by Page, Wayne;
“Shhh,” Luke cautions as he looks toward the stairs to the second floor below.
“How cool is this?” Craig says as he kneels beside the end of the old Army trunk.
Luke releases the brass clasp on the front of the trunk. Together they open the lid and peer inside. A musty wisp of 1945 air insults the cousins’ nostrils. Coordinated sneezes echo throughout the attic canyon of junk. Luke shines his iPhone light in the three-inch deep tray that rests in the trunk. Craig gently fingers through a stack of letters bound with a ribbon. Luke unfolds a silk map of France.
“Carte de champagne francaise du Nord,” Luke says.
“Qué?” Craig protests in Spanish. “OK, showoff. You’re fluent in French. Grandma Yvette loves you best.”
Fingering the silk map, Luke translates, “It’s a map of Northern France.”
“Wow!” Craig exclaims. “Back when Grandma was in the Résistance.”
“Look at all this stuff!” Luke paws through the tray.
Together, they lift the tray out of the trunk and set it gently on the floor. Slowly, one-by-one, they pull World War II artifacts out of the trunk and examine them. Grandpa’s leather Army Air Corps pilot helmet, his flight jacket, brown/green waistcoat uniform. A wool, French beret. A captured German bayonet. Luke picks up a pocket watch, flicks open the scrolled cover. A cautious twist of the stem, he holds it to his ear and nods that it works. Craig grabs it and sets the correct time. He listens to the rhythmic tick-tock and carefully places it on the rocking chair beside him.
Craig’s hand trembles as he pulls a scarlet red armband up to the light. As his fingers follow the outline of the black Nazi swastika centered in the armband’s white circle, goosebumps rise on his arm. He drops the armband back into the trunk and dusts his hands together as he shudders at this brush with pure evil.
To free a hand, Luke stuffs the silk map into his shirt pocket. He points the light into the army trunk and eyes a small, shiny object. Kneeling beside the trunk, he removes a Zippo lighter. Rising to his feet, he lays his iPhone on the rocking chair and hands the lighter to Craig. Craig examines the brass and chrome-plated artifact. Craig rubs his fingers across the surface and flicks the lighter top open and closed.
Now standing shoulder-to-shoulder, the two cousins breathing in the same decades-stale air, arms touching, Luke grabs the lighter and flicks the top open again. His thumb on the small geared wheel, he gives it a spin. Steel scrapes flint and sparks erupt from the lighter. Had someone been outside the stately Victorian house, looking up at the attic roof window, they would have seen a flash of fire and rushed to call 911.
Luke and Craig fall to their knees, shaking their heads in temporary blindness. Lightning arches through the night sky, illuminating the tin roof of a small farm barn across a meadow. Crawling on all-fours, the wet grass and rain soak through their khaki pants and oxford blue shirts. They roll to their feet and run to the safety of the barn.
Panting, out of breath, the cousins hide in a horse stall. They bury their legs under dry straw and sit, backs against the interior wall of the barn.
“What in the heck was that?” Craig demands.
“Damn if I know,” comes Luke’s honest reply. He looks at the Zippo lighter in his hand. He switches it to his other hand, then back and forth to lessen the impact of the residual heat coming from the lighter.
As Luke places his thumb on the geared wheel, Craig screams, “No! Once is enough.”
The darkness in the horse stall is swallowed by flashlights in the boys’ faces. “Haut les mains!” came the command.
Luke raises his hands over his head.
Craig, follows suit, quipping, “Obviously, that means hands up.”
Secreting the Zippo lighter into his pant pocket, Luke responds in French, “Je ne tire pas, je ne tire pas.”
“What'd ya say, what'd ya say?” Craig pleads.
“Don’t shoot.”
“Yeah, Je an tore pu,” as Craig butchers the French language.
Luke gives Craig a sneer and says, “Let me do the talking.”
Flashlights still in their eyes, there is enough light to discern that the cousins are held at gunpoint by 9 mm sub machine sten guns. One of their captors walks up to Luke and pulls the silk map out of his shirt pocket. He examines the map and hands it to his partner. The sten guns are lowered to their sides as they relax. Laughter is shared as the taller of the two men yells over his shoulder, “Agneau.”
“Lamb,” Luke whispers to Craig.
A young woman, probably about twenty-two or three, enters the horse stall. As she studies the silk map, Craig and Luke study her. Despite her dark, drab clothes, and the charcoal camouflaged cheeks, she is beautiful. The beret cocked over her forehead cause the boys to glance at each other, puzzled. The beret looks just like the one from Grandpa’s trunk. From the wedding pictures, is it possible? “Yvette?” Craig whispers to Luke.
The sten guns level in a reflex. Flashlights in their eyes. Hands again rise over their heads. The young woman stops in front of Craig and whispers, “Jamais les noms réels, toujours nom de code. Agneau.”
“Luke?” Craig pleads for help.
“Agneau,” Luke acknowledges.
The young woman leader of this small patrol of the French Résistance does not act like a lamb. She takes charge. The French men lower their weapons and sit on the scattered straw in the horse stall. Agneau motions for the two boys to sit down. She hands the silk map back to Luke. The boys look at each other as if they couldn’t read this complex football defense. They conclude they have just been accepted into the French Résistance and are being sent on a mission. The leaders finish their sidebar whispers and circle with the two boys.
Agneau snaps her fingers at Luke and requests Luke’s map. In rapid fire French that Craig assumes Luke will summarize for him later, she taps her fingers on a corner of the map and issues instructions. She hands him a canvas pouch. Luke nods understanding and rises. Agneau grabs him by his upper arms, pulls him to her, and kisses him on both cheeks. The quick brush of her cheek to his raises the hair on his arms and causes a nervous swallow. Craig rises to accept a similar farewell. Luke and Craig had yet to comprehend what just took place when the two male patrol members kiss them farewell. This causes an embarrassed pinking of their cheeks.
Luke leads the way as they exit the barn into the rainy night. Craig stumbles across the ankle-high wet pasture. “Luke, stop,” he pleads.
“Not yet.”
Craig tackles Luke around the ankles. Rolling on the ground, Craig ends up on top. “Damn it! What’s going on?”
“She gave us an assignment,” Luke said, under his breath. “This isn’t real,” Craig implores.
Luke raises a knee and catches Craig firmly in the crotch as Luke assumes the topside position. “Does that feel real?” Luke runs and tumbles behind a hay stack that could have been painted by Van Gogh.
Still reeling from the knee in the groin, Craig sits down beside Luke, backs resting against the hay stack. “Okay, what gives?”
“You tell me?” Luke queries.
“You’re the Frenchie,” Craig pleads. “What did they say?” Luke retrieves the Zippo lighter from his pocket and flicks open the top.
“Don’t you dare!” Craig barks. “We might end up as cave men.”
Re-pocketing the Zippo, Luke brings Craig up to speed. “Agneau, Lamb, is her code name. She scolded me for using her real name. Résistance groups, patrols, are small. She leads those other two guys.”
“And us?”
“Appears so,” Luke confirms. “They hide in the woods. Maquis. We are to sneak into a nearby village. Reverse road signs and drop this pouch beside the well in front of the baker’s shop. If we have time, cut some telephone lines.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“What’s in the pouch?”
“Mimeographed undergro
und newspaper.”
“What’s a mimeograph?” Craig asks.
“Heck if I know, we’ll Google it, later.”
“Let’s go home now,” Craig suggests.
“That woman is counting on us.”
“That woman? What do you mean, that woman?”
“Agneau.”
“Luke, you damn well know what I mean.”
“It can’t be,” Luke insists.
“I don’t speak French, but I’ll tell you what. It’s 1944. Before D-Day. That woman is Grandma Yvette!”
“I know,” admits Luke. He pulls the Zippo out of his pocket.
“Put it back. We gotta figure this out, before we try flickin’ that lighter again.”
Luke put the Zippo back in his pant pocket. “Let’s get to the village and then head to the woods. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
They shinny up telephone poles at the edge of the village. The night is greeted by a sliver of a new moon. Darkness covers their ornery deeds. Road signs pointing south are reversed to north. East becomes west. It’s like Halloween, but all tricks with no treats. The village is small, quiet. Even in the darkness Craig could tell the difference between a cobbler and a butcher. Just as he was laying the canvas pouch at the base of the baker’s well, car headlights blinded the Graham cousins.
“Geler! Haut les mains,” came the harsh, guttural command.
It didn’t take English, Luke’s French, or Craig’s Spanish to recognize German orders yelled by the black-uniformed Gestapo officer. The German SS Officer approaches the well and opens the canvas pouch, thumbs through a dozen copies of the latest Résistance propaganda newspaper, and smirks.
“Weiter!” He orders, with a gun in Luke’s back.
The small band of Gestapo SS troops march the Graham cousins to the village center, and push their backs against the courtyard gazebo. The German SS Officer snatches the silk map from Luke’s shirt pocket, ripping his shirt. He removes a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket, laughs, and offers the boys one last smoke. Craig initially declines, but follows Luke’s lead in taking a cigarette after he notices four German soldiers forming a firing squad. The German SS Officer lights his own cigarette and blows smoke in Luke’s face. As he proceeds to light Craig’s shaking cigarette, a quick breeze extinguishes his lighter. He flicks his German lighter again with no success.
Luke, slowly, reaches into his pant pocket and offers the Zippo to the German SS Officer. The Officer flicks the top open and inspects the gleaming chrome and U.S. Army Air Corp insignia. “Yankee!”
Luke and Craig make eye contact, touch shoulders, and lean in close to the accommodating German SS Officer. Smug in his arrogance, the Nazi spins the geared wheel as he reaches to light Luke’s cigarette. Sparks fly as lightning strikes the village gazebo.
Partially blinded and more expectant of returning to an attic in America, Craig knees the German Officer in the groin. Luke reaches into Grandpa’s trunk, retrieving the German bayonet relic. He plunges the bayonet into the neck of the Gestapo officer. Another burst of sparks and a puff of smoke reduces Herr Hendrik to ashes. Only his brass belt buckle and Grandpa’s Zippo remain. The belt buckle, a too-hot-to-handle souvenir, chars the attic floor beside Grandpa’s trunk as it spins to a stop. The Zippo lighter is once again nestled in Luke’s pant pocket.
Panting, short of breath, the two cousins fall to their knees. Craig touches the still smoldering belt buckle and jerks his hand back, reacting to the heat. Luke rises and sits in the rocking chair, shifting to retrieve the old pocket watch. He cups the watch in his hand, puzzled.
“How long ya think we were gone, Craig?”
Finally successful in picking up the warm belt buckle, “Oh, three, four hours,” Craig responds.
“Look at this,” Luke says as he hands the pocket watch to his cousin.
“Only two minutes?” Craig questions as he furls his brow. “And look at our clothes.”
“Dry, no dirt, no mud. Your shirt pocket isn’t torn,” Craig observes.
Patting his shirt pocket, Luke retrieves the silk map of France, placing it beside the ribbon-tied letters on the rocking chair. Retrieving Grandpa’s Zippo lighter from his pant pocket, he flips open the top.
“No!” Craig yells, as he cups his hands around Luke’s. “We’ve had enough adventure for one day.”
“What’s the racket up there?” Craig’s mother yells, her foot on the first attic step. “Don’t make me come up there.”
Typical of their quarterback, wide receiver second sense communication, the cousins make eye contact, confirming that they’d clean the attic mess up later. Luke places the lighter on the rocking chair as the boys prevent discovery and tumble down the steep stairway.
The afternoon returns to good food and a rehash of old Grandpa Graham stories. Luke and Craig avoid each other in fear of tipping their hand. They had no experience in how a killer of a Nazi Gestapo officer should behave or react to Résistance stories or Grandma Yvette’s retelling of how she first met Grandpa. Only Yvette, and now two of her great-grandsons had any first-hand knowledge of 1944 occupied France.
It is now that awkward time following a funeral – when to leave? No one wants to be the first to leave. Leaving last is no good either. Especially with a close-knit family, it would be hard to give Grandma Yvette that last hug before abandoning her to the loneliness of her Victorian house.
“I’m fine,” she smiles as the last of her children ease down the steps from her front porch.
“Love you, Granny,” seems particularly heartfelt as Craig and Luke accept the new widow’s French smooch on each cheek. A chill touches spines as they recall a younger Agneau sending them on their first WWII mission.
The tired, weary widow contemplates her first night in sixty-five years without her beloved Ben. The usual bedtime routine is history. Ben doesn’t put the last coffee cup in the dishwasher. Yvette returns twice to confirm that the front door is locked. Halfway up the stairs, she returns to turn off the living room lights. On her last pass through the darkened lower floor, she stops at the table displaying Ben’s Army medals and memorabilia. Her fingers grace the fabric of the folded American flag. Clutching it to her breast, she glances at the picture of her young Army Air Corps fly-boy. Tucking the flag under her arm, she limps up the second floor stairs.
Ready for bed, she notices that the attic door is ajar. Easing the door shut, a remnant of light seeps through the ill-fitting door jam. An involuntary whisper of “fichu” communicates her displeasure at one more task delaying her first night without spooning with Ben. She opens the door and turns off the attic light switch. Light still cascades down the steep stairway, eliciting a second “maudire.” This time, less involuntary and much less of a whisper.
The attic stairs had obviously been designed by an architect younger than ninety. Succumbing to the steep stairs, Yvette ascends to the third floor in more of a vertical crawl than upright. Folded flag still tucked under her arm, she meanders her way around junk she now voluntarily “damns” she should have pitched decades ago. Hand on the brass floor lamp’s knob, she gives a twist. The three-way bulb brightens. For the first time in ages, she sees Ben’s WWII Army trunk. Her breath momentarily stolen, she lowers, kneels beside the open trunk. As she sorts through the dust and memories, she places the folded flag in the trunk. Her legs fail her in her first attempt to rise. She steadies herself with a hand on the edge of the trunk. Not as steady as she would like, her hand slips into the trunk and comes to rest on the trunk bottom. As she extricates herself from falling into the trunk, she grabs at something soft. It is her beret.
Justifiably short of breath, Yvette kneels beside the old oak rocking chair. Gathering the objects blocking her derriere aside, she settles into the chair. A brief exhale and rock back and forth provides a respite. Her only objective had been to turn out the lights. She is now immersed in the 1944 French Résistance. Continui
ng a slow rock, she fingers the beret, brings it to her face and inhales the French countryside. The beret now cocked astride her silver-gray hair, she unfolds the silk map of a French village she had once called home. She lays her hands on the bundle of letters in her lap. Sliding the top letter free of its bowed ribbon, she reads sweet words written in a bygone century. A tear moistens her cheek as the letter drifts from a quaking hand to the attic floor. As she bends forward to pick up the letter, another object falls from her lap to the floor with a metallic ‘clink.’
The emotions of the day, the years, the decades pierce her heart. She returns the letter to its bundled home. She tucks the silk map under the sleeve of her blouse. She rocks forward and picks up Ben’s Zippo from the attic floor. A strange, yet comforting warmth soothes the aged stiffness in her fingers. Her heart races as she flips open the Zippo. The three-way bulb in the brass floor lamp dies, exhausted. Nimble fingers spin the Zippo wheel against the eager flint. Wrinkles fade. Lightning etches jagged shadows across the attic floor.
A bundle of ribboned letters is illuminated in an otherwise empty oak rocking chair that slowly comes to rest.
☁ ☁ ☁
The Russian Embalmer
“She looks great. Don’t you think she looks natural?” the elderly mourner queried.
Positive nods all around confirmed that Serge had once again performed magic. Tears flowed, a lifetime of stories competed with the gentle fragrance of lilacs and fresh-cut carnations. Serge stayed in the shadows and took no small measure of satisfaction in his craft. He indeed had turned the cranky widow Foster into a prom queen. Tomorrow she would be slowly nestled next to her beloved husband of fifty-seven years who would probably remark, “Damn, Ethel, you haven’t looked this good since 1957.”
In his early forties, Serge had left his family mortuary business in St. Petersburg in the able hands of his twin brother Dimitri. Serge’s emigration to Buffalo, New York was part of a larger plan of intrigue and, well, he kept most of his plans to himself. Only fellow mortician Dimitri knew the truth.