David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  She’d come from the kitchen, wearing her apron. She dried her hands in it before holding them out to Joe Amos. They joined hands and he waited, to see if she would pull him in. She did. He kissed her.

  The kiss poured over Joe Amos like cement. After she pulled away, he could have stood like this in the hall for a year, with hands and lips curled and empty but frozen in elation. Geneviève grabbed one hand and tugged at him to follow.

  ‘Can you stay?’ she asked, turning to him in the kitchen.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Dinner?’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe a little after, too.’

  ‘C’est merveilleux.’

  ‘I brought you something.’

  From the backpack he handed her the champagne. She took the bottle with reverent hands, reading the label and gasping.

  ‘Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin? This is forty-five years old. Joe Amos, where did you get this? It is ... I do not know how to say.’

  ‘I can get more, anytime I want. It’s for you.’

  ‘My father. He will not believe this.’

  ‘It’s not for him, Geneviève. Just for you.’

  The girl pursed her lips, considering. She cocked her head, Joe Amos believed he had never seen a more dazzling gesture.

  ‘Is McGee with you?’

  ‘Your dad is showing him the Peugeot.’

  ‘Parfait! He will have McGee fixing it the rest of the afternoon.’

  Geneviève spun to a cupboard. She flung it open to retrieve two crystal goblets.

  ‘Then this bottle, it is for you, aussi. Oui?’

  Almost giddy, Joe Amos watched the girl unwrap the foil and unravel the stopper wire. Humming, she gripped the neck between her knees and let the cork sail up to the kitchen ceiling. The flight of the cork, forty-five years in place, popped them into laughter. Joe Amos took from her hand a glass of champagne from the last century. Those years gave their clinking toast an extra sweetness, and a hint of misbehavior, like icing on a cake. The two sipped the bubbles and kissed again.

  ~ * ~

  Joe Amos had never tasted anything like the vintage champagne. Sweet and crisp, bubbling like laughter, their gulps drew them inching closer with each ping of their goblets, until they drank the last drops smelling the sweetness on each other’s breath. They set the glasses together on the table and slipped into each other’s arms. His hand rose to her, her nipple through her dress nubbed tenderly in the center of his palm. He tasted the champagne on the lid of her mouth and in the eager fencing of her tongue with his.

  Joe Amos knew he was drunk, surprisingly quick. This made him hurry, before dizziness distracted or lessened him. He brought his other hand to her breast. Now he was not holding her to him but groping and kissing. Geneviève pulled her hands from behind him, to push at him, but kept her mouth engaged. Joe Amos sensed he’d taken a wrong turn in the depths of this kiss. Instead of easing his pressure against the girl, he stepped forward, to express the desire between his legs into her thigh, believing in his confusion that speed was important. Geneviève tugged his hands down from her chest and stepped back, breaking the contact at all but their lips. Joe Amos stayed put, leaning out over his toes to bridge himself to her. At last she released the kiss. Joe Amos stumbled forward. She dodged out of his way, giggling.

  ‘Sit down,’ she snapped, but playful, pointing at a chair. ‘Joe Amos, sit down.’

  He sat, trying to match himself to the new rhythm in the kitchen. The champagne continued to slosh over his senses. His lips and palms buzzed, and his erection needed adjusting in his pants. He waited for her to straighten her apron with her eyes cast down before nudging it to lie along his leg and not protrude like a pup tent.

  ‘Damn, girl. What was in that champagne?’

  She waggled a finger in his face. ‘It is not the champagne that concerns me. And you know it.’

  ‘Sorry.’ But Joe Amos wasn’t sorry. Geneviève stepped closer. She laid fingers under his chin.

  ‘Do not be sorry. But this is not the way. Vous comprenez? You understand?’

  ‘Yeah. I am. I do. I mean... I’m sorry. We’ll... I dunno, we’ll date.’

  ‘Oui!’ She applauded. ‘We will date!’

  Joe Amos kept to the chair for another hour while Geneviève prepared dinner. She chopped vegetables and split a chicken, wielding a knife and chatting on as if she had not drunk a drop. Joe Amos could handle any liquor or beer, but he cataloged champagne for the future as something to be careful with. She brought him glasses of water spiked with herbs. After a while he closed his eyes and lowered his head to the sounds of the girl blithe and quick all around him—at the counter, in the cabinets, and at the table.

  He awoke with a snort, alone in the kitchen. He stood and stared out the kitchen window, through a sore haze that added to his respect for champagne. In the yard by the well, McGee washed himself from a bucket.

  Joe Amos listened for Geneviève in the house. The “lace was a mansion and she could be deep in it somewhere. He walked outside to McGee.

  Before he could reach the well, the snarl of the Peugeot rounded the house from the front drive. McGee looked up from splashing his arms. Seeing Joe Amos, he shrugged, admitting he’d been pressed into service on the car. The engine revved, the horn honked once, and Joe Amos headed around the building. McGee grabbed his tunic and OD undershirt, lagging behind.

  Emerging past the shrubs, Joe Amos saw Geneviève step from the Peugeot. The Marquis left the motor running and sat rubbing the steering wheel, savoring what was probably his first drive in years. Seeing Joe Amos, Geneviève walked briskly to him.

  Passing, she draped a hand along his waist.

  ‘I’ll get dinner ready. Go for a ride.’

  She spoke to McGee before she entered the house. The Marquis called from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Joe Amos! Your McGee is a wizard, a shaman with the engine. Mon Dieu, this car has sat so long and now she motors like she is a cat! Come! We will take her out!’

  Joe Amos walked to the driver’s-side window.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The Marquis lifted a hand to mimic striking himself in the head. ‘You live in a vehicle. Why should you want another drive? Eh? McGee! I will show you what you have done! Come!’

  McGee waved off the suggestion.

  ‘Ah, well.’ The Marquis shut down the engine. He ran fingers over the steering wheel in a parting caress, contemplating something, lost time, a missing wife perhaps. Whatever it was, Joe Amos guessed the look on the Marquis’s face was not in thanks but regret.

  The Marquis climbed from the car. He laid a hand on Joe Amos’s back. ‘Walk with me.’

  Joe Amos nodded, muzzy from his nap and the champagne. He hoped Geneviève had tossed away the bottle, to keep their interlude in the kitchen just between them. They walked past McGee. Joe Amos said, ‘Car sounds good.’

  McGee’s shirts were a clump in his hand. He narrowed his eyes at the Marquis.

  ‘It oughta.’

  The Marquis led Joe Amos onto the lawn, to the shade of a great oak. Cicadas whirred and birds on high branches chirped. Joe Amos imagined himself the heir of this manor, husband to the girl inside. The great house spread wide like welcoming arms. Joe Amos wanted to tell the Marquis how much he desired to belong here. He wanted to compress all the time that lay ahead, the time needed to know Geneviève and this man well enough and to earn their love and his place among them. He realized he was still rushing forward, the way he had with Geneviève in the kitchen, and that had been a mistake. He smiled at the Marquis.

  ‘I see the looks my daughter has for you. Perhaps I think she is amoureuse.’ The Marquis sighed, seeming to lament that Joe Amos required a translation. ‘She is in love.’

  Joe Amos thrilled to hear this. Instantly he composed a speech that in another second he would launch into, swearing to take care of Geneviève for the rest of her life, to be a good man and a good son-in-law, so help him God.

  The Ma
rquis lifted a finger, sensing the gush on Joe Amos’s lips. ‘Let me be perfectly clear, my son. It is only fair to do this.’

  Joe Amos held his breath.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ He had not thought before to call the Marquis ‘sir.’ The man was a thief. Now he was the father of things Joe Amos coveted, Geneviève and this shady ground.

  ‘I believe you care for my daughter, non?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I do. I think she’s the best.’

  ‘Yes, well. I can see in her eyes, I know her voice. She is taken with you, as well. However, I want to warn you.’

  Joe Amos stiffened. Where was there room in this shade, on this grass off the road, away from the war, for bad news, a warning?

  The Marquis swept a hand.

  ‘All this you see. And yes, I can tell, you admire. All this is not what it seems. Geneviève and I, we are not so much with money as once we were. The Nazis for four years were in our home. Everything has fallen down. We have no money, the land has grown over and cannot be farmed until it is cleared. There is nothing left to us but this house, a few chickens, and two cans of gasoline you have brought. We lived like beggars at the Nazis’ hands, and like beggars we are still.’

  Joe Amos looked from the Marquis to the manor, across the groomed lawns. He knew all this was a facade, had realized it even before he saw this place, when the Marquis was caught rummaging through his truck bed like a raccoon. The Marquis and Geneviève were not the masters of this property. They were its servants, just as they were when the Krauts billeted here. The Marquis kept up appearances, mowing, sweeping, pretending he was still royal.

  Affection surged in Joe Amos for the man and this place. The Marquis was admitting to him that everything here had indeed fallen, the Marquis and his daughter, too.

  Joe Amos, from rural Virginia, a colored in the United States Army, understood how a man can be put down, and want most in this world to rise.

  ‘So,’ the Marquis said, hands in his pockets, gazing into the mown grass. ‘I do not want you to come to my daughter because you believe she is with wealth. I would not want that for her.’

  ‘Marquis, no, man. No. That’s not it at all.’

  ‘Say no more.’ The Marquis raised a palm, accepting Joe Amos’s protest. ‘I believe you. I know the character of a man. And we are not so poor that we cannot cut up one more chicken for you and your fine McGee for dinner, oui?’

  ‘Yeah. Qui. That’ll be great.’

  The man linked his arm inside Joe Amos’s. They walked behind long afternoon shadows, which led them like dark horses before a carriage. Passing the truck parked in the circle drive, the Marquis stopped. He stuck a finger into one of the bullet holes in the Jimmy’s bed.

  ‘Very brave.’

  Joe Amos waited, standing close. He retreated a step.

  ‘So, Marquis. The truth.’

  ‘Yes? Truth of what?’

  ‘You really don’t care that I’m a black man?’

  The Marquis tilted his head at the question. ‘No, no, mon ami. This is France, not your backwards America. I do not care at all that you are black, or purple. Why should I? I am a poor man. Who can I look down on, eh?’

  The Marquis returned his attention to the Jimmy. The man sucked his teeth once and Joe Amos saw something there, a hesitance, then a flash that may have been too quick for the Marquis to catch and hide.

  He doesn’t care that I’m black, Joe Amos realized. That isn’t the thing, what makes me not good enough for his daughter.

  He cares that I drive a truck.

  ‘Marquis,’ Joe Amos said.

  The man looked up from the bullet holes. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I can help.’

  ~ * ~

  D+46

  July 22

  The forest of Mont Castre left its mark on the Tough Ombres.

  In the pre-dawn light, Ben walked Sam Baum along the lines of the 358th. In the ten days the 90th spent breaching the Mahlman Line, the division had been savaged. The slopes and crest of Purple Heart Hill split the 90th like light through a prism into three parts: the dead, wounded, and survivors. Among the survivors were the hardened ones, and the scared ones who would break or die next, and those whose damage twisted only their insides, like Sam.

  The dead and wounded were gone, almost half the division. In their places stood green boys and officers who had not seen the bocage or Mont Castre. Since arriving in France, measured by casualty numbers, the entire division had been replaced more than once.

  Ben could not take time out with each voice in the morning gloom that reached to him. 1st and 2nd Battalions, roughly a thousand doughs, waited along the LD for the signal to move up to the narrow Sèves River. Ben, with Sam at his side, kept a quick pace, speaking words of encouragement. When he caught a glimpse of a face he’d seen before, those men did not call to him for attention but simply nodded. Ben nodded back and continued to look for Phineas.

  Ben wanted to find Phineas to wish him luck today, and tell him he was here to help. The 90th’s action across the river at the village of St. Germain-sur-Sèves was the only operation in the whole American bridgehead today. Everywhere else, the troops geared up for the breakout, jumping off sometime in the next few days, though no one was saying exactly where or when. Ben asked a few soldiers if they had seen Chaplain Allenby. They all had, and each pointed a different direction where they’d seen him last. Typical Phineas, Ben thought, bouncing like a rubber ball among his men.

  Walking beside the 1st Battalion, no one uttered a word to Sam. Ben wondered what kind of reception his chaplain’s assistant would get, if the doughs would be jealous or somehow unkind to a soldier whose job it was to stick with Chaplain Kahn. Ben had never even seen Phineas’s assistant, the poor private probably couldn’t keep up with the little Baptist. Ben looked his assistant over. The veterans in the line saw instantly the vestiges of combat on the skinny boy, his dirt and beard, and the tired scuffle of his boots. The replacements lacked the nerve to question anyone as grim-looking as Sam Baum.

  ‘Hey, Chap.’ A lieutenant jogged into the lane. ‘Chap!’ The officer took Ben’s elbow, pulling him to a stop. ‘You got a minute?’

  The lieutenant had shaved, but his uniform was dogeared and he smelled like smoke. Ben paused to determine if he’d seen this boy before, on Mont Castre. He decided that he hadn’t, but that this young man had been there.

  ‘I got a guy over here. Maybe you could say something to him.’

  ‘Lieutenant, I’ll try to come back. I have to check in with the regiment CO. Can it keep?’

  The young officer rubbed his neck, clearly intending to ask again. Before he could speak, Sam Baum moved from Ben’s shoulder into the platoon. Ben and the lieutenant watched him step among the men, dodging fifty heads and shoulders popping out of foxholes like prairie dogs. Sam located one soldier alone at the rear of the unit, a boy cradling his rifle and squatting on his haunches. From fifty feet away Ben knew this was a replacement, fresh from the repple depple and the short jump from the back of a truck. This boy’s first combat lay minutes away and across the little river. The soldier rocked from his toes to his heels, hiding his face behind the lowered brim of his helmet.

  Sam kneeled beside the shaken dough. He laid his own rifle on the ground to free his hands. With Ben watching, Sam Baum wrapped an arm around the soldier’s neck, pressing his own helmet close to touch. He whispered straight into the GI’s ear. Ben turned away.

  The lieutenant grinned. ‘Does he do the dishes, too?’

  Ben returned the smile. ‘Well, I don’t know yet. I expect he might.’

  The lieutenant looked east, across the hundred-yard grass pasture separating their line of departure from the river. He winced.

  Ben followed the young officer’s gaze over the field. ‘Doesn’t look like much. Should be just a local action.’

  ‘Should be.’

  ‘But?’

  The lieutenant blew a breath through puffed cheeks. He tilted back the lip of his helmet to squin
t into the morning’s thickening mist. The day and the battle promised to be rainy and gray affairs.

  ‘But I got fifty men in my unit, thirty of ‘em I never seen before two days ago. I got two of my three sergeants I never met till yesterday. I got a company CO that I can’t even pick out of a lineup.’

  He aimed a hand over the dewy stalks of grass.

  ‘We’re making a daylight assault across open land and a water barrier. I got no tanks for the initial attack. And we’re doin’ it all on a day when there’s no other attacks anywhere in Normandy. Everybody’s sittin’ out today but us.’