By Natashia Deón
a WWII Novel-In-Progress
Excerpt
I
1944 D-Day
Normandy, Utah Beach
The Englishman
She was still breathing when the Englishman found her face down in the sand, her skin simmering with sea salt, her ear covered in blood—only some of it hers.
Abilee’s dark brown body had gone purplish like a bouquet of seaweed casually washed ashore, her fingertips bulbous, her wrists limp, her arms and legs splayed on the beach between Pouppeville and La Madeleine. She was still in full uniform.
Litter bearers, both French and British, wear red crosses on their sleeves, on their helmets. They are dodging errant bullets, are witnessing active dying, thousands of their own were already dead. They have to move quickly. A counterattack is coming, they are sure. And they are searching. Searching for Allied survivors. For bodies that like seashells are half buried in the beach. Ones they can carry or comfort, secure a tourniquet or raise a broken limb to tie down. The injured they’d transport to a dressing station at the far side of the beach for blood, for hot water bottles to counteract the shocked wounded.
These litter bearers are smaller than most. Leafy teens with no obvious physical sign of muscle, though they can deadlift large men then run those bodies over warped, shifting sand, ankles buckling. One collapses next to Abilee. Next to this out-of-place girl dressed as a soldier. He expects to give a final injection but he sees movement, listens near her throat. Waits for any new sign of life.
Her presence is strange, he thinks. Something else wrong with God, he says to himself. Why He’d allow it? No, he thinks. No God. Embarrassed he’d ever been a conscientious objector.
The Englishman hovers near her face and speaks. His words through her water-plugged ears are like muted cave echoes, rousing Abilee but she does not respond with words. If she opens her mouth, she thinks, she’ll taste the smell of war. Of gunpowder and blood and feces and urine. Of sweat and dirt and earth. Burning cloth and rubber. Then the wood. Then the flesh. All mixed together. Childbirth in a wildfire.
Around them is the battlefield, hallowed ground with sand siphoning blood deep into itself, returning its surface color to tan. The sky is a thick and gauzy color as if any blue behind is being pushed out as a gel of light, filtered through a deconstructed cigarette.
The low light spills over the wrecked bodies along the three-mile-long clip of beach, codenamed Utah.
It is noon.
The litter bearer checks Abilee’s pulse, counting, then glances at the metal tag dangling from her necklace and reads aloud. His words become clearer to her now; his intonations are that of a Brit, she thinks, of Devon, of Wales, of—. “Private Tillson!” the Englishman says, slapping her face, gentler than most might. “Abilee Tillson?” he says. “Is that your name? Are these your tags?” He jingles them. “Whose uniform is this? Are you United States Navy? What were you doing on a ship?”
Abilee can smell canned salmon—the thickening smell of burning flesh—and under her she can feel an irritating lump at her spine as if she’d been lying on her housecoat. Gunfire erupts in the distance like the slow build to applause.
Abilee grasps and collects sand in her closing fist. It is pain.
“Did you fall into the sea with these men?” the Englishman asks.
Abilee turns her head away from him, instead focuses on a body lying beside her. He seems to be dead, she thinks. His right eye a persimmon, the other hangs from its socket. A monster.
She wonders if they had won. If the amphibious invasion had been a success. Win or lose, no matter, she thought, because she had seen Black veterans like her father return victors and be hated too. And now she wondered if she were now like her father, and in another country. “You want to know the number of enemies a killer has made,” her father once told her, “Count the victims, treble their dead.”
“You are wounded, ma’am,” the Englishman says with a revised accent this time, the r-sound heightened so that it might sound more familiar to her like she was Texan, like someone she might have known and called friend. “We ah herrre to help you,” he says.
Abilee does not move. Her wet uniform clings to her body like second skin.
“I need plasma!” he calls out then lowers his voice, “Listen, ma’am? Miss Tillson? I’m-I’m going to have to take off your wet clothes. Check for wounds.”
Abilee shivers.
She is afraid.
Her severely chapped lips part but her words only crumble.
“You have hypothermia,” the Englishman says. “We must get you dry and warm.”
He cuts her uniform like shelling a lobster, straight up the center. Her brown skirt and matching coat peel to her sides while a tear slides and gathers into the well of her ear.
She blinks at the monster.
Feels the wind brush her naked body.
Feels hairpins digging into her scalp—the hat they once held, a phantom—long gone.
The Englishman pauses for a moment at the sight of Abilee’s exposed breasts. Her pubic hairs form a dark chalkboard on the wall of her brown pelvis. The first woman he’s treated. “Where did you go in, ma’am?” he says and reflexively moves through treatments.
Where did I go in? she repeats his words to herself. When did I go all in?
He wraps a blanket around her whole body as quickly as possible then ties a knot at her chest. The folds of the blanket appear solid at the curves now, otherworldly, like a marble sculpture of flowing drapery, her head and face like art unfinished, her closed eyes a Da Vinci.
The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
Black American history and the affects of war on alleged-freedom and liberty is the impetus of this novel. As a practicing criminal lawyer and Black woman who is the daughter of a policeman, my interests have long been the law, morality, and it's inequitable application and what that means for me and for humanity. Art is how we explain ourselves; it's how we sift through facts, through life, and find the truth. Artists are the living consciousness of the world and my current project about WW2s D-Day through the eyes of a Black girl who is a caregiver at home and a college drop out, is how I wanted to explore the truth behind victory and tragedy.
What was the inspiration for your creative work?
This novel was inspired by two things: receiving the raw interview footage of a Black WW2 Corporal, Cpl. William Dabney who won the French Cross for heroism on D-Day, and was inspired by the work of young caregivers around the world who must forfeit their lives and aspirations to care for a loved one or family member.
Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation?
I'm a partial introvert who still loves the intimacy shared among strangers. The human rituals that bring us together in nature, at the beach, around campfires, in parks, and anywhere "outside-outside" that will be no more because of our climate crisis. I want my children's children, and theirs, to be able to play outside until the streetlights come on. Which means, I want them to play in the sun. To be able to breathe clean air, to run, to not die of exposure. To be able to drink clean water and gather with friends. This is what I don't wish to lose.
