The Girls from the Beach

by Andie Newton

  The wind roared over her pasture, over her lawn, and tossed up her hair. “Please, God, please…” Evelyn said, crying, flinging her arms out and begging God for help, a release from the debilitating memories she’d been carrying with her for over forty years.

  The rain. There had been so much rain.

  23

  KIT

  I pulled the gun from under my dress and pointed straight up into the rain, not knowing where to aim, blinking through the splatter in my eyes, listening to Roxy cry and Red say how much she loved us, when a woman and two kids peeped into the ditch.

  “Up, up,” she said in English. “Hurry, before someone sees!”

  Red and I looked at each other, then back to her, too stunned to make sense of what was happening. She put her hand out. “Come now, in the truck,” she said, motioning. “The patrols are out. Do you want to get caught?”

  Gail sprung up to take her hand, and that same old farmer who’d been watching us appeared next to her, also with his hand out, helping Roxy and then Red and me out of the ditch.

  “Where are we going?” I said, and she latched up the truck tailgate. “Get down, girls. It’s a bumpy ride.” And we slid down into the truck’s bed and drove off down the uneven orchard road.

  Red still had the morphine gripped in her hand, and I don’t think any amount of talking would have got her to let go of it before she knew where they were taking us.

  We drove into a clearing and onto a smooth road. Moments later we lurched to a stop outside a big farmhouse. We climbed out of the truck and shuffled into the house close together only to stand in the foyer. The kids stared at us, a boy and a girl, as we dripped all over the wood floor. The smell of something salty and warm wafted in from the kitchen, and my stomach growled with the thought of eating something other than apples. Warm firelight crackled from the main room.

  “Where are you from?” the boy asked in German. The girl sucked at her thumb, blonde pigtails in ringlets.

  “Far away,” I said back.

  “America?” he asked, eyes wide, but I couldn’t tell if he was shocked, concerned, or scared.

  The woman clapped at the children. “To your rooms, you two,” she said in German, and the kids moaned before resigning to a slow climb upstairs. She wrapped blankets around us she had retrieved from a hall closet.

  Red and Roxy stood stiff as boards near the door, barely taking a step inside, and rightfully so after the other German homes we’d been in. Gail held on to her bandaged arm, her hair in clumpy wet globs covering her eyes.

  “Cut the lights,” the woman said in German, and the farmer went around the house and flipped off all the lights. She turned to us and spoke in English. “This way, this way…”

  Roxy gasped when she heard her plain accent, which was much more prevalent than it was in the rain looking down at us in the ditch—she sounded American. She waved for us to follow her into the kitchen, toward the smell of soup, and we shuffled along behind her through the front room and down the hall. A long wood table had been set with padded chairs, but we stood around it as if we didn’t know what to do. She patted the blankets over our shoulders, drying up the rain. She reached for my bag.

  “No!” I yelped, and she pulled her hand back. “I mean, my bag stays with me.”

  She paused before smiling. The farmer had already closed the window curtains in the kitchen, and lit candles, which made the room flicker dimly. “Sit,” she said, pulling out the chairs. “Please…”

  Gail and Roxy sat down at the table, and Red too, reluctantly, and eyeing the basket of bread on the table.

  “I have some soup…” The woman slowly lifted the lid on a pot of soup that bubbled with brown broth and one meaty bone.

  “Why are you helping us?” I said.

  She turned away from the kitchen counter with a hot bowl of broth in her hands, which Red immediately shook her head at and mouthed for me not to eat, but I took the bowl because she’d pushed it at me. Though, I wasn’t so trusting this time, and like Red had warned, I didn’t have any intention of eating it until she answered my question. She went to ladle up another bowl.

  “Ma’am,” I said, and she looked at me this time. “Why are you helping us?” I repeated, but much more forcefully. Roxy, Red, and Gail looked up at her from their chairs.

  The woman froze momentarily, studying us and our expressions before finally setting the bowl down. She clasped her hands together. “Because I’m American too,” she said, plainly. “My uncle heard you talking in the orchard.”

  I sat heavily into my chair at the table, overcome with relief. Her dress was unapologetically traditional with little sunflowers and a lacy hem. And her hair, flaxen as a maid in a German fairy tale. “I know what you must think,” she said, pulling her skirt up a hair to show the bulk of fabric disguising her tiny frame. “I was visiting my aunt and uncle when the war broke out, and I got stuck. I’m from South Dakota.” She smiled. “The children are orphans we took in. My aunt died, sadly, of consumption two years ago. I took her name because the Reich was arresting foreigners.”

  “You mean, you’re in hiding?” Red said.

  “But what about the village?” I said. “The town… people talk.”

  She nodded. “They do. We buried her, a private affair in the orchard.” She touched her skirt and fluffed some of the lace. “I wear her clothes and at a distance, people think I’m her. My uncle goes into the village when we need something. The children have never been there.” She held out her hand for me to shake. “My name’s Jean.”

  “I’m Kit,” I said. “This is Roxy, Red—” they both gave a nod “—and Gail.”

  She noticed Gail’s arm, and how she cradled it close to her body even in the sling. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Gail shook her head stiffly.

  “We ran into some trouble,” I said, and Jean reached for Gail’s arm.

  “Let me see it,” Jean said, and I think we were all surprised to see Gail give up her arm for a look. She unwrapped the bandage and examined the pink-stained sutures, and Gail’s stiff pinkie.

  “This is from a poison bullet?” Jean asked, as if she’d seen one before.

  “She bought it two days ago,” I said, and Jean looked up.

  “Two days?” Jean held a candle to it for more light, inspecting the dye a little closer. “I know this poison. It’s common around here. Did the bullet split or break?” Jean’s eyes trailed up to Gail’s.

  “No,” Gail said.

  Red immediately stood up to comfort Gail when Jean held her breath. “Then this is the worst of it. Right there. That finger,” Jean said, and Gail collapsed into a heap of tears right on the woman’s table.

  “Are you sure?” Red said, and Jean nodded.

  “I’ve been so scared,” Gail said, “thinking I could die at any moment.”

  “You’re not the first.” Jean got a dry bandage and redressed the wound, and she did it expertly, which impressed me as much as Red. “Herr Esser has been known to use these on trespassers. He owns the big cornfield on the other side of Lichtenau. Is that where it happened?” Jean said, but Gail kept sobbing with her head down.

  Esser. The man I killed. It was a strange feeling, knowing his name. Gail sat straight up after she had a moment, and wiped her eyes, taking a few gulping breaths. She never answered Jean’s question, or said a word about Herr Esser. It was our secret, to go with the others.

  Jean motioned for us to have some bread and eat up her soup, which we were more than happy to do now that we knew she was American, and she watched us from her chair, arms folded, while we ate like ravenous pigs, slurping straight from the bowl and chewing up every last bit of bread she had in the basket. Roxy belched, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Sorry.”

  “Quite all right,” Jean said. She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs at the knees. “Now, what the heck are you girls doing over here?”

  I swallowed, holding on to the bag of diamonds near my waist as if it we
re a baby in my belly. “Probably best if you don’t know,” I said, and she nodded. “Thank you for the food, and for bringing us in out of the rain.”

  Red and I scooted from our seats to clear the table and talked about how we should get going. Jean spoke up and said we could rest in her loft for the night.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I insist,” Jean said. “But my uncle would be glad if you left by morning.”

  Her uncle had walked by, passing through the room, and paused when he heard her say his name. Roxy mouthed, “Please,” while rubbing her neck. We needed to rest. We had to rest. Red and I discussed it further and decided to give in to her offer since we knew the damage from Gail’s poison bullet had reached its peak.

  “Understood,” I said, and her uncle walked upstairs. “We will leave first thing.”

  Red pulled the map out but it was a useless, sodden glob of paper from the rain. “The river is only a three-mile walk from here,” Jean said, pointing west. “Head that way and it’s a straight shot.”

  “We’re almost home,” Red said, taking each of our hands. “Three more miles.”

  “I never thought I’d say it,” Roxy said, “but boy I miss France. I miss the dirt. I miss our shabby tent.”

  Jean led us to a loft through a secret staircase that had been built for servants. Her uncle built shelves inside to make it look like a closet, complete with folded linens but left a space big enough for a few thin bodies to squeeze through off to the side.

  We made our way up the dark and narrow passageway into the loft. The staircase was straight as a spine and cracked like old bones. We moved in shadows, feeling our way about the loft using the walls and each other. Jean lit one candle and then warned us not to light any more, and pointed to a small round window in the far reaches of the rafters. “A secret room must stay dark.” She pulled a few blankets for us from a trunk to sleep with and gave us each a sweater.

  Red shook Jean’s hand before she left, the candlelight flickering between them. “Thank you for saving us.” It was a simple thank you but weighted with the world.

  Jean nodded once before shutting the door quietly behind her, and we listened to her retreating footsteps cracking down the stairs. It was then the room seemed to lighten a little more from our adjusting eyes. And the house was quiet. A few creaks here and a few creaks there before we heard a round of explosions thundering in the distance. I shook violently from the unexpected shake of it, coming up from the ground and rattling the house internally.

  “I miss my mother,” Gail said, and she curled up on the floor next to Red, who petted her head.

  “Me too,” Red said. “Tell us about her, Gail. Tell us the first thing you’re going to do when you get home. Give us all some hope, something to believe in.”

  Rain tapped on the roof as Gail went on about her mother, how she was the smartest person she knew, even smarter than Gail, but she’d never stepped foot in a college classroom. “She wanted me to do what no other woman in our family had done—only the men—and go to college. Oh, and she’s beautiful. I can see her now, sparkling eyes and Greta Garbo hair. The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is hug her into the next year…”

  Red sniffled as Gail talked about her mother, reaching for her cheek in the dark to wipe tears away. “That’s what I’m going to do too, hug my mom clear into next year,” Red said. “That, and pay off my mother’s landlord so she’ll never have to worry again. In fact, I’ll get us a new place. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do! I should have a few nice bucks coming after all this. And wouldn’t it be great if we walked back into the field hospital and found out we were promoted?”

  “Now you’re really dreaming,” I said.

  “Oh, but I’m not done,” Red said. “After I get cleaned up and look nice and neat, I’m going to walk over to Jim Marshall’s house and kiss him right on the lips.”

  “Who’s Jim Marshall?” I asked.

  “An absolute nobody of an ex-boyfriend,” Red said, and we all laughed. “That’s one thing I miss. Looking nice. It’s something I think about when the nights are long. There’s a cosmetics case I have, a real expensive one. All my Max Factor cosmetics are in there.” She sighed. “I can’t wait to put on a full face of Max Factor.”

  “Yeah,” Roxy said, followed by Gail.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’ll be the day. That’s when I’ll know the war is over.”

  We sat with our thoughts in the dark. It was the simple things we missed—all those things we took for granted before the war. And when that day came, when I could wear that full face of Max Factor like Red talked about, I knew I’d be thinking of my girls. Maybe I’d even buy a case like Red’s. I just hoped I could keep the memories—all the thoughts of this damn war—from consuming me like my mother’s thoughts consumed her.

  “I love you guys,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s okay to say that—the doom of saying it out loud. But God’s truth, I love ya,” I said, and they all answered up that they loved me too, and my voice quivered. “And Red, nobody’s a better chief nurse…”

  She reached for my hand in the dark. “We’re in it together,” Red said. “Remember what I said back at our field hospital? We’ll meet up after the war, like we talked about when we drank wine at our sandbag canteen.” She gave my hand a squeeze when I heard her tearing up. “We will. And tomorrow, we’ll leave early, a short walk to the river and we’ll be in France. Safe. And this part of the nightmare will be over.”

  So many days had passed since we landed on Utah Beach. Every day as clear as the next, marked by a smell, remembered by the odor of war. The loft had its own smell, one of still dust and mold. Only thin German walls separated us from the war outside and the short miles between our troops and the Rhine. My heart ticked up, thinking how close we were to the line, and how easy it would be for us to get caught in a battle if we stayed here one second longer—but leaving in the night and in the rain? We had to wait.

  “Hey,” Roxy said, and I looked up in the direction of her voice. “Will ya get a load of this?” She pulled something out from the darkest corner of the room, dragging it to us by a cord.

  “Is that…” I covered my open mouth.

  “A radio!” Roxy said.

  I glanced at the door, remembering the last time I tried to listen to a radio and the pharmacist’s wife had rudely taken it away. Gail sat up. “Do you think it works?”

  “I don’t know,” Roxy said.

  “Where’s an outlet?” I said, and Red patted the walls, then we all did as quietly as we could in the dimly lit room. I started to think maybe there wasn’t one, being an old house and in the loft, but then I found one. “Here! There’s one here!”

  “Keep it low,” Red said, patting my arm, even though the rain had picked up and trickled off the roof. Nobody would hear us. I plugged the cord in, and we huddled around it on the floor, getting a finger’s width away from the speaker. I rotated the dial slowly, through the buzz of static and undecipherable words until we heard snippets of music, then… song.

  Clair de Lune.

  Roxy gasped. “Oh my—”

  “God,” I breathed.

  My eyes fell closed, my mind dissolving into the invisible space where the piano thrummed, overcome with emotion from what I’d been through since the landing, since Utah—the firefights, the night raids, wounded soldiers crying out for their mothers, the finality of dying, death and decay. The river, losing the doctor, and feeling his wet hand slip through mine. Gail’s bullet, the dead bodies in Gilda’s barn—every memory as if it were one. I wept silently, listening to the music with tears dripping off my cheeks and pooling on the floor.

  The next time I pull back our tent’s flap, sit on my cot and feel the warm blanket between my fingers, I’ll remember this cold room, this hell, I thought, and it will be over.

  Red put her arms around all of us, and we shared the song together, thankful to be alive.

 
And thankful it was our last night in Nazi Germany.

  *

  Red shook me awake, her fingers digging into my shoulders with such urgency I sprung forward into a sitting position from a dead sleep. “Get up!” she hissed. “Kit…” Red climbed on a chair to see out the tiny window way up high. Roxy and Gail sat up, scooting together in paralyzed fear from the cut of Red’s voice in the shadowy morning air. I clutched the bag near my waist, watching Red in a silent fury as her hands gripped the window frame and the sun rose over the trees.

  “What is it?” I said.

  Red turned around, hands bracing the wall behind her, her feet sliding off the chair one by one onto the floor. Her face in disbelief.

  “They’re here.”

  “Who?” I said, and I pulled Jean’s sweater tightly around me. “The butcher?”

  She’d covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes closed, her voice whispering through her finger gaps. “The Reich.”

  I jumped up from the floor to peek out the window myself. Standing on my tiptoes on the chair. My eyes barely crested the glass, watching two men in military-style uniforms get out of a car and point to the orchard and then to the house. “They found us!” My whole body shook.

  “In the corner!” Red said, flicking her fingers at us to move, and we crammed together, arms entangled, feet and legs. A rattling knock at the front door traveled up through the floorboards, followed by pounding footsteps into the house. Red put her finger to her lips.

  We heard German being spoken, but the words were muffled. “What are they saying?” I whispered to Gail, but she only shook her head. Then her jaw dropped, and I heard it too.

  “Women,” one of them said, and I looked at Gail with a hand clamped over my mouth. A pause followed, which allowed me to wonder who he was talking to, the uncle or Jean, or maybe even the children—I wouldn’t put anything past the Reich.