Hanging on

“A credit contract,” Kelly said. Using the stature of his rank, the weight of his command, the force of his personality, and the mesmeric quality of his gaze, he tried to make Lieutenant Slade sign the paper and pass over the fifty dollars in scrip.

“I won't sign this paper,” Slade said, when Kelly was done. “And I am not going to give you or Maurice fifty dollars in scrip.” He did not seem to be particularly angry. Indeed, he was grinning at the major. “This is craziness, you know. Opting for this cowardly plan in the first place — then asking your men to hock their reputations to pay for it. This is more than I ever hoped for. You have gone way too far this time.”

“Minute by minute, the eventual arrival of the Panzers becomes more of a reality, a nearer threat,” Major Kelly said. He was beginning the argument which, in his own mind, was the most forceful one in favor of hocking their reputations and anything else on which Maurice wanted to take a lien. “If we tried to fight off a force as large as this Germany convoy—”

“Are you ordering me to sign this?” Slade interrupted, rattling the credit contract in Kelly's face.

The major considered it for a moment. He had successfully pulled that stunt with Coombs. However, though they were much alike on the surface, Coombs and Slade were utterly different underneath. What worked on one might only bring a stiffer resistance from the other. “I can't order you to do anything like that,” Kelly said.

“Damn right,” Slade said. He dropped his credit contract, turned away from them, and hurried over to the men by the rec room door.

“You're in for trouble now,” Beame said.

Kelly watched as Slade conferred with the men standing in the shadows. He was gesturing with one hand, clutching his questionnaires against his chest with the other. He kept pointing at Kelly.

“Sowing dissension,” Beame said.

Most of the men laughed at Slade and walked away from him. But a few, a sizable minority, remained and listened. They might have thought that Slade was an ass, but they nonetheless shared his philosophy. The seed of rebellion was dormant in them, but susceptible to water and gentle cultivation.

“He's telling them not to sign your paper,” Beame said.

“They have to sign.”

“I thought you couldn't make it an order?”

“I can't,” Kelly admitted. “But if too many of them refuse and we can't get up the money that Maurice wants, the whole deal will fall through. The people from Eisenhower won't help us. We won't be able to build the town by ourselves. We won't be able to hide from the Germans. We'll all die.”

In the next hour, fifteen men refused to sign credit contracts.

4

In the flickering campfire light under the copse of pines by the river, Nathalie was even more beautiful than she had been the first time Beame saw her. Her black hair, like that of an Egyptian princess, blended with the night. Her face was a mixture of sensuous shadows and warm brown tones where the firelight caught it. Images of flame flashed in her eyes. She smiled enigmatically as a sphinx as they sat side-by-side on the ground and watched their dinner cook.

She was near enough to touch, but he did not touch her. Sitting with her legs drawn up beneath her, leaning against the trunk of a pine, wearing a simple sleeveless white dress that was cinched at the waist by a red ribbon, she looked too fragile to survive the lightest embrace.

Beame leaned forward and looked into the pan suspended above the fire. “Done,” he said. “I hope it's good.” He put a thick slice of dark bread in the center of each mess tin, ladled the main course over the bread. Steam rose from it.

“What is this called?” Nathalie asked.

He handed her a mess tin. “Shit on a shingle,” he said, without thinking.

“Pardonnez-moi?”

“I mean… that's what it's called in the mess hall,” Beame said. “Uh… out here it's creamed dried beef.”

“Ah,” she said, cutting into the soggy bread with her fork. She tasted one morsel. “Mmmmm.”

“You like it?”

“It is very good.”

He looked at his own serving, tasted it, found it was good. “That's funny. I must have had this a thousand times, and I always hated it.”

After they were finished, they had red wine, which was her contribution to the evening.

“I've never had wine from a tin cup,” Beame said.

“It would taste the same from crystal.”

“I guess it would.” He wanted to kiss her, but he knew that was improper this early in their friendship. Besides, if he kissed her he would probably faint and miss the rest of what promised to be a fine evening.

They watched the fire slowly dying, and they sipped wine. As the fire darkened, Beame's head lightened. He was able to forget the bridge, the Nazis, everything. In the weeks the unit had been here, this was the only time he had felt at ease. “More wine?” he asked, when he came to the bottom of his cup.

She swallowed the last of hers. “Yes, please.”

When they settled back again, cups replenished, he was conscious of the silence, of his inability to engage her in trivial conversation. “You may have noticed my—”

“Mauvaise honte?” Her voice was husky and pleasant.

“What's that?”

“Bashfulness,” she said. “But I like it.”

“You do?”

She nodded, looked away from him. She sipped her wine; it glistened like a candy glaze on her lips.

A few minutes later, he said, “Say something in French. Just anything. I like the sound of it.”

She thought a moment, one long finger held to the corner of her mouth as if she were hushing him. “Je ne connais pas la dame avec qui vous avez parle.”

The words flowed over Beame, mellowing him. “What does that mean?”

“It means — I do not know the lady with whom you spoke,” she said.

French was a fantastic language, Beame thought. That was such an ordinary sentence in English but so poetic in her tongue.

“Well?” she asked.

Eyes closed, lolling against a tree, Beame said, “What?”

“Won't you tell me who the woman was?”

Beame opened his eyes. “What woman?”

She met his eyes forthrightly. “This afternoon, just after you invited me to dinner, a woman came up from that bunker and called to you. We said our goodbyes, and you went to talk with her.”

“Oh, that was Lily Kain.” He explained how Lily happened to be in the unit.

“She's lovely,” Nathalie said.

“She is?”

“Don't tell me you have not noticed. I suppose she has many suitors.”

“Lily?” Beame asked. “Oh, no. She and Major Kelly have a thing going.”

“I see,” she said, brightening somewhat. She drained her cup and handed it to him. “May I have more wine?”

When he filled her cup and returned it, their fingers touched. The contact was more electric than he would have expected. Sitting beside her again, watching the fire, he realized he had forgotten how beautiful she was. Now he was once more slightly breathless.

She did not sit back against the tree, but knelt, using her calves for a chair. She held the wine in both hands and was very still. In time, she said, “The frogs are singing.”

“I always thought they just croaked,” Beame said. But when he listened, the frogs did seem to be singing. “You're right.” In the faint-orange ember glow, he suddenly saw her nipples against the tight bodice of her dress…