Sergeant Cole says, “Good. You’re here. And you brought water. Well
done, Richlin.”
“It was Beebee. He’s the forager.”
Cole peers closely at Beebee. “A forager, are you? Well, well. You two find some shade.” Then, in a louder voice, he yells, “Magraff! Grab this water and get everyone topped off.”
Rio notes that Magraff has become the squad gofer, probably because she no longer has a carbine, having tossed it away or dropped it—again.
Rio drops into a patch of shade beside Jenou. She unlaces her boots and begins massaging her sore feet. “Guess who I ran into?”
“General Eisenhower, I hope. Did you mention to him that I’m really not meant for all this dusty marching around?”
“The colored medic, Marr. The one we picked up on the way in.”
“It’s a small war. How is she?”
Rio considers. “I don’t know. Thinking too much, maybe.”
“That thing that happened . . . the bullet that went on and nicked you . . . That was probably pretty hard for her.”
Rio says, “I got the impression she was new to that bunch so they weren’t that close, but yeah, she was a little down in the mouth.”
She was also disapproving, and just a bit of a moral scold, but Rio sees no point in mentioning that.
Jenou nods. “If there’s one thing worse than infantry, it’s all of that.” She makes hand gestures that may be meant to convey medical care given to the wounded, but they end up looking like random, disturbed hand-waving.
Rio slaps Jenou’s shoulder. “Did you miss me?”
“Not at all.”
“Me neither.”
Both laugh, and Jenou says, “My God, we’re starting to sound like men.”
“I used to worry I’d seem mannish,” Rio says.
“Because of your . . .” And this time Jenou’s hand-waving is more specific, as is the pitying look she aims at Rio’s chest.
“No,” Rio says, outraged. She gives Jenou a shove. “No. Because of my great, manly muscles, that’s why, you catty witch.”
For a wonderful moment, a golden suspended moment, they are Jenou and Rio once more. Rio feels it, feels herself back in Gedwell Falls, back at the diner stealing Jenou’s fries, and vice versa.
I was a girl. I was just a girl. And after a moment’s reflection, she silently adds, Past tense?
She is on the edge of saying to Jenou that Strand seemed quite taken with her inadequate figure and in fact spent quite some time exploring it in detail. However, that very thought, not even the memory, but the fact that she would think of saying something so vulgar, kills the fine nostalgic feeling.
Okay, Jenou: yes, I’ve changed. Happy?
This thought in turn sends Rio’s mind off inventorying the ways in which she has changed. She’s drunk alcohol with serious intent. She’s cursed. She’s killed. And she’s had sex. She strives to connect those facts to memories of herself just, what, a year ago? Back then the only connection she had to the war was via her big sister, Rachel. Even after Rachel joined the navy it had all just seemed like some distant adventure to Rio. It had not been until that terrible morning when news of Rachel’s death had reached the Richlin family that it hit home.
She remembers her mother’s collapse on the living room rug. She remembers even more clearly the way her father stood in profile against the innocent sunlight beyond the door, slumped, wounded, silent. Being a man. Being a man? Or being an ex-soldier? Will it be different for us, as Marr suggested? Or will we have to turn into them just to get through this?
The two friends sit side by side, each lost in related but separate memories, when the conversation of Sergeants O’Malley and Cole penetrates Rio’s reverie.
“We’re infantry, not search and rescue,” Cole says to O’Malley.
“That’s what I told Vanderpool, and he said that’s exactly what he radioed to the colonel, but the colonel explained that this was the goddamned army, not a goddamned knitting circle, whatever the hell that is, and he was to follow orders.” He spat undiplomatically and added, “Officers. Jesus wept.”