by Amy Lane
Everard nodded, as though this was the man he’d expected, which should have amused Nate. It was, in fact, the last young man he had thought he’d be.
“I understand you have something of value to the OSS. Ouida was thin on details, but our operative needs to know how important this mission is. Landing in a cow field isn’t a picnic, even in the middle of nowhere as Provence Claire La Lune.”
“Film,” Nate said, and in this silver-and-black moment, it seemed a miracle to him that he’d taken the pictures, had kept them with him through the wreck, recovery, their precipitate flight through the woods. A whim, and it had wrecked his plane. A dogged obsession, and it had made him important enough to rescue.
An accident of duty, and it had saved Walter’s life.
“They are building something, I think,” he said truthfully. “Somewhere they are not expected to be. That is the only reason I can think of that they chased my plane so hard to shoot it down. They left Stuttgart unprotected, and Strasbourg too. It was not my first mission; those dogfighters were worried.”
Everard nodded. “Good. I will not ask you where the film is. We will assume it is hidden back in the barn. We need you two gone as much as you need to go, and this operative . . . he’s stingy with the favors.”
Nate nodded, then said, “Tell them my name—and that I’m a friend of Hector’s—this may still be his outpost. I know it was his job to talk to the operatives from the air.”
Everard’s eyes lit up. “That is excellent news! We shall get you and your sleeping friend a plane out of here yet!”
“Good,” Nate said shortly. “I would hate to cost your people any more cows.”
An awkward silence descended. “Well, at least the cows are tasty, no?” With that, Everard passed over the packet of food that was making Nate weak with the smell alone.
“At this point, tree bark is tasty,” Nate agreed, but his voice softened. “Thank you. Should we try to meet tomorrow?”
“Yes. Emile wanted to meet you. Ouida can’t stop talking about the brave, kind Americans.”
Nate’s mouth watered, and his head ached as he restrained himself from diving into the food packet; even so, he detected a note of bitterness in Everard’s voice.
“These ‘brave, kind Americans’ were hiding in a cabin in the woods. We’d still be there, trying to decide what to do if your sister hadn’t at least told us the name of your province. I take pictures, Everard. I don’t even fly the plane.”
“But you know how?” Everard goaded, and Nate had to concede to the cursory time in flight school.
“Oui.”
“Then why the modesty?”
“My friend fought in Africa and lost his entire unit. I’m late to this war.”
Everard made an indeterminate sound. “Yes, well, you’re American. It’s your lot in life.”
Wonderful. But he sounded less bitter, so perhaps they could live with each other in the time it took for Nate and Walter to make it to safety.
The sky was lightening now, and although it was earlier than it had been the day before, that had been too close for comfort. As one, they looked at that terrifying light and nodded. Everard made a little bow and melted into the forest.
Nate waited until he was gone and went to wake Walter.
Walter was pale in the shadows, shaking with cold and fatigue as he woke.
“Here,” Nate said gently, his own hands shaking with the need for it. “I have food.”
The meat was wedged between great, thick pieces of bread, and there were two apples, sound and sweet, with them. Nate ripped the sandwich in half and shoved the apples in his pocket.
“We should eat the meat and bread now; the smell will be out of place in the barn.”
“Ugh. Too big a portion.”
Nate was nearly done with his part, his stomach appeased but not full. It was a Seder feast to him, but he was beyond savoring it.
“Eat,” he urged through a full mouth. “Eat. We need to be strong for the days ahead.”
Walter grimaced and folded half his food back up in the wrapper. “You eat it for me,” he muttered apologetically. “Or save it. Maybe under the hay, no one will smell it.”
Nate put the wrapped package under his shirt and made Walter drink more from the canteen. Then they both relieved themselves for the last time that night and walked back to the barn.
There were no Nazis in the barn this time, no prematurely slaughtered cows. But there was no lovemaking either. This time, when the farmer stumped out for the last time that day, Nate turned to Walter to find him curled in a ball, shivering. Nate draped over his back and spent the next few hours whispering in his ear, trying to give him enough safety to rest. He slept, limp, exhausted, and Nate feared very likely sick, until it was time to go meet their contact. Nate was tempted to skip the meeting. He had to force Walter to eat the remainder of the food, and he almost thought that sleeping through the night would be better for him than food.
In the end, he couldn’t bear to leave Walter alone.
He chivvied him up and out of the barn, practically ordering him to eat the apple and giving him the last of the water. They stumbled to the stream, but instead of jumping in to wash, they huddled together in the shadows, waiting for the elusive Emile.
Nate could no longer deny that Walter was sick.
The fear, the lack of food, lying in the stuffy, steaming barn covered in straw. All of it combined had sapped him, taken the core of steel and self-reliance that Nate had so admired in him. The man who was left leaned against Nate with a childlike trust, needing with a simplicity that chilled Nate to the bone.
Walter would not survive reassignment and deployment if he couldn’t recover from losing his home in the woods of Moselle.
“Walter,” Nate whispered, as he lay shivering against Nate’s chest. “Walter, you must have hope. You will get better. The plane will get us, and you will find other soldiers to be your family too. And you and I will meet, when the war is over, in Times Square. I swear, I will wait for you. You are the only lover my heart can bear. You need to be strong for us.”
Walter gave a sigh then and settled into a more comfortable position for sleep, and some of the ice in Nate’s bowels relaxed. Sick, that was all. Of body, not of spirit. He would live. He would live, and their sad, faraway dream of life after the war could stay alive in their hearts.
This time, their contact arrived earlier, for which Nate was grateful. He left Walter asleep in the brush again and ventured out to meet Emile.
Emile turned out to be a sour, thin-faced man in his early twenties with a thick mustache and black hair hanging over his eyes. He wore a greasy beret that he positioned and repositioned as they spoke. It gave him a restless, fidgety air, and his sharp speech didn’t endear him any further.
“So you are the great American,” he snarled disagreeably.
Nate grunted. “I really am tired of hearing people say that,” he said. “I am an American, and I am an officer in the USAAF, but beyond that, I’m a man who’s spent the better part of a week hiding in a hayloft. It does not inspire greatness.”
“It doesn’t inspire trust, either. Where’s your companion?”
“Sleeping in the brush,” Nate said, wanting to hold his worry close. “I hope you have good news for us. He’s ill and not getting any better.”
“Oh, that’s right, ill. That’s why no one’s seen him.”
“What are you implying?” Nate snapped.
“I’m saying it’s easier to get extra food if you claim to be an extra person!”
“Fuck your food!” Nate was taller than Emile, with a broader chest and apparently more righteous anger inside him. He pressed forward, watching with satisfaction as Emile stumbled backward, thumping up against a tree and huddling there, unable to escape. “Your help is appreciated, and the food too,” Nate growled. “But I want to get back to my unit, and I want to get my film to intel, and I want to get Walter to safety. I don’t want to play petty games. If
there wasn’t the chance that we could get out of here by plane, we would have left three days ago.”
And maybe, wandering around the woods, they would have found a place, full of false promises and hope, but a place all the same.
“I just think it’s damned convenient that you make such a big deal about your companion, and yet all we see of him is your need for us to put ourselves out for him, and Ouida’s faint mention of a disagreeable little man—”
Nate turned away from him abruptly. “Is the plane coming or not?” he demanded.
“Tomorrow, midnight. Between the barn and the forest. It’s flat enough for a landing strip, even for a small transport plane. Be waiting on the edges of the forest. Someone—Ouida or I—will be here to vouch for you or the pilot won’t take you.”
“We’ll be here,” Nate muttered, continuing on with his walk.
“Don’t you want your food, American?” Emile taunted.
“Does it taste better than your offer of help?” Nate asked over his shoulder, and Emile let out a beleaguered sigh.
“I am sorry. Come. A man may get jealous, hearing about the mighty god who saved his woman.”
Nate turned to him, sick in his stomach about relying on this irritating, jealous, weaselly little man for help. “I don’t want your woman. All I want is to get my companion to safety. He lived in your woods for months, peacefully, until I crashed into his life, and then he gave all of that up to save me. He might still be there, happy, hiding beneath the floorboards while you deluded the Nazis, if not for me. And I have nothing to keep me here but him.”
Emile dug into the satchel at his side and came up with a packet wrapped in linen, which he threw at Nate. Nate caught it midair.
“Be here,” Emile sneered.
“If there is no plane, I’ll paint an American flag on your door and call every Nazi for miles,” Nate threatened baselessly. He didn’t know where this man lived; all he knew of Moselle was the path from the woods to a farmer’s barn.
“No need to get nasty,” Emile said, his lip curling. “If your woman had been humping Nazis in the name of resistance, you’d be unpleasant too.”
Oh, Father, spare him.
“She’s worth ten of you,” Nate said flatly. “And I’d rather spend this time in the barn.” He turned his back on Emile then and faded into the shadows, carrying a loaf of bread and two more plump and rosy apples.
Walter was awake when Nate touched his shoulder, his eyes peering irritably into the dark. “He was a nasty piece of business. Makes me miss his girl.”
Nate chuckled, hoping for some of Walter’s laughter to wash away the bile. “And that could be the only time in your life you’ll feel that way.”
Walter smiled. “Did you get some food? I’ll feel better if I eat.”
Nate expelled a tension that had been weakening him for two days. “So will I.”
They slept without reservation when they returned, and some of the peaceful glory of their first day in the barn returned with them. This afternoon, in the heated closeness, with the gold embers of dust floating from the skylight, Nate got to study Walter as he lay, eyes closed, Nate’s hand on his thin chest.
His eyelashes were nearly transparent. It was a detail Nate hadn’t really noticed before, because they had so few moments in the sun.
Walter’s face, peaked, wan as it was, still lit from within, became glorious as Nate moved his hand from Walter’s throat to the waistband of his trousers. As Nate cupped his manhood and stroked, Walter bit his lip softly, making it plump and red, and Nate scooted up, soothed the abused lip with the touch of his mouth, his lips, his tongue. He could feel Walter’s heartbeat in the palm of his hand, with every stroke of his slender, pale cock. He barely remembered to fumble for the cloth to catch Walter’s spend, but he did capture his gasp of climax deep in his mouth and swallowed it, held it close in his chest, and let it warm him with courage for the night to come.
They pulled apart, and Walter smiled at him, that same shy smile Nate had come to treasure. “We’ll meet after the war,” he said, voice ringing with conviction. “We have to.”
They had to.
When the time came, Nate stopped at the door, his hand on the old-fashioned wrought iron latch. “A kiss for luck.”
Walter’s lips were sweet, but the kiss was too short. You cannot fit a lifetime into one meeting of lips, even if you try.
Two hours later, they crouched in the shadows at the fringe of the woods, scanning the sky. Walter was starting to shiver again, but Nate was hopeful. He could hear a plane, even if he couldn’t see it yet. The low cloud cover hovered, rendering the landscape surrealistically bright in the kingdom of the nearly full moon.
The figure ghosting up next to Nate with feline grace was a familiar surprise.
“Ouida?” he asked unnecessarily.
“Oui. Emile was busy tonight. I said I would see you off.”
Nate grimaced, not wanting to bear tales but unable to hide his dislike. “I’m surprised he wanted you alone with us. He seems to think I’m a threat.”
“I am sorry,” she whispered. “It was harder, I think, than he let on, seeing me with Horst. He has made threats against you. Our village is buzzing like a hornet’s nest, and even knowing that I killed the Nazi and caused this mess has made his irritation worse.”
“Be careful around him,” Nate advised. He would walk away and leave this place, these people in chaos; the least he could do was tell her of his misgivings. “He is dangerous, and he is going to hold on to you with bony fingers. He may cut off your wrist to keep your hand.”
“Is that a Yiddish saying?” she asked, sounding troubled.
“If it was, I would have said it in Yiddish,” Nate replied mildly. Walter was crouched in the shadows next to the same tree Nate was leaning against, and his choked snicker gave Nate heart.
“I see he is feeling fit,” Ouida observed dryly, and Nate tried to keep the misgiving from his voice.
“He will need a medic when we get back to the squadron,” he said soberly. “He has a fever.”
Ouida’s expression—shown by the almost unnatural light—softened, and she patted Nate’s shoulder. “Soon. Can you hear? There’s the plane.”
Nate peered out, and his optimism, which he’d only cautiously allowed to peek out at intervals during the day, suddenly gave a mighty leap.
They could see the plane now. It had dropped below the cloud cover, and the modified B-24 headed for the makeshift landing strip. Nate turned into the shadows and bent down to take Walter’s hand, pulling him up.
“Come on, Walter. We are almost home free.”
Walter grinned tiredly and stumbled out of the shadows, and then the sharp, echoing report of a handgun sounded, and he fell into Nate’s arms.
“Walter?” His weight bore soddenly down, and the shots sounded again. Walter’s body jumped in Nate’s arms, and a terrible pain ripped through Nate. He fell backward, Walter’s limp form on top of him, the hot slickness of blood coating Nate’s arms, his chest, his heart.
“Emile!” Ouida’s scream came from faraway, and the pain in Nate’s body was screaming, screaming, and Walter wouldn’t look up, wouldn’t move, and they were both reeking in blood. The roar of the plane grew louder, louder than the shriek of Nate’s heart, and Nate heard more shots, but closer, as Ouida, unwavering, killed her second lover in the span of a week.
Nate didn’t care. The only man he would ever love wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving. His head lolled back, showing glazed eyes and a gush of blood froth from his mouth.
Nate needed the blackness of unconsciousness, begged for it, prayed for it, so he wouldn’t have to feel that grief with his whole heart.
Sometimes God is merciful. He never believed that with so much violence as he did the moment the world went black.
Walter, where are you? I can’t feel you here. Shouldn’t we both be dead together?
Nate wouldn’t find out what happened to the film he’d carried unti
l long after the war, but he was told that it was something important. Many of the OSS documents didn’t become declassified until after the turn of the century, and by then, Nate was long past caring that a V-1 missile plant had been destroyed off the coast. It had been an important find tactically, and logistically, Captain Thompson’s sacrifice and Walter’s sacrifice had been well worth it to take those horrors out of play.
When Nate woke in the hospital in Menwith Hill, though, he was not feeling grateful for Walter’s sacrifice. He was not particularly grateful to be alive, but that did not change either thing, and it didn’t stop him from wishing himself dead.
The doctors told him repeatedly that he’d come close.
His second day of consciousness—after what amounted to three days of surgery and touch and go on his part—the woman who’d risked her life to fly in and pick him and Walter up came in with Ouida to tell the story.
They pulled up stools next to Nate’s bed and sat in tense silence for a moment. The pilot was a plain-faced girl with a big smile and an unapologetically bold nose. Lieutenant Marion Mulder, whose husband was also a pilot in the war. In the coming days, she would visit him a lot, because she liked to talk and he was predisposed to listen. She would tell him stories about visiting her cousins in Brooklyn and Queens, and her favorite cousin, Carmen, who lived in Manhattan and was going to Vassar right now, but who would be graduating in a year or two and wanted to help in the war effort too.
But Nate knew none of that when both women first sat at his bedside. All he knew was that he wanted to die, and he was afraid to speak—not because he couldn’t, but because all the recrimination and anger might come flooding out, and he would betray his and Walter’s secret in a place where he might get a blue discharge at the very least for the things they had done in the cabin in Moselle.
“It was Emile,” Ouida said baldly into the fraught silence. It took Nate a moment to register that she was using rusty English. “He was jealous. He wanted you dead for that.”