Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

“Probably a proctor coming to get us,” Frangie says.

Kerwin sits up suddenly. “Uh-uh, city girl.”

And with that there’s a wild crashing sound of something bursting through vines and branches and—

“Run!”

The three of them launch from the log like someone’s set off a hand grenade, leaving their rifles behind.

“What is it?” Rio yells.

“It’s a tusker!” Kerwin yells back, leading the way toward a tree whose lower branches just might barely be within reach.

Rio shoots a look over her shoulder and sees something that looks like a small bear, but with a pig’s snout, a rat’s hair, and two curved tusks.

It’s not huge, but it sure is angry.

Cassel leaps, grabs a branch with the dexterity of a monkey, and swings himself up. Rio is right behind him, blessing her push-up-strengthened shoulders as she scrambles and hauls, gasping for breath. Lying flat on the branch, feet and hands dangling, she sees that there is no way short of sprouting wings for the diminutive Frangie to make it.

Rio yells, “Grab my hand!”

Frangie grabs Rio’s hand and Rio—with some help from Cassel—manages to pull Frangie up and out of range of the boar.

They are now six feet above the enraged pig. They gasp for breath, shaking, and then, suddenly, laughing.

Malevolent pig eyes stare up at them, and the pig circles, snorting and huffing, still furious at some imaginary insult. They edge closer to the trunk of the tree, finding more stable spots, not trusting the branch not to break.

“I shot one of his distant relations once,” Kerwin says. “I reckon that’s why he’s so worked up.”

“You’re a hunter?” Rio asks.

“Where I live you are either a hunter or you don’t see meat on your plate,” Kerwin admits. “We live way back up in the hills. I say Teays Valley ’cause that’s close as we get to a town, but I am pure hillbilly.”

“What do your folks do up in the hills?”

“Well, my pap works the coal mine. Cooks a bit of mash on the side for spending money, but he generally drinks half of what he makes, and then gambles the rest.” He softens his tone, fearing he’s been too harsh. “He’s a good man, my pap, never beats me more than a couple times a year, and he don’t lay hands on my mom. But he does like a drink and a card game, that he does.”

“I guess that’s a hard life, coal mining.” Frangie nods like she understands, though Rio is still digesting the fact that Kerwin finds it unusual that a man should not beat his wife.

“Yes, it is that,” Kerwin says. “It’ll be my life when this is all over.” His tone is resigned. “Come home after ten hours spent a mile down, probably blacker than your own pap, Private Marr. That coal dust gets into your skin so after a while you can’t wash it away, no matter how hard you scrub. By the time you’re forty it’s got you coughing up blood half the time. But it’s a living, and there’s plenty of folks ain’t got that.”

His tone of resignation irritates Rio, though she can’t think why. Is it because he sounds like she feels? Like life is planned out in advance in ways that don’t leave a lot of room for determining your own future?

“I’m going to try for college,” Frangie says.

“A little Nigra girl like you?” Kerwin laughs. It’s not a mean laugh, more the sort of sound you make when you hear a child talking nonsense.

“It could happen.” Frangie sounds defiant but not too sure of herself. “I have a cousin up in Chicago went to college. He’s got a good job now.”

“Well, that may be,” Kerwin allows. “But most likely I end up in the mine and you end up taking in laundry and having a whole passel of little pickaninnies, and that’s a fact. And Private Richlin, here, she’s probably going to be an old-maid schoolteacher.”

“Old maid, huh?” Rio recognizes his teasing tone for what it is, but she still doesn’t like the image he’s called to mind. “What makes you think I’ll be an old maid?”

“Hell, Richlin, you’re too ornery for any man to stay married to you.”

It’s the first time anyone has referred to Rio as ornery. Or any other synonym for ornery. It brings a reluctant smile to her lips.

Ornery.