XIX
The Sweet Sue jounced west across the rough waters of the Atlantic, back toward Boston harbor. George Enos Jr. stood near the bow of the fishing boat, thinking about things that had changed and things that hadn't. He turned to Carlo Lombardi, who was smoking a cigarette beside him. "Back in 1914," George said, "my old man was coming home from a fishing run. He didn't have a wireless set on his ship. When he got back into port, he found out that goddamn Serb had blown up the Austrian archduke and his wife, and everything was going to hell."
Lombardi paused to take another drag before he answered, "We're lucky. We can find out everything's going to hell before we get into port. Ain't life grand nowadays?"
"Yeah. Grand." George tried to look every which way at once. "Of course, it's liable not to be the wireless that tells us."
"How do you mean?" the other fisherman asked, scratching his head.
"If a war starts, you've got to bet the Confederates'll have their submarines up here ahead of time. Only stands to reason, right?" George said. "If they do, first thing we'll know about it is-wham!"
"Fuck," Lombardi said, and pitched his cigarette into the green water. He eyed George sourly. "You bastard. Now you're going to have me looking around for a periscope or a goddamn torpedo all the way till we tie up at T Wharf."
"Yeah, well, I've been doing that ever since we started back from the Grand Bank," George said. "That sneaky Confederate son of a bitch torpedoed my father after the last war was done. It'd be just like one of those bastards to nail me before this one even starts."
"Fuck," Lombardi said again, and gave George an even more jaundiced once-over. "You better not be a goddamn Jonah, that's all I've got to say."
"My old man was the one with the bad luck," George said. The other man thought that over, then slowly nodded. If he didn't believe it, he kept it to himself. George went on, "Maybe there won't be a war this time around. Maybe. I keep on hoping there won't, anyway."
"I hope for free pussy, too, when I go to a whorehouse," Lombardi said, lighting another cigarette. "I hope for it, but that ain't how things work." He sucked in smoke. "Better not be another war. If there is, the tobacco'll all be shitty. My pa used to bitch about that all the goddamn time, how lousy the smokes were 'cause we couldn't get no Confederate tobacco."
George didn't remember whether his father had complained about bad tobacco. He'd been too little when George Enos Senior got killed, and his father had been away at sea too much while alive to leave behind a lot of memories. George did recall one night when his father kept asking if he and Mary Jane were ready to go to bed yet. He hadn't been ready, and his indignation still rankled across a quarter of a century.
All of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, he started laughing like hell. "What's so goddamn funny?" Lombardi asked.
"Nothing, not really," George answered. The other fisherman gave him a particularly fishy stare. He didn't care. It wasn't the sort of joke he could explain. Just the same, he suddenly understood why his father had kept wanting him to go to bed, which he hadn't when he was a little boy. He was liable to use that same impatient tone of voice to find out if his own boys were ready to go to sleep so he could be alone with Connie. As a matter of fact, he knew damn well he'd used that tone of voice with them before.
And if a new war does start, and if your boat goes to the bottom, is that what you want them to remember you for? he wondered. Had the same question ever occurred to his father? Probably not. But then, his father hadn't known anything about a big war before he found himself in the middle of the biggest one of all time. People living in the USA nowadays didn't have that excuse.
Neither did people living in the CSA. The Great War had hurt them even worse. They, or at least Jake Featherston, seemed ready-hell, seemed eager- for another round. George wondered why.
He found an answer, too, the same way as he'd found an answer when he thought about his old man. The Confederates lost. That means they want revenge. The USA had lost two wars in a row to the CSA. That had made people here twice as serious about getting their own back. Now, after a win, people here thought everything was square. South of the border, they didn't.
Will there ever be an end? Will both sides ever be satisfied at the same time? He thought that one over, too. Unlike the other questions, it didn't have an answer that leaped into sight.
No Confederate submersible or commerce raider challenged the Sweet Sue. No dive bomber dropped explosives on her from the sky. She sailed back into Boston harbor as if pulling fish from the sea were the hardest, most dangerous thing to do men had ever invented. In peacetime, it came close. Peacetime, though, felt like summertime. Even as you enjoyed it, you knew it wouldn't last.
When the Sweet Sue tied up at T Wharf, the first officer made the best deal he could with the buyers. Normally, George would have stuck around to find out how good the deal was. His own share of the pie depended on how big a pie he was looking at. Today, though, he drew fifty dollars against whatever the total would be and headed for the apartment where he spent rather less time than he did at sea.
He had to get past all the harborside attractions that tried to separate fishermen from their money and make them forget about their wives. Football games and raucous music blared from wireless sets in saloons. A drunk reeled out of a tavern. He almost ran into George. "Easy, pal," George said, and dodged.
Music with more of a thump and pound to it, music played by real live musicians, poured out of strip joints. Hearing that kind of music made you think about the girls who'd dance to it, and about what they would-or wouldn't-be wearing. You could get drinks in those joints, too, but they'd cost twice as much.
If you didn't want to drink, if you didn't want to watch, if you wanted to get down to business… A swarthy, tired-looking woman about George's age leaned out of a second-story window and beckoned to him. She wasn't wearing anything from the waist up. Her breasts drooped. They seemed tired, too. She tried to sound alluring when she called, "How about it, big boy?"
George kept walking. The whore swore at him. Even her curses sounded tired.
His block of flats stood only a couple of streets farther on. He hurried to it. Unlike the one where he'd lived with his mother, it had an elevator. Most of the time, he took that as proof he'd come up in the world. When he stepped into the lobby now, though, the cage was empty. The car was on some upper floor. He didn't have the patience to wait for it. He went up four flights of stairs, taking them two at a time till his knees got tired.
The key to his apartment was brass. A good thing, too; with all the time he spent out on the ocean, an iron key would have rusted on the chain. He put the key in the lock and turned it.
Connie's startled voice came from the kitchen: "Who's there?" And then, realizing only one person besides her had a key, she went on, "Is that you, George?"
"Well, it's not the tooth fairy and it's not the Easter Bunny and it's not Santa Claus," he answered.
She came rocketing out of the kitchen and into his arms. He squeezed her till she squeaked. She felt wonderful. He didn't stop to think that he'd been at sea so long, the Wicked Witch of the North would have felt good to him. He kissed her. Things might have-no, things would have-gone straight on from there if Bill and Pat hadn't charged him and tried tackling him in ways that would have got flags thrown on any gridiron in the country. Fortunately, they weren't big enough to do any serious damage.
"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" they squealed. If they went on after that, it was in voices only dogs could hear.
He let go of Connie and hugged the boys. They were also good to come home to, in a different way. His wife asked, "How long will you be here this time?"