Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

“Yes, sir.”

She gives in to the urge to swing the chair left to right and back, just a small motion but comforting. She looks down, finding his gaze too challenging. There’s a small feather, like a crow’s pinfeather, on the rug, and it’s drifting in the breeze of her chair’s motion.

“I can tell you what the Bible says about that.” He’s forming a tent out of his fingers, sticking the tips up under his ample chin. “First, love. You know that, you know that if you pay attention during my sermons.” He winks at her. “You do pay attention now, don’t you?”

She welcomes his bantering tone. “I memorize every word, Pastor M.”

He laughs. When he laughs, he shakes, and that makes Frangie smile.

“First, love. Love above all. Love for the ones who love you, love for the ones who hate you. That’s pretty hard to follow if you’re in a war.”

“Were you ever?”

The question takes M’Dale by surprise. He sits farther back still and drops his hands to his lap. “No, young Miss Marr, I have not. But I have counseled many men who did go to the last war.”

“Yes, sir,” Frangie prompts.

“Well, they talk about the horrors. But they do also talk about the brotherhood with other black soldiers. I’ve only ever spoken with one who acknowledges taking a life. He says it was either shoot that other man, or be shot himself.”

“I guess that’s what war is,” Frangie says. “But it’s also patching a fellow up after he’s been shot.”

“Our friends of the Jewish faith say that he who saves a single life saves the world entire,” M’Dale says. “I may not have that quotation quite right, but the sense of it is there. That’s not from scripture, but I believe our Lord would agree with the sentiment. But real life can be more complicated than that. You heal a soldier in a war, and he goes off next thing to take a man’s life. How then do you avoid responsibility for that death?”

“Sometimes you have to fight,” Frangie says.

“Sometimes you do. Sadly, yes, sometimes you do. And what would you be fighting for, Frangie Marr?”

“Fighting for?”

The question overwhelms her and she has to think about it, and as she thinks she looks down at the feather, more like down, really, it’s so light. Its little feathery fate rests on the next breeze.

“Should I not go, Pastor?” It will be easier if he forbids it. If he forbids it then she’ll have to find some other way to support her mother and father. Some other way to make her own life better than her mother’s life.

“I can’t tell you go or don’t go,” M’Dale says at last. “I can tell you what the scriptures say. They say to love and not to harm. They say to turn the other cheek. But each of us faces a path with many forks and turns, and that which guides us on that path must be our own conscience, as reflecting the light of Jesus.”

Frangie makes a shaky sigh. She’s just gotten permission, however reluctant.

I am not a feather. I will not be blown this way or that. Not from now on.

M’Dale sees all this. “You pray on it, little Frangie. You’re a good girl. You’re a faithful daughter to your parents and to this church. You pray on it, and if your conscience says go, then you go, and take with you the love and prayers of this congregation.”

Now tears fill Frangie’s eyes, and she cannot speak.

M’Dale waits until she has mastered her emotions.

“Will you add me to the prayers, Pastor?”

He gets up from his seat and comes around to her. He opens his arms and she stands, and he practically absorbs her in his large frame. “Little girl, we will pray for you at every service until you come home safe to us.”

Frangie spills tears onto his collar and knows these are not the first tears to stain his coat, and won’t be the last.

He pushes her away, holds her at arm’s length, and says, “When you’re ready you let me know, and I’ll send a couple of my deacons with you. Some of the white folk don’t much like our kind enlisting. You’d do best to have company.”

She nods, wipes away the tears, and says, “Then I guess you best send for them.”

It’s an eight-block walk to the nearest enlistment center, eight blocks during which humanity around her grows steadily lighter in color. At first Frangie and the two solemn, elderly deacons are just part of the passing scenery, but whites had begun to encroach on what had been an all-black neighborhood before the riots, and the abandoned Mason Hall that has been made over as an induction center is now in a fringe area.

A line of black recruits—mostly male—extends from the propped-open doorway out onto the sidewalk. The line seems to be moving, though slowly. But a white crowd has gathered, young men in school letter jackets or blazers, others in white T-shirts and jeans. They smoke cigarettes and make loud, braying laughs, and amuse themselves by flicking lighted matches at those waiting.