Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(50)
Most of the few women soldiers on the post live too far off to get home and back, so they stay in the barracks, even when they have a chance to get away, but Frangie has done her research and timed it all out, and there’s a bus that will carry colored passengers in the last three rows to Atlanta, where she can catch a train to Tulsa. She’s got leave coming; leave that, if everything works just right, will let her spend almost a day and a half with her family.
“If I feel tomorrow like I feel today, I’m gonna pack my trunk and make my getaway.” Normally she sings in the church choir, the old standards like “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Hard Trials” and “Go Down, Moses.” Fond memories of warm nights practicing with the choir prompt her to begin a spontaneous rewrite of “My Way’s Cloudy.”
“Old Captain’s mad, and I am glad, send them angels down! We’re comin’ on to ’43, send them angels down. We’re marchin’ on to gay Paree, oh send them angels down!”
A day and a half without marching or KP or any of the other strains and indignities of military life sounds pretty good.
“Hey there, Private, that’s a pretty voice you have. You want a ride back to barracks? Sweet thing like you shouldn’t have to walk all that way carrying a box.”
He’s a white sergeant, driving an open jeep at walking speed, now keeping pace with her. A tingle of fear goes up her spine. His voice slurs from drink.
“No thanks, Sergeant. I don’t mind the walk.”
“Well, isn’t that a hell of a thing. A white man offers you a ride and you turn him down?”
She glances at him. He’s a tall man with a thin face and blue eyes that don’t quite want to focus on a single point. “I don’t want any trouble, Sergeant. I like to walk.”
“Trouble? Who said anything about trouble?”
“It’s not far.” Maybe it wasn’t far to walk, but now she is measuring the length of this dusty, deserted, hard-pack street with a whole different appreciation for distance. How far can she run before dropping her bundle? Can the jeep follow her across the parade ground if she gets off the road?
She accelerates her walking pace. He notices.
“You’re not trying to get away from me now, are you?”
Fear is a hard knot in her stomach. The tension in her muscles crushes the cardboard box under her arm. There is no point in answering him; she’s encountered his kind before, and he will not listen to reason.
“I’m thinking when a white sergeant offers a ride to a Nigra private, she better just get her little black ass on board with the program.”
“No, Sergeant,” she says. Her teeth are chattering, and the distance to safety shrinks too slowly. If she runs what will he do? He might just laugh and call out names at her. Or he might race and catch up to her. He might even “accidentally” turn the car into her.
Best not to run until she has to. Best to just keep walking and pray God sends some help. She sees two black soldiers crossing the road, but they are three hundred yards off; anyway, what are they going to do?
Just keep walking.
The sergeant guns the car and yanks it right into her path. No question now that he’s drunk; she can smell it wafting from him.
“You get your ass up here right now, Nigra, you and me are going for a little ride to somewhere private. Private, Private.” He laughs. Then he switches to a friendlier tone. “Come on, honey, it won’t be anything you haven’t done before, it’ll just be vanilla instead of chocolate.”
She tries to pass behind the jeep. He grinds the gear into reverse and cuts her off. The fender strikes her thigh, a painful glancing blow, but she barely notices the pain.
“Sergeant, if you keep bothering me I’ll take it to my captain.”
He grins. “The word of a Nigra private against a white noncom? How do you reckon that works out? Come on, little brown sugar, I’ll make it quick, might be you’ll even like it.”
Two big deuce-and-a-half trucks come rolling by, and to Frangie’s infinite relief, the soldiers in the back are black. They are not from her unit, but one of the NCOs sees what’s what and raps on the hood of the trailing truck, bringing it to a shuddering, bouncing halt.
Ten black faces turn to watch, and none of those faces are amused.
“What’s your name, Private?” the black sergeant calls down to her.
“Private Frangie Marr, Sergeant,” she calls out in a trembling voice.
“Are you done giving directions to Sergeant Embleton?”
It takes her a few beats to realize what he’s doing. She breathes a sigh of relief. “I believe so, Sergeant.”
“Well then, you best climb up here and ride along with us.”
Strong hands haul Frangie up over the tailgate, and she wedges in on the hard plank seat between a male and female GI. Her rescuer is only a few inches taller than she, but quite a bit wider, with bunched muscles straining his uniform. He has the stripes of a technical sergeant, three up-pointed chevrons, two arced ones beneath, which gives him rank over Embleton.
“Hey now, boy,” Embleton yells, “that’s my piece of tail there. You hand her right the hell back down.”
Somewhat at odds with his hard face and body, Frangie’s savior wears wire-rimmed glasses, and she watches, fascinated, as the eyes behind those spectacles shift from worried to angry.