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This particular boat proved harmless. So the searchers said. If they were wrong, if the locals had outfoxed them…George did his best not to think about that. He breathed a sigh of relief when hams and flitches of bacon and sides of beef came aboard. Nothing explosive there.
He wasn't the only one who relaxed after seeing everything was on the up and up. "We keep eating awhile longer," Wally Fodor said.
"Yeah." George nodded. "We keep breathing awhile longer, too. Ain't it a pisser that we aren't getting combat pay any more?"
"Hey, we're at peace now, right?" Fodor said, and the whole gun crew laughed sarcastically. He went on, "'Sides, all the bookkeepers in the Navy Department are a bunch of damn Jews, and they make like it's their own personal money they're saving, for Chrissake. You ask me, we're fuckin' lucky we still get hazardous-duty pay."
"What would you call it when the bumboat blows us halfway to hell?" George said. "Hazardous enough for me, by God."
"Amen, brother," the gun chief said, as if George were a colored preacher heating up his flock.
The gun crews also covered the supply boat as it pulled away from the Oregon. If its crew were going to try anything, logic said they'd do it while they lay right alongside the battleship. But logic said people down here shouldn't try anything at all along those lines. They were well and truly licked. Didn't they understand as much? By the evidence, no.
A few minutes after the boat drew too far away to be dangerous, the Oregon's PA system crackled to life. "George Enos, report to the executive officer's quarters! George Enos, report to the executive officer's quarters on the double!"
As George hurried away from the gun, Wally Fodor called after him: "Jesus, Enos! What the fuck did you do?"
"I don't know." George fought to keep panic from his voice. If the exec wanted you, it was like getting called to the principal's office in high school. Here, George figured he'd be lucky to come away with only a paddling. But he wasn't lying to Fodor, either-he had no idea why he was getting summoned like this. Did they think he'd done something he hadn't? God forbid, had something happened to his family? He found the rosary in his trouser pocket and started working the beads.
Going up into officers' country gave him the willies on general principles. He had to ask a j.g. younger than he was for help finding the exec's quarters. The baby lieutenant told him what he needed to know, and sent him a pitying look as he went on his way. By now, the whole ship would be wondering what he'd done. And he was wondering himself-he had no idea.
He knocked on the open metal door. "Enos reporting, sir."
"Come in, Enos." Commander Hank Walsh was about forty, with hard gray eyes and what looked like a Prussian dueling scar seaming his left cheek. "Do you know a Boston politico named Joe Ke
"Name rings a bell." George had to think for a couple of seconds. "Yeah-uh, yes, sir. He used to get my mother to do work for the Democrats sometimes." What he really remembered was his mother's disdain for Ke
"Family co
"You mean it, sir?" George could hardly believe his ears.
"I mean it." Commander Walsh didn't sound delighted, but he nodded. "It's irregular, but it's legal. No hard feelings here. I know you're not a regular Navy man. I know you have a family back in Boston. You've served well aboard the Oregon, and your previous skippers gave you outstanding fitness reports. If you want to leave, you've paid your dues."
George didn't hesitate for a moment. Walsh might change his mind. "Where's the dotted line, sir? I'll sign."
The exec shoved papers across the desk at him and handed him a pen. "This is the Navy, Enos. You can't get away with signing just once."
So George signed and signed and signed. He would have signed till he got writer's cramp, but it wasn't so bad as that. When he got to the bottom of the stack of papers, he said, "There you go, sir."
"Some of these are for you, for your records and to show the shore patrol and the military police to prove you're not AWOL." Walsh handed him the ones he needed to keep. "Show them to your superiors, too. We're sending a boat ashore at 1400. Can you be ready by then?"
By the clock on the wall behind the exec, he had a little more than an hour to let people know and throw stuff into a duffel. "I sure can. Thank you, sir!"
"Don't thank me. Thank Joe Ke
From what George knew of Joe Ke
Commander Walsh nodded. "We'll take care of it. Get moving. You don't have a lot of time."
"Aye aye, sir." George jumped to his feet and saluted. "Thanks again, sir!"
When he showed Wally Fodor his discharge papers, the gun chief made as if to tear them up. George squawked. Gri
A sailor in the waiting boat grabbed George's duffel at 1400 on the dot. George climbed down into the boat. The sailor steadied him. The boat's outboard motor chugged. It pulled away from the Oregon. George didn't look back once.
When he came ashore, he got a ride to the train station in an Army halftrack. "Nice to know they love us down here," he remarked to the soldier sitting across from him.
"Yeah, well, fuck 'em," the guy in green-gray said, which only proved the Army and the Navy had the same attitude about the Confederates.
The station was a young fortress, with concrete barricades keeping motorcars at a distance. There were barrels near the entrance, and machine guns on the roof. George showed his papers at the ticket counter and got a voucher for the trip up to Boston. When the train came in, it had machine guns atop several cars. All the same, bullet holes pocked the metalwork.
Most of the men aboard were soldiers going home on leave. When they found out George didn't have to come back, they turned greener than their uniforms. You lucky stiff was the least of what he heard from them. George just smiled and didn't let them provoke him. He didn't intend to end up in the brig instead of in Co
Nobody fired at the train while it worked its way through the wreckage of the Confederacy. As George had when he traveled through the USA during the war, he eyed the damage with amazement-and with relief that he hadn't had to fight on land. He'd seen plenty of danger, but it might have been nothing next to this. Co
What now? he wondered. Now he would go out to T Wharf, hope his boat didn't hit a mine loose from its moorings, and come home to watch the kids grow up and to watch Co
The stretch from the border up past Philadelphia was as battered as anything down in the CSA. He didn't see any of the damage from the superbomb in Philly-or miss it. The towns closer to New York City hadn't been hit so hard. From New York City north, he saw only occasional damage. The main exception was Providence. The Confederates had plastered the Navy training center as hard as they could.