How Huge the Night

chapter 7





A Thousand Wings





War was not what Julien had expected it to be. That hot night in September when he’d prayed for God to give him something to do, he’d imagined Paris overrun, German soldiers in the streets, shrapnel bursting through windows …

But nothing was happening.

It wasn’t that he wanted it to happen. It just seemed so strange. He had felt so much older for a little while: part of a much larger story, a wartime story. But the troops were still sitting along the Maginot Line, and there was nothing he could do about it one way or the other. So he’d found himself back in his own world, his Julien world, where what mattered was school and soccer. Where the enemy was Henri Quatre, and Julien was waiting for his chance.

He watched Monday’s game, poised and ready; nothing. On Tuesday, Lucien fell down and grabbed his ankle—and got up again. He was going to go crazy.

On Wednesday, Antoine was absent. One of Gilles’s forwards.

He let them start without him. Roland gave him a glance and a nod. He watched, every muscle tense, till Gilles’s team was down two to nothing and fallen back to defend their goal; then it came. Henri jogged off the field to take a leak.

Julien had to get hold of the ball just seconds after he’d got on the field, give no one a chance to throw him out. With Henri gone, Gilles was making one hopeless push toward Henri’s goal; Philippe blocked it, and it bounced toward the boundary line.

Now.

Julien ran in and caught the brown ball on the side of his foot, controlled its motion and its spin. It was his. Philippe’s surprised face flashed by as Julien dribbled it across to the center—and through the one hole in Henri’s defense. “Hey!” someone yelled. He faked neatly around the last defender and fired the ball straight and hard into the lower corner of the goal as Gaston the goalie dived—too late.

The ball shot through the goal and kept on rolling, but Gaston didn’t even turn to look. He was staring at Julien.

“Where did you come from?”

“He’s not on our team!”

“Shut up, Dominique.” That was Gilles’s voice, deep with surprised pleasure. “Did you see that goal?”

“It doesn’t count!” said Pierre, coming up behind them with a red face. “He wasn’t even in the game, the goal doesn’t count.”

“Come on, man. We’ve got a right to a remplaçant. Antoine’s gone. Hey!” Gilles called down the field. “Who says it counts?”

Cheers. Julien thought he saw Roland wink.

“We can still beat you, anyway,” said Philippe.

More cheers.

Julien glanced at the trees, away to the left. Henri Quatre was coming back, a small figure moving toward them. In the trees’ leafy tops, an army of rooks was cawing and fighting, flying up and settling again in a dark cloud. Henri walked faster.

But he was too late. The ball was back in play, and Dominique got it, and he passed it to Julien. Henri had nothing to say. He had to get in there and defend.

Julien’s team won.

Dear Vincent, he wrote. Guess what happened today.





They played four more games after that, beautiful games. Henri Quatre won two, and Julien’s team won two more than they would have without him. He got out on that field and he played, and he scored, and Gilles and Roland slapped him on the back.

Then the rain came again.

It started during breakfast, softly, the first drops sliding down the kitchen window as Julien finished his hot chocolate. When he put his bowl in the sink, it was drumming on the roof, the air outside was filled with it, clouds of mist splashing up from the angled roofs down below. No soccer today. No soccer tomorrow. The rains were back for the long haul.

They walked to school with their hoods up and hung their coats beside the others to drip on the floor. The classrooms that morning had a strange, echoing sound, the sound of an enclosed space; the squeak of wet shoes on the floor and the voices of boys rang through the school. It seemed as if they all felt like Julien—keyed up, on edge, not ready for rain and winter. Not ready to sit quietly at their desks, go home for lunch, and leave the woods and the empty soccer field to soften into deep mud.

But they did. Julien and Benjamin walked up the hill as the water flowed down in muddy little runnels past their feet, and hung their sodden jackets at the top of the stairs, and opened the door.

A huge packing crate sat blocking the entryway, with Paris written on it. Mama stood smiling over it. “From your parents, Benjamin,” she said. “Would you like to open it?”

“Um,” said Benjamin. “Upstairs. I’d like to open it … upstairs, please.”

Mama’s face fell a little. “Of course, Benjamin. Julien—could you help carry …?”

When they went back to school for the afternoon, Benjamin wore a new wool jacket, gray and expensive-looking, and carried a large new book that he slipped into his coat before stepping out into the rain. Julien caught a glimpse of a submarine on the front.

The new gray wool glowed beside the worn jackets on their pegs on the classroom wall; people were looking. Out of the corner of his eye, Julien saw Benjamin stroking it. Papa glanced at it when he came in halfway through class to call Ricot away for a minute. Ricot left them with instructions to do problems one and two on page seventy-four. They sighed and opened their textbooks.

There were no problems on page seventy-four.

Julien looked around. A buzz of whispers was rising up, a breath of freedom. Pierre was already making spit wads. Even Benjamin had his book open to a huge, color plate of a submarine surfacing. Jean-Pierre at the next desk craned his neck for a look.

Julien was reading about subs in the Great War when it started. A rise in the tone of the whispers; the scraping of desks in the back by the woodstove. Julien turned.

A group was gathering around the coat rack. Where the gray coat had been was an empty peg.

His desk jerked as Benjamin stood.

They were passing the coat from hand to hand back there, murmuring in low voices; admiring it. Jérémie passed it to Gilles, who felt the soft wool, examined the blue and red threads woven through the pattern to give it color—it really was a good coat; it’d probably cost more than Mama ever spent on a piece of clothing in her life.

“Give it back!” Benjamin’s face was white, and his eyes blazed. “That’s mine. Give it back!”

The coat was passed to Pierre. Pierre grinned. Then he took the coat by the shoulders and stood, shook it twice like a bullfighter’s cloth.

“Come and get it,” he said.

Benjamin took three steps toward Pierre. The group parted to let him in, and closed around him. Pierre looked even bigger with Benjamin glaring up at him, white fists clenched.

“What do you want from me?”

“Just to see if you want your pretty coat back. Here …”

Benjamin reached out for the coat, and Pierre snatched it back.

“Come on,” he said in a kind voice. “Here …”

Benjamin’s jaw clenched, but he did not move. Julien was biting his lip, all his muscles tense. The sound of footsteps came from the hallway.

The reaction was instantaneous. Guys scrambled and dived for their seats. Henri Quatre snatched the jacket out of Pierre’s hands and hung it on its peg. Julien and Benjamin slid into their desk a split second before Ricot walked in.





The class got lines to copy: I attend school to learn, not to play, one hundred times. Even Benjamin, who didn’t hear Ricot’s rant. He was too busy searching through his desk, through his cartable, through his desk again. He leaned over to Julien and whispered, “Have you seen my book?”

Julien shook his head.

“They stole it!”

“Don’t let them see they got to you,” murmured Julien. “Wait.”

He dropped his pen behind his chair and reached down for it, glancing casually back. Pierre still wore that grin. Most of the others were smiling too. At him and Benjamin. Roland was the only one who had the decency to look embarrassed.

He sat up, checked his pen nib for damage, dipped it in the inkwell, and went on copying from the board. Benjamin sat staring straight ahead.

Julien looked out the window. The rain had stopped. Sunlight was pouring down through a break in the clouds, and the peak of Lizieux in the distance glowed.





At the bell, Benjamin was out the gate like a shot, home to his shut door and his books and his crate. Julien took his time. Walking slowly downstairs behind a clamoring group with Henri Quatre in its midst, wondering if Benjamin would still have his book if he hadn’t acted like an arrogant you-know-what …

Henri was filling in Luc from quatrième. “You should have seen his face. It’s the first time he’s looked at one of us in two months! Man, I’ve just had it up to here with these stuck-up Parisian snots—”

Julien hung back, trying to look oblivious. Henri gave a disgusted snort and turned back toward him; his heart sank.

“You tell your friend from me: if he doesn’t like it here, he’s free to go. And you are too.”

Julien looked into the icy, arrogant eyes and something snapped. “What do mean, my friend?”

Henri, Luc, Gaston, and Pierre stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking at him.

“Maybe the guy you come to school with every day?” said Pierre.

“You mean the guy whose parents pay for him to live in my house?”

Henri’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, is that how it is?”

“You have no idea.” Deep relief flooded through Julien as he said the words. “Have you ever lived with a guy who thinks he’s too good to talk to you?”

Henri Quatre raised one eyebrow this time. He had very sharp eyebrows.

“Don’t you people have eyes?” said Julien. “Did I come strutting in here with a jacket worth three hundred francs?”

“You think you’re a tanieusard because you don’t have a fancy jacket?”

“You know le père Julien? He’s my grandfather.” Henri gave a hint of a shrug that made Julien want to grab him by the collar and shake him. “My father and my grandfather were born here,” he ground out between his teeth, “and you can’t even tell the difference between me and someone who was born in Germany!”

There was a moment of pure silence. Henri’s mouth was open, his face very still. “He’s German?” he whispered. Julien’s heart was beginning to beat faster. Oh. Oh crap.

“Well, his parents are,” he said hurriedly. “They moved, uh, when he was a kid I think—”

“Oh yeah, that’s what we need in Tanieux, some rich little German Jew looking down his nose at us,” said Gaston.

“Don’t you mean up his nose at us?” said Pierre, grinning.

“People should stay where they belong,” said Henri Quatre softly, his eyes lit. “Especially Germans.”

Julien’s stomach was tight. He looked around, half hoping his father would appear, get him out of there. Nothing. “Well. I … gotta go.”

He tried not to think about it as he walked up the hill; he looked up at the sky where the sun washed through the breaking clouds and tried to think of nothing at all.





Mama had made yogurt for goûter; it was cooling on the kitchen windowsill. No one else was there. Julien sat down and laid his head down on the table in his arms. He heard the comforting clink of Mama’s serving spoon against the yogurt bowl, the warm sound of her humming under her breath. He heard her push a bowl across the table at him.

“So, Julien. Something happen at school today?”

He looked up slowly. “How do you know?”

“Benjamin looked a bit upset.”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath and continued, looking at his bowl. “Some guys at school took his new coat. I mean—they gave it back, they were just looking at it, but … Pierre …”

“Pierre Rostin? Ginette Rostin’s son?”

“I guess. I mean I don’t know his mom, but that’s his name. So … he was kind of teasing him with it. Trying to make him go for it.”

“Where was this?”

“In the science room. When, uh, when Monsieur Ricot was gone.”

“In front of everybody?”

“Oh yeah.”

“What was in front of everybody?” Papa’s head poked in the door. This was the problem with being a teacher’s son.

“Um—”

“You surely don’t imagine I haven’t heard …”

“Ricot gave us an assignment that didn’t exist!”

“So I hear. I also hear you all got lines to copy. So you can tell me everything.”

He told him almost everything.

For a few moments no one spoke. The chop of Mama’s knife slicing potatoes was loud in the silence.

“Poor Benjamin,” Mama said at last. “I think if those boys had seen him when that crate arrived, they wouldn’t have treated him like that.”

“From what I’ve seen,” Papa said, “Pierre would need to be hit with a hammer before he’d understand that kind of thing.”

“Poor Pierre too,” Mama added suddenly.

“Pierre?” said Julien. “You feel sorry for him?”

“Would you want to be him?” put in Papa.

“Well, no …”

“But mostly as a matter of principle, or virtue on your part …” Papa began drily.

“Martin,” Mama said gently, “I’m trying to tell Julien why I feel sorry for Pierre.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Mama stopped working and looked Julien in the eye. “I’ve been getting to know Ginette Rostin. You know Pierre has a brother in the army, I suppose? André?”

Julien nodded.

“Ginette talks about nothing else. André this, André that, André and his tank on the Maginot Line. The few times she’s mentioned Pierre she’s called him that boy.”

Well, poor Pierre then. He looked out the window. The sun was very bright.

Papa picked up a strip of potato peel and twirled it in his fingers, frowning. “I’m sorry my hometown isn’t treating you boys too kindly. I wish …” He sighed. “Will you do something for me? Your grandfather’s about done with that bookshelf for Benjamin. Would you take him down there to look at it, sometime in the next couple days?”

Grandpa was down in his workshop on the ground floor; the little apartment he moved into in the winter. Where he’d promised to sit by the fire and tell Julien stories while the burle blew outside. Julien looked out at the wet world and sighed, and added Benjamin to the picture.

“Sure, Papa,” he said.





Julien did the dishes after supper because Mama asked him to; when he finally pulled the plug in the sink, he felt so drained he could hardly stand up. He headed for the stairs. “Julien?” said Mama. “Would you tell Benjamin I’d like to ask him something before he goes to bed?”

“Sure, Mama.”

He knocked twice on Benjamin’s door before he heard a muffled, “Come in.” Benjamin was on his knees on the wood floor with his back to Julien, stacking books in the crate.

“Uh—y’know Grandpa’s making you a bookshelf for those,” Julien offered.

“Maybe you can use it.” Benjamin’s voice was flat. He put another book in the crate and didn’t turn around.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m leaving.”

Julien stared at him.

“I’m not staying here. Not if it’s going to be like this.” His voice cracked wildly on this.

“Um,” said Julien.

Benjamin swallowed. After a moment, he got out: “D’you need something?”

“Mama wanted to ask you something. Downstairs.” He hesitated. “Should I tell her you’re—busy?”

Benjamin glanced at the open door, and Julien saw on his face what he had been afraid of: the bright tracks of tears down his cheeks. “Tell her I’ll be down in a minute,” he said tightly.

“Sure.” He turned to go. “Uh—Benjamin?” he said, searching for the right words.

“Mm.”

“They want me to leave too. I don’t think we should give them that satisfaction.”

Benjamin shrugged one shoulder. He picked up another book and put it carefully in the crate. “Good night.”

“Good night.”





Rooks roosted in the trees by the soccer field, a black army of rooks. Every branch laden with them. Julien was running with Benjamin, passing the soccer ball. Benjamin passed it to the rook-tree. “No!” cried Julien. The cloud of rooks rose, the flap of a thousand wings making a huge, alien whisper. They rose, and fell together toward one place on the ground.

A rookery is a society, said a voice. It sounded like Papa. They punish their criminals. The whole flock pecks the offender. Sometimes to death.

The birds boiled upward and fell, again and again, a cloud turning in on itself in violence, a seething of black wings.

Julien began to run.

He ran toward them, shouting, waving his arms. They flew up, their beaks stone gray, their little black eyes glittering. In the middle lay something flat and brown.

It was the soccer ball, its leather hide pierced by a thousand holes, lying limp on the withered grass. It was bleeding.

Julien screamed. “Benjamin!” Behind him the soccer field was empty to the horizon; the lines and goalposts gone, the school gone. Benjamin was not there. The river ran on in front of the hill. But there was no bridge.

The rooks set up a great cawing behind him. He whirled and went for them, arms flailing, and they flew up away from him in a hiss of wings.

Benjamin lay in the grass, white-faced, bleeding from a thousand small wounds.

Julien shrieked.

“They’ve killed Benjamin. Help! Help!”

A shadow of great wings flying low. “You killed Benjamin?” And Grandpa landed and folded his wings about him; they hung to his feet, black and shimmering.

“No! It wasn’t me! I wasn’t there! I didn’t even see—”

Grandpa looked down at him from his great height, the eyes of a dark eagle. “They were pecking you too.”

Julien looked at his hands. There were feathers on them. “Grandpa, no. Don’t make me a rook. Bring the bridge back. Please. I have to carry him across—”

The world jerked and tilted. Darkness. A hand was shaking him by the shoulder.

“Julien? Julien? Are you all right?”

He sat bolt upright. It was dark. In the faint moonlight from the window, he could just barely see Magali by his bed.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“You sounded awful! I could hear you from my room.”

“Did I say anything? Did you hear me say anything, Magali?”

“You just yelled a couple times. Was it a nightmare?”

“Yeah.” He sank back into his bed. “Yeah. Um. Thanks for waking me.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Good night.”

She left. He lay facedown on his pillow, shaking his head and swallowing. What was wrong with him? He hadn’t had a nightmare since he was ten.

He got up and opened the shutters. The clouds were over Tanieux again, and everything was misty down below; he breathed the cold, moist air deep into his lungs, and his head cleared. He looked up, but there were no stars.

“God,” he whispered. “What was that?”

There was silence, and a cold wind.

He shut the window and turned away. He felt dizzy. He crawled back into bed and slept.