Front Lines (6 page)

“I called the operator and told her to call the fire department.”

“Good girl. But it'll take them a half hour this time of night,” Tam says.

“Can we save him?”

“Nothing can save him,” Tam says darkly. “He died a long while ago.” But then, ignoring his own cryptic assessment, he says, “I'll give it a try.”

He races to a garden hose, turns on the spigot, and drenches himself in water. He tears the sleeve from his pajamas, soaks the cloth, and ties it around his head, covering his mouth and nose.

“Be careful. Don't get hurt!” Rio cries as her father plunges through the door and pounds up the steps.

Rio hesitates, feeling useless as the sister weeps openly, and now other doors on the street are opening and other lights are coming on, and at last she hears the distant wail of a siren. But something feels very wrong about standing there and doing nothing. Her decision is not thought out but instinctive: she follows her father's example, tears away the pocket of her chenille robe, and wets it. Holding the rag over her mouth, she rushes into the strange house and up the stairs.

As soon as her head rises above the level of the upper floor she gags on smoke, and that's when she hears the unmistakable sharp, unbearably loud sound of a gunshot. The sound sends her rushing up, taking steps two at a time. Three rooms, one with an open door, are bright with fire that crackles and roars on fresh breezes from the broken window. A second door is closed. A third is open and lit only by candlelight. Rio hears her father's voice and peers cautiously around the corner.

The room is stuffed, stuffed almost to the exclusion of furniture, with cardboard boxes spilling reams of paper: old newspapers, age-curled magazines, and thousands of envelopes with the stamps neatly cut away. One entire wall is bookshelves loaded with stamp albums in a dozen different sizes and covers.

In the center of the room, against the far wall, is a bed. It's a mahogany sleigh bed like those to be found at many a home in Gedwell Falls.

Tam Richlin stands before that bed with his back to Rio. And beyond him, propped against a stack of pillows, lies a monster.

Rio stifles a scream. The creature in the bed must once have been a man, but now he is a nightmare in a sleeveless white T-shirt, revealing a frail, parchment-flesh left arm and a shocking stump where the right arm would once have been. He has only half a face, half an old man's face,
slack and sickly. But the right side of that face is gone. There is a deep crater, as though that half of his face was bitten off by a wild beast. The mouth is a twisted grin on its intact side, but from there the lips seem to melt away, revealing teeth all the way back to the upper molars. The lower molars are mostly gone as the jawbone simply ends, absent, leaving a gaping hole in sagging flesh.

She can look—must look, cannot look away—at the Stamp Man's throat, a gulping, spasming pink tube revealed through those absent teeth and jaw.

The Stamp Man's right eye is gone as well, but this is blessedly covered by an eye patch.

He is holding a pistol, aimed at Tam Richlin.

“We have to get you out of here, Captain,” Tam says.

The Stamp Man shakes his head vigorously, a gruesome sight.

“You don't want to burn to death, Captain. That's no way to go.”

The Stamp Man shakes the gun as if to say, “I won't wait to burn.” Then he waves the gun around the room, not threatening, just indicating all of it. He makes sounds, a wet, slurry mimicry of human speech. Rio can see his tongue trying to form sounds, see his throat contracting and releasing, all of it creating no intelligible word, only a cry, a plea, a wail of despair.

Tam for the first time notices Rio behind him. “What
the hell are you doing up here?” he snaps.

“I just . . . I thought I could help.” She cannot look at him because she cannot will herself to look away from the man in the bed, the Stamp Man, who her father calls “Captain.”

“Get out of here, Rio.” And when Rio doesn't move, Tam grabs her bicep and shoves her hard. “Now! Go!”

Rio flees the room and stumbles down the stairs, gagging on smoke that has thickened to near opacity as the fire builds, sending waves of searing heat and choking smoke to pursue her until she escapes through the front door and almost collapses on the sidewalk.

“Is he dead?” It's the sister. She is no longer crying. Her eyes have gone dull.

“No, he's—”

And a single shot rings out.

Terrible, fearful moments later Tam Richlin emerges, choking, his face darkened by soot and by something liquid that slides down his cheek leaving a red smear.

The fire truck comes rattling down the block, and even before it comes to a complete stop men in asbestos coveralls and iconic fireman's helmets pile off, unlimbering a thick canvas hose. Axes and hoses and portable fire extinguishers in hand, the firemen race to the porch, but Tam knows the fire chief and grabs his arm.

Rio does not hear their conversation, but she sees the
fire chief's face go from determined and a little excited to grim. He nods, and with a few words to his crew, sets them to directing their hoses toward the siding and roof of the adjoining home.

No fireman enters the burning house.

The sister says nothing, does not urge them on, but sinks down to sit, legs splayed gracelessly across the concrete sidewalk.

“Let's get out of here,” Tam says, and takes his daughter's arm. There is no arguing with the sad finality in his voice.

They walk in silence, ignoring shouted inquiries as half the town is now out in the street. Just before they reach home, Tam stops. He hangs his head for a moment, silent. Then he says, “I was about to say I'm sorry you had to see that, but I suppose it's a good thing.”

“What was that? The Stamp Man wasn't burned, what . . .”

“Captain Peter McFall, US Marines. He was at Belleau Woods in the last war. They had a bad time of it. And he had a very bad time of it.”

Rio remains silent, seeing the conflict in her father's eyes. Tam Richlin is a quiet man, not one for long speeches, or even short ones. She waits.

“I guess the fire was the last straw for him. I guess he's been waiting for death since that day. Year after year like
that. The pain . . . Never able to go out into the world . . . The fire was taking all he cared about, all his stamps, all his . . . what little he had left.”

“Did he shoot himself?”

Tam was silent for so long Rio thought he hadn't heard. Finally, in a single long sigh he said, “He wanted to. But suicide is an unforgivable sin in his faith. You see, it leaves you no chance to repent and atone.” Then, under his breath, bitterly, “As if he had not already paid for the right to sit straight and proud at God's table.”

Rio was forming the next question, thinking the words,
but I heard a shot
, when she realized the truth.

Captain Peter McFall, retired, would not have been able to repent of suicide. But Tam Richlin had time enough to seek forgiveness.

“Du bist nisht mayn tokhter! Mayn tokhter shist nisht keyn mentshn. Afile natsis!”
This pronouncement comes with a side order of two hands chopping the air for emphasis and a head thrown back as if to implore God to bear witness.

The speaker is Elisheva “Rainy” Schulterman's mother. The language is Yiddish. In English it means,
You are not my daughter! My daughter does not shoot people. Even Nazis!

It is a very dramatic statement, rendered somewhat less convincing by the fact that in her eighteen years of life, all in this same fourth-floor apartment, Rainy has heard that she is not her mother's daughter on literally hundreds of occasions, including when she took up piano instead of violin, when she first went out in public with her head uncovered, and when she added ketchup to scrambled eggs.

“Mother, I doubt very much I'll be shooting anyone. I've qualified on the M-1 carbine, but only just barely. Anyway, I've been assigned to the army intelligence training school.”

“This is good,” her father says from behind his newspaper, which, he has made clear, he will put down once all the food is served. “The army sees she is intelligent.”

Rainy's mother, who has been hovering around and bringing new dishes to the table, stalks over, rudely pulls down the newspaper, sticks her face just inches from her husband's, and says, “Intelligence, old man.
Nyet
intelligent, intelligence! Learn to speaking English like American, hokay? And no newspaper at my table!”

Rainy's older brother, Aryeh, who, like her, is in uniform, winks at her. Rainy rolls her eyes in response.

They are at the dinner table, which is loaded with mismatched serving dishes full of noodles, chicken, pickled beets, bread, and spinach that has been cooked to a gray-green paste. Steam rises into the light of the shaded bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Also at the table are the elderly couple from upstairs who are nodding along in noncommittal agreement. To be fair, they also nod along with Rainy. They're there for the free food.

“Do they give you gun?” Rainy's mother demands. “Aryeh, eat some spinach, is good for you blood. If they
give you gun it is for shoot, no? Hokay. It is for shoot.”

“They gave me a gun too,” Aryeh says, hiding a smile. “They give them to all marines. It's something they kind of insist on.”

“Hah!” Rainy laughs, which is a mistake, because this launches a five-minute-long diatribe in a patois of English, Yiddish, Polish, German, and some words that are invented on the spot, all of which culminate in the pronouncement that sons are not daughters, and daughters are not sons, and only a woman can give birth, painful birth, lasting hours, while the man is in some tavern drinking.

“The chicken is good,” Rainy's father observes once this storm has blown itself out.

“A woman's place is in the home, respecting and obeying her fool of a husband!” Rainy's mother cries.

“Yes, Rainy,” her father says in a tone of weary irony. “Why can't you learn from your mother to be respectful and obedient to men?”

“Very tender, the chicken,” one of the neighbors says.

With dinner completed, Rainy helps clear the table, moving swiftly between the narrow but elegant dining room and the tiny kitchen so as not to be caught alone with her mother.

It's her father who corners her, drawing her down the hallway to a discreet distance.

“Rainy,” he says.

“Dad?”

He sighs, scratches his head, makes a face like maybe what he's about to say is a bad idea. Then he shrugs and says, “Listen,
bubala
, you know your cousin Esther?”

“Not really. Do I have a cousin Esther?”

“She's your grandmother's sister's daughter. They live in Krakow. In Poland.”

“Yes, Father, I know where Krakow is.” She doesn't mean to sound like a sarcastic teenager and softens it by prompting, “So, what about Cousin Esther?”

“Well, she writes letters to everyone, every branch of the family. Your mother gets a letter three, sometimes four times a year.”

Rainy waits, sensing a revelation, which comes after a dramatic pause.

“Nothing. Nothing for a year now,” her father says. “One letter missed, two even . . .” He shrugs.

“Well, there is a war on.”

“True, very true. I heard something about that on the radio, I think.” Her father is capable of his own sarcasm. “But when I talk to people at temple, it's the same thing. No one hears from Poland, no one hears from Ukraine . . . I'm just saying, you're going to do intelligence work, no? You might hear something . . .” He lets it hang.

Rainy draws back, unconsciously putting distance
between them. “Father. Dad. I can't talk to you about my work. Those are the rules.”

He shrugs and dips his head and squints in a gesture that eloquently conveys his understanding, but also his expectation that rules are not always to be followed blindly. “I understand, and I will never ask you to break a rule, Rainy. I'm just saying you have a responsibility to the army, to this country that we love. But you also have an obligation to our people. Maybe you keep your eyes open. Maybe you see things, maybe you hear things . . .”

“I better finish clearing the table,” Rainy says, bringing the conversation to a halt.

With that awkward exchange and the clearing of dishes concluded, Rainy goes to her favorite place, the roof of the five-story building. The roof is flat tarpaper, with some of the tar still liquid from the day's heat. Blackened pipes stick up in a seemingly random pattern. Beyond Rainy's perch is a mile of roofs just like her own, and beyond that, in the distance, the skyscrapers that to most people's minds defined New York City. The skyline is mostly dark for fear of the German submarines lurking just offshore that use city lights to silhouette vulnerable cargo ships plying the coastal route.

Aryeh joins her, bringing up two cups of hot tea.

“Had to get out of there, huh?” he asks.

His sister is a young woman with black hair, which
unbound is so wild that it must be obsessively pinned down. She's cut it for the army, but even short it struggles to get free. She has an olive complexion untroubled by blemishes. Her face in repose is alert, smart, skeptical, and thoughtful. Her mouth is wide, with full lips. Her eyes are large, dark, and quite beautiful.

“You handled that well,” her brother says. “I saw you about to explode a few times, but you didn't.” He clinks his cup against hers. “Very mature of you.”

They are more than brother and sister; they are best friends and have been since a seven-year-old Rainy lost patience with her brother's incessant teasing and broke his nose with a loaf of very stale rye bread.

His nose healed but not perfectly, and the slight crook that twists it gives a touch of character to his movie star looks. Rainy doesn't mean to idolize him, it's not normally her way, but she can't help it.

“I've just spent thirteen weeks being shouted at by people with stripes on their shoulders,” she says. “I've had to learn to—”

“Accept criticism?” Aryeh offers lightly.

“Who's criticizing me?” Rainy snaps before realizing he's playing with her. “You think I'm crazy too, don't you?”

“A little bit,” he admits. “But not crazy enough to be a marine.”

Rainy laughs and affectionately messes his unmessably short hair. Then she's serious. “I can't sit this out, Ary. I have to be part of it.”

“They're scared is all, Mom and Dad.”

“They want grandchildren.”

“I think they want a daughter,” he says softly. “You know you're their favorite. You got the brains in the family, and that's what they care about.” He doesn't mean to sound resentful.

“And all you got is the looks? Poor baby.”

They sip their tea and look out across the city they both love.

“So how long does this intelligence school last?”

“Eight weeks,” she says.

“Spy stuff?”

“Cloak and dagger,” she jokes. “They picked me because I speak German.”

“You speak everything.”

“Not true. Just German. And some Italian. A little French. Yiddish, of course.”

“Are there other languages?” He likes playing dumb with his brilliant little sister.

“One or two. I don't speak Japanese, though, so I guess we won't be running into each other out there.” She waves a hand, meaning to encompass the world, not just New York.

“Nope. Looks like we marines'll be killing Japs on our own, no army help needed.”

This is too much for her. Far away the Japanese are having similar conversations, full of bold talk about slaughtering American marines.

“Stop,” he says, seeing the worry in her eyes. “I'll be fine. You know me. Aren't I always fine?”

But tears are welling up now, and when she looks at him her eyes glisten. “If you get hurt, I'll kill you.”

“I'm supposed to meet up with some buddies. We're going to go down to the USO club, see if there are any girls who want to dance with big, bad, bold marines. Why don't you come?”

“Right, that's what you need before you ship out: your little sister tagging along.”

He doesn't argue; he knows she'll say no.

“I wish you hadn't joined the marines,” she says after a long silence. “There are safer jobs in the army.”

“I don't think anyone wanted me for intelligence work,” he says, making a joke of it.

“Do you know where they're sending you?”

“To California by train, then a nice little boat trip to Hawaii where I will lie on the beach and soak up the sun.”

“And then?”

“Come on, Rainy, don't do that.”

She puts her arms around him and squeezes him tightly.
He strokes her head and says “come on” again. And then again.

Then she pushes him away and wipes the tears from her cheeks. There are small wet marks on the chest of his uniform.

“This tea is terrible.”

“Hey, I made it myself,” Aryeh protests.

“That, I could guess.”

“Listen . . .” He sighs. “I lied a little. Not about making the tea. I'm not going to the club to meet girls. I mean, I am going to the club with some buddies. But I'm not meeting girls. Just a girl.”

This is news, and Rainy's eyebrows rise. “A girl? Singular? Just one girl? You?”

“I kind of like her. Jane. But not plain Jane, very pretty Jane.” His tone is light and carefree and doesn't fool Rainy for a minute.

“Are you in love? I'm amazed. Have you actually fallen for someone?”

He blows out a long breath. “I may have asked her to marry me.”

That freezes Rainy solid for a full minute. “There's a problem, isn't there?”

“See, that's exactly why you'll be good at the spying game. Right away you glom onto—”

“Don't try to distract me with flattery, Ary.” She
searches his face intently, as if he's written the answer there. And maybe he has, because she begins to sense the reason for his caution. “What's her last name? Her family name.”

“Jane? Oh, it's Jane Meehan.”

“Meehan?” She sees guilt in the averted gaze. “Meehan? That doesn't sound like a Jewish name.” His silence is confirmation. “Good lord. Good lord, Ary. Are you serious? You want to marry a shiksa?”

“Don't you start in with that.”

“Look at me, Ary. Do you think I'm the one you need to worry about? Have you told Mother and Father? No, of course not, I would have heard the explosion. The whole city would have heard the explosion! The building would be flattened!”

“I thought maybe you could help me find a way to explain it to them.”

Her eyebrows achieve their maximum height. “Explain it? Explain to our parents that their grandchildren will not be Jewish? I could more easily explain the general theory of relativity!”

“General who?”

She puts her hands against the side of her face and looks at him, amazed, and, she has to admit, with disapproval. “You can't marry outside. What are you thinking?”

He shrugs. “I guess I'm thinking I love her, and I don't
see where it's so all-fired important whether she believes in a single God or a God with a Son.”

“If you say that to Mother or Father, I won't have to worry about a Jap killing you. They'll do the job.”

“Which is why I need your help. Because, see, I'm going to marry her before I ship out. So she'll have the insurance if . . . And so that . . . Um . . . Well, it should have a name.”

And now the full weight of the truth comes crashing down. “No. Don't tell me she's pregnant, this girl.”

Aryeh fidgets and suddenly looks panicky. He's been hiding this earth-shattering truth.

“I'm not leaving her in the lurch,” he says. And now the tears are threatening to fill his eyes, and that, Rainy knows, will humiliate him. But his humiliation can wait. First . . .

She slaps him hard on the cheek. It makes a satisfyingly loud crack, so she does it again.

“I thought you would—”

“You thought? You didn't think. Or at least you thought with the wrong part of your body!” The fact that Rainy's tone is an almost perfect reflection of her mother's voice is not lost on Rainy, but she pushes past that moment of realization.

Aryeh's miserable but defiant as well. “I love her, Rainy. I mean, it's the real thing, and she's pregnant, and I'm
going off to . . . to maybe. . . . And she'll be all alone.” And then adds, “And broke.”

“Ah. Here it comes. The final shoe.”

“We're getting married tomorrow. I can give her my allotment, but it won't be enough, not in this city. She'll need more.”

“You want me to help.”

“It's a lot to ask.”