Mare's War (7 page)

“I did.” Mare glances at me again. “You want to drive?”

I look out over the two-lane road into the blackness beyond and back at my grandmother, goose bumps prickling my arms. Is she serious? “Can I drive in the morning?”

“Nope.” Mare laughs. “Now or never.”

I look back over the empty, dark road. I
really
want to. Mare’s car is an automatic, there’s no one else out here, and it’s a flat, straight road. Sure, I don’t have my license, but what could it hurt?

I open my mouth to say Yes when a low white streak shoots into the headlights, freezes, then bounds off in a blur.

“Whoa!”

“Jackrabbit,” Mare says calmly. “Little suckers are all over the place.”

She didn’t even swerve.

I relax my grip on my seat belt, wide-awake and blinking.

If we pull over for me to take the wheel, Tali will wake up. She’ll want to know what we’re doing, and Mare will tell her that I’m going to drive. And then Tali will freak. She’ll
be all, “You don’t even have your permit. You just want to drive because I did.” Even if she isn’t a jerk about me copying her, I don’t want my sister watching me make mistakes.

“What’s it gonna be, Octavia?”

It’s so dark outside it feels like no one exists anywhere else in the whole world except inside this car. If it were only Mare, I wouldn’t mind, but if I go over the line or run off the road, I know Tali will never let me forget it.

And then there are the jackrabbits.

If I hit one, I think I would die.

What if I swerved and flipped over the car? What if—

My grandmother clears her throat.

“Mare, I don’t want to drive right now,” I say finally, reluctant to admit it. “Will you ask me again tomorrow?”

Mare laughs. Thunder booms distantly above us, and I smell the strange ozone scent that is rain on hot ground. “We might be on busy roads tomorrow,” Mare says, turning on the wipers as the first few drops begin to fall.

“So, you won’t ask me again?”

Mare reaches across the seat and pats my leg. “Sometimes you only get one chance to do a thing,” she says, and I feel my shoulders droop.

“You know, Octavia,” Mare says as I swallow hard, “when I was your age, I took all kinds of chances. Didn’t think I could ever join the army, but I did. You’re going to have to learn to take your chance. Live a little, girl.”

My disappointment is so sharp and heavy it feels like a rock in my throat. I don’t answer.

“When your father was little, he was just like you,” Mare muses. “I took him to the boardwalk, and I had to force him to ride the carousel. All the other little boys were having a great time, but your father—he screamed the whole ride long.”

I stare out into the dark. “Maybe he was scared of the horses,” I mutter, humiliation making my voice low. I remind her of a little kid?

“Could be,” Mare agrees. “And since he was only three back then, I don’t hold it against him. It’d be a shame, though, to be afraid to try new things like that for the rest of your life.”

“I’m not afraid!” I insist hotly. “I’m not scared at all. It’s just—it’s raining,” I say lamely.

Mare tsks and drives on silently.

“Live a little.” I hate that phrase. People always say it when they want you to taste something gross or try something that might hurt. “Live a little,” is what people say when they want you to risk total and complete humiliation. Mom said it last summer when she signed me up for tap lessons at the community center. “Live a little,” she said. “You’ll never know if you’ll like it till you try.”

And when I tripped over my own feet during the recital, the world didn’t end, but I still looked like an idiot. People like Tali never look stupid. Nobody ever tells them to “live a little,” because they’re already living a lot. Tali never makes plans or worries how things will turn out. She just does stuff. And she would have said yes if Mare had asked her to drive.

The rain’s really coming down by the time Mare pulls off the highway. We drive along slowly on a two-lane road, past gas stations and fast-food restaurants, until we find a brightly lit hotel a few miles off the interstate. We splash through a huge puddle under the carport, and Mare puts the car in park with a sigh.

“I’m going to get two rooms tonight,” she tells me, sliding out of the driver’s seat. “Wake up your sister and grab your bags.”

In a few minutes Tali sleepwalks into our room and into the bathroom. Mare sets her luggage down and turns around to go outside to move the car.

Yawning, I dig through my bag for my umbrella and trail after my grandmother. Tali should really be doing this. Dad said for
both
of us to keep an eye on Mare, not just me. My legs are stiff, and I just want to go to sleep.

“Where are you going, child?” Mare looks amused. “Go on to bed. I’ll get you girls up in the morning.”

“I was just going to walk you out to the car,” I tell her. I hold up my umbrella. “See?”

“I don’t need you to come with me.” Mare smiles. “I know your daddy said to keep an eye on the old lady, but I’m not sugar, and a little rain won’t melt me. Go to bed.”

“Mare …”

“Unless you want to park the car?” Mare holds out the keys to me with a quizzical expression.

My hand twitches at my side. I step back in the doorway, too annoyed to take her teasing me again. If I said yes, would
she really let me park? Can I park, in darkness, in the rain, without hitting another car?

“Good night,” I mutter, and close my door. I put my umbrella back inside my bag and hope the Wicked Witch melts into an evil puddle when she’s walking back.

Oh-five-hundred, that’s what the army says is five in the morning, and Lieutenant Hundley is hollerin’ at us
already
. My feet hit the floor first note that horn sounds. I have been here a week, but don’t nobody got to tell
me
to get up twice.

Last week we got on with our processing at classification. My stomach gets tight when I think what all they were asking. “What do you like to do, Miss Boylen? What kind of work?” Now, I don’t know what I
like
to do, but I know what I can do. Nobody asked me what I like to do before. I don’t know what I like to do, and that’s what I told them. I don’t know, but I sure mean to find out. All I want to do is answer those questions right so they let me stay.

Today, Hundley say we moving on from receiving to training center. Today, we get squad assignments and start five weeks of basic training.

Annie, Ruby, and Dovey are in my squad, with four other girls I don’t know too well yet. Phillipa and Peaches are in another squad. I don’t mind too much; it is just for school.
Before I get time to be happy about starting my training, Hundley does inspection and gets on us about our hair, about our clothes, even about our shoes. She tell us we don’t wear nothing from home anymore, not even our drawers or shoes, unless our uniform shoes don’t fit right.

“You women are not civilians anymore,” Hundley says. She tells us how to iron our uniforms and how to shine our shoes, tells us to wear our hair up, in a roll, and how to wear our hats. I am glad I don’t have as much hair as some girls. A girl in our barracks has two fat plaits down her back she brushes out every night and pins up every morning. Some girls leave their hair pinned and wear wigs.

Now, doing Miss Ida’s got me ironing real good, and no child of Edna Mae Boylen does not know how to at least do up her plaits, but back in Bay Slough, didn’t nobody I know razor-shave her legs. I cut up my legs something awful borrowing Phillipa’s shaver, and I was too ’shamed to say nothing about it. Ruby say next time she will teach me how so I don’t bleed all over my stockings. Sometimes I don’t feel like I know nothing about nothing away from Bay Slough.

The U.S. Army is just not ready for all of these women up in here. They want us to have dress uniform, work uniform, winter uniform, and summer uniform as well as stockings and three kinds of shoes. Most of us got only a piece or two of each uniform and no decent shoes at all, so far. Peaches, whose mama is a seamstress, took in my jacket. When I see myself in the mirror, I swell up proud.

When we wear our uniforms all together, we look sharp.
Even Lieutenant Hundley say so. The skirts are all the same length, even though they don’t hit nobody’s legs in the same place. We halfway look like we are in the army now.

Today, Lieutenant makes us work before we eat. All of us, coloreds and whites, march around and pick up cigarette butts and march off to breakfast. They call it “policing.”

We got three platoons, the First and Second for the white girls, the Third for the coloreds, and the First and Second has to trade off with us, the Third, and police the grounds three times a day. I am working hard when I pass this light-skinned girl named Gloria Madden, and she looks me over, up and down, like I did something wrong.

“It’s not fair some people got better uniforms,” Gloria says so I can hear her. She’s supposed to be working, picking up butts like the rest of us, but she’s standing around running her mouth. She’s got those real long nails, like she never did nothing in her life. Her hands are probably soft, too.

When I don’t say nothing, Gloria keep talking. “You think you’re cute, don’t you?”

What? I look up. “Peaches Carter did up my clothes,” I say. “Somebody will do yours.” I don’t know who will do hers, since Peaches only did mine ’cause we’re friends. Gloria Madden is not no kind of friendly type of girl, but she’s in Peaches’s squad. I look at her jacket pinned up crooked and her skirt all rolled up on her waist. No wonder she looks mad.

“What kind of a name is Peaches? You girls are too country.” Gloria flounces off before I can answer, and I see Lieutenant Hundley coming, so I keep my mouth shut. It is just as well.

We march to mess, and Hundley start a song. We can’t hardly march for laughing.

Hundley calls a halt, and the captain stands at the door of the mess, looking over each of us. Hundley stand next to her and look at us march. But it ’bout stops my heart when Captain looks me over and says, “Boylen, you’re a really little gal, aren’t you?”

“Ma’am?” I am so scared I can’t swallow. Behind me, I hear Annie suck in breath.

“You’re little, Boylen. Too skinny to look like you’re more than twelve. You sure you’re one hundred pounds?”

“Ma’am.” My voice cracks. I can feel the sweat starting at my hairline. First few days here, they teach us “military discipline.” They say you can’t say nothin’ to no commanding officer ’cept “yes” and “no,” and only that when they ask you something directly. I don’t know what else to say.

Cap stares at me awhile, then shakes her head. “Better feed up—eat your three squares, Private.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and just about choke on my tongue. I march into mess with my platoon and know I better dig in
and eat seconds today. Can’t have nobody looking at me too closely. What would I do if they sent me home?

“You all right, Mare?” Annie askin’ me.

“I’m all right.”

“You aren’t twenty yet, are you?” Phillipa asks. “But you can’t complain since your mama gave you permission.”

I just smile. Don’t nobody know my secrets, and don’t nobody need to. I hold my head up and go to my seat, and I eat till I’m fit to bust.

After breakfast, we march off to school. School ain’t like what I thought—we learn what they call “the GI way” of doing things. They call it “customs and courtesies.” We learn the organization of the army: division, battalion, company, platoon, and squad. We learn how to care for our uniforms—the pieces of them we got anyway—and how to salute. They tell us how to hold our arm, our hand, our fingers.

There are just too many rules about saluting. We got to do it fast, too; anybody salutes us, we got to salute them back. Everybody’s been here longer than us, so we got to salute them first. And here, a man don’t open a door for us girls, ’cause
we
got to open the door for anyone with more stripes than us—more rank. I know what the sleeve stripes mean and the difference between a captain and a lieutenant, ’cause we got those with Captain Ferguson and Lieutenant Hundley. A major’s got some oak leaves on his arm, but I don’t know too much about the rest. What I do know is nobody is nothing around here without stripes. I am on the bottom of the heap, an “enlisted man” they call it, with no stripes at all.

We learn the army likes letters for words. Nobody talks without using some of them letters. They leave up notes on the board that say
QTRS
, and we know that’s the bunks, or our “quarters.” Then the important one—
CO
for our commanding officer. Then there’s
APO
for army post office,
CQ
for charge of quarters,
HQ
for headquarters,
AWOL
for absent without leave,
PX
for post exchange,
KP
for kitchen patrol,
PT
for physical training,
NCO
for non-commissioned officer, and more letters than I can keep count of. And don’t
talk
to me about the time. It’s oh-five-hundred hours this and seventeen-forty hours that. There is no one o’clock p.m. in this man’s army, no sir. The hour after noon is thirteen hundred hours, and you best be well in your bed and fast asleep before zero hour, or midnight.