The French and Belgian Border

Winter 1945

I stop cold in the hallway of the abandoned home. A mirror hangs crooked among the sepia tinted photos of strangers adorning the faded wallpaper. I haven't looked at myself in weeks. I hesitate before tip toeing forward. My face comes into view in the foggy, circular glass.

The angles of my chin and cheekbones have always been prominent, but they have sharpened in the past months. They hungrily jut out beneath my skin like razors. My eyes are too large for my face, inky as spilled oil. They look like Cal's the last time I saw him.

My brother and I are thirteen months apart. We had an older sister who died of the Spanish flu before we were born. My parents had no other children. While growing up, we were constantly mistaken for twins. So similar in appearance and temperament, our understanding of each other was intuitive. Our arguments have always been rare. He's been my best friend since I was born. Seeing him so grievously hurt was like taking a bullet. I have been bleeding inwardly ever since.

I shun the image, hoisting the box of paperwork into the crooks of my elbows. Florence is opening the front door as I reach it.

"It's snowing," she drones.

"What else is new?"

We walk together towards the jeep heading back to Division. Our little field hospital is far enough away from the heart of the riverside town that the chances of us getting hit by snipers or shells are slim. However, it remains dangerous to be out in midday.

"It's strange that we are technically living in the same town as them."

I don't need to ask whom Florence references. I peer towards the sloshing winter river, pieces of snow and ice clinging to the emaciated banks. I try not to think about the German soldiers, but it's difficult.

My mother told me when I was a child that an unforgiving heart was the worst cancer to contract. She was angry at my father for too many years after my older sister died. The awful night that she passed away, he hadn't thought it was necessary to call the doctor until it was too late. I've seen how it has hurt my parents' marriage, how the bitterness rooted deep between them till they were strangers.

And still, I take my poison like strong moonshine.

I set the box into the backseat of the jeep with a grunt and brush my hands off on my trench coat.

"It's like living in a town with two high schools during football season," Florence comments dryly, offering me a cigarette.

"Or like sleeping in the same bed as a murderer." I take one and perch it on my lower lip.

"We'd be the murderers too, you know."

"It's different," I snap, blowing out a cloud of smoke with some force. "They are a different breed of killer. All of them."

Florence's concerned gaze washes over my face, but I keep my eyes on the dove grey horizon.

"You know, if the time and place had been different, you might have had something in common with some of them. You might have even been friends."

"Yeah well. That's not the case, is it?" I stomp out my cigarette. "I'm cold."

I turn to leave, but only make it a few feet when I am struck in the shoulder by a snowball. I stare back at Florence in shock. She smirks, holding her cigarette in one hand and another snowball in the other. She hammers it in my direction and it thuds into my chest. That one was more ice than the fresh powder falling around us.

I burst forward and shove her into a snowbank. She screeches as I grind a handful of snow into her face with gusto. The next thing I know I am flat on my back and laughing. My body sinks into the soft cold around me. I can't remember the last time I laughed.

"Ruthie." Florence flops down, the crowns of our heads touching. "I'm scared for you."

"What do you mean?" I ask, catching my breath and sniffing.

"I don't want you to forget who you are."

"I hate to break it to you, but that feels like it's already happened," I confess with a mirthless chuckle. "I don't know who Ruth Tucker is anymore."

Her hand thuds into my stomach, clutching something in her gloved fingers. I pick it up and hold it over my face.

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," I read quietly. "Where did you get this?"

"I traded a couple packs of Lucky Strikes and a Hershey bar for it from one of the boys. I thought you could use a reminder."

"A reminder of what?"

"Of the girl I met in England. I still remember the first time I saw you. You were sitting on a bench in Victoria Station. Your hair was in two braids like a country girl with a red beret and you were engrossed in this leather-bound copy of..."

"All Quiet on the Western Front." I finish her statement, my heart loosening at the memory.

"Where did that book go anyway?"

"I have no idea. I suppose it went missing along the way." I sigh at a sharp pang of remorse over its loss. "My father gave it to me before I left. It's about German soldiers during the Great War. I still don't know why he chose that one for me."

"Perhaps because he wanted to remind you that some enemies can be human too." Her statement makes my skin crawl.

"Did you know it was one of the books the Nazis called degenerate? They burned copies publicly," I say after a downy pause, accented by the chilled drift of wind. "If Hitler hates it, I suppose it couldn't have been all that bad."

"Did you like it?"

"I don't know. I can't remember." I sit up and glance over at Florence. "You know, I'm proud of you."

Florence throws a cloud of snow into my face. "Hush."

"I'm serious!" I laugh,  brushing the icy wetness from my eyelashes.

"What on earth are you talking about?" She sits up and perches her arms on her knees.

"About everything with Lieutenant Pawloski?" My voice fades a little at his name.

"Is that all?" She snorts though there is a twinge in her cheek. "Bravo to me for not becoming the other woman."

I manage a laugh for her sake, glancing down at the book cover. "I know how you felt about him and I can't imagine it's been easy."

Florence stands up and offers me a hand. "Let's not hash that out again, please."

We walk back towards the house where we are billeted, sharing the last of her cigarettes along the way.

It's after midnight when Florence and I are instructed to carry boxes of medical supplies to the aid stations closer to the river. There is a full moon. We stick to the jagged shadows of decrepit buildings and brick walls lined with the curled spines of barbed wire. We find Doc Valcourt from Cal's old company holed up in a dim basement near where CP is located.

Frank Valcourt is subtle and dark as the river water outside. Though he was born in Maine, he has a beautiful Québécois accent inherited from his Canadian parents.

I am a good nurse, I keep my head and I do my best whatever the circumstance. But I have no bedside manner. I treat wounds like a butcher treats a slab of beef. Frank sees the man. He listens to their ragged breaths and holds their hands. I don't have that capacity and I doubt I ever will.

The three of us huddle around a rusted stove, clutching tin cups of coffee in our gloved hands. I admit my fear, that I've grown too cold for my own good. It scares me how little I care in the heat of the moment. Frank's eyes give gravity to the unease in my heart.

"Ruth, it's not that you don't care," he explains, the words riding the easy dip and slope of his accent. "I believe you care too much. Detaching is how you survive."

Someday, I know I'm going to have to stop surviving and start living. I sip my coffee and burn the roof of my mouth.

"That's what I keep on telling her, Frank." Florence kicks me from across the way. "But maybe she'll listen to you."

Florence doesn't need a bedside manner. Most men are too busy looking at her to notice whether she's being sweet or spitting in their eye.

We all burst from our seats as the door bangs open. I have never seen Harry Sabbatini in such a state. "We need a medic."

We follow him through the ravaged city to an abandoned bakery close to the river. I hear the chaos before I see it. Amidst the rigid forms of the panicked soldiers, black muzzles of rifles swinging in the air and cries of men that sound more like those of lost children, I see the convulsing form of a young paratrooper.

My brain cuts up the scene like fat from meat. The only visible wound is between his bicep and his chest, too close to the brachial artery. Sniper bullet. The table around him is soaked with blood and they can't get it to clot.

They dragged him from the river, but it's been too long since he got hit.

He can't be more than nineteen. His teeth are chattering just like Cal the last time I saw him. Frank cuts away the sleeve and digs into the bullet hole. The boy screams, his pupils are black holes sucking in the light.

"Let's get him back to the aid station," Frank instructs, sprinkling a packet of sulfa powder even though we all know it's futile.

Nearly every man present reaches out to help carry the private. Their faces burn with fear. Hands sprinkled with red. The stretcher isn't even to the door. The young man's urgent pleas are too familiar. He doesn't want to die. His cries weaken as the blood drains from his armpit. He convulses. Gasps. His skinny frame relaxes with death.

After a few moments of silence, interrupted only by faint gunfire in the distance, they cover his body with a yellowed lace table cloth.

Afterwards, I stand alone outside in the dark. They shot the German sniper who killed the boy, but didn't kill him from the sounds of it. There are more snipers to fear, but I don't care. I light a cigarette, daring them. The strangled cry of the wounded man on the German side of the river slithers through the night. He's blathering something in his own tongue. 

I blow smoke in his direction and breathe in the cold. I feel nothing. I think about All Quiet on the Western Front. I think about the girl at Victoria Station with her dark hair in braids. She's as strange to me now as the dying German gasping alone in the dark.

A heavy hand presses against my lower back and I ease into its solidity.

"Put that out." Lawrence grabs the cigarette with a bare hand and stomps it into the snow. "What the hell are you thinking?"

I lift my hand to his face. Though I can't see his expression, I can sense his shock as I kiss him. He responds almost violently as he grabs me. We both taste like tobacco and salt. Numbly, I realize he is as desperate as I am to feel something again.

"Ruthie?" Florence's voice cracks as she whispers softly.

She doesn't see us. I tear away and walk in the direction of her voice, staying out of the moonlight. I wipe my mouth. My heart is as hungry as ever, despite my futile attempt to feed it on this winter's night.