He laughed. “So proper looking on the outside, but we seen you. The captain and I seen you out there”—he pointed toward the street—“carrying on with that soldier.”
After downing another sip and plunking the glass back on the table, I kept my voice pleasant but said, “And why is this any of your business?”
He shook his head. “You’re taking this the wrong way, Miss Arlene. I seen what you done, what you are, but I don’t mean you no harm. Tell you the truth, I don’t care ’bout nothin’ except getting out of this god-awful place. But my captain, why, he sure does care. I already knew he was a little crazy before, but I didn’t know how bad it really was till that night after he seen you kissing another man.”
Now the rope squeezed, and I feared it would cut off my air. “Is this a threat?”
He shook his head. “It’s a warning. Believe you me, I’d rather stay out of this here business. After he seen you, it took three of us to talk him out of a fury the likes I never seen before, and we had to get him real drunk that night so he wouldn’t take off searching you out.”
“I see.” I almost laughed. Warning was a bit of an understatement; I wasn’t surprised by Brohammer’s reaction, though I couldn’t imagine what he would do now. And why hadn’t I sensed that someone had observed Jimmy and me that day? Easy answer: I was lost in love.
I swallowed and asked, “Does he know where I’m working?”
“Not yet, but he’ll find out.” He sat back and rubbed two fingers along the line of his jaw, then leaned forward again. “Irony is, he’d just about gotten over you—he weren’t even talking about you that much anymore. I think he’d purty much given up, but seeing you here was like letting an animal out of a cage. He’s been asking around about where that girl-doctor gaggle has gone off to now, but even though one of the guys found out—it’s Luzancy, right?—I told that fool kid to keep his mouth shut. So my captain knows you was here that day out of the blue, but he has no inkling you’re staying so close by.”
The sun had lowered enough by then that his eyes shone in a different way. Surrounding his pupils was a deep, soft brown, and I read no ill intent and no guile in his gaze. I studied my hands. “I’m sorry. I misjudged you.”
“My captain, why . . .” He paused as if choosing his words. “He’s got a screw loose, if you ask me.”
An idea hit me at that moment, that perhaps I could ask Corporal Needles if he knew anything about the contraband. He didn’t sound like a big fan of Brohammer’s, and maybe he’d help me nail him.
“And yet you’re going against his wishes by sitting here and giving me this warning?”
His face fell. “You could say that.”
“He would expect you to tell him right away if you saw me?”
He looked sincerely befuddled by my line of questioning. “Right.”
“So maybe we should cut this short. I wouldn’t want anyone to think of you as disloyal . . .”
I was hoping the corporal would say something like I’m not loyal to him. But his eyes flew wide, and then I knew that Corporal Needles would never go against his captain. Needles was scared. “Thank you, miss.” He stood and peered around, then gazed down at me. “If you be taking any advice right now, I’d say you should clear outta this town.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Clear out of here fast before he sees ya.”
Leveling my hand over my brow and squinting up at him, I said, “Thank you, Corporal. Thank you kindly.”
Before he turned away, he said, “And don’t never come back.”
As he walked off, I wondered how much he knew. Was he a bad man, going along with making money off the frontline soldiers? At that moment, however, I had the awful feeling I would never know.
And that concerned me less than the question on my mind at that moment. How long could I count on Brohammer staying in the dark as to my location? If he found out where our team had moved, what would he do?
I had no answers to those questions, either.
Like a repeat of the first time I’d sat at this street café, I got up and fled. Putting too many coins down, just as Jimmy once had, I again left that lovely wine on the table.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A week later, when Cass went out in the wee hours of the night again, I lay there alone, then sat up in bed and hugged my knees to my chest. Ever since my conversation with Corporal Needles, I’d walked around on edge. Sudden sounds made me jump, and even when I drove, I perused my surroundings more carefully, as if something or someone might pop up on the road and bar my way. Needless to say, peaceful sleep was a place I sought for many hours but couldn’t find.
I took the corporal’s warning seriously, but the extra diligence made no sense, I told myself. If Brohammer found out about our operations in Luzancy, I could do nothing about it. So Brohammer was furious. But he’d been furious with me before, and maybe this time wasn’t any different.
Even more concerning—Jimmy. Fear ran amok within me at the slightest thought of him driving near the front lines. Three weeks had passed since I’d seen him. This horrible war had to end. I’d sent him a letter but hadn’t received one in return. How close to the front did he go and how often? How much fire reached the roads behind the front?
All of us hoped the cease-fire would come at any moment. Jimmy’s luck had held for a long time, and what a cruel trick it would be to get hurt after staying safe almost until the end. Now that we’d rediscovered each other, I couldn’t lose him. In my mind I could already imagine our lives back in Paris on the farm. But over the course of the war, many ambulance drivers had been injured and killed, and I had to push any thoughts like that out of my mind or else I’d fall apart.
The doorknob made a tiny screeching sound as Cass turned it from outside in the hall, and for some reason I made no move to lie down and feign sleep. Cass slipped past the door into the room and then stopped dead when she noticed me. Moonlight streaming in through the window allowed me to see enough of her dim face to ascertain that I had startled her—the bad sort of startled.
I asked her in a whisper loud enough to hear but not too loud to penetrate the walls, “You think I haven’t noticed? All this time?”
Instead of answering, she treaded noiselessly across the floor and then sat on the edge of her bed, facing me. In a calm voice but one that held some dread, too, she said, “I was pretty sure you must have heard me once or twice.”
Aware that Cass didn’t have to tell me anything, I kept my voice steady and not accusatory. “I’m almost certain I’ve noticed each and every time you left this room, and I noticed it back in Neufmoutiers, too.”
Likewise, her voice was soft and matter-of-fact. “And I’ve noticed both of the times you’ve done it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“So, who is he?” Her tone remained moderate, and I detected a bit of a smile. For a moment she sounded like the old Cass.
I turned toward her and sat cross-legged. “The first time, I didn’t go to meet someone. Back in Neufmoutiers, I went on a bit of a spy mission.”
“Oh really? You’ve become a spy?”
I shrugged. “Not in any official capacity. I took something upon myself, but it had nothing to do with romance.”
“Darn it all,” she said, and I smiled. “I hope someday you’ll tell me about it—that is, if it’s not classified. I wouldn’t want you to go to the gallows because of true confessions to me.”
I inhaled deeply. I had no reason to tell Cass about Brohammer and his contraband at this point, and I guessed there never had been any point. As each day took us closer to an armistice, any chance of exposing him diminished. Most likely, he would get away with it all. “It’s not important any longer. Someday I’ll tell you, but for now . . .” I passed a hand through the air, as if I could swat away the awful response in my body when I thought of Brohammer. “The second time, here—”
“Surprise me and tell me you went out with someone.”
“I did.”
I nodded. I’d once told Cass everything, and I’d mentioned Jimmy even after she had closed herself off to me. It seemed like a long time since we’d grown apart, and such a waste. But tonight, the distance disappeared. I should’ve talked to her like this before. I should’ve given us both a chance to unburden our secrets.
“A lowly doughboy. Of course you had to meet him in secret.”
I nodded.
“And because you were practically forced to meet him in secret, it could, in someone else’s eyes, make it look . . . so very . . .”
“Tawdry,” I said for her. “Yes, I’m aware I would appear to be a loose woman.”
We both sat with that for a spell.
“So . . . remind me of his name?”
Clearly Cass intended to keep the conversation centered on me. “Jimmy. He resisted my charms for a while, but he succumbed.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “You pursued him?”
“I guess I did.”
“Well, I’ll be . . .”
“Yes, I’ve broken the rules, but not as you have, Cass. I care almost nothing about rules now, but this has always perplexed me to no end. You’ve been sneaking out for months. Why have you kept it a secret from me? All this time . . . ? I thought you and I were—”
“Friends. Special friends,” she answered.
“Yes.”
She wrung her hands. “We were. We are, Arlene. But my situation is so much rifer with risk than yours is.”
“Is it a woman?”
She sat rock-still then and looked as if she’d stopped breathing. She shook her head and then rubbed her temples, her eyebrows nearly reaching the ceiling. “I never expected that question.”
Then we sat in silence for a while.
Finally I said, “Eve, I presume.”
She still didn’t move, but I could hear her breathing deeply and regularly. “I underestimated you. I never thought you’d figure it out.”
“I’ve only recently arrived at it as a possibility. I figured you went out alone, or with someone within our team.”
“I could’ve thought the same of you. You went out in Neufmoutiers and then here, too.”
“Once in both places, and the first time had nothing to do with romance, as I’ve already said. Two times I went out, but you’ve gone out so many times I’ve lost count. I’m not accusing you of any wrongdoing; please don’t misunderstand me. If it meant enough for you to take such chances, I knew something powerful must have propelled you.” I stopped to assess how my words had affected her. She looked intent but not upset. “Besides, I’ve heard of your condition, Cass, and I want to help.”
A long silence. Then after a long sigh, she spoke into her lap. “Condition? Is that what you call it?”
I shrugged helplessly. I couldn’t even remember who had told me what little I knew. “That’s how someone described it to me, as an illness of sorts.”
She gazed off toward the window and said in a forlorn voice, “Now you understand the need for absolute secrecy.” She continued to breathe deeply in and out. “Because if you think it’s an illness, it rather confirms that even among our generation, things have not improved.” She turned to stare flatly at me. “It’s not a condition.”
“Then what do you call it?”
“I call it love.”
I swallowed back a bit of disbelief.
“You’re repulsed. I can see it in your face.”
“I’m not repulsed. I’m concerned.”
Another long sigh. “People like Eve and me are made up in another way when it comes to love. There’s nothing wrong with us. We simply love a woman and not a man. Some men love other men, too. The problem is exactly what you’ve shown me again tonight. People see us as mentally ill or deranged. I learned that a long time ago. I started off more transparent, but the few people I told during my youth shunned me, even threatened me.”
“During your youth?”
“Yes, I’ve always felt this way.”
“I imagined . . .” I clasped my hands and stared down at them. “That maybe it came on as a response to all the awful things going on here and seeing what we’ve seen.”
“No. Not in the least. Eve has felt this way her entire life, too.”
“Have you ever spoken to a doctor?”
I glanced up to see that her body had tensed, and then I resumed looking down, trying to put my mind around all she’d told me.
“There’s no reason to speak to a doctor. There’s nothing sick about it. It’s the same thing I’m pretty sure you feel for Jimmy, but we feel it for a woman and not a man. That’s all. Everything else about us is just like everyone else. We want the same things. We dream of the same things. We need the same things.”
I believed her. I’d seen Cass at her best and her worst, and throughout it all, she’d always impressed me as a vulnerable and imperfect but sensible woman, and a fighter, too. Cass had suffered a short spell of shell shock, but she’d pulled herself up by the bootstraps. Perhaps she had found such inner strength because she’d had to utilize it before, out of necessity. I couldn’t imagine what she’d had to endure, and I hated that the way she loved made her afraid.
Meeting her gaze, I said, “I’m sorry, Cass. I didn’t know. I was just repeating what someone—someone who probably knew very little about it—told me quite a while ago.”
After a few long moments, she responded, “So now, certainly, you understand the need for our secrecy. Many people believe that women and men like Eve and me should be locked up. In some places it’s a crime.”
I simply listened.
“We have to be ever so careful about whom we trust. I wasn’t sure I knew you well enough.”
“I understand.”
After another thoughtful moment had passed, she said, “If you got caught, it would be ugly, but can you imagine what they’d do if they found out about us? If someone like Dr. Logan knew?”
I shook my head again.
Cass continued: “I don’t ever want to find out.”
Still soaking it in, I couldn’t imagine . . . my love was a forbidden love, too, but if Cass and Eve were ever discovered, the reaction would be altogether more horrific. I looked at her again and hoped she felt my sincerity. “I’m so sorry, Cass. I shouldn’t have probed.”
“I’m glad you did,” Cass said. “In a way, it’s a relief that someone else knows.”
“I promise to keep it secret.”
“I know you will. You don’t have to tell me.”
In the morning, Cass and I went about our business as if nothing had happened. Nothing had changed, except I felt close to her again. I also felt sympathy and concern, but those feelings soon got buried beneath the surface when we received news that French forces were bearing down on Sedan and its critical railroad hub. If they took it, the Germans would have no recourse. They would have to surrender. Capturing Sedan would end the war, and it could happen any day now. Even in the hospital wards, a feeling of urgency, of hopeful energy, filled the air. When a boy on a bicycle arrived with some mail, we all rushed to the windows in hopes he brought news of a cease-fire.
He shook his head. Nothing yet.
In the stack of mail, I found a letter from Jimmy and tore it open. Jimmy wrote that he would have a short leave in five days and would meet me in the woods on the first night at midnight. I looked at the date on the letter. If I could get through this day and the next, the following night I would be in Jimmy’s arms again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I met Jimmy in the same moonlit glen hidden away in the woods. By that stage in the lunar cycle, the moon had peeled back into a crescent, a happy, lopsided smile that gave off barely enough light to see by.
We clung to one another greedily, searching each other’s mouth and face, feeling our rib cages pressing together, our hands encircling waists and grasping onto backs, finding one another’s spine, our hearts in our throats. He had become familiar to me—I
craved the feel of him now, and the way he touched me showed me he felt the same way.
This time, Jimmy had brought the tarp and blankets but no bread or wine, explaining that he hadn’t had time to pick anything up during the day. His ambulance had broken down on the way to Luzancy, and at one point he feared he might not get it fixed in time.
We sat on the tarp, and he swept his arm out and over it before he handed me a blanket. “I sure know how to woo a girl, don’t I?”
I studied the empty tarp for a moment, then reached over and took his hand, finding his eyes. “You’re the feast, Jimmy. You’re all I want.”
He looked so sincerely moved, I ached inside. “How did I ever get so lucky as to find you?”
“It was meant to be.”
He smiled. “After the war ends, I’ll lavish you with everything I have. I’m due quite a bit of back pay.”
For a moment I simply basked in his presence. I turned Jimmy’s hand over and studied his palm. The only thing I knew about palm reading was to follow the life line. I searched for his, hoping to find a long one, but the moon on that night didn’t provide enough light for me to see it.
I glanced up. “Do you really think it’s almost over? We hear reports every day, and even caught one false one proclaiming the end. But of course, that turned out to be a mistake. Now we don’t know what to believe.”
Jimmy answered, “It’s almost over. Truly it is. And the miserable thing is that both sides know it. You can tell it by the Germans’ moods. Sometimes they’re defeated and going through the motions, then other times they fight with desperation. Our men are going into battle even though we’ve won, and there’s no sense in fighting any longer. But they’re under orders, and if they don’t fight with all their might, they could die on the very eve of the armistice.”
“It must be dreadful.”
“Can you imagine being the last one injured and looking down at your body and knowing you weren’t going to survive? Thinking, Just one more day, and this wouldn’t have happened . . .”
“No, I can’t.” I reached around to the back of my neck, unclasped my baby locket, and handed it to Jimmy. “I want you to take this with you.”
Mercy Road Page 22