Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  THIRTY-SIX

  We ran for the trees and lost ourselves in the woods again, the air cool on my face, the leaves swaying in the breeze. We took shelter in the shade of a wide tree, breathing hard, breathing fast. Émile said, “There may be more Germans ahead.” His sleeve was red with blood, and he pushed it up to examine the wound. He said, “Just a scratch.” But he took the aid kit from Johnny Clay’s bag and pulled out a bandage since his own kit was out. There was only one, so he tore it in half.

  Johnny Clay sat down and stretched his leg in front of him and pulled out a knife. His left hand was wrapped and bleeding. Before anyone could say anything, he stuck the knife in his mouth sideways, tore the scarf off where I’d tied it, and ripped a hole in his pants, just above the knee, so that you could see the wet purple-red of the wound. He grunted, his teeth clenched around the knife, “I want you to take the bullet out.”

  I didn’t know who he was saying it to, but Émile took the knife from him. I said, “But your shoulder.”

  Émile said, “It is nothing.”

  “Let me see it.” I reached for him and he caught my hand before I could touch him.

  “I am fine.” He held my hand, the warmth of it flowing into me. He twined his fingers through mine. There was something in his eyes—a question, impatience, anger.

  Johnny Clay said, “Don’t mind me.”

  Eleanor said, “The hole’s too small for that.” Her voice was flat and irritated and she glared at the knife. She was bleeding from one ear, where the bullet had grazed her. I pulled my hand away at the same moment Émile dropped it. I ripped the bandage in half again and held it out to her but she shook her head. “Here.” She rolled up her sleeves and bent over Johnny Clay and reached into the wet purple-red wound with her fingers. Johnny Clay didn’t even flinch, just sat back, resting on one hand, holding the other, the one that was bleeding, in his lap. He watched Eleanor work even when I couldn’t.

  She said, “There.” She held up a bullet covered in blood. “A souvenir.” She wiped it clean on her sleeve and handed it to Johnny Clay.

  He said, “Thank you.”

  She tore off the hem of her skirt and started wrapping his leg. “You should let me look at your hand.”

  He shook his head. “What’s done is done. I think I managed to stop the bleeding.” Little beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

  Eleanor tied up his leg with her scarf, and then she took the bandage, the one I’d offered her, and wrapped this around him too. She said, “This will have to do.”

  Émile went to scout out the Germans, to see how close they were and how many. He had been gone an hour. I counted the time by the slant of the sun. Johnny Clay and Eleanor and I took shelter in a cluster of trees, thick with brush.

  I looked at my brother’s leg and hand and then at his face, asking him without asking him if he was okay. I thought his face was a little pale, a little clammy-looking, but that otherwise he seemed like himself. He said, “What you looking at, little sister? Ain’t you never seen a man shot before?” He stared down at his leg and he looked almost proud. He said, “Yessir. I reckon I’ll get me a real good limp out of this. I can’t wait to see the look on Daryl Gordon’s face. He’ll probably go out and shoot himself in his own leg just so he can have one too.”

  I said, “Daryl Gordon’s dead, Johnny Clay. He was killed in a place called Bataan. Daddy Hoyt told me when I was home last.”

  Johnny Clay was still admiring his leg. I stared at his head, gold in the light, the hair growing back in from when the army had cut it. When he finally blinked up at me, all the cockiness was gone out of him. He said, “When?”

  “November 1942.”

  He nodded at this finally like, “Okay.” Like, “Well that’s the way it is then.” His eyes wandered away from me over the ground. Then they came back to me, and he looked me square in the eye. He said, “You listen here. We are going to get home again. Do you hear me?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “We are going to get out of here. No goddamn German is going to kill me before I’m ready to die.” And then he pulled himself up with his one good leg and his one good hand without any help from me or Eleanor, and stood, brave and tall, the sun behind him, setting him aglow. He took his pistol out of his belt and checked the magazine. He said, “I’m going to get us some dinner.”

  An hour later, Émile was back, just as the sun dropped behind the trees. We made a small fire, leaving it lit long enough to roast the rabbit Johnny Clay had caught, and then we covered the flames with dirt and stamped out the embers and waited for the night to fill in and grow black. The sky was starting to change colors. Nighttime already. How did it get to be nighttime again?

  Émile said, “There are Germans dug in fifteen miles to the southwest.”

  Johnny Clay said, “How many?”

  “Hundreds.”

  “Are they on the move?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which way?”

  “Some south, some north. They are getting ready for a battle, but some are fleeing.” We let his words settle in around us like the darkness. “We keep on through the night.”

  He kneeled down and, with a rock, drew a map in the dirt. He said that as far as he could figure, we were only ten or so miles from the border, but with Germans up ahead and with the state of the borders unknown, especially now that the Germans were on the run, he thought we should head east, deeper into Germany. Émile said they wouldn’t want to let anyone in or out of the country who didn’t have German identification papers.

  Johnny Clay said, “We should head west and eventually we’ll come to the French border, faster than if we go to the east.”

  “If we head west, we run into Schirmeck. There is a concentration camp there and, if the Germans can be believed, more Germans. They are everywhere from here to Belfort.” Émile stood, brushing the dirt off his hands.

  Johnny Clay grumbled, but he started walking eastward, Eleanor just behind. Before Émile could go anywhere, I reached for his jacket and pulled it aside, bracing myself for what I might see. But there was nothing. No blood. No tear in the shirt.

  “What are you looking for, Clementine?” He smiled the cat-and-canary smile. It was weary around the corners. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  I said, “But you were shot.” Not that I care, I thought. Not that I care if you die right here in the woods.

  Émile pulled something out of his jacket pocket. A round disc that was dented in the middle, as if someone had pushed it in with their thumb. He said, “I am sorry about your compass.” He handed it to me.

  I turned the compass over in my hand. I fit my thumb into the groove, the place where the bullet had hit, and I thought about all the things this could have been—fate, destiny, luck, chance. I thought, He has to believe now. I waited for him to say this was proof of something else other than just the things you could see and touch. Instead he tilted my chin with his hand, so that I was looking up at him, and kissed me.

  We traveled all night and day and into the night again, picking our way east. No one talked and I knew the others, including me, were concentrating on finding their way and not being heard or seen by the Germans who were living in the woods.

  Johnny Clay walked ahead of me and I watched the way he favored his leg, the one that had been shot, and the way he held his wrapped hand close to his ribs. The beads of sweat still dotted his forehead. His skin had gone so pale he looked as if he’d just come out of a long winter. We hiked around the peak of the mountain and across to the other side. From that high up we could see into the valley that lay below. The spires of a city—a good-sized one—rose up in the distance. We started down, and part of the way was so steep that I had to inch along so I wouldn’t go tumbling to the bottom.

  I didn’t let myself think what we would run into once we were out of the woods. Instead I stared at the ground, at the way it sloped ahead, dropping off to nothing. I made myself take one step and then one more step and no
t think about another thing.

  At dawn, I heard a rumbling in the distance. I looked up and there came the green-gray belly of a plane, just like two days before. I stood watching that plane pass on by and Johnny Clay said, “Come on, you.” His voice was low, like he couldn’t get his breath. He wasn’t going to call me Velva Jean but he didn’t want to call me Clementine either.

  I said, “There’s an airfield nearby.”

  I said it more to myself than to anyone else, but Émile said, “How do you know?”

  I said, “Because that plane’s fixing to land.”

  We went as fast as we could down the hill. We reached the edge of the woods, and past the tree line I could see a field and a squat stone farmhouse, and beyond that a road, and beyond that the dark shadow of the city.

  Johnny Clay said, “Which way?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was asking me or Émile.

  Émile said, “We stay off the roads.” His eyes burned at me. I looked away. He said, “Where is the airfield?”

  The air turned cooler against my cheeks. I felt a slight breeze from the west. My hair blew across my face and I brushed it away. I stood with my back to the woods. I thought, I don’t know.

  I studied the land. If I were building an airfield here, where would I build it? Flat land, far enough from the mountains to have a good takeoff and landing. Far enough from the city to have space, but close enough to be easy to get to.

  From the woods, I heard something pushing through the trees, something snapping the twigs. We all turned, all at once. Were we followed? Were we being watched? An animal, I told myself. Just a deer or a squirrel.

  From over the mountains, I heard the engine. And then the plane was over our heads, pointed toward the city.

  We sat low in the high grass that surrounded the airfield, Eleanor to the right of me and Émile to my left, Johnny Clay on the other side of him. Émile touched my cheek with his finger, and it was enough to send a jolt of electricity through me. For him the touch was like an afterthought. By the time I looked up at him, he was staring off toward the airfield. I tried to imagine again what it would be like to be with him outside of this war, in a world of regular things like suppers and breakfasts and sitting by the fire. I wasn’t sure he was a man made for every day.

  The airfield was a control tower, a flattened grass runway, and six planes, nothing sleek or fast. Two guards walked back and forth with guns, yawning, smoking cigarettes.

  I eyed the different planes that waited there. The Fw 190 was the fastest but also the smallest. I knew it was a single-seater and that there was barely room for one person, much less four, which meant it might be harder to get off the ground and it might be harder to fly it at a higher altitude. The Junkers Ju 87 Stuka had a wing blown off, and the two monoplanes looked like trainers. Even if they could seat four, they couldn’t fly the distance from here to England.

  The large, four-engine plane was almost the same size as the B-17, but I wasn’t sure about something that big that I’d never flown before. If I flew that one, I’d need a copilot, and Johnny Clay could do that, even as weak as he was, so that was something to think about. They might have left the keys inside it, but if they hadn’t I’d have to jimmy the engine, which could be harder to do on a plane that size. I also had to think about takeoff and how fast I could get a heavy plane up into the sky. We’d need to go as fast as possible to get past the Germans.

  We watched as the last plane circled the airfield. It was small and sleek as a bullet. The landing gear unfolded out of the wings, which was something I’d never seen before. I could tell the plane was at least a two-seater, which meant we might be able to squeeze four inside. It was a single-engine and had a two-bladed propeller. The only thing was that it was smaller than the others and might not be able to fly as far as we needed it to go.

  I said to Émile, to my brother, to Eleanor, to whoever could answer me, “What kind of plane is that?”

  Eleanor said, “A Heinkel He 70. The Blitz. They use it as a mail plane. Not as powerful as the Fw 190 or the Stuka, but it’s built for long distances and speed. It has its problems, though. It’s made of a kind of metal that burns in the air when heated, so a single hit from a machine gun can set the entire plane ablaze.”

  I couldn’t read German. I’d never flown a German airplane, but I figured a plane was a plane. I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t fly, even if I was rusty.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Ten minutes later, the sky was beginning to lighten. The rain started to fall again and the air was so cold I could see my breath. I had to stop to think what month it was because suddenly it felt like winter. I’d lost track of the date, but I figured we must be into September by now. Back home the days would still be hot but the nights would be cool, but not cool like this. They would be just cool enough so that you could feel the breeze blowing in your open window and hear the end-of-summer crickets humming in the trees.

  The Heinkel He 70 rolled to the end of the taxiway, pointed east. From what I could tell, it had a wingspan of around forty to fifty feet. It stood about ten feet high and looked to be about forty feet long.

  Johnny Clay would take care of the pilot. Émile would take care of the guards. Eleanor would be on the lookout for any crew that might appear. I would climb into the plane and get my bearings. We didn’t know how far the plane had just flown or if it had taken any hits. In my mind, I ticked through the list of things that should be done to get the plane ready to fly again: an engine run-up; running the cowlings; checking the rudder cables, prop blades, elevator cables, vertical and horizontal stabilizers—or the rudder and the elevator—fuel system, fuel lines, static port; checking for damage; refueling. There wasn’t time for any of it.

  Émile said, “No shooting. No shots fired. Do not call attention.”

  Germans behind us. Germans in front of us. I didn’t turn back to see if anyone was following us because I needed to look forward, to think about the plane. What if I couldn’t fly it after all? We might get into the cockpit only to have me figure out that I didn’t know what I was doing. The thing might not be able to take off or have only a gallon or two of gasoline. We weren’t far from the French border—even if the plane needed refueling, we would be okay, or at least safer, as long as we could get out of Germany. The He 70 had come in strong, landing gear down, no sputtering or shaking. I decided there had to be enough gasoline in the tank for the trip to France.

  The guards walked up and down, pacing, guns over their shoulders. We slunk through the grass, moving fast and silent. We stopped every few paces and waited, careful not to make a sound. When we were just feet away, we crouched low and watched as one of the guards called to the other and offered him a cigarette. They stood smoking, looking out toward the woods, talking in low voices. Every now and then one of them laughed.

  When they were done smoking, they ground out their cigarettes and one of the guards strolled off. The other one stood looking out toward the forest as if he could see through the trees. I wondered if he knew about the Germans who were hiding there.

  Finally, after what seemed like years, the guard turned around and looked the other way. He called out something to his friend, and then he started patting his pockets, like he was searching for more cigarettes.

  I watched then as Émile crept through the grass, half-crawling, half-walking. The rest of us waited. The German still had his back to us and he was only two or three feet away. Émile rose up and all of a sudden he was just behind the guard, the knife pressed to the man’s throat. I started crawling toward the plane. The guard let out a yell that was cut short before he fell to the ground. I was halfway between Émile and the second guard, when I saw the man turn in our direction. I saw the whistle around his neck, saw him fumble with it.

  Before Émile could run for him, I reached into my bag and pulled out my lipstick and threw it as hard as I could. The lipstick hit the man smack in the nose and he dropped the whistle and covered his face with his hands.
“You can turn anything into a deadly weapon,” I said. Then I jumped for him, punching out my fist like a claw, and when he took his hands away I jabbed him right in the eyes.

  Émile was there with his knife. His arm went around the guard and he dragged the body down into the grass. He grabbed my hand and his hand was wet. I tried not to think of the man’s blood on him, on me, as we ran for the plane.

  I could see Eleanor running ahead and Johnny Clay standing up on the wing, reaching into the cockpit, when I heard the shot. It rang through the morning like the bells of Notre Dame. I felt it instead of heard it, as if it were going through me, and for one minute I thought it had gone through me. I looked down at my arms, my legs, and then at my stomach, expecting to see blood. I pressed my hand to my stomach, right on my side, just below my ribs, but the only blood was from the guard.

  As if in slow motion, Johnny Clay slumped over, onto the wing, one arm hanging off the side. I stared at the hand at the end of that arm, the way it was swaying back and forth, back and forth, till it came to rest, the fingers limp and pointing at the ground.

  Before I could think or move, Émile was up on the wing. I heard a muffled shot, and the pilot’s body dropped out of the plane. Then Émile was shouting at me and Eleanor was pushing me, and I was climbing onto the wing and into the plane, and there was a compartment with four seats, two on each side, facing each other. Half a dozen cylinders were stacked on top of one another like a woodpile, and even in my haze I knew these were bombs. The forward fuselage was shaped like a rectangle, with the machine gunner’s station at one end, under the cockpit cover, and the crew compartment sitting under a framed canopy off to the port side. There were cartons in there of mail or something else, which made the compartment look like a storage room.

  Émile rushed into that compartment, carrying Johnny Clay, blood soaking through my brother’s shirt, right at his ribs and waist, blood soaking Émile and the floor of the plane. I watched as Émile laid him down, turned his own bag inside out and then Johnny Clay’s, grabbing his aid kit, opening it, throwing it aside, and sprinkling white powder over Johnny Clay and all that blood. Émile threw off his jacket and then his shirt, ripping it in half, and he wrapped this around my brother like a bandage.