Mercy Road

by Ann Howard Creel

  He had done this. He had orchestrated this. He had beaten me. Like a fox that has caught its prey and holds it down with both paws while it prepares to dig in with its teeth for blood. He must have realized that in Neufmoutiers someone had opened a crate. Maybe he figured out I had done it. Or was this retaliation all because I had refused him and chosen someone else? It hardly mattered now; the contraband was no longer in his car, and he’d made me look like a liar and an idiot.

  “My office, Miss Favier,” Dr. Logan said as she spun on her heel and marched back to the building, Beryl close behind her. At the door she turned around and said to Brohammer, “Thank you, Captain, and you have my sincerest apologies.”

  He tipped his hat toward Dr. Logan and then smiled at me. Again, like a fox.

  She said “Come with us, please” to me, then entered the building.

  Still glaring at Brohammer, I came the closest to pure, unfiltered hatred as I ever did for the rest of my days on earth. Although neither of the doctors would hear me by then, I answered anyway, “Of course.”

  Back in Dr. Logan’s office, Beryl sat next to me. Now that I had them alone, I had to try once more to convince them. “Please hear me out. Please.”

  I pulled myself together as best I could. Sweat had collected on my forehead, and I took a swipe at it while Beryl fumbled about in her pockets for a handkerchief.

  “Captain Brohammer is not who he pretends to be,” I began. My voice croaked. “He offended me and insulted me back in Paris, and when I refused him, his attention became quite consuming. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. And once after we’d spoken, I overheard some French soldiers saying that he was the officer making money off his own men. Then I learned that an American officer was indeed selling life-saving tools to our men in the trenches—”

  “I must stop you.” Dr. Logan held up her hands. “I’ll hear no more of this character assassination. If this is true, prove it! Instead you have taken us on a wild-goose chase. Digging in that fine officer’s gifts for his men, after all. You have humiliated all of us.”

  “I saw them there. He’s selling needed tools to our men to make money.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “I hadn’t either, but it’s true,” I insisted.

  Dr. Logan stared beyond her window, which looked out over the courtyard. My claims had fallen on deaf ears, and her mind had traveled elsewhere.

  When she turned back to me, she said, “All that remains is to decide what I am to do with you. You have been an excellent ambulance driver for us, but I’m afraid your work here has ended. I’ll arrange for transportation to the nearest rail station, where you can make your way to Paris. There you’ll stay until I can book your passage back home.”

  “Please don’t, Dr. Logan. I never meant to get involved with anyone. I never sought romance. In the beginning, I met with the enlisted man because he’s a friend from home.”

  She smoothed the front of her jacket. “I can only hope you haven’t already found yourself in a . . . family way.”

  “It never went that far.”

  She scoffed. “Again, I can’t believe you. Your affair has gone on for quite some time, hasn’t it? Shortly after we arrived in Neufmoutiers, a member of our team informed me that another member of our team had begun to slip outside at night on the sly. People have heard sounds, found muddied footprints in the foyer, and discovered doors left unlocked—to name but a few things—but no one has had the gumption, I suppose, to find out who had done it all, and so I dismissed these things as . . .” She smiled. “Possibly . . . the result of living in haunted houses.” Her face turned serious again very quickly. “But now I know it was you, and . . . you must face the consequences.”

  “I met him twice, Dr. Logan, twice.”

  She tilted her head and touched her temple. “So if not you, then who? Am I to believe that someone else has done the same thing you’ve done? Indeed, come to think of it, one of the rumormongers maintained that more than one person had been heard leaving the building. Are there more without decent sense?”

  Cass and Eve. They’d been oblivious, not careful enough. Cass’s words came back to me then. Can you imagine what they’d do if they found out about us? If someone like Dr. Logan knew? Cass and Eve. Their names lodged in my throat.

  I couldn’t answer her question. “I left our building three times only—”

  “A moment ago, you said twice!”

  “Twice I met the soldier. The other time I checked Brohammer’s car. That’s when I found the cutters and the gloves. That’s when I found them and knew. The only reason to possess crates full of non-army tools is to sell them.”

  Dr. Logan pressed her fingers over her eyes for a moment, then dropped her hands. I could tell she hadn’t really listened to much of what I’d said. “I’ve heard enough. Because you insist on repeating this bizarre, unsubstantiated story, I want you to leave today. You won’t have a chance to spread this nasty claim or see your soldier again. It’s time for all the forays during the night to stop.”

  She blamed me for all of them, and I didn’t deny it.

  She paused for a moment, as if allowing her anger and indignation to build. “And if you dare to make any attempt to see this soldier of yours or contact him in any way, I’ll hear about it, and you’ll have to arrange your own way back across the ocean.”

  I sat still, then turned to Beryl. Her face looked blank, and I crumbled, utterly ruined. All of my pleas and explanations had come up short.

  “Miss Favier,” Dr. Logan said, and I turned my head back to her. “Do you hear me?”

  At that very moment, cheers and hollering and clanging sounds came from outside. “It’s over! It’s over!” someone shouted as he banged the bottom of what sounded like a metal pot, and more sounds of glee followed.

  “It’s over. The war is over!”

  Later that afternoon I walked outside, packed and ready to leave. Cass would drive me to the station. Almost the entire original team of the AWH had lined up to see me off, which surprised me and further cracked open my heart. Some of them wouldn’t meet my eyes—it seemed everyone already knew about my rendezvous with Jimmy and my accusations against Brohammer—but at least they thought enough of me to say goodbye.

  Dr. Logan didn’t attend, of course, but Beryl did. She stood at the end of the line, and she did meet my eyes. In them I witnessed the strangest mixture of sadness, anger, disbelief, and even some loss.

  I breathed shallowly, denying my lungs what they needed. If only I could plead my case to her. If only I could get her to believe in me again.

  She could see the question in my eyes and quickly shook her head. “No, Arlene. I don’t care about moralizing and following strict rules. I never cared for anything like that. But we made a deal. I asked you for two things: stay till the end of the war, and don’t embarrass me.”

  Beryl thought I was building up to ask about my pay and bonus. Those things hadn’t even occurred to me yet. I wanted her to stand by me. I wanted to stay and continue to help along with the others.

  “And you did embarrass me,” she finished.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  PARIS, FRANCE

  NOVEMBER 1918

  Before Cass left me at the train station, she handed me an envelope full of cash that Dr. Logan had asked her to pass on to me. In it was the salary owed to me, all in US dollars.

  Cass said, “She’ll get reimbursed by the Red Cross.”

  Grateful, I nodded.

  I would not receive the bonus, although I had worked until the end of the war as promised. Worse than the loss of the money, however, was knowing I’d let Beryl down. I thought of myself as a person as good as her word, and it pierced me through that someone I respected thought me capable of deception.

  I had some money in my pocket now, enough perhaps to give new life to Favier Farm’s stud service, perhaps even enough to purchase a long shot of a stallion to replace Chicory. But I didn’t have nearly enough
money to build the house I’d promised Maman.

  “At least she didn’t want you to leave here with nothing,” Cass said before we parted, her face so full of sorrow and worry I almost couldn’t look at her. She didn’t know that I’d taken the blame for all of her secret meetings with Eve, and I would never tell her. What could she do besides feel miserable about it?

  “Just for the record,” I said. “What I accused Captain Brohammer of—profiting off our soldiers by selling them high-priced tools—is true.”

  “Just for the record,” she responded. “I believe you.” After another breath she said, “I just wish you’d told me before. I wish you’d told someone.”

  “I do, too. Now with the benefit of hindsight . . .”

  “Just for the record also,” she said. “I told them Brohammer had followed you around since Paris and that you’d resisted. But—”

  “It made no difference,” I finished and then looked about in disbelief. Everything had collapsed because of a jealous man and his ego. “Thanks for trying. It means a lot.”

  “All I did was tell the truth. I said I found Brohammer a very troubling and odd man, and I would take your word over his under any circumstances.”

  I shrugged and said to Cass, “What will you do now?”

  “I’ll stay as long as they want me.”

  “Please be careful. You and Eve need to be more cautious.”

  “We are careful. Why are you saying this now?”

  I had to warn her without revealing that I’d taken unjust blame for her. “Someone heard me last night when I went out with Jimmy.”

  Her face reflected a surprised realization.

  “Yes, apparently some people on our team listen to every sound in the night.”

  Over the next few days, I walked the streets of Paris. While I waited to receive notification of my travel schedule, I wandered around a city in full celebratory mode.

  I didn’t enter any bars or restaurants, instead eating bread and cheese and drinking coffee from a stand so I could hold on to as much money as possible. It surprised me that I could think of tomorrow after all that had happened, that I could form coherent plans, that I could still shape a future. Kentucky called me home, and I could almost smell the spongy grass beneath my feet, hear the horses neighing in the stables. I couldn’t wait to watch them trotting about in their paddocks, and listen to birdsong in the air instead of whistling shells and exploding bombs.

  On a bridge over the Seine, I stood and imagined all the lovers who had waited here for someone. How many waited for someone who would never come? I could not think of Jimmy. Missing him caught me up every hour of the day, and his face would materialize before me—those charming and dancing eyes, the way he closed them when I touched him. I tried not to think about questions I had no answers to. Had word somehow reached him about what had happened to me? Did he have any idea where I was? How would he find me now?

  My lease on France had expired. My tickets showed up at the hotel the next day. I would board the boat and leave in the morning.

  That evening, I took what would be my last stroll through Paris. My father walked around in my mind, and for the first time I found it almost a good thing that he was gone. At least he would never learn of the shame I’d brought down on myself in the country of his birth. Would I ever tell Maman?

  I doubted it, but the story could reach her someday. I couldn’t imagine how, but I’d never imagined any of it. And yet, I’d never regret coming to France. France now ran in my blood like minnows in a stream. Half of my line came from here and sent me forth into the world, and it seemed fitting that I’d walked in its forests, drunk from its waters, and shed tears on its soil.

  And peace worked its magic, even on me. The gauzy air of Paris, like filtered light or moonlight, made everything, even the sandbags, streets, and buildings, look softly luminous. The lamplights shone silky, like beacons showing us the way ahead. Paris was made of poetry and power, riches and romance, war and now a glorious peace. At times the boisterous merriment seemed to mock my shame, but lovely memories of France would always wind gently through my mind. Here, I had lived fully for the first time. Here, I’d found Jimmy.

  The city swarmed with Allied soldiers drinking, cheering, and celebrating, and I ran into Emile, the French ambulance driver from Meaux. He had worked there at the same time Jimmy had.

  He recognized me and asked me to join him for a drink. Even thinner and more disheveled than he’d looked at the front, apparently he’d participated in some full-scale celebrations and perhaps hadn’t slept all night. In his eyes, however, I recognized something else, a darkness that told me he really wanted to talk. We sat down at a café. I asked for water instead of wine.

  After we’d caught up for a bit, I asked him in French, “Do you remember the American driver, Jimmy Tucker?”

  “Yes, of course. Nice guy,” he said. “Funny fellow.”

  I could’ve asked him if Jimmy was celebrating in Paris, too, but I intended to follow Dr. Logan’s last directions and not seek him out. We’d have plenty of time after we both landed back in the US, whenever that might be. In the meantime, I would spend my nights longing for something I’d never before allowed myself to want or even name. And it comforted me to know that Jimmy and I slept under the same stars.

  “I’m surprised you asked about him,” Emile said.

  The brush of a warning came with his words, and my skin tightened. The breeze picked up, and I wanted to hug myself. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He shook his head as if disbelieving. “You haven’t heard what happened to him?”

  My stomach turned, and an image of Jimmy dead on the road flashed in front of me.

  Emile must have registered it. “Don’t worry. He’s alive. But he has gone through a most terrible ordeal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was arrested and almost court-martialed.”

  Incredulous and blinking, I asked, “Why?”

  “Yes. For taking his ambulance on the sly and using it for personal reasons.” He glanced away and then back. “To see you.”

  Emile watched me intently, and I imagined that his statement to see you hinted at something of an accusation, but I detected no such malice in his eyes.

  I said, “I met with him twice, and both times he was on leave.”

  “That’s not what someone told his CO. Someone said it had been going on for months, and that Jimmy had abandoned his post while on duty and left the area without permission, to go off and meet you. That’s dereliction of duty.”

  I nearly fell on the pavement. My thoughts tangled like vines in my head. It couldn’t be. Jimmy had done nothing wrong. They could not have accused him of dereliction of duty. I said, “Until recently we weren’t in the same area. It wouldn’t have even been possible . . .” Then I remembered when we both worked in Meaux for a short while, and after that, I remained in Meaux and he moved to Charly, not so far away. “Except for one other time.”

  “Even one time would be enough to get him in trouble. Even one dereliction of duty is dereliction of duty.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  He said, “As I said, a bad ordeal.” At least Emile didn’t spare me from the awful truth of the matter; he didn’t treat me like a fragile thing.

  Both times I’d met Jimmy in the woods, he had been on leave, and I didn’t think any military rules governed matters of the heart while the men were off duty. Of course, another double standard existed there, in that men were encouraged to seek female attention, whereas we women were shunned for doing so—unless the attention came from an eligible officer, that is.

  But I’d let Dr. Logan believe all the forays into the night had been mine and Jimmy’s, and someone had seen fit to pass that information along. Brohammer, of course. Even though he would’ve had no way to spell out specific dates and times, apparently a general accusation had placed Jimmy in hot water. Jimmy and I had been in close enough proximity before. Emile spoke the truth: How many
times did it take?

  I hadn’t thought it could get worse, but it had, and I’d caused it all. I was nothing, not even worthy of the air I breathed. “What happened?” I asked Emile, surprised I could speak.

  “After a few days, they released him and decided against a court-martial. He had some buddies willing to vouch for him, a little bit of an alibi if his friends could be believed, and now that the war’s over, it didn’t seem so important any longer. But his army career is probably over. He won’t go to jail, but he probably won’t get an honorable discharge, either.”

  I shook my head, still trying to believe that the mistaken impression I’d left with Dr. Logan and Beryl had made its way to Jimmy’s CO. How had Jimmy reacted? He had no idea why I’d allowed Dr. Logan to believe we’d seen each other for much longer than we actually had. He’d have no clue as to why I would’ve incriminated him so. He had no idea about Cass and Eve.

  I had to stay. I had to find Jimmy’s commanding officer and explain to him that I’d protected someone else and that Jimmy and I had never met while he was on duty.

  But no one would believe me now. Dr. Logan had warned me that if I made any contact with Jimmy in any way while still in France, I’d have to pay for my passage home. And I had to leave tomorrow. It almost killed me, but the next harsh realization arrived anyway: Jimmy probably thought I had lied, and he’d have no idea why. And the miserable irony: Brohammer had abandoned his duty, and he’d gotten away with it.

  Paris whirled and tilted around me, and then settled as Emile’s face made me see a future I didn’t want to see. My tangled reflections turned into dreadful awareness, and the heavens rained down bitter truth: I would never see Jimmy again.

  Emile slid his wine glass across the table toward me. “Here,” he said. “Take the wine.”

  My voice cracked. “If I drink enough of it, will it make all of this go away?”