Word Weld

The border fence was low and unguarded, and we easily made our way across. The snow had abated, fortunately, and the going was a little faster. We strayed onto the higher ground, where the safe house was hidden. Atop the rocky hill and surrounded by trees, it was hard to access, especially by vehicle, and made a perfect base for the members of the French Resistance. The trees were closer now, and the ground steep, before we finally arrived at the unobtrusive little cottage. As we neared, we were both surprised at how deserted it was. We went right up to the door, and I tried the handle. To my surprise, it turned, and I opened the door. I stepped inside and Casey was right behind me. Before we even had time to get a look around, we heard a sharp click from the right. A woman with curly brown hair and a wool cap stood in the corner of the room, aiming a Mauser pistol at us.  Without even thinking, I put myself in front and held out an open hand toward her. The woman did not seem nervous or agitated, but stared down the barrel coolly, her own face obscured somewhat by a thick scarf. The weary light from the doorway shown white in her steady blue eyes.

“Wait!” I said in French, which, like my English, was perfect. “We are not Nazis. My name is Mercy, and I’m from Eppenbrunn… I came from the Fruehaufs.”

“No one’s coming. The border is closed,” came her sharp voice. “It’s too dangerous to cross.”

“I promise you, I’m telling the truth,” I attempted to persuade her, “I’m Mercy Spengler. My family has been getting people out of Germany for years.”

“Then I know you’re lying,” she tightened her grip on the weapon. “All the Spenglers are dead.”

“All of them?” I trembled, suddenly afraid, though not of her. “They said Gabriella came this way. They said she was well and alive. Is she alright?”

“Get down on the floor, both of you!” she raised her voice, and we both put our hands up. If she really believed we were Nazis, she would certainly shoot us.

“Alright,” I replied, easing myself down, back against the wall. Casey did likewise, while the young woman sat down on a stool by the lit woodstove, keeping the gun on us at all times. Casey still had his service pistol in his pocket, as the woman had not searched us, probably wanting not to get close enough for us to jump her. She seemed content to sit silently upon her stool, ready to end our lives at the slightest inclination. I stuffed my freezing hands into my uniform jacket. The rest of our things were in a pack by Casey’s side, including changes of clothes.

After some time, the woman stood up and demanded our pack from Casey, who obliged and tossed it over to her. While still keeping the gun leveled at us, she used her other hand to rifle through the pack, looking among the false papers, French currency,  and changes of clothes.  After a few moments she seated herself back on her stool, looking a little less convinced we were Nazi infiltrators. I decided to have another go at her.

“May I ask what you are waiting for?” I asked.

“The others will be here soon. They will deal with you.”

“So you are keeping the place warm for them,” I persisted. “Were they involved in the hit on the German truck this morning? I wondered if it wasn’t a joint effort.”

She said nothing, which I viewed as an improvement at that point.

“Was Gabriella alright when she came here? I know she had been shot. Please, I’m her sister. I’m not even asking where she is. I just want to know if she’s safe and well.”

“You’re not her sister,” the woman said nervously.  She was getting antsy, as she was starting to soften and she thought it was a mistake. It unsettled her and Casey looked at me cautiously as I proceeded.

“I promise you I am,” I said calmly. “I could tell you all about my family, and about the Fruehaufs, and about how you smuggle people out. Can’t you see that everything we have came from the Fruehaufs? You know what their work is like, surely.”

“I know that if you want to live as long as you can, you’re going to shut up.”

At this point I was getting a little impatient, so I stood up, and the already nervous woman moved her aim with me, her hand sweating despite the cold, and her eyes not nearly so steady. Her voice became a little more strained.

“Get down!” she yelled. “I won’t ask again!”

“Then don’t,” I replied. “If you decide you’re going to shoot us, I just hope you’re very sure that you’re right, because if we are telling the truth you might regret shooting two innocent people.  This is Casey Stewart. He’s an American pilot, the one who was shot down not long ago. Casey, give her your gun.”

He held his hands up and slowly pulled the gun from his coat pocket. The young woman kept the pistol on me because I was closer to her, but Casey held the gun by the barrel and slid it across the creaky wooden floor.

“It’s an American weapon, as you can see,” I told her.

“I need you to get down on the floor again,” she asked, her hand shaking a little now.

“I thought you weren’t going to ask that again,” I smiled. It occurred to me as I was looking at her face closer now that she was quite young, perhaps only fifteen or sixteen. I became less impatient, and more sympathetic. “Look, my only interest is to find Gabriella Spengler. What would a Nazi want with her? She’s only an eleven-year-old girl. If I were a Nazi I’d be more interested in where your friends are and who they are.”

Suddenly the door banged open, and in the opening stood a French officer, armed with a pistol. A second soldier stood behind him.  The girl before me panicked in that moment. There were now threats on every side, and as she saw it, she was alone against them all. The French Gestapo, called the Carlingue, was the bitter enemy of the Marquis, or the French Resistance.

“Put the gun down!” the officer demanded, but the girl hesitated. “Put it down now!”

Before she had a chance to do anything, Casey leapt up at him. I knelt for our gun, simultaneously moving to the side and knocking the girl and her stool over. The gun flew out of her hand as she crashed to the floor. A shot rang out but missed me. Casey plowed into the first officer, knocking him over and wrestling with him for the gun, while I aimed for the man behind them and fired, striking him in the upper chest. Desperate, I fired again and again, the .45 Caliber pistol shaking me and wounding my hands, for I had never fired a gun before. I literally fired until the gun fell from my hands from my lack of skill. Meanwhile, Casey fought desperately with the man on the floor, finally wresting the weapon from the man, and knocking him out with a brutal elbow to the head. For a moment all was silent. The French girl lay on the floor, still in shock, while I picked Casey’s gun back up and hurried over to him. He was rising from off the floor, and glancing outside at the second officer.

“Do I have any bullets left in this?” he quipped as I handed him the gun.

“I couldn’t help it,” I scowled.

To my surprise, the man I shot was lying in the snow gasping. We both stared at him as he lay dying of the damage my haphazard marksmanship had done. All of a sudden, the world stopped for me. I wasn’t paying attention to the French girl, or the falling snow, or even Casey or Gabriella. I just stared down at the dying man, my hands trembling as they reached out instinctively. Something was going on inside me, but I couldn’t say what. Casey put a hand on my arm and tried to pull me back inside the little safe house, yet was surprised that I resisted. My eyes were fixed, unable to look at anything but the bloody holes in the front of his wool uniform. It had taken no thought whatsoever for me to shoot him only seconds earlier. He was a Nazi stooge, a pawn of the regime that had slain more people than my feeble mind could grasp, including my own family. Yet, as he lay in the snow, dying rapidly, my heart strained against the walls of its chamber, and I knelt down.

“What are you doing?” Casey demanded, taking my arm more firmly and yanking me to my feet once more. I trembled as I was forced to look into his face, yet my eyes strayed again to the dying Frenchman.

“Get a hold of yourself!”

He took both of my shoulders and shook me once, and I winced a little from his strong grip. He had my attention or now, but I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? I wanted to save the dying man before me, enemy though he was.

“I…” my lips stammered and my tongue stuck, “…I need to save him.”

“What?” Casey released me. There was a moment of silence between us, and then my eyes returned to the French officer. I knelt once more, but found that he had died. Something in me ached at seeing and understanding what had happened. I have since found it very difficult to put it into words.

“He’s dead,” I said flatly.

“Yeah,” the Captain agreed, “you shot him twenty times.”

Standing, I continued to look down on the body, then turned and walked inside. My numb limbs wobbled as I stepped around the unconscious still-living Frenchman. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I stood still, frantically trying to work out why my heart was in such chaos. I had done nothing wrong. Or had I?

Casey stayed outside for a few minutes, dumping the dead officer somewhere out of sight, but the snow was picking up and it would be difficult to see much longer, so he returned after not that long. Thereafter he pulled the unconscious man into the house. He found some rope and bound our prisoner, while the French girl watched silently, staring sometimes at him and sometimes at me. When Casey was done, he came over to me, apparently surprised that I was still out-of-sorts.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I could have saved him,” I looked up at him. “I know I could have saved him.”

“So what?” Casey scowled.  “Why on Earth would you want to save a man you just worked so hard to kill?”

The final word came down like a hammer, and it sent a shock of pain through my head and into my chest. I had killed a man. It had seemed so necessary and simple before that moment. But as I considered what had happened, it seemed a betrayal, as if I had spit in God’s face. After all, why was I still among the living?

“Casey,” I tried to be calm but my voice wavered. “I died, and God brought me back. I came back not the same person. I have a gift. I can heal people. What if that’s the only reason I’m here? What if God brought me back just to heal people? If I kill someone, what does that make me?”

“If that person was about to kill a bunch of other people, I think it makes you a hero,” he replied impatiently, checking his gun and ammo. “Just because you can heal people doesn’t mean you’re supposed to heal everyone you come across. What’s the point of shooting someone and then healing them so they can go and do the evil they were trying to do before you blew their brains out? How does that make sense, Mercy?”

“Casey,” I retorted, growing angry at his indifference, “my name is ‘Mercy!’ I can heal people! I can’t die! Can’t you see what blasphemy it is for me to kill someone?”

“So you’d rather we were captured and taken to another Nazi compound?” he pocketed his weapon again, staring me down evenly. “If you want to get out of this God-forsaken country… if you want to see Gabriella again… you’re going to have to be willing to do what it takes. These people won’t hesitate to kill–you should know that better than anyone. If some Kraut is holding a gun to Gabriella’s head, and you’ve got a gun, whose life are you going to spare? The murderous Kraut’s, or your sister?”

“Maybe if I had healed that man he would have changed his mind,” I muttered, still too unsure to answer his question directly. “It just doesn’t seem right, Casey.”

I stared at him closely, and he at me. Then he seemed to soften, and letting out a thin sigh as he stepped close to me.

“I know you think you have all these things happening to you for a reason,” he said, “and maybe you’re right. But you don’t know what that reason is, not yet. You can’t save everyone’s lives, even of the people we run into. I shot two guards back when we crossed the border. People are gonna die, Mercy, and no one can stop it… not even you. Maybe you need to consider there’s a more specific reason you can heal people.”

“I think if I can do good, then I ought to,” I replied. “But I’m not sure. I don’t really feel very well after that.”

“Well, have a seat.”

“Qui êtes-vous?” the girl said presently as Casey led me to a chair and sat me down. She had recovered her gun but was no longer threatening us with it.

“I told you, I’m Mercy Edith Spengler,” I explained once more.

“But you’re supposed to be dead…” she continued in French.

“What’s she saying?” Casey asked.

“She’s heard about me, but of course she doesn’t believe it can be me because as far as everyone knows I’m dead.”

Again the door banged open, and snow flurried into the room, the wind picking up and driving it together and whipping it back and forth. Four armed men entered, obviously French Resistance. Two were young while two were likely past forty years old. They carried pistols and rifles, some of French design, and some of German make. Interestingly, while the men initially reacted to Casey and I with raised rifles, the girl immediately moved in between and held up her hands, speaking in rapid French.

“No, don’t shoot!” she said. “They aren’t Nazis! They saved my life.”

The four men came inside and we all gathered around the small table while the girl put more heat on. I did not know any of them, but they were aware of me. In fact, one of the younger ones had been involved in the diversionary attack on the truck that morning, and had heard that two more escapees were on their way across the border. The two young men, probably between nineteen and twenty-five years of age, were called Marcel and Robert. The two older men were Philippe and Jean-Marc. The two older men were brothers, while Marcel was Jean-Marc’s son, and Marcel was Robert’s son-in-law. The girl was Robert’s youngest daughter, named Noelle.

There was much to discuss, and the men were very incredulous about my nature and abilities. Though they had never met me, they had heard of me from the Fruehaufs. Jean-Marc was a leader among the French Resistance, with some political ties and secret allies within the Vichy government. He was a big man but not tall, with a thin mustache and large forehead. His brother Robert was a local farmer, and thinner though no taller, with much more brown hair. The two young men were lighter of hair and eye, as well as lithe and strong, while Noelle was strawberry blonde beneath her hat, and her green eyes were keen. She had composed herself following the ordeal from before.

“So, Mercy,” said Jean-Marc, “you expect us to believe that you were killed and came back from the dead? And you can miraculously heal people of grievous wounds?”

He spoke in rather good English for Casey’s sake, though his other relations were not nearly so educated in the language as he. Noelle, for one, could hardly speak a word of it.

“Look, I’m not trying to be rude, but I don’t have time to convince you,” I observed. “You can think I’m a liar if you want. If someone gets hurt then I’ll prove it to you, but frankly I don’t need anyone to believe me. I just need your help to find Gabriella. She’s my sister and I need to be there for her.”

“Well, that will be difficult,” he replied. “I had originally thought to move Gabriella off continent–sneak her across the channel and into British waters. But things are different now. The Nazis are becoming desperate, cornered animals, with their backs against the wall. We have news that the German invasion in Russia is collapsing, with the Wehrmacht losing ground across the eastern front. It seems Kiev fell back into Soviet hands late last year. With the Americans and British pushing up through Italy, and rumors of a vast Allied invasion somewhere along the coast of France, the Nazis are getting edgy. Hitler has even placed General Rommel in charge of the defenses, which they call the ‘Atlantic Wall.’ For you this means it may be impossible to get off the continent unless you go far afield.”

“Then if you didn’t send her to England, where is she?” I demanded.

“Sometimes the safest place to be is close to an enemy,” he answered. “I sent her to stay with a family in Paris. They left two days ago, going by way of Metz and Reims. It is difficult to travel long distances in France these days, but we manage.”

“Well, I need to get there too then,” I said firmly.

“It is not easy,” Robert put in, his English not nearly so good. “It is hard to follow.”

“What does that mean?” Casey asked.

“These are difficult times,” Jean-Marc shook sighed. “If you want to follow someone fleeing the Reich’s attention, it cannot be done exactly the same. In these times if we send one person through a door it closes behind him. We have to search for other means to prevent exposure and capture.”

“I don’t care what I have to do,” I said more emphatically. “How can I get there?”

“You don’t want to risk cutting back through Germany,” he mused. “I think it would be best for you to take the back roads south of Metz, through Nancy. We have a presence there that’s largely unmolested. We stage raids and sabotage from there, and the hospital there is sympathetic to us.”

“We will make the arrangements,” Robert nodded.

“The Captain might be a bit of a liability, but there are other pilots getting shot down and we rescue as many as we can. If we can get you to Nancy then you have a chance of getting to Paris safely, by one of our less traveled routes. We keep that route reserved for wounded being sneaked to the hospital there.”

“That sounds like the best option, most likely,” Casey agreed, “but what are you doing out here?”

“Waiting for you,” he admitted. “We knew someone was coming across. The Fruehaufs let us know you were coming, but with the storm picking up we were convinced you’d be lost in the blind. So, we went looking for you.”

“So you can get us to Nancy, and from there to Paris?” I demanded.

I watched the two Marquis closely, and while they answered after only the smallest hesitation, the sidelong glance that they shared for that half a second somehow caused me to doubt.

“We’re here to do just that,” Jean-Marc observed. “We’ve gotten hundreds of people out of Germany over the years, all along the border, though it’s true that each crossing is fraught with the same amount of risk for all involved. For now, you should get some sleep. We’ll start for Nancy as soon as the storm dies down.”