by Amanda Dykes
“On the way,” Petticrew said, and I could see him etching out a map in his mind. “But isn’t that . . . south?”
Yes, and I’d come due east to find Petticrew. “Sometimes a detour is worth making,” I said. “And I’ll be taking the book from the reporter with me. General Pershing’s men have need of it there.”
He looked behind him at his companions, who were bent over some book together. “And you need us back?”
“You, son. We’ll need our chaplain soon, but he can wait. And the reporter—” I spat the word and stopped myself from saying good riddance. When I forgot that Jones was the man behind the empty-word articles, he wasn’t a bad fellow. Not at all.
“We don’t need a reporter just now. But we’re heading into an offensive that . . .” I looked around. This country was crawling with spies in every form, uniformed and civilian, both. On all sides. “Let’s just say it’s a big one. We need your—your special skill set. Not to mention Chester Hasenpfeffer won’t quit asking about you all. He’s like a lost puppy, that one.”
I tried to lighten the moment with mention of the kid who had become a bit of a mascot. But the gravity remained in my voice. It was going to be big. It was going to be important. And—I dreaded, but knew it to be true—it was going to be devastating. We would lose men. Too many men. Which made me want to send Petticrew packing to the hills, tell him to take that girl and run for safety.
But he never would.
“Things . . . hinge on this offensive.” I leaned in. He needed to understand. “It’s the beginning of the end. It has to be.”
He swallowed. “Sir, if I may . . .”
“Speak freely, Petticrew.”
He filled himself up with air and courage, standing straight to face me. “Permission to carry out the mission you assigned first, sir. To completion.”
“You wish to see her to Paris.”
“I do.”
“Yes,” I said, so quickly it nearly gave the fellow whiplash. “Stay on your feet there, Petticrew. Do the work and return to the front as fast as you can. Once we get moving on this, it’s likely to go faster than you can imagine.”
“That’s what they’ve been saying since the beginning of the war, sir. Four years ago.”
“It’s gotta be true sometime.”
It had to be.
28
Mira
When Papa left, I lifted my chin and put on a smile, for his sake and Grand-père’s.
When I found I was with child, I bit back tears at night and replaced them with a song. My anguish was not what I wished to swaddle this child with before it was yet born. I took that song to the soldiers, then, the thousand lost boys in the trenches, in defiance to the lies that told me they were all like the one who took from me what was not his.
When Grand-père closed his eyes and did not open them again, I dropped myself on his grave, the last bit of home that I knew, and picked myself up to carry on when the soldiers came, when these three men offered a path of life.
Lifted chins and put-on smiles, bit-back tears and songs in the night—all of it imploded upon me now as I ran. On and on through the vineyard, shedding each one of those things like bits of myself left far, far behind.
I knew not where I went.
But what did it matter? At least one thing hadn’t been taken from me: the life within, and the secret thereof.
But that was all dashed now. Even that was no longer mine. What did I have but the feet that carried me?
And so I flew. Stumbling into branches, cradling my stomach as my movements came much more difficult than they once had. I do not know when the tears started. I only know that they stung, and the stinging felt right. Everything stung. Everything was cruel. Everything but the stars above, and they, in their gentle, fearsome light, blinked down on me as if they wished to sing a song to me. To remind me of a strength outside myself.
I did not wish to hear it.
Blindly I went on until I could not anymore. I felt myself losing strength, losing the ability to see where I went through my swimming eyes. I should have stopped then. But I did not, not until my foot caught upon a root and sent me stumbling to the earth. Catapulting, full-force, into a dark and sharp place. I hit the ground, my palms scraping against gravel as it embedded itself in me.
And finally . . . I wept. I wept for Papa. I wept for Grand-père. I wept for the thousand lost boys, and for the babe within. I pleaded with the God of those gentle stars to spare the little one—for what if my fall had harmed it? Tears fell for the fall, and for every buried thing that had surfaced in that fall.
I tried to wipe tears from my face, but the salt of them stung the wounds in my hands, where little rocks had dug themselves in.
And then, suddenly, I was not alone.
A presence, steady and true, sank down beside me and lingered a moment before reaching out like I was made of glass and taking my wounded hand in his.
My fist curled tight. I knew, without looking, who it was. By his touch, by his presence, which felt as familiar and steady as time. I had thought I could trust him. I knew better now.
I did not wish him there.
He held my bleeding hand in his, waiting. Covering my aching fingers with his own, as if to help them unfreeze.
And they did. They betrayed me. They melted into his coaxing stroke, which opened them and let the night breeze blow over my wounds.
He did not speak. He only held that hand, bringing it close to his face, so close I felt the warmth of his breath as he studied it in the moonlight and began to remove the pebbles.
I tried to take my hand back. Anger twisted through my veins, my limbs, urging me to retract everything I could from this man. He released his grip, showing that I was free, but letting his hand stay there, telling me he was not going anywhere.
My hand throbbed.
My heart ached even deeper. It was much. Too much for me, all of this, all of the loss catching up to me. Chasing me down in the night and pinning me, digging in to me far deeper than the intruding rocks in my palms.
“Mira,” he said, his voice rough with regret.
I winced at the sound of his voice around my name. A name only he knew.
And he had no right to. I had given it to him that night in the ruined church. My lost name, the one that had died with Grand-père. I had given it to him, and with it, an invitation into my world. All that I held dear. All that I was.
This . . . this was the hand that had betrayed me.
The battle inside burned, part of me seeing him as my friend. A good man, a brave one, the one who’d been locked with the goats as a gangly youth and raked racetracks beneath the moon to set his sister free.
And part of me seeing my betrayer. Burning all the deeper because my betrayer was my truest friend, this man who had come upon me in the woods and gathered me up and held every bit of my life close to his heart ever since.
“Mira,” he said again, voice deepened with anguish. He held out his hand, silently imploring me to let him help. Until, finally, I laid my open palm back in his and let him continue.
The work hurt. The dislodging of grains of sand and hard bits of rock from human flesh, where they were never meant to be. He was gentle, but it did not change what had been done.
“Mira,” he said a third time. This time in a near-whisper that seemed to hold within it an entire universe.
It was too much. I turned away, ashamed to hear my name on his lips. Why, I did not know. It felt so, so strange—to be known. To be seen. To have a gaping part of me held in hands strong and kind. Hands that had fisted in passion as he’d spouted my great secret to his friends not half an hour before.
He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry.”
I winced, keeping my eyes shut, turning away from him. Wishing for darkness, for the stars to quiet their light and let me dissolve into the shadows. The night—it had become our homeland, his and mine. The place where all the rest of the world slept and our hearts found each other in
the dark. To sit, to talk, to be heard—and to see that the darkness was created and held by the same God who had spun the sun and all its golden light.
“I should never have said that. I—it wasn’t for me to say, and I just—they wanted to send you on a train alone away from us, and I just—I couldn’t—”
He was saying I very much. It seemed to fall upon his ears as sharply as it did upon mine, and he shook his head.
“You,” I said. “You thought? You could not? This—this did not happen to you.” His name belonged at the end of that sentence, but I would not speak it. He looked pained by my words, as if the gravel had embedded itself in his heart.
Good, I thought. And loathed myself for it. I turned away again.
“You’re right,” he said, his voice flat. He took a deep breath and started again. “I would give anything to undo what’s been done to you. It’s true, I should never have told what wasn’t mine to say.” A long pause. “With everything in me . . . everything I have . . . I am sorry.”
Everything I have. He ran his thumb gently over the heel of my hand, which was unharmed. As if to say—everything I have is just me. He did not have much, perhaps. But he was offering all of himself, every bit of heart, in this moment.
“There are other things that you deserve. Apologies—and so much more. They, too, are outside what I can give. But—I would like to try. If it’s alright.”
I did not know what he meant. Perhaps all his nights with no sleep were addling his mind. A pang of compassion swam through me.
But he waited, so I gave a simple answer. I could not speak the simple yes, so I turned to face him instead.
“I am sorry . . .” he said, brushing an embedded grain of sand from its place in my palm. “For your father and your grandfather.”
I winced, not liking that he had done what I could not: grouped my papa together with Grand-père. Among the dead.
I still held hope.
“I am sorry . . .” He gentled his stroke around a larger pebble, coaxing it out as tenderly as he could. “For you having to leave your home—your whole world—behind.” I had hardly allowed myself to put words to this loss. I had not thought that anyone else would, either, for why would they? But his care, his seeing, set the tears to a steadier flow, until one dropped upon the back of his hand.
“I’m sorry you’ve been stuck with a sorry lot like us,” he said, pulling his mouth into a half smile. A laugh bubbled up inside of me. Oh, what a gift, to laugh when the world seemed so dark. Like a spark igniting, washing the place with light. But I felt betrayed by the laughter, for I was still angry. I snuffed it out as swiftly as it came, not ready to forget.
“And I am sorry,” he said, serious again. Lifting his gaze to mine at last. Lifting his hands to my face. Searching my eyes for permission to linger there, letting his thumbs run over my cheeks to gather my tears into his hands. “I am sorry for what was taken from you in the forest.” His voice grew ragged, like the wind when it blows through the trees in the dead of winter, clattering twigs around, looking for life to soften the blow and not finding it.
People did not speak of these things. Even I, tucked away in my wooded world, knew that. I had not spoken of it, not ever, until this man had come along and somehow I had found myself with him at my side as I lay in a pew of a demolished church, with holiness and destruction everywhere. Within me and without.
And so his words were chosen with care and pain, so much so that they entered into my own pain and locked into the broken places there.
“I . . . wouldn’t blame you if you want to get on that train tomorrow. I think you heard what Henry said about your family.”
I nodded.
“If you want to go, you will go. We’ll get you there. But if you want to go to Paris—and if you can put up with me a few more days—I’ll see you home, Mira.”
It was those words that broke into my storm that night and sang me to sleep: “I’ll see you home, Mira.” It was the sort of thing a man might say to a woman in one of the stories I’d read, if he were courting her. Walking her home for the evening in the midst of evening birdsong, perhaps gathering a fistful of wildflowers to present her at the end of their stroll.
But this was no peaceful stroll home in the twilight. That was not to be my story. Not with Matthew Petticrew, not with any man. It sank with heaviness in me, as I thought of clutching pebbles and blood in place of wildflowers, and high-sailing shells in place of birdsong on this very long walk “home.” He was not courting me. He was endeavoring to save my life and the life of my child.
But those words, they sang me to sleep in the little billet attic with a slow current of hope that night. My name is Mireilles . . . and I float away. The old familiar refrain misted me from wake to sleep and right into the words that would never be ours: I’ll see you home, Mira.
29
Henry
YOUR BOYS, AMERICA!
October 3, 1918
By Hank Jones
America, your boys press on.
Your boys are courageous
fierce
brave
strong, America!
America, the truth: this is hard.
I paced the empty aisle of the vineyard, trying to beat the sun. It was early morning, and I had a piece to send over the wire before we left Épermay today. But the words would not come. And when they did, they fell flat and beseeched me to cross them out. The only thing I could do with decisiveness.
My brain was clouded over, the effect of a late night spent arguing with George and Matthew, still not knowing what to think myself.
And here I was, charged with writing an inspiring piece on brotherhood and camaraderie to kindle hope and courage in the hearts of Americans everywhere.
I had no such words. Maybe I needed to get the other ones—the clouding-over ones—out of my brain first, clear the pipeline.
So I scratched them down on the notepad.
YOUR BOYS, AMERICA!
Your boys, America, are ripped in two. Half of them wanting one thing, half of them another, all of them wanting the right thing. I have been writing to you long of your sons, your brothers, your fathers. But what if I told you there was a daughter here in need of everything good our great country has to give?
She needs medical care. She needs family. She needs, frankly, all the things your boys at the front need, only she doesn’t have letters and treats coming in packages from home.
We could walk her to a train this very morning, set her securely on her way, and have her off the roads, off her tired feet, headed toward a bright future. Well, potentially bright.
“Potentially disastrous.” I heard Matthew’s voice from the night before reminding me. He was correct, but wasn’t any path we chose potentially disastrous?
Your boys, America, are just that: boys. We are not men. We have reduced ourselves to schoolyard squabbles, only instead of fighting over croquet and football scores after school, we are fighting over the life of a woman and child.
What’s that, America? You know of another daughter of France who now belongs to you? Who, crowned, stands upon an island in New York and declares,
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Yes, America. A resounding yes! She, that Statue of Liberty, like the daughter of France I now speak of, shines a bright future in a weary landscape. And we, it seems, are dooming her to the path of the “homeless, tempest-tost, the tired and poor.”
Ah, it’s a good thing we came here, America. See what good we’re doing.
The words were bitter, making my fingers hurt with how I clutched that pencil and willed it to move faster.
I didn’t know which was more absurd: the fact that it was my job to converse with a country as if she were a person, or the fact
that I was reduced to spelling out my frustrations to her in a letter I’d never send.
How had I come to be here? How, when all I’d done was hop on a train, a farm boy on a mission to a library to save a cow?
I ripped the page out and crumpled it, tossing it on the ground. Started anew. I’d write something patriotic. I’d tell of the training we’d witnessed, the men running drills in the vineyards, the way Épermay treated them with gratitude and honor. I’d tell of the jazz music playing in the streets from our bands, the way it lit the faces of the weary locals, those “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and how the brassy sounds seemed to infuse them with hope. If I had to wager a guess, I’d bet such music would have a long and lasting future here in this fertile, hope-starved country.
I sat and started again.
The morning went on, with a few billet chores to occupy us. Matthew’s sister, Celia, spent a very long time with Mireilles, the two of them speaking in hushed tones. She, a nurse, and Mireilles, soon to be in need of a nurse’s knowledge. I could only hope Mireilles had some magical process to follow when the time came, to get her through. Who knew where she’d be, or who would be there to help her?
Celia spent an equally long time, then, with Matthew, who looked equal parts embarrassed and grave, soaking in every word his sister spoke. If one didn’t know better, from the way she gently advised him, it would seem Celia was five years Matthew’s senior, and not the other way around.
All I could hear were snatches of her voice, this sister of his. Bits of her face, haloed in golden flyaway hairs that coiled around her rosy cheeks. My pencil moving, I looked down to see I had taken to sketching her.
She turned my way. Instinctively I ripped out the page that held her sketch and crumpled it in my hand.
When she approached, head tilted and smile offered, I could barely look her in the face. I heard, in her gait, the cadence of a story—some might call it a limp, but it was more. A part of her that told a tale, and in the voice of her ways, it came out as a melody.