Last Message Read Online Free Page A

had landed, kill me or save me. He chose the last option, motivated by a goodness deep within him and a hatred of what Hitler had done to his country and to others. He was an angel. Jean Noel was his name. John Christmas. And when he appeared, I received the greatest gift of my life.
    He was as strong as an ox, with hard-calloused working hands on him like mitts on a gorilla, and he dragged me into the vineyard, out of sight. He knelt down, his face up close to mine and spoke in a whisper, his eyes still fearful.
    â€œJean Noel,” he said. “Okay. Okay?”
    â€œDavid Adam McLean, US Air Force.”
    He returned to the open field, stuffed my parachute under his arm, came back, got me to my feet, braced me with a shoulder and walked me the five miles to his home, looking back with almost every other step.
    I learned later that he had been clearing dead vines with his ax that night, toiling extra hours for a rich Nazi sympathizer. His own tiny farm was about two acres, on which he and his wife Yvette kept about a dozen chickens, a few pigs, two cows and a workhorse. He plowed an acre and a half with that horse, and used the poor beast for transportation whenever he hitched her to his little wagon to go to market in Arles, about ten miles away. Their house was made of stone, maybe five hundred years old, smaller than your garage. It had a low ceiling and just two rooms, one that served as their kitchen-living-and-dining room and another where they all slept. They had two small children, a boy and a girl. When we arrived, Yvette, a pretty lady, a little plump and wearing a dirty apron over her tattered blue-flowered dress, put her hands on her cheeks and began to cry. “Non, non, non, non, non! Non, Jean!” She kept her voice low but she was still screaming. She pulled the two children close to her.
    But Jean had made up his mind, and that is why you, Adam, are alive today. Because the Milice would have killed me the minute they saw me. No, that isn’t correct. They would have tortured me first. And they would have tortured and killed Jean too, and done worse to Yvette.
    The stone-floored and stone-walled room felt damp, but there was a lovely smell of a wood fire and wonderful home-cooked food in the air. I could see a butter churner and a loom in the cramped quarters. Jean immediately threw my parachute into their fire.
    So, that was where I lived for the next month, as my ankle healed. Not exactly in the house though. After they had quickly fed me stew and homemade bread, mixed with a little cheap red wine, Jean checked that it was safe outside and then took me just a few strides to his little barn. It was made of stone too and housed the horse, two cows, the few pigs and those chickens. I would get to know them well, know exactly when the rooster crowed each morning, and learn to live with the smell of manure in that damp, dark place. He helped me over the fence that contained the pigs and we slopped a few paces through their cramped pen, past the big sow and her piglets and then over the next fence, this one covered with webs of fine wire, into the tiny area at the back where the chickens were.
    What Jean did then made me more than a little tense. He grabbed a spade and started digging a grave. Or at least that was what it looked like. We were right at the back of the chicken pen. The ground didn’t have much grass on it—the chickens had seen to that—but the earth was thick and chocolate-colored. Jean set to work. And when Jean worked at anything, he went whole hog. He put his back into it, as well as his huge hands and arms, and about ten minutes later had dug a shallow grave about six feet long and two or three feet deep.
    It was for me.
    He motioned for me to lie in it. At that very moment we heard the hum of an engine—it sounded like a truck—coming up the little road toward his house.
    â€œVite!” he cried, and I got down and he began to throw the dirt and sod onto