Follows "Allies"
Two men sat atop an old Norman bell tower,
staring off to the west. Both seemed insubstantial in the haze of smoke that still
drifted up from the gutted carcasses of two German tanks, the still-churning
cloud of masonry dust surrounding a nearby collapsed building. One man, sitting
cross-legged, gazed fixedly into the sunset from underneath the shade of an old
slouch hat and finely-boned, tapered fingers played with the length of a
spyglass- golden light glinted off the curves of it, sparking its own kind of
fire.
Another man in olive drab reclined against a
wall, one leg dangling off the side of the tower, and smoked a cigarette. He
too watched the sunset, although his hard green eyes seemed to stare right
through the sun and the clouds that cloaked it.
Evening fell slowly, the light from the
setting sun filtering through screens of smoke and haze. The streaks of pink
and orange on the rim of the western sky took on a grayish tinge. If Lieutenant
Chris Larabee noticed it, he didn’t mention anything as he intently studied the
smoke which curled up from the smoldering end of his last cigarette.
“Can’t believe I lost a whole carton,” he
said after taking a careful drag of the cigarette, a rueful smile creasing his
mouth as he exhaled. “Spent God knows how much time and effort gettin’ other guys to trade for ‘em...
and I lose a whole damn carton. There was this guy on my stick who had six
cartons’ worth of the things and, don’t ask me how, but he brought all of ‘em on board.”
Vin Tanner didn’t answer, just tilted his
head to the side and offered the other man a half-grin- if the slight upward
twisting of his lips could even be called a half grin. He returned his
attention to the horizon, watching as the sun sank lower into a thicker blanket
of ash.
“Hell of a day,” Vin
said softly, not looking at Chris.
“Yup.” Chris flicked ash off the side of the belltower, watched as the tiny gray particles drifted away
into nothingness.
“When y’all movin’
out?” Vin’s eyes tracked the ashes into oblivion and
then returned to the skyline.
“The 82nd is supposed to be in here early
tomorrow with reinforcements, according to DeHayes,
and we have to stay here until they get here,” Chris informed the Maquis, who nodded consideringly.
“Buck and I still need to get to our own objectives and find everyone else...
like we have any idea where the hell they are.”
“Ain’t fun bein’
lost.” The quiet, introspective tone of Vin’s voice suggested something more to
the simple statement and, looking over, Chris could see the younger man’s eyes
had turned inward, looking into some private
distance.
Unexpectedly, Chris found himself thinking
about Sarah and Adam. The fire that had taken them from him, the years of
wandering down the straight-and-narrow path of Army discipline with Buck by his
side and despite knowing what awaited him, despite knowing every step he would
take to get there, he still remained completely lost.
“So... uh, what’re you gonna do?” he asked,
desperate to get past the moment. “Gonna hang around here for a bit?”
“Ain’t given it much thought,” Vin replied, shifting around uneasily and still refusing to
meet Chris’s gaze. “Maybe I’ll just stay here behind lines an’ make sure everythin’s gonna be okay for these people- a war don’t
clean itself up.”
Chris heard the longing in the younger man’s
words, but also knew that Vin wouldn’t find it easy to
stay behind while others forged ahead. It didn’t have anything to do with
glory, but it had everything to do with what Vin
thought was right.
Returning to a country to fight, a country in
which a one million Reichsmark reward hung over his
head... that was what Vin thought was right. Or maybe
it was vengeance- still, weren’t they the same things in this case?
Lieutenant Christopher Larabee, paratrooper
and human being, couldn’t say.
Neither could Vin,
Chris suspected- Vin, who continued to stare into the distance as if the answer
to that question was written there.
“You think you’re fighting for the wrong
reasons, Vin?”
Startled blue eyes whipped up to meet earnest
green and then looked away again.
“Hell if I know,” Vin
snorted, half under his breath but loud enough for Chris to hear.
Chris started to speak, surprised at how
easily the words came- he’d never been a big talker in the best of times as
Buck could well attest- but these came just as naturally as his own thoughts,
his own movements. Breathing.
“Everyone has their own reasons for fighting,
Vin... there’s just as many reasons as there are
people, I guess. A couple of the guys in my company were gonna go ear-hunting
the second they hit the ground or whenever they got the opportunity. Some were
in it for glory, convinced they were going to take the fight right to Hilter’s doorstep. Some did it because they figured it was
the right thing to do.”
“You’re talkin’
about ‘em like they’re already dead,” Vin commented.
Chris shrugged, uncomfortably aware now of
the past tense. “Maybe they are,” he said softly, suppressing pangs of worry
and grief for the rest of the men he’d jumped with. “Hope they aren’t.”
“What about Buck?” Vin
asked, and Chris exhaled a sigh of relief at Tanner’s changing the subject.
“I think Buck came along to watch my sorry
ass,” Chris confessed. “We were in the 82nd together, fighting in Sicily when
I... hell, there ain’t an easy way to put it except to say I got damn sick of
him looking over my shoulder. I put in a request to transfer to the 101st. Tried to keep it a secret, but Buck knew one of the
secretaries in the War Office...” Chris trailed off, a grin on his face at the
memory.
He glanced over and saw that Vin was grinning, too, his blue eyes shining in genuine
delight.
“Anyway, he found out about it and put in his
request right on my heels. I begged, pleaded, threatened anyone I could to try
and convince them to keep Buck in Italy. It didn’t work... and here we are.”
“Buck’s a good friend, Chris.”
For some reason, the simple statement struck
Chris with the force of an 88mm shell. He turned the words over and over in his
mind, wondering why he hadn’t seen or acknowledged the essential truth of Vin’s words.
Buck was a good friend.
Buck
is a good friend, Chris reminded himself. Buck...
crazy, womanizing, dirty-minded... goddamn loyal Bucklin Wilmington.
He wondered if Buck had found any wine
cellars yet and briefly wished for a drink, some food, anything tangible he
could share with the young man next to him... something better than words.
Like an idiot, he held out his cigarette. The
light evening breeze picked up a little, whistling through the open chamber of
the belfry, causing the dying embers of the cigarette to flare orange for a
moment only and catching the tip of the ash at the end, blowing it away into the
distance.
Vin looked at it, looked at Chris, smiled, and shook his
head.
“Thanks, Chris, but no thanks,” he said in
his quiet drawl.
“Had me enough ashes to
last a lifetime.” Vin pulled a small flask out of a coat pocket, uncapped it,
and held it out to Chris, who accepted it and took a deep swallow of Calvados.
“Looking forward to the new stuff now,” Vin said
softly, taking the flask back and taking a drink of his own.
THE END