Once a Warrior Page 11

  Mike still made it a rule not to eat before going into battle, but now his long-empty stomach growled noisily at the mention of food. He looked down at his mid-section, then up at his CO, and grinned in embarrassment. “Sounds good to me, sir.”

  “Well . . .” The colonel paused, clearly awkward when it came to good-byes, then snapped his helmet strap under his chin and said brusquely, “I’ll see you at the top of the hill, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mike replied as he snapped off a crisp salute.

  At the door, the colonel stopped and turned back, his grave expression softening with concern. “Godspeed, son.”

  “Same to you, sir.”

  Mike could hear the colonel clumping down the wooden stairs, shouting orders all the way, as he folded his map and put it away. The thought of a hot steak sandwich instead of a cold K ration had his mouth watering. And him hurrying to grab one before he started up the hill.

  He got sidetracked, though, when he was replacing the straps of his leather map case around his neck and his hand bumped against the small Bible he always carried in his shirt pocket. In addition to the pictures of his brother and sister and his godson, he now had a snapshot of Anne-Marie Gérard. Her cousin Henriette had taken it, she’d explained, and she had enclosed it in one of her weekly letters—most of which had burned along with his men and the Bronze Star he’d yet to send home for safekeeping when his tank was hit.

  Her letters had become his lifeline in the midst of all the death and destruction. When he received one, he ripped it open and read it immediately. Then he reread it every chance he got. He rarely retained what she said because the noise and the confusion made it difficult to concentrate. But whenever he heard his name at mail call, it was like music to his ears.

  He hadn’t had a chance to write back to her, what with his being constantly on the move or in the thick of battle. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could find the right words to tell her how often he thought of her—when he had the time to think, that is. If he’d had the time or the words, though, the first thing he would’ve told her was how much he appreciated her picture.

  “I’m standing in front of my house,” she’d written in her fine hand on the back. “Do you recognize?”

  Mike wasn’t sure if Anne-Marie was asking whether he recognized the house or her, but he hardly needed a reminder of what she looked like. Hell, she haunted his dreams. When the battalion coiled for the night, he had only to crawl under his tank and close his eyes to conjure up the honey-gold bounty of her hair and the pale oval of her face in the empty blackness.

  But whenever he opened the Bible to look at the small black-and-white picture, as he did now, and remembered the way her topaz eyes had glimmered with tears and her rose-kissed lips had trembled with regret when he’d told her goodbye, the guilt that raged in him was so strong that he almost didn’t care who won the goddamned war.

  Just as long as he lived to apologize to her in person.

  * * * *

  Anne-Marie had been running on sheer willpower for two days now, ever since her grandfather died, and she was drained to the point of exhaustion.

  The fierce November wind howled around the corners of the house as she closed the front door on the last of the funeral party. She rubbed her arms, wondering if she would ever feel warm again, then reached to the coatrack for her sweater. As she slipped it on, she thought of Mike’s field jacket. It was hanging in her armoire, and she frequently took it out at the end of the day and wore it to bed over her nightgown.

  She was tempted to run up and put it on right now. To bury her nose in the collar, breathe in the scent of him that still clung to it and pretend that he was close to her. But she knew if she did, she would probably crawl under her comforter, curl up into a ball and cry herself to sleep.

  Her knees nearly buckling under the weight of her fatigue, not to mention all the major decisions she still had to make about her future, she crossed the painfully empty living room to tend the fire. The clock on the mantle confirmed she’d made the right decision in settling for the sweater. It was only a few minutes after four—too early for bed and too late for a nap.

  Yesterday morning, when her grandfather had failed to come down for breakfast, she’d felt a foreboding so strong that it had sent her racing up the stairs. Trying to control the panic in her voice, she’d called out to him in the ominous silence as she’d moved toward his room. Hearing no answer, she’d opened the door and slipped in.

  And discovered his body in bed.

  “Mon Dieu!” she’d whispered, too stunned to cry as she’d taken his lifeless hand in hers and held those cold, knobby fingers to her cheek.

  Her grandfather had died in his sleep, simply slipped away from her in the middle of the night as she had so often slipped out of his house when she was working with the Résistance movement, and she’d known immediately that there was nothing she could do to revive him.

  The next few hours had been a greater test of her love and her resolve than all of her missions against the Germans combined.

  Gently, though her hands shook, Anne-Marie had closed her grandfather’s sightless eyes and kissed his stubbled cheeks before calling the farm to deliver the terrible news. Then, determined to restore her grandmother’s standard, she’d rolled up her sleeves and gone to work preparing his body for burial. By the time her aunt and uncle and cousins arrived, she had already shaved him and trimmed his snowy hair and was busy pressing his best suit.

  And today, as the wind swept down from the Arctic and a thin gray veil of sleet fell from the clouds, a nattily groomed Henri Gérard had been laid to rest beside his beloved Yvonne.

  The funeral had been almost unendurable. Her aunt had sobbed convulsively throughout the requiem Mass, almost drowning out the village priest’s ancient Latin words. Even her surprisingly sober uncle had choked back tears as the procession moved from the church to the cemetery. Her surviving male cousins had stood, somber as three old men, while the coffin was lowered into the earth. And poor Henriette, who had earlier confided that she was pregnant by Guy Compain and praying desperately that he would marry her before she started to show, had wept hysterically when it was her turn to toss a handful of cold, muddy dirt onto the lid.

  Only Anne-Marie had remained stoic and dry-eyed. In spite of her grandfather’s sometimes-gruff demeanor, she had loved him dearly. And she knew he had loved her—perhaps more than any of the others. As such, she felt it would dishonor his memory to set aside her dignity and surrender to the wrenching grief that tore at her heart.

  Mourners had come from the village and the outlying farms to make their adieux. They’d brought food and wine, as friends and neighbors do for such occasions. More important, they’d brought stories of the doctor who had delivered their babies, diagnosed their ailments and driven untold miles in weather fair and foul without regard as to whether they could pay his bill. Stories of a well-loved, well-respected man who had always put people before money.

  It was those stories, as well as her own fond recollections, which now had Anne-Marie perilously close to tears. They filled her eyes, blurring her vision as she all but stumbled across the room to sit in her grandfather’s chair. While the upholstery was worn and the seat lumpy, its welcoming arms enveloped her like a warm hug.

  Not bothering to switch on the lamp, she sat in the sepia-toned light, vignettes of those carefree August holidays that her parents and her brother and she had always spent in Ste. Genviève flashing through her mind.

  Some mornings the entire family would climb into her grandfather’s coupe and drive to the coast. After a day spent exploring the historic abbey at Mont St. Michel or building sand castles on the beaches of St. Malo, they would arrive home tired but happy. Over that evening’s apéritifs, they admired the souvenirs they’d bought in the shops leading up to the abbey or the seashells they’d found on the beach before sitting down together to one of her grandmother’s delicious dinners of lamb or freshly-caught fish.

  E
ven if there’d been no excursion planned, they’d had fun. Her brother often bicycled out to the farm, where he would pester their rural cousins by jumping off the haystacks they’d baled or accidentally dropping the eggs their hens had just laid. If it was sunny, Miriam Blum and she would go swimming in the lake or sip citron pressé in the shade of a tree; if it was raining, they would shut themselves in Miriam’s room and confide their secret dreams in each other. And at least once during their two-week stay, the whole lot of them would pitch tents in the woods and pass the long, dark night scaring each other silly with ghost stories.

  But it was those simple evenings spent en famille, with the scents and the sounds of summer drifting in through the open windows and doors, which would forever live in her heart.

  A log hissed in the fire, shooting out a tongue of blue flame, as Anne-Marie rolled her head sideways and looked across the room. Even now, she could see her mother and grandmother sitting at the lace-covered dining table, shoulders hunched and nimble fingers flying as they patched the knees of her brother’s pants or lengthened the hems of her school dresses. While they sewed, they discussed everything from what the latest fashion designs were to when Frenchwomen would finally be granted the right to vote.

  Forcing herself to look away, she focused on the chair opposite the one she occupied. If she listened carefully, she could hear one of Josephine Baker’s jazzy solos on the gramophone, providing the background music for a spirited political or philosophical debate between her father and grandfather.

  And there, on the threadbare carpet, her brother refighting Trafalgar with his tin soldiers while she sprawled on her stomach, chin in hand, reading one of her beloved romances.

  They were gone now, all of them, and she was alone.

  Alone.

  The devastating realization that she’d lost almost everyone she’d ever loved struck her like an assault. Four years of holding back, of bottling up her tears and her fears, built like floodwaters against a damn. Sorrow clawed inside her, demanding release, as she covered her face with her hands and began to cry.

  She cried for her parents—for a mother who had always smelled of jasmine and a father whose mustache had always made his kisses tickle. She cried for her sunny-faced brother, her brave cousin Maurice and her sweet friend Miriam Blum. She cried for her grandparents—for a grandmother who’d endured such horrible agony and a grandfather who’d remained true to her and to himself to the bitter end. She cried for her country, now lying in ruins, and for her people, so many of whom had paid the ultimate price to be free.

  And when that storm subsided, when her eyes were puffy, her nose stuffy and her entire body aching with sadness for all she had lost, Anne-Marie wept for Mike.

  Rocking back and forth to give herself some small comfort, she wept for the ugly way they had parted. For her refusal to make love with him. And for the yearning regret which stalked her yet.

  Then she wept for the dangers he faced. As the uncontrollable tears seeped through her fingers, the news from the radio broadcasts that she listened to nightly replayed in her mind. The battle for France had been won but the fighting along the German front was fierce and bloody, and the Allied losses were staggering.

  She didn’t know where Mike was, of course. Didn’t even know if he was dead or alive. And while she prayed every day that he was warm and safe and had enough to eat, it was the not knowing that sparked her nightmares. She was constantly fighting off the terrible specter of his fiery death, the flames racing over her own flesh and boiling her own blood, the thick, black smoke choking off her own breath, so that she would come awake in the dark, flailing against the demons that haunted her and crying out his name.

  How long she wept she couldn’t say. Gradually, though, her sobs quieted and the hot tears slowed. And her pain, finally purged, eased.

  Anne-Marie dropped her hands and raised her head, astonished to find that what little natural light there had been earlier was gone, swept away by the onset of evening, and that the room had grown dim. She fumbled in her sweater pocket for a handkerchief with which to dry her eyes. Then she sagged back in the chair and faced the very bleak but very real prospect of a future without Mike.

  He hadn’t told her he loved her. Nor had he made any rash promises to come back for her. He’d simply asked her to write to him. Which she had, faithfully. Except for the photograph he’d sent to her almost a month ago, however, she’d received no replies to her letters.

  She turned her gaze to his photo, which she had framed for display on the chairside table, and studied it in the flickering firelight. It had come as a complete surprise because she’d given up hope of ever hearing from him. But she’d gotten an even bigger surprise when, in the privacy of her room, she’d slit open the thin blue envelope and found that it contained only a black-and-white print.

  At first she’d been disappointed that he hadn’t taken the time to write her a letter telling her where he was and how he was doing. Then she’d turned it over and read what he had written on the back. And had burst out laughing.

  “I’m standing in front of my jeep,” he’d scrawled in his large, firm hand. “Do you recognize?”

  Now, as she recalled what she’d penned on the back of the picture she’d sent to him, a small, wobbly smile curved Anne-Marie’s lips. She loved Mike’s quick wit. His rich, ready laughter. Loved them almost as much as she loved the man himself.

  And yes, she recognized. His dark hair, cropped en brosse, and his handsome face. The breadth of his shoulders and the bronze of his flesh. Oh, she remembered everything about him so clearly! That intriguing dimple in his cheek and the timbre of his voice, as tantalizing as the caress of his hand.

  Her smile faded into a frown, though, when she touched his glossy likeness through the glass. Feet braced apart and hands fisted on hips, he appeared to be standing atop a hill. But despite the triumphant pose, there were deep grooves of exhaustion on either side of his mouth. Grooves that told her that he was as sick and tired of this war as she was.

  He’d lost weight, too. She could see it in the slightly baggy fit of his new field jacket. The lean and hungry planes of his features. More worrisome yet were his eyes. They stared out at her like spent bullet shells, with no life behind them, as if a part of him had died during his grueling climb to the top.

  Anne-Marie felt her heart swell painfully at the thought. She’d heard nothing from him since he’d sent the photograph. Rien. Still, she would write to him this evening, as she had every week for the last three months, and tell him he sad news about her grandfather. Then she would give some serious thought to where she went from here.

  But first, she decided, as she raised the picture to her lips and tenderly kissed his image, she would rest for a few minutes.

  She fell asleep in the chair, holding his picture.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Eifel-Ardennes

  The snow was ass-deep to a tall Indian, the December wind had a razor’s edge, and the fog that had rolled in with the night was so thick that a man could barely see his hand in front of his freakin’ face.

  Sergeant Charlie Miller still couldn’t figure out how he’d gone from running a combined mess hall at Camp Fanning, Texas, to standing guard on the Ghost Front in just two months’ time. One day he’d been serving shit-on-a-shingle to corporals and steaks to captains, nipping a little vanilla when nobody was watching to tide him over till payday, and writing dutifully to his pregnant wife, who was staying with her parents back in Kansas City for the duration. The next, he’d been reassigned to an infantry division, retrained in combat technique, and ordered to ship out immediately.

  He’d put off calling Daisy until the evening before he’d left.

  It wasn’t a call he’d looked forward to making. At five months along, she was over the morning sickness that had been plaguing her but was prone to some pretty wild mood swings. Her doctor had attributed it to hormone changes and said it was perfectly natural for a woman in her condition. But seeing
as how she’d gotten pregnant on their wedding night, when his GI condom broke, Charlie had a sneaking suspicion that she was just using that as an excuse to get back at him.

  Then there was the little matter of money. Marriage had proven to be a more expensive proposition than he’d anticipated. No sooner had he finished paying off Daisy’s wedding ring than he’d had to start in on her doctor bills. And then there was her allotment, which was automatically deducted from his check every month. So add it all up, and he was walking around flat broke most of the time.

  “But you’re a cook, not a killer!” she’d cried when he’d called her—collect—to give her the bad news.

  Charlie knew himself well enough to know he was no hero. He’d never fired a shot in anger, and he had no idea how he would react if someone shot at him. To hear Daisy tell it, though, he was just some weak sister who’d fall apart at the first sign of trouble.

  “For your information, I hit the target three times with my carbine today.” On the defensive, he didn’t bother to explain that that was out of a clip of fifteen rounds. He felt certain, however, that her old man—who’d never liked him—would be more than happy to supply his only daughter with that minor detail.

  “And you’re going to be a father next February!” Daisy’s voice rose, cracking on a shrill note before falling to a pleading whisper. “Can’t you just ask them to keep you stateside until the baby’s born?”

  “In case you’ve forgotten,” he reminded her testily, “we’re at war.”

  “How can I forget?” She sounded more in control of herself, but also a little condescending. “It’s all I read in the newspapers. All I hear on the radio.”

  “Then quit reading and listening.”

  “What else is there for me to do?”

  He fought a sudden urge to slam down the receiver in her selfish ear. “Try rolling bandages for the Red Cross. Or volunteering to write letters for wounded vets.”