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“Careful it doesn’t give you the runs,” Jenou says pointlessly since there is no chance of the child understanding.
A woman comes rushing from the farmhouse, yelling in Italian, obviously scolding her children, waving at them to get back in the house. The house, in truth, is little more than a pile of mismatched stones, shabbier and less likely to be permanent than anything Rio has ever seen. There are no windows, just a low, crooked door and a roof of cracked tiles patched with tied bundles of straw.
The children ignore their mother, who slows as she approaches. No grin from her. Her face is brown and deeply lined, her eyes dark with a thousand years of Sicilian suspicion.
“Keep moving,” Cole urges his troops. “This war ain’t over just yet.”
They move along, and the children follow for a few dozen yards until drawn back to their mother.
They are in a sunbaked land of small farm fields, stone fences, donkey-drawn carts, scrawny cattle, and mostly dirt tracks rather than roads. Trees are few and far between, but prickly pear stands are everywhere, with large, flat ovals like beaver tails festooned with two kinds of needles.
Tilo cuts one with his knife and gingerly picks it up, careful to avoid the obvious pricks. But the large needles are not the problem.
“Ah! Damn! Ow!”
Hansu Pang says, “You got to watch the little hairlike prickles. They go right into skin and it’s hell getting rid of them.”
“Got a lot of them prickly pears in Japan, do you?” Geer asks.
“No, but they grow around the internment camp where my grandparents are.” He says it without rancor, but it irritates Rio anyway, because she expects an argument to break out and she’s instinctively unhappy about any unnecessary noise. Sure enough . . .
“How the hell are your grandparents locked up and you’re in the army?” Geer demands.
“I’ve been living in Hawaii, where people understand that we aren’t Japanese but Americans.” This time Pang’s anger peeks out for just a flash before being smothered. “It’s mostly in California that folks are being interned, not Hawaii.”
“Japs are Japs,” Geer says with a shrug.
“Thanks for saving my life, Geer, and also, fug you.”
It is the first time Pang has defended himself in any way, and to Rio’s relief, Geer lets it go.
They halt and crouch suddenly, hearing gunfire. But it’s not close and not directed at them, so the march continues. Rio has no real idea where they’re headed. Vanderpool told them the name of the village, but it’s all Italian gobbledygook to Rio’s ears.
Besides, Cat has noticed something far more interesting. “Hey, those are tomatoes!”
Every head swivels left.
“And they’re ripe!”
Sergeant Cole yells something about mines, but no one pays any attention since it’s unlikely the local farmers would be tending crops in minefields. An old farmer at the far side of the field looks as if he’s considering protesting, but then gets back to his labor. They keep going in the same direction, parallel to the road, but now they are slowing to snatch fat red tomatoes from the vines, stuffing them into backpacks and shirt pockets and taking big bites from the most promising specimens. Soon the platoon is dripping tomato juice down mouths and necks, fingers and arms. First Platoon, farther on their left, is busily denuding their half of the same field and the farmer finally yells at them, but with no effect.
Rio does not join in; she’s never been a great lover of raw tomatoes. Her leg wound is itching fiercely and at the same time aching and distracting her too much for cavorting through the fields. But a mile on, the tomato-stained, prickly-pear-maimed platoon spies a patch of watermelons, and this Rio cannot resist no matter the pain. She uses her koummya to slice open a melon heavy with sweetness and greedily gobbles it up, spitting seeds as she goes.
“It’s like watching an especially disgusting machine gun,” Jenou teases.
“What else am I supposed to do with watermelon seeds?” Rio demands.
Jack says, “You’re supposed to spit them discreetly into your spoon and lay them on the side of your fruit plate.” He winks and spits a seed about ten feet.
“Pitiful,” Tilo says. “I can beat it.”
The war is halted temporarily while Rio, Jack, Tilo, and Cat compete to see who can spit a seed the farthest.
Sergeant Cole comes over, shakes his head in disgust, grabs a hunk of melon, chews, swallows, and spits a seed through the gap in his teeth that very nearly doubles Cat’s record.
“I gotta teach you people everything? Now, get your butts moving, you’ve had your lunch.”
Another hour on and the sun is taking a toll on the GIs. A water pump used to fill a cattle trough is worked eagerly to fill helmets with water, which they dump over their heads.
