The Grapple

“Yes, sir,” Carsten agreed. “For escorting convoys, for going after submarines-no problems there. But the Josephus Daniels has done a lot of things she’s not designed for, too. If she keeps doing them, her luck’ll run out one day. I know it’s a busy war. I’m not complaining-but you asked.”

“Most people would say everything was fine and let it go,” the captain remarked. “They’d be afraid of messing up their careers if they popped off.”

Sam laughed. “What have I got to worry about, sir? I’m never going to command a cruiser, let alone anything bigger. Either I stay on my ship till the war’s over or I get a real destroyer. The difference isn’t worth flabbling about. So I guess I can tell the truth if I feel like it.”

“Yond Carsten has a hard and mustang look,” the note-taking officer said. “Such men are dangerous.”

That rang a bell in Sam’s mind. He had to reach way back to figure out why. “Julius Caesar!” he exclaimed. “We did that in English the semester before I chucked school and chucked my father’s farm and joined the Navy.”

“If you still remember, you either had a really good teacher or a really bad one,” the officer said. “Which was it?”

“Miss Brewster was good,” Sam answered. “I can still quote the start of The Canterbury Tales, too… But this isn’t a literature class.”

“No,” the other officer said-wistfully? “But you’ve told us what we need to know. Why don’t you go enjoy New York City? If you can’t have a good time here, chances are you’ve got no pulse.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll do that.” Carsten got to his feet and saluted. The captain who’d done most of the talking returned the gesture. Sam left before the assembled officers changed their minds. A young lieutenant commander was waiting to go before them next. Saluting him as he went, Sam hurried out.

He flagged a cab. “Where to, Skipper?” the driver asked. He almost dropped his teeth-she was a woman, a brassy blonde somewhere around forty-five.

But why not? If she was pushing a hack, a man could do something more closely co

So he let the lady cab driver take him to Broadway instead. That was a longer ride and a classier destination than he’d had in mind, but what the hell. The Winter Garden was a big, fancy theater. JOSE’S HAYRIDE, the marquee said. “This’ll do it?” Sam asked as he paid the driver.

“Pal, if this doesn’t do it, you’re dead,” she answered, unconsciously echoing the officer with the notebook.

Quite a few Army and Navy men were buying tickets, which seemed encouraging. They cost a five-spot, which was either encouraging or appalling, depending on how you looked at things. A pretty usherette guided Sam to his seat.

He liked the music-Woody Butler was one of his favorites. The comic had his trademark greasepaint glasses marked on his face. He spent most of his time leering at the female lead. So did Sam. The cab driver hadn’t been kidding. Daisy June Lee had a beautiful face, legs to die for, and a balcony that outdid anything in Romeo and Juliet. By the howls and whistles from the audience, she was wreaking havoc on every man there. Sam gave forth with his share and then some.

She didn’t show as much of herself as a stripper would have, but what she did show was more worth watching. It wasn’t one of Woody Butler’s best scores, but it was better than most of what the competition put out. Besides, when Daisy June Lee was on stage the orchestra could have been playing kazoos and bazookas for all Sam cared. And even when she wasn’t, the comic with the painted-on spectacles kept him laughing.

He joined the standing ovation when the show ended. When Daisy June Lee took her bows, he hoped she would explode out of her tight top. She bowed extra low, too, as if challenging the laws of gravity. That made the applause even louder and more frantic. The top, of course, stayed in place. She gri

Then the comic came out and made as if to unbutton his shirt. He looked wounded unto death when the crowd laughed instead of cheering. That only made people laugh louder, which made him look more wounded yet.

Sam hated to leave, even if he knew perfectly well that Daisy June Lee was bound to have a boyfriend-and even if she didn’t, she wouldn’t give a damn about an overage two-striper. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what’s a heaven for?-another fragment from his lit class ran through his head.

He waved down another cab in front of the Winter Garden. This driver was a man: a man with a hook doing duty for his left hand, the one that stayed on the wheel. He drove well enough. Sam tipped him better than he had the woman who’d taken him to the theater.

“Everything all right?” he asked Lieutenant Zwilling when he came aboard the Josephus Daniels.

“Yes, sir,” the exec said. “You’re back sooner than I expected.”

Sam shrugged. “I had a good time.” Except when I was talking about you, I’m afraid. “You want to see a gal you’ll never forget, go watch Jose’s Hayride at the Winter Garden.”

“Maybe I will, sir.” By the way Zwilling spoke, he didn’t mean it. What did he do for fun? Anything? Poor bastard, Sam thought. Zwilling probably got his kicks telling other people what to do. If that wasn’t a dead-end street, Sam had never seen one.

Flora Blackford turned on the wireless in the kitchen and waited for it to warm up as the coffee started to perk and she used a spatula to turn the eggs frying in a pan. The eggs got done about the time the wireless came on. A few seconds later, two slices of toast popped up. The coffee, ru

She almost didn’t recognize the patriotic song coming out of the wireless. The singer and her band didn’t seem well matched. She was more than good enough, in a conventional way. The band, by contrast, did things with syncopation and harmonies nobody else in the USA would have imagined. Flora paused with a bite of fried egg halfway to her mouth. Is that…? she wondered.

The song ended. “That was Kate Smith, with ‘God Bless the Stars and Stripes,’” the a

“Thought so!” Flora said, and got up to pour herself a cup of coffee.

“Satchmo and his musicians do bless the Stars and Stripes,” the a

Those messages were important only to the advertisers who paid for them: a soap company, a cosmetics company, a prominent brand of fountain pens, and a cigarette maker that said its products came from “the finest tobacco available.” She didn’t know how many letters she’d had from constituents in the armed forces complaining about the cigarettes that came with their rations. She couldn’t do anything about those complaints, however much she wanted to; U.S. tobacco simply didn’t measure up to what the Confederates grew.

“And now the news,” the a

“U.S. forces report significant advances in northern Georgia and western Te