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In which Parker Haddaway silences the lambs.
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After twenty minutes of trying to follow Garland’s instructions to drive “fast but casual,” the old man made me pull over at a service station so he could piss.
“Just leave it running, son,” he said, climbing out of the van.
“I wouldn’t know how to turn it off if I wanted to,” I replied.
It was twenty minutes after seven on what was by far the longest day of my life, and my body kept alternating between heart-pounding terror and can’t-keep-my-eyes-open exhaustion, sometimes in the same minute, so I took the opportunity to recaffeinate. When I climbed back into the van with an energy drink so potent it would be illegal back home, Parker was flipping through a French tabloid she’d found under her seat. “Hey look, Edwin Green,” she said, holding the magazine for me to see, “it’s your shitty ex-girlfriend.”
“Yeah, she’s big in France,” I said.
“So is Burger King,” Parker said and I laughed. “By the way, I have a new Sadie theory.”
“And if I don’t want to hear it?”
“I’m going to tell you anyway,” she said, and then she told me. “At first I thought Sadie was, you know, a bitch.”
“I believe ‘bitchwhore’ was your exact phrasing.”
“Right, but now I don’t think that is entirely accurate. Don’t get me wrong, I still think she’s a bitchwhore, but I’m starting to think she might also be evil, like serial-killer evil.”
I sighed and Parker said, “Hear me out. You know how all these serial killers keep a collection of their victims’ fingers in a shoebox in the back of their closet.”
“If you say so,” I said, holding up both hands to show Parker my digits were all accounted for.
“Well that’s Sadie,” Parker said. “Only she collects hearts. That’s why she emails you once in a blue moon. She’s checking her shoebox to make sure your heart is still inside. She’d let you go if she weren’t afraid someone else might pick you up. Trust me, Edwin Green, if Sadie thought for one second you were interested in another girl she’d lose it. She’d probably eat someone’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.” Then she held up the tabloid article about Sadie and asked, “How do you say ‘World’s Worst Person,’ in French, because I’m pretty sure that’s what this caption says.”
“Funny,” I said.
“What’s funny?” Garland asked, climbing into the back seat.
“Parker’s jealous of my ex-girlfriend,” I said.
“Only because she’s seen Ryan Gosling naked,” Parker said, and I scowled at her.
“Enough bickering,” Garland growled. “Drive, son.”
I pulled back onto the road and Parker leaned her head against the window while Garland laid down across the back seat, and I said, “No. No more naps. You’ve both slept plenty and I’ve had to drive all day. Someone has to talk to me if you expect me to stay awake until Saint-Lô.”
“Son, fifteen years ago they had me in Delhi and I wound up refereeing an eighty-seven-hour cricket match between India and Pakistan without even knowing the rules. I was so sleepy I dismissed Sachin Tendulkar by mistake and almost started World War III, but did I complain?”
“Okay, but—forget it,” I said, and turned the radio to a French rap station. Garland lasted six seconds before he begged me to turn it off. “Fine,” he said, “where was I with Madeleine?”
“In her hidden bedroom with a broken ankle,” I said. “Parker, record.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Parker said.
“Okay,” Garland said. “So Maddie was seventeen, a member of La Résistance in Saint-Lô, and the prettiest girl I’d ever laid eyes on. On her way to school that first morning she stopped by the post office and told the leaders an unexpected visitor had dropped in the night before, and with my broken ankle they decided it was too risky to move me. She came home that night with a few extra rations and made dinner. We ate upstairs, me in bed, her at the little table with the radio, and we listened to Radio Londres, the BBC broadcast operated by the Free French across the channel in England.”
“Dum dum dum dummm,” Parker sang for no apparent reason.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s how the show began each night,” Garland said. “It sounded like Beethoven’s 5th, but Maddie told me, ‘It is the letter V in Morse Code. V for victory.’ Then she pointed at the red V she’d painted on the wall behind my bed, right next to this ugly ass painting she said her uncle had saved from the Nazis. After the drums a man would say, ‘Ici Londres! Les Français parlent aux Français!’”
“London calling. The French talking to the French?” I asked, with about thirty-percent confidence in my translation.
“Something like that,” Garland said. “The entire show was in French, and I understood maybe two words of it. The man on the radio would deliver personal messages, and Maddie would write them down, but when I’d ask what he said she’d always shush me. Later she’d translate the messages for me but they never made much sense. Always stuff like, ‘The parakeet is wearing a blue sweater.’ It was all coded though, secret orders for the resistance, and the people she delivered them to in the post office knew exactly what they meant.”
“We turn right here,” Parker said.
“Right?”
“Yes, Edwin Green, right.”
I turned right and Garland said, “The second day Maddie feigned illness and stayed home from school. A doctor friendly to the cause stopped by and put my leg in a cast, but he couldn’t bring crutches ’cause it would have looked suspicious, so I had to hobble around on a broom best I could. The Resistance sent word back to England that I was alive, which came as some shock to the Army since they’d already listed me as killed in action. Word came back that I was to stay put. Plan was, when the army rolled into Saint-Lô, I’d just roll out with them. But that was a terrible plan.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because after a week I was crazy in love and sure as hell didn’t want to fight anymore.”
“You were in love after one week?”
Garland smiled. “Hell son, I don’t expect you to understand, but Maddie, she was ...” The old man went quiet for a moment, then said, “The thing is, when you meet the one, the one you’ve dreamed about and hoped and prayed actually existed somewhere out there in the world, when you meet her, you know it. You know it in an instant. You don’t even fall in love with her, because you were in love with her before time. Before either of you even existed. When you meet her you’ll know it because you feel whole, for the first time, and it’s the best damn feeling in the world.”
“Hold up,” Parker said, “you told me you fell in love with Madeleine because she had, and I quote, ‘A great pair of gams.’”
Garland laughed until he started coughing, then said, “I don’t recall saying that,” then he turned to me and added, “but son you should have seen her legs.”
I laughed and Parker stuck her tongue out at Garland and the old man sighed and said, “Those six weeks together, before the invasion, they were just about perfect. Maddie would come home in the afternoon and cook dinner and we’d sit upstairs on the bed, listening to the BBC, and when Radio Londres went off we’d just sit and talk. Maddie wanted to know everything about America, but all I knew was life in the Appalachian Mountains with a family of Doomsday preppers. So I told her about our training, and my train trip to New York, and our little boat ride across the Atlantic. Then I made up a bunch of shit, and I think she knew I was lying, but I kept it entertaining enough she didn’t care. When we’d run out of things to say we’d just lie there, and she’d run her fingers through my hair and sing. Her voice, it was so beautiful, and she’d sing these French songs I’d never heard. So many nights I fell asleep to the sound of my angel singing. That’s why I didn’t want the army in Saint-Lô. Maddie and I, we were just two kids playing house, and I didn’t want it to end.”
“How old was Maddie when the Germans came?” I asked.
“Twelve or thirteen,” Garland said. “She remembered life before them, but by then it had been so long she said she’d forgotten what it was like to walk down the street and not see Nazis. Maddie used to get so angry when she’d talk about the people in town who thought the Germans had been more than fair. She curled up next to me on the bed one night and said, ‘People say we still have our movies and our fairs and our schools, so life isn’t too bad. But we’ve lost all freedom. These people say mind your business and live your life and listen to the Germans and when the war is over things will be back to normal. But these people, they only say these things out of fear. They are scared, too scared to fight, so they cower and capitulate and they do not even realize all they have lost.”
“Keep straight here,” Parker said, interrupting the story.
“Wait, are you sure?”
“Positive,” she said, “now finish your story, Garland. I believe you were about to attempt to convince Edwin Green that Madeleine kissed you first.”
“She did kiss me first,” he said, laughing from the back seat.
“A likely story,” Parker said.
“Son, I swear,” Garland said. “It was that same night, up in my room. She began talking about how the Allies would be in Saint-Lô soon, and how she couldn’t wait to see American bombers flying low over her city, and American tanks rolling through the streets. ‘Soon,’ she said, pointing toward the window. ‘This will all be over soon.’
“And I said, ‘You know what, I wish they’d take their time,’ and after I’d said it she turned on me like a circus lion going after its trainer.
“She jumped up from the bed and said, ‘How can you wish this? What gives you the right to wish this? Have you lived with these animals for four years? Have you watched them line up men and shoot them in the street? Have you gone to bed every night wondering if tomorrow is the day they will shoot you too, or send you to a labor camp? No, you have not. You have been here two weeks and you are not entitled to wish for anything but liberation.’”
“Smooth,” I said, and Garland told me to shut up.
“I told her I was sorry,” he said, “and I tried to explain when the Americans rolled into town they’d toss me in the back of a Jeep and take me far away from her. Her face softened and she sat down next to me and put one hand on my cheek and said, ‘When this is over, when the Germans are no longer in France, we can do whatever we want. You will come back to me, or I will come to you. This with you is nice, but it is only a half-life. When we are free our lives will be whole again. We will have to be apart, but when we are back together it will have been worth it. You will see.’ Then she leaned in and kissed me. It was my first kiss.”
“Wait, that was your first kiss?” Parker interrupted. “You were like twenty-five.”
“I was nineteen and I’d been living in the woods since I was twelve,” Garland growled. “Like I said, she kissed me and said, ‘When the Nazis are gone Saint-Lô will still be here, and I will still be in Saint-Lô waiting for you.’ Then I kissed her, and kissed her again, and, well, you can use your imagination from there.”
“Gross,” Parker said, “I’d rather not.”
“Wait,” I said, “this isn’t right. That’s the ocean. Parker, where the hell are we?”
“Brief detour,” she said.