American Front (The Great War series) by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780345494306
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Sylvia Enos stared at the new form the Coal Board clerk handed her. “Fill this out and bring it to Window C, over there, when you’ve finished it,” the clerk droned, almost as mechanically as a gramophone record. Sylvia wondered how many times a day he said the exact same thing.

She wished Brigid Coneval weren’t down with the grippe. But Mrs. Coneval was, which meant Sylvia had had to bring George, Jr., and Mary Jane with her to the Coal Board office of a Saturday afternoon. She was just glad the office stayed open on Saturday afternoons; if it hadn’t, she would have had to try to get time off from work to fill out this new and hideous form.

She sat down in one of the hard chairs that filled the open area in front of the Coal Board office windows. George, Jr., sat down next to her. She plopped Mary Jane into the chair on the other side. “Be good, both of you, while I answer these questions,” she said.

Every time she had to fill anything out, it was a race against the clock. The children would get into mischief; it was only a question of when. To delay the inevitable, she gave her son a lollipop and her daughter a bottle, then took out a fountain pen and bent over the sheet full of tiny type to find out what sort of information they wanted from her now.

COAL RATION ALLOTMENT REASSESSMENT EVALUATION SURVEY REPORT, the form said at the top. Sylvia sighed. It seemed to be a law—or perhaps a Coal Board policy—that every form had to be more complicated than the one it replaced. This one certainly lived up to the requirement.

She had no trouble filling out her own name or the address of the flat in which she and the children lived. Then the form asked for the names of all individuals residing at that address. That was all fine. But next it asked for the present status of each individual, and gave check-off boxes for MILITARY, CIVILIAN GAINFULLY EMPLOYED, CIVILIAN UNEMPLOYED OTHER THAN STUDENT, STUDENT, and CHILD BELOW AGE 12.

None of those boxes fit her husband, and there was no OTHER line on which to explain. Painful experience had taught her nothing caused more trouble than filling out a Coal Board form the wrong way. She glanced at her children. They both seemed occupied. “Wait here,” she told them. “I have to go ask that man a question.”

When she got to the front of the line again, the clerk who’d given her the form looked as delighted to see her as she was to see the landlord on the first of every month. “What seems to be your trouble?” he asked in a voice that said he knew she was bothering him on purpose.

She pointed to the check-off boxes. “What do I do about my husband here?” she asked. “He’s a Confederate prisoner at—”

“Prisoners of war go under the Military heading,” the clerk said, more exasperated than ever.

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