“Seems there’s some colonel in the Five-oh-ninth from San Diego,” Loomis said. “He’s heard you’re here and wants a lot of local coverage back home.” He looked at me curiously. I continually had to remind myself that I was twenty years older than Loomis.
“Where’re you from, Todd?”
“Edinburgh, Scotland.”
“Yeah? What’s your paper called?”
“The Chula Vista Herald-Post. That’s the biggest one I work for.”
“Good God.” He shook his head. “You got a driver and a jeep outside. Why don’t you check with him about tomorrow?”
I went out into the garden. It was overgrown with mimosa, tamarind and lavender bushes. The night was very warm. Across the bay I could see some fires still burning in Ste.-Maxime. The flames looked pretty on the water.
I found my jeep but there was no sign of the driver. I looked round and saw someone crouched over a lavender bush.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Oh yes, sir.”
He stood up. He was tall and well built. I could not make out his features in the dark. His voice sounded educated. He inhaled ostentatiously.
“Have you smelled the air here, sir?” We inhaled deeply together. “Pines, eucalyptus, lavender … intoxicating.”
He handed me a small bunch of lavender.
“Smell that.”
I did. The scent was so strong it seemed as if I had inhaled a fine powder. I sneezed.
“Excuse me, but are you my driver?”
“If you’re John James Todd of the Chula Vista Herald-Post, I am.”
“I am indeed. What’s your name?”
“Private Brown, sir.”
“What’s your first name? And there’s no need to call me sir. I’m a civilian.”
“It’s Two Dogs Running.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Two Dogs Running. I’m a Cherokee. A Cherokee Indian to you. A redskin, in case you were wondering.” His tone was pleasantly, inoffensively ironic.
I didn’t get a proper look at Two Dogs Running until the next day. We rendezvoused at the company HQ villa after I had written and filed my invasion report for the Dusenberry papers. Two Dogs, as I came to call him, was young — in his early twenties — tall and solid looking. He had a classic hooked nose and thin eyes. His black hair had been shaved to a stubbly crew cut.
“Morning, Mr. Todd,” he said. “Another beautiful day.”
We drove off, overtaking long columns of trucks and marching men that were moving inland from the beachhead. Shortly after lunch we were in Plan-de-la-Tour, where a lieutenant in the 157th RCT assured us that the road to Le Muy was clear. There had been a linkup that morning with patrols from the 509th Airborne.
We motored off. It was a badly paved road with dusty verges. The hills round us were covered in scrub and new plantations of pine trees. On either side we could see huddled dun and orange-pink villages, small farms and olive groves. The blue sky above was scarred with thin salty contrails of the Marauders and Liberators flying in from their bases in Corsica and Sardinia.
“You see that air raid last night?” Two Dogs asked. “Spectacular, wasn’t it?”
There had been an air attack on the ships lying off St.-Tropez. The sky had been hot with searchlights and tracers for a good five minutes. Two Dogs told me a plane had been shot down, but I had seen nothing. We bumped along the road. An old lady in black sat beneath an olive tree tending some goats. She waved as we passed. Everything was tranquil and calm; I reflected on how easy it was for the world to swallow up a war.
“You’d pay a lot for a vacation like this,” Two Dogs said.
“Aren’t we lucky.”
“Where are you from, Mr. Todd?”
“Edinburgh. Edinburgh, Scotland.”
“How come you’re working for the Chula Vista Herald-Post?”
“It’s an incredibly long story.” I changed the subject. “Where are you from?”
“New Mexico. Little town called Platt.”
“Really? I made a film in New Mexico earlier this year.”
“You’re kidding. What’s it called?”
“The Equalizer.”
Two Dogs stopped the jeep. “You made The Equalizer?”
“Yes.”
“I saw it! Christ. Just before I came overseas. It’s playing everywhere, congratulations.”
“Is it?” I thought for a moment. I had left New York for Casablanca in mid-June. Eddie must have opened it earlier than he had planned. I felt vague alarm. How come I had to find out about this traveling in a jeep in the South of France?
Two Dogs restarted the engine and we set off again. I listened to him recount various episodes in my film. He had a good grasp of its implications.
“What did you do before you enlisted?” I asked.
“Traveling salesman. Perfumes and cosmetics.”
“Hence the lavender.”
We talked some more: about films, about scents, about Two Dogs’ ambitions for his career. He was a college graduate and the unspoken question hedged itself in between us.
“How come you’re—”
“In the motor pool? They don’t give commissions to pesky red varmints, Mr. Todd.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with being a private. I was one too.”
“No shit? When?”
“The Great War, 1914–18.” My God, I thought, that was only twenty-six years ago! I felt my age clamber onto my shoulders like the old man of the sea. Two Dogs was twenty-two.… We carried on talking as we drove through the hot shimmering landscape. I liked the big dark man with his wry educated views. We discussed The Equalizer further. The invasion. The Riviera. Two Dogs had just asked me if I had read Ernest Hemingway when the jeep broke down.
We had come down out of the hills and were in a small wooded valley with a dried-up riverbed running through it. The Argens Valley, I guessed, consulting my map. I calculated that we were about seven miles from Le Muy. The next bend in the road was obscured by a wood of cork oak trees, their stripped trunks a fresh ocher. Two Dogs checked the engine and said there was something wrong with the fuel pump. I looked at the map once more.
“There’s a small village up the road. If we are where we think we are.”
Two Dogs took his carbine out of the back of the jeep and we set off. It was midafternoon and now, deprived of the early cooling breeze of the jeep’s progress, we felt the full heat of the sun. After half a mile I wished I had left my helmet behind. I carried it dangling from its strap like a tureen and thought seriously about throwing it away. It was very quiet. The metallic sawing of the cicadas only emphasized the stillness.
The hamlet — Castel Dion — consisted of a few houses, some barns and a semiderelict church. There was no prospect of getting our fuel pump repaired here. We walked down the main street. A small patient crowd was gathered at the far end round an overturned lorry. As we approached, an old man advanced to meet us.
“Écossais?” he asked.
I looked at him in frank astonishment. “What?”
“Américains” Two Dogs said, pointing to the flag on my shoulder. The old man led us over to the lorry. The crowd of villagers parted to reveal several dead bodies, some badly scorched. They wore German uniforms but they were swarthy dark-skinned Arabs of the Ost Legion. They had been dead for hours, since the morning, probably. The spilled blood was black, coagulated like treacle. Flies were everywhere. The few inhabitants of Castel Dion seemed incapable of doing anything about this morbid visitation but stare.