The train pulled into the Birmingham station just over a day after it set out from Fort Worth. No one sat close to Pinkard when he got on the trolley that would take him out to the factory housing by the Sloss Works. Maybe that was because he still wore his uniform. Maybe, too, it was because he’d had no chance to bathe since coming out of the line.
He walked from the trolley stop toward his house. He felt as if he were heading toward the doctor’s, and likely to be diagnosed with a deadly disease. He tried the front door. It was locked. Emily had gone to work, though how long she’d keep her munitions-plant job was anyone’s guess. He had a key in his trouser pocket-about the only thing he did have with him from when he’d gone into the Army. He let himself in. (He wouldn’t get that diagnosis till she came home.)
Doing nothing much felt strange and good. He took hot water from the stove’s reservoir and bathed and put on a shirt and trousers he found in the closet. They hung loosely on him; he’d lost weight. He got cold chicken out of the icebox, then read an old Richmond Review: so old, one of the articles talked about how to drive back the Yankees. Laughing bitterly, he tossed the magazine aside.
At last, the front door opened. Emily stared at him. “Jeff!” she exclaimed, and then, “Darling!”
Was there too much hesitation between the one word and the other? Pinkard didn’t get the chance to think much about that. His wife threw herself into his arms. They tightened around her. He’d never stopped wanting her, even though…
He didn’t get the chance to think about that, either. Her kiss made him dizzy. “Thank God you’re home,” she breathed in his ear. “Thank God you’re safe. Everything’s going to be fine now, just fine.” Her voice went low and throaty. “I’ll show you how fine.” She led him back toward the bedroom. He went willingly, even gladly. That would do for now. Later?
“I’ll just have to find out about later, that’s all,” Jeff muttered.
“What did you say, darling?” Emily was already getting out of her clothes.
“Never mind,” he said. “It’ll keep. It’ll keep till later.”
Sam Carsten sighed. The exhalation hurt. His lips were even more sunburned than the rest of him. They cracked and bled at any excuse or none. He’d filled out the forms for every kind of cream alleged to help; the pharmacist’s mates were all sick of the sight of him. He was sick of the baked-meat sight of himself. As usual, none of the creams did the slightest good against the onslaughts of the tropic sun.
“God damn Dom Pedro IV to hell and gone,” he said. “Stinking son of a bitch should have stayed out of the war.”
Vic Crosetti laughed at him. “You’re more worried about your hide than you are about licking the limeys.”
“Ever since the Dakota came up into Brazilian waters, my hide’s what’s been taking the licking,” Carsten said. “And we haven’t fought the Royal Navy or even seen more than a couple of British freighters. Waste of time, anybody wants to know what I think of the whole business.”
Crosetti laughed harder than ever. “Yeah, I’m sure Admiral Fiske is gonna call you up into officers’ country any second now, so he can find out what’s on your mind. He couldn’t’ve run the flotilla without you till now, right?”
“Makes sense to me,” Sam said. Crosetti grimaced at him. He was about to go on when his ears caught a distant buzzing. He searched the heavens, then pointed. “That’s an aeroplane. Now, God damn it, is it one of ours or one of theirs?”
“Escorts ain’t shooting at it, so I guess it’s one of ours,” Crosetti said. “Hope to Jesus it’s one of ours, anyways.”
“Me too.” Carsten kept watching, squinting, his eyes half shut against the bright sky, till he could make out the eagles and crossed swords under the wings of the aeroplane. He breathed easier then. “Aeroplanes,” he said. “Who would have thought, when the war started, they’d matter so much?”
“Bunch of damn nuisances, is what they are,” Crosetti said as this one splashed into the tropical Atlantic a few hundred yards from the Dakota and taxied across the water toward the battleship.
“They’re sure as hell nuisances when they spot us or strafe us,” Sam said. “But they couldn’t do a quarter of what they’re doing now back in 1914. I bet they keep right on getting better, too.”
“I think everybody on the Dakota except maybe Admiral Fiske has listened to you go on like this,” Crosetti said with exaggerated patience. “You like ’em so goddamn much, go and get yourself a pair of wings after the war’s done.”
“Don’t want wings,” Carsten said. “I like being a sailor just fine. But I like aeroplanes, too. Look at that, Vic-isn’t that bully?” The Dakota ’s crane was hauling the flying machine out of the water and up on deck.
Crosetti yawned. “It’s boring, is what it is. I think everything about aeroplanes is boring till they start dropping bombs. Then they scare the shit out of me.”
“No, that’s not boring,” Sam agreed. “Tell you something else, though-I’d sooner be bored.”
Later that day, the Dakota and the flotilla with her, which had been lazing along at ten or twelve knots, suddenly changed course toward the northeast and put on speed. Carsten grunted, waiting for the klaxons to cry out the orders to battle station. One of the other aeroplanes from the flotilla must have spotted a British convoy. He looked forward to knocking it to pieces.
Then rumors started flying: rumors that it wasn’t a convoy after all, but a good-sized chunk of the Royal Navy. Sam didn’t like hearing that for beans. He’d fought the Royal Navy before, in the tropical Pacific, and had high respect for what the limeys could do. He’d had a lot more of the U.S. Navy sailing along beside him then, too. If they’d run up against a major British fleet, they would regret it as long as they lived, which might not be long.
When the klaxons did begin to hoot, running toward the forward starboard sponson was almost a relief. Once he started slamming shells into the breech of the five-inch gun, he’d be too busy to worry. Whatever happened after that just happened-he couldn’t do anything about it.
Hiram Kidde put that same thought into words: “Now we smash ’em-or else it’s the other way around.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Well, if they smash us, I hope to God we at least hurt them. We can afford the losses and they can’t, not fighting us and Kaiser Bill both.”
“I’ll die for my country if I have to,” Kidde said, “but I’d sooner live for it.” He puffed out his chest. “Where the hell else are the United States going to find a better chief gunner’s mate?”
“Under any flat rock, I expect,” Carsten answered, which won him a glare.
Commander Grady looked into the sponson. “It is the Royal Navy,” he announced. “If the flyboy who spotted them had it straight, they’ve got a force about the same size as ours.”
“That’s great,” Luke Hoskins muttered. “They’ll sink all of us, and we’ll sink all of them. Last one standing wins.”
“Why should this be any different than anything else in the war?” Sam whispered. Hoskins chuckled and shrugged.
Hiram Kidde peered through the sponson’s vision slit. “I see smoke,” he said, and then, “Jesus, if I see smoke from down here, the fire-control boys up at the top of the mast have been seeing it the past five minutes. And if they can see it, the big guns can hit it. Why the hell aren’t they shooting?”
As if to answer his question, the klaxons wailed once more. Sam dug a finger in his ear, wondering if that ear were playing tricks on him. “Was that the all-clear?” he asked, not believing what he’d heard.
“Sure as hell was,” Hoskins said.
“Why are they sounding the all-clear, though?” “Cap’n” Kidde demanded. “The enemy’s in sight, for Christ’s sake.” He took off his cap and scratched his head. “And why the hell aren’t the limeys shooting at us?”