Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

“Ah. So I did. At ease.” He has a heavy accent of a type that Frangie cannot identify. He looks at Frangie and lifts a folder from his desk. “I see here, Private Marr, that you are the worst goddamn soldier on this post.”

“Sir?”

“You can’t shoot, you can’t throw a grenade far enough to avoid blowing yourself up, you can’t manage five miles in a pack without falling out from heat exhaustion, you got marked down on the last inspection for your bunk, your foot locker, your uniform, and your weapon. In short, you are one piss-poor soldier, even for a coon. Even for a woman coon. What are you, four feet tall? You’re a goddamn midget with not enough strength to level a goddamned rifle, and yet it says here you enlisted.”

“Yes, sir.” The words are automatic. She feels as if she’s falling, as if she just stepped off the edge of a cliff. Sergeant Kirkland has yelled at her, as have other sergeants, but this attack is categorical and brutal.

She feels Sergeant Kirkland stiffen beside her. “Captain, Private Marr is—”

“Do not interrupt me, boy. Don’t let those goddamned stripes fool you, Sergeant. You are still just a Nigra talking to a white man!” The captain has gone from placid to red-faced furious in about ten seconds.

The sergeant’s “Yes, sir” takes several long and tense moments to arrive.

“Now, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I am attempting to follow orders here and turn a bunch of ‘yassuh, nosuh,’ toe-pickin’ field Nigras into soldiers, but Jesus H., this is bullshit. Not just Nigras, women Nigras, and now this little pickaninny, goddamn, that’s three strikes right there.”

“Captain, I am raising a formal objection to your—”

“Shut the fug up, Kirkland.”

“No, sir.”

The blustery, bullying, hate-filled air turns still and cold now, a dangerous stillness.

Captain Oberdorfer stands, places his fists on his desk, and leans toward them. “Are you back-talking me? Are you telling me how I can talk about this sin-marked child of Ham? Have you never had anyone read the Bible to you, boy? It was Ham who humiliated Noah, and because of that Noah called him Canaan and said his descendants forever would be servants to the white man.”

When this is met with stony silence, Oberdorfer adds, “That ain’t my law, that’s God’s law, and God’s law is above all other law.”

“God’s law says ‘thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.’” The words are out of Frangie’s mouth before she can stop them. She barely has the presence of mind to add a belated, “Sir.”

The captain stares at Frangie like he’s just been insulted by a dog. He’s torn between amazement and rage. Rage wins out.

“Do not quote scripture at me, you dirty little—”

“Sir!” Sergeant Kirkland says sharply. “I request that Private Marr be allowed to return to quarters.”

“The hell I—”

“Sir, I have something to say that I would rather—and you would rather—Private Marr not overhear.”

That stops Oberdorfer in midword. He glares at Kirkland, shoots a murderous stare at Frangie, turns back to Sergeant Kirkland, and says, “You are dismissed, Private.”

Frangie snaps a salute that the captain refuses to return. She has no choice but to hold the pose until Kirkland says, “Wait outside, Marr.”

She does an about-face and flees the room. Outside in the humid night air she gasps for breath, doubled over, hands on her knees. She is shaking, shaking worse than she did in the live-fire exercise.

After a few minutes a seething Sergeant Kirkland arrives.

“I’m sorry, Sarge,” Frangie says.

“Shut up, Marr,” he snaps. Then, regaining his composure, says, “It’s not your fault that Cajun cracker bastard . . .”

“You don’t have to stand up for me, Sarge; you’ll lose your stripes.”

“Fug my stripes, and I ain’t standing up for you, Marr. I’m standing up for the rest of the men. He’s not wrong that you don’t belong. No power on earth is ever going to make a soldier of you.”

Frangie, numb with disbelief, nods, then stops herself. She starts to say something but is overwhelmed by emotions that pull her in different directions. She would like nothing better than to be sent home as unfit for duty. But there is still the matter of her family’s finances. And, too, the captain has tapped a reservoir of rebellious anger deep within her.

“I’m getting you through basic; I have no choice now,” Kirkland says bitterly. “I’m getting you through this and hope to hell you don’t get sent anywhere there’s bullets flying.”