Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

It is as simple to the Nazis as black and white: Jew or not Jew.

How terrible, Rainy thinks, that her religion, her tribe, had never been as meaningful to her as it is now. She’d never denied her background; she just didn’t really care. She’d seen herself as above ancient tribalism. She’d seen herself as perhaps part of, but not defined by, her nominal faith. All her grandmother’s stories of pogroms in Poland, all the casual anti-Semitism encountered in America, all the Stars of David given to her at birthdays, the rituals of Yom Kippur and Passover, the eye-rolling repetition of “Next year in Jerusalem,” none of it had made her really care, none of it had made her lock her fate to that of her people, or even to think of Jews as her people.

But that was done. That was over. Jew or not Jew?

Jew.

“I never was much of a Jew,” she says at last. “The war . . . the Nazis . . .”

Philippe sighs. “I never was much of a Frenchman. But the war . . . the Nazis . . .”

Tears come to blur Rainy’s sight. She’s not a person who cries, and doesn’t want to be seen to cry, so she stays behind him, choking off sobs that threaten to worsen, to get out of control.

The grisly killings at the café, the cold-blooded execution of Marie, the terrible memories of captivity . . . She knows now, deep down in her bones, that there is no going back, no erasing or forgetting. These things will be with her as long as she lives, and they are so huge, so overpoweringly sad and wrong and yet necessary that she knows her mind will be chewing over each act forever. She knows that she will never again be who she once was.

Rainy Schulterman, clever young girl with lots of ideas, rest in peace.

So much lost.

They walk deeper into the woods. The leaves drip and the pine needles squish under their feet, but heat is rising and with it humidity. It’s going to be a long, hot day.

Rainy is in no way an outdoorsy type and instinctively dislikes the woods. But Philippe finds a fallen log and they stretch out on it and exhaustion carries Rainy quickly to sleep. She wakes after only a few hours when her stomach rumbles. Her mouth and throat are parched. She manages a few hours of on-and-off sleep until Philippe also wakes.

“I don’t suppose you brought us breakfast?” Philippe says.

“No, and I’m starving. A glass of water would be nice, too.”

“That at least I can provide. The river is just . . .” He looks around, peers up at the sun for direction, and points.

Sure enough, the river is only a ten-minute walk. It’s a narrow stream, no more than a dozen feet across, the banks thick with trees and bushes crowding in to reach the water. Rainy pushes through and kneels by the river, drinking her fill.

“We can follow the river if you don’t mind brambles.” Philippe glances skeptically at her shoes.

“I never thought I’d miss combat boots,” Rainy says. “Where’s this river go?”

“Why to Oradour, of course. This is the River Glane.”

They follow the Glane as Rainy’

s shoes slowly come apart. She tears her coat—a burden anyway in the stifling heat—into strips and binds them around shoes and feet, which helps somewhat, but makes stepping over branches and pushing through thickets even harder.

After a very long walk, a break to eat a few berries they pick along the way, and more walking, Philippe ducks down and motions Rainy to do the same. He points, and she sees a thin filament snaking from an unseen bank out into the river.

“Someone is fishing.”

They creep closer, and then Philippe says, “It’s Bernard! He’s a boy from my village.”

“Can you trust him?”

“I trust no one anymore,” he says sharply. Then, softening, “But Bernard is playing hooky from school, it seems. He will find us food for fear I will tell his mother—she is a holy terror. And, who knows, he may have fish. Holà! Bernard!”

Bernard turns out to be an eleven-year-old boy with a round head and close-cropped mouse-brown hair. And yes, he has fish. And he has cleverly brought along a ham sandwich, which Philippe appropriates in the name of the maquis.

Bernard mourns the loss of two of his fish and the sandwich, but he’s a lively boy with a conspiratorial air about him, and clearly hiding in the woods with fugitive maquis is more fun than doing multiplication tables in school.

“How far are we from the village?” Philippe asks him. “It’s been a long time since I wandered this river.”

“Oh, it’s just there,” Bernard says, waving vaguely.