Violins of Autumn (7 page)

Denise taps her thumb against a handlebar. “That crash is a beacon to every gendarme and Nazi soldier around for kilometers.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Should we go get him, then? Before they do?”

I nod, already pushing off.

We ride standing, our full weight pressing the pedals, and set a quick pace. Denise leans over her handlebars, pushing the bike to go as fast as possible. I do the same, rapidly running out of breath. We’re in a race against an unseen opponent who won’t let a downed airman slip through its fingers, lest he escape death or hell on earth, and there’s no way of knowing how much or how little time we have.

Once past the trees the hulk of the plane becomes clearly visible, its smoke signals boldly broadcasting the location of the crash. What we can’t see is the pilot.

“All he has to do is stand. Wave an arm. Anything,” I say.

“They don’t waste time, do they?” Denise draws my attention to the horizon. “Look there on the hill, past that field of yellow colza flowers and that small stand of trees in the middle of nothing, to the left of the grass but not quite to the wheat.”

My eyes zig this way and zag that way, until I see two trucks coasting down the hillside, so far off they look like my cousins’ toy automobiles rolling through the pretend cardboard scene they painted.

“Eagle Eyes, you’re supposed to be looking over here!”

Denise surveys the proper side of the road. “Right, then. There he is. Do you see the spot of color near the dilapidated wire fence?”

“I see him now,” I say, hopping off my bike.

At the side of the road, we jostle our bicycles into the hedgerows, past the cover of new leaves to the brambly branches beneath that tug at my clothes and hair.

When I stand upright, I say, “I guarantee you, Denise, the Nazi soldiers in those trucks do not suspect they’re about to be outfoxed by two girls.”

In the stillness before we spring back into action, Denise looks to me, grinning like mad. She quotes a line from
King Kong
, one of my favorite movies I watched with Tom.

“‘Oh no. It wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.’”

In this one surprising moment she becomes my friend.

“Should we slap him?”

“No,” I say, heart racing. He lies on the ground at my feet, eyes closed, looking like a high school quarterback who’s been knocked out cold. “Okay, maybe we should.”

Denise leans over the pilot with the back of her hand poised to strike his clean-shaven cheek.
Whack!

The pilot’s eyes open with a start. He stares through his goggles at the two female heads hovering over him.

“Am I in heaven? Are you angels?”

“We don’t have time to be your angels right now,” Denise says. “Later on maybe.”

Denise grabs one arm, I grab the other, and we pull him up. We let go and he wobbles, unsteady on greasy joints, but doesn’t fall over. That’s one good thing. We need to get him somewhere safe, and quickly.

“Keep his parachute,” I say. I run to gather it up. “It might come in handy.”

The pilot lets out a moan that reminds me of a bawling moose. “They killed my Bessie Lou! Bessie Lou’s dead!”

I turn around to check the road, convinced the trucks are about to materialize out of thin air. We don’t have time for talking, much less crazed babbling.

I push the bundled parachute into the pilot’s arms. “Listen, you need to come with us.”

“I hurt my hip something fierce when I landed.” He takes three halting steps. “I can walk, but not real well.”

Denise grips a handful of his leather and marches him away. “In minutes, German soldiers will be here. Would you like to wait around to give them a proper welcome?” She turns to me as I run to catch up. “There’s nowhere to hide. Let’s get the bicycles.”

At the bushes, the pilot sets the parachute down. “Allow me.”

He mightily pushes his way through the branches. The rustling bushes give birth to my bike first. I wheel it up to the road to stand guard.

“The road is clear,” I say. “Hurry up, you two.”

With a splintering crack, the bushes spit out leaves, twigs, and Denise’s bike. She and the pilot topple into each other in an effort to keep the bike from crashing over.

“Come on now, then,” she says, simultaneously righting her bike and her hair.

She trudges toward me, clenching the handlebars of her bike. Behind her, the pilot bends, red-faced, to collect his parachute.

“Ditch your uniform,” I call out to him. “It’ll give you away.”

He stares at me, sapping precious time, before hesitantly removing his goggles.

While checking the road, I call, “Off with everything but your pants and undershirt.”

“I can’t part with my flight jacket,” he whines, and I half expect him to start bawling.

“Leave the jacket or we’ll leave you here,” Denise says. “Have a .45 in your boot, by any chance?”

“A revolver? In my boot?”

“Yes, do you have a sidearm?”

“No, ma’am, I do not.”

She gets him moving again with a flick of her hand. “Well, at least you still have your boots and didn’t lose them when you bailed.”

Bit by bit, the outer authoritative pilot falls away, leaving behind a bashful young man. He stashes his gear in the bushes and runs with the parachute and a slight limp to the road.

“I’ll take him with me,” I tell Denise.

She winks, and my face grows even hotter. I hold the bike steady while the pilot climbs on behind me. In one hand he clutches his parachute. His other hand gingerly rests on my shoulder.

“You can hold on. I won’t break.” I forcefully push off to get momentum going before lifting my feet to the pedals.

The bike lurches, swaying from his weight. I will myself to stay balanced and not dump him off. His bare arm snakes around my waist, leaving so much space between us that he’s not really holding on at all. As I ride upright the only part of me that comes in contact with his arm from time to time is my chest, and I wish that he’d just grab hold of me already. German soldiers are in hot pursuit. This is no time for either of us to be embarrassed. Next thing I know, a bump in and out of a pothole jolts him into gripping so tightly I’m struggling for air.

The parachute presses into me when his arm clamps down.
A flurry of hot breaths batters my neck. I keep my focus only so long before reflexively swatting at my hair, as if his breaths are pesky flies that won’t shoo.

The road dips into a steadily sloping arc. We zip further into the valley. Open fields now behind us, sparse forests return, the tree line broken by an intersecting road that we’re approaching fast.

Over her shoulder, Denise says, “I have an idea. We’ll have a picnic.”

“But I have a gut feeling that the trucks are practically on top of us.”

“We’ll stop there, by that brook, like we did before.” As I pull alongside her, she says, “We can’t speed past the German trucks without arousing suspicion.”

We veer off the road and continue across rough ground. The handlebars bounce in my hands, jarring my entire body. Denise, the lucky one with a bike all to herself, speeds ahead of me. I grunt and groan my way forward, desperate to catch up. That’s what I get for trying to be a hero.

At the brook, Denise runs with her bicycle to a nearby cluster of squat evergreens, and then she hurries back to a shady patch of flat ground near the water. I drop the pilot off there and I hide my bike with Denise’s. By the time I get back to them, they’ve laid out the parachute like a picnic blanket on a carpet of velvety moss.

We sink onto the silk and sit ramrod straight, looking nothing like relaxed picnickers.

“Why are we waiting for the Germans?” the pilot asks.

An uneasy giggle prickles up inside me. Why
are
we sitting out in the open and not hiding? The plan that made perfect sense
a few seconds ago is falling like one of my aunt’s cakes when her boys stampede through the kitchen.

The pilot inches away from me. “Why are you smiling?”

Denise and I snatched up a perfect stranger, ranting about Germans and trucks that he hasn’t seen any evidence of, and carried him off on our bicycles. For all he knows, we’re setting him up to be captured. And here I am, grinning at the poor guy like a lunatic, when in truth my nerves are unraveling a little.

“Places, everyone,” Denise whispers. “We’re relaxed, we’re having a brilliant good time, we are on the lookout for fun, not Germans. Ready, and … action.”

We fall into laid-back poses just as the trucks speed into view.

Without turning my head, I keep one eye on the trucks. “They’ve spotted us.” The stiff smile at my lips barely moves when I say, “I sure hope they keep going.”

The trucks slide through my peripheral vision.

“They’re not leaving,” the pilot says, in English, and far too loudly. He might as well wave a sign that reads
I’M THE AMERICAN YOU’RE LOOKING FOR!
“They’re coming back.”

His trembling legs jerk. I grab hold of his flight trousers as his seat leaves silk and yank him back to earth.

“If you run, you’ll get us all killed. Calm down.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

The trucks reverse and come to a stop. The driver’s door of the second truck swings open. A soldier steps down to the road. Pebbles crunch beneath his heavy boots. He straightens his glasses, carefully analyzing each member of our group.

Unless by some miracle he stops walking, we are finished. I chew the inside of my mouth, counting each crunching footstep.

Standing tall, arms stiff at his sides, he calls out to us in perfect English. “Have you seen an American here?”

Fear clangs through me. We all speak and understand English. While Denise and I are trained to gauge our responses to the unexpected, I’m not so sure about the pilot. If he falls for the soldier’s trap and shows a hint of understanding or fear, the jig is up.

“Watch yourself, pilot,” Denise whispers out of the side of her mouth. “And bloody well keep your mouth shut.”

“Have you seen an American here?” the soldier repeats. “An American pilot?”

Denise shrugs and calls back, “
Pardonnez-moi?
”

“
Vous avez vu un pilote américain?
” he says, in the same calm monotone he’s used since he first spoke.

From inside the truck, another soldier is keeping an eye on us. I watch him reach for the door handle.

Without saying a word, Denise scrambles to her feet and sashays to the soldier. I pick up the odd muffled word as they talk, but it’s not enough to get a good read on their conversation. The soldier’s knotted expression slackens. The rigid contour of his back slumps. Unbelievably, he waves good-bye to Denise and boards his truck. On a surface level, I notice the trucks pull away. The core of me is stunned, overcome with relief.

Denise marches back, arms swishing back and forth. She plunks down next to me and promptly falls over.

“Oh my gosh, are you all right?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I just need to catch my breath.” She lays an arm across her eyes to block the sun. “I’ll bet you thought his English was spot-on. He went to school in New York City.”

The German soldier and I were relative neighbors once. I can’t help but wonder about his life in America. Does it weigh on his mind that he now hunts American men like the pilot? And girls like me?

“We had a close call with that soldier,” Denise says. “He kept looking at you two over my shoulder, so I took his attention away by asking all sorts of questions about Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy Theater, even though I’ve only read about them in magazines. We made plans to meet in town this afternoon for a drink, and then off he went.”

“Thanks, Denise,” I say. “It was really brave of you to do that for us.”

I let her rest a few seconds more; all the time I feel we can safely spare.

“If they find out we’ve tricked them, they’ll come back,” I say, standing to leave.

She extends her arm and I help her up.

“Pilot,” Denise says. “Aren’t you coming? Up you get.”

He stares at his lap. His fidgeting fingers twist and pull at each other.

“Are you crying?”

The pilot wriggles backward onto the bed of moss. He goes about gathering the parachute, head bowed.

“What do you have to be crying about? I didn’t see you promising to go out on a date with that German.”

He hobbles away without us, quick even with the limp, in the direction of the road. We don’t have our bicycles ready. Off he goes anyway, without knowing where he’s headed or what he’s storming off to.

Denise chases him down. “C’mon now, pilot, toughen up. I’m
trying to protect you. Behaving like a six-year-old child will only get us captured or killed.”

“You’re right, I’m not six.” The pilot’s out-of-kilter stomping slows to shuffling steps. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m sixteen years old.”

Denise slowly spins around to face me. “Bloody hell.”

Our shadows, three dark spires against the dusty road, loom large ahead of us, as if impatient with our decision to walk the rest of the way to the farm. We’re nearly there, having passed an out-of-place stone fence that severs two barren pastures, the final landmark Madame LaRoche told us about.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Denise scan our surroundings. I’m still in disbelief that she had the guts to make a date with the German. She pulled personal information out of him in less time than it typically takes me to lace up my shoes. If I have to, if it means life or death, can I put so many stars in an enemy’s eyes that he won’t notice I’ve gotten away until it’s too late? If not, which tricks will I use?

“What did you say to that German?” I ask her. My curiosity always gets the better of me.

Denise shoots a sidelong glance at the pilot. “I told him he
must
be more exciting than my boyfriend. And I complimented him. Flattery works every time.”

He fell for flattery. That might be true, but it isn’t the whole story. Denise is pretty, and pretty girls know their power. The beautiful girls at boarding school got away with a lot more than the rest of us.