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“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.”
“You admit to being seduced, but you can’t talk about the war?”
“I guess that doesn’t make sense, does it? Maybe I’m not as ashamed as I should be of having . . . you know. I mean, I’m hardly the first girl to lose her virginity before marriage. But at the time . . .” She trails off.
“Does that mean you are ashamed of what you do as a soldier?”
“No! No, it’s just that I’ve always known I would . . . you know . . . have s-e-x. I pictured it happening after I was married, and in some place more romantic than a cheap hotel room in Tunis . . . I pictured it being more . . . important . . . than it felt.”
“The war makes other things seem small.”
“Oh, fug the war!” Rio says with sudden anger. Then, abashed, “Look at my language! I never, ever even thought that word before.”
“It’s changing us, I guess,” Frangie says. She shakes her head slowly, troubled deeply by the thought. “What will we be by the time we’re done?”
“Alive, I hope.” Rio rises to her feet and offers Frangie a hand, pulling her up.
“What do you do now, Richlin?”
“Find the guy who came down with me and see if we can’t scrounge up some chow, check for mail, dig a nice hole for the night. Then in the morning, head back up.”
“To the front line.”
“It’s why they gave me the rifle,” Rio says. “You?”
Frangie holds up her bag. “Here, for now at least. It’s why they gave me the bandages.”
Rio does not find Beebee, which is no surprise in the chaos. It wouldn’t matter except that Vanderpool and Cole have made her responsible for him.
Well, I didn’t ask for that.
She cannot really dig a decent hole in the sand, so in the end she stumbles on an impromptu camp of lost or simply misplaced soldiers with a campfire in the lee of a barely head-high dune. It’s dark by this time and rather than introduce herself, which will mean identifying herself as female, she stays to the gloom at the very edge of the fire’s light, checking the faces for Beebee. When she fails again to find him, she spreads her shelter half out as a ground cover and curls up to sleep.
The night is warm, and it has been a very long day.
