Front Lines

by Michael Grant

  “I just see her in that cold, gray water,” Millie Richlin says. Tears spill from her eyes, and she makes no attempt to wipe them away. “I just want to . . .” Her arms reach for what is no longer there and close around air. “But she’s with Jesus now. She’s in the loving arms of Jesus.”

  Where was Jesus when the Japanese bombs fell straight and true?

  Rio is not ready for the comfort of religion. Anger fills her. “Dirty Japs,” she mutters. “Rotten, dirty Japs. Rachel wasn’t even on a battleship, it was a . . .” She realizes she doesn’t know what kind of ship Rachel was on; the censors forbade that kind of information. All she knows is that Rachel reassured her she was in no danger. I’m just on a big old tub no one would waste a torpedo on. “Dirty Japs. Dirty Japs, why did they start this war? Why did . . .”

  “She was always so . . .”

  “I’d kill them myself if I could, the dirty . . .”

  “. . . good with the chores and so helpful, and so . . .”

  “. . . Japs. Them and the Krauts both.”

  “. . . cheerful. She must have . . .” She grabbed Rio’s arm. “Why did she go? Why did she enlist?”

  “Because she’s brave,” Rio snaps. Now the tears come fast. “She’s brave, and she wants to do her part.” She will not use past tense for her sister. Rachel is brave, not was. Is.

  Her mother looks at her in alarm. “No, Rio, no.”

  “Rachel did her part, and now she’s . . .”

  Not that word. Not yet.

  “I sit here with my stupid algebra homework.” Rio kicks at the leg of the coffee table. The tea set rattles.

  “You stop that right now, Rio. I’ve lost . . . I won’t . . . I couldn’t stand it. I would lose my mind. And your father . . .” Desperation in that voice, hopelessness, fear, and it all feeds Rio’s anger.

  Rio glances at the door through which her father disappeared. No one has closed it. The street outside is cruelly bright, a gorgeous Northern California morning with palms riding high and lavender flowers threatening to cover the sidewalk.

  Rio’s father will have reached the feed store by now. He will have unlocked the door and turned the Closed sign around to Open. Being a man, that’s what he’s doing, being a man who does not cry because men do not cry. Crying is reserved for women.

  Rio’s gaze goes to the small vertical window beside the door where the service flag hangs, a red-and-white rectangle with a single blue star sewn onto the side facing the street. There are those flags all up and down the block. All over Gedwell Falls. All over California, and all over America. They show that the family has a member in service. Some houses bear flags with two or three such stars.

  At the beginning of the war there were only blue stars, and it was an honor, a matter of pride, but now in many towns around the country some of those blue stars are being removed and replaced by gold ones.

  A gold star hanging in your window means a family member has made the ultimate sacrifice. That’s the phrase, the approved phrase, ultimate sacrifice. Rachel’s gold star will be the first in Gedwell Falls.

  Rio wonders how it is done. Who switches the blue star for gold? Does the government send you a new flag? How very kind of them. Will her mother have to do the sewing herself? Will she have to go to the sewing store to get the star herself, God forbid, to get the right color thread and to ask the clerk . . .

  If Rio is drafted the flag will bear a gold star and a blue.

  Don’t think of how scared Rachel must have been. Don’t think of the water smothering her as . . .

  “I’m not of legal age yet,” Rio says, placating her mother with a touch on her arm. “I won’t be eighteen for more than a year.”

  But her mother is no longer listening. She has withdrawn into silence. Rio sits with her in that silence until, after a few more hours, the news spreads and friends and relatives begin to arrive with covered dishes and condolences.

  The sad and somber rituals of war have arrived in Gedwell Falls.

  2

  RIO RICHLIN—GEDWELL FALLS, CALIFORNIA, USA

  “This town is so boring. So, so, so boring.” Jenou Castain lolls her head back and forth with each “so” before dropping forward on the “boring.” This has the effect of causing her voluminous blond hair to sway very attractively and earns her appreciative looks from the booth full of boys at the far end of the diner. A fact that Jenou is, of course, quite aware of.

  “You always say that,” Rio points out. She is vaguely annoyed at Jenou for pulling the hair routine. Rio has been sneaking peeks at a boy named Strand Braxton, who has been glancing back from time to time. Once they even make eye contact, which causes both to blush and quickly focus attention elsewhere. But Rio has been hoping for a second such accidental meeting of ever-so-casual glances, and Jenou, forever playing the blond seductress, has diverted Strand’s attention.

  “I always say it because it’s always true. Let me ask you something, Rio . . . and don’t bother making eyes at Strand, I heard he’s taking Hillary to the dance. Is that a shocked look? Rio, if you’re going to suddenly discover the human male you’re going to need to also discover gossip. Now, where was I?”

  Hillary? And Strand?

  “You were telling me how boring everything is,” Rio says. “Which is kind of boring by itself, you know? Saying the same thing over and over.”

  “No, I remember.” Jenou snaps her fingers. “I was going to ask you if there is a single square foot of this town that you don’t know by heart.”

  The waitress appears at that point, and Jenou says, “I’ll have a cheeseburger.”

  “Not today you won’t,” the waitress said. “No cheese.”

  “No cheese?”

  “Dontcha know there’s a war on?” the waitress asks wearily. “Deliveries are all fouled up.” She’s in a faded pink uniform and a food-stained apron and the kind of white shoes that nurses wear.

  Jenou, exasperated, smacks the table with her palm. “That does it, now the war is getting serious.” Then she winces and says, “Oh, honey. Sorry. Sometimes my mouth . . .” She shrugs.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Rio says.

  The waitress looks quizzical, and Jenou explains, “Her sister.”

  “Oh, I heard about that,” the waitress says, losing the wise-guy attitude. “Condolences, sweetie. She’s in a better place. Dirty Japs.”

  I’m that girl now. The one everyone has to pity, Rio thinks. It’s been weeks since Rachel’s death, but the Richlin home is still the only one with a gold star hanging in the window. Life goes on for everyone, almost as if there was no war, until they notice Rio. Then comes the mask of pity, the low voices of sympathy, the threats, the tough talk.

  Rio wants to forget it too, the way they all do with such apparent ease. She wants to be normal for a while, to gossip and tease and laugh.

  “Hamburger,” Rio says, trying to avoid the tears that have stalked her since the coming of the telegram, coming suddenly without warning, prompted by some familiar sight, some gold-hued memory. She wants to shoot the breeze with Jenou and flirt with Strand and not have death and tragedy and her father’s stony silence and her mother’s drawn and defeated face hanging over it all.

  “Two hamburgers and two milk shakes,” Jenou says. “What flavors?”

  “Well, we have vanilla, and then we have vanilla.”

  “I see: no chocolate because there’s a war on.” Jenou reaches across the table and pats Rio’s hand.

  They sit in comfortable silence until the hamburgers come. It doesn’t take long; the patties aren’t much thicker than a sheet of construction paper and cook up quickly on the long steel grill behind the counter.

  They take a few bites, and Rio says, “I found a journal she kept. Rachel, I mean. Up in her room, hidden under her mattress. I was in there to . . .” She shakes her head to ward off the tears and takes a big bite of burger, swallowing it past the lump in her throat.

  Breathe. Breathe. Okay.

  “I was in ther
e to snoop,” Rio admits. “Anyway, I found her old journal. I wondered if maybe she’d kept one like it on the ship.”

  Jenou nods cautiously.

  “If she was a soldier, maybe we’d get her things, you know? What they call her effects. But it’s all on the bottom of the Pacific, I guess, and we won’t ever know.”

  “I guess not,” Jenou says. “What did she write about?”

  Rio shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t had the . . . I haven’t read it. Her secret crushes, I guess. But if I read it . . . I mean, what if she just complains about her annoying little sister?” She tries to force a smile, and it doesn’t quite work.

  “You know you don’t have to be funny and lighthearted with me.”

  “It’s not for you, Jenou. I heard someone say, I don’t know who, some wise man, or some snake oil salesman, whoever, anyway . . . I heard somewhere that you make a choice in life between tragedy and comedy.”

  “It’s a choice?”

  “Well, you can’t choose what happens. You can’t even really choose how you’re going to feel about it, I guess. But you can choose how to cope with it.”

  Jenou nods her head. “You’re becoming deep, Rio.”

  “Am I?”

  “Very deep.”

  Rio raises a skeptical eyebrow. “It just seems that way because I’ve always been so shallow.”

  “Nonsense. I’m the shallow one. I insist that I am more shallow than you.”

  “Rachel was not shallow. She was always different, not like me. Rachel had ambition and goals and . . . ideas.” She shrugs again. “She was so definite. Do you know what I mean? I feel . . . I mean, I never had to think about—”

  She’s interrupted by the loud crash of a dropped glass behind the counter. Strand looks up at the sound, sees Rio, and smiles.

  “Never had to think about what?” Jenou prompts.

  “Oh, I don’t know. About the future. Life. You know. I mean, who am I, anyway? I’m just some silly girl. I was Rachel’s little sister, and your less-pretty friend. But—”

  “You are not less pretty,” Jenou says, reaching over to pat her hand. “You’re just less sexy.” She whispers the last word, earning one of Rio’s slow-build grins, which in turn causes Jenou to giggle, which causes the boys to turn around, their eyes and bodies all eagerness and energy.

  “See? That was a sexy giggle,” Jenou says. “Shall I teach it to you?”

  Rio throws a small french fry at Jenou.

  Thank God for Jenou.

  “I guess if I was ever to enlist it would be in the army,” Jenou says. There’s a false note to her nonchalance that pricks Rio’s interest.

  “You enlist? They’ll have to draft you, Jen, and then hunt you down with a net.”

  Jenou does not immediately laugh. Rio sets down her burger and leans forward. “Jen?”

  “Did I mention that this town is really boring?”

  “Jenou Castain, what are you thinking?”

  “Well, everyone knows sooner or later this war goes to France, which means Paris. Haven’t you always wanted to see Paris? City of lights? City of love? City of lovers? City of my rich and handsome future husband? You know, I come from French stock.”

  “Yes, you’ve mentioned it a hundred times, but, Jen, are you serious?” Jenou has always craved travel, especially to romantic France. She has always—well, since age twelve anyway—insisted on the French pronunciation of her name. Not a solid American j sound like jump, but a soft zh. Zhenou. Or Zhen for short. Jenou.

  Jenou looks up from her burger with the slyly defiant expression Rio has seen on many occasions, most often occasions that end with Jenou on the wrong end of a stern lecture from parents or from the pastor or even, on one occasion, from the chief of police.

  “You haven’t thought of it?” Jenou asks.

  “Me? I’ve got months before I’m of legal age and—”

  “Oh, do you really think you couldn’t get around that?” Jenou puts on her most worldly-wise face. “Where there’s a will there’s an eraser and a typewriter. Easiest thing in the world.”

  “My mother would lock me in the barn with her cows.” Rio makes a joke of it, forcing an unsteady laugh. But she doesn’t shut the conversation down. She feels like a trout must feel after realizing there’s a hook inside that tasty worm.

  But then Strand looks over at her, and it’s more than an arguably accidental glance this time—it’s a look. Which Rio returns as boldly as she is able.

  “I guess she would,” Jenou allows. “But your little cutie-pie Strand?”

  “He’s not my cutie-pie!”

  “He got his notice. He ships out next week.”

  “What?”

  “Drafted. As in, Greetings: You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States.”

  Strand suddenly looks different in light of this development. He’s a good-looking boy, a serious boy with dark hair and skin only lightly afflicted by adolescent pimples. Now he looks at once younger and older. Too young at barely eighteen, and yet old enough legally. Too old for school books, too young for a rifle and a helmet.

  She pictures him in an olive drab or khaki uniform. She imagines polished brass buttons and a hat with the brim riding low over his eyes. Yes, he would look pretty sharp in that uniform. He has the shoulders for it, and the narrow waist. But Jenou is still talking, so Rio has to break off contemplation of just what else Strand would look good in.

  “If you enlist, they say you get to choose what you do. You know, like are you a typist in an office somewhere, or are you getting shot at. If you wait to get drafted, it’s straight to the front with bang-bang and boom-boom. You know I can’t stand loud noises.”

  Rio has heard this before, everyone has, it’s common knowledge, though Rio’s father bitterly dismisses it as nonsense. “I was in the last war,” he said. “Believe me, the army sends you wherever they want you, and if you think you’re arguing about it, then you don’t know the army.”

  “I guess if I was to be drafted, I’d want to go to the front,” Rio says. She wants to sound bold, to match Jenou and Strand, and Rachel too. Is Jenou serious? Surely not. But Strand doesn’t have the option of being unserious, does he? Not if he’s gotten his notice.

  “What? Oh, you think you’d kill some Jap for what he did to Rachel?” Jenou nods knowingly and pops a fry into her mouth.

  “Maybe,” Rio says, defiant. But it troubles her to think that revenge would be her motivation. It isn’t really true either. Sure, she would like to find a way to somehow deal with her sister’s death, but she really has no desire to kill anyone, not even a filthy, cowardly Jap.

  No, if she were drafted then she’d want to do her part. That’s it: a desire to do her part.

  Her part.

  Her part.

  The entire conversation is now making Rio uneasy. It feels almost as if Jenou is tempting her. It wouldn’t be the first time, and now she’s remembering that time at the gravel quarry, she and Jenou walking along the edge high above eerily green water of uncertain depth. Jenou had jokingly suggested jumping, and Rio had been seized by a sudden desire to do it. She hadn’t, but for a few seconds she had wanted to.

  It bothered her at the time; it bothers her now as she recalls the emotion, that “what the heck?” feeling. A sense of reckless liberation, of breaking away. The freedom of foolishness. Had Jenou jumped in herself, Rio would have followed.

  Now Jenou is considering jumping. And Rio feels the pull again.

  Everyone would be amazed.

  Who? Rio? Rio Richlin enlisted? Why, I never!

  “It seems to me,” Rio says, not really even talking to Jenou anymore, “it seems to me that this being the first war where they let girls fight, we ought to make a good account of ourselves.”

  Rio enjoys the way Jenou’s exquisitely shaped eyebrows rise.

  “They let us fight? Let? Funny how I never even knew I was deprived, not going off to war.”

  Rio nods sli
ghtly, discreetly, to indicate Strand, who is behind Jenou but who Jenou can still somehow see with that all-around, three-hundred-sixty-degree boy-awareness Jenou possesses. “Why should he maybe get hurt and not me?”

  Jenou shrugs. “It’s how it’s always been, up until now. But you don’t have to sell me, honey. I can see all the advantages in being far from home and surrounded by healthy young males. That’s why I’m enlisting.”

  It’s Jenou’s first definite statement, and even though she’s been talking about it for the last five minutes, Rio is still caught off guard. She hadn’t quite believed it.

  Jenou really is jumping. Rio sees it in her eyes: defiance, anxiety, a little sadness. But excitement as well.

  It’s that hint of excitement that tempts Rio.

  “Look,” Jenou says, spreading her fingers palm-down on the table and leaning in. “First of all, they’re not going to send women to the front lines to get involved in all of that. They’ll have us typing forms, answering telephones, and driving trucks. I figure the war’s on for another six months or a year at most. So I spend the first part of it checking out the available stock of masculine animals, and the last part closing the deal.”

  Rio shakes her head in mock despair. “For you even a war is just another excuse for being boy crazy.”

  “What can I say, honey? I’m an optimist.”

  And you can’t stand this town, can you, Jen? And neither can I, without Rachel and without you.

  Rio and Jenou pay and leave and walk together as far as the town square. It’s spring, and the day lingers. The town square is a leafy, green space with a mix of elm trees and the occasional palm tree. This is Northern California, land of sunshine plus quite a bit of fog and just enough rain to keep the grape vines heavy with fruit.