Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

“Hey,” the redhead says.

“Me?”

“What are you, some kind of Injun?”

Lupé blinks. “No.”

“What are you then?”

“My folks come from Mexico. I come from Utah.”

“Utah, huh? Well, that beats all,” he says, and shakes his head. Then he leans forward and extends his hand. “Hank Hobart, from St. Paul, Minnesota. Pleased to meet you.”

She’s been expecting hostility—there are a lot of Texans in the army, and few of them are ready to be civil to Mexicans. So she is nonplussed by his open expression and the outstretched hand. She takes it and feels a softness she’s never felt before in any hand, male or female.

“What do you do, Loopy?”

“Guadalupé,” she corrects. Then, “Or Lupé.”

“Loopy. That’s what I said, isn’t it?” He seems sincere, as though he hears no difference between his pronunciation and hers, which is more loo-pay than his loo-pee.

“Okay, Hank. I live on a cattle ranch.”

His blue eyes go wide and his pale eyebrows rise to comic heights. “You’re a cowgirl?”

“I guess so,” she says, feeling uncomfortable since that title is generally earned by many long years of work. Where she comes from, cowboy means a whole lot more than major or captain.

“Guess what I do?” Hank asks. He’s tall, lanky, and so pale he’s practically translucent, and he owns an almost comically large nose that belongs on a statue of some noble Roman.

Lupé shakes her head. “No idea.”

“I play trombone in an orchestra.” He mimes moving a trombone slide.

This is so far from anything Lupé might have guessed that for a moment she can only frown and stare.

“You like jazz?” Hobart asks.

Lupé shrugs. “Like Tommy Dorsey?” It’s a lucky guess. There is no radio on the ranch, and what she knows of music is restricted to cowboy tunes and church hymns. But some of her school friends have radios, and she’s heard a few of the big names.

He nods. “Best trombone player around, I guess. Man, if I ever got that good . . . If ever ‘I’m Getting Sentimental Over You’ comes on the radio, sit down and open your ears. Man, that is one cool T-bone.” He has a look on his face that Lupé associates with religious ecstasy. Then he snaps back to reality. “So, where you figure we’re going?”

Lupé shrugs. This is more conversation than she’s had in a long time.

“Reckon we’re going to France,” Hank says. He looks concerned by the idea.

Lupé nods. “Reckon so.”

“Hell, yes, we’re going to France,” another male GI, a big slab of beef with an incongruous baby face, sandy hair, and tiny blue eyes, interjects. “We’re going to finish off the Krauts. They won’t know what’s hit ’em.” He bounces his legs a bit, with either nervousness or anticipation.

Neither Hank nor Lupé is excited at this prospect, and conversation dies out. They ride for an hour on roads choked with trucks and jeeps, ammo wagons and half-tracks, 155 Long Tom artillery pieces towed behind trucks, and even Sherman tanks. All of it, everything, is heading southeast.

At last the truck pulls into a new camp with well-ordered tents in endless rows. It looks remarkably like the last camp, and the one before that. The army, Lupé notes, owns a lot of tents.

“Last stop! Everyone off,” the driver yells.

They are met by a woman corporal who appears to be in a permanent state of irritation, rather like Sergeant Bonemaker. The corporal snatches paperwork, glances, and says, “All right, you three are going to Fifth Platoon. Report to Sergeant Sticklin.” In response to their blank, sheepish stares the corporal points and says, “Go that way till you come to the company road, turn right. You know your rights from your lefts, don’t you? Go right till you see a tent with a sign that says Fifth Platoon. Got it? Good. Now get lost.”

The three detailed to Fifth Platoon are Lupé, Hank, and the eager fellow with the baby face who is named Rudy J. Chester. He makes a point of the J. He’s from Main Line Philadelphia, and he says that as if it’s supposed to mean something special.