American Front

"Have to get them to bed early tonight," George remarked. "If we can."

"I don't want to go to bed early," his son declared indignantly. Mary Jane wasn't old enough yet to know what he was talking about.

"You'll do as you're told, though," Enos said.

George, Jr., knew that tone brooked little argument. He changed his tack, asking, "Why do I have to go to bed early? Mama? Daddy? Why?"

"Just because you do," Sylvia answered, glancing at her husband with an expression half amused, half harassed. When you had only occasional nights together, you needed to make the most of them.

And there were reasons sailors coming home from the sea had a salty reputation. "Again, George?" Sylvia whispered in the darkness of their bedroom, feeling him rise against her flank for the fourth time. "You might as well be a bridegroom. Shouldn't you sleep instead?"

"I can sleep on the Ripple," he said as he climbed back on top of her. "I can't do this." She laughed and clasped her arms around his sweaty back.

When the alarm clock jangled at four in the morning, he wished he'd slept more and done other things less. He made the clock shut up, then found a match, scratched it, and used the flame to find and light the gas lamp. Staggering around like a half-dead thing, he fumbled his way into his clothes.

By the time he was dressed, Sylvia, who'd thrown a quilted robe over her white cotton nightdress, pressed a cup of coffee into his hands. He gulped it down, hot and sweet and strong. "You should go back to bed," he told her. She shook her head, as she did whenever he said that in the small hours of the morning. She puckered her lips. He set down the cup and kissed her good-bye.

Some of the streets on the way down to T Wharf had gaslights, some new, brighter electric lamps. The lamps weren't bright enough to keep him from seeing stars in the sky. The air was crisp and cool. Fall wasn't just coming- fall was here. They might get a couple of weeks of Indian summer, and then again they might not.

T Wharf didn't care about day or night; it was busy all the time. And sure enough, there ahead of him strode Charlie White, a knitted wool cap on his head. "Hey, Cookie!" George called. The Negro turned and waved.

For a wonder, the whole crew got to the Ripple on time. "Wouldn't even expect that in the Navy," Patrick O'Do

The Cookie served out more coffee, and then more still; a lot of the fisher men were short on sleep. And if any of them were hung over, well, coffee was good for that, too.

The day dawned bright and clear. Gulls screeched overhead. They knew fishing boats were a good place to cadge a meal, but they weren't smart enough to tell outbound boats from inbound. Off in the distance floated a plume of smoke from a warship outbound ahead of the Ripple. Enos liked seeing that; it made trouble from Confederate cruisers and submarines less likely. The warship, intent on its own concerns, soon left the Ripple behind; the smoke vanished over the eastern horizon.

Though the Ripple was a trawler, everyone fished with long lines on the way out to Georges Bank: no point wasting travel time. The cod and mackerel they caught went into the hold. So did a couple of tilefish. "Shallower water'n you'll usually see 'em in," Lucas Phelps remarked, pulling in a flopping three-foot fish. "More of 'em now than there have been, too, since they almost disappeared thirty years back."

"My pa used to talk about that," George Enos said. "Cold currents shifting almost killed 'em off, or something like that." He headed up to the galley for yet another mug of coffee.

When they reached the Georges Bank that night, the trawl splashed into the sea. The Ripple crawled along, dragging it over the ocean bottom. To keep from drawing raiders, Captain O'Do

But they might have been alone on the ocean. Another clear dawn followed, with water around them stretching, as far as the eye could tell, all the way to the end of the world. No smoke told of other fishing boats or warships anywhere nearby.

Enos was gutting fish when the captain spotted a smoke plume approaching from the east. "Freighter heading in toward Boston," he judged after a spyglass examination. He looked some more. "Carrying something under tarps on the bow, something else at the stern."

The freighter must have spotted the Ripple, too, for she swung toward the trawler. O'Do

And then the captain shouted, "Cut the trawl free! We've got to run for it. Those are guns under there!"

Too late. One of the guns roared, a sound harsh even across a couple of miles of water. A shell splashed into the sea a hundred yards in front of the Ripple's bow. Then the other gun, the one at the armed freighter's stern, belched smoke and fire. That shell landed about as far behind the steam trawler.

Signal flags fluttered up the freighter's lines. Captain O'Do

"What do we do, Captain?" Enos asked. O'Do

But O'Do

V

R ain With sleet in it blew into Arthur McGregor's face as he rode his wagon into Rosenfeld, the hamlet on the Manitoba prairie nearest his farm. At the edge of town, a sentry in a green-gray U.S. Army rain slicker stepped out into the roadway, his boots making wet sucking noises as they went into and came out of the mud. "Let's see your pass, Canuck," he said in a harsh big-city accent.

Wordlessly, McGregor took it out of an inside pocket and handed it to him. The farmer had wrapped the pass in waxed paper before setting out for Rosenfeld, knowing he'd need it: the Americans were sticklers for every bit of punctilio they'd set up in the territory they occupied, and people who didn't go along disappeared into jail or sometimes just disappeared, period.

After carefully inspecting the document, the sentry handed it back. "Awright, go ahead," he said grudgingly, as if disappointed he didn't have an excuse for giving McGregor more trouble. He gestured with his Springfield. Water beaded on the bayonet; he'd done a good job of greasing it to keep it from rusting.

Rosenfeld's only reason for being was that it lay where an east-west railway line and one that ran north-south merged into a single line heading northeast: in the direction of Wi

"Shut the door behind you," called Wilfred Rokeby, the postmaster, when McGregor came in. The farmer obeyed, not blaming him a bit: the coal stove made the interior of the post office deliciously warm. McGregor stood dripping on the mat just inside the door for a couple of minutes before going on up to the counter.