The tires weren't armored, although these motorcars, unlike the first ones Ramsay had encountered, carried metal shields covering part of the circumference of the wheels.
One of the armored motorcars slowed to a stop. The Creeks cheered. It was less of a victory than they thought, though, as they soon discovered. The motorcar, though stopped, kept right on shooting. 'Where are those damn guns?' Ramsay growled. 'A target you'd dream about-'
Sometimes dreams did come true. He'd just sent a runner back toward Okmulgee to demand artillery support when earth started fountaining up around the automobile. Its hatches flew open. The two-man crew fled for the nearest Yankee foxhole moments before the machine was hit and burst into flames. The other armored motorcar skedaddled, shells bursting around it. It hid itself behind bushes and trees before it got knocked out. The Creeks yelled themselves hoarse.
'The damnyankees already have one New York,' Ramsay said to Moty Tiger, trying to pronounce the name as the Indian did. 'What the hell do they need with two?' His sergeant grinned at him by way of reply.
XVII
Sylvia Enos finished tying George, Jr.'s, shoe. Her son had just turned five; pretty soon she or, better, George would teach him to tie shoes for himself, and that would be one less thing she'd have to worry about every morning. Quite enough would be left as things were.
She looked up. In the half minute during which she'd been dealing with those shoes, Mary Jane had disappeared. 'Come here this instant,' she called. 'We're going to be late.'
'No!' Mary Jane said from the bedroom she shared with her brother. No was her standard answer to everything these days; not long before, she'd an swered no when asked if she wanted a piece of liquorice. She'd realized that tragic error a moment too late, and burst into tears.
Sylvia didn't have much time or patience left. 'Do you want me to whack you on the fanny?' she demanded, clapping her hands together.
'No!' Mary Jane answered, this time with alarm instead of defiance.
'Then come out here and behave yourself,' Sylvia said. 'I have to go to work, and you have to go to Mrs. Coneval's. Come out right now, or — '
Mary Jane appeared, both hands pressed over her bottom to protect it from the slings and arrows of an outraged mother. Sylvia knew she shouldn't laugh; that just encouraged her daughter's mischief, and a two-year-old needed no such encouragement. She couldn't help herself, though.
Virtuously, George, Jr., said, 'I'm all ready, Mama.'
'Good,' Sylvia said. 'And now Mary Jane is ready, too, so we'll go to Mrs. Coneval's.' She held out her hands. George, Jr., took one and Mary Jane the other. They paraded down the hall to Brigid Coneval's flat.
At Sylvia's knock, Mrs. Coneval opened the door. 'Ah, 'tis the hero's children,' she said. 'Come in, the two of ye.' George, Jr., puffed out his little chest and looked impressive and important. It all went over Mary Jane's head.
'I'll see the two of you tonight,' Sylvia said, bending down to kiss her children.
'Good-bye, Mama,' George, Jr., said. 'I'll be good.'
'I'm sure you will, lamb.' Sylvia turned to Mary Jane. 'You'll be good, too, won't you?'
'No,' Mary Jane said, which might have been prediction or warning or-Sylvia hoped-nothing more than the answer she gave to most questions these days.
'She's no trouble at all,' Brigid Coneval assured Sylvia. 'Good as gold, she is… most o' the time. But if I've coped with my own hellions so long, she'll have to go some to put me out of kilter.' She cocked her head to one side. 'And how does it feel to be after having your husband's picture in the papers and all?'
'It feels wonderful. We have a copy of the Globe framed in the kitchen,' Sylvia answered, and then, 'I wish they'd never done it.'
Confusion spread across Mrs. Coneval's long, pale face. 'Begging your pardon, but I don't follow that.'
'Now that the papers have blabbed what that fishing boat did and how it did it, it'll be harder and more dangerous for them to do it again,' Sylvia explained. 'I wish the Rebs didn't have any idea what sort of trick they used.'
'Ah, now I see,' Mrs. Coneval breathed. 'God bless you, Mrs. Enos, and may He keep your man safe.' She crossed herself.
'Thank you,' Sylvia said from the bottom of her heart. She did a lot of praying, too. It had brought George safe from the sea to North Carolina, and from North Carolina back to Boston.
Whatever God chose to do about that, He wouldn't let her stand around flapping her gums with Brigid Coneval. She hurried downstairs. The air was cooler and fresher outdoors than in the apartment building, but that wasn't saying much. It was going to be hot and sticky. It was usually hot and sticky in Boston in July, but she hadn't known what that meant, not really, till she'd put in a few shifts under a corrugated tin roof at the fish-canning plant.
She got onto the trolley. A man who looked like a factory worker stood up and gave her his seat. She sat down with a murmur of thanks. Men were more inclined to be gentlemanly in the morning, she'd found, than in the eve ning after a full day's work, when they were tired and wanted to get a load off their feet. Then it was everyone for himself. She'd heard women complain and shame men to their feet, but she never did that herself. She knew all about be ing tired.
Riding the streetcar gave her a few minutes to herself, even in a crowd of strangers. She spent half the time thinking of the pork chops she'd fry up for supper when she got home that night, the other half, inevitably, worrying about George. The Spray was out on patrol again. What she hoped most of all was that the boat would come back from the Banks with a hold full of hake and halibut, having seen no Confederate, Canadian, or British warships of any description. That had happened on one cruise already, and was probably the only thing the Navy was doing during the war to turn a profit.
Next best would be to sink an enemy submersible. George would have disagreed with those priorities, but what did he know? Going face to face with the Rebs and Canucks put him in even more danger than simply going out to sea, and so many men never came home in time of peace.
And, of course, the tables could turn. That was even more likely now, thanks to the enterprising reporters who'd published their stories about fishing boats that were so much more than they seemed. Making the foe wary might tempt him to shoot at long range or make him more watchful for the towed submarine or any number of other unpleasant possibilities.
On that cheerful note, she got off the trolley and walked to the factory. A couple of cats stared at her with green, green eyes. The smell of the fish-canning plant — and the scraps outside-drew them like a magnet. She wondered if they were jealous, watching her go into the dingy building. If they were, it was only because they didn't know what she did in there.
Her children's best efforts to the contrary notwithstanding, she got to work on time. 'Has the machine been behaving itself?' she asked Elena Gomes, who worked the night shift.
'It did not jam much-not too much,' the other woman answered. 'Some nights, I think it has the Devil in it, but tonight it was not bad.' She patted her lustrous black hair. Instead of cutting it short, as most of the women at the factory did, she wore it under a hairnet to keep it from getting caught in the machinery.
'That's something, anyway,' Sylvia said, though what the label-gluing machine did on one shift was no guarantee of what it would do on the next. For the moment, as shifts changed all through the canning plant, the produc tion line was quiet.
'Your husband, he is well?' Elena asked.
'As far as I know, yes,' Sylvia said. 'But his boat put to sea again three nights ago, so I won't know for certain till they come back from the trip.' And if something did go wrong, she wouldn't know till days, maybe weeks, passed. Dead? Captured? She'd been through the agony of wondering once; she didn't know if she could stand to go through it again.
The Portuguese woman made the sign of the cross. 'I pray for him, as I do for my own husband.'
'Thank you,' Sylvia said, as she had to Brigid Coneval. 'How's your Pedro?' Elena Gomes' husband was in the
