Front Lines

by Michael Grant

  She is determined not to let her parents see her fears and doubts, so just before she gets home she forces a smile and quickens her pace, bounding up the sagging steps.

  Her mother is at her machine again and looks up, her face like a jittering filmstrip shifting rapidly from one emotion to the next, before settling on a resigned sadness, seeing the morning’s events in her daughter’s eyes. This is life: choices, mostly between bad and worse.

  Frangie’s false and overbright grin fades to one of wry acceptance.

  “When?” Dorothy Marr asks.

  “Tomorrow,” Frangie says.

  “Then I best get your wash done.”

  7

  RIO RICHLIN—GEDWELL FALLS, CALIFORNIA, USA

  Am I really doing this?

  Rio and Jenou beg a ride from Toby Perkins, who has the use of his father’s 1936 Chevy pickup truck and can drive them the thirty-seven miles down to Petaluma, a larger town, almost a small city. Toby has been sweet on Jenou since they were both in third grade, a fact that Jenou has exploited ruthlessly over the years, never giving Toby so much as a dance but asking him for a favor whenever she needs one.

  The three of them drive squeezed in together in the truck, Rio in the center beside Toby, much to Toby’s regret. She angles her legs away from the gear shift, and Toby is painfully careful to avoid making contact as he moves through the gears.

  “You girls sure you want to—” Toby begins.

  “Why, Toby? Do you think we can’t hack it?” Jenou asks in a dangerously sugary voice.

  “No, I never said that,” Toby retreats quickly. “Just ain’t right is all.”

  Rio feels a little sorry for Toby, but mostly she is occupied with a case of nerves. Her stomach is in knots. Her mouth is as dry as the hills around them, and she would have traded her most prized possession—an autographed photo of Van Johnson—for a glass of lemonade.

  “What if they don’t believe I’m eighteen?” Rio asks, not for the first time.

  “No one’s going to run off and tell your mother. Goodness, Rio, you do worry. Anyway, you look eighteen, don’t you?” Jenou appraises her with mocking eyes. “Well, except for . . . But don’t worry, you’ll come into your bosoms eventually.”

  Toby swallows his tongue, and Rio blushes red.

  “Very funny, Jen,” Rio mutters, and elbows her friend.

  “Toby here thinks we’re just weak little girls,” Jenou says.

  “Despite your impressive bosoms?” Rio’s still annoyed at Jenou, but teasing Toby is too much fun for her not to get in on it.

  “Rio’s strong, Toby. She can crack a walnut with her fingers,” Jenou says. “Did you know that? I’ve seen her do it. She’s a dangerous young woman.”

  Rio smiles. “No walnut is safe from me. Just let some Jap or Nazi come at me with a walnut. You’ll see.”

  They’ve both dressed for the occasion, Jenou in a white flannel skirt and tight-fitting, blue-striped blouse, and matching high heels; Rio, significantly less fashionable, in a plaid skirt and too-large white blouse handed down from her sister, and flats. Both wear their hair up, wanting to acknowledge the importance of the occasion and to look older and more sophisticated.

  As Rio climbs from the truck she spots a familiar face: Strand is among those standing in line.

  Rio notices Jenou smirking at her. “What?” she demands irritably.

  “He’s pretty tall. You’d have to stretch all the way up on your tiptoes to kiss him.”

  “Who said anything about any of that?” She feels a blush prickle her neck. Jenou is being particularly irritating.

  “Oh, nothing. Nothing but the way you touch your hair and blush and lick your lips,” Jenou says. “Little things like that.”

  Rio has not told Jenou about her date with Strand, or the terrible fire afterward, mostly because Jenou was out of town on an overnight visit to her aunt in the city, and also because Rio has yet to come to grips with either part of it, the date or the fire.

  Two images are married in her mind now: Strand’s handsome face lit by the movie projector’s flickering beam and the Stamp Man. And both are colored somehow by the memory of her father’s grim expression following that single gunshot.

  What a terrible life the Stamp Man’s sister must have had during the interminable twenty-three years she spent caring for her brother.

  Rio imagines caring for Rachel, similarly hurt. Or Strand, if she were his wife. She would stand by him, of course, any wife would or at least should. But what complete abnegation would be required, a total abandonment of any life other than as a nurse to a ruined man.

  Only at the furthest reaches of her imagination does the thought come that if she is really doing this, if she is really enlisting in the army, the shattered, dependent patient in need of constant care might be Rio herself. But immediately behind that chilling thought comes a reassuring sense that no, of course not, that would never happen. Not to her.

  But Strand?

  There is no avoiding Strand. Now Rio and Jenou straighten their clothing, lock arms, and advance on the induction center. Rio feels her face burning, a pink so obvious that Strand can hardly help but misinterpret things. Or perhaps not so much misinterpret as see feelings she doesn’t want him seeing.

  Yet.

  “Hi, Jenou,” Strand says. Then, his voice subtly lower, says, “Hi, Rio. Come to see me off?”

  “Us?” Rio feels suddenly guilty. She’s involving Strand in a deception, after all. “We’re just . . .”

  “Signing up, the two of us,” Jenou supplies. “Rio Richlin, Jenou Castain, ready to go off and wipe out the Japs and the Krauts too.”

  Strand smiles. “All by yourselves?”

  “Well, I guess you can help too, if you want,” Jenou says.

  “So I thought for a minute you girls might be here to see me off.” He’s feeling his way forward in the conversation, casting glances at Rio, searching for clues, not sure what she’s told Jenou about their date. “Today’s the day. I came down here because my mother was threatening to show up and argue my case. Loudly. Figured it’d be best to take the bus down here and do it quiet. And why are you two here and not back up in Gedwell Falls?”

  “Similar.” Rio stumbles over the word. “Similar problems. My folks don’t want me to enlist either.”

  “I guess they wouldn’t,” Strand says cautiously. “I guess I was relieved to get my notice. Means I don’t have to go right up against my folks. I’m an only child, see, since the polio took my sister.”

  “You two have so much in common,” Jenou says breezily. “You should probably ask Rio out, Strand.”

  “Jen!” Rio cries. She is beginning to suspect that Jenou knows something.

  Strand lowers his eyes to the ground, desperately confused but trying to play along with whatever game Rio is playing. “I think I might be punching above my weight, asking a girl like Rio out.”

  Jenou does a comic double take and says, “You think she’s too good for you? I love her like a sister, Strand, but she’s not too good for you.”

  At this Rio is left speechless, having no idea what she can possibly say.

  “Rumor is we’re shipping out pretty quick,” Strand says. “Otherwise I sure would ask Rio out. She wouldn’t have to say yes. I would understand.”

  “She would absolutely—”

  “I suppose I might say yes,” Rio blurts. “If you weren’t shipping out.” She makes “thank you” eyes at him, hoping she’ll have a chance to explain her rather silly deception.

  “Well, maybe after the war’s over,” Strand says.

  “All right,” Rio says. “I hope we . . . I hope you . . .”

  “We’re going in now,” Jenou says, rolling her eyes in disbelief at the awkwardness of the conversation. “Good-bye, Strand.”

  Rio and Jenou plow through the door to the relative safety inside.

  “Don’t say anything,” Rio warns her friend.

  “You two will make such beautiful babies tog
ether.”

  “Certainly not that.”

  “Or you two could just take in a movie together,” Jenou says. “Maybe share some popcorn and chocolate almonds. Then, about halfway through the movie, he could hold your hand. Then afterward you could talk and talk and talk and not even a good night kiss.”

  Rio stares daggers at Jenou, who laughs gaily and says, “My goodness, Rio, did you really think I wouldn’t hear about it? Me? I’ve heard three different accounts, all from reliable sources.”

  “You mean gossips.”

  “Only the most reliable gossips.” She play-slaps Rio’s arm. “I cannot believe you are holding out on me. On me! Me, your best friend! I demand details. Later, not now, but you owe me the complete skinny.”

  “And you wonder why I didn’t tell you. We’re quite busy ruining our lives here; the gossip can wait.”

  “For now I just have one question: have you written your name and his surrounded by a heart in your journal?”

  Rio has done exactly this. And she has written Rio Braxton several times as well.

  “No, I wrote Jenou Castain with snakes crawling all around.”

  They’re in a crowded hallway where a harassed-looking woman with a clipboard directs traffic.

  “Where do we go to sign up?” Jenou asks.

  They are directed to a side room that still has a sign reading Postmaster above the open, glass-paneled door. The furnishings inside are minimal: three stiff-backed chairs, a metal filing cabinet, a hatstand, and a wooden desk, behind which sits a doleful-looking man in a crisp khaki uniform. There are four stripes on his shoulders, but for the life of her Rio cannot remember what they signify.

  “I’m Sergeant Tell. Can I help you girls?”

  “We’re here to enlist,” both say at once, though one voice sounds cocksure and the other tentative.

  Rio stands at a sort of civilian’s version of attention and sidles close to Jenou, who slouches nonchalantly.

  The sergeant shakes his head slowly, side to side. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Sir?” Rio asks.

  “Girls in the army. Never thought I’d see . . .” He shrugs it off and in a stern tone says, “Look, ladies, it’s not sir. Sir is for officers. I work for a living. You call me sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir, Sergeant,” Rio says.

  The sergeant seems unsure of whether she’s being a smart-aleck, but it’s getting on toward lunchtime and there will be many other NCOs down the line to instruct these two in military etiquette. He sighs and produces two flimsy sheets and one pen. “You both eighteen or over as of this date? Fill in your names and addresses. Read it, sign it.”

  He has not even paused for them to answer. Rio is relieved but also a bit disappointed—she has a whole convoluted lie worked out about her age.

  They sign, first Jenou then Rio. The sergeant has a stamp that he pounds first on the ink pad and then bam, bam, on each sheet.

  “Through that door,” he says.

  “Through that door” brings them together with the draftees who’d been processed in a different queue. Rio glances around nervously and sees to her great relief that Strand is far toward the back of the line. She is all out of conversation with Strand, and she’s terrified of being revealed as a shallow, empty-headed ninny with nothing to say.

  Stop thinking about how big his hand was.

  There were four tables, each manned by a corporal or sergeant and each apparently required to produce a piece of paper and bang a stamp down onto it.

  Paper: bang! Paper: bang! Paper: bang!

  Stop thinking about that single gunshot.

  Then, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of any organization devoted to the overthrow of the American government?”

  “What?”

  “I’ll take that as a no.” Paper: bang!

  Thus far Rio is certain that not one of the soldiers has actually made eye contact with her. That changes at the last stop where yet another aged, bored-looking sergeant does not at first look up as he says, “Do you like girls?”

  “They’re all right,” Jenou says. “But I quite prefer boys.”

  At that the sergeant looks up. “Ah. Sorry. Not yet used to the female of the um . . . Ahem. Do you like boys?”

  “I guess so,” Rio answers. “Some. Well . . . one. But it’s—”

  “Do you have any diseases that might affect your ability to perform your duties?”

  Two “no” answers.

  Bam. Bam.

  “Take your papers through that door for your physical.”

  They head for the obvious door, the one marked Physicals.

  “Not that door!” the sergeant yells. “Can’t you see the sign that says Ladies?” The door before them is not labeled Gentlemen or Men Only. But Rio hears distinctly masculine voices from within.

  Jenou freezes with her hand on the door. “Uh-uh. No, Jenou. No, you cannot go in there,” Rio says. Rio drags her to the properly marked door.

  Beyond the properly marked door is a small number of almost entirely naked people, all of them female.

  “Strip down, all the way down to your bra and panties, stack your clothing in a box, and step into the line.” The sergeant in this case is a woman, not as old as some of the men outside, but every bit as bored and indifferent. It’s been just over five years since the courts decided that women may serve, and just over a year since deciding that women must serve. At this point then, any woman ranked above private was a volunteer who had most likely gotten in before the war even started.

  Rio has never undressed in front of anyone except the family doctor. “I didn’t realize that we . . . you know.” They are the only two girls; the others are all women. Adult women.

  I look like a stick figure.

  “Come on, honey, no time for false modesty,” Jenou says.

  “There’s nothing false about my modesty. This is perfectly genuine modesty.” Rio begins to strip, stacking her clothing carefully in the box.

  She feels extraordinarily exposed. And since it is a brisk day and the building is not heated she also feels cold, especially her now-bare feet on the linoleum floor.

  She joins the line along with Jenou, who, to Rio’s quiet satisfaction, finally seems just a little abashed and uncertain.

  The line shuffles forward until they reach a man in a white coat. The fact that he, too, seems bored strikes Rio as funny.

  “Lots of men might enjoy this job,” she whispers to Jenou.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like girls.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jenou looks at her, seems to see something in her eyes, and shakes her head in wonder. “You really are so sweet, Rio. Remind me someday when we’re as bored as he is and I’ll tell you all about the birds and the bees, and also the bees and the bees and the birds and the birds.”

  “Step up!” the doctor snaps. “You, brunette. Have you had any disease that might affect your ability to perform your duties?”

  “The other man already—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “No,” Rio said.

  “Do you have any form of venereal disease?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “That’s a no. Pregnant?”

  “I’m not married, as you can see!” She holds up an empty ring finger.

  “Cough.”

  “What?”

  “Cough. Cough, cough, cough. Are you going to make me repeat every question and instruction? Cough!”

  Rio coughs.

  “Turn your head left. Now right. Now look at the chart on the wall behind me, cover your left eye, and read the top line.”

  “E, G, R—”

  “Now the other eye.”

  “E, G, R, Q—”

  “Quiet.” He holds a cold stethoscope to her chest. “Now prop your leg up on this stool.”

  Rio does, and the doctor snaps a triangular rubber mallet against her knee, causing her leg to twitch.

  “Well,” the doctor says, “at
least you two are big, strapping country girls.”

  “Excuse me?” Jenou demands archly.

  “The Depression took a toll on the size and health of recruits. If this were 1922 instead of 1942, there wouldn’t be many females up to par. But a lot of males are undersized and understrength. If you only knew how many young men I have to reject for lack of sufficient teeth, or bowed legs, or . . .” He realizes he’s complaining to a pair of recruits, stops himself, and quickly stamps their papers.

  Then it’s time to retrieve their boxes of clothing, dress, and proceed through one more door, where they merge again with the men and boys.

  And there a final corporal stands waiting. As soon as twenty recruits have filled the room, he yells, “Attention!”

  All twenty people in the room execute something that vaguely resembles the sort of attention they’ve seen in movies.

  An officer strides into the room, barely glances up, and reads from a wrinkled and coffee-stained piece of paper.

  “I, state your name.”

  “I, Rio Richlin” melts into a sea of voices pronouncing names.

  The oath is dry and formal but has the effect of silencing the last whispers and titters in the room.

  It’s happening. Right now, it’s happening.

  “Do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

  The captain shoves the paper back into his shirt pocket and says, “Congratulations. You are all now members of the US Army.”

  Rio turns slowly to meet Jenou’s unusually serious face.

  “Just like that,” Jenou says. “We’re soldiers now.”

  Rio looks past her friend and finds an even more serious expression on Strand’s face. He is at the far end of the room and has forgotten to lower his hand after taking the oath.

  Then he spots her, realizes his hand is still up, lowers it, and smiles a sheepish smile.