Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(53)

The tears spill down her cheeks, so it is through bleary eyes that Frangie sees Rio Richlin, her leg red from mid-thigh down to her boot, walking nonchalantly down the beach with another GI and half a dozen prisoners.





16

FRANGIE MARR AND RIO RICHLIN—GELA BEACH, SICILY

“That should hold,” Frangie says, tying the last of her new stitches in Rio’s thigh.

Rio sits with one pants leg rolled up above the wound. She and Frangie are on folding chairs, squashed down into the sand just outside the aid station. It’s fine for the diminutive medic, but not so comfortable for Rio, who has to sit splayed out with one leg propped on Frangie’s lap.

“Now sit still and I’ll get a decent bandage on there.”

“Thanks,” Rio says. “So. How’s the war treating you?”

“Fine.”

Rio says, “Yeah. Me too.”

Both start laughing.

Frangie worries that her laughter is somehow a betrayal of the wounded soldiers she’s treated. “I suppose it’s okay to laugh.”

“I think it might be required,” Rio says darkly.

“Just had a bad . . .” Frangie glances unconsciously at the cot, empty now. She’s fallen silent too long and tries to pass it off with a wave. “Nice kid. Bad death.”

“If I get it, I want it to be pow, right through the head,” Rio says, and mimes the action of a bullet hitting her square in the forehead.

“Well, that makes a lot less work for us,” Frangie says. She covers her mouth, shocked by her own callous-sounding reply.

Rio’s face breaks open into a huge grin that starts off small and slow and turns into sunshine. Laughing, she says, “I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”

Frangie picks up the bantering tone. “You shouldn’t even be here, white girl, your aid station’s up the beach.”

“Well . . . I reckon I could walk on up the beach, but if I do I’m sure to run into some noncom or officer who wants to give me some work to do.” Then, in a different tone she says, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of any mail coming ashore?”

“Nope. We only just got here.” She winds gauze around Rio’s leg. “You expecting something particular?”

“Maybe.” Rio shrugs and her hand goes to the oilcloth packet in her pocket. She pulls it out, unfolds it, and takes out a photo, somewhat bent and ragged.

Frangie leans around to take a look. “My, my, isn’t he handsome? You know . . . he looks a bit like Leslie Howard, but with less forehead.”

Rio frowns and looks closely at the picture. “I can see that.”

“Are you two—”

“Just once,” Rio blurts guiltily. This causes Frangie to clarify that she was asking whether they were engaged, to which Rio says yes, of course, she knew that and they aren’t engaged, probably, she isn’t quite sure because the last time they were together they were interrupted by the need to hop on ships and sail to Sicily.

Finally when the stammering dies down, Frangie says, “You know I’m a bit like a doctor—you can tell me anything and my mouth is a locked vault.”

Rio nods distractedly, clearly flustered, embarrassed, and anxious to get away. But her leg is not quite done, and as she finishes the work, Frangie says, “He looks like a good sort of fellow.”

“He is,” Rio says automatically. “He’s a pilot. He flies B-17s. He was able to get away and come for a quick visit and . . .”

Frangie suppresses a smile, but also stifles a murmur of disapproval. “Yes. I got that.” The disapproval leaks out in her tone.

“I’m barely eighteen and I’m already a fallen woman.”

“I took a drink a while back,” Frangie confesses. Then adds, “We don’t believe in alcohol.”

“Coloreds don’t drink?”

“Baptists. Baptists don’t drink.”

“Ah.” Rio looks deflated. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

“Not your friend with the unusual name?”

“Jenou? No, I . . .” Rio sighs and begins to roll her trouser leg down over the new bandage. “I feel like . . . Never mind. Thanks for the—”

“I’ve noticed the men never want to talk about it. About the war, you know, not fornication, they’ll talk about fornication any day. But ask them about the war and they’ll flirt or talk about baseball. Everyone complains, of course—”

“Of course,” Rio interjects, nodding.

“But they never talk about what it was like before they managed to get hurt and end up here with me.”

“My father is the same way. Even after he knew I was joining up he never talked about his war, not really. He just said to find a good sergeant and stick close, which was good advice, but I don’t really know what it was like for him in the first war.”

“Men,” Frangie says.

“Soldiers,” Rio counters.

“Just because men clam up that doesn’t make it right or smart, does it?”

Rio frowns. “I don’t know. I just know . . .” She’s silent for a long time, and Frangie waits, putting her gear away. “When someone asks me about it, I guess I just don’t want to talk about it.”