The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [30]
For the next two days, as he walked through his fatigue, he tried to get his mind straight about what he was looking for. He wanted to find the Albert family in Chauny and the Vallon family in Paris. They might all be dead. Or retired to the Riviera. There were others, too, who had helped him along the way. But he had forgotten their names. Their false names, he corrected himself.
ONE MORNING MARSHALL woke up on Paris time and felt sufficiently rested.
“Lights. Action,” he told his reflection in the mirror as he shaved.
After a coffee and some cornflakes in the petite breakfast room, he took the Métro to the Gare du Nord and boarded a train to Chauny. He remembered Gisèle Albert in an apron, wiping her hands, her son, Nicolas, tying a shoe.
The train made several stops. He gazed out the window at fresh fields, villages, and intermittent stations. He saw a man on a mower, a woman with her apron full of something abundantly green gathered from her garden; a girl in a spotted kerchief on a bicycle.
HE KNEW THE STREET name from Pierre Albert’s 1947 letter, and it didn’t take long to find that street. From the station it was a straight line, a turn, a dip down, a veering to the left.
There it was. He knew the house. It was brick, the local style of brick laid in decorative crisscross patterns. There was less greenery now, more sidewalk and pavement, and the tall wooden fence in the back had been replaced with a low brick wall. The barn was gone. The room where he had been hidden was at the back of the house, with a window on the side. Now, from the street, he could see his window, with its overhang.
He remembered bicycling from here to the train station the day he left for Paris.
He was hesitating about going to the front door when a couple with a dog passed by and glanced at him curiously. He started to move on. Then a small gray Renault pulled into the driveway. The driver emerged and headed for the house. He was carrying a yard-long baguette and a plastic grocery bag.
“Nicolas?” Marshall said.
The man turned. “Oui?”
13.
MARSHALL GAVE A LAST GLANCE AT THE NOSE ART BEFORE he ran for the woods. Dirty Lily would have to take care of herself. She was still on fire. Bob Hadley was panting, but Marshall didn’t dare slow down for him. “Come on, come on,” he whispered sharply, urging him into the woods. Marshall wore his leather sheep-lined helmet and his A-2 leather jacket, with his escape kit in a leg pocket. They had shucked their parachute rigging, but the catch on Hadley’s jammed and he had to cut himself loose.
The woods were sparse on the edge, but dense deeper in. The terrain was brushy, with occasional large trees. Marshall scouted for climbing trees. He saw evergreens, a bank of them, and slowed down. When Hadley stopped to throw up, Marshall said the dogs would be after them.
“What dogs?” Hadley said.
“There will be dogs,” said Marshall. “And they like puke.”
“Webb was dead, do you know? He was dead, I could tell.”
“We’re not dead. Let’s go.”
Marshall thought Hootie was dead, but he wasn’t sure about Webb. He knew Grainger’s shoulder had been hit and Campanello’s face was bloody. The Germans would be there soon, scavenging the mangled Fort like buzzards.
The girl on the bicycle had disappeared. She had told him to wait while she went to find civilian clothing, but he had run into the woods. Their squadron mascot was patched onto Marshall’s leather jacket—Bugs Bunny placidly eating a carrot and resting his foot on a bomb. Only two days ago, Marshall had boasted that he was the Scourge of the Sky in brown leather. Now he was a marked target.
The day had turned gray, and they twisted and turned several times in their dash through the trees. Marshall didn’t want to get lost in the woods. They had to seek help from some willing farmer. Marshall