Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

The smell of the cooking meat woke an enormous hunger, but I desired even more to shed my uniform, mud-slimed, grape-stained, bloodied in spots, not to mention sopped and chafing. Gita sent the drunken Bettjer to fetch dry fatigues for both Biddy and me, and we changed in a room in the farmhands' bunkhouse over the barn. My knee was growing stiff, but in my present mood even the discomfort seemed a pleasant souvenir.

"Oh, now look at this," said Bidwell. His pants stopped midway down his shin. I offered to swap, but mine were the same length and Biddy was just as happy to be silly. The Frenchmen were delighted when he appeared in his 'culottes.'

I had never been one to enjoy parties, but it seemed that I hadn't ever before had so much to celebrate. When the rain began again the crowd moved inside, where I drank and repeated the story of the attack for little knots of Frenchmen who gathered around. Almost all of them had assisted somehow over the months the operation had been planned, surveillance agents who fished the Seille to reconnoiter the dump, or silent sentries who'd kept watch once we'd slipped behind the German lines. The size of the explosion was remarked on again and again, tangible proof of the risk and of the triumph.

Eventually, the talk turned to other developments in the war. Patton's principal force was said to be moving against Metz. Many of the French were convinced that the fight would end soon, that in a matter of months la vie normale would resume and the Americans would be returning to the States. In response to questions about my home, I pulled my Kodaks from my wallet and set them on the long planked dining table where I had taken a seat, a bit woozy from the cognac I'd been sipping. The little snaps were all somewhat disfigured from the impression of my house key that I kept beside them, but that did not seem to deter my audience, who made laudatory remarks as they examined the photos of my parents, sister, and baby brother, and of Grace.

I became aware of Gita leaning over my shoulder. She was dressed again as a civilian, in a simple blouse and skirt. She lifted Grace's photo from the table with her customary boldness. Everyone else had treated the pictures as if they were sacred relics that could not even be touched.

"Ta soeur?" Your sister?

"Ma fiancee."

She gave me a direct look, finally a pursed grin. "Mes felicitations," she said and turned away.

A few minutes later, as I was about to replace the snapshots, Biddy plopped beside me, and asked to see them. Slowed by drink, he took a long time with each.

"Not your quality," I told him, "but it helps me remember their faces. You have Kodaks of your family, Biddy?"

He gave his head a solemn shake.

"Now, how could that be," I asked, "a picture-taker like you?"

"Just reckon it's better that way, Lieutenant. I got 'em here and here." He touched his heart, his head. Our exchange in English had isolated us from the Frenchmen. Gideon gathered the pictures up tenderly and handed them to me.

"You come from a big family, Biddy?"

"Not compared to some. Me, Momma, Daddy, two brothers.

"Brothers in the service?"

"No, sir. The older one, he's too old, and my middle brother, he just never got called."

"Volunteered for the Navy?" I knew several fellows who put in for the Navy and still hadn't gone in when I did.

"Nope. Just somethin 'bout him the draft board didn't never take to."

"Four-F?"

"Nothing wrong with his body, not so they ever said." He shrugged, as baffled as the rest of us over the Army's eternal unreason.

I asked if he heard from them.

"My momma. You know how moms are. I must get four letters from her every week. My middle brother, he ain't much for writing, same as my dad. But Daddy, he sends me stuff, you know, magazine clippings and whatnot. It's hard on all of 'em my bein here. My folks got into a big tussle before I went into the service, and they ain't quite set that right yet. You know how families go."

"That I do. My folks still haven't forgiven me about this girl I'm going to marry."

"Now how's that, Lieutenant? She looks like a million 'Ducks."

"And smarter and nicer than she looks. But Grace's family is Episcopalian and I'm Jewish, Biddy." I paused to wonder if I'd said that as frankly since I'd entered the service. That difference didn't sit well in either house."

At the news of my proposal, Horace Morton had exploded. Grace related only that he had denounced me as 'conniving,' but I'm sure 'Jew' had been the next word. Grace's mother, however, took my side, and in time the two women wore down Mr. Morton. Soon I was allowed to enter the great stone house to ask for his daughter's hand. Along the way, to help subdue the histrionics there, I had volunteered to become an Episcopalian so Grace could marry at her church.

Because of my parents' hostility to religious practice, I had convinced myself that this last detail would not greatly concern them. I knew that my mother did not favor my romance with someone so different, but I had dismissed that view as Old World. As I later learned, my father had persuaded Ma not to say more by pointing out that people as highly placed as the Mortons would never let their only daughter marry so far below her class. Now, when I told them about my proposal and my prospective conversion, my mother probably felt she'd been double-crossed. In any event, she stood straight up from the kitchen table, making no effort to contain herself.

"This is madness, Duvid," she said, pointedly using the Yiddish version of my name, as my parents sometimes did. "You think some priest can wave a magic wand and go poo, poo, poo so that instead of a chicken you are now a duck? To people like this, you will always be a shabby Jew and nothing else."

In answer, I described the church service Grace and her mother had envisioned, believing it evidenced their acceptance of me. My mother responded by sobbing.

"I don't go to a synagogue," she cried. "I should go kneel in a church so my son can forget where he comes from? Feh," she said. "Sooner dead. Not for all the gold in Fort Knox. If this is how you marry, you marry without me."

"She means it, Duvid," my father said, then added, "Me, too."

I hesitated even to tell Grace for days, because she would have no way to break this to her mother. Mrs. Morton had taken the side of love, but its culmination in her mind required an organ and afternoon light through the rose window in the nave. With little time to negotiate, we debated eloping, but I simply could not go off to war so deeply at odds with my family. Not quite knowing how it had happened, I shipped out for basic training with Grace still my fiancee, rather than my wife.

I told Biddy the story in shorter strokes, but drunk as he was, it seemed to move him.

"Ain't that terrible, Lieutenant, when folks get goin on like that? Someday people's just gonna be people." He looked pitiably confused and morose, his face contorted as he kept going "Mmm, mmm, mmm" in disapproval. I ended up putting my hand on his shoulder in consolation, and struck by that, Biddy smiled, eyeing me for some time.

"You are all right, Lieutenant. You gotta get outta your head and into the world, but you are definitely all right."

"Thank you, Biddy. You're okay yourself. And we were definitely in the world today."

"Yes, sir. We sure enough were. I ain't never gone see nothin like that again. This bird Martin, Lieutenant. Could be I had him wrong. I think he may be all right, too."

I knew the image of Martin dropping so gracefully into the quick waters of the Seille despite the many perils would retain a hallmarked spot in my memory.

Some of the Frenchmen were circulating now with dinner, which had been set out on a buffet in the kitchen, and I could not wait to eat. Even after the relative grandeur of my meals in Nancy, the lamb was a spectacular treat, even more so to the locals after years of wartime privations. The animal, I was told, had been hidden from the Germans. It had been slaughtered out of season, old enough to be closer to mutton, one farmer said, but still remarkably tasty as far as I was concerned.