when you were hung over, you were much too likely to get into a brawl. He didn't want to punch Pedro-most of the time, anyhow.
The Bible said a soft answer turned away wrath. No answer seemed to work just as well. When Jorge didn't rise to the bait, Pedro left him alone. He wondered whether he ought to remember that lesson for later. A shrug was all he could give the question. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't.
He went on about his business. Even in winter, the farm needed work. He tended the garden and the livestock. He went into Baroyeca once more, and came back sober. Magdalena Rodriguez nodded to him in somber approval.
Then Pedro went into town a few days later. When he came home, he was wild with rage. 'The Yankees! They've taken Seсor Quinn!'
'I was afraid of that,' Jorge said.
'But how could they know what he stands for?' Pedro demanded.
'He talks too much,' Jorge answered, which was true. 'And too many people know he was the Freedom Party man here. Someone in town must have blabbed to the soldados from los Estados Unidos.' Most of that was true, but not all.
'What can we do?' his brother cried.
'I don't know. I don't think we can do anything. The Yankees have machine guns and automatic rifles. I don't want to go up against them. If you do, you have to be out of your mind.'
Pedro frowned; that wasn't what he wanted to hear. 'I hope nobody decides to inform on me,' he said. 'All we've got here are a couple of.22s, and you can't fight anybody with those.'
'Of course not. That's why the Yankees let us keep them,' Jorge said.
Then his brother brightened. 'Maybe we could get some dynamite from the mines, and we could-'
'Could what?' Jorge broke in. 'You can't fight with dynamite, either. What are you going to do, throw sticks of it?'
'Well, no. But if we made an auto bomb-'
'Out of what? We don't have an auto,' Jorge reminded him. 'Besides, do you know how many the Yankees shoot for every auto bomb that goes off?'
'We've got to do something for Seсor Quinn,' Pedro said.
'Bueno. What do you want to do? What can you do that will set him free and won't get us into trouble?'
Pedro thought about it. The longer he thought, the more unhappy he looked. 'I don't know,' he said at last.
'Well, when you answer that, then maybe you can do something. Now we have to worry about keeping ourselves safe, and keeping Mamacita safe, and keeping Miguel safe,' Jorge said.
Miguel sat in the wheelchair. Was he listening to his brothers argue, or not paying any attention at all? Jorge was never sure how much Miguel understood. Sometimes he even thought it varied from day to day. Now, though, Miguel's eyes came alive for a moment. 'Stay safe!' he said clearly. 'Get down!' Was that the last thing he said or the last thing he heard before the shell crashed down and ruined his life? Jorge wouldn't have been surprised.
Pedro gnawed on the inside of his lower lip. 'You can put up with things easier than I can, Jorge.'
'Sometimes, maybe,' Jorge said.
'But it gets to you, doesn't it? It gets to you, too.' His brother pointed an accusing forefinger at him. 'Otherwise, why did you need to go to the cantina and get drunk?'
Jorge spread his hands. 'Well, you've got me there.'
'I thought so.' Pedro sounded smug. Not many things anyone liked better than being sure he knew what someone else was thinking.
'Careful,' Miguel said, maybe at random, maybe not. Was he still thinking about getting shelled? Or was he warning Pedro not to think he was so smart? How could anyone outside the wreckage of his body and mind and spirit guess?
With a sigh, Pedro said, 'I will be careful. I won't do anything that gets us into trouble or gets us hurt.'
'That's the idea.' Jorge hoped his brother would keep the promise. 'Maybe things will get better. We just have to wait and see-what else can we do that's safe?'
'Seсor Quinn didn't talk that way.' Pedro wasn't ready to give up, not quite.
'No, he didn't,' Jorge agreed. 'And look what happened to him. If he'd just tried to fit in, the Yankees would have let him alone, I bet. But he started running his mouth, and-'
'Some dirty puto ratted on him,' Pedro said savagely.
'Sн. It only goes to show, it can happen to anybody who isn't careful,' Jorge said.
He knew what he was talking about. He knew more than he would ever talk about. He'd written the anonymous letter that betrayed Robert Quinn to the U.S. authorities. He hadn't been happy about it, not then. That was why he came home drunk that evening. But he wasn't sorry now that he'd done it. He'd kept Pedro safe-safer, anyhow. He'd done the same thing for the whole family. They could go on. After you lost a war, that would do.
George Enos and Wally Fodor and most of the other guys at the twin-40mm mount had their shirts off. They basked in the warm sunshine like geckos on a rock. 'January,' George said to the gun chief. 'Fuckin' January. I tell you, man, Florida's been wasted on the Confederates too goddamn long.'
'You got that straight,' Fodor agreed.
It was somewhere close to eighty. Up in Boston, the snow lay thick on the ground. George had just got a letter from Connie talking about the latest blizzard. He missed his wife. He missed his kids. He sure as hell didn't miss Massachusetts weather.
'When I get old and gray, I'll retire down here,' he said.
'Good luck, buddy. The Confederates'll blow your old gray ass from here to Habana,' Wally Fodor said. 'Do you really think these guys'll be glad to see us even by the time we get old?'
'Probably be glad to take our money,' George said.
The gun chief laughed. 'Like that's the same thing. A whore's glad to take your money, but that doesn't mean she's in love with you.' Fodor laughed again. 'Hell with me if you ain't blushing.'
'Hell with you anyway, Wally.' George smiled when he said it, but he knew how uneasy the smile was. He always felt bad about going to brothels. That didn't stop him, but it made him flabble afterwards.
All the joking stopped when a supply boat approached the Oregon. The 40mm crews and even the men on the battlewagon's five-inch guns covered the vessel while sailors searched it. That was, of course, locking the door with the horse long gone, but what else could you do? The diehards might hurt other warships, but they wouldn't get the Oregon again.
Everybody hoped like hell they wouldn't, anyhow.
This particular boat proved harmless. So the searchers said. If they were wrong, if the locals had outfoxed them…George did his best not to think about that. He breathed a sigh of relief when hams and flitches of bacon and sides of beef came aboard. Nothing explosive there.
He wasn't the only one who relaxed after seeing everything was on the up and up. 'We keep eating awhile longer,' Wally Fodor said.
'Yeah.' George nodded. 'We keep breathing awhile longer, too. Ain't it a pisser that we aren't getting combat pay any more?'
'Hey, we're at peace now, right?' Fodor said, and the whole gun crew laughed sarcastically. He went on, ''Sides, all the bookkeepers in the Navy Department are a bunch of damn Jews, and they make like it's their own personal money they're saving, for Chrissake. You ask me, we're fuckin' lucky we still get hazardous-duty pay.'
'What would you call it when the bumboat blows us halfway to hell?' George said. 'Hazardous enough for me, by God.'
'Amen, brother,' the gun chief said, as if George were a colored preacher heating up his flock.
The gun crews also covered the supply boat as it pulled away from the Oregon. If its crew were going to try anything, logic said they'd do it while they lay right alongside the battleship. But logic said people down here shouldn't try anything at all along those lines. They were well and truly licked. Didn't they understand as much? By the evidence, no.
A few minutes after the boat drew too far away to be dangerous, the Oregon's PA system crackled to life. 'George Enos, report to the executive officer's quarters! George Enos, report to the executive officer's quarters on
