All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

16: Spaghetti

Posey fell in line behind Luz and in front of Perconte and made haste in grabbing her plate, cutlery, and a slice of bread. As soon as the pasta and, subsequently, the sauce, had been slopped onto her plate she couldn't help but laugh deliriously. She only barely noticed Winters overseeing the activity in the kitchen.

"Real food!" she declared to no one in particular, simply unable to keep her jubilation in.

She followed Luz to their usual table and squeezed in between him and Perconte, barely acknowledging those filtering in around her as she dug in immediately. She felt as though she'd been starving up until this very moment, as if this was the first time they were being given food for the entire time they'd been at Toccoa. It wasn't the best spaghetti she'd ever tasted in her life - it didn't hold a candle to the stuff the chef at her house had used to serve - but she was happier and readier to eat it than she'd ever been to eat anything in her life.

"This stuff is orange," Dittrich, sat across from Perconte, spoke up. He was holding a clump of spaghetti hanging from his fork up in front of his eyes to inspect it, wearing an expression of vague disgust. "Spaghetti ain't supposed to be orange."

"This ain't spaghetti," Perconte replied without missing a beat. "This is army noodles with ketchup."

"You ain't gotta eat it," Guarnere commented as he slid into the open seat beside Perconte.

Perconte looked to him, aghast. "Oh, come on, Gonorrhoea, as a fellow Italian you should know that calling this crap spaghetti is a mortal sin."

"Tastes alright to me," Posey mumbled.

All the while Hoobler, from the table behind them, was reaching an arm between Perconte and Guarnere in an attempt to steal Perco's plate. "Don't want it? I'll have it."

"No, no, no, I'm eatin' here!" Perconte exclaimed, elbowing the intruding arm out of the way.

"Hey, get outta here!" Guarnere said at the same time, batting Hoobler away as well.

Posey laughed. "That's what you get for being picky."

Perconte rolled his eyes but a tell-tale chuckle gave him away. "Well, you ain't Italian, Duckie, I wouldn't expect you to understand."

The shrill cry of a whistle interrupted their banter. A voice which sounded remarkably like nails on a chalkboard burst out, "Orders changed! Get up!" whilst stomping into the mess hall.

"Uh oh," Posey muttered around a mouth full of spaghetti as they all jumped up to stand at attention.

"Lectures have been cancelled. Easy Company is running up Currahee." No one moved until he barked, "Move! Move!"

Everyone began tripping over themselves in their haste to get out of the door quicker, pushing at each other in the hopes of speeding up the process. All the while, from behind them, Sobel called out a taunting, "Three miles up, three miles down! Hi-yo, silver! Lets go, lets go!"

Posey's stomach was full of dread and spaghetti as she followed the rest of her platoon back to their barracks and stripped off her ODs to leave her only in her PT gear. They jogged as a group to the path at the bottom of Currahee and lined up between First and Third immediately.

Luz turned to Posey, seeming to either be blissfully unaware of the spaghetti sauce smeared all around his mouth, or simply unbothered by it. "First one to throw up takes the other's next latrine duty?" he suggested. He grinned and the orange spread across his cheeks like a sunrise.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Luz," Posey drawled with a smile of her own, "But I accept."

Sobel's voice cut through the chatter once again. "Three miles up, three miles down, Easy Company! Lets go, lets go!"