The Aeronaut

by Bryan Young

  The sound of distant bombing punctuated my safe arrival on the street. The sky in the direction of the front lit up, flashes of white and red illuminated the sky in irregular patterns. Each time the sky brightened, the outlines of the zeppelins appeared. The Germans were stopping at nothing to get to me, to the cards.

  I put out of my mind how many men were dying on the front right now because of the offensive I was sure was my fault.

  I must have grown too accustomed to the look and sound of cities during this forsaken war anyway. I paid no attention to the bombed out rubble on the other side of LeBeau’s. I gave no heed to the concern that this whole place had been shelled, under siege. All it did was create more bricked debris to navigate through. Creeping as best as I could through the narrow alley-way and around the next few buildings, I pressed myself up against the edge of the cottage and inched my head into view, just far enough to catch a glimpse of the American.

  He seemed annoyed, shifting his weight from left to right as he flicked the butt of his cigarette to the ground to smolder. Nervously, he glanced back and forth, but kept his intense focus on the windows of LeBeau’s apartment. I wondered if he was waiting for backup, or if he was simply waiting to see what the situation would be.

  His fixed gaze assured me that he bought my plan. Satisfied with myself, I tried hard to grin, but couldn’t seem to manage it. Nothing happy was going to happen that day.

  Or week.

  Or for the entire duration of the war.

  My marriage was a fluke of a moment, a fleeting blip of happiness.

  The noise of every dropping bomb in the distance brought me out of my introspection and back to a battlefield. And the battlefield brought with it images of wounded soldiers I couldn’t do anything to help.

  But Sara could.

  And that meant there was only one place Sara would have been with a battle raging.

  And that’s where I’d go next.

  29

  The hospital was as I remembered it, only busier. The assault begun by the Germans had caused a staggering influx of wounded already making their way there. The sound of the bombs and the echo of distant gunfire was more acute at the hospital. When you added the shouting orders of the surgeons and doctors and wailing wounded, it sounded like the battle could have been right outside.

  The carnage among the men was worse than I’d ever seen it. Cots spilled outside and up the grass where Sara and I had our first kiss. At the peak of the hill were a pair of nurses, two I didn’t recognize, scrubbing the blood off an empty bed.

  For the wounded in the hospital’s charge not moaning in pain, sleep came easy. Casting eyes across the beds, many were quietly asleep, dreaming of better times. Even agonizing rest, bandaged and broken in the hospital, is beautiful compared to the agony of life in a trench.

  Looking again, I wondered if they hadn’t actually made it. Perhaps they were dead, just waiting for their turn to be moved out into their next life.

  Navigating through the overflow cots and into the hospital itself, I kept a watchful eye out for Sara. I imagined seeing the suffering at the hospital would soften my boiling rage. I wanted to see the Sara I loved before confronting the one I hated. What better place to see that love on display than in the place we met and the one place where she constantly exuded it unconditionally?

  But I had no such luck.

  Neither was my rage softened, nor did I catch sight of her.

  I would recognize her consoling posture anywhere, and every other nurse in the building was a mere pretender. Each of them gave fair imitations of Sara’s quality of caring, but none of them could match it. Their hearts weren’t in it like hers was. You could tell in the way they drooped their shoulders, as if they’d carried loads uphill all day, weary from effort. Sara’s back was always straight as a board, her shoulders held as high as her head, as though she were at a proper finishing school under inspection.

  I still couldn’t seem to find her, though.

  My shoulders slouched. I ran my fingers through my hair and exhaled deeply in a frustrated bid to compose myself.

  I moved past each wounded man without a second look, as though they were already white stone crosses on a patch of countryside.

  Walking through the rows of cots in the dim light they kept in the evening, I finally spotted a familiar sight.

  Hortense.

  She had her back to me, but it was unmistakably her. I’d never forget the shape of her walking away from me. But there was something different about her. She’d always maintained a dignified posture, not unlike Sara’s, but for different reasons. For once, she looked as beaten down as the rest.

  For the first time in my life, I was pleased to see her.

  Weaving through the labyrinth of wounded, I made my way around to the front of the head nurse and stopped her, putting my hands on her shoulders and forcing her to look up and meet my gaze.

  Hortense’s eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were puffy with tracks of tears in her makeup. She’d been crying, though it had been a while.

  “Vous?”

  “Yes. Me. Where’s Sara?”

  “Vous ne devriez pas être ici.”

  She tried to repeat herself in English, but I stopped her. I knew she didn’t think I should be there. It was something she said to me often.

  But then she actually looked at me, running her eyes from the bottom of me to the top. Her sad countenance turned to confusion and then she recoiled at the sight of me.

  “Est-ce que tu vas bien?”

  I must have looked awful. I don’t recall her ever asking me how I was before then.

  “No. Je ne suis pas d’accord. Where’s Sara? Where is my wife?”

  Hortense’s reaction made me think things might be far worse. Perhaps she knew something of Sara. She knew everything when Sara and I were sneaking around the hospital. Perhaps Sara was tucked away in some closet she knew of, whispering sweet endearments to LeBeau.

  Hortense shook her head and pushed past me, going about her work. I was no longer her patient, so there was no reason to bother with me.

  Or maybe I was just too blind to see that the war had taken a toll on her as well.

  I went to the nurse’s station, right where I’d proposed to her. But her chair sat empty. A tumble of rags and bandages were littered across the desk, unfolded. Their haste left little time for neatness.

  “Robert…?” a soft voice said behind me.

  Her voice.

  When I turned and saw her I couldn’t help but smile, broadly, proudly.

  Seeing her there, dressed in her flowing nurse’s uniform with her long raven hair pinned back behind her ears, I seemed to forget all of my stresses. For a brief moment, the possibilities between she and LeBeau no longer existed and the box of data cards I held was lighter than air, no burden whatsoever.

  That’s how disarming her tearful smile was, she could make me forget all the trouble I was in.

  “You’re back?” She dropped the soiled bandages she carried, leaving a smear of red down the front of her apron, letting them fall to the ground in a sopping heap.

  She stepped over the mess, increasing her pace until her arms were wrapped tight around my neck and her lips were on my neck. “I was so worried.”

  I couldn’t help but shed a relieved tear, feeling the weight of her body against mine and the grateful smothering of breathy kisses over my face. The smell of her hair, the warmth of her breath, and the cool touch of her fingers brushing the back of my neck, taken together it was all intoxicating.

  “I was, too.”

  She nuzzled her nose into my shoulder for a moment, closing her eyes and just breathing in my scent.

  It must have been awful for her. I hadn’t showered in days and must have smelled like a pungent mix between body odor and campfire. She paid no notice. The half-smile on her face implied that it all seemed like rain on a spring day.

  She pushed away from my chest to look at me. “I was so sure I was going to lose yo
u.”

  “I thought I had lost you…”

  Confusion washed over her face, but she put it aside, renewing herself in happiness for my unexpected arrival. “And the mission? It’s over then?”

  I looked away from her and the weight of the little metal box returned, like a bag of lead shot hanging from my neck.

  She ran her hand across the three days of stubble on my cheek and dragged my gaze back to her. “What does that look mean?”

  “I…”

  It was a psychotic break of some sort that I suffered. I realized that almost as soon as I saw her. There was no other explanation for my actions. There was no other explanation for why I was there.

  I should have been back in Cambrai, sweating it out in that small prison cell of a room, waiting for Lorrick to yank me out. He had a plan to do it, I’m sure.

  Instead, I took the fourth or fifth option down the list.

  All to relieve the pressure. To get out of there. To get back to Sara.

  And here I was.

  But none of it felt right.

  She yawned, snapping my attention away. Her eyes were burned as red as mine felt. There were lines around her eyes and black circles beneath them.

  As though she could read my thoughts, she commented on them. “We’ve been here since first shift. This latest attack, it’s left us a bit under-staffed. In fact, since you’ve been gone I’ve barely had time to do anything but write you, sleep, and work. They’re sending us reliefs tonight, though.”

  She spoke without taking a breath, as though she’d been bottling up every little thought waiting for me to arrive.

  I wanted to match her love and enthusiasm, but when I summoned it, nothing came.

  Instead, I stammered. “I thought… LeBeau…”

  Her face brightened at the mention of his name. “LeBeau. Yes. He was just here, if you can believe that.”

  My mind flashed to the pair of them in the closet, just as I’d imagined in my foolish, hallucinatory state.

  A chill shook me, then was replaced by a fire in my chest. “Here?”

  She bobbed her head up and down and squinted to smile warmly. It showed the creases of fatigue in her face, but she seemed not to notice. “He was delivering a message from the front. Then he stopped to check in on me for you. You know he really is the sweetest friend. You should go see him. He had a long day, too, and he’d want to know you’re safe. He loves you, you know. He was heading straight to his flat, go see him and I’ll meet you at home as soon as the relief comes.”

  I blinked.

  Then I choked back on the irrationality of my rage.

  And then I thought back to the American agent waiting for LeBeau at his flat and all of the rage dissolved into dread.

  My friend, the only person who really cared, was walking into a trap of my foolish design. “I have to go.”

  “To see LeBeau?”

  “To save him.”

  I pulled her hands from my chest, pecked a too-brief kiss to her lips–I couldn’t resist–and sprinted through the nurse’s station, past Hortense, spinning her like a dervish, beyond the cots of wounded brothers-in-arms, and straight on my way to LeBeau’s flat, hoping the whole time that I could make it before my failure was complete.

  30

  I took the stairs up to LeBeau’s flat two at a time to see the front door broken, splintered at the edges, but closed, obscuring whatever scene lay beyond it.

  Shoving the door open I saw my worst fears realized.

  LeBeau, my old friend and the former target of my shell-shocked lunacy, sat bound to a chair with frayed lengths of golden curtain cords. The cords were wound around his wrists and middle, his legs were tied to the chair’s.

  Immobilized, his face bled from a dozen cuts and nicks and his eyes were closed, bloodied over.

  He was inert in the chair.

  I hoped he wasn’t dead.

  “Andre,” I said, rushing to him.

  His eyes opened to barely a squint before he recognized me. Then his eyes widened and his brows arched high. He tried speaking, but a knot of curtain in his mouth kept him from forming words.

  Closing the rest of the distance between us, I reached around his head and untied the bit of curtain tied around his face so he could speak.

  LeBeau spit the knot from his mouth. “Baise-moi. You are back…”

  His voice was dry, hoarse. There was a gravel to it that told me he’d been screaming.

  I looked over both of my shoulders, expecting to see the American bearing down on me, but the room seemed empty. “Where is he?”

  “Your friend?” LeBeau coughed. “I am afraid he is gone, mon ami.”

  Moving around LeBeau, I knelt behind him and set my fingers to work untying the curtain cords to free LeBeau’s body. “I’m so sorry, Andre.”

  LeBeau’s shoulders slumped. “We’re in a war. I suppose it is to be expected.”

  I freed his middle and went to work on the cord that strapped his arms down and he took a grateful breath. “No. I made this trouble. This is my fault, whatever anyone else says. But I need to know where he’s going.”

  “He is looking for you. He asked about some cards and I thought you might have cheated him in a game of poker.”

  With his left arm free, he brought it up, stretching his fingers and rotating his wrist, bringing life back to it. He did the same with his right arm once I’d untied it. Together we set about freeing his legs.

  “It’s all a lot bigger than that.”

  “Il est un provocateur de l'ennemi, non?”

  “Oui. But I need to know what you told him, Andre?”

  You can tell a lot about a person and what they’re likely to say by how they won’t answer a question. He seemed more intent on cutting the cords from his legs and keeping his mouth shut rather than answer me, which told me I wouldn’t want to face his answer.

  But it was obvious.

  What else could he have told his interrogator? He probably told him everything he knew. My name. Where I lived. About Sara. Where she worked. Each bleeding cut on LeBeau’s face represented a facet of my life bled out and revealed to the man who wanted to kill me.

  LeBeau’s betrayal brought with it feelings of exposed nakedness. I could no longer hide behind my anonymity. There was only one thing I could do.

  I had to kill the American.

  And I had to do it before he killed me.

  “Where is he going, Andre?” I scared myself with how quiet and calm my voice was.

  All the rage I thought I’d feel in confronting LeBeau was gone. He’d done me no wrong. He’d tried to help me and I saw that then. My imagination had simply cracked under the pressure of the war and the mission. I wasn’t suited to the boiling pot of espionage. The lack of sleep and consistent lies didn’t agree with me. I wasn’t well suited to the war either, but that uniform still fit me better.

  “Andre.” I repeated.

  He held his freed hands to his face, putting pressure on a dozen different bleeding nicks. “Where would you be this time of night? Home? I think that is where he is heading.”

  Of course he was.

  Of course that’s how it had to be.

  “I have to go, Andre. I have to stop him. Sara will be there by now, she was meeting me there after her shift.”

  LeBeau wiped his bloodied hands across his pants and stood with a groan. “Je viens avec toi.”

  “No. You’ve done enough. You’re hurt. Go see a medic.”

  “This is my fault, Robert. I told him everything. I will come and I will help if I can.”

  There was no use in arguing with him and I told him so. He took a few limping steps to the stairs and I guessed he would give up. The American had worked him over, not just with the knife, but as a punching bag, but when we crossed the broken threshold of his apartment and reached the stairs, LeBeau proved his resolve was as strong as mine, bounding down them ahead of me three at a time.

  When we reached the street, there a whistling s
hriek sailed through the air, terminating in an explosion much closer than the front.

  “They’re desperate,” LeBeau said, limping into a running gait. “The American said they were stopping at nothing to take the prize from you.”

  I matched his pace and tried doubling it, but the energy to do so wasn’t in me. In all of my short life, I’d never felt so nakedly mortal. My energy had always seemed to match my desire, and there was nothing I desired more than to get to Sara before the American could.

  The running cleared my head some, though. The gravity of the actual situation was a stark contrast to the imagined situations I’d conjured in my exile into German territory and I wanted to make it all right. I’d stained everything with my unspoken accusations and found that I couldn’t trust myself.

  That was another new sensation.

  A rocking explosion and a cloud of dust on the street ahead of me knocked me from my inward thoughts, reminding me that being lost in my head was less important than getting home.

  After the initial expense of our energy, LeBeau and I found ourselves propped up on each other, arms around each other’s shoulders. We ran like a great three legged beast, our legs moving in unison.

  It must have been much worse on LeBeau. I’d been without sleep, but his body had been pounded and his face shredded.

  When we were halfway to the house of mine and Sara’s, I wondered if we’d ever make it.

  It felt like a nightmare: I couldn’t quite feel my legs solid on the ground, I felt like I was floating. My arms were numb and I knew that LeBeau was there, propping me up, but I couldn’t feel him. Every stride we took that didn’t deliver us directly to our destination offered the illusion that we were just running in place. The city was almost unrecognizable in the dark with the blackout called for in the air raid. And I could feel that danger in the air, not just the rubble being made of the city by the German Army, but the threat against Sara. She was bathing in a pool and a shark was coming for her, and I was lamely on shore without the rudimentary skill of swimming. I wanted to scream, but the absence of solid breath in my chest prevented me from doing so.