Under a War-Torn Sky (12 page)

The man said to walk. So Henry walked. Must have been twenty minutes by now. Henry glanced back over his shoulder again. The man was still up there on the jagged ridge, silhouetted against the moon. Henry could see the black outline of his rifle. Why did he keep standing there? Was it to protect Henry or shoot him down if he did something wrong?

Just keep moving, Henry told himself. He knew the French would never tell him much. He'd learned that well in the last few weeks. That way, if he were caught by the Gestapo, not much information could be beaten out of him.

Henry stumbled in the dark. The road was little more than a goat path, narrow, uneven, strewn with sharp white rocks. It zigzagged down along the edges of the mountains. For at least ten minutes it had been nothing more than a ledge chipped into the cliffs. One misstep and Henry would plummet hundreds of feet, bouncing off wickedly pointed rocks before landing on top of a vast pine forest far below.

Soon he heard the rush of water. A seething waterfall crashed through the gorge to a bottom Henry couldn't see. A hundred steps farther he came to a great heap of rocks that had tumbled down in a crushing avalanche of stone. He scrambled over it, knocking loose a slide of pebbles into the abyss. Henry stopped to catch his breath and calm his heart, racing with thinner air and the precariousness of his perch.

He could tell he was descending the Alps, heading southwest. He had tried to memorize a map of France at Madame's. He was probably in the Vercors – hundreds of miles still from the Pyrenees and the border of Spain. Henry had no idea what his destination was tonight. He had not been told.

Now Henry stood at a barely distinguishable split in the trail. To the right, colourful wildflowers and tall brown grasses pushed their way up among the stones. The path looked less disturbed, less travelled. Henry looked up at the tiny figure on the ridge before taking the left fork. After a few steps, he glanced back again. The man was gone. Henry was on his own.

Henry paused to look at the savage cliffs encircling him. His own Virginia Tidewater farm was so flat, the horizon so monotonous. Here it looked as if furious giants had played with boulders the way Henry had tried as a child to construct tippy-toe-high towers with building blocks. Cliff upon jagged cliff, teetering, lurching – a completely irregular string of mammoth granite peaks scraped the bottom of heaven. Henry had never felt so insignificant, so minuscule. He sucked in great gulps of the cold air to make himself feel bigger, stronger, less alone. It smelled of pine.

Finally, Henry clambered out of the crags to stand on a grassy ridge. He saw what felt like the entire world laid out before him. Far below was an emerald green valley threading itself through the mountains to create a long, thin pocket of softness. In the moonlight, he could make out pinpricks of white, cows clustered in slumber perhaps. Here and there were tiny stamps of red, most likely the tiled roofs of farmhouses.

Henry sighed in relief. He could hear his ma reciting: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures… He restoreth my soul…”

Henry's face felt wet. A wispy cloud passed over him. He held his hands up, closed his eyes and thrilled to the feel of clouds at his fingertips.

Henry enjoyed the next hour's walk. But it didn't feel like those tiny squares of red and pricks of white were getting much closer.

Vingt
, the man had said. Was that twenty kilometres? How long is a kilometre? Henry wondered. He had no idea. But he had walked two miles to school each morning, two miles back. Henry knew he could make that one-way distance in about forty minutes, no problem. That meant he could cover twenty miles in a night if he had to.

Another hour passed. Henry began to feel vulnerable.
Crunch, crunch
, his hard-soled shoes ground pebble against pebble. In the still, clean air, the crackle of each step seemed to boom down the foothills:
Here's a lost American. Shoot him.

Henry had often tended his family's chickens, and their milk cows by the light of the stars. But now the night seemed dangerous, hostile. The moon's pearly sheen illuminated only the tops of the trees and bushes. Within the eerie recesses of the plants' shadows, anything could be hiding. His own body, backlit by the moonlight, cast a long, giveaway shadow of its own.

Henry wet his lips to whistle but stopped abruptly. Idiot, he berated himself. Why don't you just light a firecracker to announce yourself?

More time crept by. The moon was sinking. The path levelled out and Henry came to a tiny village that wound itself around a church. The church had a castle-like tower, with a huge clock face. Its hands pointed to half past four. Was that the right time? Dawn would break soon. Should he go through the town? The
maquis
had told him not to, but what if that was where he was supposed to make contact? Maybe he was supposed to go to the church. The man had said churches were safe.

Henry tried to become a soundless shadow. He slid by one house, another, and another. Then he realized he was trapped in a maze. The small, two-storey houses opened out onto the narrow lane, making a solidly connected flank of ancient stone facades. If someone appeared, there was no place to hide except in a doorway. What good was that?

What should he do? Go back? Go ahead?

Henry hated being so afraid. Hated his knees feeling wobbly. Hated waiting for a saviour, completely unknown, to drop into his path.

He passed another dozen houses. Would there be a checkpoint around the corner?

Henry forced his feet to walk calmly, as if he belonged in the town. Don't run. They'll hear these stupid shoes clatter. What if a dog starts barking? A good dog will smell me passing, even if I don't make a sound. Speed would, for sure.

Henry's breathing was so laboured, he was certain it was loud enough to wake the whole town.

He made it to the church. Carved stone faces glared down at him. Henry tried the tall double door. “Please, God, please,” he whispered as he pressed the latch.

It was locked. Henry's forehead fell against its dark wood. How could they lock the church? Even during the Depression, when people were tempted to do all sorts of things to feed their kin, churches had stayed open.

Henry crossed the square to a road he thought led out of town. He paused a moment in the shadows of a slightly grander looking building. Town hall, Henry reckoned.

Suddenly, he recoiled from a dim figure of a soldier. He stared at it in the gloom. It didn't move.

It's only a poster, boy.
A poster of a muscled, blond German holding a young boy. The child was eating a slice of bread and smiling. At the soldier's hip two young girls looked up adoringly at him. The caption read: POPULATIONS ABANDONNÉES, FAITES CONFIANCE AU SOLDAT ALLEMAND!

Slowly, painfully, Henry worked out a translation: “Abandoned people, put your trust in the German soldier.” He backed away, sickened by the exploitation of children's hunger, and hurried down the street.

Henry came to the last house. What lay beyond it? Henry flattened himself against its cold stone wall and peeped around the edge. He saw nothing but night and trees, and a vast, rolling sea of hilly fields beyond.

He took a deep breath and stepped back onto the road.

Another hour. Still no contact. Henry's throat felt like sandpaper. His legs were numb, his feet throbbing. His wooden shoes had ground a huge blister onto his bad foot. He could feel blood oozing through his sock.

Every sound he heard made his skin crawl: the breeze rattling leaves, the crack of a twig as an animal skittered away, alarmed by his approach. Golden, rosy light was seeping across the earth. Occasionally he heard the tentative morning call of a rooster. What should he do?

Henry came to a rise in the road. He searched the horizon for a place to hide. Far below he saw a farm, four stone buildings clustered together, and several wide, fenced pastures. The buildings were small and low, tucked into protective crooks of the hillside. Smart, thought Henry, to place them where they would be shielded from the winds and snows. Maybe his contact was there. Or maybe the farmer was away and he could hide in the barn. Maybe he could find the well to get a drink of water. Maybe they had stored dried apples or potatoes or something he could eat. Maybe.

Henry walked on cautiously. Anyone looking out a window could surely see him. As he drew nearer he could hear the gentle tinkle of cowbells, the sound of pigs grunting and rooting around, chickens clucking on their roosts.

His stomach grumbled at the thought of food. The
maquis
had only given him a large hunk of crusty bread – the same dinner they ate – before he began his journey. He carried no water. His throat constricted as he imagined swallowing some sweet spring water.

Henry assessed the buildings. The largest had to be the house. It was covered with climbing roses, ready to bloom. One was the barn. The smallest might be a root cellar. He started to turn for it. Careful, he warned himself, watch out for –

Henry froze. There was an old, stooped man in the paddock by the barn. Henry fought his instinct to bolt. It's an old man, he thought, calming himself. He's seventy if he's a day. I can outrun an old man. I can overpower him if I have to. I have this knife. I can scare him into –

Sweet Jesus. Henry couldn't believe what he had just contemplated. It's just an old man who deserves to go about his business without being bullied for a turnip.

Henry kept moving. He felt the old man's eyes on him. He knew that the man might be a collaborator, might turn him over to the Germans for a few francs, or just for fun. It probably was a good idea to knock him out for a while. But Henry just couldn't do it. There were no telephone wires here. Henry would be long gone before the old man could alert anyone to his whereabouts. Henry hurried on.

Ten minutes later, he came to another slight rise in the road. Henry could see a village maybe twenty minutes farther down the slopes. Was there a way around it? As he searched, he spotted a small figure coming up the road towards him.

Alarmed, Henry slowed. The figure was very small, a child probably. Keep walking, Henry told himself. Don't look scared; don't change your course. Keep moving and nod at him. He's just a kid.

The boy drew nearer and nearer. Just pass him and nod. Don't try to speak. Your French is lousy, remember? Henry's heart pounded wildly, hurting his head.

A few feet from the boy, Henry couldn't help swinging out away from him, like a horse spooked.

“
Tonton Jacques!
” the child cried.

Startled, Henry backed away as the boy darted towards him.

“
Tonton Jacques!
” he called again. He caught Henry and hugged him tight. What did it mean? Was this child his contact? A child?

The little boy took Henry's hand. Henry looked down at him, ashamed that his own hand was trembling. The child couldn't be more than eight years old, maybe nine. He had the face of a baby, but his eyes seemed old and sorrowful.

Without another word, the boy turned Henry around and led him back up the road to the farm he'd just passed. When they reached the barn, the boy pulled open the door. The familiar smell of fresh hay and warm, sleepy animals washed over Henry. Just like his barn at home. Henry's eyes blurred with tears. Just like home.

The little boy squeezed Henry's hand. “
Vous serez tranquille ici.
”

“Safe?” Henry whispered.

The boy nodded solemnly.

Safe for the day.

The boy took Henry up a wobbly, hand-hewn ladder to the hayloft. The boards were ancient and thin. Bits of straw drifted down through the cracks as they walked. Henry could see the tops of cows and the old man's head through the slats. He heard the sound of milk hitting the bottom of an empty pail, a cow mooing in half-hearted protest over being milked while she ate. They were nice sounds, sounds as familiar to him as breathing.

The boy lay belly down on the straw and hung his head and shoulders way over the edge of the hayloft floor. Henry smiled. How many times had his mother reprimanded him for the exact same move?

“
Grand-père?
” the boy called.

“
Qu'est-ce que tu veux?
” the old man shouted back gruffly.

Henry winced for the boy. The grandfather sounded like Clayton.

“
Un peu de lait, s'il vous plaît?
”

“
Oui,
” the old man grunted. “
Un petit peu.
”

The boy rolled up off the hay. “
Restez ici.
” He pointed at the spot where Henry stood. Henry nodded.

The boy slipped down the ladder. Henry fell to the hay. God, he was exhausted. He pulled off his shoe. His sock was caked with dried blood. Slowly he pulled it off to avoid tearing the blister open more than it already was. It was a nasty one, two inches long, very deep, very bloody. He'd have to ask for water to wash it. What was the word for water?
Boisson?
No, that wasn't right.
L'eau.
That was it.

Henry listened to the two talking in whispers below. All he could make out was the grandfather ordering the boy to be more quiet and muttering something about hungry Americans. Then he heard a clink of metal pails and a slosh. Henry's mouth watered. The boy re-emerged, carefully carrying a large mug with a rooster painted on it.

“
Pour vous,
” he said proudly.

Henry took the mug. He chugged the thick, frothy liquid. He thought he'd never tasted anything so good. Henry closed his eyes to feel the warm, creamy milk slide down his throat.

He looked at the boy and winked. He'd always loved teasing Patsy's brood of younger brothers. Being an only child, Henry had been hungry for play and never tired of trying to amuse them when he visited Patsy's crowded cottage.