I knew this was the most dangerous time of a drop—the time that came after. If the Germans had heard or seen the plane they would be on their way—by air or by land.
I carried a bag full of food and two Sten guns, slung over my shoulder by their straps. Émile walked ahead, listening, watching, clearing the way. He wore a black cap that nearly matched the one I was wearing.
Two or so miles from the farmhouse, we climbed up over a hedgerow and there was the road. We dropped down into the ditch, which was too shallow to hide us, and waited, listening. A glow of lights came toward us. We had nowhere to go except across the road, nowhere to hide on the side we were on, and we couldn’t cross because we’d be spotted.
Émile said, “Drop your weapons. Drop your bag.” He was watching the lights coming closer, moving toward us swift and sudden. He dropped his and I did the same without asking him why. He said, “Do as I say.” He pulled my hat off so my hair came spilling out and said, “Trust me, Velva Jean.” The way he said my name was a way I’d never heard it before, French and flowing, like a lovely old-fashioned dance.
Then he shouted at me in French and shook me hard. He took my hand and pulled me in, and, just as the lights were coming up on us, he turned me around so my back was to the road and placed his arm around my waist. I was so close to him, I could feel his heart beating against mine. I heard the car slow and stop, engines chugging, and Émile drew me even closer. “We appear like two lovers quarreling in a field.” He smiled. “It is the best I could do with such short notice.” Then he kissed me.
It was soft at first, his lips barely touching mine. I wanted to shove him away, to knock him down on his back and give him a good kick in the ribs. Then I felt myself go floating out of my body until I was hovering with the clouds in the air above us, watching.
I stared up at Émile for a good long while, and then I closed my eyes and let him kiss me. The whole time, I was thinking: Not since Ty, not since Harley, better than Ty, better than Harley. Different. Is this how Butch Dawkins would kiss me? Is this what it’s like to be kissed by a man? Not a boy, but a man? Does Émile want to kiss me or is he only doing it to save us from the Germans?
Then I wrapped my arms around him and forgot to breathe and felt the hard muscles under his shirt, the way his arms felt as if they could crush me just by holding me, his hands in my hair, the roughness of his beard, and I kissed him and he kissed me, there under a watery French sky, with the Germans looking on, yelling catcalls and clapping their hands.
Suddenly Émile broke away, looking off toward the Germans while I looked up at him. One of the Germans shouted something, and I couldn’t tell if it was French or German or maybe even English, but Émile nodded and called back, “Oui. Son père est très strict.” Yes. Her father is very strict.
There was laughter from the Germans and one of them said something. I whispered into his chest, “What did they say?”
He said into my hair, “They are repeating what I told them. That your father is strict, which is why we are out here.”
The Germans laughed again and then they shouted something else and Émile answered, and they went back and forth, back and forth. The whole time, he held me close, and I rested my head on his chest, solid as a tree, because it seemed natural and like something a farm girl with a very strict daddy might do. His heart was beating fast and hard.
The Germans called out something else, and then there was a grinding as the car moved forward over the dirt of the road, and I could hear them driving off. Émile drew me to him again as they passed. I thanked God it was dark and that he couldn’t see how red my cheeks must be.
As soon as their taillights faded into the black of the horizon, just dots like stars, Émile said, “They knew about the drop.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. We are lucky they were drunk and happy and decided not to stop us longer.”
I waited for him to say something about the kiss or maybe even kiss me again, but instead he headed across the road, not touching me, a great distance growing up between us like a creek, then a river. I followed him, fast and silent, and slipped through the field on the other side. I knew where we were now—we had to cross two small fields and two small farms, and then another field, which was almost the size of Alluvial, and which was where one of the other drops had taken place, and then the woods that lay beyond. Soon after, we would reach the hill, and then, at the top, the farmhouse. There we would share our food and organize the weapons and the money.
By the time we reached the third field, I was still thinking about the way Émile had kissed me. My lips throbbed and burned. As we walked through the grass, I could see the fresh-turned earth where the canisters were buried. In my haze, from a far-off place, I thought: I shouldn’t be able to see where they buried these. The ground should be put back just the way it was so that the Germans don’t notice.
I brushed my lips with my fingers, as if I could conjure up the kiss again by touching them. They burned so much I wondered if my lips were bleeding. Up ahead, something gleamed on the ground. It was a container, and then there was another.
Émile said, “Something is wrong.” The kiss was fading fast, disappearing into the night. He bent over one of the containers and there was nothing inside. He bent over another and it had been picked through—the only things left were wool sweaters, gloves, and a medical kit, which lay open and empty. All the weapons that would have dropped with them—grenades, rifles, revolvers, carbines, submachine guns—had been taken.
We walked faster, through upturned earth and more canisters, flung here or there. We stepped over more sweaters, bandages, a broken radio, which looked as if someone had smashed it with a hatchet or the butt of a gun. “They were interrupted,” Émile said, but it was like an afterthought because we knew this already. “We need to bury the canisters and any of the supplies that we cannot use or carry away.”
But he wanted to push on first, to see how much more there was, if anything was left that would be useful to us. On the edge of the field was one last canister, larger than the others. Something about it made my heart stop.
Suddenly we were at the container, lying on the ground—only it wasn’t a container. I saw everything in pieces—a leg, a shoe, an arm. The body was lying on its side, arms reaching out toward something, although there was nothing there. The ground underneath it was dark and wet, and the hair glinted white-gold in the moonlight. And then I saw the eyes. They were open and staring up at the sky—like clear blue pools.
Together, Émile and I buried Perry in the field, along with three of the Maquis who lay nearby and all of the containers and the supplies we didn’t need. We dug the graves with our daggers and our hands, working as fast as we could in the dark. My hands went numb and blistered. My fingers bled. The graves weren’t deep, but I prayed they were deep enough to hold the men and keep them there without anyone coming along—a German, an animal—and digging them up again.
We worked fast, knowing the Germans could come back at any minute, and we didn’t speak a word. As I dug, the motion of the dagger Delphine had given me—in and out, upturning the earth—and the feel of the dirt in my hands made me feel as if I were doing something. Something necessary. Something important. It made me feel helpful instead of helpless, strong instead of weak. I’d never dug a grave or buried someone before, even though I’d lost plenty of folks I loved. I thought if a person ever wanted to know about death, they just had to dig a grave and feel the dirt, cold and moist, under the fingernails, and smell the mustiness of the earth all around. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be inside one of these holes, smelling the musty earth and the damp forever.
FOURTEEN
Long before dawn on Saturday, July 22, Émile, Barzo, Ray, and I climbed in the back of a pickup truck with two British pilots and three large pigs. The truck was owned by a local man named Armand Leveque, who was a farmer and a friend to the Babins. His son worked in a local factory as a mechanic an
d, since the war began, had been smuggling a cup of gasoline at a time from the factory and storing it away in an old shed behind his daddy’s house, where he kept the truck up on blocks, the tires hidden in the barn.
I wanted to be behind the wheel of that truck. Anywhere but lying in the back under a pile of straw, knocking against the men, tarp drawn tight over us so no one could see in, pigs grunting and squealing over each bump in the road. I didn’t know who smelled worse, the men or the pigs.
The motor was loud but smooth, and we rode with the headlights off, which meant Monsieur Leveque had to find his way in the dark along winding country roads. Each time we passed through a blacked-out village, he would cough loudly and hit the gas, and the men lifted the tarp just enough and pointed their guns out.
I knew we were following an old forest road southeastward, and that the Germans were moving in and through the area, raiding farms and setting fire to the woods and the houses. They were destroying the villages and shooting innocent people just because they were French and the enemy. Sometime the day before, according to the BBC, Hitler’s own men had tried to kill Hitler at his Wolf’s Lair field headquarters, where he’d sat in a conference room with twenty-four other people. Someone had put a bomb in a briefcase and slid it under the conference table. When the bomb went off, the room was destroyed and four people were killed, but Hitler survived. I couldn’t let myself think about what his death might have meant to me, to us, to everyone. If Hitler had been killed the war might be over, just like that. Johnny Clay, if he were still alive, would be safe. We—those of us still here—could go home.
Every now and then we heard the buzz of a plane overhead and then blasts of fire. The male pilots and I tried to guess the planes by the sound—an RAF Beaufighter or Spitfire, an American Liberator or Flying Fortress, a German Messerschmitt—but they all sounded terrifying to me.
We knew there would be roadblocks along the way, but when we were stopped the first time my heart began pounding so fast and loud I could hear it in my ears. I was sure the Germans could hear it too.
The truck shook as it sat there, engine still humming along. I heard voices—German—and then Monsieur Leveque. They were speaking French. One of the Germans asked to see Monsieur Leveque’s papers. Then it was quiet except for two or three of the Germans talking to one another in low voices, the sound rising and falling like the buzzing of crickets on a summer night.
I could hear Monsieur Leveque, and then the German who’d asked to see his papers. I didn’t know what they were saying, but suddenly the truck began to move, and soon we were jolting over the winding, bumpy road again. Émile said, “Nous sommes bien.” We are fine.
The second time we were stopped, the Germans asked for Monsieur Leveque’s papers and there was quiet followed by the sound of a door slamming. One of the Germans said in French, “Stand where I can see you.” He said something else that I couldn’t understand.
Émile whispered, “They want to search the back to see what he is hauling.”
We all froze—Émile, Ray, Barzo, the British pilots, and me. We were pushed as far away from the tail of the truck as we could get, smashed together against the back of the cab.
Suddenly there was the blinding beam of a flashlight. The pigs squirmed and squealed, and from where I lay I could see the face of one of the Germans, wrinkling his nose. Monsieur Leveque had lifted the tarp only enough to show the pigs, but I could feel the men go rigid around me, and I knew they were afraid like I was. I waited for the whole tarp to be yanked back, all the way. I waited for the Germans to see us and raise their guns and shoot us on the spot.
Another soldier walked over and took a look and shook his head. He said something in German and then the tarp dropped back into place, and I could hear Monsieur Leveque tying it down again. The voices and footsteps faded away from us. The truck settled a little as Monsieur Leveque climbed back in. The door slammed. I heard him say, “Bonsoir. Merci.” And then the truck rattled off, bumping and thumping down the road.
We weren’t stopped again, and somewhere along the way I fell asleep, my head bobbing against Émile’s back. The last thought I had before I nodded off was, I can’t believe I’m going to arrive in Paris in the back of a pig truck.
Paris was bridges and trees and grand gray-white buildings that looked as if they’d been built hundreds of years ago by kings and for kings. Every single one of them was as fancy and regal as a museum or a palace, even the normal ones, the ones Émile said were nothing but shops or apartments. Cars and trucks full of German soldiers hammered through the streets under a wet morning sky, horns honking. The sun was barely up, but already soldiers and regular, everyday people jostled and pushed or sat outside in cafés. Trees and streetlamps lined the streets, making it look like a kind of city forest. The smell of bread was in the air, and I could hear music even though there was none playing. Even in the rain, Paris looked like a picture book, a fairy tale. Émile said, “The best view is from the rooftops,” and I could hear the warmth in his voice, as if he were talking about a girl he loved.
Monsieur Leveque dropped us on a quiet street just off the Champs-Elysées, which looked as if it must be the longest street in the world. Émile said it was two kilometers, which was a little over a mile, but it seemed to stretch forever, like if you walked along it long enough you might cross the ocean and find yourself right back on Fair Mountain.
Monsieur Leveque held the tarp back while the engine of the truck kept running, and we climbed over the pigs and out of the truck onto the sidewalk under a row of handsome trees, clipped and pruned like schoolboys fresh from the barber. He saluted us all and then rattled off, the truck sputtering and coughing like an old man. I wondered if he would make it all the way home.
We stood on the sidewalk, dirty and tired. Émile and Barzo exchanged names with the pilots so that if any of us made it out of France we could report on what happened to the others. The pilots said they were going to join the Freedom Line, that there was a woman in Paris who was smuggling out Jewish children and downed airmen, that she was famous for all the people she’d saved.
I watched the men, waiting for them to tell me good-bye and send me away with the other pilots so they could get rid of me, like they’d been wanting to do from the beginning, but they just stood there, shifting their packs over their shoulders. Ray pulled on a cap that looked like something a fisherman might wear. Barzo and Émile both put on hats as well.
As the pilots waved and turned away, I said, “Wait,” then went running after them. I said, “My friend Helen Stillbert is a pilot too, a WASP. There’s a song we agreed on before we left base, one that we could use to find each other if we got lost.” And then I told them the lines and asked if they would keep an eye out for her, just in case she was in France too, when they reached the Freedom Line. One of the pilots said the lyrics back to me and I thanked him, and then I ran to join the men, who were waiting in the shadows of the trees.
Émile said to Barzo and Ray, “We split up. Take the Metro car to the Arc de Triomphe, and meet at the square du Roule.” Then he took my hand and the two of us set off down the street and up another, passing people and buildings and cafés. Barzo and Ray fell behind, Ray barely limping, even though I knew his leg was causing him pain. When I turned to look for them, Émile said, “Don’t call attention.”
I said, “We already smell like pigs. If that’s not going to call attention, I don’t know what will.”
We passed people—men in hats and slacks and crisp white shirts, women in summer dresses, their hair cut short and smart, their heads wrapped in bright scarves or flowered hats, flowers tucked behind their ears, boys selling newspapers, old men selling vegetables, and German soldiers, riding or marching through the streets. There were so many of them, walking in great lines, and I sucked in my breath. They drove past in cars without tops, six to a car, as if they were going to a party. They saluted each other and called out to each other in German, and the French people on their bicycles o
r horses steered to get away from them.
Émile’s hand tightened around mine. He said, “You are with me. Better for Barzo and Ray to go alone so you aren’t three Americans together. If we get stopped, I am here.”
We passed streetlamps, pretty as a picture even unlit, and cobbled streets and alleyways that tucked behind the rows of buildings just like secrets. Some of the houses were narrow and tall, pressed close to each other or into each other, and others were palaces, angels and kings etched into the sides, looking as if they were trimmed with brocade and lace. Flowers bloomed in gardens and neat window boxes, and the sky was a pink-gray-white, which made the city look pink-gray-white.
Émile pulled me toward a stairway that disappeared into a cave in the earth, and my other hand brushed against the black iron railing as we went down so far I thought we’d end up in China. While I waited beside him, he bought two tickets and we went through the turnstile and down more stairs to a platform packed with people. We stood close together, Émile facing me and rubbing my arms up and down with his hands, just like I was cold. And maybe I was cold. I shivered a little and had chill bumps on my skin. I looked up at him and he smiled at me, the lines around his eyes and mouth crinkling as if someone had etched them there. He said, “If a pig can make gold.” And this made me laugh.
A wide, black arrow was painted on the wall of the Metro, winding away from us. I said, “What does it mean?”
“It directs you to the air-raid shelter. If you ever hear the sirens, this means the Allies have been spotted in the skies, and you need to run before the bombs start dropping.”
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