Frankie had never seen any human eat as fast as Ethel did. It was like watching a hyena gulp down a kill as predators closed in.
Finally, Ethel pushed her empty plate aside and said, “I feel like dancing. You?”
Frankie looked down at her barely eaten Salisbury steak covered in brown gravy, and the overcooked green beans. Why had she taken so many mashed potatoes? “Dance?”
How could she dance? Her stomach kept roiling and cramping. She couldn’t shake the horror of what she’d witnessed tonight, nor could she accept her ineptitude. She was nauseated and ashamed. She pushed her chair back and stood up.
The mess hall was full of soldiers in bloody fatigues. She was surprised at how loudly they talked and how often they laughed. Frankie wondered how anyone who’d lived through a MASCAL could get over it so quickly.
She followed Ethel out of the mess. As they walked past the empty stage, Ethel told a story about the Christmas show at Di An when Bob Hope had entertained the troops. “I sent a picture of me and Bob Hope home to my dad. He said he hung it up on the bulletin board in the barn, told everyone that his girl was saving lives…”
Frankie wasn’t listening. She had never felt less like being around people. She started veering to the left, eager to escape back to her hooch.
Ethel took hold of Frankie’s arm, as if she’d read her thoughts. “Steady, Frank.”
At the O Club, Ethel pushed the beaded curtain aside; the clattering sound filled in the beat of silence between songs.
Inside, there was barely room to sit or stand. Men stood in groups, talking, smoking, drinking. A Stars and Stripes newspaper lay on the floor with the headline MCNAMARA’S LINE FORTIFIED ALONG DMZ. The air was gray with smoke.
How could they be here, as if nothing had happened, some still with blood in their hair, drinking alcohol and smoking?
“Whoa, Frank. You’re breathing like a racehorse. You don’t want to dance, I get it. Hang on.” Ethel grabbed two cold Cokes and maneuvered back through the crowd, toward the doorway.
“Hey, pretty mamas, don’t leave us!” someone yelled out.
“Was it something we said?”
“I’ll put my pants back on. Come back!”
The two women walked past the latrines and the empty shower stalls and came to the row of hooches.
Opening the door, Ethel pretty much pushed Frankie up the steps from the wood-slatted walkway and into the dank, dark, foul-smelling hooch.
She turned on the light and took Frankie by the shoulders and forced her to sit on her cot.
“I smell like blood,” Frankie said.
“And you look like hell. It’s a groovy combination.”
“I should shower.”
Ethel handed Frankie a Coca-Cola and they sat down on Frankie’s cot, side by side, shoulder to shoulder.
Frankie looked up at the horse and barn pictures tacked above Ethel’s cot and felt a pang of grief. “My brother and I rode horses a few times. I loved it.”
“I got my first horse when I was four. Chester the chestnut,” Ethel said. “Mom used to saddle him and set me on his back and garden. I still have that dream of us sometimes.”
“She’s—”
“Gone. Breast cancer. Please don’t say you’re sorry. I know it’s true. How old are you, Frank?”
“Twenty-one.”
Ethel shook her head, made a whistling sound. “Twenty-one. Hell, I barely remember that age anymore. I’m twenty-five.”
“Wow,” Frankie said.
“You thought I was older, right? We age in dog years over here, Frank. And it’s my second tour. By the time I leave I’ll have chin hairs and need bifocals, you watch.”
Ethel lit up a cigarette. The gray smoke wreathed them, made Frankie suddenly homesick for her mother. She found herself softening just a little.
“Where’s Barb?”
“A kid from her hometown was brought in tonight with the crispy critters. Not good. She’s sitting with him, I bet.”
“Crispy critters?”
“Burn victims. I know, I know, we shouldn’t call them that. You’ll learn fast, Frank. We laugh so we don’t cry.”
Frankie could hardly grasp such a thing.
“I don’t think Barb likes me,” Frankie said. “Can’t say I blame her.”
“It’s not you, Frank. Barb has had a tough road.”
“Why?”
Ethel gave her a look. “You have noticed the color of Barb’s skin, I take it?”
Frankie felt her cheeks burn. There had been no Black girls at St. Bernadette’s, no Black families at St. Michael’s Church or on Ocean Boulevard. None in her sorority or her nursing program. Why was that? “Of course. But—”
“But nothing, Frank. Let’s just say Barb is sick and tired, and leave it at that. She’s also one of the best surgical nurses you’ll ever meet.” Ethel put an arm around Frankie. “Look, Frank. I know how you feel right now. We all do. We’ve been there. You’re thinking you screwed up by signing up for ’Nam, thinking you don’t belong. But let me tell you, kid, it doesn’t matter where you’re from or how you grew up or what god you believe in, if you’re here, you’re among friends. We’ve got you.”
* * *
Frankie lay on her cot, her hair still damp from a lukewarm shower, and stared up at the ceiling. Hours had passed this way; she couldn’t sleep.
Her feet throbbed with the pain of new blisters. Barb’s snores filled the small hooch, sounded like the ocean rolling in. Far away, there was the sound of gunfire popping. Ethel tossed and turned, her cot squeaking at every movement.
Images from tonight’s MASCAL ran through Frankie’s mind, a kaleidoscope of horror. Torn limbs, blank stares, gushing bleeds, sucking chest wounds. One young man screaming for his mother.
She needed to use the restroom. Should she waken one of her roommates to go with her?
No. Not after the night they’d had.
She threw the covers off and got out of bed, stood there in the dark. She heard something scurry across the floor and already she didn’t care. What were rats to her after tonight?
She dressed in her fatigues and slipped her stockinged feet into her boots, immediately feeling the raw blisters that had formed.
Outside, the compound was relatively quiet. Some distant gunfire, an engine humming—a generator, maybe—a faraway beat of music. Someone somewhere was listening to a transistor radio.
She shouldn’t go out. She knew that. It could be dangerous. Not all soldiers are gentlemen, Ethel had said, reminding Frankie that the Army at war wasn’t so different from the world.
Still. She couldn’t breathe in here, couldn’t sleep, and her bladder ached with the need to be emptied. The horrible images she’d seen wouldn’t let her go and the heat was giving her a headache.
She stepped down onto the hard-packed dirt and walked toward the latrines. Off to the left, a shadowy figure stood at a burn barrel, throwing things into the fire. The stench wafted this way.
A narrow walkway spread over a ditch, with coils of spiked wire on either side. She walked cautiously over the makeshift bridge and ducked into the women’s latrines.
When she exited the building, she smelled cigarette smoke and stopped.
A lone orange-gold light shone down from a post overhead, revealing a man standing not far away, smoking.
She turned away quickly, stepped on something that cracked.
He turned.
The chest cutter. Jamie.
In the ghoulish light, his handsome face looked drawn, even as he tried to smile at her.
“I’m sorry. You want to be alone,” she said. “I’ll go—”
“Don’t,” he said. “Please.”
Frankie bit her lip, remembered Ethel’s warning about men. This was a lonely place, hidden. She glanced back toward the relative safety of her hooch.
“You’re safe with me, McGrath.” He held out a hand. She saw that it was shaking. “Hell of a thing, for a surgeon’s hand to shake,” he said.
Frankie moved toward him but remained out of reach.
“You caught me on a bad night,” he said.
Frankie didn’t know how to respond.