Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

Tam Richlin leans there with head bowed and says nothing. His fists clench then relax as if he simply lacks the strength to go on. But he says nothing. Nothing, no sound, as his wife howls in plain misery, howls into the hollow of her surviving daughter’s neck.

Tam Richlin says, “I best go open the shop.” And with that he is gone.

Rio moves her mother to the sofa, literally physically having to take her mother’s heaving shoulders and lift. Rio goes to the kitchen to make tea, because isn’t that what people do at moments like this? Don’t they make tea? As the water heats, she sets out the good silver tea service, focusing for as long as she can on the placement of the elements: the pot, the sugar bowl, the little, slightly mismatched cream pitcher, all of it clattering because her fingers are clumsy. It feels right, somehow, using the good silver, the silver that only comes out for Christmas, baptisms, rare occasions when some important person comes calling, and when sisters die. The person you used to gossip with, quarrel with, share clothing with, learn from. . . . The person you wanted to be like when you grew up. This day could not be marked with tea from a chipped old china teapot.

“I just see her in that cold, gray water,” Millie Richlin says. Tears spill from her eyes, and she makes no attempt to wipe them away. “I just want to . . .” Her arms reach for what is no longer there and close around air. “But she’s with Jesus now. She’s in the loving arms of Jesus.”

Where was Jesus when the Japanese bombs fell straight and true?

Rio is not ready for the comfort of religion. Anger fills her. “Dirty Japs,” she mutters. “Rotten, dirty Japs. Rachel wasn’t even on a battleship, it was a . . .” She realizes she doesn’t know what kind of ship Rachel was on; the censors forbade that kind of information. All she knows is that Rachel reassured her she was in no danger. I’m just on a big old tub no one would waste a torpedo on. “Dirty Japs. Dirty Japs, why did they start this war? Why did . . .”

“She was always so . . .”

“I’d kill them myself if I could, the dirty . . .”

“. . . good with the chores and so helpful, and so . . .”

“. . . Japs. Them and the Krauts both.”

“. . . cheerful. She must have . . .” She grabbed Rio’s arm. “Why did she go? Why did she enlist?”

“Because she’s brave,” Rio snaps. Now the tears come fast. “She’s brave, and she wants to do her part.” She will not use past tense for her sister. Rachel is brave, not was. Is.

Her mother looks at her in alarm. “No, Rio, no.”

“Rachel did her part, and now she’s . . .”

Not that word. Not yet.

“I sit here with my stupid algebra homework.” Rio kicks at the leg of the coffee table. The tea set rattles.

“You stop that right now, Rio. I’ve lost . . . I won’t . . . I couldn’t stand it. I would lose my mind. And your father . . .” Desperation in that voice, hopelessness, fear, and it all feeds Rio’s anger.

Rio glances at the door through which her father disappeared. No one has closed it. The street outside is cruelly bright, a gorgeous Northern California morning with palms riding high and lavender flowers threatening to cover the sidewalk.

Rio’s father will have reached the feed store by now. He will have unlocked the door and turned the Closed sign around to Open. Being a man, that’s what he’s doing, being a man who does not cry because men do not cry. Crying is reserved for women.

Rio’s gaze goes to the small vertical window beside the door where the service flag hangs, a red-and-white rectangle with a single blue star sewn onto the side facing the street. There are those flags all up and down the block. All over Gedwell Falls. All over California, and all over America. They show that the family has a member in service. Some houses bear flags with two or three such stars.

At the beginning of the war there were only blue stars, and it was an honor, a matter of pride, but now in many towns around the country some of those blue stars are being removed and replaced by gold ones.

A gold star hanging in your window means a family member has made the ultimate sacrifice. That’s the phrase, the approved phrase, ultimate sacrifice. Rachel’s gold star will be the first in Gedwell Falls.

Rio wonders how it is done. Who switches the blue star for gold? Does the government send you a new flag? How very kind of them. Will her mother have to do the sewing herself? Will she have to go to the sewing store to get the star herself, God forbid, to get the right color thread and to ask the clerk . . .

If Rio is drafted the flag will bear a gold star and a blue.

Don’t think of how scared Rachel must have been. Don’t think of the water smothering her as . . .

“I’m not of legal age yet,” Rio says, placating her mother with a touch on her arm. “I won’t be eighteen for more than a year.”

But her mother is no longer listening. She has withdrawn into silence. Rio sits with her in that silence until, after a few more hours, the news spreads and friends and relatives begin to arrive with covered dishes and condolences.

The sad and somber rituals of war have arrived in Gedwell Falls.

2

RIO RICHLIN—GEDWELL FALLS, CALIFORNIA, USA