Breakthroughs (23 page)

And then the
Bonefish
went hunting. Kimball had got used to patrolling inside a cage whose bars were lines of latitude and longitude. He supposed a lion would have found cage life tolerable if the keepers introduced a steady stream of bullocks on which it could leap.

Trouble was, he wasn’t a lion. Battleships were lions. He was a snake in the grass. He could kill bullocks—freighters. He could kill lions, too. He’d done it, even in their very lair. But if they saw him slithering along before he got close enough to bite, they could kill him, too, and easily. They could also kill him if he struck and missed, as he had at that nasty hunting dog of a destroyer.

So much of patrol duty was endlessly, mind-numbingly boring. More often than not, Kimball chafed under such boredom. Today, for once, he welcomed it. It gave the crew a chance to recover from the long, tense time they’d spent submerged. It gave the diesels a chance to recharge the batteries in full. If that damned destroyer had stumbled across the boat too soon, she couldn’t have gone underwater for long or traveled very far. A submarine that had to try to slug it out on the surface was a dead duck.

A quiet evening followed the quiet day. The crew needed to recharge their batteries, too. A lot of them spent a lot of time in their hammocks or wrapped in the blankets they spread next to or, more often, on top of equipment. The odor of fried fish jockeyed for position among all the other smells inside the pressure hull—Ben Coulter had caught a tuna that had almost ended up dragging him into the Atlantic instead of his being able to pull it out.

“You know what?” Kimball asked his exec. They’d both had big tuna steaks. Kimball wished for a toothpick; he had a shred of fish stuck between a couple of back teeth, and couldn’t work it loose with his tongue.

“What’s that, sir?” Tom Brearley asked.

“You know the Japs?” Kimball said. “You know what they do? They eat tuna raw sometimes. Either they dip it in horseradish or bean juice or sometimes both of ’em together, or else they just eat it plain. Don’t that beat hell?”

“You’re making that up,” Brearley said. “You’ve told me enough tall tales to stretch from the bottom of the ocean up to here. I’ll be damned if you’ll catch me again.”

“Solemn fact,” Kimball said, and raised his hand as if taking oath. His exec still wouldn’t believe him. They both started to get angry, Kimball because he couldn’t convince Brearley, the exec because he thought the skipper kept pulling his leg harder and harder. At last, disgusted, Kimball growled, “Oh, the hell with it,” and stomped back down to the solitary albeit cramped splendor of his bunk.

He and Brearley were wary with each other the next morning, too, both of them speaking with military formality usually ignored aboard submersibles in every navy in the world. Then the lookout let out a holler—“Smoke off to the east!”—and they forgot about the argument.

Kimball hurried up to the top of the conning tower. The lookout pointed. Sure enough, not just one trail but several smudged the horizon. Kimball smiled a predatory smile. “Either those are freighters, or else they’re warships loafing along without the least little idea we’re anywhere around. Any which way, we’re going to have some fun.” He called down the hatch: “Give me twelve knots, and change course to 135. Let’s get in front of the bastards and take a look at what we’ve got.”

The
Bonefish
swung through the turn. Kimball peered through his binoculars. “What are we after?” Brearley asked from below.

“Looks like supply ships,” Kimball answered. “Can’t be sure they haven’t got one of those disguised auxiliary cruisers sneaking along with ’em, though. Well, I don’t give a damn if they do. We’ve still got plenty of fish on board, and I’m not talking about that damned tuna.”

Skippers who paid attention to nothing but what was right in front of their noses did not live to grow old. While Kimball guided the
Bonefish
toward her prey, he kept another lookout up on the conning tower with him to sweep the rest of the horizon.

He jumped when the sailor tapped him on the shoulder. Apologetically, the fellow said, “I hate to tell you, sir, but there’s smoke over on the western horizon, and whatever’s making it looks to be heading this way in a hell of a hurry.”

“Thanks, Caleb.” Kimball turned, hoping the sailor was somehow mistaken. But he wasn’t. Whatever was making that smoke was heading in the general direction of the
Bonefish
, and heading toward her faster than anything had any business traveling on the ocean. He raised the binoculars to his eyes. Almost as he watched, the ship crawled over the horizon. He counted stacks—one, two, three…four. Cursing, he said, “Go below, Caleb,” and then bawled down the hatch: “All hands prepare to dive! Take her down to periscope depth.”

The
Bonefish
had no trouble escaping the U.S. destroyer. Depth charges roared, but far in the distance. Tom Brearley said, “We spotted her in good time.”

“That’s not the point, goddammit,” Kimball growled. “The point is, she made us break off the attack on those other Yankee ships. They’ll get away clean while we’re crawling along down here. She did what she was supposed to do, and she kept us from doing what we’re supposed to do. Nobody does that to me.” His voice sounded the more menacing for being flat and quiet. “
Nobody
does that to me, do you hear? I hope that destroyer hangs around this part of the ocean, ’cause if she does, I’ll sink her.”

Sylvia Enos felt like a billiard ball, caroming from one cushion to the next. She got off the trolley not by her house, but by the school a couple of stops away. After Brigid Coneval’s husband stopped a bullet with his chest, Sylvia had had to enroll George, Jr., in kindergarten. He was enjoying himself there. That wasn’t the problem. Neither was his staying on the school grounds till she got out of work. A lot of boys and girls did that. The school had a banner out front:
WE STAY OPEN TO SUPPORT THE WAR EFFORT
.

The problem was…“Come on, George,” Sylvia said, tugging at his hand. “We’ve still got to pick up your sister.”

George didn’t want to go. “Benny hit me a while ago, and I haven’t hit him back yet. I’ve got to, Mama.”

“Do it tomorrow,” Sylvia said. George, Jr., tried to twist free. She whacked him on the bottom, which got enough of his attention to let her drag him out of the schoolroom and back toward the trolley stop.

They missed the trolley anyhow—it clattered away just as they hurried up. Sylvia whacked George, Jr., again. That might have made him feel sorry. Then again, it might not have. It did make Sylvia feel better. Twilight turned into darkness. Mosquitoes began to buzz. Sylvia sighed. Spring was here at last. She slapped, too late.

Fifteen minutes after they missed the trolley, the next car on the route came by. Sylvia threw two nickels in the fare box and rode back in the other direction, to the apartment of the new woman she’d found to watch Mary Jane. “I’m sorry I’m late, Mrs. Dooley,” she said.

Rose Dooley was a large woman with a large, square jaw that might have made her formidable in the prize ring. “Try not to be late again, Mrs. Enos, if you please,” she said, but then softened enough to admit, “Your daughter wasn’t any trouble today.”

“I’m glad,” Sylvia said. “I am sorry.” Blaming George, Jr., wouldn’t have done any good. She took Mary Jane’s hand. “Let’s go home.”

“I’m hungry, Mama,” Mary Jane said.

“So am I,” George, Jr., agreed.

By the time they got back to the apartment building, it was after seven. By then, the children weren’t just saying they were hungry. They were shouting it, over and over. “If you hadn’t dawdled on your way to the trolley, we’ve have been home a while ago, and you would be eating by now,” Sylvia told George, Jr. That got Mary Jane mad at her big brother, but didn’t stop either of the children from complaining.

They both complained some more when Sylvia paused to see if any mail had come. “Mama, we’re
starving
,” George, Jr., boomed. Mary Jane added shrill agreement.

“Hush, both of you.” Sylvia held up an envelope, feeling vindicated. “Here is a letter from your father. You wouldn’t have wanted it to wait, would you?”

That did quiet them, at least until they actually got inside the flat. George Enos had assumed mythic proportions to both of them, especially to Mary Jane, who hardly remembered him at all. One corner of Sylvia’s mouth turned down. She wished her husband had mythic proportions in her eyes.

“If you read it to us, Mama, will you make supper right afterwards?” Mary Jane asked. Her brother’s bluster hadn’t worked; maybe bargaining would.

And it did. “I’ll even start the fire in the stove now, so it will be getting hot while I’m reading the letter,” Sylvia said. Her children clapped their hands.

She fed coal into the firebox with care; people at the canning plant said the Coal Board was going to cut the ration yet again, apparently intent on making people eat their food raw for the rest of the war. Glancing in the coal bin, she thought she probably had enough to keep cooking till the end of the month.

As soon as she walked back into the front room from the cramped kitchen, George, Jr., and Mary Jane jumped on her like a couple of football tackles. “Read the letter!” they chanted. “Read the letter!” Some of that was eagerness to hear from their father, more was likely to be eagerness to get her cooking.

She opened the envelope with a strange mixture of happiness and dread. If George had come into port to mail the letter, who could guess what he was doing besides mailing it? As a matter of fact, she could guess perfectly well. The trouble was, she couldn’t know.

When she saw a scrawled line at the top of the page, she let out a silent sigh of relief.
A supply ship bound for home came alongside just after I finished this,
George had written,
so it will get to you soon.
That meant he hadn’t set foot on dry land. She could relax, at least for a while.

“ ‘Dear Sylvia,’ ” Sylvia read aloud, “ ‘and little George who is getting big and Mary Jane too—’ ”

“I’m getting big!” Mary Jane said.

“I know you are, and so does your father,” Sylvia said. “Shall I go on?” The children nodded, so she did: “ ‘I am fine. I hope you are fine. We are down here in the—’ ”

“Why did you stop, Mama?” George, Jr., asked.

“There’s a word that’s all scratched out, so I can’t read it,” Sylvia answered.
Censors,
she thought.
As if I’m going to tell anybody where George’s ship is.
She resumed: “ ‘We are doing everything we can to whip our enemies. A sub tried to torpedo us, but we got away with no trouble at all.’ ”

“Wow!” George, Jr., said.

Sylvia wondered how much more dangerous that had been than George was making it out to be in his letter. Like any fisherman, he was in the habit of minimizing mishaps, to keep his loved ones from worrying. “ ‘We went after him and we’—oh, here are more words scratched out,” she said. “ ‘They say we either damaged him or sunk him, and I hope they are right.’ ”

“What does
damaged
mean?” Mary Jane asked.

“Hurt,” Sylvia answered. “ ‘I have chipped more paint than I ever thought there was in the whole wide world. The chow is not half so good as yours or what Charlie White used to make on the
Ripple
but there is plenty of it. Tell little George and Mary Jane to be good for me. I hope I see them and you real soon. I love you all and I miss you. George.’ ”

She set the letter on the table in front of the sofa. “Now make supper!” George, Jr., and Mary Jane yelled together.

“I’ve got some scrod, and I’ll fry potatoes with it,” Sylvia said. Even though George was in the Navy, she still had connections among the dealers and fishermen down on T Wharf. The transactions were informal enough that none of the many and various rationing boards knew anything about them. As long as she was content to eat fish—and she would have been a poor excuse for a fisherman’s wife if she weren’t—she and her family ate pretty well.

Fisherman’s children, George, Jr., and Mary Jane ate up the tender young cod as readily as Sylvia did. And they plowed through mountains of potatoes fried in lard and salted with a heavy hand. Sylvia wished she could have given them more milk than half a glass apiece, but she didn’t know anybody who had anything to do with milk rationing.

After she washed the supper dishes, she filled a big pitcher from the stove’s hot-water reservoir and marched the children down to the end of the hall for their weekly bath. They went with all the delight of Rebel prisoners marching off into captivity in the United States.

They were as obstreperous as Rebel prisoners, too; by the time she had them clean, they had her wet. In dudgeon approaching high, she marched them back to the apartment and changed into a quilted housecoat. They played for a while—Mary Jane was alternately an adjunct and a hindrance to George, Jr.’s, game, which involved storming endless ranks of Confederate trenches. When he pretended to machine-gun her and made her cry, Sylvia called a halt to the proceedings.

She read to them from
Hiawatha
and put them to bed. But then, it was nearly nine o’clock. She’d have to get up before six to get George, Jr., off to kindergarten and Mary Jane to Mrs. Dooley’s. Silently, she cursed Brigid Coneval’s husband for getting shot. If he’d had any idea how much trouble his death was causing her, he never would have been so inconvenient.

Twenty minutes—maybe even half an hour—to herself, with no one to tell her what to do, seemed the height of luxury. Had George been here, she knew what he would have wanted to do with that time. And she would have gone along. Not only was it her wifely duty, he pleased her most of the time—or he had.

After a long day at the canning plant, after a long day made longer by missing the trolley when she was trying to retrieve Mary Jane,
wifely duty
didn’t have a whole lot of meaning left to it. If she felt like making love, she would make love. If she didn’t…

“I’ll damn well go to bed, that’s what,” she said, and yawned. “And if George doesn’t like it—”