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softguarnere · 1 year

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Like A Girl (Like A Man)

Shifty Powers x OFC

Chapter Seven: Nvwatohiyadv & Saoirse

Summary: If this is what Hell feels like, at least it’s not as lonely as all those days back home in her room.

A/N: An update? After all this time? I'm just as shocked. I'm trying my hardest to keep up, but I have so many papers and projects due this semester that updates may be a little infrequent for the next few weeks.

Also a massive thank you to the wonderful @latibvles for supplying the name of Zenie's first kiss 🫶🏼You are so beloved And for those of you who like chapter titles, nvwatohiyadv is the Cherokee word for liberty, while saoirse is Irish for freedom - just trying to combine both parts of Zenie's heritage

Warnings: alcohol, smoking, religious trauma, period typical attitudes and terms in regards to race, homophobia, improper binding techniques, language, brief mention of vomit

Taglist: @liebgotts-lovergirl @latibvles @mrs-murder-daddy @lieutenant-speirs

August 1943, New York

Most of them are spilling their alcohol soaked guts onto the docks with retches that hurt to listen to. The few of them that didn’t partake in the guzzling of whiskey the night before are strong stomached until they step onto the SS Samaria, and then they too are sick to their stomachs.

Hardly any of them have ever been on a ship before, and it’s taking them a while to get their sea legs. Funny, how they can fling themselves out of perfectly good airplanes, hurling themselves toward a cold and unforgiving ground, but a ship against the rocking of the waves is what makes most of them feel ill.

But something else is getting to Zenie. Not the usual nerves that send a chill down her spine whenever she spares the occasional moment to be anxious about the possibility of being found out. This is something else. It’s almost like homesickness, or tender feelings for the place she’s about to leave behind.

Life jackets on, they all pack together on the deck as the Samaria leaves New York. She’s short enough that she manages to claim a place by the rail without anyone complaining that they can’t see. After all, just like her, everyone is vying for a peek of Lady Liberty herself.

She’s beautiful. Tall. Elegant. Set against the hazy backdrop of orange sky and mist rising from the waters around her, she’s more of a figure, looming larger than life as they sail by.

Zenie has only met her paternal grandparents a handful of times, but now a memory of her grandfather’s voice whispers to her in his thick accent. “. . . I looked out across the water, and there she was. Her torch guided the ship like a lighthouse, pullin’ us in. All my doubts about leavin’ Ireland left me then. How could I be nervous, with such a lass watchin’ over me?”

Guilt turns into a rock in her stomach. Her father’s parents worked hard to get out of Ireland, to get themselves and their descendants to America. And here she is, willingly going back to the place that they fled.

And now the fine lady watches Zenie as she goes in the opposite direction – leaving America for Europe. If the statue were real, she might recognize something of her Irish grandparents in Zenie and offer her the same strength that she did them so long ago.

What about her other grandparents? The ones who are one hundred percent all-American, whose parents and their parents and the ones before them had been in America since time immemorial. Lady Liberty never welcomed them – they were already here.

It’s silly, really, to wonder whether or not a statue could afford some fondness or sense of protection on a person, but Zenie can’t help but wonder if the figure protects her and her liberties, too, when the world seems so keen on keeping those rights away from her and other Indians.

No. A statue can’t protect anyone, or their liberties. Not really. It’s Zenie and these men and all the other people fighting this war that are protecting those freedoms. The statue is just a reminder of what is often overlooked; it gives an icon to an ideal. If anything, the statue doesn’t represent some omnipresent force that welcomed her grandparents when they immigrated, but rather regular people and their beliefs. The statue only exists because someone believed in something enough to give the world a giant reminder of it.

Well then, what does Zenie believe in?

The lady looming over the water must have some sort of answer. Just as she welcomed Granda into America so long ago, she now watches Zenie leave it – both McGlamery’s traveling towards something that they believe in, though their journeys go in opposite directions.

Go, the godlike figure on the island seems to tell her. Go forth and protect and defend what I represent. For people like your Irish grandfather, who believed in liberty. And people like your Cherokee Granny, who hardly got to see it.

Lady Liberty is stuck in place. Zenie knows what that feels like. But she’s not immobile now. She unstuck herself because of feelings of suffocating in one place. Now she keeps going because she believes in what she’s doing. She believes that she’s a part of something that’s good.

How could she feel guilty with such a lass watching over her?

The longer that they’re on the ship, the more grateful Zenie becomes that she’s not in the Navy, or the Marines, or the Coast Guard. Or any sort of sailor, actually, carrying her secret or not. It’s hot and crowded and miserable. The men stink and personal space is quickly becoming a foreign concept. Her large feet trip her up on the ladders several times, and the only thing that keeps her from tumbling down and crashing onto the decks are the quick hands of her friends that fly out to catch her by the arm.

Toye claps her on the back once after helping her stay upright. She hopes that he mistakes her wince as one of relief and not her dread that he might feel her bandages.

If anything, her secret is only making her experience aboard the Samaria more miserable than everyone else’s. The farther down into the ship they go, the hotter and more crowded it becomes. The binding around her chest makes it harder to breathe, and even though the men all have a few beads of sweat along their hairlines, she feels like she’s glistening with it. All she can do is hope that by some miracle, the ship will reach her destination faster than anticipated, because the second that Zenie sees the hammocks packed together to provide them with a place to sleep, she has a feeling that she won’t be doing much of that – not when the mercury is so high and the oxygen so scarce.

If her feet don’t floor her in this crowded place, the realization that hits her does: where will she change? Clean up? Relieve herself? They’ll toss her out to sea before the ship even sets sail.

“You look like shit, Tommy Boy,” Bill deadpans.

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, I’m bein’ serious. Have a cigarette or somethin’.”

“Maybe you should find Doc Roe,” Luz suggests. He slings his pack over his shoulder and sighs up at the racks above them, resolving himself to climb up to the top where there are still a few that are unoccupied. “If anyone wants to offer a trade, now’s your last chance.”

Toye makes a show of stretching out on his rack, which is close to the ground. “I’m good.”

Bill flips open his lighter and holds it to the end of his cigarette. “Same here.”

Finding Gene is probably her best option. He’ll have some sort of suggestion; he always knows what to do. But right now the boat is hot and she’s exhausted.

A vague memory of a church sermon from her childhood flashes through her mind. The pastor, his booming voice like a canon as it echoed off the walls of the church, lecturing the congregation about the fires of Hell that awaited them if they strayed from the flock. He gave the lecture so many times that she could be remembering any given Sunday of her childhood. As a young girl, the danger of the Underworld seemed to lurk right beneath her feet, the ground threatening to split open and reveal lapping flames that would swallow her up if she so much as fidgeted during the service. The Sunday after she had her first kiss – with that pretty Lucy Jordan from out of town, with the pretty hair and the soft lips – she sweated in her family’s pew as she awaited the inferno to take her. When nothing happened, the fire and brimstone didn’t seem quite so threatening, or even all that real.

The heat generated from the bodies all tightly packed around her does make her wonder, though, if this is what the nether regions of the afterlife feel like. At least she’s surrounded by friends. The thought makes her chuckle to herself as she plops down on a rack. She removes a cigarette from the mostly untouched pack in her pocket, nicks Bill’s lighter, and fills her lungs with the smoke, hoping it will help her nerves.

She glances around, chuckling again as she picks up pieces of scattered conversations from the men. If this is what Hell feels like, at least it’s not as lonely as all those days back home in her room.

Yeah, she thinks. Not too bad.

“My brother’s in North Africa,” Bill’s voice draws her out of her thoughts. “He says it’s hot.”

“Really?” Malarkey snarks from behind him. “It’s hot in Africa?”

“Shuddup.” Malarkey’s hard expression melts as he laughs. Bill rolls his eyes. “Point is, it don’t matter where we go. Once we get into combat, the only person you can trust is yourself, and the fella next to ya.”

Or woman. Lady. Lass. Dame. Whatever slang term Philadelphians use for girls.

Would they trust her, if they knew her secret and then found themselves next to her on a battlefield? Eugene would; he had said she was brave. If there’s anyone I would trust in combat, it’s someone as fearless as you.

Maybe someone else on the ship is fearless in the same way that she allegedly is. Maybe they share the same secret. That’s a nice thought. She would trust these men – these fellas – if the bullets were flying, but if they knew the truth, they would probably never trust her again.

“Long as he’s a paratrooper,” Toye says.

Zenie might not be a man, but she is a paratrooper. She went through the same training as everyone else here.

“Oh yeah? And what if that paratrooper turns out to be Sobel?” Luz asks as he hauls himself up the racks. Looks like he couldn’t convince anyone to trade spots with him.

Above them, someone else’s voice sounds off with a response that she misses over the din of whoever is above her shifting his weight, making the rack squeak. Another thing that reminds her of Sundays in church: learning to tune things out. She doesn’t need to get her feelings hurt by listening to them talk about who they do or do not trust – because while Tommy falls into one category, Zenie most likely falls pretty firmly into the other.

The next thing that she knows, the rack beside her is shifting as Bill stands, and then the people around her fall quiet as Liebgott’s voice fills the space. “I’m a Jew.”

“Congratulations.” She can’t see him, but Zenie can hear the smug smirk on Bill’s face when he responds, “Now get your nose outta my face.”

He deserves it, friend or not, when Liebgott swings at him. He should know better than to say something like that, and she’s planning on telling him so when she jumps up to help the others hold the two men apart.

A sharp pain blooms in her chest, sending her stumbling back into the racks. A gasp escapes from her lips. No one notices – they’re all too busy trying to keep the first Easy Company casualties from occurring before the ship reaches England.

She’s never been hit in the breast before. And now someone’s elbow has just jabbed her there, managing to hurt even through the bandages.

That’s it. She’s got to solve this problem.

It’s a miracle that she doesn’t get jabbed again as she pushes through the throng of bodies. The miracle balances itself out with the fact that she doesn’t see Gene anywhere among them, and no one seems to know where he is when she throws the question out to them. Instead she finds –

“Tommy!” McClung yells above the rest of the voices that swirl around them. In a second, he’s pushed through the crowd and caught up to her, Popeye and Shifty right behind him. “Where’re you off to?”

“Any of y’all seen Doc Roe?”

“No.” Popeye tilts his head. “Are you as sick as ol’ Shifty Boy here from all that whiskey?”

“Just eat somethin’,” Shifty suggests with a nod. “A couple of those donuts from the Red Cross girls had me right as rain.”

Popeye claps him on the back and flashes her a winning grin. “He learned that from me.”

“No, it’s –“ She offers a vague, sweeping gesture with her arm. The heat. The tight space. The lack of privacy. “I just need some air.”

“We were goin’ up top, anyways. We’ll come with you!”

It’s easier to push through the crowd when she’s got three friends helping her clear people out of the way. Earl pushes through the crowd like it’s nothing. Popeye calls out greetings to people as he goes. Zenie scans everyone’s faces, looking for Gene, reassuring herself with the thought that he’ll know what to do and he’ll come up with a plan for how to handle all this bandage business.

“Fuckin’ ridge runners,” someone scoffs as they force their way through the crowd.

At her sides, her hands immediately ball themselves into fists. She scowls, looking around for whoever might have said it. Cobb is sitting on a rack nearby, and she’s willing to bet the comment was thrown from his direction.

“Hey.” A gentle hand places itself on her shoulder and urges her forward from behind. “Just ignore him. Been enough fights on this boat for one day.”

“But –“ She feels herself deflate under Shifty’s touch. He’s right; they’ve been called worse.

The salt on the breeze is unlike any kind of wind that she felt back at home. During the more pleasant times of year, mountain breezes feel friendly and teasing as they play with her hair and snap flags on their posts. The wind from the sea that greets them abovedeck carries a sense of adventure. It’s powerful – powerful enough to carry them somewhere new.

It fills her lungs and whispers to something in her soul. All those days of sitting in her bedroom feeling suffocated and sorry for herself. Now she’s the farthest away from home that she’s ever been, and (as long as she’s not crammed in the bowls of the ship with the other men) she can breathe.

“Feelin’ better?” Shifty asks. His hand hasn’t left her shoulder. Zenie finds that she doesn’t really want him to remove it.

“Much.”

Earl gestures to all the space around them. “Look at this! This is way better than being trapped belowdecks.”

“Well, it’s a long way to England. We can probably spend as much time up here as we want.” I know I will be, Zenie doesn’t add as she relishes in the cool breeze and the sound of the waves.

“We oughtta sleep out here,” Popeye says. “Better than sweatin’ for hours at a time and listenin’ to everyone snore and complain about the heat.”

Shifty nods in agreement. “We oughtta.”

So they do.

The first night of the voyage, they return to their racks with everyone else. Zenie stays awake all night, listening to people pant in the heat, grimacing every time a rack squeaks as someone shifts their weight. Some people manage to doze, but she spends the next day groggy and vows that she’ll take Popeye’s suggestion. Her friends don’t take much convincing.

“Like camping.” They’re all sprawled out on the deck, hoping that any non-coms or officers that catch them won’t send them back below. The waves slapping against the side of the boat are loud but soothing. In the growing darkness, Zenie can just make out Shifty’s smile. He’s in his element. The others agree, and she doesn’t admit that no one has ever actually taken her camping before.

Instead she’s intent to just be there, the ocean sounds sending that thrum of adventure running through her core as it carries her far, far away from that noble statue back in New York. Far away from the loneliness of her room and straight into the next leg of her adventure. Surrounded by friends.

Not too bad.

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