Despite that annoyance, everything went smooth as a training run in the Gulf of Mexico outside Mobile Bay. The destroyer, which could have left him far behind, kept lazing through the sea. He pulled ahead of the U.S. ship and swung the Bonefish into the tight turn for the firing run. “Bring her down to five knots,” he ordered, not wishing to draw attention to the boat as he closed in.
Like any submarine skipper, he would have made a hell of a pool player, for he was always figuring angles. Here, though, players and balls and even the surface of the table were in constant motion.
He took his eyes away from the periscope every so often to check the compass for the Bonefish ’s true course. Gauging things by eye didn’t work at night-too easy to be wrong on both range and angle. He swung the submersible’s course a couple of degrees more toward the southeast. Ben Coulter had been right: if he was going to do this, he couldn’t afford to miss.
The lookout on the conning tower called softly down the hatch: “Sir, I reckon we’re inside half a mile of that Yankee bastard.”
“Thanks, Davis,” Kimball called back. He’d just made the same calculation. Having the lookout confirm the range made him feel good. Inside six hundred yards…Inside five hundred…Inside four hundred…“Fire one!” he shouted. If he couldn’t hit the Ericsson now, he never would.
Clangs and hisses and the rush of water into the emptied tube announced the torpedo was on its way. Even in moonlight, Kimball had no trouble making out the white track of air bubbles the fish left behind it. Maybe somebody on the destroyer’s deck also spotted it. If he did, though, he was too slow to do anything about it. Less than half a minute after the Bonefish launched it, the torpedo slammed into the U.S. warship just forward of amidships.
“Hit!” Kimball screamed, and the sailors howled out Rebel yells. The Ericsson staggered on her course like a poleaxed steer. Water foamed as it poured into the hole better than two hundred pounds of guncotton had blown in her flank. Already she was listing to port and appreciably lower in the water than she had been a moment before.
Up on the conning tower, Davis the lookout whooped for joy. “We-uns is goin’ home, but not them Yankees!”
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?” Why don’t you ask for the moon, Sylvia, while you’re at it?
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,