• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“The other guys sneaked through. I was hanging back with Hootie, and it came our turn. We had just climbed a steep path to the side of a precipice, and we were panting. It was steep, and the air was getting thinner. I started ahead, toward the path that I could barely see. I saw the shadow of the guide. Hootie was just behind me, I thought. Suddenly there was a burst of light, and then gunshots. My instinct told me to run. I ran like hell, toward the path ahead, toward the Basque.

“I heard a whimper and a clatter of rocks. I looked back and I couldn’t see Hootie. He wasn’t there. Behind me was the cliff we had just climbed. A searchlight was sweeping across, and there were more gunshots. I couldn’t run back. The rear guide, the Frenchman, was herding us on, into a thick grove. There was nothing we could do, he said. I wanted like hell to go back, but he wouldn’t let me. And I could see he was right.”

“That is what the guides did,” Annette said. “They just kept going. It was necessary. It was too dangerous otherwise. I know of such journeys.”

“So we were across the border, but Hootie was gone. And before long the guides were gone, too. The French guy slipped away near the border. He headed off to the side, to cross back into France somewhere farther along the border. The Basque led us a mile or two into Spain, but then he picked up speed and just left us behind.

“We were in Spain, but we had no food, and we weren’t really sure what to do next. And my head was whirling because of Hootie. I don’t think I’ve ever been so heavy-hearted. I had reached my goal. I had made it out of France, finally, but it felt like the worst day of my life.”

Marshall quit talking, and Annette waited. They sat quietly, side by side, for several minutes before Marshall took up the story again.

“It was less rocky there, and then it was grassy and we came tumbling down, sliding on the fresh grass. There I was, in Spain with four strangers who might have included spies for all I knew, but we were still in mountainous terrain with no clue to what was ahead for us.

“I won’t bore you with our wanderings. You know how we were arrested by some Spanish border guards and detained. But that was pretty much just for show. We wound our way through Spain and then to Gibraltar, where we were processed back to England.

“I never saw Hootie again. He simply vanished. Except for that one whimper, there was no noise, no cry. It was just darkness. I don’t know if he was shot or if he simply fell from the cliff. That episode is something I’ve played over and over, as if it had a meaning, some symbolism for my life. What could I have done differently?

“I was able to tell his family what happened—how he seemed to disappear. I wrote to them. After that, I tried hard never to think of that night, but it kept coming back to me. How could I be sure he was dead? I wasn’t sure the shot hit him. I assumed that slipping over that ledge was fatal. But I don’t know. I wondered—should I have gone back?”

She laid her head on his chest. “Was his body ever found?” she whispered.

“No. Surely someone will find his dog tag one day. You remember, we kept our dog tags in our boots. Of course, I always imagine I’ll run into him somewhere.”

“No one is to blame,” she said.

“C’est la guerre?”

“Oui.”

“Understand, I’ve never talked much about this, not since the war. Annette, I know you saw much worse—much worse than you can ever tell me. But you told me a lot, and I—I owed it to you to tell you my own small story.”

Annette cupped his face in her hands. “Marshall, I think you are a person who has rarely divulged his heart. But now you have. Thank you.”

He rose and walked a few steps away. She was still sitting on the ledge.

“Loretta and some of the others made a fuss over me,” he said. “The ‘hero.’ I made it to Spain and back to England when so many others didn’t. But I was no hero. What did I do in the war? Nothing. De la merde. Got shot down, then saved my own ass.”

He paced