Front Lines (5 page)

He moved away, she thought, up to Memphis; anyway she hasn't seen him around lately. And she's certainly never seen him like this: he's wearing an Army Class A uniform, dark green, with a single yellow chevron on his shoulder and a rakishly tilted cap on his head.

“Doon? Well, look at you.”

Doon grins with far more confidence than he'd ever shown when she knew him as one of the less conceited athletes at school.

“You like the monkey suit?” Doon asks. He points at the stripe. “Private first class. But you can just call me PFC Acey.”

“Looks like I'll have one for myself soon,” Frangie says. “A uniform, anyway, maybe not such a fine stripe.”

The grin drops from Doon's face. “You got drafted? But you're not even eighteen yet, are you?”

Frangie shrugs, feeling a little strange talking about her decision. “I'll be eighteen soon enough, and I'm not waiting around for some draft board. I'm enlisting.”

“Enlisting?” Doon looks at her as if she might be crazy. “Why would you do a foolish thing like that?” He takes her arm and guides her a few yards away to where the crowd is less thick and the music not so urgent. “Frangie, I don't know what you think is going on in this war, but
it's not what folks think it is, at least not for
us
.”

The laugh-a-minute Doon is gone suddenly, replaced by an earnest young man. Frangie is almost alarmed by the change.

“So tell me,” Frangie says.

“First of all, nothing changes between black and white. We have white officers—only white officers, no Negro officers. Most of the NCOs are colored, but it doesn't help because we're still doing the same old shit—sorry, I shouldn't use that word. The same old stuff. I'm in the artillery.” He points to a small badge on his collar, two ancient cannons, crossed. “See those cannons? That's just about how old our equipment is. The white regiments get the new stuff; we get what's too old or broken . . . I mean, don't start thinking things are different for us just because we're fighting for the same country.”

“My pop's too hurt to work.”

“I heard about that.”

“And we need the money.”

Doon nods, accepting that, but he is still concerned. Frangie figures it's not the first time he's heard a similar story. “My mama talks about me going to college but can't pay the grocer.”

“College girl, huh?” Doon brings back that wide smile of his, and she likes him for that. Too many people still didn't believe females belong in college, let alone colored
ones. “What would you study, little Frangie, if you were to go to college?”

“I guess I wouldn't mind being a doctor,” Frangie says shyly.

“You get to be a doctor and I'll break my arm just to give you something to fix up.”

She doesn't know how to answer that, so she just looks down and suddenly realizes how young she must look, a short girl with no shoes. Probably looks thirteen.

“You know, you can put in to be a medic,” Doon says, snapping his fingers. “Yeah, why not if you want to be a doctor?”

“They taking us for that?”

“Medics? Sure. What do you think, some white doctor is going to tend to a Nigra that gets shot?”

Frangie has already thought along the same lines, but she is glad to have the confirmation from Doon. A medic. Has to be better than cleaning toilets or cooking stew, although her stomach rumbles a bit at the thought of stew. Dinner was beans and corn bread and not too much of either.

They stand for a while, listening to the music. The band is blistering but still somehow cool and in control.

“That man can play,” Frangie says after a while.

“Don't you know who that is? That's Benny Goodman. I heard a couple of his own boys are down with the grippe
and he had to cancel their own gig downtown with his big band, so he came down here to play with Diz.”

“A white man playing at the Regent?”

Doon smiles. “Jazzmen don't care a damn—sorry—for what color you are, it's just can you play or not. And that particular white man can play some clarinet.”

“Well, I guess I have to get back or my mother will fret,” Frangie says. “Take care of yourself, Doon.”

“Send my regards to your mom and pop. I don't forget your dad speaking up for me that time, getting me that work. So if there's anything I can do. You know?”

“I do.” Frangie starts to walk away, turns, now walking backward, and says, “Just don't stick your head in the wrong end of any of those old cannons. I still remember you and that car muffler you thought you could spit into.”

Doon laughs. “I'd say I'm smarter now, but look at me.” He waves his hands elegantly to indicate his uniform. “How smart am I?”

Rio Richlin sits far more stiffly than she intends, in the sixth row, center left at the Jubilee Movie House with a small bag of popcorn on her lap, a soda on the floor by her feet, and sweat on the palms of her hands.

There is something strangely rushed about this date. One minute she'd been idly glancing at Strand—a boy she'd more or less known all of her life, or at least known to nod politely to—and now they are at a movie together. A romantic movie at that.

Rio has heard people talking about how the war seems to accelerate the pace of daily life, how it seems to bring sudden change. As sudden as losing Rachel.

She is acutely conscious of Strand, which is strange in itself. Strand has always been there, a year ahead in one class or another, school or Sunday school, a presence, a boy among many possible boys she might see at a baseball game or wait behind in line at the grocery store. It
would be wrong to compare him to a familiar lamppost or stop sign, but in some ways that's what he's been: a part of the landscape.

And suddenly, just a few days ago, she began to actually see him. And then to see him in detail. And then to see him to the exclusion of other boys.

He's touching me!

His arm and hers share an armrest. There are four layers of fabric between them—her blouse, her sweater, Strand's shirt, and Strand's sports coat—and yet they are touching. It feels very awkward to Rio, but she definitely does not want to break off contact. She wonders what he is feeling—does he particularly enjoy the contact between their respective sleeves? Is he as aware, as she certainly is, of the body heat that crosses those fabric barriers? Is he feeling the muscle in her arm as she is his, and if so, is he thinking that she's too muscular?

She does a lot of physical work, and she likes it mostly. Maybe it's not how she would choose to spend her whole life, hauling hay bales and milking cows and stacking bags of fertilizer at her father's store, but she has never disliked hard labor.

Well, if Strand thinks she's unfeminine, well . . . Well, then that's that. Maybe she isn't Jenou, maybe she's not the most girly girl, maybe her skin is too tan, but she is . . . well, again, she is what she is. Who she is.

Whatever that is.

Neither of them has spoken in a while, and Rio wonders if he feels as awkward as she does.

“That's a great dress,” Strand says. He sounds as if he's spent quite some time preparing the compliment.

“Thank you, Strand.”

“I . . .”

“Yes?”

“It's starting,” he says with obvious relief.

The house lights go down, and the audience waits for the newsreel. First, though, comes the sales pitch for war bonds, followed by Daffy Duck taking on Adolf Hitler.

Rio wonders whether—or maybe when—Strand will try to take her hand. Assuming he's not actually disgusted by her and regretting this date. And she wonders how many sets of prying eyes will mark the event. Then again, what if he never does take her hand? Those same ever-observant eyes will note that fact as well. The news bulletin around the school will be “Strand and Rio!” Or, alternately, whispered reports, accompanied by head-shaking, that Strand is not really interested in Rio. Poor Rio.

They'll say it's a pity date because of Rachel.

“How strange,” Rio whispers, not really intending to be overheard.

“What's strange?”

“Oh, nothing. Just . . . Just that life goes on, doesn't it? Even with a war on.”

As if reading her mind, Strand nods in the direction of Jasmine Burling, a high school junior who could have a great future in journalism, if her love of the very latest gossip is any indicator. Jasmine is three rows down and off to the right, whispering to her irritating milquetoast boyfriend while quite clearly looking at Rio and her definitely-not-boyfriend Strand. Jasmine's boyfriend turns and looks, his face such a mask of boredom and despair that Rio laughs.

“What's funny?”

“Nothing,” Rio says, then amends, “People. Sometimes people are funny.”

The newsreel starts in with the usual dramatic music followed by a stentorian voice narrating the footage. In this case it shows marines on some blasted, godforsaken island fighting the Japanese. The narrator uses terms like “hard-fought,” “slogging,” “slug match,” and “desperate.”

“That was depressing,” Strand whispers.

“It said we were on the march,” Rio counters. “That's good, isn't it?”

The newsreel moves on to a story about a movie star, then a story about a very fast horse, concluding with a silly piece about two babies switched at the hospital even
though one is white and one colored.

Rio looks carefully at the little black baby. She's never seen a black person in Gedwell Falls, only in movies—maids or butlers or comical tap dancers. It looks almost exactly like the white baby except for being darker.

A second cartoon starts and lightens the mood enough that Strand feels free to dip into Rio's popcorn, and she retaliates by stealing a chocolate-covered almond from him.

She risks a glance at him. He is quite handsome in profile. He has a good, strong chin, a straight nose, and the sort of lips Jenou describes as “kissable,” which for Jenou covers a lot of ground.

They settle in finally for the main feature, announced with a blare of trumpets and pounding drums. It's a love story with Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine, a love story but a war story as well. It's hard to get away from the war.

No wonder I feel swept up.

Just around the part where Tyrone regains his sight, Strand takes Rio's hand.

He's holding my hand!

He looks at her as if to ask permission, and Rio, with her heart pounding so hard she is surprised anyone can hear the last scene of the movie, smiles queasily and squeezes his strong fingers and wonders whether he can feel her callouses and whether he is shocked and whether
his heart is pounding too.

He walks her home after the movie. They take their time, not wanting the night to end. Rio learns that Strand enjoys taking photographs. He learns that she likes riding horses. He has his pilot's license and wants to grow up to fly, maybe for the post office carrying air mail, after the war. She admits she hasn't really thought much about her future.

No vows are spoken. No promises are made. He does not kiss her, but had he tried she'd have let him. And that fact, too, joins so many other facts in making her wonder whether something very profound has changed in the world around her.

They hold hands as they walk and talk and Rio's feet never touch the ground.

“So?” her mother asks as Rio literally twirls in through the front door. “I suppose you had a good time?”

“I suppose I did,” Rio says, smiling and making no effort to hide her very, very good mood. She glances at the phone on the little table at the bottom of the stairs and considers calling Jenou. But of course Jenou will demand details—every last detail—and there is no privacy to be had talking in the hallway. Jenou can wait. Besides, Rio wants to make sense of her feelings on her own for now.

She climbs the stairs to her room, falls back on her bed, bounces once, and pulls her ancient stuffed bear—Barely
Bear, or BB for short—to her chest. BB was a fifth birthday present given to Rio by Rachel.

“BB, it's possible I'm in love,” Rio says in a whisper. “What's that, you say? It's only a first date? Don't be such a prude. You're a bear, what do you know?”

The bear does not argue the point. Nor does it object to Rio tracing a small heart onto its furry chest with her finger as her eyes close and she hovers between sleep and waking, between dreams and imagination.

Rio is not sure whether she is awake or asleep when she hears a woman's cry.

She sits up, tosses BB aside, and listens, waiting for a second cry to reveal the source. Nothing. She gets up and opens the door to the hallway, sticks her head out, and listens intently. Nothing. She withdraws back to her room and raises the sash window. Still nothing to be heard but a breeze in the trees and a distant truck engine. She is about to shrug it all off when she notices a glow, an orange glow, that at first glance seems like a single candle in the darkness.

She blinks, then squints, trying to get some sense of scale in a tableau only faintly touched by moonlight. Not a candle: fire.

Fire!

Rio throws on a robe and slippers and rushes out into the hallway intending to rouse her parents, but their door
is closed and no light shows through the cracks. So, as quickly as she can without making noise, Rio descends the stairs, lifts the phone from its cradle, and dials the operator.

“Operator, I believe there's a fire over on Fitch Street. Please alert the fire department, won't you?”

This is the extent of her civic obligation, but Rio is fully awake now and it's a moderately warm night, and the streets of Gedwell Falls are safe, even for an unaccompanied girl at night. So she dons a pair of dungarees under her robe and sneaks out into the night.

She has never been out in the street this late at night—or this early in the morning—and there is something wrong and yet thrilling about it. She knows every house, but the deep, silent darkness of the time beyond midnight turns the familiar strange and even sinister. Windows become staring eyes, doors are astonished mouths, and trees seem too active and alert to be merely ruffling passively.

From ground level she cannot see the fire at first, but as she walks she begins to catch glimpses in the gaps between homes. Then, coming around the corner, there it is.

It is a very old wood-frame house, two stories behind a weed-grown garden, and Rio recognizes it immediately. It is the Stamp Man's House.

The Stamp Man's House—it is always referred to that way—is the most often stared at, most often shunned
house in Gedwell Falls. No one has ever seen the Stamp Man, at least not that Rio has ever heard. There are rumors, and there are tall tales. There are even ghost stories told 'round campfires at church camp. But there are no firsthand sightings that Rio knows of.

The Stamp Man lives with his sister, a middle-aged woman with wild gray hair and a face etched by suffering, leading naturally to suggestions by the more imaginative children that she is some sort of witch. Rio has seen her in town, nodded in a neighborly way, but never spoken with her. Rio knows—everyone in the small town knows—that the sister makes a weekly sortie to the post office to pick up the mail that comes to the Stamp Man, mail from strange, exotic locales bearing the brightly colored stamps he is believed to collect.

It is she, the Stamp Man's sister, who now stands barefoot in a threadbare nightgown on the sidewalk in front of the house, hand over her mouth, staring in helpless horror at a window flickering orange.

The sister notices Rio and cries, “Help him! Help him!” Her eyes glow with reflected firelight.

“What's . . . What is . . . ,” Rio stammers, no longer enjoying this forbidden excursion.

“It's Peter! He won't come out!”

For a moment Rio is confused, not connecting the name Peter with the Stamp Man. “Is he awake?” she asks.

“It's the fireplace in my room, I told him we needed to have the chimney swept, but he . . . I have to . . .” She makes a tentative move toward the porch but doesn't get far. There is something indecisive, a conflict of some sort. “I shouldn't have burned coal. I should have . . . but wood is so . . . and I can't . . .” This is all accompanied by weak, fluttering hand gestures.

An upper-floor window's glass pane cracks, and seconds later the glass bursts outward, shards clattering on the porch roof and sliding down the shingles to smash on the walkway. A tongue of fire licks upward, touching the eaves. The smell of smoke is acrid and deeply disturbing, not the comfortable smell of burning firewood or leaves, but the more complex smell of burning paint and wallpaper paste, of pillow feathers and Bakelite and tar.

“Peter!” the sister screams. “Peter!”

A sound comes from within the house. It might be human, must be human, but it is not a sound Rio has ever heard come from a human throat. It is not a scream but a cry, a warning, but with words slurred to incomprehensibility, a guttural, throat-clearing, strangled sound. Whatever the meaning of this cry, the sister seems to understand it.

“No, Peter! You must come out!”

She says it, shouts it, but again Rio detects a doubt, an ambiguity in her tone.

Rio looks around frantically, hoping for someone, anyone to come along and do . . . something. Something, she doesn't know what, but something that will take the burden off of her own shoulders, for she sees pleading in the sister's eyes, a mute neediness. Despair.

Rio takes tentative steps toward the porch, willing the volunteer fire department to bestir themselves and come to the rescue quickly. But if the volunteers are on their way there is no sign of them.

“Help him! Peter! Peter!”

Rio climbs the three wooden steps to the front door, which is closed but surely not locked since the sister must have come out this way. She touches the doorknob. It is not hot to the touch. She peers through the narrow vertical slits of lace-curtained windows beside the door and sees a stairwell inside, and no sign of fire on the lower level.

Taking a deep breath, she opens the door and reels back from the stench of smoke that has crept down the stairway and now billows out through the door and passes above Rio's head to rise into the night sky.

“What do you think you're doing?” Rio asks herself.

And just then Tam Richlin comes rushing up and asks the identical question, “What do you think you're doing?”

Rio has never been so glad to see her father. “The Stamp Man is upstairs. He won't come down.”

Tam Richlin hears this and nods, showing no surprise but a grim understanding. “He may not care, but this fire could spread to other homes.”