Quill Pen Scratchings

Chapter 17

Edmund drove as fast as he could, at moments barely keeping the car on the road.  When the trees broke overhead, or when he was next to the rolling fields to his right, he could glimpse the German planes as they swarmed over the town ahead.  He could hear their low droning engines, and the higher pitched ones of the Nieuports as they were trying to chase the Germans off.  It was clear to Edmund that the old Nieuports flown by the Escadrille were no match for the new Fokkers. 

Edmund heard the muffled booms of explosion in the town, and he pushed the gas down harder, squealing his tires as he made a sharp turn.  The noise of bombs and guns intensified ahead, and he prayed that Clemence was safe.  When he finally approached the outskirts of the town, he could see flames and belching smoke ahead, and planes continued to fly low overhead.  Finally, he could see the café, and it looked untouched.  He hoped that Clemence had gone into the cellar.  He looked up and to his right, and a Fokker glided in along the path that he was driving.  He could make out every detail of the undercarriage of the plane and see the Iron Cross insignia painted on the wing. 

Edmund quickly looked down at the rifle that Tino had given to him, but he didn’t think he could really hit it while he was driving.  The plane continued over his head until it was past him, and he watched as the pilot reached his hand over the side of the plane and dropped two small bombs onto the café.  He watched them fall silently through the air, and separate slightly, one hitting the side wall near the front of the building, and one landing on the roof. The roof exploded first and then the wall, and the building erupted in a ball of fire and black smoke.  The front of the building collapsed into a heap of stone and wood.  Edmund sped forward.  He could hear nothing and the café seemed to recede into the past before him, as if he would never reach it. 

He slid to a stop twenty yards away from the café, and he jumped out of the car, grabbing the rifle.  A whistling noise broke through the silence, and Edmund looked up to see the bathtub from the upstairs of the café pirouetting through the air.   He stopped and watched as it plummeted to the ground and landed with a deafening clang a few feet from where he stopped.  The sides of the iron tub were caved in and met in the middle.  Edmund stared at it as he ran past and then sprinted to the café.  Only the back wall of the building still stood to its full height.  It looked as if a large saw had cut the building diagonally from there to the sidewalk patio in the front of the building.  The rubble pile blocked his view of what had been the dining room. 

He ran up to it, but couldn’t find a place to climb over, so he finally just threw himself up as high as he could and grabbed a large wooden beam and pulled himself up.  As he scrambled to the top, he thought that the wall between the kitchen and the dining room still stood, and he could see into the bedroom where he had slept when he stayed.  The bed was still intact, though the front wall was gone, along with the rest of the top floor, including Clemence’s room.  He climbed on top of the rubble heap and looked down.  Clemence was kneeling, trying to lift the top of a collapsed table off of the floor.

“Clemence!” Edmund cried and he lost control of his voice as he did so.  She did not look up at him, but lifted the tabletop on its side, and then began picking up table legs off of the ground.  Edmund leapt as carefully as he could down the pile that he had climbed.  He yelled her name again, but she did not respond.  Finally, he was down on the floor and he ran to her and grabbed both of her shoulders.   “Clemence!  Clemence!”

She looked at him briefly, but did not seem to know him, and then looked down at the ground again, searchingly.  “The tables are all gone.  How are we going to serve supper?  The people will be here soon, and I don’t even have anything on the stove yet.” She looked up at Edmund, “Where are they going to sit?”

Edmund rubbed her face with his thumbs, holding the sides of her head.  She had cuts on her cheek that looked like they were from flying glass. He felt her head, and then her shoulders and then held her tightly against him.  She did not resist, but she did not hug him back.  He held her apart from him again, holding her shoulders.  “Clemence, it’s me.  Are you hurt?”  Edmund’s voice was shaking.

“Edmund?”  She looked at him uncomprehendingly.  Her eyes swept the rubble again, and then she looked up into her brother’s room and saw the bed sitting intact.  “Where is the bathroom?”

“Over there.” Edmund nodded his head toward where the bathtub was lying in the street.  “Are you okay?”

She looked back up at him.  “Edmund,” she looked around the room again, and her eyes filled with tears, and her mouth opened in an expression of horror, and a cry welled up from deep within her.  She looked back up at him, and he pulled her tightly to himself and she sobbed into his chest, her legs slowly collapsing under her.  Edmund lowered her gently to the ground and held her while she cried, and they sat in the middle of what used to be the dining room of the café.  The large hearth was still there, but one side of the wooden mantle had fallen and was now laying diagonally across the fireplace opening.  The door into the kitchen hung by one hinge, and he could see through it.  The kitchen looked relatively unchanged, and it seemed to Edmund as if this doorway was a portal to another time.

He slowly lifted her up, and with one arm around her back, he swept her legs into his other arm and carried her into the kitchen, kicking the door out of the way as he went.  He sat her down carefully on the large preparation table and ran over to the sink and picked up a dishtowel.  He turned on the faucet in the sink, but no water came out.  He looked around and found a pitcher of water sittig near the stove.  He poured water on the towel and returned over to Clemence.  Her face was coated in plaster dust and dirt.  He wiped her face clean, being careful of the cuts on the side of her face.  She stared at him as he did this.

She sniffed slightly and looked away and then looked back at him.  “Isn’t this how we met?”

“Something like this.” Edmund said.

She looked over his shoulder through the door to the ruin of the dining room.  “Everything’s destroyed.”

“No, not everything.  I saw the building get hit.  I thought you were gone.”  Edmund almost couldn’t get the last word out, and he reached out and held her tightly, crushing her up against him.  She rocked him back and forth, and he reached a hand up and ran it across her hair.  “I thought that I had lost you.”

He stood up, and Clemence took the dishtowel and wiped his tears away.  She looked back out of the doorway again.  Edmund followed her eyes and then walked over and looked himself, leaning on the door frame.  After a moment, he reached out and grabbed the hanging door and pulled it forcibly into the frame, shutting out the ruin.  He turned and surveyed the room.  Apart from a large crack in the wall adjoining the dining room, it looked the same as it ever had, except that Clemence and he had already packed up most of the items in the room when he was there previously.  He looked up the stairs, and the door at the top was closed, though he could see sunlight pouring in around it. 

“There isn’t any water,” he said.  Then he walked over to the wall switch for the lights.  He pushed the buttons repeatedly but nothing happened.  “Or electricity.”

“We have a well out back, and lamps and a stove.”

“We need to see about getting you on the train south.”  Clemence’s tickets were for the day after next.  He wanted to get her out of this wreck as soon as he could.

“I don’t have anything to wear.  Everything I had prepared to take with me was still in my bedroom.  And now it’s gone.”  She looked down at the sleeves of her blouse and then down at her dress.  “I guess I will be wearing this.”

“Well, you look beautiful in it,” Edmund said.

Clemence laughed slightly and then looked down at the floor.  “Thank you, but it is a bit dirty.  I guess I should wash it before I go.  I think we packed a few old clothes down in the basement.  I will go and find a nightshirt or something to wear while these are drying.”  As she headed down into the basement, Edmund went out into the back and brought in some wood to build up the fire in the stove.  When he was in the back, he opened the door to the old shed that stood near the back fence.  He found a hammer and some nails and some old planks of wood.  He brought these in also and nailed up the door from the kitchen into the now ruined dining room.  He boarded up the cracks around the door as best he could. 

After he had done these things, he told Clemence that he was going to go look at the train station to make sure that it was still operating and that it hadn’t been destroyed by the Germans.  He hugged her for a long time near the door before he left, and he locked the side door as he left with his key. 

Bar le Duc had been hit hard by the German planes.  Many buildings looked just like the café, and large piles of rubble spilled out into the streets.  People were climbing over them to salvage whatever they could from the wreckage.  Above the buildings and trees that still stood, Edmund could see the tall tower of Saint-Etienne, and he was glad that the old church hadn’t been destroyed.  Men had lit bonfires in the street from shattered pieces of wood from the buildings and homes they used to live in. 

He made his way to the train station which thankfully the Germans had missed.  The crowd of newly created refugees increased as he went.  The train platform was deluged with old men, young boys, and women and girls of all ages.  A conductor stood on a small crate near a hissing and steaming train that sat on the tracks.  He was trying to shout over the crowd that the train was full of ticketed passengers, and that everyone would need to buy a ticket.  They would be increasing the number of trains to the station at Bar le Duc the next day, continuing into the next week.  People became angry when they realized they would have to return to the bombed-out remains of their homes, at least for a few days.  Most of the crowd turned towards the ticket window, and Edmund backed away.  Clemence had her ticket.

Edmund turned and stepped back off the platform and back into the street.  He passed an old man wearing a felt hat sitting on a box.  He had his legs crossed and his hands were folded over his lap.  He stared into the ground.  As Edmund walked by, the man looked up, but seemed to stare through Edmund.  He nodded at the old man, but he just looked down at the ground again.  Edmund kept walking back to the café. 

He unlocked the door using his key, and the warm smell of dinner enveloped him as he walked in the door.  Clemence stood by the stove and smiled at him as he entered, but it seemed to cost her to do so.

“The train station is still there, but half the town is trying to leave now, and there are no more trains for today.  They said they are only taking ticketed passengers.”

Clemence nodded and turned back to the stove.  “Does the rest of the town look like this?”

“Yes, pretty much.  Saint-Etienne is still there though.  When I walked back, it looked like that is where many people were headed with blankets and bundles of their possessions.  I think it is going to be home to a lot of people for the next couple of days.”

Clemence stopped stirring the stew she was making and stared down at the stove for a moment.  “We should probably take some food over there.”

Edmund looked at her in amazement.  

“What we have left will just go to waste anyway.  There is an old cast iron cookpot and tripod out in the shed that father used to use.  Let’s take it up to the church and just put everything we have left into a big stew.  We certainly have enough bowls and silver to serve them all.”

She looked up and saw Edmund staring at her. 

“What?  I have been feeding these people all my life.  I am not going to stop when they are starving!”  She seemed almost angry as she said this.

She served their supper and opened a bottle of wine.  They ate at the small table in the kitchen by candlelight.  After they ate, Edmund went to the shed armed with a small scrub brush and found the cast iron cauldron, and the tripod and chains.  He scrubbed out the cauldron at the well until his hands were frozen.  He carried it to Saint-Etienne and set up the tripod on the corner of the street.  The church was full of people who had brought all they had left in the world with them.  Edmund looked around and found a bombed out and deserted building nearby.  It had a well in the side yard with a bucket hanging on it.  He filled the bucket carried it over to the cookpot and poured it in.  It took him several trips, but he soon had the cauldron about two-thirds full.  He looked around and found scrap wood and piled it up under the suspended pot and then took a stick that was burning at one end from a nearby bonfire.  He turned and saw Clemence walking up the street with a tray full of cut-up chicken and some ham. She had quickly seared it on the stove and was bringing it for the stew.  Edmund ran to her and took the tray from her and then helped her put the pieces into the water.

She then asked Edmund to go back and get the bowls full of vegetables that she had cut up, and a selection of spices that she had put into a large glass.  She had a ladle in her apron, and she began to stir the stew.  The water was just beginning to warm, and she stood leaning over it, being careful to keep her dress out of the fire.  Edmund walked back to the café and brought back the things she had requested.  When he approached the fire and Clemence the second time, a small crowd of people were standing around the fire talking to her, and he stood off in the dark for a few moments and watched.  They all were staring into the fire and talking softly, two old men, a woman and a smaller girl.  They all suddenly laughed softly.   

Edmund came forward and handed the large bowl of vegetables to Clemence.  One of the old men thanked him.  Clemence poured the vegetables into the pot and Edmund stirred as she did so.  Then she took the glass full of spices and slowly added them to the swirling stew. 

Edmund returned and brought a crate full of bowls and spoons, and soon there was a ring around the fire and Clemence, and she dished up the stew from the pot.    Edmund stood in the background as people crowded around Clemence and demonstrated their affection for her.  Many people told her how sorry they were for the café and asked about her mother.  Clemence was surrounded by adulation and thanks, and Edmund looked at her and was amazed by the strength she possessed.  Edmund received an occasional pat on the back and warm smile, but just by virtue of his association with Clemence. 

Soon after night descended for good, and the crowd had been fed, Edmund and Clemence stood close by the fire to keep warm.  There was one unused bowl left, and no spoons, so Clemence dished up what was left of the stew and she and Edmund shared it, drinking from the bowl.  “I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.  That was all the food we had left, except for just a little bit for the next day or so for us.” She looked up at Edmund as she said this. 

“I overheard a couple of the town elders talking as I was carrying the last of the vegetables over.  They said that the Red Cross was coming in the morning to help organize relief.”

“Well, at least we got through the first night,” Clemence said, looking around at the street.  Most of the women and children were settling down for the night in the church.  A few of the older men stood around one of the other bonfires, smoking and passing a brown bottle around.  When Edmund and Clemence began packing up, four of these men walked over to help them, and then volunteered to help carry things back to the café.  They recovered almost all the bowls, except for two, which had broken.  Several of the silver spoons were missing.  Clemence said that she didn’t care, if they needed them badly enough to steal them, then they were probably worse off than she was. 

When they had reached the door of the café, the men put the things they had carried down and ceremonially kissed Clemence on both cheeks, and then shook Edmund’s hand, with many “Merci’s” exchanged.

Edmund washed the pot out in the well, and Clemence washed the bowls with some water that Edmund brought in.  When the cleaning up had done, he built up the fire in the stove.  Clemence sat at the small table by candlelight.  Neither knew what time it was.  Clemence stood and ran her hand along the preparation table, as if feeling it for comfort.  “Where are we going to sleep?”

“I think your brother’s bed is still upstairs.  I will try and bring the mattress down.”  Edmund mounted the stairs, treading carefully near the top, testing each step to make sure it was still safe.  The door at the top was closed, and he could feel cold air cascading down the steps around his feet as it tumbled down.  He turned the knob and pushed on the door.  Debris was piled in front of it, but he was able to push it out of the way, the door bending under the pressure.  He stepped into what had been the hallway, and then into the bedroom he had slept in.  The front wall was gone, but if he faced away from it toward the back of the house, everything else remained undisturbed, as if he would turn around and the hallway to Clemence’s room and the large bathtub, and Madam Morel’s rooms were all still there.  The ewer and washbasin stood undisturbed on the dresser. 

Edmund looked at the window that looked into the back yard, and he remembered how the sunlight had streamed through the curtains on that first morning when he could still feel Clemence’s warmth clinging to him.  The cold night air was causing his breath to come out in white clouds. 

He turned and looked out over the ruins of the dining room of the café, the fallen mantle and collapsed tables and chairs.  Beyond that, he could see the rubble that had been the bar where they had watched the dance of drunken soldiers and fallen women.    In every direction, buildings lay half in the streets, and men stood around bonfires made of the buildings’ remains.  They were lucky, Edmund thought, that no fires had erupted to finish off what was left.  To the north, he could see the tower of Saint-Etienne where they had spent the evening, serving one last meal to the now homeless townspeople.

He heard a scraping sound and turned to see Clemence coming up the stairs.  He watched as she seemed to go through the same observations that Edmund had, looking first at the mostly intact room, and then out at the town.  She walked over and sat down on the bed and continued to stare out into the darkness.  Edmund looked up at the cloudless sky and at the indifferent stars that continued to shine in all their glory, as if none of this destruction had happened below them. 

“What am I going to tell Mother?”  Clemence said.

Edmund looked back at her, and after a long moment of silence, he said, “She is a strong person.”

“All she talked about as she was leaving was coming back, and the improvements that she wanted to make.”  She looked at Edmund closely, “With your help, of course.”  They continued to look at each other.  “But all that is gone now.”

“Is it?” Edmund said.

“I am leaving after tomorrow.  You are not.  You have a widowed mother and a house and a business that you are responsible for.  And now that,” she hesitated, “your pilot is dead, you have nothing holding you in France.”  He had told her about Knox while they were at Saint Etienne.

“Clemence,” Edmund began.

“Your mother needs you, as mine needs me.”  She stood up and said, “I’m cold.” And she began bundling up the sheets and the blankets and pillows from the bed into one large roll, which she slung over her shoulder. “Can you manage the mattress?” she asked when Edmund reached out to help her.

“Yes,” he replied.  He watched her disappear down the steps into the kitchen.  Edmund leaned over the bed and grabbed the edge of the mattress and bent it up, finally lifting the whole mattress from the bedframe.  It was wobbly and kept bending, but he managed to wrestle it over to the steps, and then slide it down the stairs.  When it rested at the bottom, he ran back up and closed the door tightly.  He bent the mattress around the landing at the bottom and then slid it over toward the stove.  Clemence had moved the preparation table and cleared a spot on the floor that she and Madam Morel always kept meticulously scrubbed. 

Clemence made the bed on the floor, as Edmund added wood to the fire in the stove, and then blew out the candles and lamps.  Clemence sat on the edge of the mattress and took off her shoes and climbed under the covers with all her clothes still on, leaving room for Edmund beside her.  Edmund looked at her for a moment, but she didn’t look up at him, just simply stared at the fire through the air vents in the front of the stove. 

He took off his boots and jacket, and slid under the blankets beside her, facing her back. He put his arms around her, and she moved back into him, but did not turn around or say anything.  They drifted off to sleep where they lay.

Chapter 15

They were awake late into the night and slept late into the morning.  Edmund had gotten up a couple of times to put more wood on the fire.  Clemence had watched him the first time, looking at the firelight dance across his body, but the second time she was asleep, and did not wake when Edmund got out of bed.  That time, he had to go into Clemence’s room to get more wood, and he was completely chilled by the time he crawled back under the covers, but she only stirred slightly as he slid underneath the sheets and back up against her warm body.  He rose up on one elbow, and looked down at her face.  She looked more at peace than he had ever seen her, and he imagined that she had a slight smile on her face. 

When they finally awoke, the sun had been long in the sky, and Edmund lay on his back, and Clemence lay against him, her legs intertwined with his, and her head on his shoulder.  She was running her fingers lightly across his chest.  She yawned and looked out of the window, through the gap between the shade and the frame.  “We are being so lazy.”

She was silent again, and Edmund was staring hard at the ceiling.  Clemence watched his face.  “What are you thinking about?”

Edmund sighed.  “I have to write to my mother.  And I really don’t know what to say.”

Clemence raised up on her elbow and kissed him on the chin.  “I will help you.”  She kissed him again and said, “In fact,” she slipped out from under the covers and walked across the room.  Edmund watched her open the door and disappear for a moment.  She came back in wearing a robe and carrying a large book, some sheets of stationery and a pen.  She shut the door quickly.

Clemence sat at the foot of the bed and leaned up against the bed frame.  She put the book in her lap like a desk and put the paper on the book and uncapped the fountain pen.  She looked up at him.  “How do you want to start?  ‘Dear Mother?’” she asked and smiled at him. 

Clemence helped him write to his mother and to Lloyd, and they had to address both letters to Lloyd, because Edmund did not know his aunt’s address in Baltimore.  To his mother he said how sad he was, or at least tried to express it, and how much he loved her, and how much he had loved his father.  He also said that he would be home as soon as he was able to come.  He watched Clemence closely as he said this, but he could not see any reaction from her as she wrote it down. 

To Lloyd, Edmund said how thankful he was that he was there to help his mother when Edmund couldn’t be.  They mailed these letters at the post office in town, along with several crates to be sent by train to Clemence’s mother.

They spent the next two days packing up the lives of Clemence and Madam Morel into crates and boxes.  The morning of the second day, the day Edmund had to leave, they packed up Clemence’s bedroom.  They were still in their nightshirts, having started as soon as they got up, before eating breakfast.  Edmund mostly sat on Clemence’s bed and watched as she went through a lifetime of small remembrances, and he felt himself grow strangely nostalgic when Clemence described to him the history of some small object that he had never seen before.  They had two boxes in the room, one to be stored in the basement and one smaller one to send ahead to Marseille.  Clemence sorted her belongings between each box.  As she was emptying out her dresser, Edmund heard her breathe in deeply and quickly as she opened a bottom drawer.  She brought the whole drawer over and laid it on the bed, as she had done the others, and looked at Edmund.  It was filled with her husband’s clothes.  She looked up at Edmund for a moment and paused. 

“I meant to get rid of these things a long time ago.”

Edmund nodded.

“I guess I should bring them, and my brother’s things, over to the church.”

“If you are ready to do that.  I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people who could use them. But if you are not ready to part with them, that is okay too.”

“No, it is just silly to keep them any longer.”  She picked up a shirt out of the drawer.  “After he was gone, I used to take these out and smell them.  Sometimes I would get a rush of memory from it, and then I would cry and put them away again.”  She raised the shirt to her face and breathed in and looked down again and was silent.  Then she looked up at Edmund and quickly put the shirt down.  “I’m sorry to keep talking about him.”

“Don’t be.  It’s okay.”

Clemence walked over and picked up the picture of her husband from the dressing table.  She held it against her, just below her navel, and looked down at it, cradling it in her hands.  She stood over the two boxes and hesitated for a moment and then began to put it into the box to be stored in the basement.  Edmund reached out and gently stopped her hand.  “You don’t want to lose that.  Send it ahead to Marseille.”

Clemence looked at Edmund and said,  “But I need to let go.”  Edmund had never heard anyone sound more defeated and helpless.

“Yes.  But you don’t need to forget.”  He gently took the picture out of her hand, and she put both arms around him.  Still holding each other, he put the picture carefully into the box for Marseille.

They finished quickly in her bedroom, leaving her husband’s clothes on the bed.  Clemence said that she would add her brother’s clothes to the pile and take them to the church.  She did know of a couple of things of her brother’s that she would like Edmund to have, some of his nicer clothes, and he agreed to take whatever she wanted to give to him. 

Clemence went down to the kitchen in her nightshirt and brought up the clothes Edmund had come in.  She had washed them the previous day and hung them in a makeshift clothesline that Edmund had put up in front of the stove.  They dressed, and then Clemence cleaned out her brother’s dresser and wardrobe and after setting aside some things for Edmund, added the clothes to her husband’s and tied them into two bundles in a sheet.  She wrote ‘for charity’ on a small card.  She asked Edmund to take the clothes to Saint-Etienne church while she made an early lunch for them. 

Edmund put on his coat and slung the two bundles over his shoulder and walked out of the front of the café.  He had seen the church a few times in passing and knew where it was.  He walked by several people on the streets as he went, mostly older couples and women with young children.  There were two men about his own age, but one was on crutches with only one leg, and the other was missing an arm.  They looked thin and gaunt and used up.  Edmund could see the tower of the grey and brown stone cathedral ahead, and he walked past the ornate arched doorway that led into the sanctuary and around the side of the building, he walked toward the back, and left the clothes, and the small card Clemence had written on the porch of the vestry.  Edmund walked back around to the main entrance and climbed the steps and looked inside.  The sanctuary was lit by sunlight streaming in through ornate stained-glass windows, and the smell of candles filled his nose.  An elderly woman sat in a pew toward the front of the sanctuary with a black scarf over her head.  Edmund took a few steps in and sat down in the back, on the opposite side of the aisle from the woman.  The wood of the pew creaked loudly as Edmund sat, but the woman didn’t turn. 

He looked around for a moment, at the carved stonework and the streaming windows, and at the crucifix at the front of the room.  He put his arms over the pew in front of him and leaned forward.  He clasped his hands together and bowed his head.  He prayed for his father and then prayed that God would comfort his mother and keep her safe.  He prayed for Clemence, to ease her pain and for her safety, and that God would bless her and himself, and that he hoped that God would help them find a way to stay together.  He prayed for Tino and for Knox, and then he prayed for Penny’s soul.  Finally, he asked forgiveness for killing the German soldier and prayed for that man’s soul also.

Edmund arose from his seat, and stood in the aisle for a moment, and the bowed his head again, and thanked God for giving him Clemence, for whatever time they might have together.  Then he turned and walked out of the church.  It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the daylight.  The day was cold and the sky was bright blue.  He walked back to the café. 

When he got there, he went back through the front door and then locked it behind him.  There was a sign that said ‘closed’ in the front window, but people still walked up and tried the door and then stepped back and stared at the building as if they couldn’t believe it.  The smell of the lunch Clemence was preparing warmed him and he walked into the kitchen and up behind Clemence as she stood at the stove.  He put his arms around her waist and kissed her neck.   She turned her head and quickly kissed him on the cheek and continued stirring the chicken gravy that was finishing in a frying pan.  She had put a tablecloth and plates and silver on the small table in the kitchen and had placed a bottle of wine on it with two glasses.  It was one of the few bottles that had remained in the cellar.  The day before, they had dumped out two more bottles of older vintages that had turned sour.

Edmund opened the bottle and poured two glasses and sat down at the table as Clemence came over and dished up the chicken, and some potatoes and beans, and then added gravy.  As they ate, they talked easily, but for Edmund, the meal had a sense of finality to it.  He knew that he would only be coming back here one more time, and then to put Clemence on a train and send her away from him. 

When they were done, Edmund helped Clemence clean the dishes.  As he did so, he was trying to fully open all his senses and take everything in so that he could capture this moment and keep it with him.  Finally, the washing done, and the sky darkening with an impending mid-winter storm, they decided that he must go to make it back to Behonne before the weather set in.  While he had walked to the church, she had wrapped up the clothes that she wanted to give him in butcher paper and tied them with twineto fit easily under his arm. 

They walked to the door, and she asked him to wait for a moment, and she went over to the preparation table and opened a drawer and pulled out a smaller package also wrapped in the same paper.  She held it out to Edmund.  “This is for you, but don’t open it until you get back to the camp.  And be careful, it has glass in it.”  Edmund looked at the package and written on it was To Edmund my love.  Edmund looked back at her, and tears were forming along the bottom rim of her eyes. 

“Thank you,” he said, and he held his coat open where he had an oversized pocket.  He put the package in there. 

“Oh, and one more thing,” Clemence said, and she reached up with both hands and pulled a silver necklace out from under her blouse.  There was a slender key on the end of it.  She took it off over her head and lifted his hand and placed the key in it.  It was warm from being up against her body.  “It is a key to this house,” she looked up and around the door frame of the side door that Edmund had come in that first day where they were now standing.  “To this door.”  She looked back at him.  “My father had four made and always made sure we each had one with us.  He always said that having that key meant you always had a place to come home to.  I’ve always carried mine,” and she reached down into a pocket of her apron and pulled out a key identical to the one Edmund now held.  “My brother had his with him when he was killed.  My mother took hers with her, and this one,” she said, touching the one in Edmund’s hand, “was my father’s.  My mother has worn it on that chain since he died but left it with me when she went away.  And now it’s yours.”

Edmund looked down at the key, and then up at Clemence.  “Are you sure your mother…”

Clemence smiled back at him.  “Why do you think she left it?”

Edmund laughed slightly and bowed his head as Clemence put it on him, slipping it inside of his shirt.  She put her hand up to feel it against his chest. Then she stepped around him and opened the door.  Edmund took two steps toward it and stopped in the doorframe.  The bitter cold swept around his legs.

“I don’t know when I can come back.”

Clemence stood close to him, taking hold of the lapels of his coat.  “I know,” she said quietly.

“But I will be back as soon as I can.”

“I know that too.”

“I love you,” Edmund said quietly, and leaned forward and kissed her.  Clemence kept her eyes open as she kissed him back, and tears flowed freely down her cheeks.  Edmund could taste the salt on his lips.  He held her hand as he backed down the step and then let go as he walked out into the street.  When he reached the first corner, he looked back and she was standing in the doorway and raised her hand in a wave.  He waved back and then turned the corner and he could no longer see her.

Edmund walked as quickly as he could because of the cold, and because the winter storm that had blown in looked pregnant with snow.  The temperature had dropped several degrees, and the wind had picked up from when he had gone to the church earlier in the day.  He walked quickly to keep warm, and soon he was out of the town and out among the fields and the woods.  Despite the cold he was enjoying the walk.  The threatening sky overhead filled him with the excitement of impending danger and unpredictability.  He could feel the chain sliding back and forth against his chest as he walked, and he had to keep shifting the bundle of clothes from hand to hand so he could put the free one in a coat pocket to keep it warm.  He thought he knew what was in the package inside of his coat, but he still wanted to see it, but he promised her that he wouldn’t open it until he got back to Behonne.  He didn’t really want to open it in front of Tino though.  He decided that he would open it when he got to the gates of the airfield. 

He thought about Clemence rattling around in the café all alone.  He wasn’t worried about her physical safety, but she was alone in a house that she had shared all of her life with those whom she loved and who loved her.  And one by one they all left her, first her father, then her brother, her husband, and then her mother, and now Edmund. 

He decided that he would find out what was happening at Behonne and then return as soon as he was able to.  He knew that they were planning another mission in the next couple of days, that is, Edmund looked up at the sky, as long as nature cooperated.  They wanted to follow up on the success of the earlier raid and to try and take out as many of the new German Fokkers as they could on the ground.  From what Edmund had heard, the new German planes were faster and better armed than the French Nieuports. 

Edmund rounded the last corner, and he could see the iron gates of Behonne Aerodrome ahead.  He walked over to the side of the road that faced a field.  He sat down on a small overhang where only his head would be visible from the roadway.  No one was near, but he wanted privacy as he opened the package from Clemence.  As he sat, he could feel the coldness from the ground seeping into him, but he wouldn’t be sitting there long.  He sat the clothes down next to him and took the small package from his coat pocket.  He untied the twine, and carefully unwrapped the butcher paper, being careful not to tear the words that Clemence had written on it.  It was a photograph of Clemence.  She was sitting holding a bouquet of flowers, and looking down at them.  Her hair was swept back and had flowers in it.  He looked at the background, and then at the frame, both matched those of the photograph of her husband.  This was her wedding photograph.  He looked at her hair and then followed the line of her neck down to where it met her shoulder, and then into her blouse.  He closed his eyes and tried to remember what she smelled like when he had buried his face in her neck.  And then he thought of what she looked like when she was standing in the bath holding her arms out to him, and water running down her body. 

He opened his eyes again and looked at her face.  He couldn’t see her eyes very well as she looked down at the flowers, but he could see that she was smiling, with that sweet, beguiling smile that she had.  She looked happy.  She didn’t yet know of the pain that she would experience in the next few months.  Still, Edmund thought, she did know that her husband and brother were going off to war.  As he looked again, he thought he could read that on her face as well. Edmund stared at her face until the cold began stinging his eyes, and then he carefully rewrapped the picture, again being careful not to damage the words she had written.  His fingers were very stiff as he retied the twine.  He got up and walked back up to the road and through the gates of Behonne, nodding at the sentry as he went. 

When Edmund got to the tent, Tino was shaving in a bowl using the small mirror.  As Edmund opened the tent flap, Tino shouted, “OY!  You’re letting the heat out!”  Edmund turned and quickly reclosed the flap and set some of the bricks they kept for just such a purpose on the bottom of it to hold it closed.  “Welcome back, Romeo.” Tino said.  “Have a good time?”

“Yeah, pretty good.”  Edmund walked over and put the clothes down on his bed and warmed his hands over the paraffin oil stove. 

“How is your woman?”

“She’s fine.”

Tino reached out and grabbed Edmund’s hand and looked at the clean white bandages on his palms.  “I see she is a better nurse than me!”

“Yes, she took care of me.”  Edmund immediately regretted saying this.

“Really good care, eh?”  Tino said, raising his eyebrows at Edmund.  Tino managed to make everything sound dirty.  Edmund just smiled and nodded and, without taking his coat off, sat down on his bunk and leaned back against the post of the tent. 

Edmund sat for a moment and thought about Clemence standing in the doorway waving goodbye to him.  “I have a picture.”  He reached inside of his coat pocket and took out the photograph.  He sat up and carefully unwrapped the portrait, keeping the words she had written smooth, and placed it on the small table next to a bottle that Tino had sitting there.  Both of Tino’s hands were wet and covered with shaving soap, but he leaned over and looked at the picture where it sat.

“Oh, she is beautiful,” he said.  “And such nice features, eh?”  Edmund watched as Tino held his hands out in front of his chest. 

Edmund snorted and smiled, and Tino stood back up to shave.  Edmund leaned back on the bed again, still looking at the picture of Clemence.

Tino leaned around the post on which the mirror was hanging and looked at Edmund.  “You actually look good.  Better than when you left.”  He leaned back and looked in the mirror again and made another pass at his thick stubble with the razor.

“My father died.”

Tino leaned around the post again and looked at Edmund.  He seemed to be deciding if Edmund was joking or not.  After a moment he said, “I am sorry.”

Edmund nodded at him in thanks but didn’t say anything.

“When did you find out?”

“I got a letter when I was on my way into town.  Read it on the way.  Stroke, heart attack, something like that.  It doesn’t really seem real to me.  I haven’t seen him or heard from him in months.  And when I left, I was very angry with him.”

Tino shrugged and finished shaving and wiped the last of the soapy foam off his face.  “Eh, that is the way it is with fathers, you know.  I can’t remember the last time I saw mine.  I am sure I yelled at him.  He left my mother when I was very young, you see.  I don’t remember any of that.  I used to travel back and forth between them, between Italy and France depending on who had the best fortune at the moment.  It was actually kind of useful.  When I got into trouble in France, I could lay low in Italy with my old man for a while, then when it got too hot in Italy, I could come back to France.  I have two sets of identification papers, and can use whichever is most, um, convenient, you know what I mean?”  He shrugged and smiled at Edmund.  “But here I am going on.  Are you doing okay?”

“I guess.  It just feels strange because the whole time I have been here, I have thought about what it was going to be like when I went home.  Now, my father’s dead, my mother has gone to live with her sister in another city.  So I really don’t have a home to go back to anymore.”

Tino pulled the chair over, so it was closer to Edmund and sat down and looked at him.  “Sometimes your home is just where you are.” Tino paused and neither said anything.  He continued, “And it may not be what you want, but sometimes it is all that you have.”  He sat back in the chair, “But what about this…”  he gestured toward the photograph.

“Clemence.”

“Clemence!  Beautiful name!  What about her?  No husband, widowed mother.  Ready-made home and business.  You could be the man of the house!”

Edmund felt the weight of the key against his chest.  “He mother went to Marseille to get away from the front.  Clemence is preparing to join her in a few days.”

“For good?”

“I don’t know.”

Tino nodded and looked at the floor as if he was considering this information.  “Well, you know the best way to get over the old girl is the next girl.  I always keep two or three around for just such an occasion. Never have to get over any of them.  Not a very dependable species, on the whole.”

Edmund smiled and laughed slightly, and then the two men were quiet again for a moment.  “I don’t know how long I am bound here for.  I guess I should go find out.  Talk to Knox maybe.”

“Is your house in America still there?”  Tino asked.

“Yes, sitting empty.  All closed up.”

“And your father ran a business, eh?”

“Yes, his manager is running things right now, waiting for me, I suppose.”

“Well, sounds like a pretty good situation to walk back into, if you ask me.”

“I don’t know.  Things were bad when I left.  My father sent me away to get me out of some trouble I caused with a fairly prominent family.”

“What did you do?  Knock up their daughter?”

“Not exactly.”  Edmund felt the sting of these words that he knew Tino meant innocently enough.

Tino seemed to see the emotions flashing across Edmund’s face.  He waved his hand, “Well it doesn’t matter now.  Time changes everything, and you would be the returning war hero.  And the only returning war hero in a country full of young boys messing their pants just waiting for your country to join in the fight.  Me, I’m thinking my time here may be up as well.  Hell, I just took this job to stay out of the trenches.  These governments just can’t stand to see an able-bodied young man without trying to see how well he will stop a bullet.  I kept having to skip back and forth across the border, one minute I’m French, the next Italian to keep away from the enlistment squads.  During the last call up in ’15, time finally ran out on me, and I managed to get hired on here, just moments, I think, before I was conscripted.  But now,” he leaned back and patted his injured hip, “thanks to our dearly departed German friend and the lead he left permanently in my bones, I think I am excused from further duty.  I already took my bullet.  And only one, thanks to you.”

Edmund nodded with mock formality to him.  Tino leaned back in his chair and poured from the bottle into a small glass sitting next to it, then he handed the bottle to Edmund and picked up the glass himself.  He raised his drink and said, “To your father, may he rest in peace.”  And he raised the glass and swallowed in on one gulp.  Edmund drank what turned out to be whiskey deeply from the bottle.  Tino put his glass back firmly on the table and stood and picked up a shirt and began to put it on.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re back.  The Americans want to build on their last raid with another the day after tomorrow.  The only thing I couldn’t do was get the Lewis gun down to clean it.  Knox didn’t take any damage last time out, so I just had to clean the engine and check the lines. And you are right about that Luc.  Useless swine.  Said he would help me, but then he was never around when I needed him.”

Edmund sat the bottle back on the table, and Tino corked it and put it in his clothes chest at the foot of his bed.  “Come on.  I have done too much talking.  Let us get some food and some more to drink.”

“No, thanks.  I am just going to stay here.”

“No, you are not.  Sometimes it isn’t good for a man to be alone.”  He reached down and grabbed the lapel of Edmund’s coat and pulled him up.  Despite his wound, he was still very strong.  Edmund stood, and not saying anything, followed Tino out of the tent.  He stopped to look back at Clemence where she sat on the table, looking down at her flowers.

Early the next morning, Tino was tapping the bottom of Edmund’s foot with his cane.  “Get up!  We have some work to do.”  Edmund opened his eyes, and everything was foggy, and it took him several moments of blinking to see clearly.  “You had a little too much to drink last night.” 

Edmund sat up on his elbows.  “No thanks to you.”  Edmund had tried several times to sneak out of the canteen the previous evening, but Tino always saw him and pulled him back inside and gave him more to drink.  He vaguely remembered playing pool until he could no longer line up the cue stick.  He didn’t remember making it back to his tent. 

Tino held at tin cup of water out to him.  “Come on, we need to clean that gun.  The pilots are coming around later this morning to inspect everything.” 

Edmund took the cup and drank deeply, and felt the water absorb into the cotton of the inside of his mouth.  He stood and knelt at his chest and took out new clothes and quickly put them on, taking one of the shirts out of the bundle Clemence had put together for him out of her brother’s clothes.  As he pulled the new shirt on, he held up the key that was still around his neck and looked at it for a moment before putting it inside of his undershirt.  He wanted it to be against his skin.  He looked up and saw that Tino had seen him do this.

“Souvenir?”  Tino asked.

Edmund just nodded his head and continued to button his shirt.  Tino stood by the tent flap while Edmund hastily pulled on his boots and then picked up his coat and followed Tino outside.  They stopped through the canteen, which showed no signs of the wreckage from the night before.  Judging by the way he felt, Edmund thought there must have been much damage to the place, but it looked the same as it always had.  They took as many sausages and bread as they could carry and filled up two tin cups full of coffee and walked back into the cold. 

The hanger was abuzz with activity, as the crews put the finishing touches on the planes and got them ready to fly again.  The Nieuport looked to be in good shape.  Edmund noticed that a couple of small tears that he had been meaning to fix were now neatly stitched.  Edmund ran his hand over the fixes. 

They stood and ate their breakfast, and Edmund’s sat on his stomach like a rock.  Tino lit a paraffin oil stove near the plane.  “Why don’t you climb up…” Tino paused.  “Sorry, you are the boss now, what would you like me to do?”

Edmund looked at him and then climbed up onto the lower wing of the plane.  “Get that tarp out and shut up.”  He climbed into the cockpit and released the catches of the Lewis gun.  He leaned over the side and held it out to Tino.  “You got it?”

“Of course I have it!  I’m not crippled, you bastard!”

“Well, yeah you are.  Now take the gun.” 

Tino took the gun from Edmund and laid it on the ground.  “I can beat you to death with my cane, you know.”

Edmund smiled and climbed down and got the gun oil and rags and the barrel snake out of the supply locker.  They quickly dismantled the gun and laid the pieces out on the tarp, and began wiping the carbon residue off the metal.  “He sure gave this thing a workout.”

“Yes, he did.  Don’t think they are making Lewis’s much anymore.  The new German Fokkers, the D7’s, have guns that fire through the propellers, synchronized with the engine so they don’t shoot their own props.  They are also a hell of a lot faster than these old Nieuports.  The Boche’s just brought in a new detachment of the new D7’s.  We destroyed most of them on the ground before they could get in the air, which is a good thing, because these old girls,” Tino nodded at Knox’s plane, “don’t really match up too well anymore.”  Edmund looked at the airplane but didn’t say anything.  “I heard Spad is putting a new design into production with synchronized guns and bigger engines.  Don’t know when they will show up here though.”  Edmund wondered, and not for the first time, where Tino got this information.  He always seemed to know much more than merely what was going on at the airfield. 

They worked in silence for a while.  Finally Tino said, “Can she cook?”

Edmund looked at him for a moment.  He had been thinking about his mother and wondering how she was doing at her sister’s.  “Can who cook?”

“This Clemence.”

“Oh, yes.  Quite well actually.  I mean, they ran a café.”

Tino nodded and ran the snake through the gun barrel until the inside looked like a spiraled mirror.  They reassembled the gun in silence, and soon, Edmund had it remounted on the upper wing of the plane.  Tino handed Edmund five extra clips of ammunition.  They kept adding more for each mission. 

Edmund climbed down from the cockpit, and they stood back admiring the plane, and giving it one last look over before the pilots came for inspection. 

Tino stood next to Edmund for a moment and picked up his line of thought again.  “So, she can cook.  She has her own business which you could step into.  Face of an angel, body of a devil, you could do a lot worse…”  Tino trailed off and turned his head and looked out of the large hangar door that faced the airstrip.  He limped quickly over to the open door, and Edmund watched him.  Then Edmund heard it too, a high droning sound.  He thought it must be the pilots on their way.  He was glad they had gotten the Lewis gun cleaned and remounted just in time.  Then Edmund heard a sound that he hadn’t heard before, a hand-cranked siren.  Tino came rushing back into the hangar as quickly as he could.  The other crews stared at him.  They had heard the siren also. 

“Incoming!  Get the planes out of here now!”

Chapter 13

He heard a soft tapping at the door, and a click as the handle turned.   Clemence stuck her head inside the room.  “Wake up, lovely boy!” she said in a loud whisper.  She stepped into the room and quietly shut the door behind her.  She was wearing a long dress and a white blouse with a heavy shawl pulled around her shoulders and her hair was pulled back from her face.  She looked different, happy, Edmund thought hopefully.  He sat up halfway, propping himself up on his elbow. 

“It is cold,” he said. 

“Yes it is,” she smiled at him. “I turned the gas on in the bathroom, so there should be hot water for the bathtub.  Father put that in for mother years ago.  We were one of the first houses around here to have one.  Anyway, I can run the bath for you, if you want to wash up properly.” She bent down and picked up Edmund’s nightshirt off the floor.

Edmund laughed quietly and flipped off the blankets.  The cold air on his naked body was a shock to him, but he stood up quickly and stretched.  Clemence looked at him and then quickly looked at the floor.  “You should put this on.”

“Right,” he said, taking the nightshirt and slipping it over his head until it fell to his knees. 

“Grab your things and I will show you the bath.”  Clemence walked over to the door and out into the hall.  Edmund picked up clothes and followed her, but he paused as he got to the doorway.  Clemence looked back at him, and then whispered, “She is downstairs making breakfast.  I already told her you stayed and she was very glad that you didn’t head out into the blizzard.”  She leaned in towards him and said, “and I’m glad too.”  She kissed him lightly on the cheek and walked up the hallway into the bathroom.

Edmund followed, tiptoeing on the cold floor, and stepped into the bathroom.  Clemence was leaning over a large cast iron bathtub and, putting her hand under the flow of running water, testing the temperature.  Steam came off the water in the cold air.  He looked up and there was a tank mounted to the wall in the corner over the tub.  Through a grill, Edmund could see a small gas flame.  The steam in the room thickened as the tub began to fill with water.  “I’ve set out soap and a few things for you on the sink.”  She looked back down at the water.  “That should be ready for you in just a moment.”

Edmund put his clothes on a rack near the door and put his boots on the floor.  Clemence stood up, still looking down at the water, and Edmund stepped quickly over to her and kissed her firmly.  He grabbed both of her arms and pulled her tightly against him.  After a moment, she pulled away from him and looked down at the bathtub, which was mostly full.  She knelt and turned off the water.  She stood up and leaned back into him and said, “Your bath is ready.”

She looked back up into his face and kissed him lightly on the cheek.  “I,” she paused, “I need to get back downstairs.  Just come down whenever you are ready.”  She stepped around him and walked out into the hall, closing the door behind her.  Edmund stared at the door for a moment and listened as Clemence’s footsteps receded down the stairs.  He slid the nightshirt over his head and turned back toward the steaming tub.  He lifted his foot and touched the water with his toes.  His feet were like ice cubes, and the water burned as he plunged his foot in, and then the next one, and then lowered his body into the tub.

The water was up to Edmund’s neck, and his body began to warm up.  He submerged his head, and ran his fingers over his head, and he could feel the pockets of cold that were clinging to his hair dissipate in the warmth.  He stayed under the water for a moment and almost felt himself floating.  He sat up and raised his head above the water again and pushed his hair back off his face.  He picked up the cake of soap she had left for him and began to wash.  When he was clean and rinsed, he stood up and picked up the chain that held the plug with his toes and lifted it out of the drain.  He stepped out of the tub, and steam rose off his body in the cold air.  He quickly grabbed a towel that Clemence had left and rubbed dry.  Even though the air was very cold, his body was still warm from the bathwater.  He quickly dressed himself, making himself look at neat as he could, making sure that his tie was straight.  He noticed a new pair of socks, much thicker than the ones that he had been wearing, laying among the things Clemence had set out for him.  He put them on and then pulled on his boots.  On the sink, there was a razor and a very old cake of shaving soap and a brush.  He ran the brush under hot water from the sink and lathered up the soap and then shaved, and he cleaned his teeth with some paste and a cloth. 

He combed his hair in the mirror and put his coat on.  He was feeling a little nervous about seeing Madam Morel.  Checking himself in the mirror one last time, he opened the door to the considerably colder air in the hallway, then he stepped out and walked down the stairs. 

As he descended into the warmth of the kitchen, he could see Clemence carrying a platter of eggs into the dining room.  “We are just about ready to eat.”

“Great!  I am starved!”

“Well, we started getting things ready to serve when we heard the water draining from the tub.”

“Oh, you were listening.  Glad I didn’t do anything questionable up there.”

Clemence smiled and shook her head slightly and carried the tray into the dining room.  Just after Clemence stepped out, Madam Morel came in through the same door and smiled brightly at Edmund.  “Good morning! I bet when you came for dinner last night, you had no idea you would be staying for breakfast!”

“No, ma’am.  But I appreciate your hospitality.”

“Oh, it is nothing.  There is no way you could have departed in that blizzard last night.  You would never have made it.”

 “Well, thank you just the same.”

“I trust you stayed warm enough last night?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Little cold this morning, but that bath warmed me right up!”

“Yes, that is a wonderful thing to have.  It was a gift from my husband on our fifth wedding anniversary.”  She picked up a plate of sausages and a plate of tomatoes and walked back into the dining room.  Edmund followed her and saw that the sofa and chair from last night were gone, and the table was back in its place, laden with plates of food and an urn of coffee.  A fire crackled merrily in the hearth, and they all sat down to eat. 

As they ate, Madam Morel said, “It certainly looks beautiful outside.”  And indeed it did.  Edmund looked out of the front window, and everything was still and quiet and dazzlingly white under a thick blanket of snow. 

“It is beautiful, but I am going to have a cold walk home.” Edmund said.

“Oh, I spoke to Monsieur Fournier this morning when he brought the milk and I told him we had a stranded American here.” Clemence said, smiling at Edmund.  “He has his sleigh harnessed up and he had to make some deliveries out near Behonne and he could drop you off there when you were ready.”

“Oh, how nice,” Madam Morel said.

“That is very nice of him.” Edmund said.  He was suddenly depressed at the thought of leaving.  The conversation died down as they dined on a breakfast of eggs, tomatoes, sausage, and apple pastries. As they ate, Edmund felt Clemence’s leg slide behind his so that her shin was lightly touching the back of his calf. 

After a few moments, Madam Morel said, “We were able to build that fire using the wood you brought in last night.  We didn’t have to get more this morning!”  She winked at Edmund. 

“Glad to be of service,” Edmund said and nodded.  “And I sure was happy to have that fireplace in my room last night.  I stayed nice and warm all night.  Do all the bedrooms upstairs have them?”

“Yes, Monsieur Morel had them put in when we bought the place,” Madam Morel said proudly.

“Well, Monsieur Morel was a very smart man.  This is a very comfortable and beautiful house,” Edmund said, and Madam Morel beamed.  He continued, “I remember growing up, we had two iron stoves, one in the kitchen, for cooking, of course, and one in the hall, supposedly to heat the upstairs.  We also had a fireplace in the parlor.  But I remember many mornings waking up feeling like I had icicles hanging off my ears and grabbing my clothes and taking them down and throwing them on the hearth just to thaw them out.”

Madam Morel was smiling but had a faraway look in her eyes.  “Yes,” she said, “he was a jewel.” And she reached out and patted Edmund on the hand.  “I need to refill the coffee,” she said, standing up and taking the coffee urn into the kitchen.

Clemence pressed her leg more firmly against Edmund and smiled at him.  “She likes you.”

Edmund smiled toward the kitchen.  “She is a very sweet lady.”

“Yes, she is.  Most of the time,” Clemence said, laughing.  “She has been through a lot.”

Edmund nodded as Madam Morel came back into the room with a steaming urn of coffee.  After they each had their fill, Clemence said, “Well, I suppose we shouldn’t keep Monsieur Fournier waiting much longer.”  Edmund nodded at her and pushed back from the table.  “Mother, would you mind if I accompanied them?  I would love to see the countryside like this.”

“Oh, not at all dear.  One so rarely gets to see beautiful things these days, you should take the chance when it comes.”

Edmund looked at Clemence, but she didn’t look back at him.   “Let me help you clear this away and then we will go,” Clemence said.

“Oh, I can take care of this,” Madam Morel said, but Clemence ignored her and began picking up plates and platters and silverware.  Edmund stood up to help. 

Edmund and Clemence cleaned off the table, making several trips back and forth to the kitchen while Madam Morel sat and finished the last of her coffee.  When they were done, Edmund walked over to the peg by the door and picked up his overcoat and hat.  Clemence disappeared into the kitchen and then brought out a long coat and a fur hat and muffler.

 “I would go with you, but I don’t think my old bones would appreciate it very much.”

“You stay by the fire, Mother.  And don’t worry about the dishes.  I will take care of them when I get back.  I don’t think we will have much of a dinner crowd today.”  She leaned over and kissed her mother on the cheek, and Edmund did the same.  Clemence looked long and thin in her close-fitting coat.  Edmund held the door at the front of the café open for her.  The snow was about twelve inches deep, and he walked in front of Clemence to plow a lane with his boots for her to walk in.  They turned right and walked down a block, and as they rounded the next turn, there was a building with an open stable door, and standing out in front was a red sleigh harnessed to two horses.  Smoke curled out of a chimney of the house attached to the stable, and a thick blanket of snow made everything clean and white.  It looked to Edmund like a Currier and Ives print that his mother had hanging in the parlor.

“I will go and fetch Monsieur Fournier,” Clemence said.  She walked off through the snow and into the barn, out of Edmund’s sight.  Edmund walked over to the horse closest to him and ran his hand down its neck.  The horse turned its head and rubbed Edmund’s shoulder with its nose.  Clemence reappeared and said, “He will be right out.”

Monsieur Fournier was a short but stout man, who nodded and bowed and smiled to Edmund and Clemence.  He looked at Edmund and said, “Behonne?”

 “Oui, merci.” Edmund replied, and Monsieur Fournier nodded and bowed again, and stepped over to the side of the sleigh and gestured for them to climb into it and sit.  Edmund held Clemence’s hand as she gathered up her dress to make the first high step into the sleigh.  Edmund could see her high black boots, and then her white pantaloons that were tucked into the tops of them.  Edmund clambered up behind her, trying to knock the snow off his boots before stepping onto the floor of the sleigh.  Edmund again held Clemence’s hand as she sat down on the middle of the wide leather seat.  He sat down next to Clemence, and Monsieur Fournier climbed up into the driver’s seat, which was set slightly higher than the back seat.  Edmund leaned over Clemence and pulled several layers of wool blankets topped by a fur-lined one up and over their laps.  They were large enough that he was able to cover their legs and feet and then pull the tops of the blankets up over their shoulders, so only their heads were exposed.  As they were settling in, Clemence moved even closer to Edmund so that she was sitting tightly pressed against his side.

Monsieur Fournier looked back at them and smiled warmly and nodded, and Edmund smiled and nodded back, and with a crack of the reins, the horses started off.  Edmund put his arm around Clemence, and she rested her head on his shoulder, and her hand on his thigh.  They rode on in silence, listening to the muffled sounds of the horses’ hooves as they thudded in the snow. The runners compacted the snow beneath them, and the bells on the horses’ bridles jingled merrily. 

Everything was cold and white and crisp, and as the sleigh headed out of town on the road to Behonne, they could see far through the woods in every direction.  Edmund could see a family of deer foraging for food, and they didn’t even look up as the sleigh glided by.  Soon, much too soon for Edmund, they approached the iron gates of Behonne.  Monsieur Fournier slowed the sleigh to a stop, and Clemence sat up.  Edmund pulled the blankets off him and tucked them around Clemence, and as he stood up and put one foot on the runner outside of the sleigh, Clemence slid over to where Edmund had been sitting.  She looked up at him and said, “Goodbye.”     

“Goodbye,” Edmund said.

 “You will come back soon?”

“You couldn’t keep me away,” Edmund said smiling.  He reached up and put his hand on the side of her face, and she leaned her head into his hand and closed her eyes.  Then she pulled her arm out of the blankets and reached up to the side of his neck and pulled him close to her and he kissed her.  Then he pulled away and kissed her forehead and stepped down out of the sleigh.  He looked up at Monsieur Fournier who smiled down at Edmund and, Edmund thought, winked at him.  Then with a click of the tongue and a snap of the reins, the horses started off again.  He watched the sleigh glide quietly down the road, and then he could see Clemence sit up and turn and look at him and raise her hand to wave goodbye.  He watched until the sleigh rounded a bend and he could no longer see it. 

Edmund turned and walked through the gates of Behonne and nodded at the sentry.  The sentry winked at him and nodded.  Edmund shook his head.  The snow on the road into Behonne lay pristine and undisturbed.  There had been no movement in or out of the base all morning.  The low buildings, the tents, the canteen, the administration building, and the large hangars all lay under a mantle of white, and the place looked quiet and calm, even a bit cheerful, although he wasn’t looking forward to how cold his tent probably was.  He trudged on through the unbroken snow, and then finally onto an area of heavy foot traffic where the snow had been trampled down by men going and coming from the canteen.  He continued to his own tent and as he approached he saw footprints leading into it.  He stopped and looked up at the roof of the tent and could see waves of heat coming out of the chimney for the paraffin oil heater. 

Edmund approached slowly and as quietly as he could, stepping into the existing footprints in the snow.  He climbed the low steps, and then quickly whipped the tent flap open.

 “Oy!  You’re letting the heat out!”

Edmund stuck his head inside, and saw Tino standing, half-shaven, over a washbasin. 

“Tino!” Edmund said, stepping quickly into the tent.

“One and the same,” Tino said, and smiled.  “And you are my hero and savior,” he said and bowed deeply to Edmund.

Edmund smiled.  Tino straightened up again, gripping a cane that was leaning against his leg, and Edmund could see that he was much thinner and paler than when he last saw him. 

“And close the fucking flap,” Tino said as he turned back to the mirror and continued shaving. 

Edmund turned and pulled the tent flap shut and then tied the straps tight to keep the cold out.  He sat down on his cot.  “When did you get back?”

“Yesterday, just before the storm hit.  I kept expecting to see you, and imagine my surprise when you didn’t show, eh?  Hopefully you found a French honey to keep you warm?  Lots of lonely widows out there.”

Tino’s last comment irked Edmund, but that, Edmund remembered, was what Tino did.  “No, nothing so lucky.  I went into town to have a Christmas dinner at one of the cafés and got snowed it.  The owner put me up for the night.”  Edmund didn’t want to tell anyone about his night, and the things that passed between him and Clemence.  Tino especially had a way of making things seem cheap. 

“How unfortunate and boring for you.  I was hoping somebody was curled up with a warm body last night since I was shivering my ass off in this paper shack.  Hell, it’s been a long time since I curled up with anyone.  Though there was this one nurse who took extra good care of me.” He looked back at Edmund, his eyes shining.  “She had a huge rack,” he gestured with his hands out in front of him, “and one evening, she pulled the curtains around, and…”

Edmund laughed, but he wanted to change the subject.  He cut in, “So, how are you doing?  All healed up?”

Tino smiled and paused and then looked back in the mirror.  “Mostly, except now I come with a lead bullet in my hip, the Boche bastard.  Thanks for killing him, by the way.”

 “No problem.”

“But yeah, the docs couldn’t get the bullet out.  Tried three times until I finally told them to quit.  Just leave me with enough morphine to get by.  Have you ever tried that stuff?”  Edmund shook his head.  “Well, it is pretty good.  They gave me some for the trip.  Gotta figure out where I can get more though.”

“Search me,” Edmund said with a shrug.  Tino picked his shirt up off his cot and pulled it on and began to button it.

“I stopped by and looked at the Nieuport.  Looks damn good.”

“Thanks.” Edmund said.

“Did you have any help?”

“Well, sort of.  Knox borrowed a guy from another crew, Luc something, but I could never find him when I needed him.  He did do the artwork on the side though.”

“Yes, I know him.  Lazy shit.  You did a nice job of patching the holes though. The stitches are nice and tight, and the lacquer covers them up nicely.  Any structural damage?

“Not really, just holes in the fuselage.  One shot did knick a guide wire though.  I replaced the whole thing.”

 Tino nodded his approval.  “Sounds like you don’t need me at all,” he said as he smiled at Edmund.

 “I don’t know.  It’s a hell of a lot of work when they come back all shot up.”

 “I heard they lost Rockingham.”

“Yeah, went down a couple of weeks ago.”

“Well, he was an asshole anyway.  Nice funeral though, so I hear.”

“It was impressive,” Edmund said.

“I heard talk yesterday that they are planning another mission as soon as the snow is off the runway.  If it doesn’t melt soon, they may be asking us to pile dirt and gravel on it to give them some traction so they can land.”  Tino finished getting dressed and began to walk with his cane over to the flap of the tent to go out.  He turned around to Edmund, “Listen, no questions came up about where we were and what we were doing out there, did they?”

“No.  I just said that we were on a supply run and needed to get fuel.  Signed the report.”

“Good.  Nobody ever asked me about it, and I just wanted to make sure that my savior,” Tino bowed his head slightly towards Edmund as he said this, “didn’t take any heat for it.”

“Nope, none at all.”

“Good, good.” He turned to exit and then turned back again.  “Listen, some of the boys are having a little Christmas party in honor of my homecoming tonight in the canteen.  It wouldn’t be complete without my savior.”

“Oh, sure, I will be there.”

“Good.  I’m going to get some breakfast and then I thought maybe we could go look at the plane and you could show me what you have done to it.”

“Sounds good.”

Tino stepped out of the tent and closed the flap tightly.  Edmund stood up and took off his clothes, leaving on his long underwear and then lay down on his cot and slid under the blankets.  The paraffin oil heater did put off a lot of heat, but it was uneven in the drafty tent.  He lay, staring at the canvass roof, thinking about how it had felt to lie against Clemence’s body, and how she looked with her skin illuminated by the firelight.  He drifted off into a short, but very deep, dreamless sleep. 

He wasn’t sure what time it was when he awoke, but he snapped into consciousness quickly, and stood up, taking some work clothes out of his trunk.  He felt like he may have gotten up too fast and felt dizzy while he was pulling on his pants. He put on his boots and coat and hat and then turned the heater down.  They weren’t supposed to leave them turned on when they weren’t in the tents, but he knew it would take forever for the room to heat up again if he turned it out.  If they ran out of kerosene, he knew Tino could get more.  He exited the tent, making sure to close the flaps tightly and trudged through the snow to the hangar.  The paths were getting more and more tamped down by footsteps, but the air had turned decidedly colder, and a hard mantle had formed on the undisturbed snow, and it crunched under his boots as he plowed along. 

The hangar was fairly active when he got there, but it was darker than usual.  The large barn-style doors that faced the runway were closed, and the room was illuminated only by the electric lights.  Several paraffin heaters were distributed around to provide some heat, but the hangar was frigid.  Tino was over at Knox’s Nieuport, looking under the engine cowling.  Edmund walked up behind him and watched.  He wasn’t doing anything except looking.

 “So, what do you think?

“Eh?”  Tino turned around and looked at Edmund.  He stepped back and stood beside him, and both were admiring the airplane.  “What do I think?  I think you are going to put me out of a job.  That is what I think.”  Edmund smiled.  “Couldn’t you have fucked something up so they would think they still needed me?  I mean, I am just an old pirate, and now a crippled one at that.”  He said as he held up his cane.  “I looked for the guide wire that you replaced, and I couldn’t tell the difference between the new one and the old one.”

“Well, I, for one,” Edmund said, clapping Tino on the shoulder, “am really glad you are back.  Keeping this thing up is a hell of a lot of work for one person.”  He leaned in towards Tino and said quietly, “And just between you and me, I don’t know what I am doing.  I just took what I knew of cars, combined it with what you taught me, and just figured out the rest.”

Tino looked at him and laughed in his deep rumbling way, “Welcome to the club.  That is how we all learned it.  I never saw an airplane before I got here.  I was a pretty good mechanic, and my father, the bastard, was a blacksmith and a wheelwright, so I knew metalworking as a kid, but airplanes?  Where the hell do you learn about that?”  They stood in silence and looked at the plane.  Then Tino continued, “No, before our young Sergeant Knox came along, I was an assistant, and we had a couple of planes that were pretty bad off, a Nieuport 10 and an old Airco I think, and we practically had to strip them down to the airframe and rebuild them.  That is where I learned the little that I know.  I just faked the rest.”

“Well, it worked,” Edmund said.  He walked over to the supply locker and said, “We do need some things, though.  Some ammunition, oil, and,” he rummaged around in the cabinet, “some more varnish.  Took a hell of a lot to cover up the artwork.”  Tino took a small flask out of his coat and took a long drink from it and handed it to Edmund without looking at him.  Edmund took it and drank a considerably smaller amount than Tino.  They spent the afternoon sitting around the plane and talking and drinking from Tino’s flask.  Edmund moved a paraffin heater over to them and placed two chairs on either side of it.  Edmund still didn’t mention Clemence to Tino. 

After a while, Tino grew tired and got up and said he was going to take a nap to rest up for the evening.  Edmund cleaned up around the plane and then headed over to the canteen for some coffee.  Several men were there, and they had moved some of the tables off to the side and were busy putting together a pool table.  When Edmund asked, he was told that some of the pilots had purchased it and sent it over to Behonne for the crew to use.  None of them had ever put one together before, but among the group of mechanics were several talented craftsmen and woodworkers who quickly figured it out.  It took several men to maneuver the slate top into place, but eventually it was set up and men were clamoring around the table to play. 

As the afternoon turned into evening, more and more of the camp gathered at the canteen for dinner, many to play pool, but they were also there for Tino.  Edmund ate and sat off to the side with a cup of coffee.  He saw Luc playing a round of pool.  Soon, some of the men hung a banner on the wall that said Joyeux Noël!  It was Christmas Eve.  As he sat, he noticed that bottles of wine and other spirits had appeared.  Edmund sat and thought about what Clemence was doing.  Probably sitting by the fire with her mother, or maybe they have a full house at the café, and she is serving dinners to happy families, though no family in that town seemed intact.  Then he thought about his parents.  He wondered if they had decorated or put up a tree. He also thought about Penny.  She had already had all the Christmases she would ever have.

Edmund was startled when a large tin cup was placed down roughly on the table in front of him, and red wine was poured into it sloppily, so that it gurgled and glugged and splashed.  He looked first at the cup, and then at the bottle that was filling it, and then up the arm to the face.  It was Luc.  The two stared at each other for a moment without expression, then Luc smiled.  “Happy Christmas,” he said.  He walked away before Edmund could say anything.  Edmund looked down into the cup and then took a sip.  The tin from the cup gave the wine a metallic taste.  Edmund leaned his head against the wall and observed the men as they talked and yelled and drank.  They looked happy, and the noise erupted into cheers as Edmund saw Tino enter the room, limping noticeably.  Men were clapping him on the back and shaking his hand. Someone took his coat and hat and handed him a cup.  He looked over at Edmund and raised his cane as if in salute.  Edmund nodded back at him.  The party continued late into the night and into the early morning.  With Tino there, Edmund couldn’t help but be near the center of attention.  At one point, Sgt. Knox, along with William Thaw, came to have a drink with the mechanics and to wish Tino well. 

In the early morning light, Edmund helped Tino limp back to their tent.  He could feel how frail and thin Tino had become since the injury.  The next morning, Christmas Day, Edmund was awoken by Tino, who was shaking his shoulder as he was getting dressed in his best clothes.  “Come on.  Christmas Mass.” 

Edmund nodded and sat up and dressed quickly, before stopping and saying, “Christmas what?”

“Mass.”  Tino said as he tied his boots, not looking up at Edmund.

“Oh.  Right.” Edmund said.  He sat down on his bunk and began putting his boots on.  He finished quickly and looked over and Tino was still struggling with the boot on his injured side.  His face looked contorted in pain.  “Listen, I have never been to a Catholic service before. But I hear there is lots of kneeling and stuff.  Can you help me know what to do?”

“Sure,” Tino said, still struggling with his boot.  “Been doing it since I was at my mamma’s teat.  I could do it in my sleep.”  His boot finally tied, Tino stood.  Edmund thought he looked remarkably composed, considering the night he had before and the amount of pain he had just seen on the man’s face.  Edmund hoped he looked half as good, for he did not feel that way. 

The two made their way over to the canteen, that had been cleared of all the debris from the previous evening, and the pool table had been moved and draped and set up as an altar.  Most of the men who had stumbled out of this room in the wee hours were back, some in varying shades of green and grey.  The priest wore white robes, and the service was in Latin, and Tino showed Edmund when to kneel and when to pray.  Tino winced considerably every time he had to kneel and then get back up in his chair.  Tino also told Edmund not to take communion. 

During the final benediction, Edmund heard the door of the canteen slam.  He looked back and Thénault and Lufbery and two aides de camp stood by the doorway. 

As the priest was still finishing his final amen, Thénault was striding up the center aisle.  “Gentlemen,” he said as he stood in front of the pool table altar, “we have received intelligence that the Germans plan to step up their air campaign in this sector, beginning in the first few days of the new year.  They have gathered additional pilots and planes, as well as large amounts of fuel and munitions, including some new types of bombs. In addition, they have a new type of aircraft, a Fokker design, which we are still trying to get more information on. They are waiting for the same warm up in the weather that we are to get the runway cleared.”  He paused for a moment.  The room was silent.  “Right now, we are planning a New Year’s Day mission.  We hope to catch the Germans recovering from their previous evening’s revelries.” He laughed lightly as he said this.  “We think the weather will warm a bit this week, and we will be bringing in truckloads of rock and dirt to spread over the runway to give our boys a good surface to land on.  We will be organizing work crews starting tomorrow to resurface the airstrip.  Any questions?”  He stopped and looked around the silent room.  “Oh, and the admirable celebration that you had last night will have to serve as your New Year’s Eve party as well.  As the mission is at 4:00 in the morning, all celebrations are cancelled.  Have those planes ready, men.”  With that, he bowed to the priest who put his hand on Thénault’s head and said a blessing over him.  Thénault stood and put his hat on, and said, “Merry Christmas to all of you,” and strode down the aisle, his footsteps echoing loudly in the silent room, followed by a loud slam as the pilots and their aides left the hall.

The silence was broken by one of the cooks, who stepped out of the door from the kitchen and said, “Christmas Dinner will be ready in one hour.  Some of you dogs need to help turn this place back into a mess hall.”  Tino looked at Edmund and nodded toward the door. 

When they got outside, the sun was high in the sky, and Edmund could feel the warmth through his clothes.  “Sounds like it is going to be a hell of a week, eh?” Tino said to Edmund as he lit a cigarette.  He offered one to Edmund, who refused.  He was still feeling woozy from the previous evening. 

“Yes, sounds like it,” Edmund replied.

“Still, you already have Knox’s bird ready to go, so nothing much to be done there.”

“Yes, so that means more time to haul gravel.  Great.” 

Tino said that he was going to go back to the tent and lie down.  Edmund walked over to the administration building.  He was hoping, though he didn’t really want to admit it even to himself, for a letter from his mother.  He went into the office and the clerk handed him an envelope, but it had not come through the mail.  It simply had his name on the front.  He stepped out onto the front steps and opened the envelope. 

My dearest Edmund,

I should probably be remembering the night I spent in your arms with shame and regret, but I do not.  I miss you too much to pretend any false modesty.   Last night, I slept in the bed we shared.  I could still smell you on the pillow, but it was no comfort.  But I am not writing just to tell you of my loneliness. 

We have decided that Mother is going to take the train south to be with her sister in Marseille.  I have secured a ticket for her on December 27^th.  It was hard to get since many people have decided to flee to the south.  She cannot take the memories, or the fear that the Germans will be marching down the road any day now.  I have promised to close the café and join her in a month.  M. Fournier has agreed to help me board up the windows and doors, but I am going to ship all the valuables and family things before I leave.  I don’t think the place will survive intact with the war so close and order seeming to break down further every day. 

I hope with all of my heart to see you again before I leave.  But I know that nothing is certain.  If the past is all the time we will ever have together, I will lock it away in my heart and cherish the memories forever, and draw on them whenever I feel lonely.  I hope that is not our fate, but I learned long ago that we seldom get to choose our paths.

                                                            Clemence

            Edmund refolded the note and put it into his pocket and stood and stared at the gate and the road toward Behonne and Clemence.  The sun was high in the sky and it was warm enough that he unbuttoned his coat.  Slowly he turned back toward the canteen.  The snow was melting and turning the ground to mud, and Edmund trudged through it.  The Christmas dinner was ready, and he was among the first to arrive.  He ate quickly and then went back to his tent.

            Tino was still asleep when he got there, and Edmund woke him and told him to go eat.  Groggily, Tino staggered up and out of the tent.  Edmund sat at the small desk and wrote a letter back to Clemence.  He told her how much he missed her and how he didn’t want her to leave.  He leaned back in his chair and read what he had written and then tore the page in two and pulled out a fresh sheet.  He said that he missed her, and that he was glad for her mother, and he wanted to visit her again as soon as he could, but that it would probably not be until after New Year’s Day.  He sat back and tried to think of a way to write what he was feeling, but he couldn’t find any words that seemed right.  He read the letter again and realized that it didn’t say anything that he really wanted to say, but it was all he was able to write. 

He folded the letter and put it into an envelope and addressed it as completely as he could.  He put the note into his trunk and took off his muddy boots and his clothes down to his long underwear and crawled into his bunk.  He lay for a few moments, thinking about the café sitting empty and all boarded up, and then the next thing he knew was Tino shaking him awake early the next day.

“Get up.  The engineer is here with the gravel.  We have to report to the airstrip.  I brought you some bread and sausages and some coffee.”  Edmund got up and ate as he dressed in his dirtiest work clothes, and he and Tino made their way over to the airstrip.  All the men were assembling and an engineer with the French air service was there to direct them.   A large pile of gravel that had begun arriving on Christmas day lay to one side of the airstrip, beyond the last hangar.  The camp had two bulldozers, one of which Tino was designated to operate.  Edmund was glad, because he didn’t see how Tino would be able to do a lot of the work hobbling around on his cane. 

Edmund was assigned for the morning to a wheelbarrow, and in the afternoon to a rake.  By the end of the day, his hands were blistered and torn, and his whole body ached, but they had gotten a great deal accomplished.  The lower east end of the airstrip that usually stayed soft and somewhat muddy now had a thick layer of gravel and dirt compacted down to a firm surface.  As the men toiled, more loads of gravel continued to be dumped onto the pile, and at the end of the day, the supply of rock was larger than it had been at the beginning.  Edmund was particularly disheartened by this.  As dusk approached the men trudged wearily off, some to their tents, some to the canteen.  Edmund was famished and went to the canteen and ate a huge meal.  But when it came time to get up to leave, he had trouble straightening up, and he felt like it took him almost until he was at his own tent to be able to walk normally. 

Tino came into the tent as Edmund was struggling to get his boots off.  “How was it up on that bulldozer all day?”

“My backside is sore.  You should be glad you didn’t have to sit there all day.  You had it easy.”

Edmund just looked at him, and Tino grinned.  “Shut up,” Edmund said.  His second boot finally slid off, and his foot banged on the ground.  “I can barely move.”  He held up his hands, and the palms were blistered and bloody. 

Tino winced as he looked, and then said, “I think I have some old gloves that you can wear tomorrow.”  He opened up his trunk and threw a pair of work gloves onto Edmund’s bunk.

“Thanks.  These would have been good to have today.”

Tino shrugged.  “Sorry.”  He leaned down and took a bottle of clear liquid and some paper packets out of the bottom of his trunk.  He picked up their tin drinking cups and disappeared out of the tent.  He came back with two cups of water.  He tore open the paper packets and poured a white powder into each cup and stirred it with his knife.  He held one out to Edmund. “Here, this will make you feel better.”

Edmund took the cup and looked at its milky swirls.  “What is it?” 

“Morphine.  It will make you feel better.  They gave it to me in the hospital, and then some to come home with.  Drink it.”

Edmund sipped the liquid and it had a bitter taste.  He made a face.  He looked up, and Tino was gulping his cup, and then took it away and sighed contentedly.  “Just like mamma’s milk.  Doesn’t work quite as well this way, a syringe is better, but you gotta take what you can get.” 

Edmund looked back down at his drink and then gulped it down.  Tino handed the bottle to him.  “Here, this will get the taste out of your mouth.”  Edmund gulped the liquor, and it burned the back of his throat, but it did clear the bitter taste of the morphine.  He handed the bottle back to Tino.  “Come here,” Tino said.  “Stick your hands over the shaving bowl.”  Edmund stood and looked at Tino, and hesitated.  “Come here. You have to get those hands cleaned up.”  Edmund hesitated again, and Tino said, “Come on.  Don’t be a baby.”  Edmund stuck his hands over the bowl, palms up, and Tino poured the liquor over his torn and bleeding hands.  Edmund felt like he was holding his hands over a cold open flame, but as the pain shot up his arms, a wave of ease welling up from his midsection pushed ahead of the pain, and he relaxed.  “Put your hands down in the bowl and let them sit for a moment.”  He took a long drink from the bottle he had been pouring on Edmund.  “Waste of good booze.”  Tino rummaged around in his trunk again and pulled out some cotton bandages and took Edmund’s hands out and dried them and wrapped them.  Edmund began to sway as he stood and felt sleep overcoming him.  Tino walked him to his bed and threw the blankets over him as he lay down.  “Goodnight, princess.”

Once again, Edmund was awoken the next morning by Tino shaking him.  He had slept like a stone, and had stayed all night in the same position he had laid down in.  He sat up quickly before he was fully awake, but when his feet hit the floor and he stood, every muscle in his body burned with pain, and his hands felt as if the skin had been rubbed off with sand.  Tino tossed him more cotton bandages and told him to re-wrap his hands and keep the gloves on during the day. 

Slowly he got dressed and out of their tents to the runway.  When he began to work his muscles screamed with pain at first, but by mid-morning, he had finally loosened up.  Only his hands concerned him.  The blood mixed with sweat and dirt made a viscous mixture that caused the gloves to slide around on the palms.  The pain wasn’t too bad, but he was afraid to remove the gloves.  As the end of the day approached, Edmund could see that they were nearly finished.  Their evening routine was the same, except Edmund refused the morphine.  Instead, he washed at the bath house.  The palms of his hands were raw and bleeding, but he figured that with bandages and gloves, he could get through another day.  He was glad that the Nieuport was ready to go, because he didn’t think he would be able to do anything meticulous on it until his hands healed.

They finished the runway on the third day, and all the men stood and admired their work.  Edmund was proud of what they had accomplished together, though he missed the grass strip and the park-like feel it provided that existed before.  Still, this would be a much more secure, though harder, surface for the planes to land on.  They had compacted the gravel with the bulldozer and the trucks until it barely shifted when a man walked on it.

They had finished in the early afternoon, and for the most part, the men drifted back to their tents and were quiet, resting and sleeping.  Edmund again washed up in the bathhouse, and then cleaned his hands with the alcohol, taking a few deep drinks of it as he did, and then crawled into his bunk.  Again, he refused the morphine when Tino offered it, but Tino, Edmund noticed, took a hefty dose for himself.  Edmund didn’t put any bandages on his hands, and as he lay in his bunk, he could feel the skin burning where blisters had formed and been torn off and then blisters reformed and then were torn off again, sometimes several times over. 

They spent the next two days getting the Nieuport ready.  Tino did most of the work and allowed Edmund to sit and rest for the most part.  There really was not that much to do, and Tino’s activities were limited to just rechecking that everything was working properly.  Tino had gotten extra ammunition and stored it in various places around the cockpit. 

New Year’s Eve was spent waiting and quietly relaxing.  The mood of the camp was subdued.  Tino helped Sgt. Laurence Rumsey’s crew get some last-minute work done on his plane, and Edmund spent most of his time wondering what Clemence was doing, and making plans to see her when the mission was done.  He hoped there would be at least a brief window between missions so he could spend some time with her before she left.  

New Year’s Day finally came, and all the pilots arrived from the chateau in the pre-dawn darkness.  The entire squadron was taking part in this mission that was designed to destroy the major supply routes to the German front north of Verdun.  The air was crisp and frosty, but the sky was clear, and the planes began climbing into the sky at first light.  Dewey Short and Reuben Wood had come to witness the takeoff and stayed for the aftermath, along with two other ambulances with French crews.  The men built fires along the edges of the airstrip and sat and ate the breakfasts that had been prepared for the pilots which, as usual, were left mostly uneaten. 

Several of the men walked the length of the runway to see how it had held up under the airplane wheels and the tail draggers, but it looked good with hardly any deep ruts.  One plane, flown by Charles Johnson had to return early, and the men could hear the plane sputtering and coughing as it approached.  The men watched anxiously until the plane was safely on the ground, and Johnson leapt out and began yelling at his mechanics.  Tino leaned over to Edmund and said, “Sounds like some of the cylinders aren’t firing properly.”  Then as he heard Johnson yelling, he chuckled and said, “Poor bastards.”

Roughly two hours later, the spotter called everyone to attention and announced that the squadron was returning.  And indeed, they all did return.  Only a couple of the planes had suffered any damage at all from ground fire, and that was only minor. They had caught the Germans completely off guard, and they had only been able to scramble a few planes for any kind of defense, and those were quickly dispatched.  Knox had used almost all his ammunition but had no confirmed kills to claim.  In all, Edmund would learn later, the mission had destroyed a railhead and a truck depot, and they had also hit a nearby airbase, destroyed several planes where they sat on the ground and had bombed two hangars with an unknown number of planes inside.  The mission had been a stunning success, and every pilot made it back alive and unhurt. 

Edmund and Tino looked over Knox’s plane quickly, but aside from some smudges from the exhaust and some oil streaks, it looked as it had when it rolled out of the hangar that morning.  Trays of food and bottles of champagne were brought out and the pilots and crew celebrated on the edge of the runway.  Thénault announced that they planned to follow up with smaller missions in two days, and that raiding parties would be announced the next day.  Soon the pilots, each holding their own bottles, piled back into their cars and headed back to the chateau, and the men began putting the planes back into the hangars. 

Edmund and Tino spent the afternoon cleaning the Lewis gun, and wiping the oil and exhaust smudges off the fuselage, but there wasn’t much more to be done.  As they were sitting around the plane, with the pieces of the gun spread out on a tarp in front of them, Edmund asked if Tino minded if he were gone for a couple of days.

Tino looked at Edmund out of the side of his eyes, “Going far?”

“No, just into town.”

Tino looked down at the firing pin that he was scraping carbon off and smiled.  “Meeting a woman?”

Edmund didn’t answer right away, but then he said, “Possibly.”

“There is a pretty girl who lives above the Café Morel.”

Edmund nodded. “Clemence.”

“She is a war widow, no?”

“Yes.”  Edmund was running a cloth soaked in gun oil down the barrel of the gun.  “Do you know her?” Edmund said, trying to sound casual.

Tino shook his head.  “No.”  Then he looked up at Edmund and grinned.  “Seen her though.  She is quite beautiful.”

Edmund nodded.

“I make it a point to notice all the pretty women with a certain radius of me.  Especially lonely widows.”

Edmund nodded again.  “Her husband was killed over a year ago at Verdun.”

Tino finished with the piece he had been working on and said, “A sad, but not uncommon story.”

Edmund nodded again.  “So anyway, they are closing the café and moving south like everyone else.  I thought I would see if she needed any help packing up.”

Tino grinned at Edmund again.  “I’m sure she will be extremely grateful for your help.”

Edmund just nodded again. 

“Take as long as you need.  Hell, you held down everything here by yourself while I was lying on my ass at Lyon.  Besides, I know where to get hold of you if I need you.  I will make sure to knock loudly first if I have to come calling.”

Edmund went to the bath house and cleaned up and changed into some clean clothes.  The air was chilly, but the sunlight was bright and warmed his shoulders.  He went to the administration tent to see if any trucks were heading into Bar le Duc, but there were none scheduled for that day, but after rummaging around for a few moments in a stack on incoming mail, the clerk handed Edmund two envelopes.  Edmund thanked the clerk and stepped outside, and as he looked at the two envelopes, he walked through the gate and started off towards town.

He recognized the handwriting on one of the envelopes, it was from his mother and was postmarked December 10.  The handwriting on the second looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.  It was postmarked December 14, also from Annapolis.  Even though he was very curious about the second, out of deference, and since it was written earlier, he opened his mother’s letter first.  It was a bit difficult with his still-bandaged hands.  The letter contained two pages of news about home, including the large Thanksgiving Dinner they attended in Annapolis.  It made Edmund sad to think that there had been no Thanksgiving feast at home that year.  His mother obviously had not gotten his letter by the time she wrote this one. 

She said that his father was close to signing a contract with the Naval Academy to provide automobile repair services on base, and to help augment the Academy’s motor pool.  Edmund’s father was now fully in support of the United States entering the war, and in fact, she said, he is going around telling everybody that his son was already over there ‘helping the French.’  She said that he frets awfully, especially at night over Edmund’s safety, and wonders if he did the right thing by sending Edmund.  She assures him, she said, that he did, and that Edmund is safe. She concluded the letter with a plea to him to indeed keep himself safe until he could come home to them.

Edmund smiled as he walked.  He could see his father walking around with his chest puffed out telling everybody at church on Sundays that his son was singlehandedly beating the Germans.  With a wrench in my hand, Edmund thought.  Then he thought about the one German that he did kill and wondered if he was still lying in the clearing in the woods where he fell.  Edmund shivered suddenly.

The road had reached a stretch where woods had arisen on his left, and fields rolled off to the north on his right.  The snow was still pristine across most of the landscape, except for a solitary deer track that traipsed across the middle of one of the fields.  He remembered watching this view slide merrily by from the sleigh as he sat close to Clemence, feeling her warmth.

He folded the letter from his mother and put it into his coat pocket and then looked at the mystery envelope.  He knew the handwriting was familiar, but he just couldn’t place it.  He carefully tore it open and slid the letter out of the envelope.  It was one page, and Edmund quickly looked down at the signature.  It was from his friend from St. John’s, Lloyd James.  He was filled with a surge of remembrance and happiness.  He had forgotten how much he missed his friends, especially Lloyd. 

Edmund quickly began reading through the letter but slowed midway through and simply stared at the paper in front of him.  He stopped walking and stood in the middle of the road.  After a moment he lowered the letter to his side and looked around.  A large rock set off to the side marked the intersection of two country lanes, and he walked over and sat down on it.  He looked back down at the date at the top of the letter.  December 12.  What had he been doing on December 12?  He couldn’t remember.

Chapter 12

Sgt. Blaine Rockingham did not return from the next mission.  When the pilots landed, several of the planes, including Knox’s, were riddled with bullets.  Raoul Lufbery, who had been flying close to Rockingham reported that together they attacked an Albatross observation plane, and as it passed, the tail gunner shot Rockingham’s plane several times in the engine.  Rockingham, he said, went down in flames near the French lines.  He did think they would be able to recover the body, though. Lufbery chased the Albatross and raked the front of the plane with bullets, taking many shots to his own plane from the tail gunner who had shot Rockingham.  He hit the pilot and then the engine, and he tailed the plane as it headed into the ground.  He had the tail gunner in his sights several times, but he did not shoot him, he simply watched the terror play out on the man’s face as he realized the plane was going down and there was nothing he could do about it.  At the end though, Lufbery said that the gunner looked directly at him calmly.    

There was no celebration when the pilots landed, just a quiet toast to their fallen comrade. Blaine’s brother, Robert Rockingham, who had recently joined the squadron, was silent and inscrutable.

Blaine Rockingham was one of the original seven American pilots who had begun the Escadrille, flying missions initially out of Luxeuil, and he was the first to go down of those seven.  Rockingham’s body was recovered from the crash site, and the next week, the squadron held a funeral in Bar le Duc.  It was the largest and grandest ceremony that Edmund had ever seen, and every American in the entire area attended, as well as many French military officials.  Edmund was very tired during the ceremony because he had been working long days repairing Knox’s Nieuport.  One of the bullets had nearly cut the control cables for the rudder.  Another eighth of an inch, Edmund thought, and there would have been a double ceremony.  He didn’t see Knox again until the funeral, and when he asked about the plane, Edmund said that he almost had all the repairs finished.  He didn’t tell him about the cable. 

After the ceremony was over, he went to the café.  He had not seen Clemence since Thanksgiving.  He had not had a second since the mission to do anything other than repair the damaged plane.  He walked around to the side door of the kitchen, but when he knocked there was no answer.  He looked through the window and the kitchen was dark and quiet.  He tried the knob, but it was locked.  Then he walked around to the front of the café, through the terrace and looked in the picture window into the dining room.  It was also empty and the door was locked.  He looked at the table where they had sat and ate that one evening.  It was strange, he thought, they should have been preparing dinner.

As he walked away from the front door, he met several other people who had been planning on the café for dinner, and they looked at him questioningly as he walked away.  Edmund explained that it was closed.  They asked him why, and he just shrugged his shoulders, and they all stood looking back at the front door for a few moments in silence.  The people shook their heads, and Edmund began the long walk back to Behonne. 

The weather had turned colder, and Edmund turned the collar of his coat up and held it tightly around him.  When he was about halfway to the base, he hitched a ride on a truck that was returning to the airbase from the funeral.  Edmund’s feet felt like ice cubes by the time he got back and he was hungry, but the canteen was closed.  Everyone from the base had been at the funeral. 

Edmund made his way back to his tent and lit the paraffin oil heater and then took off his boots and crawled into his cot.  It was only mid-afternoon, but he was very tired, and very worried about the café being closed without any word from Clemence.  Had they left?  He was angry with himself for not contacting her for so long after Thanksgiving and began to wonder if he would ever see her again.  This was his final thought as he drifted off to sleep.

It was dusk when he awoke, and his cot was warm and comfortable, but he was hungry, so he got up and put his boots on, and headed to the canteen.  It was open and serving dinner, but not many men were there, and the ones who were just talked quietly.  Edmund ate by himself and then walked back to his tent.  He had left the paraffin heater on, and the tent was quite warm, and he closed the flap tightly behind him.  He took out a sheet of paper and a pen and inkwell and wrote a letter to his mother.  He told her all about the Thanksgiving dinner, and then the funeral, but he said that he didn’t really know the pilot who had died.  She would have been impressed by the ceremony, he wrote.  He finished the letter, and then went to the bathhouse to wash, and climbed into bed in a clean set of long underwear. 

He spent the next three days working on the Nieuport.  He didn’t know when the next mission was, and he wanted to make sure it was ready.  He had not seen Luc since the funeral, but he managed most things by himself.  Other crews were willing to help him when he needed it.  The whole time that he was working, he was becoming increasingly convinced that Clemence and her mother were gone for good.  He finally decided to go into town and try and find out what happened to them when he received a note from Clemence.  It was an invitation to Christmas dinner at the café.  Edmund smiled broadly as he stepped out into the cold, and tears stung his eyes as he walked back to the hangar.    

On the night of the dinner, two days before Christmas Day, Edmund hitched a ride into town on a supply truck.  He had gotten a bottle of what he was told was very good red wine, and a kind that was getting harder to get in France as the war dragged on.  He got off the truck at the side of the café, and walked up to the door and knocked.  Madam Morel answered.

            “Edmund, darling boy, come in! Come in!” She leaned forward and Edmund kissed her on the cheek.  He was still uncomfortable doing this.  The first couple of times he did it, he just touched his cheek to hers, but then the next few times he did, she kissed him, so he thought that was what he was supposed to do also. 

            “Merry Christmas,” he said to her.

            “Happy Christmas to you also,” she said, smiling at him.  “We have a big fire in the dining room, so why don’t you go on in there and sit?”

            “Yes, ma’am.  I brought this for you,” he said, holding out the wine, which he had wrapped in a white cloth and tied with a green ribbon.

            “Oh!  Thank you,” she said, unwrapping the bottle.  She looked at the label and said, “I haven’t seen a bottle this good since before the war.  Wherever did you get it?”

            Edmund just shrugged and smiled.  It turned out that Tino wasn’t the only black-market operator at Behonne.  One of the cooks at the canteen had gotten it for him, though it cost Edmund more than he really wanted to pay.  But, as he had little to spend his money on since he had gotten there, he had quite a bit saved up from his paychecks.

            “Well, come, come, let us go into the dining room.  I will open the bottle in there and let it breathe for a bit.”  With that, she turned and walked into the dining room.  Edmund shut the door and then followed her.  The aroma coming from the stove made him realize how hungry he was, and how easy it was to be at the café with its big warm kitchen, good food, and Clemence and her mother. He followed Madam Morel into the dining room, and Clemence was there, lighting a tall red candle in the center of an elaborately laid out dinner table that was near the fireplace.  A crackling fire warmed the room.  Candles were lit on several other tables also, and the old oil lamps that hung on the walls were lit as well.

            “Are you expecting more guests?” Edmund asked as he looked at the other tables.             Madam Morel looked at the other tables also and said, “Oh, no.  The electricity has been going on and off all day, and completely off about two hours ago, probably for good by the look of it.  But no matter!  We have plenty of wood for the fireplace and the oven, and plenty of oil in the lamps.  When Monsieur Morel first opened this café, we didn’t have any electricity, so we are quite prepared to be without it!”

            “Hello, Edmund,” Clemence said, smiling at him, but then quickly looking down.

            “Hello, Clemence,” he said, and he stepped over to where she was standing and kissed her cheek.  “You look beautiful,” he said quietly to her.

            “Thank you,” she almost whispered.  She picked up the box of matches from the table and put them on the mantle above the fire.

            Madam Morel set the bottle Edmund had brought down heavily on the table.  “Let me go and find the opener,” she said, and then hustled off into the kitchen.  Clemence stood looking into the fire, and Edmund stood looking at Clemence.

            “I came by a couple of weeks ago, but no one was here.  I was afraid something had happened.”

            Clemence looked up at him.  “Was that during the funeral?”

            “Yes,” Edmund said.

            “We went to visit my mother’s sister, outside of Paris for a couple of days.  We took the train.  We knew about the funeral, and we both decided that we didn’t want to be around all the sadness.  We probably should have stayed.  We could have used the money, but neither one of us wanted to face that.  I’m sorry that we worried you.”       

            “I’m just glad you are back.”

            She looked at Edmund and smiled.  “How was it?”

            “What?  The funeral?  It was sad, but very grand.  It was attended by many French and American military officials.  There must have been a thousand people there.”  This was probably an exaggeration, Edmund knew.  “And I wasn’t the only one disappointed not to find you here that day. There were several people trying to get into the café after it was over.”

            Clemence smiled slightly and shrugged and looked into the fire.  “Did you know him?”

            “Yes, but not very well.  He was one of the original American pilots who started the Escadrille.  You met him at Thanksgiving.”

            Clemence nodded.  “I was hoping that wasn’t him, but I thought the name sounded familiar,” she said.  “So much loss.”

            “Yes,” Edmund said.  He stood and looked at Clemence, fingering his hat in his hands.  

            “But look at me, how rude.  Can I take your coat?”

            “Oh, yes, thanks.  I suppose I could have hung it up myself,” he said, slipping off his overcoat.

            “Nonsense.  Let me have it,” she said.  “You are our guest.”  She took the coat from Edmund and then took his hat and hung them on an empty row of wooden pegs by the front door of the café. 

            “Here we are!” Madame Morel said, walking back into the room holding up a corkscrew.  “Took me a moment to find it.”

            Clemence looked at the bottle on the table.  “Oh, how thoughtful,” she said.

            “It was nothing really.”

            Clemence looked closer at the label, “And quite a nice bottle too.  I’m afraid it is nicer than anything we have here anymore.”

            “Well,” Madame Morel said, grunting a bit as she twisted the corkscrew down into the cork, “we can start with this, and then maybe the rest won’t taste so bad afterwards, eh?”

            “Yes, ma’am,” Edmund said.  “May I help you?” he asked, as she struggled to pull the cork free.

            “No no, I have it.”  And after a moment, with a loud popping sound, the cork was free.  Madame Morel held it up to her nose and inhaled deeply.  “Oooh, that is nice.” She held it out to Clemence, who also smelled it.

            “Lovely,” she said.  Madam Morel then held it out to Edmund, who obligingly sniffed it and nodded his head.

            “Would you mind, Monsieur?” Madame Morel held the cork still on the screw to Edmund.

            “Not at all,” he said, taking it from her and untwisting the cork.

            “Sometimes the years catch up to these old hands,” she said.

            “Here you are,” Edmund said, handing the cork and the corkscrew back to Madam Morel.

            “Thank you, dear,” she said, as she disappeared into the kitchen again.

            “Thank you for coming here.” Clemence said, looking at Edmund from the fireplace.  “Ever since the funeral, she has been so down.  Especially this time of year.  You have given her someone to fuss over.  Besides me, that is.”

            “It was quite a sacrifice, you know.  I mean, come on, I could have eaten unidentified meat broth with a bunch of unwashed gents at the canteen, and then spent a cold evening by myself in my tent.  I don’t normally like good food and good company in front of a warm fire.”  Edmund said, with a serious look on his face.

            Clemence smiled and said, “Well, remind me to repay you for your kindness, good and generous Monsieur.”

            “See that you do.”

            “See that she does what?” Madame Morel walked back into the room, carrying a silver tray laden with a large goose, roasted to a golden perfection.  The smell filled the room.

            “Nothing, Mother.  I was just teasing Monsieur Fitzhugh.”

            Madam Morel grunted as she leaned over to put the goose in the middle of the table.  As she did so, she looked up at Edmund and said, “See that she does what?”

            Edmund paused for a moment, and then said, “Why see that she gives me a long and passionate kiss for coming to dinner tonight.”

            There was silence for a moment as Madam Morel straightened up and looked at Edmund, and then over at Clemence.  Edmund could not read the expression on Clemence’s face.  “Oh, well, yes.  That.  See that you do dear.  But please warn me first so that I may turn my head,” Madam Morel said as she turned and walked back into the kitchen.

            Clemence took two steps toward Edmund and slapped him in the shoulder and looked at him with amazement.  “She would have thrown my husband out on his ear if he had said something like that, even when we were engaged!”

            “She must like me.” Edmund said, his eyebrows raised and slightly shaking his head.

            “Or she wants to marry me off.  I swear I always thought that she didn’t think my husband and I even so much as held hands, even after being married.  I mean, she had two children somehow, so she must know.  She would never talk about it though, I even had, you know, questions about,” she paused and looked up at Edmund, “well…”  She looked down at the floor.

            “You don’t really have to kiss me.”

            She looked up at Edmund and smiled and smacked him in the shoulder again.  “Stop it!”  She looked at the kitchen door.  “That is just the last thing in the world I would have expected my mother to say about something like that.”  She turned and looked at Edmund’s face, and he looked back.  The firelight caused deep shadows on one side of her face, and a warm golden glow on the other.  He looked directly into her eyes. Layers between them began to recede and the room around them seemed to fall away.  They were standing very close to each other.  She lowered her eyes slightly but was still looking at his face. “I should pour the wine.”

            “Yes,” he said quietly.  She leaned over, and picked up the bottle, stepping slightly toward Edmund, and her hip brushed up against him.  He did not move to separate himself from her.  She poured three glasses of wine, picked two up, and held one out to Edmund.  He took it from her.  “Merry Christmas.”

            “Merry Christmas,” she replied, looking once again into his eyes. 

            “Is it safe to come in yet?” Madam Morel said loudly from the kitchen door.  “Has she fulfilled her duty yet?”  Clemence took a step back and put the wine glass up to her mouth and drank deeply.

            “Yes, quite nicely, thank you!” Edmund said loudly back.

            “Edmund!” Clemence said, looking at Edmund with her mouth open.  “Mother, I did not!”  Madam Morel walked back into the room, not looking at either of them. 

            “Well, time for that later, I suppose.  But a young woman should see to her duties.”

            “Mother!”  Clemence said.  “I swear I don’t know who this woman is!”  She said to Edmund.

            “Well, I mean, this gentleman came all the way out here and brought us this very nice bottle of wine.  That is the least you can do for him.”  Madam Morel said, still not looking at either of them, but smiling and obviously enjoying making Clemence squirm.

            “Monsieur Fitzhugh, you will have to forgive my mother.  She has lost her mind.”

            “Nonsense, my dear,” Madam Morel said, suddenly patting Clemence warmly on the hand, “I just don’t want you to end up like me.” There was a sudden and uncomfortable pause.  “Shall we eat?”

            They all sat down around the table, and soon the wine began to take effect, and the conversation flowed easily, and away from death, and the past, and uncomfortable things.  For several stretches during the evening, he just sat back and watched as Clemence and her mother talked. 

            The evening went on pleasantly into the early night. All of the courses were served and eaten, and then Madam Morel brought two pies out for dessert along with another bottle of wine.  This bottle went more slowly than the first, and by the time they were finished, they had only drunk half of it.  Soon, Madam Morel rose and began gathering dishes, and Edmund stood up quickly to help.

            “Sit, sit!” Madam Morel said to Edmund.

            “No, I want to help,” he replied.

            “But you are our guest.”

            “I know, but you have been so kind to have me.”

            “Clemence,” Madam Morel appealed to her daughter.

            “Mother, let him help if he wants to.” Clemence said, as she stood and also began clearing the table.  Madam Morel let out an exaggerated sigh and carried her load of dishes into the kitchen.  Edmund carried a large armful of dishes over to the counter by the sink, as Madam Morel was putting on an apron. 

            “Edmund, could you be a dear and light a few more lamps in here.”  She nodded her head toward a shelf above the stove where a box of matches sat.  He picked up the box and lit several lamps that hung on the walls of the kitchen. 

            “Would you mind taking this outside and shaking it out?”  Clemence said, handing Edmund the tablecloth they had been using.

            “Not at all,” Edmund said.

            “And maybe get some more wood for the fire from the pile out back?” Clemence said, looking at the dying fire.  “It is getting a bit chilly in here.”

            Edmund nodded and carried the tablecloth out the back door and shook the crumbs off it, and then brought it back in and laid it on a table. He went back out to the woodpile that sat in a jumbled heap near the fence at the back of the yard.  It was considerably colder than when he had arrived, and the bright stars in the sky were now being assailed by clouds that looked to be laden with snow.  The nearly full moon still fought valiantly to shine through, and when it was uncovered, the yard was illuminated in a blue glow that made it almost as bright as day.  But as Edmund watched, the moon was overtaken by a large thick cloud, and the yard darkened.  The cloud was brilliantly lit around the edges, and Edmund stared up at it.  Despite the cold, he still felt warm.  He could hear Madam Morel washing the dishes in the sink, and she and Clemence talking, in French, he noted, and not in English like they did when he was around.  He felt at home. More so than he had ever felt in his life.

            After a moment, the door opened, and the yellow flickering light from the lamps spilled out into the yard, cutting through the blue moonlight.  He continued to look up at the sky.  The door shut, and he could hear Clemence walking toward him. 

            “It’s beautiful,” she said.

            “Yes.  Looks like it might snow.”

            “I was beginning to think you got lost out here, but now I see why you stayed,” she said.  “It is very cold though.”  Edmund looked down at her, and she had her arms crossed in front of her.  He wanted to put his arms around her and hold her tightly, but he continued to stand motionless.  Her face was turned up to the sky, and her hair was highlighted in silver. 

“You are staring at me,” she said without looking at him.  Edmund said nothing.  Finally, she looked down at him.  Her breath came out in white clouds which began to grow faster and more shallow as they stared at each other.  “I should go help mother.  I just came out to check on you.”

            Edmund nodded his head and dropped his eyes but then looked back at her.  She continued to stare at him.  He took a step toward her.  “Clemence, I…”
            “I need to go back in,” she said.  She reached up and put her hand on his arm.

            Edmund nodded.  “I will get the wood.”  He watched as Clemence turned and went inside the kitchen and shut the door.  He looked up at the sky again, and the moon was completely blocked by a very thick and pregnant cloud.  After a moment, he turned, and in the moonlight, gathered an armful of wood and returned to the warmth of the kitchen.  Clemence stood at the stove, stirring something in a pot, and Madam Morel was finishing the dishes in the sink. 

            “Oh, here,” Clemence said, “let me help you.”  Clemence walked into the dining room and motioned for Edmund to follow her. 

            “Just put it down here,” Clemence said, pointing to a metal rack beside the fireplace. She then took the top two pieces of wood from Edmund’s arms and put them on the rack.  As Edmund put the rest of the wood down, Clemence took an iron poker and began to move the hot embers in the fireplace and then blew on them to heat them up.  When they were glowing bright red she took two smaller pieces of wood and put them on the fire. 

            Edmund looked at the rack of wood.  “There really isn’t much there.  Should I get some more?”

            “I think this might be a cold night,” Clemence said, looking into the fire.

            “Okay,” Edmund said, and trudged back out through the kitchen into the yard.  The clouds had set in, and Edmund didn’t look up at the sky this time.  He gathered up as much wood as he could carry and stood, his arm straining under the load.  As he looked toward the window, he could see that snowflakes were falling, silhouetted against the lamplight.  He fumbled with the latch on the door, and the arm holding the wood began to tremble under the weight.  He finally managed to get the door opened and he grabbed the load with both arms again.  As gently as he could, he shut the door with his foot. 

            Madam Morel looked up from the stove.  “My goodness, that is a lot of wood!  Planning to stay for a while?”

            Edmund was suddenly embarrassed and just said.  “It is snowing.”

            “Yes, I thought it might.  I could feel it in my bones.”  She looked back down at the pot and said, “The mulled wine is almost ready.”

            Edmund carried the wood into the dining room.  He walked quickly over to the rack, which he suddenly realized was much too small to hold all the wood he had brought.  He knelt beside the rack, and his arms gave out, and he dropped the wood onto the floor with a loud thud and clatter.  “Sorry,” he said, and quickly began stacking as much of the wood as would fit onto the rack.  He piled it up high, but there was still more left over. 

            “Not at all, it will save me a trip later tonight,” Clemence said.  Edmund looked over at her, and she was smiling at him. “Can you hand me a couple of pieces?”  Edmund picked up two smaller logs from the wood still on the floor and handed them to Clemence.  She put them on the fire, which was growing much warmer and brighter.  Edmund stacked the rest of the wood that wouldn’t fit on the rack on the floor next to it, but there was a mess of bark and dirt left where he had dropped the pile.  Clemence got up and walked to the corner and came back with a broom and small dustpan, swept up the remains, and put it into the fire.

            “Sorry,” Edmund murmured again.

            Clemence smiled at him again and patted him quickly on the back as she put the broom back in its corner.  “Can you help me move some furniture around?” she asked.

            The two of them moved the table they had used for dinner and then put a small sofa in front of the fireplace, and then a stuffed armchair next to the sofa.  Clemence then placed small end tables on each side of the sofa. 

            “That should be cozy,” she said, and then walked around the room, blowing out the candles that had been lit for dinner.  Soon the room was illuminated only by the fire, and beyond the sofa, the room was quite dark.  Clemence disappeared back into the kitchen, and Edmund walked over to the picture window.  It was a lot colder away from the fireplace and near the window and the front door.  It was so dark inside that he could see clearly the street outside and the very heavy snowfall that was blanketing the ground.  It was going to be a cold walk home, he thought.

            Madam Morel came into the room, carrying a serving bowl filled with the mulled wine and spices that had been on the stove.  Clemence followed her in, carrying three silver cups and a silver ladle.  “We haven’t used these in a long time,” Madam Morel said.

            “Yes, it is nice to get them out again,” Clemence said.

            “Come and get it while it is hot!” Madam Morel said to Edmund.  As he walked over to where the bowl sat, the rich smell of the wine and the spices enveloped him.  Clemence pressed a warm silver cup into his hand and then ladled one for her mother, and then for herself.  Madam Morel stepped over in front of the fire and sat down in the chair, leaving the sofa for Edmund and Clemence.  Clemence sat down closest to her mother, and Edmund sat on the far end of the sofa.

            Madam Morel raised her glass, “Merry Christmas, may God keep us and protect us, and may there be peace soon.”  They all drank from the mulled wine.  The warmth and the spices made it seem very rich to Edmund.  His feet were very cold from standing near the door, and he stretched them out in front of him towards the fire. 

            “How does that taste?” Madam Morel asked.

            “Wonderful, Mother,” Clemence answered.  She stared into the fire.

            “It is delicious,” Edmund said, smiling at Madam Morel, who beamed back at him.  The three sat in silence and sipped their drinks.  After a few moments, Madam Morel made a large display of finishing her cup, and then stood up, struggling to get up out of the chair.  Edmund jumped to his feet.  

            “Well, I think it is time for these old bones to call it a day.  Edmund, be a dear and drop a few hot coals into that bucket for me?”  She pointed to a metal bucket, one of two, that sat next to the hearth.

            “Do you need help with your fire?”  Clemence asked.

            “No dear.  I have been lighting my own fires for many years now.”  She replied, and Edmund thought he heard a slight sigh under her breath.  He picked up the bucket, and with a pair of fire tongs, he selected several larger red-hot embers from the bed of the fireplace.  He put them in the bucket and handed it to Madam Morel.  She held it away from her body and leaned over Clemence, who half-rose and gave her a small kiss on the cheek.  She then walked to Edmund and leaned in, and he did the same as Clemence did.  “Good night, good night!” she called as she disappeared into the kitchen, and then Edmund heard her heavy footsteps on the stairs.

            “Would you like more?” Clemence held out her cup to Edmund.

            He looked down into his cup.  The wine had grown cold.  “Yes, please,” he said as he handed the cup to Clemence.  She refilled both of their cups and then they sat back down on the sofa.  Clemence drew her feet up underneath her, so she was sitting half turned toward Edmund.  She did not look at him but continued starting into the fire.  Edmund sipped his drink and also looked at the flames.  He liked the way they curled, and the patterns that they made, and the way the smoke rose off the tips of the fire.  After a few moments, he turned to look at Clemence.  She made no sign of noticing him.  Every so often, Edmund noticed that her expression would change slightly.  He stared at her openly, watching the light from the fire play off her hair, and watched the reflection of it in her eyes and her lips.  Finally, he said, “You are miles away from here, aren’t you.”

            Clemence took a deep breath and turned and looked at Edmund after reluctantly taking her eyes off the flames.  She stared at him for a moment and then smiled at him.  “I’m sorry.  I’m being rude.”

            “Not at all.” Edmund paused and Clemence looked back into the fire.  “Christmas is a time for remembrance.  And family.”

            “Yes, it is.”  Clemence said, and then suddenly smiled, still staring at the fire.  “My Father loved Christmas.  Our house always seemed filled with warmth and magic during this time of year.  He would read Dickens to us around the fire, and then on Christmas Eve, he would recite T’was the Night Before Christmas to us from memory.  My mother tried to keep it up for my brother and me after Father died, but I think it was hard for her.  And the last two years have been…empty.”  She turned and looked at Edmund. “Actually, your coming here tonight gave my mother a great gift.  She was happy and excited to have someone here with us.”  She looked down into her cup.

            “And what about you?” Edmund said.  “Are you happy that I am here?”

            Clemence looked up into his eyes and held his gaze for a moment and then looked down again and did not say anything.

            “Well, I am happy to be here.  I had a wonderful time.”  Edmund looked at Clemence, who did not look up.  He suddenly felt very awkward.  He took a long drink and finished what was left in his cup and then took a deep breath and sitting up straighter, he turned and looked out of the window.  The snow was several inches deep, and the wind was blowing wildly, obscuring the view so much that he could barely make out the lights from the other side of the street.  “Well, I should go before it gets any worse out there.”  He stood up and looked at Clemence.  She looked up at him, surprised, and she looked like she wanted to say something.  Edmund waited, but she said nothing.  “I had a lovely evening.” He reached down and took her hand and kissed the back of it and then walked over to where his coat and hat hung on pegs.  The wind howled loudly around the door.  As he was putting on his coat, Clemence suddenly got up and walked quickly to the door.

            “Edmund, you can’t go out there.  It is a long way back to Behonne.  You will freeze to death.”

            Edmund continued to button up his coat.  “No, I will be fine.  It isn’t that far.”

            Clemence took a further step towards the door.  “Edmund, please,” she said, her voice quivering a bit.  Edmund stopped buttoning his coat and looked at her.  She took two steps toward him.  “Please don’t go.”  She turned and looked out of the window.  “You will never make it home.”

            Edmund put his hat on.  “Well, I can’t stay here, I mean, it wouldn’t be…” he hesitated.

            “We have a spare room.  My brother’s.  Mother keeps it up for guests, though there are never any.”  She looked at Edmund.  He paused and looked out of the window.

            “Well, it is cold,” he said, looking out at the blowing snow.  “But how would your mother feel with a strange man…”

            “Mother wouldn’t want you out in this either.”

            He looked out of the window again into the blowing snow.  “Well, if you think it will be alright.”

            Clemence reached up and took Edmund’s hat off his head.  “I will just hang this back up,” she said, walking back over to the pegs on the wall.  Edmund watched her walk, turning where he stood, but not moving.  She hung his hat and walked back over to the fireplace.  Edmund slid his coat off and hung it back on the rack, and then followed Clemence, who was gathering up the cups and the bowl.  She carried them into the kitchen.  Edmund stopped and looked into the fire for a moment and then followed her.  She was standing at the sink, rinsing out the cups and bowl. 

            Edmund leaned against the doorway.  When she finished, she took one oil lamp down from a shelf over the stove and set it on the table.  “Would you mind helping me put out the rest of the lamps?”

            “Not at all,” he replied, and reached up and turned the knob of the closest lamp, and it flared up brilliantly. He quickly turned the knob in the other direction and the lamp went out.  Together, they moved around the room, turning out the oil lamps until the one on the table provided the only light.  Clemence then walked over to the side door that Edmund had entered that first day, and slid the large bolt, locking the door.  She did the same with the two bolts on the Dutch door leading to the yard.  She then picked up the lamp and walked past Edmund into the dining room.  He followed in time to see her locking the front door. 

            “Can you help me?  I am out of wood in my room.  When Father built this house, he put fireplaces in every bedroom.  Quite an extravagance, but it is wonderful on nights like this.  Your room has plenty of wood.  Mother always keeps it well stocked for all those imaginary guests.  But I have always suspected,” she paused and looked up at Edmund, “that it is partly in hoping that my brother will come home.”  She smiled, but Edmund could see the pain.  Clemence was still hoping for that also.

            Clemence took another metal bucket and the fireplace tongs and put a small pile of hot embers into the bucket.  Edmund gathered up an armful of wood as Clemence put a heavy folding screen in front of the fireplace.  Then she picked up the bucket and the oil lamp and said, “Ready?”

            Edmund stood with his load of wood, considerably smaller than the one that he had carried in from the yard, though when he lifted it, the same muscles ached.  He nodded his head slightly, “After you.”  They walked back into the kitchen, now lit only by Clemence’s lamp, and when they got to the stairs, Clemence held the lamp and the bucket handle in the same hand, and gathered up her skirts in her other hand and began walking up the steps.  Edmund tried not to make a lot of noise with his heavy boots on the wooden stairs, but it was hard because Clemence’s skirts blocked most of the light from the oil lamp, so he was climbing the stairs carrying the load of wood in the dark, and he had to feel for each step.  When she got to the top, Clemence let her dress fall back down, and she held the lamp out so Edmund could see better. 

            “You probably can’t see a thing, can you?” Clemence said in a loud whisper.

            “I’m fine,” Edmund said quietly, but he moved much easier with the light from the lamp.  They turned left at the top of the stairs, and then left again, and they were in a hallway that led toward the front of the house. 

Clemence began walking down the hall and then stopped at an open door.  She pointed to a door at the end of the hall. “That’s Mother’s room,” she said.  Edmund guessed that it must be over the dining room in the front of the building.  Clemence pointed to another door on the left side of the hall, “And that’s the lavatory.  Father had it put in when he changed the plumbing and put in electricity.  I was very young then.”  She took two steps into the room.  “And this is my room.”  As she said this, she looked down at the floor.  She set the bucket with the hot coals down on the hearth of a small fireplace, and put the lamp on the mantle.  “You can just put that wood in the rack there.”

Edmund saw a metal rack that was a smaller version of the one downstairs.  He put the wood into it piece-by-piece so that he would not make any noise.  “Don’t worry,” Clemence said, “Mother is a heavy sleeper.”  She moved over to a lamp that sat on a night table next to the bed and opened a box of matches and lit it.  “Would you mind starting the fire while I go and open up your room?”

“Not at all,” Edmund replied.

“There is some smaller wood there,” Clemence pointed to a ceramic vase that was filled with an assortment of thinner pieces of wood, “to help you get it started.”

“Thanks,” Edmund said.

“I will be right back.”  Clemence said, and then, picking up an ewer out of a porcelain washbasin that sat on a dressing table, she walked out of the room.  Edmund placed a few of the smaller sticks into the fireplace, leaving a hollow place where he placed some of the smoldering embers from the bucket.  He blew on this until the wood began smoking and then caught fire.  He could hear Clemence walking in the next room and then down the hall to the lavatory as he did this, and then as he was adding some of the larger pieces of wood, she came back into the room carrying the ewer that was now clearly full of water.  “I filled the one in your room also.”

“Thank you,” Edmund said.  Clemence walked over and sat down on her bed, but then quickly stood and walked over to a chair at her dressing table and moved it closer to the fire and sat down on it.  Edmund was kneeling on the hearth.  He blew on the embers again, and the small flames of the kindling wood rose a bit higher and began to lick the larger pieces of wood.  Edmund could hear the wind whistling across the top of the chimney.  Suddenly, a large plume of smoke wafted into the room, but just as quickly, most of it was pulled back out again by the draw of the chimney.

“The wind is fierce.  Your room has been closed up, and I am afraid it is rather cold in there.  We need to get your fire started.”  There was a pause, as Edmund looked into the fire.  Clemence added, “These fireplaces draw pretty well.”

“Yes, they do.  Your father did a nice job.”  Edmund turned and looked at Clemence.  Then he noticed a wedding photograph in a frame on the night table next to Clemence.  He couldn’t make out the faces in the dim light, but he assumed that it was Clemence’s wedding.  Clemence followed Edmund’s gaze and also looked at the photo.  Then Edmund looked up at the wall, and two oval photos were framed together with an ornate matting.  One was her mother, and the other, he assumed was her father.  Again, Clemence followed his eyes, but said nothing.  Below this double picture was a photograph of stern looking younger man in a uniform.  Clemence looked at that also, and then said, “That is my brother.  It was taken after he joined the army.”

“He looks like you.  Only meaner.”

Clemence laughed.  “He wasn’t mean.  Well, sometimes as a boy I suppose.”  Edmund watched her face as she looked at her brother’s photo, and then she laughed again to herself this time, and then her smile slowly faded and her gaze dropped.  After a moment, she quickly turned around and picked up a photograph in an oval frame and handed it to Edmund.  “This is my husband.”  The man in the photo was wearing the same uniform as her brother, but he was smiling.

“He looks kind.”

“He was kind.”  Edmund handed the photograph back to her, and she held it in both hands and looked down at it.  “It is funny, I was about to stand up and get this from the night table beside the bed, but then I remembered that I put it over here.  And then I also remembered that I turned it away so that I couldn’t see his face from the bed anymore.  I used to lie in bed and stare at his face, and I would ask him why he went away.  But he never answered.”  She was silent and still looking down at the photo.  She had said all of this in a matter-of-fact way.  “But it’s funny,” she said looking up at Edmund, “I don’t remember when I moved it.  Or why.  I just did.”  She looked down at the floor and said, “I am just being stupid.  None of this matters.”

“Yes.”  Edmund said.  “It does matter.”  He paused and then sat down on the low hearth so he was looking up at Clemence.  “I used to carry a photograph of Penny in my pocket all the time.  Along with some notes that she had written to me.  And then one day, and I think it was quite recently, I just forgot to put it in my pocket.  I remembered a couple of days later, and carried it around for the next week, but then I forgot again.  But I still know where it is, and that it is safe. 

Penny sat for a moment, still looking at the photo of her husband, and then slowly turned and placed it on the dressing table, facing the fireplace.  She then looked off to the side at the floor and reached up and rubbed her neck and sighed very heavily.  Then she looked at Edmund.  “We should get your fire started.”  She stood and held her hand out to him.  He reached up and took it and held it for a moment, not moving.  Then he stood, pulling hard enough on her hand to let her know he was there, but not enough to pull her over.  She held tightly to his hand, and with his other, he picked up the bucket with the remaining embers, and they walked into the hall, and then through a door near the stair landing that they had passed by when they first came up.  They walked over to the fireplace, and she squeezed his hand quickly and then let go. 

Edmund knelt and began building the fire.  Clemence walked over and sat down on the bed.  The fire began steadily, and Edmund tended it for a few moments, then he sat back and looked around the room.  The walls were bare, but he could see shadows on them where things used to hang.  A lit oil lamp and an ewer and wash basin sat on a dark wooden dresser, and a chair sat in the corner.  He looked at Clemence, who had been watching him.  When their eyes met, she dropped hers and stood up.  “I should get your bed ready,” she said as she leaned over and folded the bedspread and the blankets and sheets down and then fluffed up the pillow.  “There is an extra blanket in the bottom drawer if you need it,” she pointed at the dresser, “and you have extra firewood.  Oh, and I found this,” she held up a new-looking white nightshirt, “if you would like.”  She looked at Edmund for a moment and then quickly folded the shirt over and placed it on the bed.  She looked around the room again and then smoothed out her dress.  “I think that’s everything,” she said.  Edmund stood up.  “And please, if you need anything, just knock.”

“On your door, or your mother’s?”

Clemence smiled and said, “Well, that is up to you.”  She took two steps toward him and took both of his hands in both of hers and kissed him quickly on the cheek and stepped back.  He held on to her hands.  “Goodnight, Edmund.”

“Goodnight, Clemence.  And thank you.”

She smiled at him but looked away quickly and slipped her hands out of his and walked out of the room and shut the door without looking back.  Edmund stared at the door and listened as she walked to her room and shut her door.  He picked up the wooden chair from the corner and brought it closer to the fireplace.  He undressed, folding his clothes as neatly as he could, and hanging his shirt and pants over the back of the chair.  He stepped over and picked up the nightshirt.  The smooth wooden floor was cold under his bare feet, and his skin contracted into goose bumps from the frigid air.  He could hear the wind whistle outside of the windows.  He opened the bottom of the shirt and slipped it over his head.  It reached down below his knees and was made of a thick cotton flannel.  He walked over to a window that looked out of the back of the building and opened the curtains.  Cold air rushed off the glass. The room was dark enough that he could easily see the snow pelting down outside and whipping through the trees.  At times it looked like it was flying sideways.  He leaned closer and looked out onto the side street, but he could not see it at all.  Everything was covered in a blanket of white.

He stepped back and closed the curtains and walked back over to the fire.  He squatted down in front of it to warm himself.  Being careful not to get soot or ashes on the nightshirt, he put two more pieces of wood onto the fire, and then just stayed there feeling the warmth wash over him.  He heard what he thought was a chair being moved across the floor in Clemence’s room.  He listened for more but heard nothing else.  After a few moments when he felt warmer, he stood up and looked over at the bed.  It was on the colder side of the room, in the corner between windows on the back and side of the house.  He thought for a moment about moving it over closer to the fire, but then he thought about how much noise it would make. It would probably bring Clemence and Madam Morel running.  The fire quite warm now and should burn for some time, Edmund thought.  He walked over and blew out the oil lamp, and then slipped in between the icy cold sheets, and pulled the several layers of blankets up to his neck.  As he slid further down into the bed, his nightshirt slid up, and he wriggled around, trying to push it back down, just to get as many layers of cloth between his bare skin and the cold air as he could.  The foot of the bed was the closest thing to the fire, so he hoped that it would help keep his feet warm.

He lay there, listening to the wind whistling outside, and to the friendly crackling of the fire, and soon the fire and his own body heat began to win out, and the bed became quite warm and comfortable and soft, and he began to drift.  He thought he heard a quiet tapping noise above the wind and the fire, but he didn’t open his eyes.  Then, a quiet click of his doorknob snapped through his consciousness and he opened his eyes.  Clemence slipped through his door and closed it behind her and leaned against it. She was also wearing a night dress made of a material that was much thinner than his.  Her feet were bare on the floor.  She looked at him for a moment and then walked over and stood at the foot of his bed.  Edmund propped himself up on his elbow.  His heart began to beat fast.  She was silhouetted by the fire, and he could clearly see the outline of her body through the fabric. 

“Edmund, I am so cold,” she paused and looked down at the floor.  “And I am tired of being cold.”  Edmund didn’t say anything, but he pushed the blankets down and moved over toward the wall, making sure that his nightshirt didn’t rise up further.  Clemence walked over and slid down into the sheets facing Edmund.  Her body was cold, and soft, and as she moved further under the covers, her nightshirt slid up as Edmund’s had, and she intertwined her bare leg around his.  He lay down on his back as she leaned against him.  As she put her arms across his chest and put her head on his shoulder, he pulled the blankets up over her.  She began to warm quickly, and then he felt her body shudder slightly in a sob.

He held her tightly in his arms. He could feel the soft smoothness of her skin through the fabric of her nightshirt, and he moved his hand down her back and he could feel the hard ridges of her ribcage, and then the softness of her side and hip.  He put his other hand on her bare leg as it lay over his.  Her skin was smooth and he could feel her body tighten.  Her legs gripped him closer and she pushed her body against him.

He felt her face on the side of his neck, and then her lips on the side of his face.  He turned his head and kissed her.  She raised herself so that she was sitting straight up and the blankets fell away.  She looked down at him and ran both of her hands up his chest, and he put both of his on her thighs, and moved them up under her clothes until he was holding her bare hips in his hands.  He looked at her face but could not read her expression. 

She pulled her nightshirt over her head, and her bare skin, illuminated by the firelight, was taut with the cold.  She reached down and found the bottom edge of Edmund’s nightshirt and pulled it up.  He rose up onto his elbows and helped as she pulled the clothes up over his head and then dropped them onto the floor.  He lay back, fully exposed to her, and she to him. 

When he awoke the next morning, still lying in the same position in which he fell asleep, Clemence was gone, and a dazzling white light burst in through the windows around the curtains.  The fire was out, and Edmund could see his breath in white clouds.  He burrowed deeper into the blankets to try and recapture some of the now fleeting warmth and the lingering scent of Clemence.

Chapter 11

Edmund awoke on Thanksgiving morning, and for the first time in quite a while, he did not go over to the hangar to tinker around with the plane.  He went to the canteen and ate some bread and drank coffee and then returned to his tent and wrote a note to his Mother and Father.  He wished them both a happy Thanksgiving and told them a little about the ceremony for Knox and about the missions that the pilots had flown, and then promised to write later to tell them about his Thanksgiving dinner at the chateau.  He thought that his mother would enjoy reading about that.  As he wrote, he thought about what he would be doing if he were still back at home.  There would be Thanksgiving dinner with his family of course, and probably a round of parties to go to with his friends, and they would all be studying ferociously for final examinations.  All of that was gone now.  Maybe he would return to it someday, but he wasn’t sure.  After sitting for a few moments, he signed the letter and sealed it and then walked it over to the administrative offices to put in the mail. 

He returned to his tent and washed himself and then put on the tuxedo.  As he thought, the shoes fit, but they rubbed his heel.  It would be okay for one day though.  There was a late November chill in the air, but he decided not to wear his overcoat, which looked quite shabby over the pressed tuxedo.  He looked at himself in the small mirror that Tino kept hanging on a post and combed his hair.  He left the tent and walked over to the offices.  As he passed other crewmen, he felt awkward in the tuxedo.  They all looked at his attire oddly, since to them, this was just another workday.  They knew about the party and knew that there would be no mission that day, so there was not a lot of activity at the camp. Just as Knox had promised, a Renault BK sat in front of the office with a driver in the open front seat.  Edmund had never seen one of these before, but he recognized it from a book that his father had given him about international car manufacturing.  The car had a closed passenger compartment in the back.  Edmund approached the driver.

“Are you from the chateau?”

“Oui.” The driver looked Edmund over.  “Monsieur Fitzhugh?”

“Yes,” Edmund said.  The driver got out of the car and opened the back door for Edmund.  He stepped inside the rather small compartment and said, “We need to stop in Bar le Duc to pick up one more guest.  At the Café Morel.”

“Oui Monsieur,” the driver said with a slight nod and bow before he shut the door.  He started the engine and the car trundled off down the road to Bar le Duc and Clemence.

When they arrived at the door to the café, Edmund opened the door and hopped out, just as the driver was getting out to open the door for him.  “Oh, er, sorry,” Edmund said.  “I will just be a moment.”

“Oui, Monsieur.”

Edmund stepped through the front door of the café. There were three sets of diners in the dining room. All looked at Edmund his evening wear as he walked into the room.  He strode over to the door into the kitchen and leaned his head in.  “Clemence?”  She was not in the kitchen, but Madame Morel stood in front of the stove, stirring something that smelled very good in a large pot.   A younger teenage girl was loading a tray with plates of food.

“Oh, Monsieur Fitzhugh!  Don’t you look handsome!” Madame Morel said, turning for a moment from the cooktop.  “Welcome!  Clemence is not down yet.”  She nodded toward the girl. “You can see that I had to acquire some help, since you are taking her away during the dinner hour.”

“Oh, sorry about that.”  Edmund stepped into the kitchen, and then off to the side as the girl passed him, balancing the tray.

“It is no matter.  Not much of a crowd these days anyway, I’m afraid.”  Madame Morel took the large ladle out of the pot and tapped it on the rim to shake off any excess and then put it down on a plate.  The girl walked back into the room.  “Go and see what’s keeping her, please dear?” Madame Morel said to the girl in French.

The girl put the tray down and walked over to the stairs, curtseying slightly and smiling without breaking stride as she passed Edmund.  She ran quickly and loudly up the stairs, and Edmund heard her say “Clemence! He’s here! He’s here!”  Edmund smiled. 

Madame Morel rolled her eyes and sighed in an exaggerated way.  “She’s a sweet girl.   Reminds me a lot of Clemence at that age.  So happy.”  She shook her head.  “Clemence has been fretting about what to wear ever since your invitation arrived.  She hasn’t been able to get much in the way of new clothes since the war started.  She is afraid that she will look very old fashioned, but I think we found something nice.”

“I’m very sure of that.” Edmund said, smiling.  In a few moments, he heard two sets of steps beginning to descend slowly.  Edmund could see satin high-heeled shoes on the top step, and then they slowly descended in a slightly sideways gait down the steps.  Edmund could see Clemence’s ankles as she took each step down.  The opening at the bottom of the long skirt was rather narrow, and she held it up to allow her to negotiate the steps. As she came into full view slowly, Edmund watched as her figure was revealed in the form-fitting green satin dress.  The girl bounded down behind two steps at a time, stopping several times to let Clemence get far enough ahead so she wouldn’t run into her.  Clemence’s hair was tucked into a black brimless hat.  She smiled at Edmund as soon as she could see him but then looked quickly down again at her feet to make sure that she didn’t trip. 

“Silly thing is a bit hard to walk down steps in,” she said.  Edmund quickly went to the bottom of the stairs, and held out his hand to her, which she took as she descended the last three steps.  “There we go, no broken ankles or anything!  I’m sorry that I kept you waiting.”

“You look beautiful.” Edmund said.

“Thank you.  And you look quite handsome.”  Clemence said, looking up at him.  The girl on the steps behind them giggled.

“Well, we must be off,” Edmund said, turning to Madame Morel.

“Yes, yes!  You children go!” Madame Morel called from the stove.  “And have a good time!”

“I will have her back in time for supper.” Edmund said.

“No matter.  I have young Sophie here all day, so take your time.”

“My goodness, Mother, I think you are trying to get rid of me.” Clemence said, smiling.

Madame Morel turned back to the stove and waved her hand in the air as a response.  Edmund thought she might be crying.  Clemence walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek, and Madame Morel patted her on the arm, but wouldn’t turn her face back toward Edmund.  Clemence walked back to Edmund.  He held out his elbow, and she slipped her arm through it.  “Good-bye,” he called, and together, they stepped out of the kitchen.  All the faces in the dining room turned to look at them as the two of them walked past.  Clemence greeted all of them with smiles and nods.  An elderly couple sitting in the corner both stared at Edmund and Clemence, smiling.  The man said, “Look how beautiful you are.”

“Merci Monsieur Pierre.”

“And so happy,” the woman added, and she reached over and patted her husband’s hand and smiled at him.  Clemence smiled at her.  When they stepped through the front door, she leaned into Edmund and said, “I have known them since I was a child.”  As they approached the car, the driver, who had been leaning against front door smoking a cigarette, quickly stood and flicked the cigarette butt into the street. 

“Clemence!” he said, and then glancing quickly at Edmund, “I mean, Madam Dumond.”

“Hello, Roger,” she said, smiling.  “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Yes, ma’am.  I was at the front.  Got shot up.  Now I’m back.  Working up at the chateau for the pilots.”

“Well, I’m very glad you are back,” she said, smiling at him.

“Shall we be off?”  Roger said, holding the back door open.

“Yes, thanks,” Edmund said.  He held Clemence’s hand as she stepped into the car.  She had to pull her dress up to put her foot on the running board, and Edmund put his hand on the small of her back to help her up.  Once she was in, he climbed in and sat down next to her.  She was sitting somewhat toward the middle of the seat, so that when Edmund sat down, she leaned into him.  She did not move away.

“Do you know everyone here?”

“Practically,” she said.  “He was friends with my brother and my husband.  I’m glad he made it back.”

The motion of the car made Clemence lean even more into Edmund.  Again, she didn’t make any motion to move away.  It felt very comforting to Edmund to feel her so near.

“It is funny though, how things change,” she said.  “When I was first dating my husband, Mother would never have allowed us to go off alone like this.  We were always chaperoned.  Either my brother, or sometimes she herself, would tag along.  My brother would sometimes leave us alone together though.  But now, she practically shoves me out the door with you,” she said smiling at Edmund.  “I guess she is afraid I will wind up alone like she is.”

Edmund smiled and nodded at her in what he hoped was a sympathetic way.  “Well, I am very happy that you came with me today.”

“I am too.”

They rode on in silence for several moments, the ruts and unevenness in the road causing them to rub and bump against each other gently.   After a while, they were driving beside a stone wall which eventually opened into a gate.  A French military sentry stopped the car and nodded at the driver and then looked in the back seat at Edmund and Clemence.  He stepped back and saluted, and the car pulled through the gate.  

They proceeded up a driveway of pea gravel that led to a large looming house.  It was of a yellowish stone with a steeply sloping roof of bluish-grey slate, with five gables jutting upward along the roof line.  There was a central hall, with two taller additions on either side of the main center part of the house.

“Oh, I have been here before,” Clemence said.  “I was much younger, and my mother had made some deserts for a Christmas party, and I went with her to deliver them.  It is quite beautiful inside.”

“What happened to the family that owned it then?” Edmund asked.

“I think I heard that they fled south when the Germans came so close and have loaned the house to the Americans to use.”

The driveway opened into a circle with a center island that was richly planted with flowers beginning their late-Autumn decay.  Two stone vases on columns stood in the in the middle.  Several cars were parked around the circle, and Edmund could see couples entering the house.  The men were mostly wearing dress military uniforms, but there were a few in tuxedos, and all the women were in expensive-looking dresses.  They had to wait as a car in front of them discharged its passengers.  In a moment, they pulled up to the door, and a French military attaché approached the car and opened the door with a white gloved hand.  Edmund stepped out and then turned and took Clemence’s hand and helped her as she stepped gingerly down onto the running board, and then onto the ground.  They joined several other couples entering the front door to the chateau and into a central hallway and then followed the line to a room off the hall.  There was a butler at the door announcing the names of each couple as they entered the room.

When Edmund and Clemence came to the door, the butler turned and looked at Edmund.  “May I announce your names, sir?”

“Yes, please.  Edmund Fitzhugh and Clemence Dumond.”

“Very good sir.  And your rank?”

“Sorry?”

“Your military rank, sir.”

“Um, just Monsieur.  Oh, and it is Madame Dumond.”  Edmund looked back at Clemence, and she was looking at him, but he could not decipher the look on her face.

“Very good sir.”  The butler turned to a table behind him that was covered with small envelopes laid out in neat rows.  Each envelope had one or two names written on it in scrolling handwriting.  A woman sitting behind the table looked over the envelopes and picked one up and handed it to the butler. 

The butler handed the envelope to Edmund, and said, “May I take your coat Madame?”

“Yes, please,” Clemence said, and a maid appeared behind her and whisked her coat away. 

The butler then turned and announced loudly, “Monsieur Edmund Fitzhugh and Madame Clemence Dumond.”

Several people had turned around to hear the announcement, and then looked Edmund and Clemence over, but then just turned again to their conversations.  Edmund held out his elbow, and Clemence slipped her arm through his, and they walked into the large ballroom.  Several oversized round tables were set on the near side of the room with elaborate place settings with precisely placed silver and gold chargers and several long-stemmed glasses of different shapes surrounding each place setting.  Large fall flower arrangements of marigolds sat in the middle of each table.  White cards with large numbers on them were perched on tall stems rising out of the middle of the flowers.

“I guess we should find our table?”  Edmund said to Clemence.

“Yes,” she said. Edmund opened the small envelope and pulled out a card that said, You are seated at table 12.  The words had been printed, but the “12” was handwritten. Edmund looked up and saw a table in the right-hand corner by the front window with a large “12” printed on the card floating above the flowers.  They walked single file between the tables and the people standing behind their chairs.  Edmund unbent his elbow and slid his hand down Clemence’s arm and took her hand.  She clasped his tightly as they weaved their way to the corner of the room.  No one was around their table, so they circled around looking for their seats and found that they were not together.  The table was arranged alternating men and women, and Edmund’s seat was exactly in the corner of the room and was between two women that he didn’t know.  Clemence’s seat was three over to his right, and she was looking at the names on either side of her seat.  Edmund walked around to where she was standing.  To the left of her, the card read M. Dewey Short. 

“I don’t know any of these people,” Clemence said.

“I know him,” Edmund said, pointing at Dewey’s card.  “He is an ambulance driver from St. Louis, Missouri.”  Clemence didn’t say anything.  “He is a nice guy.”

Clemence nodded.  She walked over and looked at the cards on either side of Edmund’s seat.  Then she looked up at Edmund and smiled, and picked up the card to his right, between Edmund’s and Dewey’s seats, and put it where her’s was, and put her card beside Edmund.  She looked up around the room to see if anyone had noticed.  Then she looked back at Edmund and smiled again.

Edmund saw Sgt. Knox across the room standing among a group of pilots all in dress uniforms, along with two older gentlemen in tuxedos.  Women in elegant dresses were mixed in among them.  Edmund took Clemence’s arm and said, “There is someone I would like you to meet.”  They made their way through the tables and around the crowds to the group of pilots.  Clemence trailed behind him with her hand clasped in his.  Edmund walked up behind Knox, who was engaged closely in conversation with one of the older men.  Edmund waited for a moment for a lull in the conversation and then reached out and put his hand lightly on Knox’s shoulder.  Still talking, Knox slowly turned his head and smiled at Edmund as he finished what he was saying. 

“Fitzhugh!  Glad you could make it!”  The older gentleman also turned to look at Edmund.

“Thank you for inviting me,” Edmund said.  “I would like you to meet Clemence Dumond,” Edmund stepped to the side so Clemence could step forward.  She held her hand out and Knox bowed forward and kissed it.

“Delighted,” he said.  As he straightened up, he looked at Edmund and raised his eyebrows and smiled.  “And I would like you to meet Dr. Edward Gros.  Dr. Gros, Edmund Fitzhugh of Annapolis, Maryland, and Miss Clemence Dumond.”  Dr. Gros nodded at Edmund and likewise kissed Clemence’s hand.  Knox clapped Dr. Gros on the back and said, “We all work for him.”

“Oh, nonsense, my boy,” Dr. Gros said, but he was clearly pleased.  “All of this was Norman’s idea.” Dr. Gros pointed with his thumb to another pilot, Norman Prince, who was standing slightly behind him.

“Well, sir,” Knox said, “you know what they say, ideas without means are just so much empty air.  Edmund here is now my chief mechanic, and I must tell you, sir,” Knox put his hand firmly on Edmund’s shoulder, “that I may have two kills, but Edmund here already has one, and he never even left the ground.”

Gros looked directly at Edmund. “Really.”

“Yes, sir,” Knox continued. “A Boche sniper tried to take out my old chief mechanic, and Edmund here shot him!”

“Well,” Dr. Gros looked at Edmund as if reassessing him. “Hell of a way to get promoted!”  He looked back at Knox, “But I daresay, you had more than two kills in the Legion, did you not?”

“Well,” Knox said looking down, but smiling, “let’s just say that I gave more than I got.  I’m not sure I distinguished myself as much more than just a target.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.  We all know what you did. And I…”

Gros was interrupted by Sgt. Blaine Rockingham, who put his arm around Gros’s shoulder and stepped into the conversation.  “Excuse me, Knox, for not letting you dominate the man of the hour here,” Rockingham said, with a drawl.

“Not at all, Rock.  You know Fitzhugh here,” Knox said.  Rockwell nodded towards Edmund, but he was looking at Clemence.  “And Miss Dumond.”  Rockingham took her hand and kissed it and held it longer than was customary as he looked directly at her. 

“It’s Madame, actually,” Edmund said.

“Madame?” Gros said, raising and eyebrow slightly.  “Is your husband at the front?”  Rockingham still held her hand.

“He was. He was killed a year ago,” she said, looking at Gros and not at Rockingham.

“Well, Madame, I am very sorry for your loss. You have truly given much to this war.”

“Yes, indeed, would you like to talk about it?” said Rockingham, looking deeply into Clemence’s eyes.

Knox put his arm out in front of Rockingham and grabbed his shoulder.  “Come on, Rock.  Let’s aim you somewhere else.”  He pulled Rockingham away from Clemence.  “If you will excuse us,” he said, nodding back to Edmund and Clemence.

“Pleasure to meet you, Edmund. Madame Dumond.” Gros said, nodding slightly at them.

“And you as well,” Edmund said.  Clemence nodded, and they turned and walked toward a table that was set up as a bar. 

“That was interesting.  Are all Americans like that?”

“Well,” Edmund paused and scratched the back of his head, “not all of us.”

“I suppose it takes a pretty healthy ego to fly around in those machines.”

“Yes, and in his case,” Edmund nodded toward Rockingham, “ego and alcohol.”

“Well, yes, maybe a little of that too.” Clemence smiled at Edmund.

At the drink table, Edmund picked up two glasses of champagne and handed one to Clemence.  He raised his glass towards her.  “Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Yes,” she raised hers also, “Happy Thanksgiving to you, even though I don’t know what that means.”

Edmund smiled at her, and they both sipped their drinks and looked around the room at the men in shining uniforms, and the women in beautiful dresses.  Soon, Norman Prince announced that dinner was about to be served and asked that everyone make their way to their seats.  When they were back at their table, Dewey Short and his guest, a Mademoiselle Aldaine, whom, Edmund thought, looked curiously like Dewey, short and a bit squat, with a blunt featured face.  Reuben and his guest were not there yet.

A man in an ambulance driver’s uniform, but also in a clerical stole with a large cross on a chain around his neck, stood up in the front of the room.  He asked everyone to bow their heads in prayer, and he gave, Edmund thought, a rather long prayer ranging from the Pilgrims to the safety of the pilots and then winding up with a plea to God that the United States would enter the war soon.  When he finished, Reuben Wood arrived with his guest, an elderly widow named Madam Cousteau.  During the meal, Madam Cousteau told Edmund and Clemence how Reuben and Dewey had labored in vain to save the life of her son who was caught in a mustard gas attack without his gas mask.  Apparently, he lingered for a few days, coughing up bits of his life in her parlor.   The two ambulance drivers had taken to looking after her, and she to cooking for them when they were off duty. 

The dinner was a surprisingly traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, complete with a large Turkey for each table, but with a French server to carve.  There was also ham, mashed potatoes and yams, stuffing, and corn and green beans.  Edmund had heard that food was scarce for many in the surrounding countryside, and wondered how such a feast had been acquired, but it was enough to remind him of home and was comforting to him, nonetheless.  There was also an endless flow of red and white wine and champagne. 

Most of the talk in the room was about Wilson’s re-election and what this meant for the prospects of America entering the war.  There was also a woman elected to the Congress for the first time, which elicited quite a bit of caustic humor.

When they were mostly done eating, and wedges of apple and pumpkin pie were served and eaten, Edmund could feel a slight pressure against his knee from Clemence.  He looked over at her, and she was holding her stomach and had her head bowed slightly.  She puffed her cheeks out as she looked at him.  “Would you like to get some air?”

“Yes, please,” she said with mock relief.  Edmund stood and made excuses for them, and they walked towards the door.  “I think there is a rather nice garden behind the house, if I remember correctly.”

Edmund asked the butler how to get to the garden, and he pointed them to a door that led to a back passageway and out into a traditional French garden.  It was neatly trimmed and cleaned up for the fall and winter.  It was chilly, and Edmund offered his suit jacket to Clemence, which she took and wrapped around her shoulders.

“We should have gotten my,” she said.  “Aren’t you too cold?”

“No, I am fine.”  He really was cold, but he wouldn’t admit it.

“Well, thank you for your jacket. That is very gallant.”  They walked in silence for a few moments, admiring the statues and the neat arrangement of the garden, and listened to the crunch of the gravel under their footsteps.  “It seems so surreal to be here in this beautiful garden of this beautiful house, walking with you after such a feast, to know that men are suffering and dying just up the road a bit.  And to remember how much has changed, how much has been lost since the war started.  I have trouble remembering what it was like before.”

Edmund nodded but didn’t say anything.  But he knew also what that felt like.  The life he had in Annapolis now felt like an extension of his childhood, all ended by Penny’s death.   And now here he was, living almost what felt like a second life, unconnected with his first. 

As they walked, he began to wonder how long this new life would last.  It wouldn’t take much, he thought, for the Germans to push their way through the front and drive south and overrun Bar le Duc and Behonne, which, he assumed with the successes of the Escadrille lately, was probably moving up on the target list.  This life began for him because of death.  Something that had only been abstract to him as a child now seemed to be around every corner, and behind every face he met.  Clemence was haunted by it, and the pilots faced it as a real possibility nearly every day.  He felt that he had only narrowly escaped it himself.  Maybe there wasn’t anything to look forward to.  Maybe it was just this garden, and Clemence, and that would amount to his life.

Edmund shuddered and reached out and squeezed Clemence’s hand tightly.  She slowly turned towards him and raised her head and looked into his eyes.  She was crying.  He put his arm around her and held her tight against him, and she seemed to melt into his body.  He wanted to hold her forever and not let her go.  She was all he had.  He felt her shoulders shake as she began to cry harder against his chest.  He held her until her body was still. 

She put one hand up against his chest and gently pushed and he loosened his hold on her.  She kept her head down, and he could hear her sniffling, and she was sorting through her handbag, eventually pulling out a handkerchief which she put up to her nose.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “This was such a beautiful day, and a beautiful place.  But sometimes, I just get overwhelmed.  And you were so nice to bring me here for such a lovely time, and I have just ruined it.”

“No, not at all.  You made it wonderful,” he said and smiled at her.

She looked up at him, the handkerchief still over her nose.  She took it down and refolded it and wiped her eyes.  “I must look a sight.”

“No, you just look sad.”

She shrugged slightly.  “Not all the time.  At least not anymore.  Just sometimes…”

“I know.”

“Would you mind if we didn’t go back in?”

“No, I don’t really feel like it myself.  We can get your coat and call the car.  I will go give our regrets.”

“Thank you.  And thanks for bringing me today.”

They walked back into the house and retrieved her coat.  While the car was being brought around for them, Edmund stepped back into the dining hall and over to their table.  He said that Clemence wasn’t feeling well and that he needed to get her home.  Dewey stood and hugged Edmund in the deep brotherhood brought on by too much alcohol. 

Edmund and Clemence sat in silence on the way back to town.  She sat closer to him than she did on the way there.

Chapter 10

            The moon was bright.  As he walked, he began to cry.  Lightly at first, but then the tears were making it hard for him to see the road.  He stepped off the road and sat down on a small embankment.  He was alone, and put his head down on his arm, and sobbed uncontrollably for several minutes.  With his nose buried in the sleeve of his coat, he could smell the roses from the satchel that had been against the fabric.  He stood and wiped his eyes one final time and then set out for Behonne again.

Edmund awoke the next morning, stopped to eat breakfast quickly at the canteen, and then headed over to check over Knox’s Nieuport.  He was drinking coffee from a tin mug and eating a piece of bread as he walked into the darkened hangar.  As he got closer to the plane, he saw that the engine cowling was open, and an oilcloth was spread out over the bottom of the fuselage.  Oil was dripping down on to the ground.  Edmund broke into a quick run, and as he came closer, a man wearing greasy coveralls was walking from the tool chest back up to the engine. 

            “Stop!” Edmund yelled.  “Who the hell are you?”

            The man looked up at Edmund.  He had a cloth tied around his head, and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  He looked to be about Edmund’s age.  He stared blankly at Edmund, and he was holding an oil can with a long nozzle on the end of it.  Edmund thought he recognized him from one of the other mechanic crews.  Edmund took a step closer to the open engine compartment and looked inside and then looked back at the man.  Edmund stared at him for a moment, and the man just stared back at him.  “What are you doing?”

            The man took a long draw on his cigarette and then blew the smoke off to the side. As he did this, he reached inside his coveralls and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.  He handed it to Edmund.  There were grease smudges on it from the man’s fingers.  Edmund opened the paper, and it was a short note in French.  It was from Commander Thénault, to a man named Luc.  Edmund looked up at the man. Luc, he supposed.  Luc stared back at him, the cigarette hanging loosely from his lips.  Edmund’s skill at reading French was lagging somewhat, but he thought he got the gist of it.  He saw Captain Knox’s name, and Tino’s and his own, and gathered that Luc had been assigned as Edmund’s assistant until Tino returned.  Edmund handed the note back to Luc, who put it back in his pocket.  “Fine.” Edmund held out his hand “Edmund Fitzhugh.”

            Luc looked at Edmund’s hand for a moment and then shook it. “Luc.”  Edmund pulled his hand away and realized his palm was blackened with grease.  He closed his hand and looked up at Luc who was still staring back at him, cigarette still dangling.  He looked back at the airplane.  “So what have you been doing?”

            “Je ne parle pas Anglais.”

            “No English.”  Edmund thought for a moment about how to ask the question in French, but he decided just to ask again in English with hand gestures.  He didn’t feel like cooperating.  He pointed to the oil can and then to the engine, and shouted, “What are you doing?”

            “Roulements à billes.” Luc said, holding up the oil can.

            “Ball bearings.  Fine.”  Edmund had just oiled the bearings two days ago, but he didn’t really care what Luc did as long as he didn’t hurt anything.  He made a mental note to himself to check them later. Edmund walked over to the open trunk and took out the gun cleaning kit.  He had also already cleaned the Lewis gun, but he wanted to do something he felt comfortable and adept at in front of Luc.  He climbed up into the cockpit and slid the gun down its mount and then took it off and then climbed down.  He tripped slightly on the lip of the cockpit and banged the gun against the frame.  He didn’t look at Luc, but instead he just continued to climb down, spread out a tarp, and then proceeded to clean the gun.

            There wasn’t really any work to be done on the Nieuport.  The whole squad had been grounded for several days, so Edmund had already done everything as Tino had shown him.  There was a notice posted at the canteen during breakfast announcing a mission the next day, leaving at first light.  There would be pre-flight checks in the morning, but he didn’t want to leave Luc alone with the plane until he knew him more.  And it didn’t look like that was going to happen easily.  He kept a close eye on Luc as he worked, and Edmund thought he seemed proficient at what he was doing, but he still planned to re-check his work. 

            The hangar became extremely busy as the day wore on.  Most of the pilots would be going on this mission.  There were no details about what the mission was supposed to accomplish on the notice Edmund had read.  He assumed they didn’t put that kind of thing in print just in case it fell into German hands.  There was a general assumption among those in the camp that the Germans knew a lot about what they were doing there.  That was one thing that the French complained about:  they saw the American pilots as a sieve of information. 

            Edmund and Luc tinkered around the plane for the better part of the day, never saying more than just a couple of words to each other.  They communicated mostly in gestures, with Luc’s pale eyes giving away nothing.  When dinner time came, Luc finished the job on which he had been working, and then just walked away, saying nothing to Edmund.  Edmund straightened up the area around the plane, and put all the tools away, including the ones that Luc had left out, and then went to eat himself.  The two American ambulance drivers, Dewey Short and Reuben Wood, were in the canteen, and Edmund sat with them and exchanged the latest news they had heard from America.  It was mostly Dewey and Reuben talking because, outside of the letter from his mother, Edmund had heard very little.  They said that they would be on hand for the return of the pilots the next day.  They also told him that they had heard that Tino was recovering well at the hospital at Lyon. 

            After dinner, Edmund returned to the hangar and rechecked everything that Luc had touched, and was a bit disappointed to see that he had actually done a very neat and thorough job.  Edmund re-covered the plane to keep the pigeons from decorating it and then went back to his tent.  It was starting to get dark, so he lit the oil lamp, and then pulled out the letter he had started to his mother.  He read it over to where it ended abruptly.  He thought about adding something else, but instead just wrote, “Love, Edmund,” and then folded it over.  He would mail it in the morning.

            He awoke well before dawn and lay in bed for a while.  The camp was silent.  When he first started hearing noises outside, he got up and dressed and then washed himself with the icy water from the pump behind his tent. He went to the canteen and ate a quick breakfast, gulping two cups of very hot, black coffee, and then headed to the hanger.  There were a few other members of flight crews around, but he was among the first there.  He uncovered Knox’s Nieuport and began doing the pre-flight checks as Tino had taught him.  Luc was not there.  He really could have used some help, but he managed to complete everything himself.  Hell, he thought, it might be harder if Luc was around.  He didn’t quite like the position of the rudder, so he adjusted the tension on the pedal wires until it was more to his liking.  He checked that the Lewis had a full clip of ammunition, and he put two extra clips down in the seat.  He filled the extra canteen that Tino kept in the locker with water and placed it down beside the seat. 

            When it was time to move the plane out of the hangar, Luc was still nowhere to be found, so he asked for help from Sgt. Masson’s crew, who had just moved their plane out of the hangar.  Together, these men and Edmund pushed the plane out into line.  Two crewmen pushed a manual fuel pump along the airplanes, and each took turns topping off the gas tanks.  Edmund filled Knox’s Neiuport and then bled the tank to make sure there was no water in it. 

            Edmund began to get nervous.  Knox’s life depended on the work he had done.  He was confident that he had done everything as Tino had shown him to do, but he suddenly began to wonder if there was something that Tino had not demonstrated yet, something not needed before now.  In a nervous sweat, he looked around and spied an older mechanic that he knew Tino was friends with and asked him to come and give the plane a once over.  The man knew about Tino’s wounding and agreed.  He looked at the engine connections and all the control systems, and finally the Lewis.  He hopped down out of the cockpit and nodded at Edmund and then went back over to his own plane and crew. Edmund felt relieved, but there was still no sign of Luc.

            Finally, Edmund heard the approach of the pilots in their caravan of cars.  Food arrived on carts, and suddenly the whole airstrip, which until then had been filled with silent nervous tension, was alive with laughter and shouting and motion, but all of it still fueled by nerves and fear.  Knox strolled up to Edmund, with a teacup in his hand.  He ran his hand along the body of the airplane as he approached.

            “Well, Fitzhugh, she looks great!”

            “Yes, sir.  She is all ready for you.”

            “Good, good.  And how is the other man that I sent to help you?”  Edmund opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t get a chance.  Luc appeared from under the nose of the Nieuport, seeming to have been there the whole time.  “Ah, Luc!  Thanks for helping out.”  Luc quickly took the cigarette out of his lips and nodded and grinned at Knox.  He put the cigarette back and looked at Edmund.  Edmund could not read him.  Knox turned back to Edmund as well.

            “She is fueled up and I have already bled the tank.”

            “Good, good.”

            “You have a full magazine mounted on the Lewis, and two extra 47’s beside the seat.  Oh, and extra water too.”

            Knox smiled at Edmund.  “You are just like Tino, always taking care of everything!”

            “Thank you, sir.”  Edmund didn’t think he was very much like Tino.

            “Speaking of our Italian friend, how is he doing?”

            “I heard that he is recovering nicely.”

            “And he is at,” Knox hesitated, but Edmund thought it was just for effect.  “Lyon, is it?”

            “Yes, sir.”  He hoped Knox wouldn’t ask any more about Tino, because that was all that Edmund knew. He felt ashamed that he didn’t know more about his friend’s condition.

            “I tell you what,” Knox said as he was buckling the chin strap of his helmet, “I have some business over that way in the second week of December, how about you and I hop a train over to see him, that is, of course if we can find any running that direction.  If not, we can probably get a car.”

            “That would be great, sir.” 

            Knox climbed up onto the wing, and leaned into the cockpit.  He put some papers and a small flask down beside the seat.  He stood up and looked at Edmund again. “Oh, that also reminds me, a few of us at the chateau are planning a Thanksgiving dinner for the Americans in the area.  There is no Thanksgiving in France, you know.”  Knox looked up for a moment and then laughed, “Though there might be soon if enough of us come over here to help out.  Anyway, you are invited.  Along with a guest of course.”  At that moment, Thénault walked by, calling all of the pilots and crew together for a pre-flight speech.  Knox nodded his direction, “We will also be inviting some of our more distinguished French compatriots as well.”

            “I’m honored. Thank you.”

            “Great.  I will make sure that you get an invitation.  I assume you didn’t bring your formal attire with you?” Knox looked at Edmund, who shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.  “No matter, we can set you up with something suitable.  I need to invite those two ambulance drivers also.”  Knox stepped down off the plane and gathered with the rest of the pilots around Thénault.  As usual, a second ring of crewmen formed around the pilots and listened to the pep talk. 

The mission was designed to weaken a particularly strong and troublesome artillery emplacement north and east of Verdun that the French had little success at dislodging using ground forces and artillery. They were long range guns that were behind the German trenches that were being supplied by a hastily constructed rail line.  Their mission was to take out the guns and the rail supply line.  They expected it to be heavily defended from the air, so Knox and the other pilots in fighters were to give the bombers cover so they could destroy the guns.  After Thénault finished and led the pilots in a couple of cheers, the men walked back to their airplanes.  Edmund walked back slightly behind Knox, who was talking with another pilot, Sgt. Chapman. 

            When he reached his Nieuport, Luc was already standing with a hand on the propeller.  Edmund’s face grew red.  Tino had been the one to help start the engine, and Edmund thought this was a more prestigious job than pulling the chocks from the wheels.  Knox hopped up into the cockpit and buckled himself in.  The elevators and the ailerons move up and down and back and forth as Knox tested the controls.  Other engines began roaring to life around them.  Knox shouted, “Contact!” and Luc shoved down hard on the propeller, and with no hesitation, the powerful engine joined the chorus of the other planes.  Knox looked over at Edmund through his goggles and gave him a thumbs-up sign.  Edmund waved back at him and then ducked under the plane.  As soon as Knox eased the throttle off and the propeller slowed down, Edmund ducked under the plane and removed the chocks. 

Soon the planes were taxiing down the airstrip and with a roar began taking off in groups of two’s and three’s.  Knox launched in a v-formation beside another Nieuport following behind a bomber.  Edmund stood still and followed the planes with his eyes.  Several of the men were standing and watching the same was he was, with similar looks of awe and admiration on their faces.   Tino used to watch the launches in the same way, even with as hardened and as callous as he seemed about most things.  Luc was nowhere to be seen. 

            Edmund grazed on some of the food brought out for the pilots, who, as usual, didn’t eat very much.  He stood and ate with some of the other flight crews he had come to know, but he just joined in awkwardly, never really entering into conversation much.  Soon he went into the hangar and neatened up his work area to get it ready to receive the plane once again.  He then walked over to the office and put the letter to his mother, which he had put into his pocket that morning, into the outgoing mail tray.

            When he walked back over to the airfield, Luc was still not around, but Dewey Short and Reuben Wood were there eating what was left of the food, sitting on the tailgate of their ambulance.  Edmund noticed as he walked up to them that the vehicle was quite a bit more beaten up than the last time he had seen it.  It even had what looked like bullet holes in the side of it, but the two medics seemed to be okay, and in their usual spirits.  They were laughing at a joke one of them had just told.  Dewey spit part of his biscuit out onto the ground in a burst. 

            “Morning fellas.  What’s so funny?”

            “Fitzhugh!  How are you doing?” Reuben asked.

            “Oh, I’m fine.”

            “Getting along okay without your mentor?” asked Dewey, still chewing what he still had left in his mouth.

            “Sure, I guess.  A plane’s just a car with wings.”  Edmund said and smiled.  Dewey laughed again, coughing out the remainder of the food in his mouth.

            “I suppose it is at that,” Reuben said.  “But if a car stalls, you can just pull it over to the side of the road.”

            “Well, that is one difference, I suppose.”  

            “Those flyboys sure are brave, I will give them that.” Dewey said, looking off into the sky.

            “Or just crazy,” Reuben added.

            Edmund wanted to change the subject.  “Well, it doesn’t look like you boys,” he walked over to the side of the ambulance and ran his hand along some of the damaged areas and holes in the body, “have fared much better on the ground.”

            Reuben looked around to where Edmund was standing.  “Oh, that? Well, yes, that was pretty hairy.”

            “Yes, it was,” Dewey said.  “Pretty much the worst scrape we ever got into.”

            “Well, except maybe for that time back home when you got shot at by that girl’s daddy,” Reuben said.

            “Oh, it wasn’t even close!  He didn’t even hit the car,” Dewey said, laughing slightly.

            Edmund laughed and turned back to the ambulance.  “Are those bullet holes?”  As he looked at them closer, they seemed a bit jagged and irregular.

            “No, shrapnel, I think,” Reuben said. 

            “We got caught in an artillery barrage,” Dewey added.  “Early in the morning after a rather nasty fight just north and west of Verdun, everything was quiet, but there were a couple of fellas still alive lying out forward of the trench line that we were trying to bring back.”

            “Yeah, we thought everything had quieted down, so we drove out, making sure to show the red cross to the bad guys,” Reuben pointed to the large symbol painted on the side of the vehicle, “and parked and took the stretcher out to one of the French boys who was laying just moaning out on the side of a crater.  He was shot through the knee, it was pretty much gone, and he had lost a lot of blood, but the poor bastard was still alive, so we tied the wound off quickly and loaded him up onto the stretcher when Dewey here sees flashes and smoke coming from the Huns.”

            “Yeah, the bastards started shooting at us.”

            “Well, they weren’t shooting at us,” Reuben said.

            “But they hit us,” Dewey said, mocking Reuben.  “Anyway, a shell comes screaming in and lands behind us.   Just blew the shit out of everything.  I got zinged in the shoulder,” he grabbed his right shoulder with his left hand and grunted as he flexed it, “and Reuben goes flying the other direction, stretcher gets shredded, and that poor bastard we were carrying has a six-inch piece of shell sticking out of the side of his head.  Damn near cut it in two, right through his skull.”

            “We had parked the ambulance up on the forward edge of a shell crater so the fucking Huns could see the cross, so we clambered down behind the ambulance and laid down on the side of the crater.  A few more landed in front of us, but not close enough to hit the ambulance with anything but flying metal.”

            “Well, it sure shook a few times, and I thought it was going to come down on top of us once.”  Dewey added.

            “Yeah, I was just hoping it didn’t take a direct hit to the gas tank.  We wouldn’t be here talking to you right now if it had.”

            “Probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to stay right behind it, but at the time, I remember just trying not to shit in my drawers.”  Dewey said, but he didn’t laugh.  “One shell landed just beyond us, but we were protected by the crater, but it was so loud that I couldn’t hear for three days afterwards.”

            “So anyway, they adjusted their fire, trying to hit further back into the trenches, or into the artillery that was behind it, but I don’t think they had the range.  When we finally got back over the lines, we never saw any damage.  The Huns did attack later that morning.  Came right across the field where we were laying, but they didn’t really get anywhere with it,” Reuben said.

            “We jumped back into the ambulance, praying like hell that it would start.  It did, and we quickly took a look for the other guy we had started off to get, but there was just a big hole where he had been laying.  We guessed he had been turned to mud under a direct hit.”

            “So we just hightailed it out of there.  I sewed Dewey’s shoulder up later.”  He patted the ambulance with what looked to Edmund like affection, “She sure took a beating though, and probably stopped a couple of pieces of metal that might have hit us.”

            “I think I’m still a little deaf in my right ear.” Dewey said, snapping his fingers near the side of his head.

            Edmund looked back at the ambulance.  “Is it running okay?  Did it get damaged at all?  I mean besides the holes in the body.”

            “I think so,” Reuben said.  “We looked it over and didn’t see anything.  It does sound a little funny though.”

            “I would be happy to take a look for you,” Edmund said.

            “We sure would appreciate that,” Dewey said, still snapping in his ear.

            “Yeah, if this thing goes, we will be out of luck.  Not sure when we could get a new one.  It would be quite a shame.  Sure has gotten us through a lot over here.” Reuben again patted the ambulance affectionately.  The men tinkered over the ambulance for a while, looking under the hood, and finally Edmund spotted a small hole in the exhaust near the manifold.  Nothing serious.  He was about to get materials to patch the hole when they heard a shout from the spotter with binoculars, and they heard the first faint noise of the airplanes returning.

            This time, all of the pilots returned, all unhurt.  The only damage that Knox’s Nieuport had sustained, as far as Edmund could see initially anyway, was two bullet holes in the upper starboard wing.  Easy to patch, he thought, as long as they hadn’t hit the airframe.  Knox was ecstatic when he landed, claiming two kills.  It seemed that the squadron’s mission was a wild success.  They destroyed four long-range artillery pieces and the rail head that was supplying them.  In total, they shot down five enemy airplanes that had been sent out to intercept them.  Great cheers erupted as Thénault recounted the successes of the mission to the entire assembly, and he singled out Knox with a champagne toast for his skill, daring, and bravery in the face of enemy fire. 

Soon, the pilots were standing and recounting their exploits to each other, and the crews had drifted back over to the planes.  Edmund wanted to look at the bullet holes and to see if any other damage had been done.  Luc was standing off to the side of the plane, smoking and talking quietly to some of his friends.  He didn’t acknowledge Edmund as he walked toward the plane.

Edmund climbed up onto the lower wing and found the bullet holes in the upper.  One of them slightly nicked a rib of the wing, but nothing more than a mark on the surface really.  It would just take some surface patching and paint, he thought.

“That one came pretty close!” Knox said.  He was standing near the cockpit watching Edmund.  Edmund had not heard him approach.

“Yes, I’d say so,” was all Edmund could think to say. As he turned to look at Knox, he could see the Luc had partially turned and was watching Knox also. 

“Listen, Fitzhugh, part of the congratulations for what happened up there belongs to you.”  He ran his hand along the side of the fuselage and gazed at it for a moment.  “She flew like a dream. Every cylinder fired when I gunned it, and it seemed to respond to my thoughts, turning at pinpoint when I needed it to.  And I needed it to a couple of times,” he said grinning.  “I felt just like a bird up there,” he said, looking at the plane once more.  “She really is beautiful, isn’t she.”

“Yes, sir.  She is.”

“The Lewis is going to need some attention though.  I burned through two magazines and was well into the third by the time we were finished.  I probably only have two or three shots left.  I don’t know that I would be here talking to you if the Boches had sent any more after us.  I probably should take another magazine or two with me next time.”

“No problem,” Edmund replied, making a note to get a couple of extra magazines before they went up again.  He jumped down from the wing and Knox stepped closer to him. 

“And don’t forget about Thanksgiving.  And you need some clothes, right?”  He walked up and, facing Edmund grabbed his shoulders with his hands, and then looked him up and down.  “Mm hmm.  I think I know just the thing.”  Edmund felt a little like a child, but it was only a mild embarrassment.  He thought that Knox genuinely meant well.  But he did wonder if what he was going to get for him would fit.  Knox was considerably taller than Edmund and had much broader shoulders.  Knox looked down at Edmund’s muddy shoes.  “What size shoe do you wear?” he asked.

“Um, nine, I think.” Edmund was suddenly unsure.  He had never really thought about it that much before.  When he was at home, he would just go to the shoe store and have his foot measured.

“Great.  I will send something over to you next week.  Remember, Thanksgiving in two weeks, and bring a date!”  He let go of Edmund’s shoulders and patted him hard on the back and took a couple of steps toward the cars.  Then he stopped and turned again and looked at Edmund in the eyes.  Edmund had started to walk back toward the tail of the plane but stopped when Knox did.  “Again,” Knox said, his voice had changed and softened a bit, the bravado gone, “thank you for taking care of her.  She saved my life up there.”

Edmund felt the back of his throat swell a bit, and he couldn’t think of a reply.  He just nodded, and after a second said, “I will get her ready for next time.”

“Good man,” Knox said, and patted him on the arm again, and then turned to go. As he approached the cars that were waiting to take the pilots back to the chateau, Edmund could hear the other pilots cheering Knox as he came near, and he was greeted with handshakes and backslaps all around.

“Luc!” Edmund said loudly, “let’s get this bird back inside.”

Luc looked at him for a moment, and Edmund knew he had watched the whole exchange between Knox and himself.  He took the cigarette he was smoking out of his mouth and flicked it onto the ground and walked back to the tail and bent to lift it off the ground.

Edmund put his hand on the tailfin and said, “No, you grab the struts.”  Luc looked at him in the eyes for a moment not moving.  Edmund stared back at him and didn’t flinch.  Luc dropped his gaze and walked up to the port wing strut and began pushing the plane, as Edmund lifted the tail and steered it toward the hangar.  This was normally a job for more than two, but Edmund didn’t want any help, and together they eased the plane back into the hangar.

Edmund spent the next few days checking over the Nieuport.  There really was little damage to it other than the two bullet holes, which had only torn through the fabric.  Edmund sewed patches on them using the tight stitches that Tino had shown him and then painted over the new fabric to match the rest of the plane.  Luc didn’t show up for two days following the mission.  Edmund had to ask for help from another crewman who he had been friendly with to help him check the alignment of the rudder and the tension on the elevator wires.  Knox really had put the plane through its paces, Edmund thought.  He had to readjust the tension on all the control wires, as they had been stretched slightly under the strain of all of the maneuvers Knox had done. 

The Lewis gun also showed signs of heavy usage.  Edmund dismantled and cleaned it.  Knox had gone through almost three clips of ammunition.  Edmund replaced the used ones with fresh ones from the armory and then went back for three more to stash next to the pilot’s seat for the next mission.  He gave the engine a tune-up and it was humming like a top when he tested it out. 

He was proud of the condition of the Nieuport, and confident that he had done everything right.  He had wiped down the entire fuselage and cleaned the oil stains and soot underneath the engine and near the exhaust until the plane fairly shone.  After two days working more that fourteen hours straight on the plane, Edmund returned to his tent and collapsed in his clothes.

The next morning, he was up early and had a quick breakfast and headed back over to finish putting away all the tools and to generally clean up the work area.  He entered the hangar and passed the first few planes in the row, the Nieuport came into view.  Luc was sitting on a stool at the side of the plane.  Edmund could see a large outline of the Escadrille’s Lakota Indian head mascot sketched lightly on the side of the fuselage behind the cockpit.  On the tailfin, there was a large and stylized “SK” painted in black. A lot of the pilots had their initials on the tailfin or on the side of the fuselage.

Edmund walked past Luc over to the tool cabinet.  Luc did not look over at him.  After rummaging around for a few moments, and gaining control of his temper, Edmund said in French, “What are you doing?”

Luc didn’t look at him, but replied, “Surprise for Sergeant Knox from Commander Thénault.”  It was the longest English sentence that Edmund had ever heard him say.  As always, a cigarette hung out of Luc’s mouth, and Edmund’s eyes followed some ashes that dropped as Luc spoke.  The ashes landed in one of the cans of paint that were opened around Luc.  An assortment of smaller brushes was neatly arrayed on a cloth on the ground in front of him.  Edmund looked over the rest of the plane, and there wasn’t really much for him to do, but he didn’t want to leave Luc there alone with the plane.  He decided to sand down the wooden propeller and then give it another coat of varnish. It didn’t really need it, but Edmund had planned to do it after the next mission anyway.  It was really the only thing left undone, and it would take him several hours.  Probably the same amount of time, he calculated, that it would take Luc to paint the insignia. 

He got out some sheets of sandpaper and rags and cans of varnish.  Luc did look over once to see what he was doing but then turned quickly back to his work.  One of the propeller blades was angled downward, so Edmund began sanding it smooth with a sheet of rough sandpaper.  At one point he was rubbing it vigorously causing the plane to shake.  Luc shouted, “Oy! Oy!” and gestured at his painting.

“Sorry,” Edmund said, but he smiled to himself as he began to work more gently.  It took Edmund several hours to finish the propeller, about the same amount of time Luc worked that day.  He had mostly finished the port side and sketched out the design on the starboard before leaving, without saying anything to Edmund.  Luc had also sketched out two skull and crossbones designs on the port side of the fuselage, just below the cockpit.  Edmund stayed for a while and inspected Luc’s work.  It was actually very good, he thought.  Edmund cleaned up and covered the cockpit with the tarp, being careful not to let it fall on the newly painted Lakota head.

Edmund went out into the darkening night, ate some dinner, and chatted for a while with some of the other flight crews.  When he returned to his tent, he saw two packages wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine on his bunk.  He lifted the larger one.  It felt like cloth and the other was clearly shoes.  A note in Knox’s handwriting had been slid underneath the twine on the larger package:

Fitzhugh,

            I hope these fit.  They belong to a fellow pilot (and an American!) who will            be wearing his dress uniform to Thanksgiving dinner.

            See you there.

                                                S. Knox., Sgt., E.A.

Edmund untied the string and opened the package.  A black tuxedo, complete with white shirt and black tie were inside.  Edmund took them out and hung the jacket from a nail he had hammered into one of the tent’s support posts. He decided he had better try them on, so he stripped down to his underwear and put the suit on, including the tie.  It did mostly fit.  The pants were a bit too long, but not by much.  He unwrapped the shoes, and they also fit, though they rubbed his heel a bit as he walked around the tent.  He took the outfit off, hung the pants over the back of the chair to try and let the wrinkles from being folded straighten out, and hung the coat and shirt on the nail again.  He thought that he would try and find some clothes hangers in the morning.  It was still about a week and a half until the feast.  Edmund, still in his underwear, slipped into bed and fell asleep quickly.

The next morning, Edmund went to the camp administration office to see if they had any clothes hangers.  The clerk said that he did not have any, but he did have a note from Commander Thénault for Edmund that was dated November 20, the day before.

Dear M. Fitzhugh,

On Thursday, November 23, at 11 o’clock in the morning, I am having a small ceremony to recognize the achievements of Sgt. Sinclair Knox during the most recent mission against the Imperial forces of the German Empire, during which Sgt. Knox shot down two enemy aircraft and personally saved two of our bombers from certain death.  An official commendation is working its way through the proper channels, however this is a squadron-wide recognition of his feats and bravery.  Please see that M. Didier has his artwork on Sgt. Knox’s airplane completed in time for this celebration and that the plane is clean and made presentable.

                                                Georges Thénault,

Captaine, Escadrille Americaine

            Didier.   So that was Luc’s surname.  The plane was in pretty good shape already.  Edmund thought that he would give it a once over, and he did want to clean—and possibly touch up—the exterior, especially around the engine exhaust again. 

Edmund headed over to the hangar to get started.  No one else was there, so he began to work.  He cleaned the fuselage around the engine and had to touch up the paint on the starboard side where the engine exhaust had blackened the surface.  He also touched up several mysterious splotches on the wings and the body of the plane and polished the glass on the windshield.  Luc did not show up before lunchtime, so Edmund went to the canteen to eat, and ask if anyone had seen him.  Now that he knew his last name, it was easier to try and find him.  No one had seen him that morning, though one man whom Edmund thought that Luc was friends with said that he had spent a late and rather hard evening in Bar le Duc.

Edmund headed back over to the hangar after he ate a quick lunch, and Luc was sitting on his stool beginning to paint the Lakota head on the starboard side of the Nieuport.  “You need to get that finished by tomorrow afternoon, so it will dry before Thursday,” Edmund said to Luc.

Luc looked over at him and said, “No problem,” and turned back to painting.

Edmund really didn’t have much else to do to get the plane ready, so he wiped a few things, and put his paint away, and then climbed up on the wing on the opposite side of the plane from Luc.  He knew he shook the plane, but Luc didn’t complain this time.  Edmund leaned inside the cockpit and polished the glass faces of the dials and the wooden instrument panel and then reached up and oiled the outside of the Lewis gun until the metal shimmered. 

Edmund climbed down and walked around the plane to see how Luc was coming along.  He really had not gotten much done, Edmund thought.  He put the rags and oils he had been working with away and told Luc that he was going to get some coffee from the canteen.  Luc did not respond.  After a cup of lukewarm black coffee, Edmund went back to the hangar and Luc was gone, along with all his paints and brushes.  Edmund asked some of the crew from the next plane if they had seen him, and they told him that Luc had cleaned his stuff up and left right after Edmund had.  No one knew where he had gone.

The next morning, Luc showed up at 10:30 and began working.  Edmund really tried not to say anything, but finally he reminded Luc of the time of the ceremony the next day.  Luc did not respond but did look a bit rattled as he began working on the second Lakota.  Edmund began to feel like his own mother, so he decided to leave and not hover over Luc and nag him all afternoon.  He could see that Luc was feeling pressure to get it finished.  Edmund stayed away from the hangar until the evening, and when he came back, the Lakota, as well as the two skull and crossbones images were completed, and Luc was gone.  Edmund reached out and touched one of the skulls.  It was still wet. 

Edmund looked around the hangar and tried to picture where the ceremony would look best.  He had remembered an automobile show that his father had taken him to when he was younger and they had the new car models under large silk cloths that were whisked away to reveal the shining new automobile underneath. 

Tino had once shown Edmund an experimental parachute that had been given to the Escadrille early on to try out, but no one had ever actually used it.  Edmund took the parachute out of the trunk that it was stored in and took it over to the center walkway of the hangar.  He laid it out on the floor and then looked up.  A wooden joist beam ran directly over his head.  He found a ladder lying along the hangar wall and took two pulleys that were in Tino’s tool chest.  He put the ladder directly over the parachute and climbed up and screwed one of the pulleys into the beam.  He put another pulley in off to the side of the hangar.  He strung one long parachute cord through the pulleys, and then unfurled the parachute, and tied one end of the cord to the center vent.  He moved around the parachute, spreading it out to its full dimensions on the floor of the hangar, and he untied all the parachute cords. 

This took him quite some time, but he was pretty sure he would never have to retie the cords.  The pilots did not have parachutes, nor did any of them express an interest in them.  They had all heard of a woman in California who had successfully jumped from an airplane and glided to the ground using a parachute, but none of the pilots were eager to try it.  Most of them figured that they could ride a crippled plane to the ground or maybe jump when they got close enough.  All of them had seen a compatriot or an enemy go down, and they did talk about it; whether or not the poor bastard was already dead, or whether he watched the ground come at him until the very end.  Planes catching fire is what really seemed to haunt the pilots.  That is why many of them carried pistols with them, so that they could have a last resort escape from a slow death by burning.  But parachutes?  That was just insanity.  So Edmund didn’t figure that anyone would mind if he dismantled this one.

He spread the silk chute out to its full length, with the center directly below the pulley.  He walked over to the side of the hangar where the end of the cord running through the pulleys hung.  He reached up as far as he could and yanked hard on the cord and the parachute lifted up off the ground in a collapsing cone shape.  Edmund saw that the parachute was suspended high enough, so an airplane sitting underneath it would be fully revealed.  He tied the cord onto a side beam of the hangar and walked over and removed the chocks from the wheels of the Nieuport.  He had never tried to move an airplane by himself before, but he had felt the heft of them and had always thought he could do it.  He lifted the tail off the ground and grabbed the tail dragger and pushed hard but gently on it, and the plane rolled slowly out to the center of the hangar, directly underneath the parachute.  He took the stool that Luc had sat on when he painted the sides of the plane, and put it directly in front of the newly finished Lakota.  He hoped that this would keep the parachute from touching the wet paint. 

Edmund went over to where the cord was tied off, and he slowly lowered the parachute down to where the center was suspended just over the back of the Lewis gun.  He tied the cord off again and walked to the plane and spread the chute out evenly over the entire airplane, making sure that it didn’t touch the wet paint.  It took him a while, running around the plane many times to get the whole thing even.  Once he did this, he stepped back.  The effect was exactly what he had pictured, with the whole plane draped elegantly in the white silk.  After looking at it for a moment, Edmund walked back over to the end of the cord and untied it, and pulled hard on it, and the parachute lifted smoothly off the plane and disappeared up into the rafters of the hangar.  Perfect, he thought, and he lowered the chute back down to where it was, and spread it over the plane again for the night, except that he uncovered the wet Lakota so that it would dry during the nighttime.

Edmund left the hangar and strode into the chill night air.  He wrapped his coat tightly around him and walked back to his tent.  He didn’t know what time it was, but he suddenly felt very tired.  He must have been working for hours, he thought.  No one was around and the sky was very dark.  Edmund fell quickly asleep once he reached his bunk. 

He awoke early the next morning, and dressed in his makeshift military clothes, but he wore a civilian shirt and a tie, along with his grey overcoat and a soft kepi hat that he had picked up recently to replace his civilian fedora that he had brought from home.  All of the flight crews wore mismatched uniform pieces, and even the pilots were allowed to largely personalize their uniforms.  Edmund stopped by the canteen and took some coffee in a tin cup and a piece of bread and headed to the hangar.  The Nieuport was just as he had left it.  Several of the crewmen who were there looked at him expectantly as he walked in, and several more were admiring Luc’s artwork.  Edmund chatted with a few of them for a while, and, after checking that the paint was dry, covered the whole plane in the parachute cloth. 

Soon, Edmund could hear the caravan of cars delivering the pilots from the chateau to Behonne.  Captaine Thénault walked over to Edmund.

“Is everything completed?” he asked, looking at the cloth covered airplane.

“Yes, sir,” Edmund responded, and walked over to the plane and lifted the parachute so that Thénault could see the painted insignia. 

“Very good.”  He looked at it for a moment, “Yes, very nicely done.”  He looked up at the plane, and Edmund could see his eyes follow the cord up to the pulley on the high rafter, and then over to where the cord was tied off against the wall.  “And very dramatic, no?” he said, smiling at Edmund.

Edmund just smiled and nodded.

“Very good.”  Thénault said as he turned and walked over to other pilots filing in who were in their dress uniforms with stiff kepi hats.  Knox was one of the last to arrive.  Thénault walked him over to the plane but would not let him look underneath.  As they stood chatting, Edmund walked over to the tied-off parachute cord against the wall.  As the men stood talking, he could see Luc talking with some of the Thaw’s crew against the opposite wall.  Edmund looked at him and smiled, but Luc did not turn his way.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, gather round please.” Thénault began.  “We are here today to recognize one of our fellow knights of the sky, who, on our last foray, demonstrated exceptional daring, bravery, and skill,”

“And I daresay, luck!” added another pilot Blaine Rockingham.  All of the pilots, including Knox and Thénault, laughed.

“Yes, yes, we all need a bit of that,” Thénault added.  “But this man, Sergeant Sinclair Knox, now has, I have learned this morning, two officially confirmed kills on one outing!”  At this announcement, the men burst into cheers and applause for Knox.  Knox smiled and waved at his compatriots and bowed slightly to Thénault.  “So,” Thénault continued, “to mark the occasion, we have prepared a little gift for you.”  Thénault stepped off to the side a bit and nodded at Edmund.  Edmund gave the cord a steady and strong pull, and the parachute slipped off of the airplane and disappeared into the rafters above.  When it hit the top, it shuddered and billowed up like a cloud for a moment, but only Edmund noticed this.  Everyone else was applauding and slapping Knox on the back.  Knox himself was admiring the artwork on his plane.  Only with prompting did he notice the initials on the back, and then the two skull-and-crossbone insignias marking the two kills.

Edmund tied the cord off, and then walked forward, but just to the edge of the row of planes, staying behind the crowd gathered around Knox.  Edmund heard several of the pilots saying, “Speech! Speech!” 

After a moment, Thénault stepped forward next to Knox and said, “Perhaps the Sergeant would honor us with a few words.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly come prepared to make a speech.  I haven’t even had coffee yet,” Knox said, and the crowd laughed.  “Well, Raoul, my bird looks almost nicer than yours now,” Knox continued looking back at the painting on the side of his Nieuport, as the men continued to laugh quietly.  Raoul Lufbery bowed toward Knox.  “But I really just want to thank all of you for doing this.  And as we all know, no man is up there alone.  We all have our crews that keep us flying, and our families that sent us here.  You, um, did have a mother once, didn’t you Captaine?” Knox said looking at Thénault, who nodded and smiled back at him.  Again the men laughed quietly.  Knox continued, “But the only thing between our machines and the ground is Almighty God who keeps us aloft and safe, until he decides to call us home.”  The crowd murmured in agreement.  Edmund could hear several men say “Amen.”  “And the only thing we have up there besides God is each other, and hopefully a well-oiled Lewis gun.”  Again the men laughed, and he could feel the tension leave the crowd.  None of them liked to think about how close they all were to death.  “We are all up there because it is the right thing to do.  We all recognize the need to stop this evil that is spreading throughout this land, and to keep up the fight until the rest of our American brethren see the light, and come to the defense of France, before this scourge spreads to the rest of the world.  So, I just want to thank all of you.  None of us could accomplish anything alone.  We are all up there together, supporting each other and watching out for each other. We live together, fly together, kill together, and die together.  I have never had a closer family than you men in this room right now.”

“Here here.” Thénault said quietly, and the room was silent.  Edmund could feel a lump forming in the back of his throat. 

The quiet was broken by the noise of a metal tub filled with ice and champagne bottles being sat roughly on the ground by two other pilots, Victor Chapman and Bert Hall. “Who else here needs a drink besides me?” Chapman asked, holding up a bottle.  This question was answered by most of the men with “Here here!” and “Amen!”  Chapman and Hall began pulling bottles out of the ice and handing them around.  The men popped the corks, sending them flying into the rafters of the hangar, and drank directly from the bottles, passing them around to their compatriots. 

Knox was standing talking quietly to Thénault, looking at the Lakota insignia.  Knox took a long drink from a champagne bottle, and then offered it to Thénault, who politely shook his head.  They spoke a few more words to each other, then Thénault patted Knox firmly on the back and turned into the crowd.  Edmund walked over to Knox who was taking another long drink from the bottle when he saw Edmund approach.  He clapped Edmund on the back and put his hand on the back of Edmund’s neck, holding it affectionately, but also at arm’s length. 

“Boy, that is nice,” Knox said, looking at the Lakota. “Was this your idea?”

“No, the Captaine’s,” Edmund said, nodding toward Thénault.

“Well, it sure is beautiful,” Knox said, and he handed the bottle to Edmund.  “And she looks brand new.”  As Edmund drank, Knox looked up at the wing where Edmund had patched the bullet holes.  “I can barely see the damage.”

“Thank you,” Edmund said, wiping champagne off his mouth with the back of his hand.  He handed the bottle back to Knox.

“Oh, I meant to ask you, did the clothes I sent fit you?”

“Yes, perfectly, thanks.”

Knox reached inside his coat and pulled an envelope out of the breast pocket.  “And here, rather late I am afraid, is your actual invitation.  We had a devil of a time finding a printer who wasn’t either evacuating or working on war stuff.”

Edmund opened the envelope and slid out an invitation card.  At the top left was a cartoon of the American and French flags on crossed flagpoles, and at the top right was the Lakota head insignia.  A little further down in the middle was a drawing of a roasted turkey and two Pilgrim torsos.  Below that, the text began.

The Members of the Escadrille Americainé

Invite you and a guest to

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thursday, November 30, 1916

at the

Chateau Americainé

Please respond using the enclosed card                                                         Formal attire requested

“If you could just send a note back up to the house with your name and the name of your guest on it so the staff can make the name cards, I would appreciate it.”

“Will do,” said Edmund, realizing that he didn’t have a guest.

“And again, thanks for all of this,” Knox said, looking back at the plane.

“You deserve it, sir.”

“Well,” Knox said and looked down at the ground, “thanks.  See you next week, if not before.”

“Yes, sir,” Edmund said.  Knox walked over to a group of pilots who slapped him on the back and began talking loudly about his exploits.  Edmund looked around the hangar.  Groups of mechanics and crewmen were gathered around the edges, dispersed among the airplanes, sharing a bottle or two and talking.  The pilots were all gathered around the middle of the room, standing next to the tub of champagne, each with his own bottle in his hand.  Edmund looked back at the plane for a moment and then decided that he would move it back when the crowds had thinned a bit.  With one last glance at the men talking excitedly in the hangar, Edmund walked out and headed back over to his tent. 

When he got inside, he sat down at the small table and took out a pen and a piece of Behonne stationery, and began writing a note to Clemence, asking her to Thanksgiving dinner.  Three days later, he received her acceptance.  Edmund sent another note to the chateau confirming their attendance. 

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the Escadrille flew another mission.  It was a small reconnaissance job, but Knox had seemed particularly nervous before this one, and he tried to cover it up by being affectedly relaxed and magnanimous.  He offered to send a car from the chateau to pick up Edmund and his date, to which Edmund agreed.  The mission went off without a hitch.  They encountered no air resistance and only a few wild shots from the ground.  None of the pilots were hit.  Edmund sent another note to Clemence telling her when he would be picking her up.