American Front

"Best thing he could have done for me was shoot me through the head," Jacob said. "Morphia's the next best thing, though. I'm still on fire inside, but it's not as big a fire." He yawned; the drug was making him sleepy. Though his bedroom was rather dim, the pupils of his gray eyes were as small as if he'd been in bright sunshine.

He yawned again, then started to say something. The words turned into a soft snore. Without his seeming to realize it, his eyelids slid shut. The snore got deeper, raspier; A

She walked out into the hall and called one of the servants: "Julia!" When the Negro woman had come into Jacob's bedroom, she said, "I want you to sit here and make sure my brother does not lie down, no matter what. If he starts to slump away from the pillows that are supporting him, you are to straighten him up. Someone will have to be here all the time when he's asleep. I'll make arrangements with Scipio for that. Do you understand what I've told you?"

"Yes, ma'am," Julia said. "Don' let Mistuh Jacob lay hisself down, no matter what."

"That's right. You stay here till he wakes up or till someone takes your place." When Julia nodded again, A

In her office, a few doors down from Jacob's room, the telephone rang. She hurried down the hallway, the silk of her dress rustling around her ankles. Picking up the earpiece, she spoke into the mouthpiece: "A

"How do, Miss A

She needed a moment to place the name, even though he'd written to her more than once after their encounter on the train to New Orleans: the randy submersible skipper. "Hello, Lieutenant Kimball," she said. "I'm well, thank you. I didn't expect to hear from you. Where are you calling from?"

"Lieutenant Commander Kimball now," he told her proudly, "though I reckon you know me well enough to call me Roger." That was true in a biblical sense, but probably in no other. "Where am I at? I'm in Charleston, that's where. Fishing over on the other coast is so bad, they moved a good many of us back here."

"I wish you luck with your fishing," A

Kimball did think. "Since I'm so close now, I was figurin' on gettin' me some liberty time, and then comin' up there and…" He let his voice fade, but she knew what he had in mind. Since she'd already given herself to him, he thought he could have her any time he wanted.

That she'd made a related calculation about Jacob and her serving women never once entered her mind. What did enter it was anger. "Lieutenant Commander Kimball, my brother just now came from the Western Kentucky front, suffering from chlorine in the lungs. I am not really in the best of positions to entertain visitors"-let him take that however he would-"at the present time."

"I'm very sorry to hear that, Miss A

"It isn't good," A

"I really do hope he gets better," Kimball said, and then, half to himself, "Nice to know there's somethin' in this war you don't have to worry about aboard a submersible." That brief bit of self-reflection done, he went on, "All right, I won't come up there right away-you'll be busy and all. Maybe in a few weeks, after I make a patrol or two."

His arrogance was breathtaking, so much so that A

"I promise, Miss A

George Enos set his gutting knife down on the deck of the steam trawler Spray, opened the ice-filled hold, and threw in the haddock and halibut he'd just finished cleaning. Then he went back to the latest load of fish the trawl had just scooped up from the bottom of Brown's Bank.

The seaman who was helping him clean the fish, a fellow named Harvey Kemmel who spoke with a harsh Midwestern accent utterly unlike Enos' New England dialect, wiped his face on his sleeve and said, "This here fishing for a living, it's damned hard work, you know?"

"I had noticed that, as a matter of fact," George answered dryly as he yanked another squirming halibut up off the deck, slit its belly open, and pulled out the guts. He tossed the fish into the hold and grabbed another one.

Patrick O'Do

"Same with me, Skipper," George Enos agreed, "and I heard Charlie say the same thing about the galley. I like it that we're all still together-except poor Lucas, I mean."

"Me, too," O'Do

Work went on. Work always went on, and there were never enough men to do it. Like Harvey Kemmel, several of the other sailors were working aboard a steam trawler for the first time. That meant O'Do

One of the new men, a tall, ski