Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 (3 page)

Rice couldn't understand the order, but the motion was clear. Slowly, he lowered his rifle and bent his knees as if he were going to sit down. Then he moved quickly, as he had been trained, bringing his rifle forward and pulling the trigger. The rifle kicked back against his shoulder, knocking him off balance, but the bullet hit the German square in the chest and put him down. One shot. One kill.

The other fired his pistol but missed, as Rice fell back into the snow. He put his hand down to keep from falling all the way. He pushed himself up and aimed his rifle again. This time, he spoke.

"Get down! Down, you fucking Kraut!"

He had never screamed so loudly in his life, had never felt such anger and fear. The German must have felt it too, for he dropped the pistol and fell to his knees, arms in the air. "
Bitte nicht
s
chießen!
"

On weak legs, Rice moved forward until he was but a few feet from the man. No, not a man. A boy. He saw that now. A mere child, much younger than Davis. His small, red-chapped face peeking out from underneath a thick, padded helmet. His frail, tiny arms raised in the air, thin and girlish. On his knees he didn't even come up to Rice's waist. He was a boy.

But still a killer
. And as Rice stood there, looking down at the boy, anger overtook his fear. He raised his rifle, aimed it carefully at the boy's chest, and fired.

September, 1635, Grantville

Mary Jo Blackwell and Sandra Sue Prickett sat in Ella Lou Rice's living room, sipping tea and sharing pleasantries. Ella Lou didn't know these women very well, but they came highly recommended by the Grantville library. "They know their stuff," the librarian told her. She would find out the truth of that soon enough.

"More tea?" she asked, holding up the teapot with mildly cold hands. A month after John's death and the air already had a chill of autumn in it. Her old bones could not take the changing weather anymore, but she had opened the window a crack to oblige the hot-blooded youngsters sitting before her.

"Please," Mary Jo said, holding up her cup.

Ella Lou poured then set the teapot down next to the heirloom. "Thank you both for coming." She cleared her throat. "As you know, my husband John Thomas recently died. He was a veteran and served with distinction, being promoted to sergeant during World War Two, and then to Lieutenant afterwards." She picked up the silver heirloom and ran her thumb gently over the worn image on its front. "He got this during the war."

She handed it to Sandra Sue and both ladies studied it, turning it over and over to see the details. "It's pretty old," Sandra Sue said. "It looks like the image of the Virgin Mary, perhaps holding the baby Jesus."

"Yes," said Mary Jo, "and they're looking at something in the sky. Perhaps a cross or the face of God? It's hard to tell. Very religious, though. Catholic, maybe, or Lutheran. But we're not antiquities experts, Mrs. Rice, so don't take our word for the gospel. We're genealogists." Mary Jo laid it back down. "What exactly can we do for you?"

Ella Lou breathed deeply, then said, "Ladies, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm quite old, and not long for this world. I'm trapped in this century against my will. I've tried to adjust. I've tried making friends with down-timers. Some have even moved in nearby and are very friendly. But this is not my world, not my place. My husband has died. Five of our children were left up-time. All that remains is my son Clyde and his wife, my memories, and this." She picked up the heirloom and held it close. "Before I die, I want to honor the memory of my husband and the time that we had together. I want to make an
altruistic
gesture, as my son would say. I want to find the ancestors of the German soldier this heirloom belonged to . . . and give it back to them. Can you help me do that?"

There was a long pause as Mary Jo and Sandra Sue exchanged weary glances. Sandra Sue exhaled as if she has just finished off a good bowel movement. Mary Jo finished her tea in one gulp, crossed her legs, and said, "Well, Mrs. Rice. Ella? Can you tell us a little about this German soldier? What do you know about him and his family?"

Ella Lou placed the heirloom on the table and nodded. "I'll tell you what I know."

December, 1944

Oh, dear God, I've killed a child.

The thought raced through Rice's muddled, confused mind. The shot echoed through the trees and put the German boy down. Yet, despite the ever growing clangor of approaching armor and enemy soldiers, he could not run. He had to know for sure.

Rice fell to his knees and crawled through the snow to the boy. He pulled the boy close, tugged at his thick clothing and ripped the white coat open at the chest. The bullet had gone clean through the coat, leaving a moldering black hole of torn and scorched fibers. Rice's numb fingers clawed at the coat, tearing through it, seeking the place where the bullet hit.

He found it to the left of the heart, a neat wound, blood running down the boy's pale white skin. Rice pushed aside a medallion that hung from a chain around the boy's neck, whipped away the blood, and found the bullet lodged in a rib bone, just below the skin. He breathed relief. Not dead. Not yet, anyway. The boy moaned and tried moving. Rice held him still and cupped a hand over his mouth.

"Shut up! Don't move."

Gunfire erupted somewhere up ahead in the forest. Diesel engines, yelling, screaming, orders barked in German. Rice thought he could see a line of figures moving towards them. He turned and looked the other way. Perhaps if he ran, he could outrun the advance. Perhaps . . . if he were lucky. But life had never dealt John Thomas Rice a winning hand. There was nowhere to go.

He grabbed the boy's arm and dragged him toward a pile of brush and broken tree trunks. The boy winced in pain and yelled something indiscernible. Rice ignored him, fell back to his knees, and pushed his way underneath the debris.

Another push and they fell into the remains of an old foxhole, wet and muddy, stinking with shit. It stunk like death and dried blood too. Rice swallowed hard to hold down the nausea. He shook his head clear. There would be time later for getting sick, if he survived.

He pulled the boy in all the way and pressed his hand over his mouth. The boy's eyes were open, wide with fear and pain. Rice looked into those eyes. This wasn't a soldier, he thought. This was nothing more than a boy.

"Keep quiet."

For the next several minutes, all he could hear was breathing, heavy with exhaustion, heavy with doubt and terror. Rice found that he was just as anxious as the boy; perhaps more so, for above them, line after line of German soldiers passed by. One slip of his hand and the boy would cry out, and he'd be dead. Rice realized he was pushing down on the boy's mouth too tightly, pushing too hard against his nose. "Sorry," he whispered. He loosened his grip.

The boy gasped for air but kept quiet.

The German soldiers filed away and all that remained were echoes of firefights and far-off artillery fire. Rice removed his hand and lay back. If the boy screamed, it would hardly matter, and he couldn't very well keep his hand in place forever. Rice was behind enemy lines now; it was only a matter of time before he were found, killed, or died alone like whoever had died in this gross hole already.

"You speak English?" Rice asked.

"
Ja,
" the boy coughed. "A little."

"Good, because I'll be damned if I'm going to speak your language. I don't know it too good anyway, and every word sounds like shouting. You got a knife?"

The boy coughed again, nodded, and motioned weakly at his boot.

Rice reached into the boot and found a small blade, nicely crafted, slim and sharp. He held it in the faint light bleeding through the dead canopy of leaves and branches above them. He recognized the markings: a swastika on the grip; a
Reichszeugmeisterei
inscription on a blade with no blood groove
.
He'd seen a knife like this once before.

"
Hitlerjugend
?"

The boy nodded slowly.

"I thought your unit was smashed at Normandy."

"
Ja
, many dead. But not all."

Rice huffed and shook his head. "I should kill you now, you brain-washed little fool. But I've already lost one boy today; I'll be damned if I lose another, no matter what color your uniform is."

Rice leaned over the boy and opened his coat. The bleeding was not as bad as before, but it was still flowing. "I'm not good at this kind of business, but you learn a thing or two about gunshot wounds in the Pennsylvania hills. I've got to get that bullet out now or you're going to die. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded as his eyes closed. He was weak and getting weaker.

Rice reached into a pocket on the inside of his coat and pulled out a white handkerchief, nicely embroidered with tiny red and yellow flowers. He sighed. "I got this in France. I was going to give it to Ella Lou when I got back home, but I guess she won't mind me using it to save a life." He placed it near the wound and grabbed the boy's hand and pressed it against the soft, silk fabric. "Now, you push down as hard as you can, grit your teeth, and try to think about something pleasant. This is going to hurt."

As Rice began cutting an incision around the wound, he said, "I don't understand how this bullet got lodged like this. At the range I fired, it should have torn right through your chest like it did your partner." Rice shook his head. "I don't know . . . must have had a bad ammo load. That's happened to me before. You're one lucky little sot."

The boy gritted his teeth against the pain. "
Ja
, maybe." He reached feebly for his chest and grabbed the medallion that lay there. He held it forward with thumb and index finger. "But this helped."

Rice stopped cutting and took the medallion. It lay somewhere between the size of a silver dollar pancake and a silver dollar. An heirloom of some kind, maybe, tarnished and worn in many places. He squinted to try to make out the pattern on the front of it: some religious symbol with a cross and the faint outline of a face. He turned it over and saw what the boy was talking about.

The bullet had hit it near the bottom, chipping away a piece and leaving a gash that cut through some phrase that had been etched into it years ago. Rice tried to make out what was left of the words, but he could only discern
Ich
.

"I . . . what?" Rice asked. "What did the rest of it say?"

The boy did not answer. He had passed out.

****

The Black Dragons roared all night.

Rice heard the distinctive sound of the American 240mm heavy artillery, and it was music to his ears; that is, until some of the shells strayed into their area and rocked the ground below them. Rice did everything he could not to scream. Mighty flashes of heat and light broke through the lattice-work of tree limbs that covered their foxhole. Rice shook with fear, but held himself close to the boy, giving him as much warmth as possible. He had covered them both with a thin blanket he had pulled from his pack and had even piled up old, dried leaves over their legs for extra protection against the night freeze.

The boy lay at his side, moaning quietly, feverish and fitful, but alive. The bullet had come out easier than expected, and Ella Lou's handkerchief had stopped the blood, which he had placed tightly against the wound with the aid of a bandage from his med-kit. Nothing now but uninterrupted sleep could do the rest. Rice had checked the pockets of the boy's coat for anything else: matches, a flashlight, an extra blanket, a morphine syrette, food. Nothing. The boy didn't even have a satchel. His commander had put him in the field with nothing more than a coat, a gun, and a knife. Rice huffed. This war was over; the Germans just didn't know it yet.

The next morning the boy awoke and was hungry. Rice gave him some rations. He gave him a drink from his canteen too, then checked the wound. The area around the broken rib was red, raw, swollen, but for the most part clean. "I think you'll live," he said, laying back. He winced. The shrapnel bits in his neck were beginning to hurt badly. The blood had stopped, but the skin was tender and smelled awful.

"Would you like my blade?" The boy said, holding up his youth knife. "You have something in your neck. It looks infected."

Cautiously, Rice took the knife and wiped it against his pant leg. "What do you know about it?"

"My grandfather was a surgeon in the Great War."

"
Hm.
My grandfather was a pig farmer from Ohio."

Rice pushed against one of the larger pieces lodged in his neck. He then placed the knife blade beneath it and yanked quickly. The piece burst through the skin and flew out. He pushed the collar of his coat against the blood and said, "What's your name, boy?"

"Oswin, sir. Oswin Bauer."

"John Thomas Rice. Don't call me sir. I'm a private like you, and not much older I guess. How old are you anyway?"

"Fourteen."

Jesus!
"Well, Oswin, when you get back home, you can tell your family and friends that you bested an American, left him for dead in a foxhole. You can embellish the story if you like. I won't tell."