FREE AGENT
Pussyfooting past the nose of the truck, I scuttled under the closest boxcar, eased over the cool iron rail, crept across a splintery tie, darted through a deadly patch of moonlight, and slipped soundlessly down the far embankment. A sentry stood there a few paces away, but he heard nothing. One can move quietly when his life depends upon moving quietly. Taking my cue from his position, I bellied along the thin black shadow cast by the moon at the bottom of a barbed-wire fence that paralleled the spur line, and from the corner of my eye I could see beneath a boxcar the legs of the prisoners and guards who milled around behind the loaded truck. I doubled back past them until I calculated that I was midway between them and the boxcar in which the first bunch of prisoners now slept. All was quiet. Up ahead, leaning against the side of that boxcar, were two guards talking in undertones. A bit beyond them, a dense hedgerow crossed the spur line at right angles. I couldn’t crawl up and down the sentry line all night, and now I was blocked on three sides by sentries: many to the left, one dead-astern, and two dead-ahead.
To my right lay an open, flat meadow lit up like a shooting gallery by the spitefully brilliant full moon, and three sentries that I was aware of had a clear field of vision across the meadow. But I didn’t have much time left, and to try anything was better than doing nothing, so I rolled under the fence. The meadow grass was a half-foot deep, soft and green and clean and drenched with heavy dew.
I took off flat-out and about six inches underground, striking a diagonal course that would intercept the hedgerow some hundred feet from its junction with the railroad tracks. Now, leprechauns and a like variety of critters may be old hands at swimming in dew, but this was my debut and I used the old Australian crawl minus the leg action; just reaching out one arm at a time, grabbing a fistful of grass at each stroke, and snaking myself forward. The grass was cool against my cheek, and wet and slippery, and the wetter I became the faster could I slither and I clocked off a fantastic speed with no effort at all—the black hedgerow drawing me toward it as though it were a mighty magnet and I a tiny needle. And under the merciless moon every millimeter of the way found a twitching or proportionately increasing intensity building up in my spine, in full anticipation of one quick and final burst from a sentry’s machine pistol.
The closer came the hedge, the brighter seemed the moon, and then one outstretched hand touched a tightly-strung wire fence at the far border of the meadow. The bottom wire was but a few inches above the ground, and I either went through it or under it: I know I didn’t go over it. Then plunging an arm deep into the base of the hedgerow, I jerked my thin wet carcass into the beautiful tangle of interlaced brambles and vines, and I took the first breath I’d dared to chance since leaving the bunch behind the truck . . . and I’d made my cover by a bare half-second, for the fun began the very moment that my heels disappeared into the hedge.
There sprang up the dangdest hullabaloo ever to fill a moonlit night, and at that stage of the game I shoved throttle clear through the firewall and buzzed through the base of my hedgerow (ordinarily an impassable barrier) like a jet-propelled black snake going down a corn row. Unmindful of gouging thorns and slashing brambles, I squirmed amongst the roots down along the length of the hedge for a few hundred yards; and then breaking out into the shady side where the moon cast a broad, deep shadow, I crouched down for a quick listen. Of all the ungodly rackets I’d heard to date, that which now arose behind me was by far the finest. Keeerist, what a furor! Whooping and hollering and a thudding of boots and the twang of the wire fence: guttural cries of anguish, shouts of rage; short and nasty bursts of the burp-guns punctuated by an occasional rifle shot. Now, more than likely the Jerries had found my snaky trail across the dewy meadow, for bumblebees started flying: slugs snapping and tearing through the brush close-by with a rattle of twigs to mark their passage. Slugs spanged and ricocheted recklessly and I didn’t stay around there much longer.
Breathing hard, I faded into a deep shadow for a moment, snatched my beret from a pocket, and tugged it far down over my forehead. I tore off the khaki combat jacket and pants and stuffed them into a thicket, then turned up the collar of my black suitcoat and wound around my face my black woolen scarf, leaving just a narrow slit through which to see, and now—black from head to foot—I was part of the night. I ran hard for a quarter-hour, silently as a cat on a fur rug, invisible in the shadows of hedges and trees and thickets, and when I’d have to lope through an occasional brief patch of moonlight I’d shove my hands up under my armpits to prevent any possible shine being seen. I settled into a fast dog-trot for a while, always angling away from the spur line, but it was difficult to put much crow-flight distance between me and the Jerries for, of necessity, my course was twisting and turning and sometimes doubling back in order to cling to the shady borders of the irregular fields. The Jerries were in hot pursuit and still were doing a little shooting, but the bastards didn’t have a ghost of a chance, for they were shooting at shadows.
I tumbled down behind an ancient tree and chuckled and listened and chuckled some more. The German officers were still shouting—hoarsely by now—at the guards, and I chuckled faster in hopes that they might be taking turns at clubbing Oscar’s rat face to an unrecognizable pulp. That thought, plus the satisfaction of having skeedaddled during an inspection of the guard by a quartet of tough Jerry officers, put the final polish to the unholy glee bubbling within me! Right now, the blade of the shiny guillotine was falling upon the plump neck of that slob, Oscar. Heh heh heh! That bastard was off to the front lines, where I hoped he would soon meet an excruciating, lingering death. I was just saddened by the thought that I couldn’t be around to help him over the hump. All day long I’d pondered how I’d loved to’ve rammed my old Mustang up his blubbery arse, and now somebody else would soon have the chance. Heh heh heh! To repress such a moment of high triumph was difficult, and I rubbed my hands on the rough bark of the old tree and choked back a long, loud, and exultant howl at the moon. Nobody was ever happier than I was right then. I was about to explode with sheer happiness. I was a free agent, solo in a countryside so purely pretty that it like to’ve made me weep. And I didn’t aim to be taken again.
With a sniff of the fresh night wind and a rub of my hands, I took a quick gander at the North Star and lit out, steering southwest. When I came to the road we’d trucked over during the day, a jeep came snarling along leaving in its trail moonbeams of swirling dust. So I snuck into a thicket. A pair of gravel-crunching guards trotted past, one on each side of the road, their Mausers at the ready. I ducked across the road, squirmed through a hedge, and made tracks, comfortably engulfed in the blackest shadows I could find. And soon the uproar was quite faint behind me.
But then I caught a listen that chilled my blood: the baying of a couple of hound dogs, it was, and their eager yowls were coming in against the breeze from the general direction of the area I’d just vacated . . . It might not have been what I thought it was, but I didn’t waste time investigating. Using maximum rpm and war-emergency power, I took off crosswind and flew low for a long time and when I came to a little creek I went down through the shallow water like a torpedo boat, falling headlong now and then and coming up running each time. When a full-sized wake extended for several kilometers behind me, I throttled back and cupped an ear: all quiet. I plugged along, again on course.
By way of celebrating my victory, I rolled a smoke with a bit of tobacco requisitioned from a Jerry ration bag. I lay on the cool wet grass and grinned at the moon and smoked my damp cigarette right down to the last shred of tobacco. I couldn’t stop chuckling.
Guns mumbled steadily in the north and west: an occasional flash of sheet lightning brightened the distant horizons. My territory was full of troops and mechanized units, and it seemed to be a busy night for the Wehrmacht: every highway looked like Route 66 with columns of tanks and trucks and endless processions of soldiers whizzing silently along on bicycles. Every road meant a careful wait until it was possible to slip through a gap in the traffic. From a hilltop I watched a bivouacked tank outfit break camp: noisy engines revving up as eight or ten massive tanks clanked slowly across a moonlit meadow to clatter down a dusty road. All about I could hear the creak and jingle of harness and wagons and the shouts of the skinners, and the groans of laboring truck engines.
Now a thin overcast had formed and my guiding stars were invisible. Polaris was hidden, and my compass needle was useless in the dark, for the luminous reference dots had dissolved in my mouth. But the moon was still faintly visible and that I would use, calculating in the southerly swing of its passage through the night skies. I walked on.
Strained through the thickening overcast, the moon became a dim blur and I had difficulty in keeping track of it. And now a heavy ground fog formed, cutting visibility down to a scant ten paces. My whole world was a milky, slow-flowing, suffocating mass of cold mist, wherein not a trace could be seen of the moon nor much of anything else.
I knew I was mounting a steep hill because I slipped backwards a couple of times, and I knew I’d blundered into a freshly prepared defensive position when I fell into a trench. I climbed out and fell into another. The whole hilltop was a maze of zigzag trenches, foxholes, tank revetments, and sandbagged pillboxes. I crawled on hands and knees now, feeling my way ahead and then I found a stick that I tapped along in front of me. Clear of that area, in desperation I fished out my compass needle, balanced it carefully on the point of a pin, and struck one of my precious matches. I picked up my course again, and within a few paces my checkpoint was lost in the swirling fog. I couldn’t even guess as to just where in the hell North might have been.
So I could lay down in my tracks and wait for daybreak or I could carry on, flying blind with no instruments. The night was cold; my clothes and shoes were saturated from the wet grass and the dripping underbrush and from fording numerous creeks. I took a dim view of trying to sleep under a thicket. Anyway, I wanted to keep moving: I knew the woods and I knew all about walking in circles. But tonight, I kind of figured, my instincts were supernatural. If a goddam pigeon could get away with it, I sure as hell could make a try, anyway.
Onward over hill and dale, scrambling and skidding and now and then grabbing great chunks out of the fog in an effort to keep my balance, all the while concentrating on trying to feel southwest and to keep my paces of equal length. I savored the complete pleasure of every minute, too, for I was free as the frogs that croaked down in the hollows, while back at the miserable spur line forty-nine prisoners were jammed into a couple of boxcars; all hungry, thirsty, unhappy, uncomfortable, undignified, and subject to the whims of a lousy lot of Jerry slobs. (Minus one now, for pal Oscar was probably riding the point of a bayonet en route to the front.)
I walked on for hours, with never a dull moment. Dodging farms and chateaux and thrashing my way through countless hedges, I got jammed in the middle of one for a full quarter-hour—got lost in the goddam thing and finally emerged in a wet meadow with clothes and hide in shreds, and with temper in sorry need of a major overhaul. And it was overhauled, shortly after the incident in the hedge, when I cruised blindly over the brink of a five-foot vertical bank to land with a resounding splash in the creek below. But the wetting was turned to my advantage, for the bits of Jerry hardtack in my pockets were softened to some degree, and as I chomped on them I thought of home, for the stuff reminded me of the hound dogs I’d had before the war: the Jerry rations tasted exactly like the stuff I used to feed my dogs. (I would eat a dog biscuit now and then.)
I stumbled into the edge of a tiny village and tiptoed a stealthy retreat when I saw the fog-bound forms of soldiers sleeping beside their bicycles. While sneaking across a little wooden bridge, I perceived a sentry box and a little three-legged stool that stood before it. Nobody was around, so I tilted the sentry box over the rail and into the creek below, and it was sure that the morning guard detail would appreciate the truly delightful calling card I left for them on their little chair. Heh heh heh! For the rest of the night I was in good humor and I sang endlessly under my breath all the dirty old flying songs I could think of.
At last . . . the chilly, dim dawn, and I could make out trees ahead of me. At sunup the fog thinned out a bit and I saw, a few kilometers ahead of me, the twin spires of a cathedral. There seemed to be something a little familiar about those spires, and I ran to a hilltop for a better look. Even when I realized the facts of the matter, I didn’t want to recognize them: for the spires were atop the cathedral in the heart of Sees. A half-block this side of the cathedral was SS headquarters. A short ways north of my present position was the spur line, complete with boxcars, Jerries, and forty-nine prisoners of war.
I’d left the spur line six or seven hours earlier, running southwest as fast as I could go: during the night I’d traveled a long, sweeping curve, turning always to my left, so now I was heading just about northeast. Had not the sun come up to burn away the soup when it had, I would have just about made rendezvous back at the old stand, where I knew I’d have been welcomed with open arms. Firearms, that is.
“You are one smart son of a bitch, Tayo,” I told myself: and with a groan and a sigh and a shrug I chalked it all up to experience, forgot the thirty-thousand paces I’d just accomplished, turned around, and picked up a compass course to cut back across the semicircle I’d just walked. Many kilometers were gone all to pot, and taking advantage of what little fog remained I cruised fast, trying to rid myself of the exasperating sight of those twin spires.
The brighter became the day, the more slowly was I forced to travel. “A coyote,” I pondered, “can run through the middle of ten thousand hunters and never be seen by one.” So I adopted duplicate tactics: keeping the hell off the skyline and hugging fences and hedges and creek bottoms for protective camouflage. When the sun blazed hotly I dried out at last, and for the first time I felt tired. Rearing back, I took a mighty running jump far into the edge of a field of ripened wheat, leaving no trace of ever having entered the field: once in, I was visible only to the birds and they didn’t mind, so I slept in peace for a while.
Harvesting a handful of grain, I chomped it down to a sweet cud, washing it down with a long drink from a cool brook. Tracks and other substantial evidence of many cattle were on the bank and bottom of the creek, and the water was really quite foul, but I had a thirst and figured with a chuckle that surely the Air Corps had run into my arms enough needles to take care of a little thing like that. Now, having rested and had a breakfast, I was off to the races; still mad at myself and walking faster to make up for lost time. Homing pigeon, hell!
The endless dodging and detouring really didn’t matter. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular and I didn’t have to get there at any particular time; I was just beamed in the general direction of the Bay of Biscay in hopes of arriving in a general area where I calculated American strategy would cause our troops to be, sometime. I was happy, for the chill of the long night was out of me. The day was warm and bright, and the shadows of drifting clouds offered momentary coolness as I walked. The sight and sound of our fighters was always around me, and when a flight of roving Thunderbolts changed prop pitch and went into a circle I ran to the top of a knoll for a looksee.
They peeled off into nice straight dives for a bit of strafing: first a train of gun smoke behind each ship and then the chatter of 50s. Whatever their target was, it burned sending a pillar of smoke slanting skyward. I rolled a skimpy cigarette and gave bitter thought to the wonders of flight: those jockeys would cover, in the next five minutes, the ground that would take me one damned hard day of gravel-kicking to accomplish . . . but then again, look at the fun they were missing . . .
The hardtack long gone, for lunch I took another turn of my trusty belly-band. With the farmland behind me, I had come into pretty wild backwoods country, but despite the seeming desolation every trail showed the tracks of many boots having hobnails arranged symmetrically—which meant Jerries, since the undisciplined hands of the old French farmers always planted their shoes with hobnails in a most haphazard fashion.
In the afternoon I galloped down a long, sloping meadow and trudged up a much longer hill, skirting a forest that extended as far as my eye could reach; and I came upon a little corner of northern Minnesota, a tiny village of log houses set back into the fringe of the woods, and as I broke out into the clearing I could see a little sawmill and much sign of small-scale logging operations. Following a rut road along the edge of the forest for a kilometer or so, I came upon a scene of once-mighty industry: an abandoned turpentine still or the like, with many strange riveted iron pots strewn amongst the slash pine. Cords of wood were stacked here and there and wagon tracks crisscrossed the area, but I was the only one around. I climbed into one of the pots and went to sleep.
Opening an eye hours later, for a moment I couldn’t quite figure out what was what: a round, rusty, iron cauldron with me inside, and the lid was a disk of blue sky. With a happy smile, I remembered I was free! I thought back over the odd bedrooms I’d slept in lately: bomb craters, shell holes, featherbeds, stables, master suites of grand chateaux, haystacks, straw stacks, thickets, fireplaces, caves, prison cells, wheat fields, and now a turpentine pot. What next?
There was a fine spider web strung across the chord of the kettle, and I spotted the owner and operator crouching evilly on the perimeter of his trap, waiting for business. Just for the hell of it, I rounded up a husky black beetle and dropped it into the very center of the web. When the villainous spider got the message, he streaked across the tough strands he’d spun and gave battle. It was a good show, for the spider—accustomed to winning out—was foiled this trip. My beetle, defying the spider’s poisonous jaws with his armored back, just snipped his way across the web, kicked a hole in it, and dropped free. I tried the beetle again . . . same results. Capturing a pompous little cricket, I dumped him onto the web where he sat kicking stupidly in all directions. The spider pounced and stuck the little feller a few times and wrapped him in silk in a split second, twirling the cricket in his legs while spinning a shroud to completely conceal the victim. The spider laid his bundle away for future digestion. All this I pondered.
With some amusement I recalled the tale of another fugitive who had, once upon a time, watched a spider in operation: a feller by the name of Bruce who, amazed at his particular spider’s persistence in accomplishing a difficult bit of engineering, had come out of his wretched hideout with renewed courage to then free his Scotland from English rule. With this legend in mind, I looked back to my little group of performers to think that it was a damned shame I had no way of dispatching the whole tiny theater and its players to the headquarters of the hibernating General Montgomery. With malicious glee, I mused over the tags I’d attach. The web would be the German front lines and the spider could play the Wehrmacht. A big beetle might play the American Army and to the cricket, heh-heh, I’d affix a label, “The Master.” For additional enlightenment, I thought it would be quite a joke to include a boxful of beetles, each with the word “tank” printed on its armored back, with instructions to dump them all onto the web at one time and to observe their methods. Who knows? Had I only been able to’ve introduced Monty to my indomitable beetle, perhaps one day I might have been hailed as the savior of the Channel Coast of France!
Tired of puttering around, I poked my head out of the top of my iron shell like an old turtle casting a roving eye out over his pond. The sun was low and I bailed out and made for the woods. My rough logging trail petered out about sundown, and I tried a gravel road for a while, but Jerry traffic soon forced me back into the woods. Their tanks and trucks gave plenty of warning, but the silently whirring bicycle troops nearly caught me off guard a time or two. But now the old moon slid up into the sky and the night was perfect, and I felt as though I could walk a million kilometers through such country without ever tiring of the scenery.
A lovely sky with all the stars one could ask for, and the trees rattled a bit in the gentle breeze and sighed and whispered at me. The forest floor was soft and quiet for walking; dead old logs lay sunken and moldering in the ground, and rotted stuff and deep beds of pine needles filled the cool air with spice. Once in a while I’d startle some little wild critter and he’d rustle off away from me, and then I remembered the vision I’d had that evening while straining my scenery through the barbed wire of Alençon Prison. It had come true to the smallest detail!
I rested atop a mossy windfall and watched the elusive images of beefsteaks as they floated in orderly procession before my eyes. I sat on my old log sniffing the night wind and pondering the vastness of my strange world. There didn’t seem to be a soul on Earth but me, and if there was anyone else anywhere they didn’t know where I was. Nobody knew where I was. I didn’t even know, or care much. All I knew was where I was going and where I’d been, roughly. I liked the scenery, though, and figured I wouldn’t have swapped my night in the black forest of Normandy for all of the booming honky-tonks back in the States. So after a while I got up, mumbling in my beard, for I’d lost the North Star and had to spend ten stumbling minutes jockeying around trying to relocate it through the waving tops of the towering pines.
Before dawn I came upon a creek, just a trickly little thing that twisted and shone brightly under the moon, and I laid on my belly, burying my face in the icy waters to suck it up—a tired old horse guzzling from a trough. And if it was polluted, it was polluted; but to me it tasted like fifty-year-old bourbon whiskey. Hungry or not, the night was damned fine and I hated to see the sun come up.
After dawn I walked a mud road just below the skyline of a long ridge, and ahead I watched a farmer drive a team and rake into a clearing where he began to windrow his hay. Not quite liking his looks, I kept moving and he never saw me. I watched a lot of people who never saw me, and the thought struck me that perhaps many unseen eyes had observed me without my knowing it. Not too many, maybe: for by now, when I felt in the mood, I could become quite invisible in broad daylight. So I went my way.
Small mountains and big hills, rough country and an occasional farm, and for each kilometer made good on-course, there were three more of dodging and circling. Around each farmhouse, soldiers and camouflaged vehicles precluded any chances I had of panhandling a meal: green apples and wheat, plus an occasional wild strawberry didn’t go far toward filling the cavern behind my belt buckle. A cold drizzle fell all that afternoon and evening, and about midnight, leery of duplicating the first night’s backtracking, I holed up in a little rank-smelling cave in a woods.
The demons screeching for chow in my belly got me out and on the trail at dawn, and from a hilltop I examined the terrain before me: nearby meadows and a chateau to detour; a half dozen farms with their tightly-hedged fields; a pair of highways; and beyond on the horizon, a great black forest. I plotted a course for a jutting salient of the distant wood, figuring that five careful hours should see me safely into the tall timber. All morning I struggled through an endless succession of snarled fences and brambled hedges, using every precaution I could think of and more that popped up instinctively. More green apples and a gulp from a brook, a final sneak along a fence line, and I sailed into the welcome shelter of the pines.
In an hour I broke out into an arm of farmland that projected into the forest. There were many tiny farms, each hidden from the next by the rolling terrain, and I decided to have a fling at rustling up some food. A ration-less forced march can become rather tedious after training on a diet of Jerry prison fare.
Spotting a little inn on a country road, and with a shot of Calvados in mind, I threw caution to the breezes and struck out across a meadow. When but a few hundred paces away, four black-uniformed Jerries emerged from the doorway of the inn. I called a halt. One of them shouted at me and I jettisoned all ideas of refreshment, turning to zigzag into a convenient ravine along which I traveled fast; not particularly caring whether or not the Jerries took out after me, knowing that in this kind of country they couldn’t get their hands on me.
In a few kilometers I came upon a likely looking farmhouse that nestled in a curve of the hilly gravel road. I bellied under a fence and through the backyard garden to a place where I could look ten feet down into the farmyard. Faint voices floated from the kitchen, and the smell of cooking food made my mouth water in anticipation of the roasted rabbit I was about to receive. But—innocent as the layout appeared—there also appeared that curious and uneasy prickling of my scalp, so I lay in concealment for perhaps a half-hour. I’d almost decided to jump down into the yard and knock at the door, but to be on the safe side I sweated a little longer, watching and listening with great patience. Then from the kitchen, the chatter of a chair sliding on a board floor, a husky laugh, and a loud, “Ja! Ja!” My visions of wine and rabbit faded rapidly, as did I. Another farmhouse I cased, and another. Soldiers were billeted everywhere, so I dug out my compass and plunged again into the forest, nibbling on a bunch of underdone onions I’d snatched from a garden.
The forest was incredibly thick: pines straight and tall, tangled underbrush, and countless windfalls over which to crawl, and I had to check my course constantly for it was impossible to pick out a checkpoint very far ahead. The going was rough and I herring-boned up the steep slopes and slid down the hills where footing was precarious on the slick pine needles. Mid-afternoon now, and sensations of weakness were coming with increasing frequency, and I cussed and whistled and sang and got goddam good and hungry. Coming to a delightful little mountain creek, I took off my shoes and peeled away what remained of my stockings and let the cold water caress my blistered feet. I buried my head in a pool and drank, and then lay on my belly and rested. When lifting my eyes, I beheld a patch of blueberries that could have been spotted only from my worm’s-eye view! Big as grapes, they were, and covered with a powder-blue dust, and they were the finest blueberries in the world.
As I climbed each hill, I thought that surely I’d see the edge of the forest. But at the top, only another hill and an endless procession of hills. For hours without end there was forest and more forest until I thought I’d croak. At last I came across an asphalt highway and, glad for the level footing, I walked the shoulder of the road. Immediately a little low-slung Jerry staff car came buzzing along to catch me by surprise, and I was forced to make an emergency jump from the road. Off the road, at that particular place, involved dive bombing—with my body—a bush some fifteen feet below the roadway. I picked my bones up out of the thicket at the bottom of the embankment. If the Jerries in that little car had been suddenly transformed into what I hollered after them, the least they’d have done would have been to stop their car to lift a leg at the nearest tree.
Paralleling the road, I came to a Y junction where I read the signpost. I’d never heard of any of the villages listed thereon. Kicking in the door of an abandoned log cabin there, I shopped around for some chow: just empty tin cans and a filthy litter of rubbish, and all I got out of the deal was a few choice butts—Jerry issue—that I spilt open and rerolled into one fairly decent cigarette. I dug out one last match and hit the tall timber again, puffing contentedly on my lumpy stogie.
The Jerries in this neck of the woods had done a recent and thorough job of readying things for a battle. Every little road and logging trail was cleverly blocked by trees, which had been felled in such a manner as to funnel tanks or any other vehicles into numerous natural lanes, and sighting down each lane was a massive log pillbox. Expert woodsmen had done a good job: countless pines a foot or two in diameter lay in their precise positions. But it was clear that the Jerries expected attack only from the northwest, which meant to me that they feared American attack, as these defensive positions would be useless in the event of attack from any other point of the compass.
Precisely at the time when I felt in need of a rest and a smoke, I stumbled upon an important-looking cable composed of five varicolored wires. I presumed they connected various flakbatteries and control stations and headquarters outfits, so I settled down to business. Putting a rock beneath the cable, I pounded away with a boulder until the strands parted, and after a bit of puttering and tinkering I had the insulation stripped back. I rejoined the wires, connecting the blue to the red, the red to the yellow, the yellow to the green, the green to the brown, and the brown to the blue. A neat splice it was, too. After kicking some leaves over the makeshift repair job, I trudged away feeling—for no good reason—mighty pleased. I’d much rather see direct results of my mischief, but I had to content myself with thoughts of the Jerries’ confusion upon their next transmission of urgent orders over these wires.
After another battle with the underbrush, I came upon a new military road that sliced through the woods, beamed east and west. I headed west down the middle of the road, clocking off the kilometers with ease, pausing only to rip down a directional signpost here and a coded arrow there. Knowing the average I.Q. of Jerry truck drivers to be negative, they would, I figured, be hopelessly lost once they hit this now-unmarked stretch of lonesome road.
When the sun was low on the horizon ahead of me, I was tempted to call it quits for the day. But the interminable forest that had held me for so long had in my mind become a bitter and personal enemy: it seemed now to take an unholy delight in refusing to yield to my eyes the sight of civilization, and I resolved profanely to conquer this gloomy patch of pines.
Legs working automatically, I counted paces from one to a thousand, whereupon a withering stream of invective would be directed toward the grinning forest. Then another thousand. A parched throat and terrific hunger had me lightheaded now; and then it was pure orneriness that kept one foot swinging out ahead of the other. Over and over again came the whispered thought that somewhere ahead of me, if I’d only keep traveling, was a friend waiting: a friend with wine and bread and rabbit and sweet butter and milk, all I could eat. Ahead of me floated elaborate mental pictures of the feast that would be mine if I’d just walk. So I kept going, like a thin and tired greyhound chasing the ever-elusive mechanical bunny around and around the endless track. I cussed the woods and the occasional trucks that drove me momentarily into the thickets. I cussed puddles in the road as I sloshed through them. I cussed the slightly larger chunks of gravel, which forced me to lift a shoe an extra fraction of an inch.
At long last, through a fringe of trees I caught a glimpse of farmland off the port wing and I soon gazed down into a peaceful valley. I pulled a bead on the closest farmhouse, determined to eat by hook or crook. Creeping down a weedy fence line to within a few yards of the house, I saw German staff cars with camouflage netting flung over them. A quartet of Jerry officers lounged on the grass smoking their after-dinner cigars. I retreated, clinging to the edge of the forest and keeping to the long sunset shadows until I found an orchard. I gobbled a couple of green apples and wet my lips in a creek, afraid to drink the roiled water.
Just a nubbin of sun showed over the horizon as I approached a second farmhouse: guttural shouts and laughter, as though the bastards didn’t know their days were numbered.
Dusk now, and I was just about kaput. Coming upon a little dirt road, I squeezed through the hedge that fenced it and followed along inside on the meadow. Ahead the road petered out in a gloomy neck of the forest, and in the fast-fading light I could make out the cobblestone wall and iron-barred windows of a desolate farmhouse. I crept through a little garden toward the cluster of ramshackle outbuildings and crawled into a tiny weathered woodshed that stood near the house.
Gluing an eye to a crack in the rear wall of the shed, I saw a half-open kitchen door from which a sliver of firelight escaped to flicker upon the cobblestones of the yard. Soft voices came from the house. In a moment a very small boy skipped from the doorway and came to within a few feet of me. Humming a tune, the little feller picked up a crooked twig and commenced to poke at a bug.
Stepping silently from cover, I made a little sound like a squirrel and the boy jumped to his feet to search me out with startled eyes. When he saw me he froze.
I flashed my fangs in a friendly smile and put a finger to my lips: “Shhhh . . . . Venez-ici! Venez-ici!” But the lad would come no closer, and I couldn’t exactly blame him since I looked like the one and original bogeyman. Again warning him to silence, I whispered, “Ton pére! Ton pére! Fetch yore daddy outside, son!” And the kid scuttled to the doorway and disappeared.
Swiftly I tiptoed to a new hiding place. It was full darkness now, and I wanted to be able to see whoever might come from the doorway before he could see me. German or French collaborator, they were of equal danger. I was set for a hasty retreat should things go haywire.
A stocky young Frenchman strode belligerently from the house and proceeded directly to the woodshed. He found no one there. I stepped into the open and hissed, and he swung like a cat and advanced; and a little revolver leveled at my belly prompted me to put up my hands and state my claims.