Free Resistance by Anita Shreve Page B

and bits of tobacco fell onto the floor. “Don't you stand there like a stone, or I’ll give you another one of these.”
    Jean did not look up, but he knew a fist had been made.
    “I know you were in the wood. I can see by the sight of you. You see any of the Americans?” Jean shook his head.
    “Don't lie to me, or you'll be no son of mine. That's what you were looking for, isn't it? You think this is a game? It's a game that'll get your neck broken, that's what. You see an American, you tell me. You understand?”
    Jean nodded. The blood from his lip was in his mouth. He didn't dare to spit. He swallowed it.
    His father picked up the plate that contained Jean's meal, threw it at the stove. The crockery broke against the cast iron. The boy flinched. It was a casual, unnecessary gesture on his father's part, meant to frighten the son, hurt the mother when she saw the broken plate in the morning, if she had not already heard the noise from her bedroom above. Jean knew that if his father hit him again, he'd go down. He had no strength left in his legs. He wasn't even sure he could make it up the stairs.
    “I’m not through with you yet, but I’m sick of looking at you.”
    His father made a dismissive gesture with his arm. Gratefully, Jean left the room, not even stopping to remove his coat.
    On his bed, in the small room under the eave, Jean lay fully dressed, holding a sock to his lip to stanch the blood. He had not washed because he'd have had to do so at the sink in the barn, and he could not go back into the barn. Jean had imagined he'd be reported missing from the school, but he had not thought Monsieur Dauvin himself would come to the house. He wanted to go into his mother's room, to tell her he was all right, but he wasn't all right, and she would see and be alarmed—and besides there was again the risk of encountering his father.
    He lay on his bed and thought about the flyer. He tried to imagine what it must be like to lie in that cramped trough with the potatoes. He thought about the dark, the smell and feel of the potatoes, the low sounds of the cows. But the more he thought about the flyer, the more worried he became. What if the American froze to death in the trough, died before the morning? And if the man didn't freeze to death, what was Jean to do with him then? The boy had not planned beyond getting the flyer into the barn, and perhaps during the night smuggling some food and water to the man. But as Jean lay there, the enormity of what he had done began to close in around him.
    Something would have to be done before daylight. There could be no stopping now. What had it all been for, if not to save the flyer? But if he waited until morning, his father would find the American and turn him over to the Germans. Was his father right? Had he, Jean, merely been playing a game? Living out an adventure that this time might end in catastrophe?
    He wanted to cry. He began to think about the flyer's leg. It needed attention, a doctor or a nurse. What if it became infected and had to be amputated—all because Jean had brought the man to the barn and could not think of a way to get him out? What if the American died of the infection? Could a grown man die so quickly from a wound? And surely there was the loss of blood, too, and shock. In the darkness he saw the American's face. The man who had called himself Ted, who had no use of his hands, who had nearly smiled at their small triumph of communicating a single word.
    The boy had said he would return. He had promised that. He had to get the flyer out of the barn before daybreak.
    He held the sock to his lip, fighting off sleep. He stared into the absolute darkness of his tiny room. He made his eyes stay open, and he thought. After a time, he listened to the heavy tread on the stairs of his father's footsteps, heard the door to his parents’ bedroom open and close.
    And when he had thought a long time, he sat up on the edge of the bed, threw the sock to the floor,