Breakthroughs

The trolley driver-who’d leaned crutches behind his seat and had one empty trouser leg-worked the brake and brought the car squealing to a halt at the edge of the company town. He nodded to Jefferson Pinkard as the soldier got off. Jeff nodded back. He felt the driver’s eyes on him as he walked away. Did the fellow hate him for his long, smooth strides? How could anyone blame him if he did?

Everything was quiet as Jeff headed home. Most of the cottages were dark, with men away for the war or working the evening shift or asleep if they worked days or nights. Here and there, lamplight yellow as melted butter spilled out of windows. A couple of dogs barked as Pinkard passed their houses. One of them, chained in the front yard, rushed at him, but the chain kept the big-mouthed, ski

Jeff turned onto his little lane. He felt swept back in time to the days before the war. How many times he’d walked this way with Bedford Cu

There stood the Cu

Lamplight shone from the curtained window of Pinkard’s own house, just past the Cu

Even knowing she was awake, he went up the walk on tiptoe. If he couldn’t give her the best surprise possible, he’d still give her the biggest surprise he could. His thumb and palm closed on the doorknob. Gently, gently, he turned it. The door swung open without a squeak. He was glad Emily had kept the hinges oiled. In Birmingham, anything that didn’t get oiled rusted.

The lamplight glinted off Emily’s shining hair. Seeing that before he saw anything else, Jeff began, “Hey, darlin’, I’m…home.” What had started as a glad cry ended as a hiss, like air escaping from a punctured i

Emily half sat, half knelt on the floor in front of the divan. On the divan, his legs splayed wide, lolled Bedford Cu

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Cu

“Close the door, Jeff,” Emily said. Her eyes were wide and staring. She sounded eerily self-possessed, like somebody who’d just staggered out of a train wreck.

Mechanically, Pinkard did. He was stu

Cu

Jeff’s wits began to work. “Get your clothes on. Get the hell out of here. I ain’t go

Bedford Cu

“Why?” Jefferson Pinkard asked the age-old question of the husband betrayed.

Naked still, Emily shrugged. Her breasts, firm and pink-tipped, bobbled briefly. She was, Jeff saw, over the jaundice that troubled some munitions workers who handled cordite too much. “Why?” she echoed, and shrugged again. “You weren’t here. I missed you. I missed it. Finally, I missed it so much I couldn’t stand it any more, and so-” Yet another shrug.

“But Bedford-” My best friend! was another husbandly howl as old as time.

Emily got to her feet in a smooth, graceful motion Jeff couldn’t possibly have imitated. She walked up to him and took his hands in hers. He knew what she was doing. He could hardly have helped knowing what she was doing. “He was here, that’s all, darlin’,” she said. “If you’d been here, too, I never would’ve looked at him. You know that’s so. But you was in Georgia and Texas and all them damn places, and-” She shrugged one more time. Her nipples barely brushed the breast of his tunic.

No, he could hardly have helped knowing what she was doing. That didn’t mean it didn’t work. His breath caught in his throat. His heart thuttered. He’d missed it, too, but he hadn’t realized-he hadn’t had the faintest notion-how much till she stood bare before him.

She took a step backwards, still holding his hands. He took a step forward, after her. She took another step, and another, leading him back to the divan. When he sat, it was where Bedford Cu

She didn’t kiss him on the lips. That might have reminded him where her mouth had just been. Instead, she leaned over and lowered her head. He pressed her down on him, his hands tangling in her thick hair. She gagged a little, but did not pull away.

Moments later, he exploded. He let Emily pull back far enough to gulp convulsively. Then, unasked, she returned to what she’d been doing. He stiffened again, faster than he would have believed he could. When he was hard, she got up on her knees and swung her right leg over him, as if she were mounting a horse. She impaled herself on him and began to ride.

Her cries of joy must have wakened half the neighborhood. Then, throatily, she added, “I never made noise like that for Bedford.” Jeff’s hands clutched her meaty buttocks till she whimpered in pain and pleasure mixed. He drove deep into her, again and again. And, as he groaned and shuddered in the most exquisite pleasure he’d ever known, he wished with all his soul he were back in a muddy trench in Texas, under artillery bombardment from the Yankees.

Sweat ran down George Enos’ face. The sun stood higher in the sky than it had any business doing at this season of the year, at least to his way of thinking. The USS Ericsson was down in the tropics now, nosing around after the submarines making life miserable for the warships and freighters that were trying to strangle the trade route between Argentina and England.

“What do you think?” he asked Carl Sturtevant. “Are we after English boats, or are the Rebs out here giving their pals a hand?”

“Damned if I know,” answered the petty officer who ran the depth-charge launcher. “Damned if I care, either. Knowing who they are doesn’t change how I do my job. We keep them too busy either going after us or trying to get away from us, they aren’t going to be able to do anything else.”

“Yeah,” Enos said. “Just between you and me, I’d sooner see ’em trying to get away than going after us.”

Sturtevant looked him up and down. “Any fool can see you ain’t a career Navy man,” he said after a brief pause for thought.