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.