Front Lines (7 page)

“It can't be a lot because I don't have a lot. A PFC stationed overseas earns $597.60 a year.”

“You'll be a corporal in no time,” he says with a winning grin.

“Like hell,” Rainy snaps. “I'll be a sergeant in no time.” She shakes her head in a show of disappointment, but of course she's already decided to help, and her brother knows it.

“You're the best, Sis. Just don't tell . . . you know.”

“So you want money and discretion. Swell. Anything else?”

“You'll help.”

“Of course I'll help. You're my brother. How can I not help?”

“Lots of sisters wouldn't,” he says.

She goes on shaking her head woefully, face grim, sending him the message that this is serious, sending him the message that he had better not screw up anymore. But
he's Aryeh, so most likely he will.

“If it's a girl we'll name it after you.”

“I'm going to slap you again.”

“I have it coming,” Aryeh says.

“So, tell me: what is on your mind, Frangie girl?”

The question comes from Pastor John M'Dale, the spiritual leader of Frangie's family. He's a middle-aged man, a serious man, a thoughtful man, a scholar even, cursed (or blessed) with a round, cherubic face. His office is all dark wood, books, dust, a big globe on a three-legged stand, a small stuffed pheasant, and various symbols of his faith and position. The chair Frangie occupies is cracked leather and feels vast. She resists the urge to swivel it back and forth.

“I'm signing up, I guess,” Frangie says. “So I wanted to tell you I won't be singing in the choir anymore for a while.”

M'Dale sits back and takes a long, deep breath, nodding and looking closely at Frangie. “Your daddy still out of work?”

“Don't imagine he'll be working ever again, Pastor M.”

He nods. It's not the first time he's heard a story like this. “You think you want to fight in this war of white men killing Japanese or else killing other white men?”

“I don't aim to kill anyone. I aim to try out for medic.”

“Well, that is honorable work, Frangie. But even if all you're doing is patching up hurt boys, you'd still be part of it all.”

“Yes, sir.”

She gives in to the urge to swing the chair left to right and back, just a small motion but comforting. She looks down, finding his gaze too challenging. There's a small feather, like a crow's pinfeather, on the rug, and it's drifting in the breeze of her chair's motion.

“I can tell you what the Bible says about that.” He's forming a tent out of his fingers, sticking the tips up under his ample chin. “First, love. You know that, you know that if you pay attention during my sermons.” He winks at her. “You do pay attention now, don't you?”

She welcomes his bantering tone. “I memorize every word, Pastor M.”

He laughs. When he laughs, he shakes, and that makes Frangie smile.

“First, love. Love above all. Love for the ones who love you, love for the ones who hate you. That's pretty hard to follow if you're in a war.”

“Were you ever?”

The question takes M'Dale by surprise. He sits farther back still and drops his hands to his lap. “No, young Miss Marr, I have not. But I have counseled many men who did go to the last war.”

“Yes, sir,” Frangie prompts.

“Well, they talk about the horrors. But they do also talk about the brotherhood with other black soldiers. I've only ever spoken with one who acknowledges taking a life. He says it was either shoot that other man, or be shot himself.”

“I guess that's what war is,” Frangie says. “But it's also patching a fellow up after he's been shot.”

“Our friends of the Jewish faith say that he who saves a single life saves the world entire,” M'Dale says. “I may not have that quotation quite right, but the sense of it is there. That's not from scripture, but I believe our Lord would agree with the sentiment. But real life can be more complicated than that. You heal a soldier in a war, and he goes off next thing to take a man's life. How then do you avoid responsibility for that death?”

“Sometimes you have to fight,” Frangie says.

“Sometimes you do. Sadly, yes, sometimes you do. And what would you be fighting for, Frangie Marr?”

“Fighting
for
?”

The question overwhelms her and she has to think about it, and as she thinks she looks down at the feather,
more like down, really, it's so light. Its little feathery fate rests on the next breeze.

“Should I not go, Pastor?” It will be easier if he forbids it. If he forbids it then she'll have to find some other way to support her mother and father. Some other way to make her own life better than her mother's life.

“I can't tell you go or don't go,” M'Dale says at last. “I can tell you what the scriptures say. They say to love and not to harm. They say to turn the other cheek. But each of us faces a path with many forks and turns, and that which guides us on that path must be our own conscience, as reflecting the light of Jesus.”

Frangie makes a shaky sigh. She's just gotten permission, however reluctant.

I am not a feather. I will not be blown this way or that. Not from now on.

M'Dale sees all this. “You pray on it, little Frangie. You're a good girl. You're a faithful daughter to your parents and to this church. You pray on it, and if your conscience says go, then you go, and take with you the love and prayers of this congregation.”

Now tears fill Frangie's eyes, and she cannot speak.

M'Dale waits until she has mastered her emotions.

“Will you add me to the prayers, Pastor?”

He gets up from his seat and comes around to her. He opens his arms and she stands, and he practically absorbs
her in his large frame. “Little girl, we will pray for you at every service until you come home safe to us.”

Frangie spills tears onto his collar and knows these are not the first tears to stain his coat, and won't be the last.

He pushes her away, holds her at arm's length, and says, “When you're ready you let me know, and I'll send a couple of my deacons with you. Some of the white folk don't much like our kind enlisting. You'd do best to have company.”

She nods, wipes away the tears, and says, “Then I guess you best send for them.”

It's an eight-block walk to the nearest enlistment center, eight blocks during which humanity around her grows steadily lighter in color. At first Frangie and the two solemn, elderly deacons are just part of the passing scenery, but whites had begun to encroach on what had been an all-black neighborhood before the riots, and the abandoned Mason Hall that has been made over as an induction center is now in a fringe area.

A line of black recruits—mostly male—extends from the propped-open doorway out onto the sidewalk. The line seems to be moving, though slowly. But a white crowd has gathered, young men in school letter jackets or blazers, others in white T-shirts and jeans. They smoke cigarettes and make loud, braying laughs, and amuse themselves by flicking lighted matches at those waiting.

A white cop at the end of the street looks on tolerantly, ready—perhaps—to step in if any of the white folks turn nasty. Ready—very definitely—to step in if any of the colored folks object to being mocked.

So boys and men and some women who will soon be at war dodge flying matches and hold their dignity tight to them as the insults fly.

Frangie hesitates. The two deacons slow as she slows, following her lead. Perhaps if she comes back later the line will be shorter and she can go right inside. Or perhaps the crowd of white trash will grow bored and find something better to do.

“We can't start trouble with them white boys,” one of the deacons advises her.

“Yes, sir, I know that,” she says.

They have come to a stop half a block away. It will be Frangie's decision whether to go ahead. Bile rises in her throat, a barely suppressed rage at being put in this position. She doesn't even want to do this. She's only doing it to help her family. Why would these crackers feel they need to make it all still worse?

She's angry too at the deacons, though she knows it's unfair. Pastor M'Dale insisted they keep her company, but what good are they? Old black men, old men who were here when the buildings burned and black women were raped and the Tulsa police—the police!—flew a rickety
plane over Greenwood throwing gasoline bombs on black businesses and homes.

Helpless then, helpless now.

“I made it here,” Frangie says, her voice tight and low in her throat. “You did your duties. Go tell Pastor M that I made it safely.”

“Now, Miss Frangie—”

“No. You know what happens if the three of us go stand in that line. I'm just a little thing, they won't start trouble, not too much trouble, anyway. But if I have bodyguards . . .”

The deacons did not take too much convincing. They knew she was right, and they knew they were weak and useless in her eyes, as they were in their own.

Frangie walked the last half block. The crowd of whites noticed her immediately.

“Well, look at this, boys. It's a sweet little colored girl come to sign up to shoot Japs.”

“Nigra bint lookin' for a government check, more like.”

“Now I know we're going to lose if that pickaninny is who's fighting.”

She joins the line behind a young man who stands so stiff she wonders how he breathes. He ignores her, focusing on his own self-control.

“Hey, want a light?” One of the white men flicks a
match at her. It spins, hits her shoulder, and falls extinguished. She does not look at him. Will not look at him.

“Must want to be raped by some of them Japs, yeah, that's what she wants.”

Frangie hears it, but she's heard that and worse. Still, it churns her insides.

“You think Japs ever tasted brown sugar?”

“Hell, Dwayne, that's the only kind of pussy you've ever had.”

This remark is not taken well, and a scuffle breaks out between two of the white men that provides distraction until Frangie is safely inside.

An hour later she is Recruit Frangie Marr, of the army of the United States of America. She is to report to the bus station the following morning.

She has forgotten to pray for guidance, and now it's too late. She has followed life's path lit only by her own conscience, without consulting either scripture or the God that inspired it.

Her own conscience . . . and the promise of a paycheck to keep the lights on at home.

She had arrived at the enlistment center in her painful church shoes. She walks home barefoot, with her shoes in one hand. The new army boots she'd been hoping for won't be hers until she arrives at the aptly titled “boot camp.”

She is determined not to let her parents see her fears and doubts, so just before she gets home she forces a smile and quickens her pace, bounding up the sagging steps.

Her mother is at her machine again and looks up, her face like a jittering filmstrip shifting rapidly from one emotion to the next, before settling on a resigned sadness, seeing the morning's events in her daughter's eyes. This is life: choices, mostly between bad and worse.

Frangie's false and overbright grin fades to one of wry acceptance.

“When?” Dorothy Marr asks.

“Tomorrow,” Frangie says.

“Then I best get your wash done.”

Am I really doing this?

Rio and Jenou beg a ride from Toby Perkins, who has the use of his father's 1936 Chevy pickup truck and can drive them the thirty-seven miles down to Petaluma, a larger town, almost a small city. Toby has been sweet on Jenou since they were both in third grade, a fact that Jenou has exploited ruthlessly over the years, never giving Toby so much as a dance but asking him for a favor whenever she needs one.

The three of them drive squeezed in together in the truck, Rio in the center beside Toby, much to Toby's regret. She angles her legs away from the gear shift, and Toby is painfully careful to avoid making contact as he moves through the gears.

“You girls sure you want to—” Toby begins.

“Why, Toby? Do you think we can't hack it?” Jenou asks in a dangerously sugary voice.

“No, I never said that,” Toby retreats quickly. “Just ain't right is all.”

Rio feels a little sorry for Toby, but mostly she is occupied with a case of nerves. Her stomach is in knots. Her mouth is as dry as the hills around them, and she would have traded her most prized possession—an autographed photo of Van Johnson—for a glass of lemonade.

“What if they don't believe I'm eighteen?” Rio asks, not for the first time.

“No one's going to run off and tell your mother. Goodness, Rio, you do worry. Anyway, you look eighteen, don't you?” Jenou appraises her with mocking eyes. “Well, except for . . . But don't worry, you'll come into your bosoms eventually.”

Toby swallows his tongue, and Rio blushes red.

“Very funny, Jen,” Rio mutters, and elbows her friend.

“Toby here thinks we're just weak little girls,” Jenou says.

“Despite your impressive bosoms?” Rio's still annoyed at Jenou, but teasing Toby is too much fun for her not to get in on it.

“Rio's strong, Toby. She can crack a walnut with her fingers,” Jenou says. “Did you know that? I've seen her do it. She's a dangerous young woman.”

Rio smiles. “No walnut is safe from me. Just let some Jap or Nazi come at me with a walnut. You'll see.”

They've both dressed for the occasion, Jenou in a white flannel skirt and tight-fitting, blue-striped blouse, and matching high heels; Rio, significantly less fashionable, in a plaid skirt and too-large white blouse handed down from her sister, and flats. Both wear their hair up, wanting to acknowledge the importance of the occasion and to look older and more sophisticated.

As Rio climbs from the truck she spots a familiar face: Strand is among those standing in line.

Rio notices Jenou smirking at her. “What?” she demands irritably.

“He's pretty tall. You'd have to stretch all the way up on your tiptoes to kiss him.”

“Who said anything about any of that?” She feels a blush prickle her neck. Jenou is being particularly irritating.

“Oh, nothing. Nothing but the way you touch your hair and blush and lick your lips,” Jenou says. “Little things like that.”

Rio has not told Jenou about her date with Strand, or the terrible fire afterward, mostly because Jenou was out of town on an overnight visit to her aunt in the city, and also because Rio has yet to come to grips with either part of it, the date or the fire.

Two images are married in her mind now: Strand's
handsome face lit by the movie projector's flickering beam and the Stamp Man. And both are colored somehow by the memory of her father's grim expression following that single gunshot.

What a terrible life the Stamp Man's sister must have had during the interminable twenty-three years she spent caring for her brother.

Rio imagines caring for Rachel, similarly hurt. Or Strand, if she were his wife. She would stand by him, of course, any wife would or at least should. But what complete abnegation would be required, a total abandonment of any life other than as a nurse to a ruined man.

Only at the furthest reaches of her imagination does the thought come that if she is really doing this, if she is really enlisting in the army, the shattered, dependent patient in need of constant care might be Rio herself. But immediately behind that chilling thought comes a reassuring sense that no, of course not, that would never happen. Not to her.

But Strand?

There is no avoiding Strand. Now Rio and Jenou straighten their clothing, lock arms, and advance on the induction center. Rio feels her face burning, a pink so obvious that Strand can hardly help but misinterpret things. Or perhaps not so much misinterpret as see feelings she doesn't want him seeing.

Yet.

“Hi, Jenou,” Strand says. Then, his voice subtly lower, says, “Hi, Rio. Come to see me off?”

“Us?” Rio feels suddenly guilty. She's involving Strand in a deception, after all. “We're just . . .”

“Signing up, the two of us,” Jenou supplies. “Rio Richlin, Jenou Castain, ready to go off and wipe out the Japs and the Krauts too.”

Strand smiles. “All by yourselves?”

“Well, I guess you can help too, if you want,” Jenou says.

“So I thought for a minute you girls might be here to see me off.” He's feeling his way forward in the conversation, casting glances at Rio, searching for clues, not sure what she's told Jenou about their date. “Today's the day. I came down here because my mother was threatening to show up and argue my case. Loudly. Figured it'd be best to take the bus down here and do it quiet. And why are you two here and not back up in Gedwell Falls?”

“Similar.” Rio stumbles over the word. “Similar problems. My folks don't want me to enlist either.”

“I guess they wouldn't,” Strand says cautiously. “I guess I was relieved to get my notice. Means I don't have to go right up against my folks. I'm an only child, see, since the polio took my sister.”

“You two have so much in common,” Jenou says
breezily. “You should probably ask Rio out, Strand.”

“Jen!” Rio cries. She is beginning to suspect that Jenou knows something.

Strand lowers his eyes to the ground, desperately confused but trying to play along with whatever game Rio is playing. “I think I might be punching above my weight, asking a girl like Rio out.”

Jenou does a comic double take and says, “You think she's too good for you? I love her like a sister, Strand, but she's
not
too good for you.”

At this Rio is left speechless, having no idea what she can possibly say.

“Rumor is we're shipping out pretty quick,” Strand says. “Otherwise I sure would ask Rio out. She wouldn't have to say yes. I would understand.”

“She would absolutely—”

“I suppose I might say yes,” Rio blurts. “If you weren't shipping out.” She makes “thank you” eyes at him, hoping she'll have a chance to explain her rather silly deception.

“Well, maybe after the war's over,” Strand says.

“All right,” Rio says. “I hope we . . . I hope you . . .”

“We're going in now,” Jenou says, rolling her eyes in disbelief at the awkwardness of the conversation. “Good-bye, Strand.”

Rio and Jenou plow through the door to the relative safety inside.

“Don't say anything,” Rio warns her friend.

“You two will make such beautiful babies together.”

“Certainly not that.”

“Or you two could just take in a movie together,” Jenou says. “Maybe share some popcorn and chocolate almonds. Then, about halfway through the movie, he could hold your hand. Then afterward you could talk and talk and talk and not even a good night kiss.”

Rio stares daggers at Jenou, who laughs gaily and says, “My goodness, Rio, did you really think I wouldn't hear about it? Me? I've heard three different accounts, all from reliable sources.”

“You mean gossips.”

“Only the most reliable gossips.” She play-slaps Rio's arm. “I cannot believe you are holding out on me. On me! Me, your best friend! I demand details. Later, not now, but you owe me the complete skinny.”

“And you wonder why I didn't tell you. We're quite busy ruining our lives here; the gossip can wait.”

“For now I just have one question: have you written your name and his surrounded by a heart in your journal?”

Rio has done exactly this. And she has written
Rio Braxton
several times as well.

“No, I wrote
Jenou Castain
with snakes crawling all around.”

They're in a crowded hallway where a harassed-looking woman with a clipboard directs traffic.

“Where do we go to sign up?” Jenou asks.

They are directed to a side room that still has a sign reading Postmaster above the open, glass-paneled door. The furnishings inside are minimal: three stiff-backed chairs, a metal filing cabinet, a hatstand, and a wooden desk, behind which sits a doleful-looking man in a crisp khaki uniform. There are four stripes on his shoulders, but for the life of her Rio cannot remember what they signify.

“I'm Sergeant Tell. Can I help you girls?”

“We're here to enlist,” both say at once, though one voice sounds cocksure and the other tentative.

Rio stands at a sort of civilian's version of attention and sidles close to Jenou, who slouches nonchalantly.

The sergeant shakes his head slowly, side to side. “I never thought I'd see the day.”

“Sir?” Rio asks.

“Girls in the army. Never thought I'd see . . .” He shrugs it off and in a stern tone says, “Look, ladies, it's not sir. Sir is for officers. I work for a living. You call me sergeant.”

“Yes, sir, Sergeant,” Rio says.

The sergeant seems unsure of whether she's being a smart-aleck, but it's getting on toward lunchtime and
there will be many other NCOs down the line to instruct these two in military etiquette. He sighs and produces two flimsy sheets and one pen. “You both eighteen or over as of this date? Fill in your names and addresses. Read it, sign it.”

He has not even paused for them to answer. Rio is relieved but also a bit disappointed—she has a whole convoluted lie worked out about her age.

They sign, first Jenou then Rio. The sergeant has a stamp that he pounds first on the ink pad and then
bam
,
bam
, on each sheet.

“Through that door,” he says.

“Through that door” brings them together with the draftees who'd been processed in a different queue. Rio glances around nervously and sees to her great relief that Strand is far toward the back of the line. She is all out of conversation with Strand, and she's terrified of being revealed as a shallow, empty-headed ninny with nothing to say.

Stop thinking about how big his hand was.

There were four tables, each manned by a corporal or sergeant and each apparently required to produce a piece of paper and bang a stamp down onto it.

Paper:
bang
! Paper:
bang
! Paper:
bang
!

Stop thinking about that single gunshot.

Then, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of
any organization devoted to the overthrow of the American government?”

“What?”

“I'll take that as a no.” Paper:
bang!

Thus far Rio is certain that not one of the soldiers has actually made eye contact with her. That changes at the last stop where yet another aged, bored-looking sergeant does not at first look up as he says, “Do you like girls?”

“They're all right,” Jenou says. “But I quite prefer boys.”

At that the sergeant looks up. “Ah. Sorry. Not yet used to the female of the um . . . Ahem. Do you like boys?”

“I guess so,” Rio answers. “Some. Well . . . one. But it's—”

“Do you have any diseases that might affect your ability to perform your duties?”

Two “no” answers.

Bam. Bam.

“Take your papers through that door for your physical.”

They head for the obvious door, the one marked Physicals.

“Not that door!” the sergeant yells. “Can't you see the sign that says Ladies?” The door before them is not labeled Gentlemen or Men Only. But Rio hears distinctly masculine voices from within.

Jenou freezes with her hand on the door. “Uh-uh. No, Jenou. No, you cannot go in there,” Rio says. Rio drags her to the properly marked door.

Beyond the properly marked door is a small number of almost entirely naked people, all of them female.

“Strip down, all the way down to your bra and panties, stack your clothing in a box, and step into the line.” The sergeant in this case is a woman, not as old as some of the men outside, but every bit as bored and indifferent. It's been just over five years since the courts decided that women
may
serve, and just over a year since deciding that women
must
serve. At this point then, any woman ranked above private was a volunteer who had most likely gotten in before the war even started.

Rio has never undressed in front of anyone except the family doctor. “I didn't realize that we . . . you know.” They are the only two girls; the others are all women. Adult women.

I look like a stick figure.

“Come on, honey, no time for false modesty,” Jenou says.

“There's nothing false about my modesty. This is perfectly genuine modesty.” Rio begins to strip, stacking her clothing carefully in the box.

She feels extraordinarily exposed. And since it is a brisk day and the building is not heated she also feels cold, especially her now-bare feet on the linoleum floor.

She joins the line along with Jenou, who, to Rio's quiet satisfaction, finally seems just a little abashed and uncertain.

The line shuffles forward until they reach a man in a white coat. The fact that he, too, seems bored strikes Rio as funny.

“Lots of men might enjoy this job,” she whispers to Jenou.

“Maybe he doesn't like girls.”