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“I can do that,” Rio says. She steadies her head, which has a tendency to want to loll back and forth with each movement of the ship. And she looks into his eyes.
“Wow,” Rio says.
“Mmm?”
“It’s like . . .”
“Like?”
“Um . . .”
She closes her eyes when he kisses her.
The first kiss is tentative and a bit sloppy. Jack pulls away. He seems to be trying to focus his eyes, then gives up and in the end closes them, and moves forward blindly for a second kiss.
It would be easy for Rio to push him away. But she doesn’t. Nor does she close her eyes this time, but watches him, watches him with minute attention, and when it begins to look very much as if he will miss his target, she takes his face with her two cold hands and holds him still. Holds him still, and he opens his eyes, heavy lidded, somehow innocent and lustful at once, and for what feels like a very long time the two of them just look, inches separating them.
The distance between them lessens, and Rio feels the warmth of his breath on her nose and cheeks. His lips are parted, waiting, and she draws him closer, fraction of an inch by fraction of an inch. She tilts his head to the right, and her own to the left, because that is the opposite of how Strand kissed her, and she is aware of that memory, and aware that what she is doing is very wrong, but this is not a moment for fine moral considerations. Of far greater importance right now is the feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the trembling of her hands on his face, and the realization that they have both stopped breathing.
He does not kiss her, she kisses him, lips parted so she can taste him.
Which is when Jenou reappears to say, “Uh-oh.”
Your father got a job!
Frangie clenches her teeth as her bunk passes through all the angles between 45 and 135 degrees. On the downswing she extends her feet to stop sliding in that direction, and on the upswing she sticks a hand over her head to brace against sliding in that direction.
In her free hand she holds the letter she’s already read through several times. Obal has taken over his buddy’s paper route, Pastor M’Dale has won an award from the NAACP, and the labor shortage as men and women flood into defense plants has created an unexpected opportunity for her father.
Her father is dispatching taxis, a job he can do from a chair. He is earning a living. The family finances are saved. They aren’t well-to-do, certainly, but neither will they lose their home or go hungry.
You can come home now, baby.
That line is as sickening as the effects of the waves. Frangie enlisted to save the family. So she could contribute her allotment. It is the sole reason she signed up, the sole reason she is here on her way to North Africa in this follow-up to the successful American landings at Algiers and Oran.
She wants to ball the letter up and throw it away. Or burn it. Or rip it into tiny pieces and scatter them overboard.
Camp Szekely, Fort Huachuca, that hellish hospital ward near Manchester, two reeking, miserable ships, all to save a family that no longer needs saving. And her mother writes as if this will be happy news.
You can come home now? Frangie pulls the rolled-up coat she uses as a pillow from beneath her head, wads it up over her mouth, and screams into the rough wool.
The letter reached her in England as she was being herded along with thousands of others from ship to truck to train to truck to ship. Mail call, normally the happiest of times, had turned very dark very quickly.
As she’s screaming a hand roughly shakes her shoulder. She pulls off the “pillow” and stares at an amused white sailor.
“What?” she snaps.
“Your lieutenant volunteered you. Sick bay is ass-deep in bruises and broken bones, dumb-ass coons not knowing you keep a hand for yourself and a hand for the ship, falling down hatches and—”
“What?”
“They need a Nigra medic to help with some of the coloreds. Tag: you’re it.”
She follows the sailor down labyrinthine corridors whose walls and floors will not stand still, up stairs that almost seem to change direction as the floor falls away, across just enough open deck to leave her drenched, and finally arrives at the sick bay.
Sick bay is roomy by contrast with her berth, but still no bigger than a pair of parlors. One room is distinctly for whites, the other definitely for colored. There’s a white doctor muttering to orderlies as he moves between the white beds, pointing at fractures, prodding at bruises, and ignoring anything said to him.
The injured black soldiers are receiving even less care, with one sour-faced white orderly and two black privates who are clearly at a loss. Frangie spots a familiar face. Sergeant Green has just heaved a loudly complaining soldier off his shoulders and onto a gurney that is already occupied.
