Front Lines (17 page)

“Is he a coward?”

“Tell you what, Richlin.” She does the knee slap thing again and this time stands up, as does Rio. “Tomorrow
we have the ceremony where we send you off home and then off to the war. We'll all be in Class-As, fruit salad and all. So you find an excuse to get close enough to Sergeant Etcher and look at some of that fruit salad on his chest. You take a look at what's on his uniform and decide for yourself whether he's a coward.”

Rio suddenly sticks out her hand.

Sergeant Mackie looks at the hand, obviously torn between disdain and acceptance. In the end she shakes Rio's hand.

“Thank you, for . . . I . . . You're . . .” And now the tears come, silent but unstoppable. Rio forces a small laugh. “I don't even know your first name.”

“Sure you do, Richlin. It's Sergeant.”

At that Sergeant Mackie walks away.

Rainy is pretty sure this will be her last opportunity for quite some time to enjoy New York. Her family lives on the Lower East Side, in a neighborhood that was once almost all Jewish but which has begun to change as many Jews have been driven by high prices to the refuge of Brooklyn across the river. Once almost all the store signs had been in Yiddish with smaller English subtitles, but now the Yiddish has grown steadily smaller and the English larger.

It is a neighborhood of four- and five-story brick buildings, narrow cross streets and broad avenues, cars parked haphazardly, wedged in between horse-drawn carts loaded with scrap to be taken away or barrels of ale to be brought in. Laundry lines are still slung across iron fire escapes, and rugs are still draped from open windows to air out, but this has come to seem low class and fewer pairs of underwear and nightgowns and baby diapers are on display.

It is a fine day, and people are out, taking what sun they can. A trio of shopgirls take their cigarette breaks on the sidewalk, sitting in rickety bentwood chairs, and pass a chipped pottery ashtray between them. Housewives in dowdy dresses and comfortable shoes haul string bags of canned goods and newspaper-wrapped fish. Wild young boys just released from school run and tease and shove, while their female counterparts, no older but far more mature, look on with disdain and trade secrets behind hands held over their mouths.

There are businessmen in suits and ties, ancient grandfathers with untrimmed gray beards, hurrying shopkeepers in stained aprons, teamsters flicking whips at their tired horses, taxicab drivers lounging and gossiping between fares. And the newest and most obvious addition to the life of the neighborhood: soldiers and sailors on leave, few entirely sober.

Rainy loves these streets. This is her home. But her affection does not diminish her restless desire to see very different places. She knows this place; she's spent much of her life running errands here: to the fishmonger, to the kosher grocery, to the sewing shop.

She knows it, she loves it, she's ready to see something new.

As she heads away from the Fulton Market, she sees three drunk sailors and one very sober young man. They
are just inside an alley, and the situation looks a lot like a mugging.

Rainy stops. She scans around for police, but New York's Finest are not in view. One of the sailors pushes the civilian. He is putting up no resistance, but he is arguing loudly and without apparent fear.

“Hey, don't push. I just got this suit pressed.”

“Don't push, huh?”

“Yes. You didn't hear me the first time?”

“Don't wise off to me, you dirty Jew.”

“I apologize. I thought since you were pushing me, you would be the one to wise off to. Is there someone else I should be wising off to? How about you?” He addresses a second sailor. “Are you in charge here?”

Rainy sees what the young man is trying to do—he's trying to sow dissension among the three sailors. She doubts very much that it will work.

Sure enough, the second sailor punches the young man in the face. It's not a prizefighter blow, but neither is it gentle. Rainy hears the impact and sees the man's head snap back. Blood seeps from his lower lip.

Rainy looks again for cops, again sees none, but she does spot a trio of male GIs, two privates and a PFC. She sticks two fingers in her mouth and whistles sharply. “You three. Over here.”

The three GIs are no less drunk than the three sailors,
but Rainy figures that's an advantage, as are the sergeant's stripes on her shoulder. “Boys, there are some
sailors
down that alley who have been saying very bad things about the army. Talking about soldiers being lazy, good-for-nothing cowards. A friend of mine stuck up for the army, and now he's getting beat up.”

The ensuing melee is satisfying to both the soldiers and the sailors, all of whom had just been looking for an excuse to get into a fight.

The beleaguered young man escapes with a cut lip. He nods appreciatively at Rainy.

“Thank you. I believe you may have saved me. My dignity is beyond salvation, but my body remains mostly intact.”

Up close he's a good-looking fellow with thoughtful yet mischievous brown eyes, and he's younger than she'd initially thought.

“Think nothing of it.”

“Um . . .”

“Yes?”

“I don't suppose you'd wish to repair with me to that diner and have a cup of coffee?”

Rainy is shocked and does nothing to hide it. “I don't even know your name.”

“Halev. Halev Leventhal.”

About half her instincts are telling her to say a polite
but firm good-bye. She listens to the other half. “You need some ice on that cut or it will swell up. They'll have ice at the diner.”

The diner is like every other diner in the city—a narrow, greasy, noisy room with a grill down one side fronted by a counter with round stools, and a row of cramped tables along the other wall. It's mostly empty, it being too early for dinner and too late for lunch.

Rainy takes charge, ordering some ice and a towel and two cups of coffee. A kind waitress brings ice and a small bandage and clucks sympathetically for a while before being called away to another table.

“Hurt much?” Rainy asks Halev.

“It's mostly numb,” Halev says, touching the wound experimentally, wincing, and replacing the ice bag. He twists in his stool to look Rainy up and down. “So, you're a soldier.”

“Is it the uniform that gave it away?”

“Well, that and the steely-eyed determination. What's your name?”

“Rainy. Rainy Schulterman.”

“Ah, so one of the tribe,” he says. “A Jewish woman soldier.”

“Is that disapproval I hear?”

“How could I possibly disapprove of you?” he says.

Rainy's not a fool; she knows a flirtatious remark when
she hears one, but she pointedly ignores it.

“That's a rhetorical question that avoids an answer,” she says.

“Yes, but I think you're overlooking the obvious tone of admiration,” he says.

He's enjoying sparring with her, and Rainy doesn't mind that at all. It's fun sparring with men who think they can make short work of her with leers and condescension.

“Misdirection doesn't work very well with me, I'm afraid. Neither does flirtation.”

He leans toward her, cocking his head to one side, his eyes judgmental, amused, but not dismissive. “All right, you want a serious answer? My father would disapprove. My grandfather would disapprove. If you listen closely, you may hear the whirring sound of my great-grandfather spinning in his grave. But me?” The judgment and the sly mockery evaporate and a very different look now radiates from those really rather large and soulful eyes. “Me? I approve of anyone who means to rid the world of Adolf Hitler.”

Suddenly they have a second thing in common, beyond sharing a religion and a background.

“I wasn't thinking of ridding the world of Hitler all by myself,” Rainy says. “However, should the opportunity come my way . . .”

Halev's gaze is shrewd. “So that is it.”

“Like I said: if I get that opportunity.”

“You would take his life?”

“I would blow his brains out and dance a jig afterward,” Rainy says. There is no doubt, no humor, no wise-guy attitude in her voice. She means it. She means it, and she wants to see the look on his face when he realizes she means it.

What she sees surprises her: raw envy, mixed with admiration. For a few minutes they sip their coffee and say nothing.

“I would join up if I could,” Halev says at last, voice low. “Four-F. I broke my shoulder when I was seven, and it has never healed properly.” He raises his left arm and winces when it approaches horizontal. And he says it again, the damning designation. “Four-F. Unfit for service.”

“I'm sorry.”

Halev drinks his coffee, eyes downcast, then says, “He means to kill every Jew on earth. He means to exterminate us.
Is
exterminating us.”

“I don't think it's a good idea to exaggerate,” Rainy says. “The truth is bad enough. Jews are being dispossessed, impoverished, dying on forced marches to concentration camps. That's enough.”

“Rainy.”

“What?”

“It's not an exaggeration.”

There is a certainty in his tone. A sincerity and openness and pain in his eyes.

“You have proof?” she asks.

Halev shrugs. “Your family must know Jews in Germany and Poland. You must have family. Are you getting letters from those people?”

Rainy recalls the way her father pulled her aside to tell her that Cousin Esther has stopped writing. “I don't know.” That is not an easy phrase for her to speak.

“No one is getting letters. Not in my circle, and we all have relatives. Relatives but no letters. Not from places the Germans have taken, anyway. A silence has descended on our people in Europe.”

Rainy tells herself this is paranoia. She tells herself that the Germans have simply cut off all communication. But in light of her father's identical story, she is not so sure she's right.

Not at all sure.

“So what are we to do?” she asks.

Now he grins. “Two things. First, this.” He taps two fingers on the stripes on her shoulder. “And also, you should come to a meeting.”

“A meeting? I do hope you're not going to tell me you're a communist.”

He laughs. “Nothing quite so conspiratorial. But I am a Zionist. In the end, we Jews must have a land of our own. You could come.” Then, with a meaningful look, as if this is yet another flirt, “We are very progressive on women's rights.”

Rainy is tempted but, after a moment's thought, shakes her head. “I can't attend meetings.”

Halev waits, but she adds no explanation. He tilts his head to one side, looking at her now from an angle, as though this will reveal something new. “It is not that you don't care—you do.”

“Of course.”

“And it is not that you don't wish to know. No, I can see the curiosity in your eyes. It's as hard to miss as a bonfire on a dark plain.”

“That was poetic.” She's waiting now, watching him as intently as he is her. Just how smart is this young man?

Halev snaps his fingers. “You would have to report it.”

Very smart indeed.

“It was a pleasure meeting you,” Rainy says, and stands up.

She shakes his hand, but he does not release his grip. “You know the Garment District at all? Thirty-Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. Zabno-America Button Company. I work for my uncle, in case you ever need someone to rescue. I'm sure I could arrange to get beaten up again.”

“Zabno. I'll remember that,” she says.

Halev laughs and releases her hand and looks at her shrewdly. “Oh, I have no doubt you will. You're a girl who remembers.” He taps the side of his head.

Rainy walks away, sure she'll never see him again, and a little saddened by the realization. There is no time in her life for the male of the species, and definitely not for ardent young Zionists. No, the men in her life now will be wearing uniforms and carrying guns.

Rio sits at her usual place at the table. Her father is at the head, her mother to his right. Rio is across from her mother and down one place, leaving an empty seat for Rachel at her father's left hand.

She's been met with hugs and tears. The questions have been consciously put off till dinner, which consists of a small green salad from her mother's garden, milk from her mother's cows, a fat hen her father traded for with a farmer who was behind on his feed bill, mashed potatoes, boiled carrots, and a small but luscious cheesecake that was also courtesy of the cows.

Rio and her mother drink milk; her father drinks beer.

This place feels strange now.

“No steak, I'm afraid,” her mother apologizes. “The only steak nowadays comes from Mr. Black.”

“Mr. Black?” Rio asks.

“You know,” her mother said with a knowing look that
borders on being comic. “The black market. That's where I go to get my stockings.”

“Chiselers and thieves,” her father says, politely wiping his mouth when a bit of lettuce escapes.

“Mother has fallen in with thieves?”

“Your mother has unexpected depths,” Tam Richlin says, and winks.

“Are they feeding you at all?” her mother asks. “You look thin.”

“Actually I've gained a few pounds.”

“All of it muscle,” her father observes disapprovingly. “You look . . .” He changes course upon receiving a warning eyebrow from his wife. “You look beautiful. Very healthy.”

“And stylish too,” Rio says dryly. She's in uniform, still proud of its shiny new adornment: the metal Sharpshooter badge.

Rio is happy to be distracted from the subject of food—the truth is, they had steak once a week at camp, pork chops or fried chicken most of the time. None of it had been well prepared or flavorful, and much of it was frightening to look at, but they did not go hungry. Rationing has been harder on civilians than on the soldiers.

She's tense, waiting for the inevitable question, and it isn't long in coming.

“So, you've made it through basic training.
Congratulations. Any word on what they'll have you doing?” her father asks, digging into his potatoes.

“I'm classified 745,” Rio says, hoping that will end the discussion.

“Which is?”

She sets her drumstick down, mostly eaten. “Rifleman, Father.”

Her father stares. Her mother says, “But what does that mean exactly?”

“It means that I will be carrying a rifle. Or maybe a carbine, it's lighter weight. But I'm a better shot with the rifle.” She says that last part as if it's a throwaway line, like it doesn't matter, like her Sharpshooter badge is meaningless.

“But surely you won't be . . .”

“They're actually sending women into combat?” her father demands angrily. “Teenage girls? On the front lines?”

“Yes, Father.”

A long silence follows her announcement. She can see that her father is suppressing a rising tide of anger that now is beginning to frighten her mother.

Suddenly her father slaps the table with the palm of his hand. Dishes jump and rattle. “It's a damned dirty rotten trick!”

“Dad, the war could be over before—”

“Don't feed me that line,” he snarls. “It's too much like what your sister told me. ‘It'll all be over soon,' she said. ‘The Jap navy can't touch us,' she said. ‘Stop worrying.' And now . . .” He looks at the empty place.

Rio's mother reaches to take his hand, but he shakes her off brusquely. “You don't know what you're getting into, young lady. Neither of you does. I do.”

“Tam, there's no point in frightening Rio.”

“The goddamned generals sit up there in their headquarters, and you'll be nothing but a number to them. Some major will say, ‘We anticipate only ten percent casualties,' and the general will say, ‘Jolly good, we can manage that,' but the ten percent aren't names or faces to them, just numbers. And the generals are fools, most of them. They send young men to . . . to have their legs and arms and faces . . .”

He grits his teeth, angry at himself for losing control, angry at himself for showing emotion.

Rio sees the ruined face of the Stamp Man in her memory. She doesn't want to see it, has, in fact, pushed it to the far edges of her memory, but it is clear and vivid and real at this moment.

Rio wants to ask her father what it was like for him, his war. She wants to ask him whether he was brave—that question has begun to preoccupy her. And she wants to ask him what exactly happened with the Stamp Man on
the terrible night of the fire. But she knows she mustn't—Tam Richlin's wartime experience is taboo in this house. It is not something the family is allowed to discuss, and a part of her doesn't really want to know, because his war was
his
war. For better or worse, this war is hers. It is
hers
.

Hers and Rachel's.

Hers and Jenou's.

And Kerwin's, and Jack's and Cat's and Stick's and Tilo's. It's even Luther's war. It does not belong to the men who fought that earlier war, that mockingly subtitled “war to end all wars.” Their war, their fate, will not be hers. She will not live out her days sucking air through an absent cheek. Not her, not Jenou, not Strand.

“Mother, I like your chicken much better than the chow hall's chicken,” Rio says gamely, moving the conversation to safer ground. Rio can see her father making an effort to be kind, to be patient, but the fear is very specific and very real to him. His fear frightens her because she cannot dismiss it.

Her mother's fear is no less real, but Millie Richlin's concerns are somewhat different.

“Just don't you forget all you learned in Sunday school,” Millie says. “Just because you're in a uniform doesn't mean you're safe. It doesn't mean boys don't have certain urges. Secret urges.”

Rio manages—just barely—to avoid grinning at the
notion of boys having secret urges. The males in her barracks have urges, all right, but they are definitely not secret. So do some of the females, including a certain Private Jenou Castain.

“Yes, Mother.”

“One mistake can ruin your life. Don't forget: when this is over and you're home safe, you still have to find a good man, get married, and make a life together.”

Mrs. Braxton. Mrs. Strand Braxton.

Mrs. Jack Stafford. Lady Stafford.

That's ridiculous, Jack is not a lord, and anyway, Strand!
She'll be seeing him tomorrow.

“I worry about you.”

“So do I,” Rio mutters, before catching herself. “Don't worry, Mother, my own sergeant told me the odds of getting hurt are pretty low. Really. And Sergeant Mackie is not what you'd call a ray of sunshine.”

“Is your sergeant going with you wherever you go?”

I wish she were.

“No, Mother, Sergeant Mackie already has another load of soft recruits to inflict pain on.”

That truth causes Rio a pang of regret, a feeling almost like jealousy. Mackie with a whole new barracks full of gawky, awkward, ridiculous recruits, one of whom will be sleeping in Rio's bunk.

With the dishes done, Rio heads out to the porch. It is
unbelievable luxury to have time to slowly digest dinner without needing to study a manual or shine her boots or sew her uniform. At the same time, how strange not to have Cat tossing off some bit of poetry she's just made up, or Tilo doing his Frank Sinatra impression. Jenou is just across town, staying with her aunt, not her parents, for reasons Jenou has not explained. But the rest of the old crowd are spread here and there, slated to reunite in New York City.

New York City! The very thought is thrilling. New York City and then the slow boat to England. So long as a German U-boat doesn't spot their convoy.

Rio's father is on the porch, a cigarette in his mouth, gazing off toward the sun setting behind the church steeple. Rio noticed that he drank two beers with his dinner, not his usual one, and now he's holding a glass of brandy with the bottle near at hand but discreetly out of sight behind a potted plant.

She senses that he is nerving himself up for what he has to say. She feels him tense when she joins him. He seems at first to regret the brandy in his hand, but then takes a healthy swig. He sets the glass aside, pulls a pack of Luckies from his shirt pocket, and holds it toward her.

“Have you picked up the habit yet?”

“No thanks. Some of the guys have, but not me.”

“Not yet,” he says darkly. “Before you're done you'll be smoking and drinking too.” He immediately shakes his head in regret. “Listen, I, uh . . .”

“Yes, Dad?”

He sighs, takes a drag off his cigarette, and exhales a cloud. “Listen, sweetheart. Don't be a hero.”

Rio smiles. “I wasn't planning on it.”

“No, listen to me.” There is urgency in his tone. He insists she listen. He insists that what he knows she must know as well. “If they actually go through with this hare-brained notion and send you into the fighting, there will come a time when you'll have a choice between staying in your trench and crawling out of it to save a buddy. Or maybe you'll have had enough of getting shelled and decide you just have to run out there and shoot someone. That's what I mean. When that moment comes, you stay down. You keep your head down. You hug the ground.”

She has the terrible feeling that his eyes might be filling with tears, but that's impossible, surely. She looks away.

He is seeing something in memory, playing it over again. He winces, swallows hard, and takes another puff and then a drink.

“Don't listen to your officers, listen to your noncoms. It's the sergeants that keep their men alive, the good ones, anyway. You find a sergeant you trust and stick to him like glue. An officer will throw your life away for
nothing, but a good sergeant . . .”

“Yes, sir,” she says, not even realizing that she's fallen into the military style of address, nor that she is standing at something like parade rest that is not quite attention, but not the casual stance of a teenage girl talking with her father either.

“I'm your father. That's your mother in there,” he says, his voice gone rough. “We're your family. Whatever happens, we're your family. Whatever happens, this is your place, this house, this town.”

He is seeing the Stamp Man too, she knows. And perhaps seeing much more.

“I know that, sir,” she says.

“You'll need that.” He nods to himself. “You'll need to know that. When you're scared. Or hurt. No matter what: we are your family.”

Rio can't answer. This is as open as her father has ever been with her, the first time he has ever addressed her as an adult. This is him baring his soul within the limits his notions of masculinity allow. A tear rolls down her cheek, but she can't wipe at it without giving herself away.

“You'll need that,” he says again, almost a whisper.

The doorbell rings at 0900 sharp.

“Strand!”

“It's too early, isn't it?” he asks.

He seems taller than she remembers, and his shoulders are definitely wider and stronger. But then, she supposes, she looks more muscular to him as well, and it makes her cringe a little.

“Not too early at all, Strand.”

“I figured you woke up at, what, 0700?”

“Nonsense. I woke up at 0600—I'm real army, not air corps,” she teases. “You know, in the real army we don't even have butlers to bring us our coffee in bed every morning.”

“Oh, here we go,” he says, playing along. “Now I have to listen to this from you. It's not true our butlers bring us coffee in bed. That is a dirty lie, a regular army falsehood. Our butlers lay the silver and the china out on a very nice table on the veranda, and
then
they bring us our coffee.”

“It's awfully good to see you, Strand.”

“You look swell,” he says.

“So do you,” she says. It takes her a moment to register that this is something she would never have said before. It's forward and blunt. She doesn't exactly regret it, but she does make a mental note to think about it later. “Speaking of coffee, will you come in and have a cup?”

“Oh, I don't want to use up your ration.”

“Nonsense, we always have coffee for men in uniform,” Rio's father says, coming down the stairs. He sticks a
hand out, and Strand shakes it. “Am I to take it that you are here to court my daughter, young man?”

He pitches the tone perfectly between deadly serious and downright dangerous, so Strand swallows hard and shoots a panicky look at Rio.

“Father is having fun with you, Strand. Come in, come in.”

“How's air corps life?” Tam asks Strand.

“It's fine, sir, aside from the matter of getting enough planes, which is FUBAR.”

Rio, who has heard that term and knows what it means, sees horror in Strand's eyes and is torn between two wildly different emotions: fear of what may come next, and delighted amusement at the predicament Strand has just walked into.

Just let it go, Mother . . .

“What is FUBAR?” Millie asks.

Strand looks helplessly at Rio, who stares guiltily and paralyzed at her mother's innocent expression. It's her father who comes to the rescue.

“It stands for ‘Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition,'” he says, casting a wry look at Strand, who rediscovers his ability to breathe. “It's a common soldier's term.”

Yes, Rio thinks, though the
F
is usually taken to be a word that is a bit less appropriate for a mother's ears.

“I'm off to the store; I'm already late,” Rio's father
says. “Oh, by the way, remind me that I need to clean my shotgun later. My twelve-gauge shotgun.” He softens this with a manly hand on Strand's shoulder.