12 September 2009
Music Box Dancer--Epilogue
)Published on September 12th, 2009 @ 08:02:12 am, using 1009 words, 105 views
[We’ve started another story here for your diversion. Go here to catch the Prologue and other chapters if you missed them.]
EPILOGUE
They had never run so fast, so wildly, even Eric. They might fall, each of them did, but they would hurry back up, legs flying again. The wind seemed to push them along, carry them at times. All they could hear were their rapid hearts and their heavy breaths as their feet thundered up and down the uneven ground.
They had reached the second hill when they heard it. Machine gun fire. They all stopped in their tracks for an instant, Anne-Marie’s hand rising to her throat, her mouth gaping. Then she shouted, “Come, come,” and they were flying again up the hill.
At the farmhouse the farmer and the woman also heard the shots from the security of the barn. Their eyes immediately whirled to each other. “Let’s go,” he told her.
She thought for a moment, desperately. “No,” she answered finally, “not yet.”
“I’m not going to wait to be caught,” he said harshly.
“Then go,” she told him. “The shots are still away. There is still a chance.” She bore her eyes into him. “I will wait alone.”
He stared at her angrily but didn’t leave.
The children were slowing. The sound of gunfire, all kinds, had chased them up the second hill and on down. They still had the last hill to climb, though, and their legs didn’t seem able. Eric, in particular, wanted to rest. He was starting to cry. Jean-Paul and Claudette didn’t want to argue with him.
“Keep going,” Anne-Marie pleaded angrily. “Just over this hill.”
“No,” Jean-Paul groaned, shaking his head. He was bent over, hands on knees, trying to breathe. “Let us rest,” he said, panting.
“Please, Anne-Marie,” Claudette begged breathlessly. “Just for a minute. Please?”
“No,” Anne-Marie cried. “We do not have minutes. We have to go. We cannot stop for anything.”
“We cannot go on now,” Jean-Paul told her harshly, looking up at her.
She rushed to him and, taking his shoulders, threw him roughly onto the side of the hill. “They you stay,” she shouted. “And let the Germans have you. You will deserve it. But I will not. I . . . .” She paused. The shooting had stopped. She turned her head back behind them, up the slope of the second hill. Tears welled instantly, without thought. “GO!!!” she abruptly screamed at Jean-Paul, literally lifting him to his feet. They all began to run again up the hill, as fast as they could.
“Woman, it is time,” the farmer told her. “They will be here any moment.”
They were outside the barn now. He was trying to flee, turned toward the tree-line and hills behind the barn, but her eyes were on the other slope. She wouldn’t go with him.
“We have to go,” he said gruffly, insistently.
She was nodding but not moving. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
He growled and went to her. He took her shoulders in his big hands and began to pull her away. “Just one more minute,” she said. “We have one more minute.”
“No,” he responded, shaking his head and pulling her along. “There is no time.”
She sighed deeply and nodded again. “Those poor children,” she said, mainly to herself. “To get so close.” She crossed herself. “That poor man.”
She was about to turn away completely when she saw them. “Stop,” she exclaimed and broke away a few steps. Heads, little heads, were bobbing up over the edge of the hill, growing into bodies, children’s bodies, running at full speed, looking as if they would fall with each stride. They had made it.
“Henri,” she cried, hurrying toward them. “Look. The children.” She waved back at him. “Come. We must help them.”
The farmer cursed briefly but rushed forward, rifle in hand, with her to meet the children as they flung themselves down the long slope. They reached them near the base of the hill. “Come,” the woman half-laughed, half-exclaimed as she embraced Jean-Paul and Eric. “Come. We must hurry now.”
“The American?” the farmer asked as he lifted Claudette into his arms and turned them toward the barn, the cave, and safety.
Anne-Marie stopped and looked back up the hill. The air was silent except for the wind. She swallowed and bit her lower lip. “He will not be here,” she then answered, evenly, in control.
The woman nodded and picked up Eric without commenting. They began to run again, Jean-Paul and Anne-Marie keeping pace with the adults, side-by-side. They ran past the barn toward the hill and the trees. “There is a cave up here,” the woman told them breathlessly as they reached the hill and started to climb. “It is hidden well. We will be safe.”
Anne-Marie nodded. Then she noticed. Claudette in the farmer’s arms. Her coat. The pocket. The envelope. It was gone. “No!!” she cried. “Claudette! The envelope!”
Claudette frowned sadly. “I fell down,” she said softly. “It came out. The wind took it. It blew away. I am sorry, Anne-Marie.”
She stared back at the long sloping hill, clenching her fists tightly. “I have to find it,” she said. “I have to go back.”
The farmer took her arm. “Don’t be ridiculous, girl,” he told her, pulling her up the grade into the trees. “Come on. Now.”
Her gaze was still on the slope, but she slowly climbed the hill with them. She nodded at last. “I remember,” she whispered at the wind. “I will never forget.”
The wind seemed to answer. It sang and moaned and whisked along, through the trees, across the grass, over the hills, carrying her message away. In the distance a wrinkled, white rectangular piece of paper whipped through that air, jerking back and forth on the current, as if dancing, to a special tune of its own, bright, cheerful, but with an odd touch of melancholy, a tune that clung to the mind
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