evidently vigorous grandfathers with their sleeves rolled up too. Only a few teenage boys were included, for most young men were off fighting the war. But there
“How many?” Beame asked when the head of the procession reached the gorge and the tail had not yet shown itself.
“We were promised a hundred to start with,” Major Kelly said.
Maurice found a way down the gorge wall, using some of the old bridge's underworks for support. His people followed him, carefully picking their way across the river, stepping from one unsteady mound of rubble to the next. The men with the wheelbarrows lifted these above their heads, and they looked like canoeists fording shallow water.
Beame grinned fiercely. “I believe we might just pull it off!”
“You do?” Kelly asked.
“I don't,” Slade said, giggling.
“For once,” Kelly said, “I have to agree with Lieutenant Slade.”
Two hours later, Lieutenant Beame was down in the ravine with Danny Dew, surveying the wreckage which yesterday's B-17 attack had produced. The two bridge piers were still standing, stone and concrete phallic symbols, but the steel and wooden superstructure and the bridge flooring had collapsed into the gorge. Much of the planking was smashed, charred, or splintered beyond repair, though several large sections like the sides of gigantic packing crates were salvageable. Likewise, some of the steel support beams, cables, angle braces, couplings, and drawing braces had survived and could be used again if Danny Dew were only careful not to crush them when he started through here with his D-7 dozer.
“Over there!” Beame shouted, pointing at a jumble of bridge parts.
“I see it!” Dew shouted. “Ten-foot brace! Looks undamaged!”
They were forced to shout because of the din in the gorge. For one thing, the buckled plating on which they stood was the cap of a heap of refuse which was blocking the middle of the river. The water, diverted into two narrow streams by this barrier, gushed past them in a twin-tailed roar of white spume.
“Is that a coupling?” Beame shouted.
Dew squinted. “Yeah! And a good one!”
Added to the roar of the water were the sounds of fifty French men and women who were doing preliminary salvage that was best completed before the dozer came through. Hammers, wrenches, drills, shovels, and torches sang against the background of the moving river. And, worse, the French jabbered like a cageful of blackbirds.
They were jabbering so loudly that when Beame tried to hear himself think, he failed. They jabbered at the Americans who were giving them directions in a tongue they could not understand, and they jabbered at one another, and many of them jabbered to themselves if no one else was nearby.
“I don't see anything more!” Beame shouted.
“Me either,” Dew said. “I'll get the dozer.” He scrambled down the shifting pile of junk, leaped the narrow divide of shooting water, and came down on both feet on the shore. Very athletic. Beame had always heard that Negroes were good athletes, but Danny Dew was the first proof he had seen. He watched Dew climb the steeply sloped ravine wall and go over the top without effort.
That was when he saw the girl.
She was standing at the crest of the slope, fifty yards from where Dew went over the top. She was watching the workers, the gentle morning sun full on her.
She was the most beautiful girl Beame had ever seen. She looked no older than twenty-one or — two, perhaps only seventeen. Though it was difficult to judge her height from this angle, he thought she must be tall for such a slender girl, maybe five-seven. Her complexion was Mediterranean, dark and smoky. Great masses of black hair cascaded around her face and fell to the sharp points of her widely spaced breasts. All this took Beame's breath away. He was affected by the way she stood: shoulders back, head up, exuding grace, a serene and almost Madonnalike figure.
Though Beame was no womanizer, he knew he had to meet her.
He went down the rubble heap too fast, lost his footing. He tottered and fell into the spume, flailing. He swallowed a mouthful of water, tried to spit it out, swallowed more. He was drowning. He felt himself swept around the rubble. He banged into a steel girder, shoved desperately away, scrambled for the surface, realized that he did not know where the surface was. Then, abruptly, he was in calmer water. He bobbed up, sputtering, shook his head, swam a few strokes to the shore, and crawled out, amazed that he was still alive.
The girl had not gone away. She was up there, watching him now.
Had she been anyone else, he would have run away and hidden until she was gone. But she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Wiping his hands down his sodden trouser legs to press the water out of them, he surreptitiously checked to be sure his fly was closed. It was. He started up the slope.
He did not make it to the top as easily as Danny Dew had done. He slipped and fell twice. His wet clothes took on a patina of mud, and his face was smeared with long brown streaks of topsoil. What did the girl think? She had seen Danny Dew come off the rubble, across the water, and up the hill as if he were walking across a room — and now she saw Beame floundering like the first legged fish that crawled out of a prehistoric sea. He felt like an ass.
But she was smiling. And it was not a cruel smile.
Beame waved and started towards her. The closer he got, the more he saw how beautiful she was. By the time he was standing in front of her, he was numb, speechless in the aura of her radiant beauty. Her hair was really black, not just dark brown. Her complexion was Spanish and flawless, her eyes as large as olives and as black as her hair. Her nose was small, fine-boned, exquisitely arched. Her smile was wide and warm. Her teeth were square and white, her lips two ribbons tied in a sensuous bow.
“Hello,” he said, clearing his throat. “My name's David Beame.”
“Nathalie,” she said.
“What?” He thought she had told him, in French, to get lost. Or worse.
“That's my name,” she said. “Nathalie.”
“You speak English,” he said, relieved that she had not been insulting him. “I'm pleased to meet you, Nathalie.” She was
She was flattered by his ill-concealed admiration. She blushed. Beame was happy he had flattered her. He knew he was blushing too, and he wiped his face with one hand, never realizing his hand was muddy.
“How is it you speak English?” he asked.
“Father taught me.”
“And who is your father?”
“Maurice,” she said.
Could this be true? Could greasy, conniving Maurice Jobert give half the seed to make a girl like this? “I've never seen you before. You weren't at the village dance a couple of weeks ago.”
“I had a summer cold. Papa made me stay in bed until the fever broke.” She cocked her head and looked at him. “You are staring — so intently.”
Startled, Beame wiped a hand across his face to cover another blush.
“You're getting mud all over your nose,” she said, putting one finger to his face, taking it away, showing him the mud.
“Oh,” Beame said, feeling like an ass. He wiped his muddy nose with his muddy hand. Realizing his error, he used his shirttail next. But that was even muddier than his hands. Suddenly, he wished that he had drowned when he fell into the river.
“Are you nervous?” Nathalie asked.
“Me? No. Why should I be nervous?”
“Father says you are all scared of dying. Father says you are the only soldiers he's ever seen who are aware of their own mortality.” She smiled. Just gorgeous. “He likes doing business with you, because you have no illusions.”
“You mean it's
“Oh, yes. Very good.”
