Walk in Hell

The mechanism broke when she saw Isabella Antonelli, or rather when her friend saw her. “Sylvia!” Isabella exclaimed, recognizing the dazed, haggard face staring at her for what it was. “Your husband, your Giorgio. Is he-?”

“Missing.” Sylvia forced the word out through numb lips. “I got-the telegram-last night…” She started to cry. She should have been working already. “I’m sorry, but-” She dissolved again.

Isabella Antonelli came over and wrapped her arms around Sylvia, as Sylvia might have done for Mary Jane had her little daughter broken a favorite doll. “Oh, my friend,” Isabella said. “I am so sorry he is gone.”

“Missing,” Sylvia said. “The telegram said missing.”

“I will pray for you,” Isabella answered. She said nothing more than that. Missing was a forlorn hope, and one all too likely to sink on the sea of truth. She knew that. Sylvia knew it, too. She would not have admitted knowing it, not if her own life depended on that admission.

Mr. Winter came limping along to see that the day shift’s run was beginning as it should. When he saw the two women huddled together between their machines, he hurried over to them. “Here, what’s this?” he asked, his voice not angry but not calm, either. For him, the line came first, everything else afterwards. “What’s going on?”

Sylvia tried to answer and could not. Calmly-with the sort of calm that comes from having experienced too much rather than not enough-Isabella Antonelli spoke for her: “Her husband, he is missing, she hears last night from the Department of Wars.” Sylvia didn’t bother correcting her.

“Oh. I am sorry to hear that,” the foreman said, and sounded as if he was telling, if not the whole truth, then at least most of it. He studied Sylvia. “Do you want to go home, Mrs. Enos?”

“No,” Sylvia answered quickly. If she went home, they would find a substitute for her, and they might keep the substitute, too. But that was not the only reason she spoke as she did: “I’d rather be here, as a matter of fact. It will help me take my mind off, off-” She didn’t go on. Going on would have meant thinking about what she most wanted not to think about.

Mr. Winter gnawed at his mustache. “I dunno,” he said. But Isabella Antonelli gave him such a reproachful look that he softened. “All right, Mrs. Enos; we’ll see how it goes.” Had he not been interested in Sylvia’s friend as something more than an employee, he might have decided differently. Sylvia noted that enough to be amused by it, and then got angry at herself for letting anything amuse her.

She went to her machine and began pulling levers. She hoped desperately to fall into the routine that sometimes overtook her, so that half the day would go by without her consciously noticing it. To her disappointment, it didn’t happen. Her body did what it had to do, pulling her three levers, loading labels, filling the paste reservoir, and her mind ran round and round and round like a pet squirrel in a wheel.

When she went home, she said nothing to Brigid Coneval. The Irishwoman’s green eyes glowed with curiosity, though; surely the whole floor and probably the whole apartment building knew by now that she’d got a telegram in the night. But explaining to Mrs. Coneval would have meant explaining to George, Jr., who, like any little pitcher, had enormous ears. She sometimes marveled that he could hear anything, what with all the noise he made, but here he did. George is only missing, Sylvia told herself fiercely. I don’t have to say anything till I know for certain. Time enough then.

She did her best not to let her demeanor show either of her children anything was wrong. That she was even more tired than usual from having slept so badly the night before probably helped rather than hurt her cause. The evening passed quietly, not too far from normal.

Four days went by like that. Sympathy replaced curiosity in Brigid Coneval’s face. “It’s a brave front you put up, Mrs. Enos,” she said, having drawn her own conclusions. When Sylvia only shrugged, Mrs. Coneval nodded, as if she’d received all the answer she needed.

Sylvia’s mood veered from despair to fury, with many stops in between. She’d expected a second telegram hard on the heels of the first, either letting her know George was well or-more likely, she feared-very much the reverse. Either way, she would have known how to respond. She couldn’t respond to nothing, though. It left her adrift on a chartless sea.

Her work was not all it might have been. Mr. Winter proved more forbearing than she’d expected. “You’re doing the best you can, Mrs. Enos; I can see that,” he told her. Was he saying that because he was a veteran himself, and a widower, too, and so knew what suffering was like, or because he had an ulterior motive if George really was lost? With no way to be sure, she cautiously gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Another four days went by. Sometimes life seemed almost normal. Sometimes Sylvia thought she was losing her mind. Sometimes she hoped she would.

Press, step, press, step, press, go back to the beginning and begin the cycle anew…She had succeeded in immersing herself in the rhythm of her machine when another Western Union delivery boy interrupted her. “Mrs. Enos?” he said, holding out a yellow envelope. “They told me at your apartment house where you was at, ma’am.”

She signed the sheet he had on his clipboard. He got out of there in a hurry-telegraph delivery boys were not welcome visitors, not in wartime. Cans began to stack up as Sylvia pulled none of her three levers.

She opened the envelope. Yes, from the Navy Department-who else? Isabella Antonelli came hurrying over to her. She didn’t notice. Again, she was reading: MY PLEASANT DUTY TO INFORM YOU YOUR HUSBAND, ABLE SEAMAN GEORGE ENOS, CONFIRMED AS UNINJURED SURVIVOR OF LOSS OF MONITOR USS PUNISHMENT. TO BE REASSIGNED, LEAVE POSSIBLE. She read but did not notice the Secretary of the Navy’s name.

“God hears my prayers,” said Isabella, who had been looking over her shoulder.

“Good heavens!” Sylvia exclaimed. “The line!” All at once, life stretched out ahead of her again. Small things mattered. Waving the telegram like a banner, she hurried back to deal with all the cans that had stacked up. Mr. Winter never said a thing.

“This west Texas country would be wonderful terrain for tanks,” Stinky Salley said.

Several of the Confederate soldiers gathered around the campfire looked at him. “You mean barrels, don’t you?” Jefferson Pinkard said at last.

“I prefer to use the name our allies have given them,” Salley said loftily, with his usual fussy precision. “Let the damnyankees call them what they will.”

“Oh, give it up, Stinky,” Pinkard said. “Everybody’s calling the damn things barrels, us and the Yanks both.”

“That does not make it proper,” Salley returned, “any more than it is proper to call me Stinky rather than my given name.”

“Proves my point, doesn’t it?” Jeff said, and got a laugh from his squadmates. Stinky Salley glared, but he spent a lot of time glaring.

“It would be good country for barrels, except only for one thing,” Hip Rodriguez said, holding one finger up in the air.

“What the devil do you know about it, you damn greaser?” Salley said with a snort. “It’s perfect country for tanks.” He kept on using his word, regardless of what anyone else did. Waving a hand, he continued, “It’s flat, it’s wide open-it’s ideal.”

Rodriguez looked at him expressionlessly. “I gonna tell you two things,” he said in his uncertain English. As he had before, he held up one finger. “It ain’t no perfect country for barrels on account of ain’t no train stations close to here nowhere. Barrel got to run by itself, barrel breaks down.”

“Everything I’ve heard about them damn things, he’s right,” Sergeant Albert Cross said. “Bastards break down if you look at ’em sideways.”

“Gracias.” With considerable dignity, the Sonoran soldier inclined his head to the noncom. Then he undid his bayonet from his sheath and made as if to clean his nails with it. Looking straight into Salley’s face, he went on, “I tell you the second thing now. You call me a damn greaser again, I cut your fucking throat.” His voice was flat and emotionless-not so much a threat as a simple statement of how the world would be.

Salley’s pale eyes went wide. His mouth formed a startled O. He turned to Cross. “Sergeant, did you hear that?”

“I heard it,” the noncom answered. “I heard you, too. If I was you, I’d watch the way I ran my big mouth.” He noisily sipped coffee from his tin cup.

Salley stared at Hip Rodriguez as if he’d never seen him before. Maybe he hadn’t, not really. Sonorans and