Kid Comes Back Read Online Free PDF Page B

long at the window watching for German patrols; but day by day it lessened. Soon he felt able to take whatever might come. Finally, late one evening, word arrived. They were to be ready to leave town the next day, traveling nearer the coast, mostly by small, local trains. Boarding an express meant more controls, more inspections, more danger.
    Jim became Dennis Dupont, cultivateur or farm hand from Plessis, near Floreac. Roy was Georges Barraux, his cousin, a vigneron or wine grower from the region. They were journeying to the town of Dax to work for the summer with relatives. Identity cards, with their own pictures in French civilian clothes and stamped by a seal stolen from the German Komandateur of the town, were in order. Everything was fixed for the getaway.
    Saying good-by to Madame Lucien Jacques, they left about ten the next morning. Out the back gate, down the alley, along rear streets to the station. Marcel carried an antique pasteboard suitcase that seemed to be falling apart. Walking along, they discovered that the radio was in the suitcase. It was one that had been brought in by Fried Spratt, and it was to be delivered at their next stop to someone in the Resistance. Looking down at the feeble suitcase, its handle tied with string, an old shirt sticking from a hole in one corner, Jim wondered how Marcel dared to carry it. He asked him about it.
    “In the Resistance, is dangerous everytheeng. To sleep, to eat, to live is dangerous. Wan day my sees-ter in train puts valise with Resistance journals up... so... above. It breaks, the valise. Down come journals, dozens and dozens.”
    “What happened, Marcel?”
    “Nawtheeng. The people in train, they know; they peeck up journals and put back.”
    The two boys looked at each other, trusting no such occurrence would happen on their trip. Now they were nearing the Place de la Gare. There was the station, with its stopped clock which said five minutes to six. A German soldier, his bayonet on his rifle, stood at the entrance. They brushed his sleeve as they passed within. The waiting room was completely jammed, and a long line stood at the tiny ticket window. People were milling round with bundles, baggage, boxes, clothes tied up in sheets, and one woman even had a live hen, its feet fastened by a string, in a patent leather shopping bag. Both the hen and the bag looked the worse for wear. Finally Marcel got their tickets and came toward them, perspiring visibly. At the train gate, the blue-coated railwayman with the German officer beside him punched their tickets and inspected their identity cards carefully. Then he shoved them through and onto the platform.
    Like the waiting room, the platform was a madhouse. Hundreds of expectant travelers stood in the space for a third that number. When the train arrived, an hour late, there was a terrific battle to get aboard. Marcel fought his way in, and they followed. Unlike our trains, each car was divided into little compartments running across the carriage, seating five on a side. The benches were of wood, hard and uncomfortable, especially when twelve people were jammed into the space for ten.
    The train stayed forever in the station, but finally, giving a shriek, it pulled slowly away, leaving many would-be passengers stranded frantically on the platform. They moved through a warm, sunny countryside, a land of white stone houses with red roofs, many grapevines, farms with every inch of land cultivated. The tiny train, already overloaded, stopped at each station along the line, frequently unsnarling a few weary passengers and invariably taking on many more, who jammed themselves somehow into the corridor that was filled with baggage and people standing up or sitting on their suitcases. At about two in the afternoon, they reached a main junction where they had to change for the trip to Dax, their destination. Unfortunately here it was necessary to take an express.
    Since they did not wish to pass the gate into the station and