself, and there wasn’t another fella at training camp that was faster or tougher or smarter. I told them so myself, and I wouldn’t let ’em be till they let me in.” I thought about the way I’d written to Jacqueline Cochran, trying to persuade her to accept me into the WASP program. I thought, Look at us, my brother and me, about as far away as you can get from Fair Mountain.

  He said, “They sent me into Normandy on D-day, only I dropped in with two other guys, not two hundred. It was just me and them and my weapon.”

  He told me about organizing Resistance groups and how he’d destroyed German tanks and bridges and how he’d gotten himself caught after blowing up a munitions factory outside Paris. He said he’d talked his way out of being executed, that the Germans were holding the gun to his head and pulling the trigger when he’d told them he was a paratrooper and that if they shot him there’d be hell to pay. He said Hitler had issued orders to execute all agents, but they weren’t allowed to kill paratroopers just because they’d landed in France. He said Hitler could have found himself in a heap of trouble if he did that.

  He told me how he’d bluffed a German regiment—more than eighteen thousand troops running from Paris, tails between their legs—trying to get back to Germany as fast as they could. He was by himself, walking down a country road (he didn’t say where the other members of his team were and why he was by himself), when he came across their commander and convinced the man, just by some fast talking, that he and his men were outnumbered. He said the man surrendered to him right there, and then Johnny Clay turned them over to the French in Reims, which was at least a hundred miles away.

  From Reims, he went to Germany, where he and the members of his team killed two men who were high up in the SS, and afterward they broke into a castle, a lot like the one we were in right now, only, according to him, ten times bigger. He said the castle belonged to one of Hitler’s right-hand men, a man who was a chief in Hitler’s armed forces, and that Johnny Clay broke in during the daytime, not even at night, and that he met the girlfriend of the man, who was also his secretary, and she gave him a present because he charmed her. He said it was a gold bookmark that had belonged to Hitler himself, that it was given to him by Eva Braun, who was Hitler’s mistress.

  I said, “Johnny Clay.” Now I knew he was pulling my leg.

  He said, “I’m serious.” Then he told me about how he’d been taken prisoner as soon as he got back into France, but how he’d hid the bookmark so they couldn’t find it, and then disguised himself as a worker, escaping in a coal bin on a train that went all the way to Belgium.

  I said, “I’m not listening to any more of your tall tales.”

  He said, “I ain’t done. Halfway there, I climbed out of that coal bin and walked right into the passenger car and sat beside an SS officer, and he didn’t even check my papers. Offered me a cigarette and even lit it for me, and I just sat there, cool as could be, covered in coal dust from head to toe.”

  I said, “So why’d you drop in from England then? I thought Émile was waiting on a new team from there, and that was you.”

  He said, “Aw, they sent me back to debrief me. Made me a first lieutenant. Said I’d done enough already and completed my mission. Said I could sit the rest of this war out after all I’d done, but I said, There’s still a war to be fought here and I aim to fight every last minute of it.”

  I still couldn’t see him, but I could picture his face, jaw stuck out like he was daring someone to knock it flat.

  “Little sister, would I lie to you?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  He laughed, and his laughter, even though it was soft and low, rang through the empty castle walls, bouncing over our heads and out of our reach and right back to us. I thought then about the people who must have lived there before, all the kings and queens and knights in armor. I thought of the wars that must have been fought hundreds of years ago, back when the castle wasn’t ruins but was whole and new.

  Johnny Clay went on for a while, and I believed some of it but not all of it because I knew better than that. But I was proud of him just the same. When he was done, I said, “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  He said, “Shit.” I could hear him shuffling his feet against the floor. “I didn’t ask what you was doing here.”

  I said, “They said you were missing and I came to find you.”

  There was a long silence, and I waited for Johnny Clay to swear or make a joke or cha
nge the subject, because he never knew what to do when you got too serious or sentimental. Finally, he said, “Thank you.”

  Then he told me that Linc had been made a captain because of being wounded in Anzio, Italy, and that, last he’d heard, our oldest brother had helped to liberate Rome on June 4. He said Coyle Deal, who was now Sweet Fern’s husband, had been there too, but was sent back to England to recover after being shot through the arm and shoulder. He said as far as he knew, Coyle was still there, but maybe he’d be going home soon because it didn’t sound like they were going to let him fight anymore, which was a rotten shame, if you asked him. He said Jessup Deal was with the 4th Infantry Division, but he didn’t know anything about him past D-day, when he landed on Utah Beach. He said Butch Dawkins and his group of Comanche Indian code talkers had landed with them, and that they might be anywhere now or nowhere at all. He said those code talkers were traveling through France scalping the Germans. He said he hadn’t heard from Beachard.

  Music played in some far corner of my mind as I tried to conjure up Butch Dawkins—his gap-toothed smile and the broken bottle neck and his head bent over his guitar. For one sweet moment, I could see him.

  Johnny Clay said, “So this Frenchman.”

  My hackles went up. I said, “Which one?”

  “The old guy. Charles Boyer out there.”

  I said a little too quickly, “He’s not old.”

  “Oh really?”

  Dammit, I thought.

  Johnny Clay said, “What’s he to you, anyway? How’d you get mixed up with him?”

  Before I could tell him about Harrington or the crash that killed everyone but Émile’s team and me, Eleanor’s voice, sharp and annoyed, came wavering up out of the dark. She said, “I’m trying to sleep.”

  I looked over at the direction of the voice, and I couldn’t help it. I started singing “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue.”