Chapter 12
751 Words
Camille heard the plane’s engine, faint but coming closer. An aircraft poked through a fluffy cloud, French flags painted on the wings, smoke trailing behind it. The tail was riddled with holes, the top jagged and broken. It was losing altitude, whining as it dropped from the sky.
A burst of machine-g*n fire came from behind it. A German plane dove from much higher, the body gray with black crosses on the wing and tail. The pilot fired rapidly, bullets running up and down the French aircraft.
Screaming refugees scattered—shouting, cursing, praying—darting in all directions. They hid behind trees and shrubs on the side of the road or lay in a gulley damp from rain. Scared parents covered wailing children, shouts and screams drowning the sound from the plane’s engine. Wagons and motor cars were abandoned, horses kicking and neighing, their owners seeking safety on the side of the road. Bullets ran up and down the road, tufts of dirt springing skyward, burrowing into wagons, pinging as they hit fenders and hoods of automobiles.
The soldiers kept running, most far in the distance. The German pilot turned towards them, only a few hundred feet above the ground, spraying bullets through the fields. Soldiers dove to the ground, some meekly firing at a target they would never hit. After the plane passed, it arched up and circled, briefly hidden in a setting sun.
The French plane dropped lower, its engine spitting, until it passed the horizon. The ground shook seconds later, a flash of fire shooting skyward, black smoke launched behind it.
Camille watched the fight unfolding. Lucien stood beside her, as if walking into a dream—or maybe a nightmare. “Get down!” she hissed, yanking him to the ground. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
He kneeled. “Why didn’t you go with them?” he asked, nodding toward the fleeing British.
“I’m staying with you.”
He looked at her oddly. “Your life is in front of you. Mine is behind me.”
Camille eyed the man beside her. “It depends which way you’re facing.”
Lucien studied her for a moment. “An interesting comment from an interesting woman. Not that I’m interested. Where are you from?”
“Nearby.”
“Tournai, or the village?”
She pointed toward Tournai. “I live near the church,” she said, even though she didn’t. But it’s where her home had been until she went back to Paris. “Do you see the steeple, peeking from behind the smoke?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been in that church?”
“No, I haven’t. God left me years ago.”
“Maybe it was you who left God.”
“It’s the same.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Why do you care?” he asked.
She refused to show pity for a broken man. “Because I knew you when you were a man.”
“What am I now?”
“A shadow.”
He didn’t reply, his expression not changing. “You’re young.”
“Not much younger than you,” she said, scanning the landscape, searching for Germans.
“Ten years, maybe more,” he said, then shrugged. “Or maybe not. I’m not an old man, only tired and broken like old men sometimes are.”
“Tired and broken men can be repaired, they can start life where they think it ended.”
The wounded soldier groaned and shifted on the soil. His eyes fluttered but stayed closed. Blood had begun to stain his bandage, the wound in his thigh still weeping.
“I hope he doesn’t lose his leg,” Lucien muttered.
“Can you give him something for the pain?”
“Whiskey,” he replied.
“No medicine?”
Lucien hesitated. “I have some medicine. I used it once. But no more. I have no need.”
“You’re a doctor,” she said. “You should have something.”
“I was a doctor,” he clarified. He stood and peeked around the chicken coop.
“Are they coming?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But they will soon.”
“We have to bring him inside,” Camille said. “Before they get here.”
The German plane circled, coming toward them. The refugees remained on the ground, screaming, hands over their heads. The bullets strafed the fields where the soldiers were running.
- Writer
