Read Online Clash by Night by Doreen Owens Malek - Free Book Online Page A

Then, closing the wooden door and bolting it with the crossbar, he climbed the ladder to the loft and settled in for the night.
    Forrest was right, he thought. Boys and old men. But tough, you could tell that right away. They could be shot by the Germans for what they were doing yet they didn’t hesitate for a minute to put their lives on the line. And that kid didn’t look a day over eighteen. What had he been doing at that age? Worrying about beating Lake Forest in the Homecoming Weekend game and trying to get Mary Beth Dawkins into the back seat of his father’s precious Packard. It didn’t seem fair. This war was robbing Duclos, and millions like him, of their youth. He nestled deeper into the fragrant straw, his eyes closing.
    Inside the Duclos house, Laura seized Alain as he came through the door.
      “Is he here?” she demanded rapidly. “Did you get him to Pierre’s barn?”
    Alain glanced around routinely to check on the whereabouts of his father.
    “He’s in town at the district meeting,” Laura said. “Remember?”  
    Alain nodded. In his excitement he had forgotten. A fortuitous circumstance had conspired to keep his father occupied with his German friends on the night their enemy was to arrive.
    “Well?” Laura persisted.
    “He is here, he is well. He’s probably sleeping in Pierre’s hayloft right now.”
    Laura let out a sigh of relief. “What’s his name?” she asked.
    Alain told her, wiping his face and neck with a dishcloth. He bent and took a drink from the bottle of water in the wooden icebox on the floor.
    “Arries?” Laura repeated, momentarily confused by his accent. Then, “Oh, Harris,” half smiling at the wonderful familiarity of it. Harris. That was right up there with Smith and Jones. It spoke of Thanksgiving and Little League and Fourth of July picnics. Harris. She liked the name.
    “Why are you standing there like a statue?” Alain demanded, noting her bemused expression. “Help me get some fresh clothes for him. He’s a giant, but I think some of Thierry’s old shirts might fit.”  
    The two went off together as Harris drifted into slumber several hundred yards away in Langtot’s barn.  

 
    Chapter 4
     
    Harris spent the next day sleeping intermittently and wondering what lay ahead. He’d been able to bring so little with him that there was nothing to do. During the long, lazy summer afternoon the sun beating on the roof turned the barn into an oven. He communed with the animals swishing their tails at flies in the stalls behind him, and thought dryly that he had left the Carolina heat for this: more heat, and the company of cows. Chickens scrabbled outside in the dirt, and he could hear Langtot’s wife calling to them softly as she scattered their feed. He didn’t know if she was aware of his presence, but she didn’t come inside the barn, and after a while her voice ceased and only the bird and insect sounds remained.  
    He stretched out on his back, chewing on a piece of straw, and inhaled deeply, breathing in the intermingled scents of hay and manure and animal flesh that surrounded him. Considering his circumstances, he was curiously content. He had always felt this way before a challenging event; while others choked up, worried and tense before a physics exam or a track meet or a jump, he relaxed in anticipation of the test, conserving his strength. This was the calm before the storm, and he relished it, aware that it might be a long time before he enjoyed such leisure again.
    Langtot had been in early that morning to milk his cows, and he returned at dusk, bringing provisions and the message that the rest of the conspirators would be joining them at full dark. Harris ate the food, passing up the old man’s vinegary homemade wine. And as the gray light faded from the sky, the visitors crept in one by one, staggering their arrival time so as not to attract attention.
    Curel came first, a swarthy, sharp-eyed man of about sixty, who saluted Harris