Here It Is

Let me alert you to the following. This story has gone through contests in two separate statewide competitions, several years apart. One gave me no award whatever and the other gave me First Prize. I hope you enjoy it.♥


TO SAVE A BRIDGE


It began at midnight yesterday. The long-awaited invasion of Europe by the Allies was underway. Weather conditions on the coast proved unfavorable for troop convoys to land without the scheduled full moon. But General Eisenhower took his staff meteorologist’s recommendation and proceeded with the invasion. To our amazement, the Nazi soldiers in the Loire Valley left our streets and rushed to Normandy. News spread like wildfire and eased our war-weariness to an extent: we heard it was the beginning of the end. I wrote it all down, as papa taught me to do—and to write and read, indeed to think—like an adult, before he left for war, against a time like this.

Hitler ordered the destruction of all the wine-producing châteaux in France. Château Vougeot is not so large and well known as Mouton-Rothschild, and not one of those tourists drive out from Paris to see, but we have our good years. Hitler isn’t punishing us for putting best labels on poorest wine we were forced to send to German troops fighting in Russia. He can’t know that. No, this latest order is predicated on his diabolical bent to destroy all things French except what he stole. This means especially the wine industry, as precious to us French as the art treasures in the Louvre. I learned of his objective in time to try to save our château.

Yesterday, before hearing of the invasion, I attended my first Résistance meeting, which included just the leader and me. Though he said I was so young—my being a girl didn't matter—I learned how to plant a land mine encased in wood. Then shortly after noon when we saw châteaux in the distance go up in flames, it was time to plant those mines.

The fires formed something of a lopsided circle, and were closing in, sneaking along in the underbrush as well as reaching for the heavens. Our château, larger than the others in this area, might be last, as a sort of climax perhaps. It is the first château on the main road, just one mile from the bridge, and after us, the enemy could make a laughing exit.

With so many trees about, no one saw me move bricks and bury two land mines close together just a few yards inside our front gate, on the route the Nazi soldiers always used when they rang our doorbell. It was far enough inside the courtyard that any friend who might arrive would still bear to the right, heading for the east entry, and be safe as usual. But we expected no friends to call. They had houses to protect. Afterwards in the kitchen I deliberately cut my left hand. I see that as foolish now, but at the time I thought, how could anyone suspect me of planting mines if I had an injured hand? Mama bandaged it but she didn't know about the mines or about the deliberate cutting. We females have to cope, for our men folk are away fighting the war or doing slave labor and starving to death in prison camps. When my brother Henri turned sixteen, away at school in England, French Intelligence grabbed him up for training. Mama keeps our wine business going with the help of my six-year-old brother Jacques and me, and occasionally neighbors. But without copper sulfate it's impossible to keep fungus out of the vineyards. Much effort has gone into planting a garden—mostly parsnips and turnips—to feed us and as many others as we can. How we could use Henri now, but we haven't heard from him in over three months.

Now Jacques and I hide among the vines, where Mama sends us, with bread, cheese, and inferior grapes wrapped in a damp cloth, and in my good hand my father’s leather portfolio of valuable papers. We find two other children here and their mothers, women who have worked for us when we could afford to pay them and who have no vineyards of their own. Some still work for us without pay other than a noon meal, such as it is. We daily go about our work, hoping to avoid being picked off by Nazi soldiers at target practice.

Jacques and I are short enough not to have to crouch among the vines as the adults do. We know to keep still and quiet when the situation demands it, but my hand hurts and I find being still difficult with both a bandaged hand and the portfolio to protect. I forget my discomfort, however, when we see smoke billowing from the village church, a building used these days only for peasant weddings, though it is not big enough to hold the crowd. This is a heart-breaking blow, for our family has taken care of it since the early 1700’s.

Jacques and I relocate ourselves some distance from the château, closer to the edge of our property, almost directly across the road from the church. A short distance from the church is an open car, signifying the Nazis’ presence. We witness the top of the bell tower fall, leaving the bell held up by the four corner posts of the tower, it reverberating with a plangent chime once as burning wood crashes against it. The bell eventually gets so hot it turns red as we watch, so strange, like a bell on a Christmas card. Then we espy four soldiers, and hear them laugh with bravado, as all of them relieve themselves into the fire. I imagine they joke about trying to put out the blaze.

The one who struts around as if in charge of the others keeps repeating the word schnell, which means quick or hurry, I know, but I do not know what die Brücke means. French children do not study German in school, but Papa says that is a mistake, that we need to know the language of the enemy. I agree with Papa.

Finally the Nazi soldiers leave, driving away from us. They must be saving our house till last, for it is so near and yet they drive elsewhere. We watch the fire for a long time, until the old structure with its ten pews is no more. Only one part is left standing, seemingly not burned at all. Strange, when the rest of the building burned so quickly.

Before we are back with the others hiding in the vines, I see by a trace of moonlight those same four soldiers return in their open car and stop at our front gate. They never have driven right up to the door; even when it rained. I think they like to hear their hobnailed boots pound our brick, in step with each other, as if they paraded before their Führer himself or were bent on his command, as was apparently the case now. They do not notice the disturbed bricks as they march toward the château forty feet away.

A few minutes before, I was a child. Now I grow up. I think of Papa and Henri. If I were a German officer, would it cross my mind that a French prisoner was someone's father and therefore spare his life? That's exactly what I think about these four Nazis. They are each probably someone's father, certainly someone's son. Guilt overwhelms and tortures me for my brutal action to be undone.

But it is too late, even if I knew what to do. The mines explode, leaving voices and hobnailed boots silent on an eerie parade ground. I cry out in agony on my knees, pressing my bloody bandaged hand into the soil to punish myself. I have killed a human being, not just one, but four. Jacques does not see what happened but as he puts his arms around my neck, I feel his little body twist around to look for the source of the big noise. I try to concentrate on the irritation of the knapsack of bread and cheese bobbing against my back. I cling to him, trying to hold back my tears, as we move forward into the vines, looking for Mama.

No one has seen her all evening.

I think of the difference between soldiers killing soldiers at war and a child killing soldiers as I’d done. War is not a child's duty, but that is what the Résistance is about. I console myself with the thought I might have saved Mama's life as well as the château. (As I write this now, I know eight French citizens, all friends of ours, burned to death in their homes last night.)

I stumble and drop the portfolio. My hands shake as I grasp at posts and miss, almost falling, and even at vines to try to stop the shaking. The silence among the women and children is unreal.

Hours pass as we wait for something to happen other than the new putrid smell among the smoke. Nothing does, except in the semi-darkness I realize my bandage has a dark spot. Blood. Soiled blood. As my eyes linger on it, it seems to grow. Blood covers my hand. It transfixes me and I soon fall asleep.

As dawn breaks, the women move about in a surreal tableau like eager spirits gathering up the dead before daylight catches them at it. They sweep up bits of uniforms and ignite the pile, its odd-smelling smoke becoming part of the already polluted air. Two women salvage four Luger pistols from the shrubs, apparently thrown from the blast unscathed. Strange, I think, but I know nothing about firearms. Other women get the car down the road and into a ravine. A boy, hardly older than Jacques, siphons out almost a full tank of petrol.

With difficulty I remove traces of my part of the tragedy, though no one seems to connect me with the event. Perhaps the bandaged hand has done its job. Some women replace the broken bricks with whole ones from over the courtyard and pour cherished Cabernet Franc Red over the wide-spattered -blood on the bricks and swab them down, anticipating a uniform redness. I keep wondering where Mama is.

At last everyone leaves our property to see about their own houses, most of them small cottages. Survivors from the burned châteaux will be back tonight to sleep at ours. I must help get everything ready for that. Jacques and I go into the house.

Mama does not appear. I search all the rooms in the part of the château still in use. On the floor near the front entry, leaning against the baseboard, rests a homemade gun. Afraid to touch it, I nevertheless pick it up and stow it in a closet, out of sight, wondering what Mama had in mind for it. The Résistance leader told me people had such guns but never said who had them.

With sinking heart, I replace the portfolio of valuable papers in Papa's cabinet in his study, and secure its key in its hiding place. I give Jacques the last of the cheese and grapes and tuck him into bed. How much of his composure is fear and dread, and how much is bravery, I can’t determine. Covering him with his favorite red blanket, I see my hands of the same color moving about. All is blood, my heart cries. I stand outside his door until I hear the sound of a child sleeping. Then, unable to hold back my tears, I make my way along the road toward the church that is no longer there. Perhaps it will still offer refuge.

This night, which seems not over though it is a new day, I witness the making of history important to my family, the destruction of this church. An ancestor of my great, great grandfather, the first Vougeot in the Loire Valley, built the church of storybook design in the seventeenth century. As I near the rubble with some charred slabs of wood still burning, Mama rises from the low stone wall surrounding the churchyard and comes toward me.

"Cherie, oh my cherie, I got four of them with just one shot!"

She is shaking in a frightful way, her teeth clattering, even with the heat of the fire still around her on a warm night. It shocks me to see her wearing her best dress, a crimson silk she bought in Paris. Yes, she would want to look her best if she were shot dead or captured by the enemy. How long has she been here?

"I thought of Charles and my Henri and I just shot them, four of them with one shot!"

I don’t like her laughter or her huge glassy eyes. I wonder at her need to come to the church after killing the enemy so happily. She is proud of what she has done; perhaps her prayers are those of thanksgiving.

"Man maman, let's go home."

"Where is Jacques?"

"He's asleep, man maman. He was so tired. He didn't see anything except the fires. Come home now and I'll fix you breakfast. We'll share that last egg.”

"What the war has done to you, my Rose-Hélène! Here you are, not yet fourteen, leading your old mother as if she were blind or crazy."

She stops walking. "Four of them!" Ordinarily she would never call herself old.

"Hush, man maman. Come along. You need food and rest.”

"Suddenly she throws back her head and yells, as if to the world, "Four with one shot! I saw them coming! Coming to destroy us."

She bursts into tears. I hug her, twice bigger than I.

How much of the truth should Mama hear? Would knowing everything cure what seems to be a new problem? From now on, would I be taking care of her? I hug her a little tighter. Surely Papa would be home soon but in what condition? Maybe I'd be caring for both of them.

At least I save our house and thousands of bottles of our best wine, sealed up behind a brick wall, hidden from the Nazis. Some people will probably claim me a hero, if they ever discover the truth, but I decline and don't admit anything. I’m just another French patriot out of millions. I won't let myself become a hero, or a pacifist either. We have seen too much of that at Vichy. Our once-loved Marshal Petain is even now accused of treason. Yesterday I would have been afraid to write this down, but today it seems safe, for the war must be almost over. The Germans have more important missions than to return to this part of the Loire Valley to finish off one château.

As we begin the trek back to the house, I see the church bell now lying among the ashes. I must get Monsieur LeMaine to retrieve it, for its replacement in the new church when the time comes. We pass the confessional, not burned at all. We stop. Light plays up in old-style French an inscription on the rough-hewn relic: This confessional is for anyone at anytime but especially for a Vougeot with a great sin. A chill envelops me. I reach out my bandaged hand to the confessional to promise my return to it, priest or no priest. Even a few of them have turned into collaborators.

Back at the house, Mama cleans and redresses my wounded hand with not a shadow of mental aberration showing on her beautiful face. We share the fried egg and days-old brioche. I will be more satisfied with her condition when she changes into her everyday work attire.

Later this morning, while mama sleeps, with her crimson dress hanging in its proper place in her armoire, the women feed eighteen local refugees in our kitchen. I slip out of the house and walk to the church ruins again, to talk directly with God this time.

I kneel before the inscription with the crackling and popping of dying fire sounding all around me. I confess my sin of taking human life and know forgiveness as I have never known it in my short life. When I rise to my feet, a ray of sunlight shines through the valley's smoke, settling on the strip of wood where the inscription was a few minutes before. It is no longer there. It lasted just long enough for me, I reason.

After a few hours of fitful sleep, I return once more to the burn only to find the confessional itself is now ashes. But something wonderful will replace it in our lives. When we rebuild the church, I will insist on the same inscription on the confessional, especially for a Vougeot with a great sin.

I stand in the middle of the road for a time, looking toward the bridge, as if to see Papa and Henri coming home. But of course, the smoke over the valley is too thick to see anything in the distance. But the bridge must still be there. Perhaps I—
Yes—it strikes me—that must be what die Brücke means, the bridge! They meant to destroy the bridge, once they had crossed to the other side. Awe-stricken by a deed I was not aware of doing at the time, I wonder about forgiveness while saving a bridge. I need to talk with Papa.

Mixed joy and sorrow envelop me as I return to the house, to finish writing the story of this day. I am not sure I like being an adult. But one thing is certain: I will never be the same person as before.

On the front step I look around. Toward the east the air has cleared a bit and through an intervale I would ordinarily miss noticing, I witness blue sky just waiting to spread over this valley. It will be difficult to realize the war still goes on.