Silver Stars

by Michael Grant

  “What, no whorehouse?” Cat asks, joining them. Jillion Magraff hovers at the edge of their little group.

  “Where are you ladies going?” Jack asks Rio.

  Rio shrugs. “I’ll follow Castain; she’s my guide to the seamy side of life. I suppose you’re off to have a different kind of fun.”

  Jack grins. It is an irresistible thing, his grin, full of mischief and fun. “I’m not much for bordellos, I’m afraid; I’m saving myself for the future Mrs. Stafford. But I guess I’ll see if I can keep Suarez and Geer out of the guardhouse.”

  Beebee shows every sign of wanting to go with the men but says, “Well, I suppose the ladies will need an escort. Anyway, Sergeant Cole said . . .”

  “Yeah, you protect us,” Cat says, rolling her eyes, but not unkindly. Cat Preeling is approximately twice Beebee’s size, and Cat once strangled a Kraut with the strap of her M1.

  The five of them, Rio, Jenou, Cat, Jillion, and Beebee, spend the next several hours wandering alien alleyways, buying snacks of unfamiliar food from women squatting beside open charcoal braziers, and picking out trinkets to send home to little brothers and sisters, moms and dads. Rio buys a small silver necklace for her mother and tucks it into her pocket.

  At a stand whose rickety table looks ready to collapse under the weight of bronze cookware, brass filigreed boxes, and, incongruously, a ragged and scorched chunk of steel bearing most of a German cross, Rio spots something.

  She points at it and says, “Show me that.”

  The shopkeeper, a very old man with a face like leather that’s been boiled then left out in the sun to shrivel, ignores her.

  “That!” Rio says, pointing insistently.

  The shopkeeper shakes his head and adds a wagging finger.

  “Can’t you understand plain English?” Cat demands, self-mocking. “We’ve come to save you from the Hun, you ungrateful—”

  “It’s on account of you being a woman, I expect,” Beebee says. “The men, most of them, have a blade of some kind, not the women.”

  Rio stares at him. Clever boy. “Okay, you ask him.”

  Beebee steps past Rio and points at the object, and the shopkeeper reluctantly hands it to him. It is a dagger, a curved knife with a silver butt on the dark, hardwood hilt and a silver scabbard covered in a repeating pattern of curlicues.

  Beebee hands it to Rio, who draws the blade slowly. The scabbard is curved, the blade, almost a foot of lightly corroded steel, slightly less so. Rio tests the edge.

  “A little dull, but I could sharpen it up.”

  “You sending it home?” Jenou asks skeptically. “For who, your dad?”

  “Maybe,” Rio says with a shrug and hands it back to Beebee, much to the shopkeeper’s relief. “Tell him you’ll give him a dollar.”

  Beebee and the shopkeeper haggle for ten minutes before arriving on a price of six dollars. Beebee takes the prize and hands it to Rio, who slips it into her belt.

  “I think he was saying how it’s called a koummya,” Beebee offers.

  “Koummya and I’ll stabbya,” Cat quips.

  “My birthday present to myself,” Rio says with some satisfaction.

  “Your . . . ,” Jenou says, and then stares at her, mouth hanging open. “Oh my God, honey! It’s your birthday! I cannot believe I forgot your birthday!”

  “Eighteen,” Rio says, then, noticing the surprised looks from everyone but Jenou, adds, “Um . . . nineteen?”

  “They’re not going to kick you out now,” Jenou says, and gives her friend a hug before holding her out at arm’s length to look her up and down. “Well, there you go, honey. You are a legal adult.”

  “Clearly we need a beer to celebrate,” Cat says. “How the hell do we find it, that’s the question.”

  “Down that alley over on the right,” Beebee says, which earns him curious looks from his companions. He shrugs. “I noticed some GIs coming out. They looked like they’d been drinking.”

  Cat slaps him on his narrow shoulder, earning a wince, and says, “We may have use for you after all, young Bassingthwaite. Lead on!”

  The tavern is a low-ceilinged, dimly lit place with a short and narrow door providing the only light. Had there been artificial light it likely would not have penetrated the thick blue cigarette smoke that swirls and hovers and is parted by the squad’s entry into the room. At least twenty GIs are crammed in so tightly that the two small round tables have become de facto stools.

  Rio has been in British pubs, and those could be raucous at times—she has sidestepped more than one drunken brawl between American GIs and British Tommies. Or between American GIs and American sailors. Or between white GIs and black GIs. Or . . . Well, fit, energetic young men far from their families had a tendency to get into trouble, especially when drunk. But the tone of this place is subtly different. Here there is more weariness on the one hand and on the other hand a more desperate edge to the braying laughter. There are silent, sullen drinkers and loud, lit-up, electrified drinkers who are all raw nerve.

  Rio checks shoulder patches and the condition of uniforms and the look in men’s eyes and knows these are not rear-echelon soldiers but men who had been in the fight.

  There are a number of long looks plus the inevitable catcalls and lewd propositions as Rio, Jenou, Jillion, and Cat, with their male escort Beebee, walk in. The more civilized men offer to buy them drinks; others offer to give them a baby so they can muster out and go home.

  The four women have very different ways of dealing with this. Jenou smiles and in a loud, welcoming voice says, “I’ll decide who buys me a drink, and it ain’t you, short stuff. I want handsome and I want rich. If you’re rich enough, I’ll give a pass on the handsome.”

  This confuses most of the men and leaves them temporarily stalled, unsure how to proceed. They might be veterans, these men, but few are over twenty-five and none of them are suave or sophisticated with women.

  Cat Preeling has a different approach. When a rowdy, red-faced buck sergeant comes up demanding a dance—despite the absence of music or room to dance—Cat says, “Aw, fug that. Pull up and tell me a war story, Sarge.” In five minutes Cat has a gaggle of men around her, all competing to come up with the best story, or failing that then the most extravagant complaint about the army. And of course Cat is giving back as good as she gets.

  Jillion is the lost lamb, clinging nervously beside Rio, glancing toward every new sound. Rio manages to push her way up to the bar—actually a section of perforated steel resting at a noticeable angle on a sawhorse and a chest of drawers. The man behind the bar glares at her with naked hostility as she says, “A beer, please, and one for my buddy here.”

  The barman ignores her. So Rio pulls the knife and scabbard from her belt and lays it on the bar, examining her recent purchase. She draws the blade, holds it up to the smoky light, and runs her finger carefully along both sharpened edges.

  The beers appear, and the knife is put away.

  “I wish I could do that,” Jillion says ruefully.

  “It’s all bluff,” Rio says. “But don’t tell anyone.” She avoids smiling because she knows her grin, which is slow to arrive but dazzling when it does appear, makes her look even younger than her current just-barely eighteen years.

  “I’ve only ever tasted beer once,” Jillion says. “I didn’t like it then. But now I like anything wet.” She offers Rio a cigarette, which Rio declines, then lights one for herself.

  She’s a fussy person, Jillion, with quick, small movements and an air of alertness that makes Rio think of a squirrel hiding its nuts. She has none of the physical robustness that Rio, Jenou, and Cat all share, and Rio wonders, not for the first time, how Jillion made it through basic training. She can’t picture this nervous squirrel running five miles in full gear, though to be fair she’s always kept up with the rest of the squad. Not much of a fighter, maybe, and a bit of a goldbrick, but there are others in the platoon as useless. Or almost as useless.

  “So, what’s your story, Magr
aff?” Rio asks, partly from curiosity, more just to have an excuse to shut out the noise around her.

  “Me?” It comes out almost as a squeak. “Well . . .” She has to think about it while hunching her shoulders around her drink as if afraid it will be snatched out of her hands. “I’m from a place called Chapel Hill in North Carolina. It’s where the university is.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Small town really, I guess. My father works in a print shop. I was figuring to go to work there maybe someday.”

  “What does he print?”

  “Oh, you know, flyers and church bulletins and diner menus and such. But they do some artwork sometimes and well, I kind of, uh . . .”

  “You like art?”

  Jillion nods and looks away as if admitting something shameful.

  “I see you drawing sometimes in that notebook you have.”

  “It passes the time.”

  “What do you draw?” Rio asks, and now she’s actually interested. The closest she’s come to knowing anyone with artistic interests is Strand, who enjoys taking pictures. Her hand moves involuntarily to the inner pocket where she keeps her photographs and letters.

  “The squad, mostly. Folks from the rest of the platoon too, whoever is sitting still long enough but won’t notice me. It makes people nervous, but it keeps me from getting nervous.”

  Rio half turns to favor her with a skeptical look. If this is Jillion Magraff not being nervous she’d hate to see her nervous.

  “Would you like to see?” Jillion asks.

  “Sure.”

  Jillion draws her bent, sweat-stained sketch pad from under her blouse. She opens it to a page and shyly holds it for Rio to see.

  “That’s Castain! Hey, Jenou, come here.” But Jenou is busy flirting with a drunk but darkly attractive staff sergeant. “You got one of me?”

  Jillion pales. “Um . . . I have a few of you.”

  “Well, let’s see.”

  “Okay, but, you know, I’m just an amateur,” Jillion says deprecatingly. “This is the first one I did of you.”

  The sketch is of a girl, in partial profile, looking off to one side and smiling. The girl is in uniform, but without a helmet, and she looks just ready to start laughing.

  “Oh man, my freckles,” Rio says. Jillion starts to put it away, but Rio puts her hand on the page, stopping her. “Who was I looking at when you drew this?”

  “I don’t remember,” Jillion says.

  But Jillion blushes, and it’s pretty clear she’s lying. Why, though? Who would she smile at that way? Not Stick. One of the other girls? Certainly not Pang or Tilo. She hopes it wasn’t Cassel, but then the answer slowly dawns: Jack. Of course. She was looking at Jack, ready to laugh.

  “Okay,” Rio says, confused as to how exactly she should be reacting. She wants to compliment Jillion: it’s a very good likeness, but it’s also, maybe . . . revealing. Rio swallows and forces a laugh. “Any others?”

  Jillion, perhaps reading Rio’s uncertainty, shakes her head.

  “Come on, Magraff, you said there were others.” Rio dreads seeing something equally revealing, but dreads more not seeing it.

  Jillion turns through the pages, past a frightened-looking Tilo, past Geer strangely tender in a face-to-face with his kitten, past Sergeant Cole’s gap-toothed grin in an obviously posed picture with his Thompson on his hip. And then, at last, reveals a somber picture of a GI. The GI’s face is partly shaded by the brim of a helmet, so only the mouth is visible. It’s a partly open mouth, showing a hint of upper teeth. It’s a wolfish half-smile, nothing like the laugh-ready grin of the first picture. There’s something predatory in that expression that matches the tension of the body. In the picture she has her M1 leveled, and a wisp of smoke curls from the barrel.

  For a moment Rio can only stare. For some reason she feels the collar of her blouse chafing her neck, distracting, annoying, spreading irritation through her. She searches for something to say, because again, it’s a very good drawing, but she doesn’t like it. It seems connected to the scrape of collar on her neck and connected as well to the vague nakedness she feels not having the weight of her rifle on her shoulder. In the sketch her right hand melts into the trigger housing of the rifle.

  “That’s—” she begins, but suddenly two male hands appear, reaching around Rio to cover and squeeze her breasts. Rio says, “Can I borrow your cigarette?” and without waiting for a reply takes Jillion’s cigarette from her mouth and stabs the lit end into one of the hands.

  “Goddammit!” the man shrieks. “You burned me! You fugging bitch!”

  “Sorry,” Rio says mildly. “I must have slipped.” There’s an angry red-and-black circle on the back of the man’s hand, and he alternately shakes it and massages it.

  “If you weren’t a woman, I’d punch you in the face!”

  This is loud enough and angry enough to cause Jenou and Cat to close in, standing shoulder to shoulder with Rio. Beebee dithers uncertainly before finally deciding that loyalty to his new platoon mates is more important than loyalty to a fellow male.

  “How about I buy you a beer to show there are no hard feelings?” Rio says, breaking out a tight, false, predatory smile which, it occurs to her, she has just seen in the sketch. That very smile. No smile at all, really.

  “How about you—” the man begins in a belligerent tone, but taking a second look at determined faces, he backs away muttering curses under his breath.

  They order another round of beers and then move on to a different establishment, where the Arab barman, and his whole family who help serve and clean up, is happier to serve them. There they run into Jack, Stick, and Tilo, all somewhat impaired and clearly intent on getting still more impaired.

  Suddenly self-conscious, Rio whispers, “Don’t mention my knife. Or the masher back there.”

  Jenou rolls her eyes but just says, “Oooookay,” with a drawn-out vowel. But she can’t stop herself, so in a whisper adds, “We wouldn’t want you frightening your backup boyfriend.”

  This leaves Rio in the impossible position of either denying or asking who Jenou means by “backup boyfriend,” both of which seem likely to cause Jenou to say still more. She limits herself to shooting Jenou a furious look—not the look from the sketch, an angrier but less dangerous look—which Jenou laughs off, saying, “Save it for the Krauts and the mashers. You don’t scare me, Rio.”

  “The ladies are here, thank God!” Jack says with a big and somewhat misaligned grin. “I’m stuck with these two.” He waves vaguely at Stick and Tilo. Tilo has the look of an unfocused owl trying to see in daylight. Stick is less tipsy but not quite his usual solid, steady self.

  “Why, you boys have been drinking,” Jenou drawls.

  “Why, yesh, yesh we have,” Jack confesses without shame. He bows from the waist, almost falling over, takes Jenou’s hand, and kisses it.

  “Well, la-di-da, aren’t we fancy?” Jenou says.

  Jack moves to take Rio’s hand, but she deftly sidesteps and he winks knowingly at her. On a previous occasion where too much drink had been consumed, Rio and Jack shared a drunken kiss. Rio has tried since then to put it entirely out of her mind, to file it away under “irrelevant distractions,” but the memory is too strong and seems oddly to be growing stronger and more specific over time. And now it takes the form of that first sketch, the happy one, the one where she isn’t holding a smoking rifle.

  Wet, freezing cold, and suddenly so warm, warm all the way through, when we kissed.

  Her hand reaches for the photograph of Strand Braxton but thinks better of it. It would be too obvious that she was using it as a talisman to ward off thoughts of Jack.

  Inevitably the comparisons come floating up through Rio’s somewhat addled thoughts. Strand is taller, better looking, a pilot, a dashing figure, an officer, not to mention being a hometown boy who will no doubt get married when the war is over, presumably to Rio.

  Maybe.

  If that’s what I want.

  Wh
ich it must be.

  Surely.

  Jack is tall enough without being striking, has reddish hair, faint freckles like her own, and he’s funny. And charming. Strand is also charming, but he lacks Jack’s quick and easy wit.

  I’ve kissed them both, and . . .

  Jillion and her damned pictures.

  Strand, unlike Jack, is not here. Strand is on an air base three hundred miles away on the coast of Algeria. She’s had letters from him, all censored of course, but it is clear that he is not flying the fighters he’d hoped to pilot but rather is flying bombers. Where he’s bombing and who he’s bombing, she does not know.

  What she does know is that there are women with the Air Corps, as well as nurses and local women, all of whom would presumably find Strand as attractive as she does herself.

  Strand isn’t that kind of fellow.

  But really, is there a male who isn’t that sort of fellow? Really?

  Suddenly Rio wants a drink or several. Or else to hide away somewhere, all alone, and think. Or better still, not think.

  Jillion and her damned pictures.

  Tilo says, “Heard we’re shipping out. For real, this time.” He speaks with the exaggerated care of an inebriate.

  Rio nods. Everyone knows they aren’t staying in North Africa. Everyone knows they’re going somewhere, and probably soon since summer is coming on and up north the Soviets are crying endlessly for the Allies to open a second front by invading Europe proper.

  “France,” Tilo says in what he mistakenly believes is a confidential whisper.

  “Not France,” Stick says. “It’s either Sardinia or Sicily.”

  “What’s the difference?” Cat asks and drinks half her beer in a single long pull that leaves her with a foam mustache.

  “Damned if I know,” Jack says, but he’s not really paying attention, he’s watching Rio, head cocked, grin hovering.

  Stick sighs and says, “Okay, here it is.” He dips his finger in his beer and begins tracing squiggly lines on the countertop. “That’s the Mediterranean Sea. That big boot sticking down? That’s Italy. And here’s Sicily and Sardinia, which the Eye-Ties control. If we set out for southern France, see, we’d pass right under Kraut and Eye-Tie planes and get shot to hell.”