Front Lines. Майкл Грант

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СКАЧАТЬ I was there. I saw. So, hate? Sure, I’ll show you some hate.

      There will be hate.

      But I suspect over time the hate will fade, and it will be the love that lingers: the love of the woman or man standing next to you in a hole; the desperate love of a home that seems farther away with each squeeze of the trigger; the fragile love for the person you hope—or hoped—to spend the rest of your life with.

      A moment ago I reached the end of a page and ripped it from the machine, and in trying to insert the next sheet I made a mess of it. My fingers shook a little. I feel jacked up, high and wild, a twanging nerve, a guitar string tightened and tightened until it’s got to break, till you kind of wish it would just break. I’m sweating, and it isn’t hot. But as long as I keep hitting these keys, as long as I don’t stop, maybe that will all pass. I don’t know.

      We are the first generation of young American women to fight in a great world war. “Warrior Women” is what the newspapers like to say. But when it all began three years ago, we were not any kind of women, we were girls mostly. And with the wry mockery that comes so easily to men and women at war, we made up our own headline and called ourselves not warrior women but soldier girls.

      As I sit here pounding feverishly on these keys, I feel as if I am all of them, every soldier girl who carried a rifle, dug a hole, slogged through mud, steamed or froze, prayed or cursed, raged or feared, ran away or ran toward.

      I am Rio Richlin. I am Frangie Marr. I am Rainy Schulterman and Jenou Castain and Cat Preeling. As long as I’m pounding these keys I’m all of them.

      This is the story of what happened to a few of us who ended up on the front lines of the greatest war in human history.

1

       RIO RICHLIN—GEDWELL FALLS, CALIFORNIA, USA

      1942.

      Remember 1942? It’s been a long three and a half years since then, hasn’t it? In 1942 the Japs were unchecked, rampaging freely across Asia. The Germans had taken all of Europe and some of Africa before running into trouble in the Soviet Union. Our British allies had been hit hard, very hard.

      And we Americans?

      Well, we were just getting into it. Still with plenty of time to worry about the little things . . .

      “Rio Richlin, stay out of the sugar. Heavens, girl, the ration for the family is thirty-two ounces a week, and I’m saving for your sister’s birthday cake.”

      “I just used a teaspoonful for my coffee, Mother.”

      “Yes, well, a teaspoon here, a teaspoon there, it adds up. Who knows what Rachel is getting to eat?” Mrs Richlin says. She has deep and dark suspicions when it comes to navy rations.

      Rio is sixteen and pretty; not a beauty, but pretty enough. Tall for a girl, and with the strong shoulders and calloused hands of a farmer’s daughter. Rangy, that’s one word. If she’d been a boy, she’d have played ball and you’d expect her to be able to throw from center field to home without much trouble.

      Her complexion is cream in the mild Northern California winter and light brown sugar during the long days of summer, with faint freckles and brown hair pulled back into a practical ponytail.

      “I guess the navy is feeding her; wouldn’t make much sense to starve your own sailors,” Rio points out.

      “Well, I don’t suppose her captain is making her a nineteenth birthday cake. Do you?”

      Mrs Richlin emphasizes what she sees as her conclusive statement by taking the ration book with its multicolored stamps and fanning it out on the table in front of Rio. “You see the situation. Thank goodness for the cows. I trade my milk to Emily Smith for her coffee ration, otherwise your father and you would have nothing to drink.”

      “There’s always beer.” This from Rio’s father, Tam, who rushes through the kitchen on his way to the feed store he owns. “But not for you, young lady,” he adds quickly, pointing at Rio then winking.

      It’s a spacious kitchen with green-painted oak cupboards on most of one wall, a battered and well-used white-enameled stove and oven, a long porcelain sink, and a deeper tin sink beside it. There’s a bare wood counter so long-used that dips are worn into the edge where three generations of Richlin women have kneaded bread dough and chopped carrots and parsnips and sliced tomatoes fresh from the garden.

      In the center of the room stands a round table—antique, quarter-sawn oak—surrounded by five chairs, only two of which match and all of which squeak and complain when used.

      The house is old, having passed down from her father’s great-grandfather, the Richlin who settled in Gedwell Falls after coming two thousand miles in an ox-drawn wagon. Rio has never doubted that she will spend the rest of her youth in this place, going to school, doing her chores, and spending time with her best friend, Jenou.

      She’s also never doubted that she’ll marry, have children, and keep house. When they discuss these matters, as they often do, Jenou always emphasizes to Rio the importance of marrying someone prosperous. “Money and looks, Rio,” she always says. “Money and looks.”

      “What about kindness, generosity of spirit, and a sense of humor?”

      To which Jenou invariably responds with a despairing shake of her head and a slow repetition. “Money and looks. In that order.”

      Rio assumes, has always assumed, that she will be like her mother, who is like her grandmother. For the most part Rio accepts that. But there is a small voice in her mind and heart that senses something off about it all. Not bad, just off. Like she’s trying on an outfit that will never fit, and isn’t her color.

      This dissatisfaction is vague, unformed, but real. The problem is, being dissatisfied does not mean she has any better goal. Or any goal at all, really, except of course to get through her final year of high school with grades that don’t disgrace her and the family.

      Rio sweeps her math work sheet into her brown leather book bag, slings it over her shoulder, kisses her mother on the cheek, and follows her father toward the front door.

      Her father is stopped there, framed in the doorway against the early sunlight of the street beyond. He’s a tall man with a face carved to leanness by the hard years of the Great Depression, when he kept a roof over his family’s heads by taking on any work he could find, often going straight from his shop to mucking out cesspools or painting barns.

      In the teasing voice that is their common currency, Rio says, “Come on, Dad, some of us have places to . . .”

      She focuses past him and sees a uniformed telegram delivery boy.

      Rio’s heart misses two beats. Her steps falter. She tries to swallow and can’t, tries to breathe but there’s a weight pressing down on her chest. She moves closer. Her father notices her and says, “It’s probably nothing.”

      “Is СКАЧАТЬ