Front Lines (11 page)

He stands, and Rainy does as well, though her legs are weak and her mind is still swimming with dark thoughts and far too much emotion.

“Sir, I . . .” She is brought up short by the realization that tears are forming in her eyes. She manages to say, “Thank you, sir.”

Herkemeier shakes her hand and says, “Now, you go get 'em, Rainy Schulterman.”

“By any and all means necessary, sir.”

“Jumping jacks, twenty-five and sound off. HUT!”

Rio doesn't recall this particular sergeant's name, but she resents his being this awake and fit and energetic at an hour when sunrise is still a long way off.

Forty mostly young, but not all young, recruits begin. Feet thrown to the side, arms over the head, recover. All across the base are identical formations of identically bleary and sore soldiers, all shouting along to the rhythm of their own PT leader.

Voices, some male, some female, yell, “One! Two! Three!”

“Why can't we eat first, that's all I want to know,” Kerwin Cassel mutters under his breath.

“Four! Five! Six!”

“Because that would make too much sense,” Jenou mutters back.

In just a few short weeks they've already perfected the
art of speaking without moving lips, between beats, and pitching it so only those nearest can hear. They are evolving the fine art of military grumbling.

“Hands laced behind your necks, deep-knee bends, twenty-five and . . . HUT!”

“One! Two! Three!”

“I hate this one,” Rio says.

“I hate them all,” Jenou shoots back.

“Quiet in the ranks!” the sergeant yells.

“Four! Five!”

“Plenty fun if you have my view,” Tilo says, managing a leering sound in between gulps of air. He's behind Rio and Jenou.

“It's fine for me, Suarez. You look at us, and we don't have to look at your skinny butt,” Jenou says.

“That's a win-win,” Rio chimes in.

“Nine! Ten! Eleven!”

Week three. Friendships have formed; dislikes as well. There are still lewd remarks and many passes made and the occasional grab or clutch, but word has come down to the NCOs in no uncertain terms that they are not to tolerate any nonsense. Many of the male soldiers have made peace with the idea of the women being here. Some, like Jack Stafford, the cheeky Englishman, took a chivalric approach and shut down the more obnoxious of the men.

Others were nowhere close to accepting females, and that number includes officers and NCOs as well. And the hard truth is that despite the army's reluctance to send anyone home who might carry a rifle, females are washing out at a higher rate than the males. Many of the girls and women simply lack the physical strength and endurance. The females still left tend to be taller and stronger than average, many from farms or ranches. Even Jenou is solidly built beneath the feminine curves, and her jumping jacks have the requisite snap and precision. As for Cat, she could probably best some of the men in a fist fight.

The integration of men and women is far from easy or settled, but is still more advanced than the integration of the races. Rio has learned that the camp across the river is for colored soldiers only. From time to time she glimpses them over there, doing much the same things that the whites on this side of the river are doing, but always over there, and never over here.

Rio is curious about that other camp and the colored soldiers over there, but she seems almost alone in her curiosity. They are seldom spoken of, those others. Only Jack has remarked on the irony that America is going to war against a white supremacist enemy with a segregated American army. And when he made that remark he was hooted down, especially by GIs from the south, male and female alike.

They jump, squat, sit up, and perform a complicated move called the Army Stomp, until each of them is sweating and shaking with exhaustion. But there is no doubt that they are already stronger and fitter than when they had first arrived. The fact that they are able to complain is evidence of that, since in the early days they'd all been busy gasping for breath. No, although they complain more, the pain is far less, and pride in her own physical strength has begun to bubble up within Rio Richlin.

“Push-ups! Twenty-five! HUT!”

I can do this.

“One! Two! Three!”

This is the one exercise that always left the women behind. The men can all do it—all twenty-five push-ups. But none of the women has gone past seventeen.

“Twelve! Thirteen! Come on, Castain, push it! Fifteen!”

Rio is strong to fifteen, but then comes the lethargy, the burn, the inability to control her breathing.

No, I won't stop.

“Seventeen! Eighteen!”

Rio's shoulders and stomach muscles tremble from the exertion, like she has fever chills, all the small muscles shaking while the big muscles burn.

“Nineteen! Twenty!”

Jenou collapses, facedown on the matted grass.

Sergeant Mackie joins the noncom who is leading calisthenics. Rio catches a sweat-blurred view of her and feels Mackie's eye on her. Mackie takes over the count.

“Twenty-one!”

Impossible. Just lie down.

“Twenty-five!”

The women were all either facedown or climbing stiffly to their feet. The last male is done. Rio is on twenty-two.

“Give up, Richlin!” Tilo heckles.

Twenty-three. Two more.

It's as if she's trying to push up with a tractor on her back. Rio's muscles just do not want to obey. Just . . . do . . . not.

Twenty-four! A shaky, sloppy twenty-four, but a twenty-four just the same.

Down. Collapsed. Finished. Done in.

No.

The twenty-fifth push-up takes what feels like five full minutes. Rio's teeth grit. Her face is beet red. She makes a sound like an animal in distress.

Twenty-five!

Applause breaks out from some of the men and some of the women.

“Twenty-five,” Rio says as she rises to her feet.

“Congratulations, you can count,” Tilo mutters.

From Mackie there is just the very slightest nod of
acknowledgment. More than enough to cause Rio's heart to swell. She almost staggers from dizziness, but she manages to maintain her place in the line.

Rio Richlin is someone now, someone in Sergeant Mackie's eyes, at least. She is the girl who's done all twenty-five. The only female so far. The first.

That's right: Rio Richlin. Twenty-five!

“Chow in thirty minutes. Atten-HUT. Dismissed.”

Rio walks to the barracks with the half-crippled gait of an exceedingly sore back. She grabs her towel and ditty bag from her foot locker, hurrying because even if you get there early hot water is never a certainty, and if you're last in line it's guaranteed to be freezing. Jenou falls in beside her, but already other women have gotten a lead on them.

“Great work,” Jenou teases. “Now Mackie's going to expect us all to do that.”

“I doubt I'll ever manage it again,” Rio says, but she's confident that she will. “It was Suarez that motivated me. I had to show that little . . .”

“That's you all over, honey. Any time someone tells you you can't do something it excites your inner mule.”

“My inner mule?”

“Hey, sweetie, why don't you come shower with me? You could scrub my back.”

Rio freezes. The voice is male and familiar: Luther Geer. She doesn't want to turn and face him, and now she
feels foolish and conspicuous just freezing like this, with her towel and her shower bag in her hand.

She starts walking again, and now the voice is even more suggestive.

“Or you could scrub something else,” Luther says with an unabashed leer in his voice. “Right, boys?”

“Feeling threatened, boys?” Jenou snaps.

Rio, her face reddening, feels tears begin to fill her eyes. She is humiliated by the suggestion, and even more humiliated that Jenou feels the need to defend her. She knows she should spin around and give this rude young man a piece of her mind, but the right words do not come quickly and that hesitation becomes yet another cause of embarrassment.

She walks away on stiff legs, pursued by more than one wolf whistle and derisive chuckles.

“Scrub a dub, baby, scrub a dub,” Luther calls after her and makes a loud kissing sound. “I got something dirty that needs cleaning.”

In the crowded, hectic women's latrine Jenou says, “We should tell Sergeant Mackie.”

“No,” Rio snaps.

“But she's the—”

Rio turns a face now gone white with rage on Jenou. “No.”

Jenou sighs. “No, you're right. We'll have to find a way to—”

“
We
don't have to do anything, Jen. I have to deal with Private Geer.” She looks at herself in the mirror and consciously changes her expression until she achieves a look of resolve rather than rage. “It has to be me.”

“Boys will be boys,” said Carlita Swan, an older woman of twenty-nine who is wasting her limited time plucking her eyebrows over the sink. “Don't let it get to you, kid.”

“I won't,” Rio mutters.

But it has already gotten to her. Weren't they all in this together, the males and the females? Weren't they all soldiers?

She feels furious and cowardly and even more furious for being cowardly, the one feeding on the other. Her moment of triumph has been turned into resentment.

Enough.

The rage is gone. All emotion in Rio Richlin has gone cold, and something else, something grimly practical, has taken hold.

“Rio? What are you thinking?” Jenou asks, nervous at the expression on her friend's face. This is a different look, unfamiliar to Jenou in a lifetime of gauging Rio's inner feelings. There is something almost . . . predatory.

“Let it go, kid,” Carlita says.

“I've let it go and let it go and I'm done with it,” Rio says. She sets her shower bag down carefully and does an about-face. She marches out of the women's latrine, past
Mackie's closed door, and along the hundred feet of polished tile to the other end of the barracks.

She takes a single deep breath before striding directly into the men's latrine.

The shrieks and cries have a strangely nonmasculine sound. Naked men twist away or cover themselves with whatever comes easily to hand, sometimes pulling a still-clothed buddy in front of them in a soapy, steamy panic.

“Where is Private Geer?” Rio demands. “I am here for his apology.”

A dozen pairs of appalled, scandalized, and frankly frightened eyes turn toward the far end of the room, silently betraying an oblivious Geer singing in the shower.

It's not the cries but the sudden silence that alerts Geer, who sticks his face into the shower jet, rinses soap from his hair and forehead, and says, “What's going . . .” His eyes widen, a rivulet of soap runs down into his left eye, which blinks madly all on its own. His mouth opens and moves, but no sound comes out. He looks like a large, pink catfish that has just landed in the bottom of a fisherman's cooler.

“I would like your apology,” Rio says, pleased that her voice is at least somewhat steady and holds her gaze rigidly on Geer's face.

Geer does not answer. He reaches with a fumbling hand for his towel and holds it in front of himself. He
swallows convulsively and his eyes inscribe a panicky circuit from left to right, looking for salvation.

An older man, maybe as old as some of Rio's teachers, and blessedly still wearing at least the most vital parts of his clothing, says in a laconic voice, “I think maybe you'd best apologize to Private Richlin, Geer, so all these boys can breathe again.”

Luther says, “Ksh . . . Mf . . . Shuh . . .” and various other monosyllables before finally discovering his voice and vocabulary. “I didn't mean . . . anything. I was just . . . But I apologize.”

“I accept,” Rio says.

She executes a military about-face, only slightly spoiled by the fact that on the wet tile she over-rotates a little, and marches back out of the room.

Jenou followed her in and now follows her out.

“Well, that was an education,” Jenou says.

“Much to think about,” Rio agrees solemnly.

Halfway back to the women's bathroom stands Sergeant Mackie.

“Richlin. Castain. The men's latrine is off-limits. Report to the mess sergeant for KP.”

KP—kitchen patrol—involves peeling a great many potatoes, brewing vats of coffee, and washing pots and pans. It's a lot of work for two tired, sore girls.

But it's less work when Cat comes sauntering in. “I am
in the mood to peel me some taters,” she says in an exaggeratedly rustic accent.

This is perhaps not too great a surprise, though Cat is the only female to join in. Then Jack appears in the doorway. “Hot, soapy water, just my cup of tea. Stick has other duty or he'd be here.”

And then the appearance that stops them all in mid-laugh: Tilo Suarez.

Tilo shrugs irritably. “What? All the pretty girls are here. I'm not leaving them to this foreigner.” Jack tosses him a towel.

Upon returning to barracks they find a somewhat changed atmosphere. For one thing, people have come up with several names for Rio's stunt. It is now Private Richlin's Raid. Or Richlin's Surprise Inspection. Or more crudely the Rio Richlin Short-Arm Showdown. Even Private Richlin's Willie Hunt.

And Rio herself is treated differently. About half the men find the whole thing entertaining and grudgingly admire her courage. The other half (most of whom were in the showers at the time) are not at all amused. Not at all. Some are angry. Some seem almost wounded.

In a single day, with twenty-five push-ups and a brief foray into the men's latrine, Rio goes from being a sort of appendage to the more outgoing Jenou to being an object of curiosity, admiration, fear, and resentment.

The same array of attitudes is evident among the other women, some of whom see her as a champion, while others are annoyed at her sudden elevation in status.

She begins a letter to Strand, thinking she will tell him all about it, but then, after contemplating various descriptive passages, decides not to. How on earth is she supposed to tell him that she's gone storming into the men's latrine?