Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(49)

“Where I live you are either a hunter or you don’t see meat on your plate,” Kerwin admits. “We live way back up in the hills. I say Teays Valley ’cause that’s close as we get to a town, but I am pure hillbilly.”

“What do your folks do up in the hills?”

“Well, my pap works the coal mine. Cooks a bit of mash on the side for spending money, but he generally drinks half of what he makes, and then gambles the rest.” He softens his tone, fearing he’s been too harsh. “He’s a good man, my pap, never beats me more than a couple times a year, and he don’t lay hands on my mom. But he does like a drink and a card game, that he does.”

“I guess that’s a hard life, coal mining.” Frangie nods like she understands, though Rio is still digesting the fact that Kerwin finds it unusual that a man should not beat his wife.

“Yes, it is that,” Kerwin says. “It’ll be my life when this is all over.” His tone is resigned. “Come home after ten hours spent a mile down, probably blacker than your own pap, Private Marr. That coal dust gets into your skin so after a while you can’t wash it away, no matter how hard you scrub. By the time you’re forty it’s got you coughing up blood half the time. But it’s a living, and there’s plenty of folks ain’t got that.”

His tone of resignation irritates Rio, though she can’t think why. Is it because he sounds like she feels? Like life is planned out in advance in ways that don’t leave a lot of room for determining your own future?

“I’m going to try for college,” Frangie says.

“A little Nigra girl like you?” Kerwin laughs. It’s not a mean laugh, more the sort of sound you make when you hear a child talking nonsense.

“It could happen.” Frangie sounds defiant but not too sure of herself. “I have a cousin up in Chicago went to college. He’s got a good job now.”

“Well, that may be,” Kerwin allows. “But most likely I end up in the mine and you end up taking in laundry and having a whole passel of little pickaninnies, and that’s a fact. And Private Richlin, here, she’s probably going to be an old-maid schoolteacher.”

“Old maid, huh?” Rio recognizes his teasing tone for what it is, but she still doesn’t like the image he’s called to mind. “What makes you think I’ll be an old maid?”

“Hell, Richlin, you’re too ornery for any man to stay married to you.”

It’s the first time anyone has referred to Rio as ornery. Or any other synonym for ornery. It brings a reluctant smile to her lips.

Ornery.

“You want to hear a story, Private Marr?” Kerwin asks.

“I got time on my hands,” Frangie says ruefully.

“See, there’s this old boy doesn’t like the ladies taking part in this here war, and he makes some rude suggestions to Private Richlin. Well—”

“Oh come on, Cassel, don’t tell that story. I sound like some kind of crazy person.”

“Well, now I have got to hear it,” Frangie says.

For the next hour they swap stories, some funny, some not, and Rio’s still grinning when the proctor finds them. He’s a senior NCO armed with a clipboard and a pistol. He fires a round in the air, and the pig just stares at him. The NCO levels the pistol at the pig, which snorts derisively and finally trots off into the woods.

“What’s going on here?” the proctor asks, drawling the words.

“These are my prisoners, Sergeant,” Frangie answers.

Kerwin says, “Uh, Sergeant? I don’t suppose you need to mention any details of this to anyone else, do you?”

“You mean you being caught by a tiny little Nigra girl and getting chased up a tree by a pig? My lips are sealed, Private.”

Rio is prepared to believe this until later, when the badly beaten Blue Team is at chow and Jack slices into his ham steak, holds up a piece on the end of his fork, and says, “Richlin, I do hope this isn’t a friend of yours.”

Rio accepts the ribbing with good nature, just as the entire platoon has had to endure ridicule for losing the day’s exercise to a colored platoon. She’s still digesting the fact that she, little Rio Richlin from Gedwell Falls nowhere, is seen as ornery.

Well. Maybe I am.





15

FRANGIE MARR—CAMP SZEKELY, SMIDVILLE, GEORGIA, USA

“I got those Szekely blues, just as blue as I can be,” Frangie sings to herself, freely adapting the W. C. Handy song “St. Louis Blues.” “Oh, my sergeant’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea. Or else he wouldn’t have been so mean to me.”

She has not felt much like singing lately, but tomorrow is to be her first time off-post since coming to this steamy backwater, and she’s walking toward the barracks, coming from the laundry with fresh uniforms and a spring in her step. Frangie’s lucky that for her home is just a sixteen-hour bus and train ride away. For most of the soldiers at Camp Szekely, a three-day pass means staying with one of the black families in Smidville that will host lonesome soldiers for fifty cents a night.

Smidville isn’t much of a town, and what there is of it is whites only. For black soldiers there’s a juke joint out on the highway where for two dollars you can get pretty drunk and listen to some amateur musicians playing jazz or blues. But that’s one thing for the men, a whole different matter for females: an unaccompanied woman at a juke joint is looking for trouble. Even an accompanied woman might not be so safe.