The Girls from the Beach

by Andie Newton

  Red took the instruments from Gail to clean herself, dousing antiseptic over them from the broken bottle. One ampule of penicillin survived the river. She held the injectable in her palm. “This won’t be good forever,” Red said.

  “It’s better than nothing, I suppose,” I said.

  “How are we going to carry our supplies?” Gail asked, and Red turned her around and wrapped her legs up like a mummy with bandages.

  “We’ll have to tuck everything under the bandages,” Red said. “Our skirts will hide it.”

  Gail stood with her arms up as if Red was her seamstress and fitting her for a new dress. “But it’s so bulky,” Gail said. “People will notice.”

  “Do you have another idea?” Red said, and she paused to look up at Gail with her arms spread out until she shook her head.

  Once we’d taken as much equipment with us as we could, Red stashed what was left under a rock, and buried our fatigues in a hole. The dress I wore was still damp and smelled fishy like the river with little purple flowers and a lacy hem. I’d been wearing fatigues for so long, the air between my legs felt odd and wrong. My hair crunched in my hands.

  Roxy looked me over with those big brown eyes of hers, pulling a sprig of river weed from my hair. “You look like a drowned rat,” Roxy said. Red also looked horrible in her ruffly pinstripe dress and Gail in her peachy thing. “We all do. We’ll never blend in.” Roxy pointed to her feet, wet toes in wet shoes that squished with water. “And our shoes!”

  Red pulled a kerchief from her pack to cover her red hair, and immediately she aged ten years. “We’ll blend in,” Red said. “Hand me your packs.” Gail gave hers up instantly, while Roxy shook hers out in the dirt before handing it over. I folded the map up before holding out my pack. “Anything you want to say?” She glanced once at the map in my hand.

  I slipped the map down the front of my dress. “About what?”

  She snatched the pack from my hands, and the way she did it let me know she wasn’t finished with me about where I got the map.

  A huge tree feathered with golden orange leaves grew out from the riverbank. “Remember this tree,” Red said, pointing. “It’s our way out.”

  God help us.

  And together all four of us walked away from the river and into Germany.

  *

  We stood on a hill looking down at the village. Binoculars in my hand. No cars drove in and out, the farms looked derelict and the vineyards were all dried up. “What do you see?” Red said, and I looked into my binoculars from behind a leafy tree branch.

  My gaze rolled over the village, over the rooftops and down the cobbled roads. Third building on the right after the square. Third building on the right after the square. Third building on the right after the— “Ah hell,” I said, gasping. “There’re two squares.”

  Red reached for the binoculars, yanking them from my eyes. “Give me those.” She took a long look at the squares. “Wonderful,” she said, handing the binoculars to Roxy.

  “Nobody said anything about two squares,” Roxy said, after looking. She handed the binoculars to Gail, who after studying the village for a moment, noticed something we had not.

  “One’s bigger than the other,” Gail said.

  “Let me see,” I said, and I looked again, adjusting the lenses, and sure enough the second square was different than the first. “It is smaller!” I said. “You can clearly see a fountain in the first and a bell tower, but nothing in the second.”

  “Man,” Roxy said. “You trying to give me a heart attack or somethin’?”

  “Red,” I said, but she’d started to pace. “Red!”

  “What?” Red said, stopping, and looking no better than she had moments ago, agitated and worried.

  “It’s smaller,” I said.

  She came walking back. “What does that mean? Smaller. So what if it’s smaller? Doesn’t change the fact that there are two squares,” Red said.

  “Let me see again,” Gail said, and I handed her the binoculars. “The biggest square is always the true square of any village. Anything else is considered an open alleyway or a close. The second one doesn’t have anything extraordinary about it, no fountain, no central meeting point. I’ve seen these kinds of openings all over—not a square.”

  “I thought you just got here?” I asked.

  “Ya,” Roxy said. “How are you so sure?”

  “I did just get here…” Gail pulled the binoculars from her eyes, and she paused, looking at us. “What I meant was, that’s what I read in the Baedekers. Read the Paris guide cover to cover on my trip over—”

  “You read a travel guide coming over?” I said, laughing, thinking of Gail sunning herself on her ship’s deck in her little white nurse dress, thumbing through a travel guide on her way to war. Of course, she sunned herself. Red rolled her eyes. “We came over on the Pendleton, arriving four days after D-Day.” I paused to see if she’d catch on to what I meant by that, but it appeared she was lost. “We were under constant threat of a U-boat attack—torpedoes, Gail. And during the night, when we were fast asleep in the bowels of the ship on our swinging cots, our captain sailed us into an underwater German minefield—yeah, and in case you’re wondering, German bombs sound just as menacing exploding all around you in the ocean as they do on land.”

  “Yeah,” Roxy said.

  Gail flashed us a quick smile before looking back into the binoculars—what I’d said made no impact on her whatsoever. My mouth fell open.

  “Open alleyways are very popular,” Gail said. “The first one is the location we’re looking for. Third building on the right. See there?” She pointed toward the village. “White brick with an awning. Looks like a business, a pharmacy maybe. It’s hard to tell what every building is, but this is my best guess…”

  It was the most I’d heard Gail talk in one conversation, and by the look of Roxy’s wide eyes, it was clear I wasn’t the only one stunned by her sudden chattiness and her total disregard for what I’d said about our crossing to the beaches.

  Red snatched the binoculars from Gail. “Let me see those.” She looked again, though very quickly. “Better hope you’re right,” Red said.

  “So… What are we gonna do?” Roxy said. “We can’t waltz down there and ask the Huns about our boys. That’ll be suicide!’”

  Red folded her arms. “Oh, you don’t say?”

  “Stop it, Red,” Roxy said. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Give me a break.”

  “I say we walk into the village as anyone else would.” I ripped a handful of colorful weeds from the ground that looked more like wildflowers. “And carry some flowers. I’ll lock arms with Red and we’ll go straight on through. Nobody will think we’re suspicious if we move causally yet swiftly. German girls carry flowers, right?” I dusted away the dirt and snapped off the roots, holding the weeds like a little bouquet.

  Gail pulled up some weeds too and so did Roxy.

  “But what if…” Roxy said. “What if we see some Germans? Not the locals. The ones like we saw at the river.”

  We looked at each other. Nobody wanted to say they were scared.

  “If you see a German, keep walking,” Red said. “And whatever you do, don’t talk—no matter what. The second you say something in English we’ll all be dead.” She looked at me. “You either. Don’t say anything.”

  The rain had evaporated from the grass and the sun was out. Puffy white clouds floated way up high, so beautiful, no planes, no sign of war—exactly the kind of weather four young German women would be out strolling around in. Yet, not one of us moved from the top of the hill, and my heart raced from being scared.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Roxy said, wiggling from being wrapped up like a mummy with supplies under her dress.

  “I need a second, all right?” I took a deep breath before looking at Red. “If anything happens…” I said, swallowing. “Red, I want you to know…”

  “I know, Kit,” Red said. “I know.”

  Red
took the first step and together we walked down the hill through a field of blue cornflowers to get to the street. The air smelled sweet, not cloudy with diesel or smoke from charred villages, but of the last days of summer.

  The buildings were taller up close, with many windows for people to peek out. Red and I watched carefully, looking for people looking at us between fluttering curtains, when a group of German girls ran past us on the sidewalk—one, two, three—little blonde heads bobbing down the road.

  I watched them with a hand to my chest, before looking at Red; we weren’t prepared to see smiling children, especially ones who looked rested and wearing clean dresses. Not like the shoeless French children who were starving, dirty, and crying.

  We turned the corner, only I’d gasped from walking under a Nazi banner hung proudly over a restaurant. I’d seen them in the newspapers and on the newsreels, but in the French cities we’d passed through they’d been torn down and burned up. “My God,” I whispered, and Red tugged on my arm.

  We stopped to read the road sign, but there were three and they pointed in different directions even though there were only two streets to choose from. A woman asked if we needed help, and when we looked at her stunned and still, she pulled stiffly on her jacket lapels. “Where are you going?” she reiterated, nose pointed.

  Roxy sneezed into her flowers, and we all shook from the unexpected shock of noise.

  “Well!” the woman said, and she stormed off.

  Red grabbed me by the sleeve when she heard the fountain, and we scampered off toward the sound of the gushing water. I counted our steps, counted the buildings. Third building on the right after the square. I saw the white one with the brick and striped awning. It was a pharmacy, just like Gail thought. Of all the places—a pharmacy, most likely with medicines and supplies? I wrapped my fingers around the cool glass knob, pausing slightly, waiting for Roxy and Gail to catch up the two steps they’d lagged behind, but I had a terrible, sinking feeling I’d got the directions all wrong. A pharmacy? What were the odds?

  “Jesus, the police,” Red said, voice deep, and we whipped our heads around. They patrolled the square, pointing to German women gathered in a group. Their fingers shifted toward us and my stomach felt like it had fallen out of my body and landed on the sidewalk.

  Roxy’s scalpel slipped out from under her skirt and the metal clanked on the ground. “Go in!” She snatched it up in a hurry, but I looked at Red, desperately trying to gauge if she was thinking the same thing—had we gotten it wrong?—when she reached around and opened the door herself.

  We shuffled in like penguins under the ding of a ringing bell that echoed into the street, then immediately turned to look out the window after closing the door. The policemen had walked to their car instead of toward us, none the wiser.

  “I think we did it,” I said, but we still searched the streets, looking for any signs that someone else had noticed us, but it seemed as if nobody had. “Ah, we did do it,” I breathed, only to turn around and scream.

  One stunned pharmacist and his equally shocked wife stared at us from the middle of the store. The woman clutched a broom in her hand while he slowly grabbed a metal rod from a shelf.

  “Red,” I said, and the wife backed up, whispering a few words in German to her husband I couldn’t make out, and he tightened his grip around the metal rod. The wife froze, one foot behind the other, eyes shifting.

  They both made a break for it out the back and Roxy jumped over the counter and wedged her body between them and the door.

  “We’re Americans,” Red exclaimed, and when the man looked at me, I lifted my dress up to show them the medical supplies I had under my skirt. His mouth turned into an “O.”

  “Quick! This way,” he said in broken English.

  We followed him down a short hallway and into a cellar with a man lying on a mattress, who immediately reached for a club resting against the wall. His mattress springs squeaked and shifted from the weight of his body trying to sit up enough to use it, only he collapsed from exhaustion and I saw his face.

  “Jack?” I said, shocked, flabbergasted, and searching for words.

  “It’s you!” he said. “Thank God. I hoped it would be you…”

  He looked rougher than he looked the last time I saw him, stubbly beard and dirty fingernails. “What are you—” I bent to my knees, reaching for supplies. “I didn’t expect this…”

  Roxy unraveled a bandage from her leg. “You know this guy?” she said, and when I nodded, Red looked at me. A slight shake of her head followed, which I took as a warning not to say how.

  His arm had been bandaged up a while ago and was now soiled with brown blood—old blood. “Were you shot?” I said, and he nodded. Roxy and Red started unwrapping his arm while I pulled a hypodermic needle and an ampule of penicillin out from under my dress.

  He tried to smile when I moved in close, but his arm got the better of him and he grimaced. I smoothed his hair back to get a look at his eyes, see if he was in shock. “Look here,” I said, and his eyes shifted to mine and they were sky blue with dark lashes, and suddenly I was staring.

  I turned away, faking a cough. “Where are the others?” I said. “We were told there were a few of you boys. Maybe even an amputation.” I prepared the needle for injection, pulling the medicine into the syringe after giving the ampule a shake.

  He swallowed dryly. “They didn’t make it.”

  Roxy immediately covered her gaping mouth with this news, leaving Red to pull his sticky bandage off.

  “Ugh!” Red said into her sleeve. The markings of an infection had set in and the bullet hadn’t been removed.

  “It’s warm too, Jack,” I said, feeling his skin, and I had to wonder what would have happened to him if we hadn’t come.

  I waited for Red and Roxy to finish looking Jack over for other wounds as the couple tried talking to Gail in their broken English, but she unexpectedly replied in perfect German.

  I looked up, nearly dropping my hypodermic syringe.

  Red and Roxy were still too busy to notice, but it was very clear to me. She wasn’t speaking a few broken words; she sounded fluent with an accent. Gail stopped talking mid-word when she noticed me staring, turning slowly, and the air between us felt uncomfortable and charged.

  “Kit, you gonna stick him?” I heard Roxy say, but I couldn’t say a thing and swallowed a million times, standing like a goose among the reeds, frozen with a syringe in one hand and an ampule of penicillin in the other.

  A bell chimed from the front of the store, and the pharmacist and his wife looked terrified. “Go, go,” Gail said to them in German. “We’ll be quiet as mice.”

  The wife patted her hair in place and fixed her apron before walking back to the front of the store with her husband. Gail closed the door gingerly behind them and without a sound. She fit her ear into the crack to hear. “Quiet as mice,” she said again in German, and with that Red and Roxy had turned around.

  The nervous tick in my chest spread throughout my body. Gail’s shiny hair, and that noticeably nourished figure of hers took an unexpected, suspicious turn. She showed up to France wearing the wrong uniform, and the day after we’d questioned the SS officer and learned about the Nazi war chest. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t see it before. She knew about the squares, she spoke German, and even though we’d accepted her as a nurse, I couldn’t forget how she’d squirmed at the sight of needles.

  Red snapped once to get my attention, mouthing silent words to me I didn’t understand, but the sentiment was there; Gail was German, a spy, the kind the sergeant had warned us about.

  I motioned for Jack’s club on the ground, and Red quietly reached over and handed it to me, while Roxy took the syringe and ampule from my hands. My brother had taught me how to hit a baseball. “Keep your hands together and load up,” he’d once said to me. “Swing all the way through.”

  Red nodded once, and I tightened my grip around the club, looking at the back of Gail’s neck and her brassy he
ad of curls.

  11

  KIT

  Gail pressed her ear to the door, listening carefully to the commotion on the other side, while I took a step toward her. A seesaw squeak from Jack inching up in his bed, the sound of Roxy’s lips mouthing words to Red, and I pulled back the club. Gail turned around, immediately jumping back with fists defensively in front of her body. Every tendon in my arms locked up.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  The door burst open, and the pharmacist and his wife rushed into the room. “Customer is gone,” they both said, only to freeze when they saw me with the club and Gail with her fists up.

  “Who are you?” I said, rotating my wrists and swinging the club around.

  The couple looked at Gail, mouthing off some frantic German words asking what was going on with Gail replying in an equally frantic tone that she didn’t know.

  Red lunged at Gail, taking her by the arms and getting her on the ground. “You’re hurting me,” Gail said, tearfully. “Cut it out, Red… please…”

  I lowered the club after hearing her pleading voice only to raise it once more. “Tell us who you are,” I said, chin up. “Where’d you learn to speak German like that?”

  “In college,” she said, “I swear it.” She burst into tears and Red let go of her. “What’s wrong with you guys?” Gail coughed and spit through her tears, which made it hard not to believe to her.

  I dropped my arms, and the club slipped from my fingers and fell onto the floor. “Why didn’t you tell us you knew German?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” Gail’s knees curled up into her chest. The couple tried to help her and she talked to them in German through her tears, telling them that we were indeed the nurses they’d been expecting. I tried to help Gail up, but she scooted away to stand flush against the wall with her hands feeling the bricks behind her.

  “Listen, Gail,” I said. “We’re not going to kill you. We’re on edge, all right? And when you started speaking like a local out of the blue it sounded fishy.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Can’t you understand? From the start, you’ve been off. You’re the most squeamish nurse in France, and you knew things about the squares and then to find out you’re fluent in German?” She nodded, which surprised me. “So, you do understand?”