Taking his time now, Kimball lined up the second shot with painstaking precision. “Fire two!” he shouted, and the torpedo leaped away. It broke the destroyer’s back and almost tore the stricken ship in two. She went to the bottom hardly more than a minute later. Kimball scanned the sea for boats. Spotting none, he grunted in satisfaction. “Resume our course for Habana,” he said, and stepped away from the periscope. “We’ve done our job here.”
Ben Coulter spoke earnestly to the sailors: “Remember, boys, this ain’t one where you get drunk and brag on it in a saloon. You do that, they’re liable to put a rope around your neck. Hell, they’re liable to put a rope around all our necks.”
“You do want to bear that in mind,” Kimball agreed. He wished he could tell Anne Colleton. If she ever heard he’d gone right on killing Yankees even after the armistice, she’d probably drag him down and rape him on the spot. Warmth flowed to his crotch as he thought about that. But then, slowly, regretfully, he shook his head. He didn’t think with his crotch, or hoped he didn’t. If she found out what he’d done here, it would give her more of a hold on him than he ever wanted anyone to get. He’d have to keep quiet.
The log would have to keep quiet, too. Kimball went back to an earlier attack and neatly changed a 3 to a 5 on the writeup of the run. That would make the number of torpedoes listed as expended on this cruise match the number he’d actually launched.
He strode toward the stern. Sure enough, Tom Brearley sat on his bunk, looking glum and furious. He glared up at Kimball. “How does it feel to be a war criminal-sir?” He made the title into one of scorn.
Kimball gravely considered. “You know what, Tom? It feels pretty damn fine.”
Sylvia Enos threw a nickel in the trolley-care fare box for herself and another one for George, Jr. Next year, she’d have to spend a nickel for Mary Jane, too. She sighed. Even though she was getting her husband’s allotment along with her salary at the shoe factory, she wasn’t rich, not anywhere close. Nickels mattered.
She sighed again, seeing she and her children had nowhere to sit during the run from Mrs. Dooley’s to her own apartment building. She clung to the overhead rail. George, Jr., and Mary Jane clung to her.
As the trolley squealed to a stop at the corner closest to her building, she sighed yet again. Who could say how long she’d keep the job at the shoe factory? With soldiers coming home from the war, they’d start going back to what they’d done before. Women would get crowded out. It hadn’t happened yet, but she could see it coming.
She wondered when the Navy would let George loose. He’d have no trouble getting a spot on a fishing boat operating out of T Wharf. As long as he was home with her, she wouldn’t have to-she didn’t think she’d have to- worry about his chasing after other women. They could try getting back to the way things had been before the war, too. Maybe she’d have another baby.
Mary Jane would be heading to kindergarten next year. If Sylvia didn’t get pregnant right away, maybe she could look for part-time work then. Extra cash never hurt anybody.
She paused in the front hall of the apartment building to pick up her mail. It was unexciting: a couple of patent-medicine circulars, a flyer announcing a Fishermen’s Benevolent League picnic Sunday after next, and a letter to the woman next door that the postman had put in her box by mistake. She set the last one on top of the bank of mailboxes for her neighbor to spot or for the mailman to put in its proper place and then took the children upstairs.
“What’s for supper?” George, Jr., demanded. “I’m starved.”
“Pork chops and string beans,” Sylvia said. “They’ll take a little while to cook, but I don’t think you’ll starve before they’re ready. Why don’t you play nicely with your sister till then?”
Rebellion came not from George, Jr., but from Mary Jane. “I hate string beans,” she said. “I want fried potatoes!”
Sylvia swatted her on the bottom. “You’re going to eat string beans tonight, anyhow,” she answered. “If you don’t feel like eating string beans, you can go to bed right now without any supper.”
Mary Jane stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes. Sylvia swatted her again, harder this time. Sometimes she practically needed to hit her daughter over the head with a brick to get her to behave. Now, though, Mary Jane seemed to get the idea that she’d pushed things too far. She looked so angelic, any real angel who saw her would have been extremely suspicious. Sylvia laughed and shook her head and started cooking.
She’d just set supper on the table and was cutting Mary Jane’s pork chops into bite-sized pieces when someone knocked on the door. She muttered something she hoped the children didn’t catch, then went to see which neighbor had chosen exactly the wrong moment to want to borrow salt or molasses or a dollar and a half.
But the youth standing there wasn’t a neighbor. He wore a green uniform darker than that of the U.S. Army; his brass buttons read WU. “Sylvia Enos?” he asked. When Sylvia nodded, he thrust a pale yellow envelope at her. “Telegram, ma’am.” He hurried away before she could say anything.
Scratching her head-delivery boys usually hung around to collect a tip-she opened the envelope. Then she understood. “The Navy Department,” she whispered, and ice congealed around her heart.
DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU, read the characterless letters, THAT YOUR HUSBAND, GEORGE ENOS, WAS AMONG THE CREW ABOARD THE USS ERICSSON, WHICH WAS SUNK LAST NIGHT BY AN ENEMY SUBMERSIBLE. DESPITE DILIGENT SEARCH, NO TRACE OF SURVIVORS HAS BEEN FOUND OR IS EXPECTED. HE MUST BE PRESUMED DEAD. THE UNITED STATES ARE GRATEFUL FOR HIS VALIANT SERVICE IN THE CAUSE OF REMEMBRANCE AND VICTORY. The printed signature was that of Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy.
“Your pork chops are getting cold, Ma,” George, Jr., called from the table.
“If you don’t eat your green beans, you have to go to bed right now,” Mary Jane added gleefully.
Sylvia kept staring at the words of the telegram, hoping, praying, they would twist into some different shape, some different meaning. Twice now, when George had been captured by a Confederate commerce raider and when he’d survived the sinking of the
“What am I going to do?” she said, though no one could answer. “What am I going to do without George?”
“I’m right here, Ma,” her son said. “I didn’t go nowhere. Your pork chops are still getting cold. They’re no good if they get cold. You always say that, Ma. You do.”
She turned back to the table. She didn’t realize tears had started running down her face till Mary Jane asked, “Why are you crying, Ma?”
“Don’t cry, Ma,” George, Jr., added. “What’s wrong? We’ll fix it, whatever it is.”
They depended on her. She had to be strong, because they couldn’t do it for themselves. And she had to tell them the truth. They needed to know. She swiped her sleeve over her eyes. Then she held up the telegram. “This says-” She had to pause and gulp before she could go on. “This says your father…it says your father’s ship got sunk and he isn’t…isn’t alive any more. He isn’t coming home any more, not ever again.”
They took it better than she had imagined possible. Mary Jane, she realized, hardly remembered George. She’d been very little when he went into the Navy, and he’d come home but seldom since. How could she miss what she hadn’t truly known?
George, Jr., understood better, though he plainly didn’t want to. “He’s…dead, Ma?” he asked, his voice trembling. “Like Harry’s father at school, the one the dirty Canucks shot?”
“That’s right,” Sylvia said. “That’s…sort of what happened.”
A noise in the hallway behind her made her turn. There stood Brigid Coneval and several of her other neighbors. Somehow, almost as if by magic, everyone knew when a Western Union messenger brought bad news. Had anyone doubted the news was bad, the look on Sylvia’s face would have told the tale.
“Oh, you poor darling,” said Mrs. Coneval, who, if anyone, knew what Sylvia was feeling at the moment. “You poor darling. What a black shame it is, with the war so near won and all.”
People crowded round her, holding her and telling her they would do what they could to help. Someone pressed a coin into her hand. She thought it was a quarter. When she looked at it through tear-blurred eyes, she discovered it was a gold eagle. She stared in astonishment at the ten-dollar goldpiece. “Who did this?” she demanded. “It’s too much. Take it back.”
No one said a word. No one made any move to claim the coin.
“God bless you, whoever you are,” Sylvia said. She started crying again.
Mary Jane said, “You’re going to have to go to bed without any supper, because you aren’t eating your pork
