Front Lines (21 page)

“Jesus save us!” Kerwin cries, perhaps being funny, but perhaps scared as hell too.

The
Tiburon
—a much, much smaller ship than the
Queen Mary
, and much, much more likely to be tossed around like a cork—reaches the top of a wave and then shoots down the far side like a boulder rolling down the side of a mountain. For a few seconds Rio feels as if gravity has been canceled. But gravity comes right back with a vengeance as the ship bottoms out, nearly collapsing Rio's knees.

“I never knew being in the army meant so much time on boats,” Jenou says. “And if we have to be on boats, why can't it be the
Queen
instead of this old tub? I liked the
Queen
.”

“Yes,” Rio says wryly, “you had a very good time on the
Queen
.”

“Oh, I wouldn't call one young ensign a very good time. More like a . . . diversion,” Jenou says, and attempts to toss her hair coyly, an effect ruined by the fact that her hair—and the rest of her as well—is quite wet.

Rio, Jenou, Cat, Kerwin, Luther, Tilo, Stick, and Jack have been formed into a squad with the sullen and unfriendly Jillion Magraff, a gloomy corporal named Hark Millican, a very Japanese-looking and instantly distrusted Hansu Pang, and Buck Sergeant Cole, who is to be their squad leader.

Most of the squad is in bunks trying desperately not to vomit. But Rio, Jenou, Cat, Stick, Tilo, Kerwin, and Jack are either immune to seasickness or else have already emptied every possible fluid from their bodies. The seven of them have found a tiny, cramped space beneath an overhanging gangway on the port side. They are shielded from the direct blasts of the weather and catch only spray rather than the massive, deck-clearing gray-green waves that roll over the bow and the starboard side.

“This is bad,” Rio shouts above the wind. “Not as bad as down below.”

“At least there's some oxygen up here,” Cat agrees. “Somewhat damp, though.”

Their outer layers are soaked despite the ponchos they wear. Tilo has for once abandoned vanity to tie a red plaid scarf—a gift from an aunt—around his head. The
scarf is soaked, and Rio can see each breath he takes as it draws wet wool into his mouth.

“You know your problem,” Jack says, shouting to be heard over another moan from Cassel. “You're not a seafaring folk, you Yanks. You don't know how to cope with these mildly blustery conditions.”

Stick, normally the most stoic of the group, says, “I don't want to punch you in the nose, Stafford, but I will.”

“Ah, but being of proper English seafaring stock, I have managed to obtain a cure for all our ills,” Jack says, and with that draws a bottle of whiskey from beneath his poncho.

Rio has sipped the occasional beer at home in Gedwell Falls, has drunk entire beers during the bleak, wet, dull two weeks of training in England, but has never before tasted whiskey. Jack hands the bottle to her first, and though she has her doubts, she doesn't want to be a stick-in-the-mud.

So she tilts the bottle back and takes a deep swig of what feels like liquid fire.

“Good, eh?” Jack asks.

To which Rio replies, “Cchh . . . Ah . . . Mmpf . . .” and gasps out several painful breaths.

Jack grins happily, sticks his fists on his hips, widens his stance, and begins to sing at the top of his voice.

“When Britain f-i-i-irst, at heaven's command,

Arose from out the a-a-a-azure main,

Arose, arose from out the azure main;

This was the charter, the charter of the Land

And Guardian A-a-a-angels sang this strain . . .”

Tilo says something that sounds like an exasperated threat, but it isn't intelligible through his scarf. Rio, however, is charmed to discover that Jack has quite a good singing voice.

“Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!”

“I'm going to kill him, just as soon as we finish his bottle,” Kerwin says, taking a drink.

In short order they are seven quite drunk soldiers, stumbling helplessly into one another with each big swell. And now they are an impromptu chorus belting out the chorus, “Rule, Britannia, Britannia rule the waves,” despite some querulous looks from passing sailors who, being Americans, are not pleased to be celebrating the Royal Navy.

Yes, Rio thinks, Jack has a very nice singing voice. And
she likes his accent too.

Rio has no experience of being drunk. Jenou is a bit more knowledgeable and is amused by the sight of her friend growing more garrulous and more friendly. And less steady on her feet.

And Jenou is also more observant when it comes to men. She has noticed several lingering looks from a seriously inebriated Jack—looks aimed not at Jenou but at Rio.

Well,
Jenou thinks,
there's no accounting for taste.
She tilts her head and gives Tilo a speculative glance, but Tilo has just collapsed in a heap, completely unconscious. Stick hauls him away by the only means he can manage on the pitching deck: he's got one of Tilo's ankles in each of his hands and is dragging him as if he's pulling a wagon.

Jenou says, “Maybe we better get below too,” and takes Rio by the arm.

Rio laughs as if that's a joke and peers around owlishly, surprised to discover that her little group has already attrited, reduced now to just herself, Jack, Jenou, and Kerwin.

“Come on,” Rio says, “party's just getting started!”

Jenou rolls her eyes, torn between a never-very-strong sense of responsibility and amusement. Then the matter is settled when Kerwin seems to freeze solid in midsentence, eyes fixed, jaw slack.

“Wha's Cassel starin' at?” Rio asks.

“Absolutely nothing,” Jenou says. She sighs. “The care and feeding of drunks. All this way to deal with drunks. I could have stayed home and helped pour my father into his bed. Come on, Cassel, let's get you to where you won't wash over the side.”

Rio watches them stagger away and is overwhelmed by a wave of sadness for Jenou. Both Jenou's parents are heavy drinkers. Rio's known that since she was eight and witnessed the two of them throwing dinner plates across the dining room. It's a burden for Jenou.

Jenou leans close to Rio, puts her mouth right up close to her ear, and says, “You're drunk, honey. Don't do anything you shouldn't do.”

“Wha' should I . . . should not, shouldn't I do?”

“Okay, I'm coming right back for you,” Jenou says, pointing a warning finger at Rio. “Don't get washed overboard before I get back.”

“M'be righ' there,” Rio calls after her friend.

“Uh-huh,” Jenou says, and guides the comatose Kerwin away like she's leading a blind man.

“Where are they . . . huh . . . ,” Jack says, and sways into Rio, causing her to giggle, which causes him to giggle, and the two of them roar with laughter when a wave sneaks up the port side to slap at them and barely misses.

“Almost got us,” Rio says.

“Nazi wave. Thass wha' that was,” Jack says.

“I thought Britannia ruled them. The waves.”

“Not tha' one. Tha' was a bloody treasonous wave.”

It is the last assault of a sea that is calming by degrees. Rio and Jack lean back against the steel bulkhead and stare blearily out at the convoy around them. A Royal Navy destroyer is a mile off, eternally patrolling for submarines. A second troopship is nearer, in line just astern. The sky is ragged, scudding clouds below a silvery moon, sky and moon both untroubled by the storm below.

“I've got . . .” Jack holds the bottle up to see that it has less than an inch of auburn liquid left in it. “That much lef.”

“No more,” Rio says.

Jack upends the bottle, swallows all that remains, and then belatedly says, “Sure you don't want some?”

He is suddenly standing very close to Rio, or perhaps she's standing very close to him, close enough that they no longer need to shout.

“You sing . . . good,” Rio says.

“You shoot good,” Jack says. “You shoot, I'll sing.”

At which point he launches into a largely incomprehensible version of a song Rio has never heard.

“Come, come, come and make eyes at me, down at the old Bull and Bush, la-la-la.”

“Make eyes,” Rio says, and follows it with a snorting laugh. “I don't even know wha' tha' means. Make eyes.”

“Hah!”

“Jenou, she . . . I don't . . .” Something has gone wrong with her brain and her body, the sober voice buried deep inside her inebriated brain notices with alarm. Her body is way too cold and wet to feel this warm.

Jack turns to her and looks directly into her eyes.

“What. Are. You. Doing? Jack Stafford?” Rio enunciates as carefully as she can.

“Making eyes at you,” Jack says.

Rio is going to laugh but doesn't. She's about to give him a playful shove but doesn't do that either. Instead she feels herself falling toward him, as if some kind of gravity wave is beaming from his suddenly serious eyes.

“I can do that,” Rio says. She steadies her head, which has a tendency to want to loll back and forth with each movement of the ship. And she looks into his eyes.

“Wow,” Rio says.

“Mmm?”

“It's like . . .”

“Like?”

“Um . . .”

She closes her eyes when he kisses her.

The first kiss is tentative and a bit sloppy. Jack pulls away. He seems to be trying to focus his eyes, then gives
up and in the end closes them, and moves forward blindly for a second kiss.

It would be easy for Rio to push him away. But she doesn't. Nor does she close her eyes this time, but watches him, watches him with minute attention, and when it begins to look very much as if he will miss his target, she takes his face with her two cold hands and holds him still. Holds him still, and he opens his eyes, heavy lidded, somehow innocent and lustful at once, and for what feels like a very long time the two of them just look, inches separating them.

The distance between them lessens, and Rio feels the warmth of his breath on her nose and cheeks. His lips are parted, waiting, and she draws him closer, fraction of an inch by fraction of an inch. She tilts his head to the right, and her own to the left, because that is the opposite of how Strand kissed her, and she is aware of that memory, and aware that what she is doing is very wrong, but this is not a moment for fine moral considerations. Of far greater importance right now is the feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the trembling of her hands on his face, and the realization that they have both stopped breathing.

He does not kiss her, she kisses him, lips parted so she can taste him.

Which is when Jenou reappears to say, “Uh-oh.”

Your father got a job!

Frangie clenches her teeth as her bunk passes through all the angles between 45 and 135 degrees. On the downswing she extends her feet to stop sliding in that direction, and on the upswing she sticks a hand over her head to brace against sliding in that direction.

In her free hand she holds the letter she's already read through several times. Obal has taken over his buddy's paper route, Pastor M'Dale has won an award from the NAACP, and the labor shortage as men and women flood into defense plants has created an unexpected opportunity for her father.

Her father is dispatching taxis, a job he can do from a chair. He is earning a living. The family finances are saved. They aren't well-to-do, certainly, but neither will they lose their home or go hungry.

You can come home now, baby.

That line is as sickening as the effects of the waves. Frangie enlisted to save the family. So she could contribute her allotment. It is the sole reason she signed up, the sole reason she is here on her way to North Africa in this follow-up to the successful American landings at Algiers and Oran.

She wants to ball the letter up and throw it away. Or burn it. Or rip it into tiny pieces and scatter them overboard.

Camp Szekely, Fort Huachuca, that hellish hospital ward near Manchester, two reeking, miserable ships, all to save a family that no longer needs saving. And her mother writes as if this will be happy news.

You can come home now?
Frangie pulls the rolled-up coat she uses as a pillow from beneath her head, wads it up over her mouth, and screams into the rough wool.

The letter reached her in England as she was being herded along with thousands of others from ship to truck to train to truck to ship. Mail call, normally the happiest of times, had turned very dark very quickly.

As she's screaming a hand roughly shakes her shoulder. She pulls off the “pillow” and stares at an amused white sailor.

“What?” she snaps.

“Your lieutenant volunteered you. Sick bay is ass-deep in bruises and broken bones, dumb-ass coons not knowing you keep a hand for yourself and a hand for the ship, falling down hatches and—”

“What?”

“They need a Nigra medic to help with some of the coloreds. Tag: you're it.”

She follows the sailor down labyrinthine corridors whose walls and floors will not stand still, up stairs that almost seem to change direction as the floor falls away, across just enough open deck to leave her drenched, and
finally arrives at the sick bay.

Sick bay is roomy by contrast with her berth, but still no bigger than a pair of parlors. One room is distinctly for whites, the other definitely for colored. There's a white doctor muttering to orderlies as he moves between the white beds, pointing at fractures, prodding at bruises, and ignoring anything said to him.

The injured black soldiers are receiving even less care, with one sour-faced white orderly and two black privates who are clearly at a loss. Frangie spots a familiar face. Sergeant Green has just heaved a loudly complaining soldier off his shoulders and onto a gurney that is already occupied.