Читать книгу Silver Stars - Майкл Грант - Страница 13

“You know what I want to do today?” Luther Geer says, stifling a yawn and using the heel of his hand to grind the sleep from his eyes. “I want to go sit in a damn LC and invade that same damn beach all over again. At least I get cool and clean wading through the waves.”

His kitten, the former Miss Pat, now renamed Miss Lion of the Sahara, blinks owlishly from her position on his chest.

Rio Richlin has not warmed up to Luther Geer. She thinks he is a bully and not very bright to boot, but she nevertheless agrees.

Since the fighting wound down in Tunisia, the 119th Division has trained and practiced and trained some more. There has been renewed effort to improve soldiers’ effectiveness with the bazooka. There have been lectures on the necessity of actually firing one’s rifle and not just carrying it around like some family heirloom. There have been the inevitable marches around the desert—marches that had started off unpleasantly cold and then moved without seeming transition to being fiercely hot. And there have been amphibious assaults.

They have assaulted the same beach three times already, and the weary consensus among the deeply bored GIs of Second Squad, Fifth Platoon, Company A of the 119th, was that today heralded yet another phony invasion.

Jenou rolls upright in her canvas cot and upends her boots before putting them on. There are scorpions and snakes and things that have no name in the Tunisian desert, and many of them like to find shelter in a shady boot. Jenou is already partly in uniform and has in fact slept in it, there being no such thing as army-issue pajamas or nightgowns. And anyway, with zero privacy she’d have had no way to change without being stared at by the men of the squad, especially Tilo Suarez, who reacts to boredom by becoming even more irritatingly amorous.

Jenou stands up and says, “I’m grabbing chow before the coffee gets cold.”

“I’m with you,” Rio says. “I like to get the powdered eggs before they start separating.”

“This is the life, man,” Dain Sticklin says, scratching his chest through his OD undershirt. “A thousand tents surrounded by a million square miles of sand with a million sand fleas per man—or woman.”

“Are those sand fleas or lice?” Cat Preeling teases. “Because if it’s lice, we’re going to have to barbecue you, Stick. It’s the only way. Death by fire.”

“I think mine are sand fleas.” Stick picks up his uniform blouse, shakes it, and begins peering closely at the fabric, searching for tiny crawling things.

Dain Sticklin, inevitably called “Stick,” is the closest thing to a real soldier in the squad. Smart, educated, disciplined, with a prominent widow’s peak that somehow makes him look the part of the mature GI, he’s been in only as long as Rio herself and in fact went through basic training with her.

“We’re not going to know until we put them side by side whether it’s fleas or lice,” Geer opines. Geer is a big ginger hick, the least open to the idea of women in the unit. But in battle he’s performed well, and that has become more meaningful to Rio than his daily obnoxiousness.

“We ought to take a louse and a flea and put ’em together, see who wins.” This from Tilo, who seems vaguely excited by the idea, or as excited as a bored, doe-eyed young lothario in a deathly hot tent can get.

“Jesus, let me out of here,” Jenou mutters. She and Rio head for the flap and throw it open onto a blindingly bright day.

There, just arriving, is Sergeant Cole and some male private neither Rio nor Jenou recognizes.

“Where you headed?” Cole asks.

“The latrine followed by the chow line,” Rio answers.

“Then the latrine again,” Jenou says darkly. There is some dysentery in the camp, and the food is the prime suspect.

“Hold up a second,” Cole says, and the two young women back into the tent.

Sergeant Cole is the oldest member of the squad, in his midtwenties but with the air of an older man. He has wide-set eyes in an open face, thinning sandy hair, a gap-toothed grin, and the stub of an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth.

The young man with him is a mystery, so for the moment no one bothers to acknowledge his existence.

“I got good news, and I got kinda good news,” Cole announces.

“Oh, I do hope it’s a five-mile hike in full gear,” Jack Stafford suggests. He’s just about Rio’s height, with sparkling eyes, reddish-blond hair and a grin that practically defines the word devilish. Jack is a displaced British boy with the luck (either good or bad) to have ended up in the American army.

“First, the not-so-good news,” Cole says.“We got a replacement for Cassel.”

A replacement? For Cassel?

“This is . . . Who are you?” There’s something anticipatory in Cole’s voice.

“Private Ben Bassingthwaite,” the young man says.

“Tell ’em where you’re from.” Cole hides a smile by taking a sudden interest in the ground.

The private suppresses a sigh. “I’m from Beaverton, Oregon.”

“The hell?” Geer demands rudely.

“That’s right,” Cole says, struggling to keep a straight face. “He’s Private Benjamin Barry Bassingthwaite from Beaverton.” And then he waits as his squad runs through various possibilities.

“Call him Beaver?” Cat suggests.

“But that’s what I call Castain,” Tilo says, grinning at his own wit and batting his admittedly gorgeous eyelashes at Jenou.

“Not before I get my coffee, huh, Suarez?” Jenou says. “Coffee before bullshit: it’s in the manual.”

“Triple B?” Cat offers.

“Beebee,” the newcomer says. “That’s what it always comes down to. Beebee.” His tone is resigned. Not happy, but not unduly upset either.

“I still like beaver,” Tilo mutters. “Not that I’m getting any in this dump.”

Jillion Magraff and Hansu Pang do not join in the banter. Magraff is either shy or sullen, Rio still isn’t sure which. And Hansu Pang is a Japanese American, and despite his good soldiering he remains deeply suspect.

“Beebee it is,” Stick says. “Seen any action, Beebee?”

Beebee is short, painfully thin, scrawny even, nothing at all like Cassel. He has the slightly nauseated look Rio would expect from a new guy suddenly pushed into a room . . . well, tent . . . full of new people all giving him the stink eye. For the moment at least, Beebee embodies the gap that opens up between those who have been under fire and those who have not. He is an unknown quantity, and just like the new kid in high school, people size him up, looking for vulnerability.

Cat’s begun rolling up the side of the tent nearest her. The tent sides go up during the heat of the day and down for the chilly desert night. “Okay, that’s the bad news,” Cat says. “So what’s the good news?”

Cole displays his uneven teeth. “Children, I got you a twenty-four-hour—”

The word pass is lost in an eruption of cheering followed immediately by a whirlwind of GIs grabbing whatever money they’ve stashed away and pounding for the exit with such enthusiasm that Cole might well be trampled.

“If only I could get you all to move that fast for inspection,” Cole says. “Now hold on! Hold on! ”

They freeze, forming a comical tableau, like a freeze-frame in a cartoon.

“Do not, I repeat, do not make damn fools of yourselves. I don’t want anyone in the hospital because of some drunk bar fight, and I don’t want anyone falling out because they’ve caught the clap, and Richlin? You and Castain have custody of the new man.”

Cassel’s replacement.

Rio wipes her right hand down the side of her pants, unconsciously wiping Cassel’s blood from her hand. Cassel, the first to die. His final word, “Oh.”

Oh. And two minutes later he had bled out into wet sand.

“Aw, jeez, Sarge,” Jenou complains theatrically. “If I’ve got to babysit, at least get me someone with some shoulders on him. Dammit.” She sighs. “Okay, Booboo or whatever your name is, you got thirty seconds to drop your gear and grab your cash because we are heading for town.”

“Wait a minute,” Rio says. “I thought being a private meant I didn’t have to babysit. I mean, that’s sergeant work, isn’t it?”

Cole says, “Yes it is, Richlin, just like it’s my job to delegate, and hey, guess what? I just did.”

Rio is not specifically excited to see Tunis, but she is bored to the point of unconsciousness and welcomes anything at all that breaks the routine. Tunis, Paris, or the Gates of Hell, she’s up for anything that is not this tent. She shoulders her rifle.

“Nuh-uh-uh,” Cole says. “No weapons. Drunk GIs and weapons are not a good mix. Do you all comprehend me? I am dead damn serious: I sure as hell better not be hearing about you from the MPs.”

Rio and Jenou, with Beebee in tow, join the others climbing aboard an open deuce-and-a-half truck whose driver has been persuaded to drive into town in exchange for half a carton of Luckies.

It’s a dusty, bouncing, behind-pounding, spine-crunching, noisy, two-hour drive down roads choked with military vehicles. A sort of hierarchy governs the roads: at the lowest end are civilians, Arabs and Berbers with huge loads on their backs or smacking heavily laden donkeys; next, soldiers on foot; then the trucks. Jeeps carrying officers are next, and at the top of the precedence, tanks, because no one wants to get in the way of a Sherman.

Speaking of which, there is a very odd sight by the side of the road, a Sherman pointing vertically out of a crater. A bulldozer idles beside it, and colored troops are running a thick chain from the tractor to the front of the tank.

Beebee says, “So I guess some of you fellows have seen action?”

Luther Geer seizes the opportunity to impress and terrify the new guy. “We have been into the jaws of death, youngster. Jaws of death! Krauts everywhere, bullets flying, blood up to our knees!”

“And how about you girls?” Beebee asks, unconsciously drawing closer to them.

“Well,” Jenou drawls, “we mostly just follow behind the men and bring them tea and cookies when they get tired of killing Krauts.”

Jack emits a guffaw. Then, as if it’s the most serious matter in the world, he leans toward Beebee and says, “Of course you Yanks call them cookies, but the proper term is biscuits.”

“I like Castain’s biscuits.” Tilo smirks. “Richlin’s biscuits haven’t quite risen, if you see what I mean.”

“Stick, you’ve read the manual cover to cover,” Jenou says. “Is it okay if I shoot Suarez?”

“Gonna get me some A-rab tail,” Tilo says, undeterred. “Gonna see for myself what they’ve got underneath those scarves and outfits they wear. I hear an A-rab woman will go with a GI for a dollar.”

“I’m getting me some hooch first,” Geer says. “Then tail. What about you, Jappo?”

Hansu Pang jerks in surprise. He is rarely spoken to directly.

Before Pang can decide on a reply, Geer continues. “I know you Japs like pussy, what with all the raping and such your people did in China.”

“Knock it off, Geer,” Stick says.

“I am one-quarter Japanese,” Pang says with all the dignity he can muster as the truck rattles noisily over ground torn up by tank treads. “Half Korean and one-quarter white.”

“Well, goody for you,” Geer says. “So you’re a half-breed who’s only one-quarter traitor.”

No one comes to Pang’s defense, though the silence that follows is distinctly uncomfortable. It nags at Rio’s conscience, this baiting of Pang. There were Japanese (or Japo-American, whatever, she isn’t sure what to call them) farmers around Gedwell Falls. They were just regular, hardworking farmers, no different than the various English, Scots, Italians, French, and so on in the area. She has heard about them being rounded up and sent to camps, many of them being forced to sell their farms for far less than they were worth.

She thinks someday she might get annoyed enough by Geer to say something. But not now. Not yet. She tells herself she has enough trouble being a woman in the army, she doesn’t need to pick fights on behalf of Japs.

Anyway, they have a twenty-four-hour pass. Time for fun, not for picking fights.

Tunis is a city, not a town—a vast, sprawling maze of sun-bleached one- and two-story stucco homes, narrow crooked streets, and narrow, even more crooked alleys. Their progress is slowed by donkeys piled high with bushels of dates, big pottery jars of honey, bushels of wheat, and colorful rugs; by men with dark, suspicious faces glowering from the shade of hoods; dirty, excited, nearly naked children racing alongside yelling their few words of English, “Hey, Joe, gimme cigarette?” and “My sister love you long time—one dollar!”

Jillion Magraff digs in her pocket, comes up with a chocolate bar—or what passes for chocolate in army rations—and tosses the bar into the gaggle of children, who instantly start fighting over it.

Finally the truck lurches to a halt outside an intersection choked with foot traffic milling past awning-shielded stalls selling olives, grapes, dates, chickpeas, bright orange spices, and war souvenirs that run from German medals and helmets to British tea and cans of bully beef to American cigarettes.

“Far as I go,” the driver yells, leaning out of his window.

The squad piles out, eyes wide, voices high, various uncreditable appetites honed to desperation.

“So what do we do now?” Rio asks Jenou. Rio is still a small-town, rural girl, intimidated by cities, especially strange cities full of people who do not look at all happy to see her.

“We look around, I suppose, see what there is to see.” Jenou has always been the worldly wise balance to Rio’s naiveté, though in truth Jenou is a bit overwhelmed too.

“What, no whorehouse?” Cat asks, joining them. Jillion Magraff hovers at the edge of their little group.

“Where are you ladies going?” Jack asks Rio.

Rio shrugs. “I’ll follow Castain; she’s my guide to the seamy side of life. I suppose you’re off to have a different kind of fun.”

Jack grins. It is an irresistible thing, his grin, full of mischief and fun. “I’m not much for bordellos, I’m afraid, I’m saving myself for the future Mrs. Stafford. But I guess I’ll see if I can keep Suarez and Geer out of the guardhouse.”

Beebee shows every sign of wanting to go with the men, but says, “Well, I suppose the ladies will need an escort. Anyway, Sergeant Cole said . . .”

“Yeah, you protect us,” Cat says, rolling her eyes, but not unkindly. Cat Preeling is approximately twice Beebee’s size, and Cat once strangled a Kraut with the strap of her M1.

The five of them, Rio, Jenou, Cat, Jillion, and Beebee spend the next several hours wandering alien alleyways, buying snacks of unfamiliar food from women squatting beside open charcoal braziers, and picking out trinkets to send home to little brothers and sisters, moms and dads. Rio buys a small silver necklace for her mother and tucks it into her pocket.

At a stand whose rickety table looks ready to collapse under the weight of bronze cookware, brass filigreed boxes, and, incongruously, a ragged and scorched chunk of steel bearing most of a German cross, Rio spots something.

She points at it and says, “Show me that.”

The shopkeeper, a very old man with a face like leather that’s been boiled then left out in the sun to shrivel, ignores her.

“That!” Rio says, pointing insistently.

The shopkeeper shakes his head and adds a wagging finger.

“Can’t you understand plain English?” Cat demands, self-mocking. “We’ve come to save you from the Hun, you ungrateful—”

“It’s on account of you being a woman, I expect,” Beebee says. “The men, most of them, have a blade of some kind, not the women.”

Rio stares at him. Clever boy. “Okay, you ask him.”

Beebee steps past Rio and points at the object, and the shopkeeper reluctantly hands it to him. It is a dagger, a curved knife with a silver butt on the dark, hardwood hilt and a silver scabbard covered in a repeating pattern of curlicues.

Beebee hands it to Rio, who draws the blade slowly. The scabbard is curved, the blade, almost a foot of lightly corroded steel, slightly less so. Rio tests the edge.

“A little dull, but I could sharpen it up.”

“You sending it home?” Jenou asks skeptically. “For who, your dad?”

“Maybe,” Rio says with a shrug and hands it back to Beebee, much to the shopkeeper’s relief. “Tell him you’ll give him a dollar.”

Beebee and the shopkeeper haggle for ten minutes before arriving on a price of six dollars. Beebee takes the prize and hands it to Rio, who slips it into her belt.

“I think he was saying how it’s called a koummya,” Beebee offers.

“Koummya and I’ll stabbya,” Cat quips.

“My birthday present to myself,” Rio says with some satisfaction.

“Your . . .” Jenou says, and then stares at her, mouth hanging open. “Oh my God, honey! It’s your birthday! I cannot believe I forgot your birthday!”

“Eighteen,” Rio says, then, noticing the surprised looks from everyone but Jenou, adds, “Um . . . nineteen?”

“They’re not going to kick you out now,” Jenou says, and gives her friend a hug before holding her out at arm’s length to look her up and down. “Well, there you go, honey. You are a legal adult.”

“Clearly we need a beer to celebrate,” Cat says. “How the hell do we find it, that’s the question.”

“Down that alley over on the right,” Beebee says, which earns him curious looks from his companions. He shrugs. “I noticed some GIs coming out. They looked like they’d been drinking.”

Cat slaps him on his narrow shoulder, earning a wince, and says, “We may have use for you after all, young Bassingthwaite. Lead on!”

The tavern is a low-ceilinged, dimly lit place with a short and narrow door providing the only light. Had there been artificial light it likely would not have penetrated the thick blue cigarette smoke which swirls and hovers and is parted by the squad’s entry into the room. At least twenty GIs are crammed in so tightly that the two small round tables have become de facto stools.

Rio has been in British pubs, and those could be raucous at times—she has sidestepped more than one drunken brawl between American GIs and British Tommies. Or between American GIs and American sailors. Or between white GIs and black GIs. Or . . . Well, fit, energetic young men far from their families had a tendency to get into trouble, especially when drunk. But the tone of this place is subtly different. Here there is more weariness on the one hand and on the other hand a more desperate edge to the braying laughter. There are silent, sullen drinkers and loud, lit-up, electrified drinkers who are all raw nerve.

Rio checks shoulder patches and the condition of uniforms and the look in men’s eyes and knows these are not rear-echelon soldiers but men who had been in the fight.

There are a number of long looks plus the inevitable catcalls and lewd propositions as Rio, Jenou, Jillion, and Cat, with their male escort Beebee, walk in. The more civilized men offer to buy them drinks; others offer to give them a baby so they can muster out and go home.

The four women have very different ways of dealing with this. Jenou smiles and in a loud, welcoming voice says, “I’ll decide who buys me a drink, and it ain’t you, short stuff. I want handsome and I want rich. If you’re rich enough, I’ll give a pass on the handsome.”

This confuses most of the men and leaves them temporarily stalled, unsure how to proceed. They might be veterans, these men, but few are over twenty-five and none of them are suave or sophisticated with women.

Cat Preeling has a different approach. When a rowdy, red-faced buck sergeant comes up demanding a dance—despite the absence of music or room to dance—Cat says, “Aw, fug that. Pull up and tell me a war story, Sarge.” In five minutes Cat has a gaggle of men around her, all competing to come up with the best story, or failing that then the most extravagant complaint about the army. And of course Cat is giving back as good as she gets.

Jillion is the lost lamb, clinging nervously beside Rio, glancing toward every new sound. Rio manages to push her way up to the bar—actually a section of perforated steel resting at a noticeable angle on a sawhorse and a chest of drawers. The man behind the bar glares at her with naked hostility as she says, “A beer, please, and one for my buddy here.”

The barman ignores her. So Rio pulls the knife and scabbard from her belt and lays it on the bar, examining her recent purchase. She draws the blade, holds it up to the smoky light and runs her finger carefully along both sharpened edges.

The beers appear, and the knife is put away.

“I wish I could do that,” Jillion says ruefully.

“It’s all bluff,” Rio says. “But don’t tell anyone.” She avoids smiling because she knows her grin, which is slow to arrive but dazzling when it does appear, makes her look even younger than her current just-barely eighteen years.

“I’ve only ever tasted beer once,” Jillion says. “I didn’t like it then. But now I like anything wet.” She offers Rio a cigarette, which Rio declines, then lights one for herself.

She’s a fussy person, Jillion, with quick, small movements and an air of alertness that makes Rio think of a squirrel hiding its nuts. She has none of the physical robustness that Rio, Jenou, and Cat all share, and Rio wonders, not for the first time, how Jillion made it through basic training. She can’t picture this nervous squirrel running five miles in full gear, though to be fair she’s always kept up with the rest of the squad. Not much of a fighter, maybe, and a bit of a goldbrick, but there are others in the platoon as useless. Or almost as useless.

“So, what’s your story, Magraff ?” Rio asks, partly from curiosity, more just to have an excuse to shut out the noise around her.

“Me?” It comes out almost as a squeak. “Well . . .” She has to think about it while hunching her shoulders around her drink as if afraid it will be snatched out her hands. “I’m from a place called Chapel Hill in North Carolina. It’s where the university is.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Small town really, I guess. My father works in a print shop. I was figuring to go to work there maybe someday.”

“What does he print?”

“Oh, you know, flyers and church bulletins and diner menus and such. But they do some artwork sometimes and well, I kind of, uh . . .”

“You like art?”

Jillion nods and looks away as if admitting something shameful.

“I see you drawing some times in that notebook you have.”

“It passes the time.”

“What do you draw?” Rio asks, and now she’s actually interested. The closest she’s come to knowing anyone with artistic interests is Strand, who enjoys taking pictures. Her hand moves involuntarily to the inner pocket where she keeps her photographs and letters.

“The squad, mostly. Folks from the rest of the platoon too, whoever is sitting still long enough but won’t notice me. It makes people nervous, but it keeps me from getting nervous.”

Rio half turns to favor her with a skeptical look. If this is Jillion Magraff not being nervous she’d hate to see her nervous.

“Would you like to see?” Jillion asks.

“Sure.”

Jillion draws her bent, sweat-stained sketch pad from under her blouse. She opens it to a page and shyly holds it for Rio to see.

“That’s Castain! Hey, Jenou, come here.” But Jenou is busy flirting with a drunk but darkly attractive staff sergeant. “You got one of me?”

Jillion pales. “Um . . . I have a few of you.”

“Well, let’s see.”

“Okay, but, you know, I’m just an amateur,” Jillion says deprecatingly. “This is the first one I did of you.”

The sketch is of a girl, in partial profile, looking off to one side and smiling. The girl is in uniform, but without a helmet, and she looks just ready to start laughing.

“Oh man, my freckles,” Rio says. Jillion starts to put it away, but Rio puts her hand on the page, stopping her. “Who was I looking at when you drew this?”

“I don’t remember,” Jillion says.

But Jillion blushes, and it’s pretty clear she’s lying. Why, though? Who would she smile at that way? Not Stick. One of the other girls? Certainly not Pang or Tilo. She hopes it wasn’t Cassel, but then the answer slowly dawns: Jack. Of course. She was looking at Jack, ready to laugh.

“Okay,” Rio says, confused as to how exactly she should be reacting. She wants to compliment Jillion: it’s a very good likeness, but it’s also, maybe . . . revealing. Rio swallows and forces a laugh. “Any others?”

Jillion, perhaps reading Rio’s uncertainty, shakes her head.

“Come on, Magraff, you said there were others.” Rio dreads seeing something equally revealing, but dreads more not seeing it.

Jillion turns through the pages, past a frightened-looking Tilo, past Geer strangely tender in a face-to-face with his kitten, past Sergeant Cole’s gap-toothed grin in an obviously posed picture with his Thompson on his hip. And then, at last, reveals a somber picture of a GI. The GI’s face is partly shaded by the brim of a helmet, so only the mouth is visible. It’s a partly open mouth, showing a hint of upper teeth. It’s a wolfish half-smile, nothing like the laugh-ready grin of the first picture. There’s something predatory in that expression that matches the tension of the body. In the picture she has her M1 leveled, and a wisp of smoke curls from the barrel.

For a moment Rio can only stare. For some reason she feels the collar of her blouse chafing her neck, distracting, annoying, spreading irritation through her. She searches for something to say, because again, it’s a very good drawing, but she doesn’t like it. It seems connected to the scrape of collar on her neck and connected as well to the vague nakedness she feels not having the weight of her rifle on her shoulder. In the sketch her right hand melts into the trigger housing of the rifle.

“That’s—” she begins, but suddenly two male hands appear, reaching around Rio to cover and squeeze her breasts. Rio says, “Can I borrow your cigarette?” and without waiting for a reply takes Jillion’s cigarette from her mouth and stabs the lit end into one of the hands.

“Goddammit!” the man shrieks. “You burned me! You fugging bitch!”

“Sorry,” Rio says mildly. “I must have slipped.” There’s an angry red-and-black circle on the back of the man’s hand, and he alternately shakes it and massages it.

“If you weren’t a woman, I’d punch you in the face!”

This is loud enough and angry enough to cause Jenou and Cat to close in, standing shoulder to shoulder with Rio. Beebee dithers uncertainly before finally deciding that loyalty to his new platoon mates is more important than loyalty to a fellow male.

“How about I buy you a beer to show there are no hard feelings?” Rio says, breaking out a tight, false, predatory smile which, it occurs to her, she has just seen in the sketch. That very smile. No smile at all, really.

“How about you—” the man begins in a belligerent tone, but taking a second look at determined faces, he backs away muttering curses under his breath.

They order another round of beers and then move on to a different establishment, where the Arab barman, and his whole family who help serve and clean up, is happier to serve them. There they run into Jack, Stick, and Tilo, all somewhat impaired and clearly intent on getting still more impaired.

Suddenly self-conscious, Rio whispers, “Don’t mention my knife. Or the masher back there.”

Jenou rolls her eyes but just says, “Oooookay,” with a drawn-out vowel. But she can’t stop herself, so in a whisper adds, “We wouldn’t want you frightening your backup boyfriend.”

This leaves Rio in the impossible position of either denying or asking who Jenou means by “backup boyfriend,” both of which seem likely to cause Jenou to say still more. She limits herself to shooting Jenou a furious look—not the look from the sketch, an angrier but less . . . less dangerous . . . look—which Jenou laughs off, saying, “Save it for the Krauts and the mashers. You don’t scare me, Rio.”

“The ladies are here, thank God!” Jack says with a big and somewhat misaligned grin. “I’m stuck with these two.” He waves vaguely at Stick and Tilo. Tilo has the look of an unfocused owl trying to see in daylight. Stick is less tipsy but not quite his usual solid, steady self.

“Why, you boys have been drinking,” Jenou drawls.

“Why, yesh, yesh we have,” Jack confesses without shame. He bows from the waist, almost falling over, takes Jenou’s hand, and kisses it.

“Well, la-di-da, aren’t we fancy?” Jenou says.

Jack moves to take Rio’s hand, but she deftly sidesteps and he winks knowingly at her. On a previous occasion where too much drink had been consumed, Rio and Jack shared a drunken kiss. Rio has tried since then to put it entirely out of her mind, to file it away under “irrelevant distractions,” but the memory is too strong and seems oddly to be growing stronger and more specific over time. And now it takes the form of that first sketch, the happy one, the one where she isn’t holding a smoking rifle.

Wet, freezing cold, and suddenly so warm, warm all the way through, when we kissed.

Her hand reaches for the photograph of Strand Braxton but thinks better of it. It would be too obvious that she was using it as a talisman to ward off thoughts of Jack.

Inevitably the comparisons come floating up through Rio’s somewhat addled thoughts. Strand is taller, better looking, a pilot, a dashing figure, an officer, not to mention being a hometown boy who will no doubt get married when the war is over, presumably to Rio.

Maybe.

If that’s what I want.

Which it must be.

Surely.

Jack is tall enough without being striking, has reddish hair, faint freckles like her own, and he’s funny. And charming. Strand is also charming, but he lacks Jack’s quick and easy wit.

I’ve kissed them both, and . . .

Jillion and her damned pictures.

Strand, unlike Jack, is not here. Strand is on an air base three hundred miles away on the coast of Algeria. She’s had letters from him, all censored of course, but it is clear that he is not flying the fighters he’d hoped to pilot but rather is flying bombers. Where he’s bombing and who he’s bombing, she does not know.

What she does know is that there are women with the Air Corps, as well as nurses and local women, all of whom would presumably find Strand as attractive as she does herself.

Strand isn’t that kind of fellow.

But really, is there a male who isn’t that sort of fellow? Really?

Suddenly Rio wants a drink or several. Or else to hide away somewhere, all alone, and think. Or better still, not think.

Jillion and her damned pictures.

Tilo says, “Heard we’re shipping out. For real, this time.” He speaks with the exaggerated care of an inebriate.

Rio nods. Everyone knows they aren’t staying in North Africa. Everyone knows they’re going somewhere, and probably soon since summer is coming on and up north the Soviets are crying endlessly for the Allies to open a second front by invading Europe proper.

“France,” Tilo says in what he mistakenly believes is a confidential whisper.

“Not France,” Stick says. “It’s either Sardinia or Sicily.”

“What’s the difference?” Cat asks and drinks half her beer in a single long pull that leaves her with a foam mustache.

“Damned if I know,” Jack says, but he’s not really paying attention, he’s watching Rio, head cocked, grin hovering.

Stick sighs and says, “Okay, here it is.” He dips his finger in his beer and begins tracing squiggly lines on the countertop. “That’s the Mediterranean Sea. That big boot sticking down? That’s Italy. And here’s Sicily and Sardinia, which the Eye-Ties control. If we set out for southern France, see, we’d pass right under Kraut and Eye-Tie planes and get shot to hell.”

Rio looks on, partly out of actual interest and partly because it allows her to form a blank expression. Is Jillion recording this too? Like most front line soldiers, Rio has no real idea where she is, let alone why. The geography is a mystery to her. “That one,” she says, stabbing a finger at the larger of the two islands.

“Why?” Stick asks, curious.

“Because it’s bigger?”

Stick laughs. “That’d probably be enough of a reason for the generals,” he admits.

“We’ll know when we know,” Jillion offers in a soft, almost-inaudible voice.

“But when?” Tilo cries in exaggerated despair, arms thrown wide and nearly sweeping an overflowing tin can ashtray onto the floor.

“You in a hurry?” Cat asks him.

“I don’t like not knowing. It gets on my nerves. Back and forth, scuttlebutt and more scuttlebutt. Let’s just get this war over with!”

“I’m happy to let someone else win it,” Rio says. “I’m happy just to sit here in the desert. I can have my folks send me some magazines. Maybe I’ll take up knitting.”

“Right,” Jack says. “Knitting.”

He can’t even imagine me as I am back home. He’s never even met that Rio. He doesn’t know me. Not me.

And that’s when a half dozen exceedingly drunk Goums come bursting in, loud and aggressive.

The Goums are Berbers, French colonial troops now supporting the Allies. They are Muslim, so they are not allowed to drink, but like the many Baptists equally forbidden to drink, they have suspended some rules temporarily. They are dark-skinned, fantastically bearded, dressed in loosely belted, open-front robes of sorts, like bathrobes, with wide vertical stripes of tan and sun-bleached burgundy. They wear last-war French helmets or white cloth head wrappings and carry what appear to be daggers very much like the one Rio purchased.

“I thought towel-heads didn’t drink,” Tilo says. It is unlikely that any of the Goums speak enough English to understand his words, but they see the challenge in his eyes and then see that he is in company with women.

One of the Goums shoves Tilo, knocking him back against Rio. Stick moves quickly in front of Tilo, holding up his hands, palms out, and speaking in a soothing voice.

The Goum laughs, takes a step back, grins, and launches himself forward.

And the bar fight begins.

The first bar fight of the night.