Third draft – Chapter 1
1.
Aries hated this shit.
He hated the flies, the uncertainty, the goddamn artillery, and the waiting. Always the waiting.
“Look alive!” yelled the sergeant at him and a skinny private next to him.
Aries, a big, broad man, sat at the base of the pock-marked building, just at the top of Omaha Beach. The rifle seemed almost too small for him. He had fiery red hair and piercing green eyes – “a typical Irishman with a typical Irish temper” you would think just by looking at him. He had lost most of that over the years, thank the gods.
The sergeant glared down at them. “What are you waiting for?”
Aries used the rifle to help him stand to his full six foot five height, and ended up looking down at the sergeant. “You go first, Sarge.”
The sergeant shrieked, “You’re not the one giving orders here, soldier!”
Aries glanced at the private next to him. They hadn’t even exchanged names in the chaos that had been Omaha Beach. Both the private and the sergeant were unfamiliar faces to him. Aries could see by the patch on their arm that he was in the right church – division – but wrong pew – regiment.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Aries said, and glanced around the corner. He pulled his head back, and boldly stepped out. Nobody fired at him.
The sergeant said, “See that wasn’t so –” The crack of a shot, the gurgle of words stuck in a man’s throat, and the private and Aries scrambled away from the building without looking back. Bullets flew around them as the private grabbed a hold of Aries’s shirt, dragging him toward the ground, but Aries hooked his arm around the other man’s, yanking him up, and leaping into an open door. They dove to the floor. The firing stopped.
They panted, looking at each other. “Thanks,” the private said.
“Aries,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Steinbrook,” said the private, shaking it.
“Jewish?”
“No. Lutheran.”
“What regiment?”
“Sixteenth.”
“I was in the fourth.”
“Hell of a mess down at the beach.”
“No shit.”
They paused, getting up, avoiding the window. Steinbrook said, “Think that sarge’s dead?”
“For certain.”
“Shit.” The two men examined the two-room house, with a set of stairs that led up. They went up the stairs, secured the area, found more stairs. The house had three floors, so they got to the top floor and peered out the window. No one shot at them.
“We’re snipers now,” said Aries with a grin. “Look out that window.”
Steinbrook did. “All clear.”
“Wait, I think I see our boys.”
Steinbrook came rushing over to Aries’ window, and looked out to see an army of men coming their way down a rutted path. “All we have to do is wait.”
2.
“Private John Joseph Aries,” said Captain Kilguss, examining the big Irishman standing in a salute stance before him. “And Private Walter Nicholas Steinbrook. At ease.”
The two men both moved their hands behind their back, spread their legs out a little, and looked at the captain.
“So you took this village by yourself?”
“Seems that way, sir,” said Aries. “We were looking for the rest of the division, sir.”
“You got pretty far ahead without getting shot. I saw a sergeant from the fifth regiment down there, shot through the throat.”
“Yes, sir, he was giving us orders when he was shot, sir.”
The captain looked between the two of them. Neither man looked down or ashamed. “What kind of orders?”
“To go around the corner of the building, sir.”
“You did.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kilguss focused his attention on Steinbrook. “And you?”
“I just followed Aries, sir. He seemed to know what he was doing.”
Aries puffed up his chest, almost unconsciously. He damn well better know what he was doing. He’d done this hundreds of times.
“Did he, now?” Kilguss smiled. “I guess a man is in need of a promotion…corporal.”
Aries smiled also, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“I’ll get that paperwork filled out right quick, as soon as I find the paperwork to do it.” He motioned with his hand. “In the meantime, go steal a stripe from the dead sergeant or something. We don’t have a quartermaster right now.”
“Understood, sir.”
“In fact, I don’t have an assistant, either.” He looked at Steinbrook. “What did you do before you came here, son?”
“I was a baker for my dad’s bakery.”
“You know how to read and write?”
“Yessir.”
“Good, you’ll be my assistant, PFC, until I get someone from division. Think you can handle that?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Good. Dismissed, both of you. Steinbrook, find me Lieutenant Waffle. He should be with the second regiment about three streets down. Black hair, sounds like he’s from New York.”
Both men almost skipped out of the house that the captain used for his command headquarters. “Congratulations,” said Aries, shaking Steinbrook’s hand.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m not much of a gopher.”
“You’ll do fine. Go find that guy. I’m gonna see if I can find the rest of my company.”
3.
Soline Elise Paquet stood outside of the door to her tiny three room house, one of the very few that hadn’t been touched by Allied bombs. She unemotionally watched the troops march by. “Girl,” called her father, “What is going on? The Germans?”
“No, father, Americans.” She turned and went back into the house. More troops, more men, it wouldn’t make a difference or matter. They were all occupiers.
“Americans!” cried her brothers, getting up.
She put her hands down to try and hold them back. “They look just like the Germans,” she said. “Go sit down.”
Someone banged on her door. She sighed, turned and answered it. Standing before her was a big man, with red hair and eyes of jade. He stared at her, his mouth slowly dropping open.
Finally, he looked down and removed his hat. “Ma’am,” he said, and then in broken French, “vous vive?”
Even though the man was handsome he was still an occupier. She had no room in her heart for a man, especially a soldier who was going to be here for maybe one day or less. She folded her arms across her chest and answered him in French, “I live here with my father and my three brothers.”
“Girl!” yelled her father.
“I’m talking!” she yelled back.
“Insolent bitch!” She heard her father start to rock in the other room. He couldn’t get out of the chair without her help. And even if he got out, he couldn’t get far because of his blindness. She turned from the soldier and stormed into the other room where her father leaned back and forth in the chair attempting to get up. Her three brothers stood looking up and up at the soldier.
“Get me out of this damn chair,” her father was yelling. “Light the candles!”
“You leave,” said the soldier at the door, as he ducked into the house. “Abandonner,” he said quietly.
Soline’s head rose and her eyes were full of fire. “Never!”
“S’il vous plaît, c’est pour ton bien.” Please, it’s for your own good.
Then someone much smaller shoved past the big man. “There’s people in here,” he said, turning to look at the big man. “What the hell is this?”
“I’m trying to get them to leave, but they won’t.”
By this time the old man was out of his chair, leaning hard on Soline. “I will never leave my home,” she said defiantly. She understood the occupier’s language, but refused to speak it herself.
“Who are you?” the old man was yelling in French, and waving his arm around. “Get out of my house!”
“Get these people out in the next five minutes, corporal,” said the smaller man, stepping back outside “Bring the equipment in.”
The big man stepped forward and stood face to face with the woman. He spoke in French: “Walk out or I will carry you out.”
The old man punched the big man in the face. He jerked back as the old man tried to stand on his own feet, pushing Soline forward. Soline started to lose her balance, but then she was caught at her waist and righted. “Let me go!” yelled the old man.
Soline looked at the man, holding her grandfather up with one strong arm. His other arm was still around her waist. She shoved his arm off of her, and took her father from the corporal. “Papa, we have to go outside.”
Soldiers were coming in, setting up radio equipment. The sergeant was at the doorway, tapping his foot. “Corporal…”
“Get some things,” said the corporal in English. “I’ll hold the old man.”
“You will not touch my father!”
The big man made like he didn’t understand. Oh, so in private he would speak the language but in public he would not.
“You dirty, stinking bunch of pigs, I hope you all eat shit and die!”
He still had a blank look as she took her father and literally dragged him outside. “Did she just say ‘shit’ and ‘dead’ in the same sentence?” asked the sergeant.
“Don’t know, sir,” said the corporal. “Don’t we have a wheelchair or something we can let her use?”
“Too bad that she doesn’t have one,” said the sergeant. “That’s her fault for not leaving. Put that over there! The colonel will want everything up and running by the time he gets here!”
Soline set her father down on a bench in front of their house. Americans went in and out of her tiny house, bringing equipment, clogging up the door. The big man came out while the old man was sitting on the bench, now crying.
“See what you did,” Soline said to the corporal, in English.
“I’m very sorry. You can go in and get some things. I’ll see if I can find a wagon for your father.”
“We are not leaving.”
“You have to leave.”
“See what you did!” She pointed to her father. “This is all we have left of our lives!”
“Madame, please.”
“I am not an old woman! If you cannot speak my language, then I will not speak yours!”
Then her youngest brother started to cry. The other two brothers comforted him. She sat down on the bench next to her father, taking his hand while he wept. The corporal went away.
It was dark when a man rode up in a military vehicle. He wore a helmet with a star on it, and looked down at her when he got out of the car. “Who the fuck is this?” He pointed to her. By this time, they hadn’t eaten and they hadn’t left the place they sat down.
A man came out of the house. “This is their house. They won’t leave.”
The man leaned down and said to her, “Madamoiselle, you must leave. We need your house.”
Soline spat at him.
He jerked back and ordered, “Arrest them, bring them all in!”
4.
Aries finally found the medic corps and was able to steal a wheelchair from one of the trucks. Unfortunately, the medic corps was a two-hour walk from where he had just come from.
He started pushing the empty wheelchair down the road, letting trucks and vehicles pass by him. He ended up a few times in fields, pulling the wheelchair instead of pushing it. He headed south with the tide of men, going back to Vire.
It got dark. Soon Aries could not see anything in front of him, but he kept the sound of vehicles constantly on his left. In the dark, he could only see that woman before him, her dark locks framing her face, that fire in her eyes, that defiance.
What an interesting person she would be.
No, he thought. That was against his quest. All he had to do was help get rid of the Germans in France. Then he could go home, back to the Kingdom of Heaven, where his Queen and her consort waited to hear his report of the world. How many of his brothers had done Her work and not returned? He had made it his personal vow to be not only the first chosen, but the last to leave.
Unlike his brothers, he decided that his life was to be a soldier, and to be alone. It was expected. So he lived for the army. There always was an army somewhere that wanted him. This time around it was the American army. He joined the Army in Pennsylvania in January of 1942. He followed the 29th Division into war.
This was no time and place for a woman. What woman would want an eternal soldier, anyway?
He arrived in Vire late at night. Most people were sleeping as he went into the village, to the woman’s house. He approached the building. It was quiet, but he could hear voices talking lowly inside. He left the wheelchair outside the house and knocked on the door.
“Password,” said a voice.
“Lucky Strike.”
“That was an hour ago.”
“Oh, let him in,” came another voice.
“I should make him sing the jingle.” Aries snorted, opened the door and peered inside.
They were men from the 29th communications unit. Aries asked, “The lady and her father, where’d they go?”
“Colonel Dwyer sent ‘em upriver,” said a kid encased in shadow.
“Where?”
“Back to Saint Lo, I guess.”
“Shit!” He slammed shut the door, and stared at the useless wheelchair he had just taken three hours to drag up south. His body was tired. He could keep it going, but it wouldn’t be good if he got injured. The problem with a human body was that it was finite in its energy, and even though he could use the energy for things that were beyond a human’s capabilities – such as regenerating lost tissue or taking enough bullets to kill an elephant – he only had so much stored. He knew he needed rest.
He sat down in the wheelchair and made himself pass out.
5.
Sunrise, the door to the barn opened. The fifteen or so families who had been crammed into the place slowly rose to their feet. Soline and her oldest brother Harold helped to lift their father from the floor where he had stretched out to sleep in the hay. At least the old man had stopped crying and saying he wanted to die.
“Everyone,” said a man in French, with a very obvious Quebec accent, “We will be having food after the soldiers eat. Please come out to refresh yourselves.” He made a sweeping motion with his arm, leading out the door.
Soline struggled with her father as he started to shuffle forward. He wasn’t quite paralyzed, but he wasn’t able to walk on his own anymore. A man came to her side, and said, “Let me help, miss.”
She looked at the man carefully. He looked perfectly fine, healthy, in fact. How did he survive the bombings and the Germans? She narrowed her eyes. Of course, Vichy.
“I have him,” she said, and then her father started to cry again.
“Kill me, kill me now. I’m of no use to you. I’m just a burden.”
“No, papa, please.” She stumbled, almost falling, but she straightened herself out. The man stood by and watched her struggle with him.
((I’m getting along farther with this one, because I’m familiar with the background (WW2 Liberation of France). However, I still don’t like the spirits idea. An idea was presented that at each “age”, someone learns “The Truth” of the zodiac, and embodies a particular sign for that “age”. The Age of Aries, technically, was right around the time the Zodiac was noted by Sumerians andAkkadians. Not sure I like that either because I don’t want to have mages involved – I’m burnt out with mages and magic, thank you.
((The other option is to go back to the first draft and clean that up. But they are all going to be Sumerians/Akkadians. I wanted different types of men for different times, from Sumerian to the present day. A blond here, a brunette there, a red-head over there…how can I possibly do that without breaking continuity in the series? That brings me back to the spirits, or the Utukku.
((In this draft, also, the romance is contrived and forced. I don’t like Soline. I don’t like writing women, period. Make the guys gay and write for a niche audience? That doesn’t sound so bad, to tell you the truth, but I’m afraid of the characters all sounding like each other when I get to the end.
((I’ll let the muse sleep on it for the third day in a row.))