Clash by Night by Doreen Owens Malek Read Free Book Online Page B

alone.  
    She got up and looked out the window. She couldn’t see anything except the yellow glow from the oil lamp hanging on a hook outside Pierre Langtot’s barn. She sat down again. Curel had said that he would have a special job for her soon, and she was looking forward to it. Alain’s hit or miss tactics were wearing her down. She wanted to be focused on something in particular, to do something significant, something that would make a difference.
    She opened one of the student books, looked at the jumble of scrawled answers on the first page, and closed it again, rubbing her forehead with her free hand. How could she care about teaching the principles of long division to a bunch of remedial, summer session students, when Alain might be found lying dead in a ditch? If nothing else, the invasion had put the world in perspective for her. Before the war, her life had been simple: love from her family during childhood and adolescence, and after that love from Thierry. Each day had begun with the knowledge that she had a base, a center, supporting what she did. And underlying all of it was the certainty that she was free and could make of her future what she chose. That was gone now, and the grief at its loss was mutating rapidly into a consuming, yet nurturing, desire for revenge.
    She had not realized how very much she would want to fight back. While in the United States she had taken her American liberties for granted, but she appreciated them now, when she saw what it was like to live without them. The grinding, daily oppression worked on Laura until her very genes rose up in a silent scream of revolt. The Randalls were descended from people who had braved an ocean in a pitch and timber boat to find religious freedom, and then fought off unfriendly natives and an even unfriendlier climate when they reached their destination. She was Pilgrim stock, by God, and she wasn’t going to submit to this sort of thing without a struggle. For years she had watched the Nazi evil develop like a cancer in neighboring Germany, her outrage at its unprincipled leadership and unconscionable practices growing until the invasion had turned it into something close to hate. And when she thought that the occupation could go on for years, might even become permanent, it made her more determined than ever to end it.
    She heard a sound at the back door and shot out of her seat. Alain stumbled inside and collapsed into the chair she had vacated. He looked exhausted and his left arm was covered with blood.
    Laura ran to the front of the house, drawing the living room curtain. She looked out at the street to see if anyone had observed him arriving home in this condition, but the roadway was deserted.
    She quickly gathered supplies, and when she returned to the kitchen Alain was slumped on the table, his eyes closed.
    “Sit up,” she barked, frightened that he might faint, and to her vast relief he obeyed. She worked the pump above the sink to start the flow of water and said, “What happened? It was supposed to be a simple survey of the grounds, how did you get hurt?”  
    “Got caught in the barbed wire outside the camp,” he replied wearily, wiping his perspiring forehead with the sleeve covering his uninjured arm. “I was trying to sneak a look at the storehouse and the searchlight almost found me.”
    “Do you realize that this is the third time this month you’ve come home in this condition? Every time you go out without me you return carved up like a goose. Fat lot of good you’re going to be to Curel, or anyone else, if the Germans pick you up. Blood always attracts their attention very quickly.”
    “Don’t lecture me,” he said, sagging with fatigue, and he looked so young and vulnerable that Laura didn’t have the heart to continue. She loaded a shovel full of their precious allotted coal into the stove and filled the kettle at the pump, setting it on top of the cover to heat.
    “Why were you so close?” she asked him in