The Hesitant Hero Read online

  “Whoa there, Crazy,” he said as he started to lead the horse off the road.

  “It’s the Nazis,” Antoine cried as he got close.

  Tyler looked ahead and saw an open car crest the hill and knew it was too late to hide. “Everybody take it easy.”

  Jolie was paralyzed by the sight. They were caught out in the open, and she watched helplessly as the black car slowed down. There were four soldiers in it, she saw, two privates in the front seat and two officers in the back. The car came to a stop next to the group, and the officers got out, the younger one pointing his Luger.

  Jolie glanced at the children to make sure they were all right after almost being thrown out of the wagon, and she saw Rochelle pull Marie tight against her chest.

  “Stop where you are,” one of the men ordered in very bad French. “What’s your name?” he asked Tyler.

  Tyler and Jolie had discussed several days ago what they would do if they were caught. The only papers Tyler had were his own, which showed him to be an American citizen, so he spoke in English. “My name is Tyler Winslow.”

  “You are . . . an American?” the older officer asked with almost no accent.

  “Yes.”

  “Your papers.”

  Tyler fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the papers. He wished ardently that he had Marvel’s pistol in his pocket, but it was in the wagon.

  The senior officer took the papers and studied them. “What are you doing in France, Mr. Winslow?”

  “I am a painter. I came to France to study art.”

  “I am Major Hermann Dietrich. This is Lieutenant Werner Braun.” Dietrich looked down at the papers again and at the rest of the group. “This is your family?”

  “No, we’re not related,” Jolie said. “My name is Jolie Vernay, and my home is here in France. In Ambert.”

  “And these are your children?”

  “They are orphans, Major,” Jolie said. “I was a physician at the orphanage in our village.”

  “They’re obviously lying, Major Dietrich,” the lieutenant said. There was a hardness in him and a chill in his blue eyes.

  “They probably are.”

  “I’m an American citizen,” Tyler insisted. “All I’m trying to do is get back to America.”

  The man studied Tyler critically and then turned his attention to the children. “We must take them in for questioning,” he told the lieutenant. “I do not like this.”

  “Yes, Major,” Lieutenant Braun agreed. “But how will we arrange it?”

  “I will leave you here, along with Krupke. The driver and I will go on ahead. There are trucks at our rendezvous up ahead. I will send one of them back for you and the prisoners.”

  Braun laughed. “Perhaps they will try to escape.”

  “Now, Werner, none of your tricks.” Dietrich smiled and then turned to speak to Krupke, barking a crisp order. The soldier got out of the car carrying a rifle.

  “It should not be too long, nephew,” Dietrich said to the lieutenant.

  The major turned to leave but then stopped abruptly. “Why did you leave Ambert with these children?”

  “The orphanage is closing,” Jolie said, thinking fast, “so we are trying to find homes for all the children. We’re taking this group to stay with a relative.”

  “What relative is this?”

  Jolie made up a name. “Their uncle, Philippe Cordon, and his wife.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “On the coast in the village of Fécamp.”

  “That will be easy enough to check.” He holstered his pistol. “Watch them carefully, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, Major Dietrich.”

  Dietrich got into the car and snapped an order, and the car pulled away at once.

  The lieutenant looked over at the soldier and winked. “Keep your rifle ready, Hans. You may need it. They look like dangerous characters to me. Maybe spies.”

  The soldier, a heavyset man with a broad, brutal face, grinned. “Ja, Lieutenant Braun. I wish they would try it.”

  Braun walked up to the wagon and said, “What is your name?” speaking to Rochelle.

  “Rochelle.”

  “Rochelle what?”

  “Rochelle Cohen.”

  “Cohen.” Braun stared at her and lost his smile. “You are a Jew?”

  She shot an agonizing glance at Jolie, and when Rochelle did not answer, Braun grabbed her arm. “Answer me. Are you a Jew?”

  “Yes,” Rochelle cried. She was still holding the baby, and Braun kept his grip. “Are the rest of you Jews too? Speak up, boy!”

  “Yes, I’m a Jew,” Damien said defiantly.

  “So you are taking Jews to a place of safety,” he accused.

  Braun released Rochelle and went to stand in front of Jolie. “What did you say your name was? It’s Cohen, I believe.”

  “No, my name is Jolie Vernay, as my papers will prove.”

  “Well, if you’re a physician, I must say you’re a pretty one. But I do not believe anything you French say.”

  He grabbed Jolie’s dress and pulled her away from the group. “You come with me. We know how to treat you French girls.”

  She cried out and tried to hold her dress together, but Braun only laughed.

  When the lieutenant saw Tyler start to run after him, he waved his gun and said, “Shoot the man if he moves again, Private.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  Jolie tried to fight him, but the German was many times stronger than she was.

  Tyler threw himself at the lieutenant but wasn’t prepared for the force of the butt of the rifle in his back. He fell to the ground, face in the dirt, choking for breath.

  He heard the private laughing, and when he caught his breath, he saw Jolie being dragged by the powerful lieutenant straight toward the trees. Tyler sprang to his feet and grabbed at the soldier’s rifle, yanking it from the man’s hands.

  Taken off guard, the private yelled, “Lieutenant!”

  Tyler whirled and leveled the rifle, but even as he did he saw that Lieutenant Braun’s Luger was pointed in his direction. Tyler dove to the ground and immediately heard the bullet strike the German private. The man uttered a single coughing moan as he fell to the ground next to Tyler.

  Tyler scrambled onto his knees and took aim at the lieutenant, but Jolie was in the way. “Get out of the way, Jolie!” he shrieked.

  As she threw herself to the ground and rolled away from the German, Tyler wasted no time pulling the trigger. He heard the explosion and felt the recoil of the rifle, but at almost the same time felt a horrible pain in his forehead and fell to the grass.

  Jolie saw the lieutenant fly onto his back, his arms flailing, and cried “Tyler!” as she saw him fall as well.

  “Stay here,” Rochelle told the younger children, who had crouched down in the wagon when bullets had started flying. Marie was screaming at the top of her lungs. Rochelle and Antoine ran quickly to where Tyler lay still.

  “He’s dead!” Antoine whispered.

  Jolie ran to join them, panic filling her, and knelt beside him. She put her ear to Tyler’s mouth and was relieved to feel hot breath and see his chest rise and fall. “No, he’s alive,” she breathed.

  “He’s hurt pretty bad, isn’t he?” Antoine asked.

  Jolie gently wiped the blood from Tyler’s forehead so she could examine his wound. “He’s a very lucky man. It looks like the bullet just grazed him. Still, he’s going to need stitches to stop the bleeding.”

  “What will we do?” Rochelle asked.

  “First of all, we need to try to stop this bleeding. Do either of you have a clean handkerchief?”

  Rochelle pulled one from the pocket of her dress.

  Jolie showed Antoine how to hold it gently but firmly to Tyler’s forehead.

  “They’ll be coming back,” Antoine said. “If we don’t get away quickly, they’ll shoot us all.”

  Jolie was trying to think. She got up and walked over to Private Krupke. She knelt down
and probed for his pulse but shook her head when she felt nothing. She repeated the procedure with the other German. The major called him “nephew.” That’s strange that two family members would be working together.

  Her mind was swimming as she returned to Tyler’s side. She checked his wound again. “He may be unconscious for a long time. It’s hard to tell.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Antoine said urgently.

  “I know. We’ve got to leave right away.”

  “Right now!” Antoine insisted.

  “I know we must hurry, but I don’t know what to do.” She looked up and said, “We must pray to God for guidance.”

  Antoine stared at her. “I don’t believe in God.”

  “I do,” Yolande said.

  Rochelle summoned a smile, although she knew her hands were unsteady and her heart was beating fast. “I do too,” she said.

  Damien beamed a huge smile at her. “You do, Rochelle?” he asked.

  “I do now,” she affirmed.

  “Damien, will you pray with me?” Jolie asked.

  He nodded his head.

  “And you, Rochelle?”

  She nodded her head also.

  “All right. Let’s pray.” The three children dropped to their knees around Jolie as she bowed her head and began to pray aloud. “Lord, we are helpless, but you can do all things. I ask that you help us find our way out of this frightening situation. Give us the wisdom to do the right thing, and deliver us from this evil! We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

  She opened her eyes. “Now,” she said firmly, “we will believe and trust in God, our Deliverer!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A Place to Hide

  Jolie’s heart had been filled with doubts and her mind had been swept with confusing thoughts. But as she prayed, an inexplicable peace had come over her. “We have to get Tyler into the wagon and leave at once,” she told the children.

  “Yes, that is what we’ve gotta do,” Antoine agreed. He ran over and untied Crazy and then led the horse, still pulling the wagon, back until the rear of the wagon was even with the wounded man. “He’s a big man. I don’t know if we can lift him.”

  “Together we can,” Damien said. “I’ll help and you too, Rochelle. Give the baby to Yolande.”

  Jolie directed them all to positions around Tyler, with Rochelle and Damien on his legs and Antoine with Jolie on his upper body. “Be very careful to keep him level and not bump him into the wagon. I don’t want to make his head wound any worse.”

  The four of them leaned over and Jolie said, “When I say go, everyone lift. Are you ready?” She waited for their assent, then took a deep breath. “All right—go!”

  Jolie had not realized how hard it would be to lift an inert man. But somehow they managed to get his upper body onto the wagon, and then she quickly went around to help the two younger children push Tyler’s legs into the wagon. He uttered a grunt during the shift and then grew still again.

  “Quick, let’s go!” she cried. She was troubled at the sight of Tyler’s pale face, but there was no time to do anything else. “Everyone into the wagon.”

  “But where’ll we go?” Antoine asked. “The truck might be back any minute. The soldiers will find us.”

  “We have to hide someplace very quickly.” A plan leaped into her mind. “They’ll be expecting us to head for the coast, but we won’t. We’ll go back from the direction we just came, toward the south.”

  “But we might run into other Germans,” Rochelle said faintly. “What will we do then?”

  “If we hear any vehicles coming, we’ll pull off and hide until they pass us, and we’ll stay there until dark.”

  “They’ll be searching everywhere for us,” Antoine said.

  “I know, but God will help us.”

  Expecting every moment to see German vehicles coming down the road, Jolie drove Crazy with all the speed she could get out of him.

  As she drove, she kept turning around to check on Tyler. After they had gone a couple kilometers, she pulled over to the side and jumped into the back. “Rochelle, we need to use a couple of those blankets for Tyler. Can you move off them for a minute?”

  Rochelle, with the baby on her lap, had found the stack of blankets made a comfortable seat. Jolie grabbed two of them and quickly arranged them under and around Tyler’s head to protect him from the constant motion.

  “Even with this extra cushioning, I’m a little worried about jolting Tyler around like this. The next time we see a place to hide, I’m going to take it.”

  About a half hour later, Antoine said, “Look, there’s a house over there. See that little road that leads to it?”

  “We’ll take that.” Jolie turned Crazy down the lane. Darkness was falling, for which she was thankful, but she knew they couldn’t assume these people would help them. There were Nazi sympathizers in France, she knew that much. Not many, but it only took one.

  “What if they won’t help us?” Rochelle asked, fear in her voice.

  “I think we have to take our chances.”

  “What if they won’t hide us?”

  “Then we’ll keep going.”

  “If the Germans stop here, they might betray us,” Antoine said.

  “We have to trust them,” Jolie insisted.

  As they got closer, they could see a man was sitting on a chair leaning back against the house. There was a barn behind the house, and over to the right a field where sheep were grazing in the gathering darkness. It was a peaceful, idyllic-looking place, but there was nothing peaceful in Jolie’s spirit, for she knew they were in a desperate situation.

  The man stood up and watched the wagon approach, and Jolie told the group, “None of you say a word, you understand? Let me do the talking.”

  She pulled up in front of the house, and the man came slowly toward them. He had a pipe in his mouth and wore the roughest of clothing, including an old hat that had seen much bad weather.

  Even before Jolie could speak, a woman came out of the house wiping her hands on her apron. A younger woman followed her out of the house.

  “Bonsoir,” she greeted. “Who are you? What are you doing here this time of the day?”

  “My name is Jolie Vernay,” she said. “My friend and I are trying to get these children away from the Nazis. They caught us and my friend was shot. We need a place to hide.” She saw shock run across the man’s face and she prepared herself to hear a rejection.

  “He was shot?” the man asked. He came forward and looked over the edge of the wagon. “Is he dead?”

  “No. I’m a doctor, and I can treat his wound, but the Germans will come looking for us.”

  “How did you get away from them?”

  “We had to kill one of ’em,” Antoine said importantly. “The other one was already dead—his friend shot him by mistake.”

  Jolie wished that Antoine had obeyed her order to keep silent, but then she thought, It might be just as well to tell the whole truth. “These children are from an orphanage in Ambert. If the Germans catch them, their lives will be in danger. Will you help us in the name of God?”

  The younger woman came over to the wagon and peered at the children huddled on the seat and in the back, taking in each face methodically. The attractive woman was in her late twenties or early thirties, Jolie thought.

  She turned and said to the older couple, “We must take them in.”

  The two had a quick conversation and then the man nodded. “We will help you all we can, but you realize this is a dangerous situation, don’t you? For all of us.”

  “I’m very sorry to put you in this situation. You understand if the Germans find us and know you’ve helped us, they will execute you. They will have no mercy on you.” She watched their faces and saw no fear in them.

  “The filthy Boche will do anything,” the man said. “I fought them in the last war, and I will fight them again. If they come for you, we will tell them nothing.”

  The young woman appeared to be think
ing hard. “We must take them to the old house.”

  “Yes, Annette,” the man said at once. “That is good. You will have to hide the wagon too.”

  “Where is the old house?” Jolie asked.

  “We used to live in another house about half a kilometer back there,” the young woman said as she pointed. “We built the new house closer to the road.”

  “I can’t even see the other one,” Jolie commented. “It sounds perfect.”

  “Yes, the area is overgrown now. No one would think to go back there. The roof leaks, but it’s sound enough. I don’t think the Germans will go that far into the woods.”

  “Quickly,” the young woman said. “We must go.”

  Without another word, she headed off behind the house. The older woman called out as Jolie urged the horse after her. “We will bring you something to eat and our first-aid supplies for the sick man.”

  “Merci, madame,” Jolie cried out.

  As the wagon caught up to the woman who was striding quickly through the pasture, she turned to Jolie and said, “By the way, my name is Annette Fortier.”

  “And my name is Jolie Vernay. We are so grateful to you and your family.”

  Yolande was bouncing as the wagon ran over the uneven ground, but she cried triumphantly to Antoine, who was holding her to keep her from falling out, “Didn’t I tell you that if we prayed, God would help us?”

  He grunted but made no other comment.

  Nature had definitely taken its course on the land between the new house and the old house. Weeds had grown knee-high, and bushes and saplings had taken over much of the land. As the wagon bumped over the little-used lane, Jolie again worried about Tyler’s head bumping but hoped the blankets would give it adequate protection.

  The small house was nearly hidden by brush and dwarfed by two huge trees in front of it. Jolie pulled the wagon as close as she could to the door and then called Crazy to a stop.

  Annette opened the door and put a brick in front of it to hold it open. Jolie instructed the children to take all the food and blankets into the house and then to return to help with Tyler. The children quickly tumbled from the wagon, their arms full of supplies.