Return Engagement (42 page)

“Oh.” Rodriguez couldn’t tease him about that. He said, “
Gracias a Dios,
everything goes well.”

His friend made the sign of the cross. “I hope so. By all the saints, I hope so. They tell us about victory after victory—heaven knows that’s true.”

“That proves the war is going well,
sí
?” Rodriguez said. The barmaid came back and set two foam-topped mugs on the table. He smiled at her. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

Her answering smile was a professional grimace that showed white teeth. “You’re welcome.” She hurried away, her backfield in motion.

Rodriguez raised his mug.
“Salud.”
He and Carlos Ruiz both drank. Rodriguez sucked foam off his upper lip. “Why aren’t you happy about the war, then?”

Ruiz eyed his beer. “If it’s going as well as they say it is, why haven’t
los Estados Unidos
given up?”

“They’re the enemy,” Rodriguez said reasonably.

“Well, yes.” Ruiz finished his beer and waved to the barmaid for a refill. Rodriguez hadn’t intended to pour his down, but he didn’t want to fall behind, either. He gulped till the mug was empty. Ruiz, meanwhile, went on, “But in 1917 they beat us over and over. They beat us like a drum.” He’d fought in Kentucky and Tennessee, where the worst beatings had happened. “And when they’d beaten us hard enough and long enough, we had to give in. Now everyone says we’re beating them like that. So why aren’t they quitting, the way we had to?”

Rodriguez shrugged. “We’d been fighting for three years then. We couldn’t fight any more. This war is hardly even three months old yet.”

“And if it goes on for three years, we will probably lose again,” Carlos Ruiz said gloomily. “If a little man fights a big man, sometimes he can hit him with a chair right at the start and win like that. But if the big man gets up off the floor and keeps fighting, the little man is in trouble.”

“Countries aren’t men,” Rodriguez said.

Ruiz shrugged again. “I hope not. Because we’ve knocked the United States down, but we haven’t knocked them out.”

The barmaid set fresh beers on the table and took away the empty mugs. Her smile might have been a little warmer—or maybe Rodriguez’s imagination was a little warmer. He was pretty sure she did put more into her walk this time.
She’s just trying to get a bigger tip out of you,
he told himself. He enjoyed watching her even so. Thinking about the war took a real effort. “We’ve cut the United States in half,” he said.

“Sí, es verdad,”
Ruiz said. “But even if it is true, so what?
Why
did we cut
los Estados Unidos
in half? To make them quit fighting, yes? If they don’t quit fighting, what good does it do us?” He started emptying his second mug of beer as methodically as he’d finished the first.

“Well . . .” Rodriguez thought for a little while. “If they’re cut in half, they can’t send men and supplies from one part to the other. That’s what
Señor
Quinn says, and the wireless, too. How can they fight a war if they can’t do that? They’ll run out of men and food and guns.”

“They still have men on both sides. They still have food on both sides, and factories, too.” Carlos Ruiz seemed determined to be glum. “We’ve made it harder for them,
sí, sin duda.
But also without a doubt, we haven’t beaten them unless they decide they’re beaten. It isn’t like it was with us at the end of the last war, when we couldn’t stand up any more. They can go on for a long time if they decide they want to, and it looks like they do.” He tilted back his mug. His throat worked. He set the mug down empty and waved to the barmaid again.

Rodriguez had to gulp to get his mug dry, too, by the time she walked over. He said, “At the rate we’re going,
you’re
not going to be able to stand up any more, and neither am I.” But he nodded when his friend ordered refills for both of them.

Ruiz said, “I’ll be able to get home. I’m not worried about that. But if I get drunk tonight—so what? I don’t do it very often any more. If I have a headache tomorrow, I’ll have a headache, that’s all. That’s tomorrow. Tonight, I’ll be drunk.”

Magdalena would have something besides
so what?
to say to getting drunk. Rodriguez suspected Carlos’ wife would, too. That didn’t make the idea any less tempting. Rodriguez didn’t get drunk very often any more, either. Did that mean he couldn’t do it every once in a while if he felt like it? He didn’t think so. The two beers he’d already drunk argued loudly that they ought to have some company.

Here came the barmaid. She had company for those beers in her hands. “Here you are,
señores,
” she said, bending low to set the fresh mugs on the table. Rodriguez tried to look down her ruffled white blouse. By the way Carlos Ruiz craned his neck now, so did he. By the way the barmaid giggled, she knew exactly what they were doing, and knew they wouldn’t—quite—have any luck.

They drank. The barmaid brought over a plate of
jalapeños.
Those were free, but they made the two men thirstier. They drank some more to put out the fire. They weren’t the only ones doing some serious drinking tonight, either. Somebody at the bar started to sing. It was a song Rodriguez knew. Joining in seemed the only right thing, the only possible thing, to do. He’d never sounded better, at least in his own ears. And the rest of the audience wasn’t inclined to be critical, either.

It was two in the morning when he and Carlos staggered out of
La Culebra Verde.
“Home,” Rodriguez said, and started to laugh. Everything was funny now. It might not be when Magdalena saw the state he was in, but he wasn’t going to worry about that. He wasn’t going to worry about anything, not right this minute. He embraced his friend one last time. They went their separate ways.

The long line of power poles pointed the way home. They went straight across the countryside. Hipolito Rodriguez didn’t, but he did go generally in the same direction. And he found the power poles convenient in another way, too. He paused in front of one of them, undid his trousers, and got rid of a good deal of the beer he’d drunk. A couple of miles farther out of Baroyeca, he did the same thing again.

The night was cool and dry. Days here in late summer kept their bake-oven heat, but the nights—growing longer now—were much more tolerable. Crickets chirped. Moths fluttered here and there, ghostly in the moonlight. Bigger flying shapes were bats and nightjars hunting them.

A coyote trotted past, mouth open in an arrogant, almost-doggy grin.
Have to look out for my lambs,
Rodriguez thought, wondering if he’d remember when he got home. Farmers around here shot coyotes on sight, but the beasts kept coming down out of the mountains and stealing stock.

There was the house, a light on in the front window. He approached with drunken caution; if the light was on, Magdalena might be waiting up for him. And if Magdalena was waiting up, she wouldn’t be very happy.

He tiptoed up the steps. Somehow, he wasn’t so quiet as he wished he would have been. He managed to slam the front door behind him. Even that didn’t bring out his wife. Maybe she’d stayed up till an hour or so ago, and was deep asleep now. That would save him for the time being, but she’d be twice as angry in the morning, and he’d be hung over then. He didn’t look forward to that.

He didn’t want to be
very
hung over in the morning. He knew it was too late to block all the aftereffects of what he’d drunk tonight. Maybe he could ease the pain to come, though, at least a little. He went into the kitchen and flipped on the light in there. He didn’t have to fumble around lighting a lamp. A flick of the switch was all it took. A good thing, too; he might have burned down the house fooling around with kerosene and matches.

In the refrigerator were several bottles of beer. Rodriguez let out a silent sigh of relief; Magdalena might have thrown them all away. He reached for one. It might take the edge off the headache he’d have in the morning. He was
still
drunk, and proved it by knocking over a pitcher of ice water next to the beer on the top shelf.

A desperate, drunken, miraculous grab kept the pitcher from crashing to the floor and bringing Magdalena out with every reason to be furious. It didn’t keep the whole pitcher’s worth of water from splashing down onto the floor and all over everywhere. He jumped and cursed. The cold water froze his toes. He’d hardly felt them for quite a while, but they announced their presence now.

Still swearing under his breath, he fumbled for rags. He did a halfhearted—a very halfhearted—job of cleaning up the mess, or at least that part of it right in front of the refrigerator. Puddles still glittered on the floor in the light of the electric lamp. He started to go after some of them, then shook his head. It was only water. It would dry up. And getting down on his hands and knees was making his head hurt. He didn’t just want that beer. He needed it.

He opened it. He drank it. It wasn’t just delicious, though it was that. It was medicinal. His headache retreated. He started to smile. Maybe he would get away with this after all. He set the bottle on the counter. Then he smiled a sly smile and put it in the trash instead. Magdalena wouldn’t have to know. He wasn’t as sly as he thought, though, and he was drunker than he thought.

As he reached for the light switch, his sandal splashed in one of the puddles he hadn’t bothered sopping up. The instant he touched the switch, he realized he’d made a dreadful mistake. Current coursed through him, stinging like a million hornets. He tried to let go, and discovered he couldn’t.
Just a stupid mistake,
he thought over and over.
Just a stupid . . .

H
onolulu. The Sandwich Islands. Paradise on earth. Warm blue water. Tropic breezes. Palm trees. Polynesian and Oriental and even white women not overencumbered with inhibitions or clothes. Bright sunshine the whole year round.

Every paradise had its serpent. The bright sunshine was Sam Carsten’s.

He’d had duty in Honolulu before. It had left him about medium rare, the way bright sunshine always did. He was too fair to stand it, and he wouldn’t tan. He just burned, and then burned some more. He wished the
Remembrance
were charged with protecting Seattle or Portland, Maine, or, for that matter, Tierra del Fuego. At least then he could stick his nose out on deck without having it turn the color of raw beef.

Staying below in warm weather was no fun, either. The ship’s ventilators ran all the time, but heat from the sun and from the engine room combined to defeat them. Sometimes that drove him topside. He stayed in the shade of the carrier’s island when he could, which helped only so much. Even the reflection of the sun off the Pacific was plenty to scorch him.

The exec noticed his suffering. “Are you sure you want to stay aboard?” Commander Cressy asked. “If you want to transfer to a ship in the North Atlantic—one that’s out to keep the British from sneaking men and arms to Canada, say—I’ll do all I can to put your transfer through.”

“Sir, I’ve been tempted to do that a few times,” Sam answered. “I’ve been tempted, but I’d rather stay here. This is where the action is.”

“Plenty of action everywhere, I’d say,” Cressy observed. “But I do take your point. And if you don’t want to leave us, well, you’d better believe we’re glad to have you. You’re a solid man. You’ve proved that plenty of times—and you may get the chance to do it some more.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” Sam said. The exec’s good opinion mattered to him, probably more than that of any other officer on the ship. Cressy was a man who would soon have a ship of his own, if not a fleet of his own. Hoping to take advantage of his friendly mood, Sam asked, “When do we go into action against the Japs?”

“Damn good question,” Cressy told him. “What I haven’t got for you is a damn good answer. Right now, I’d say it’s more up to Tokyo than to us. We’re playing defense here, trying to make sure they don’t take the Sandwich Islands away from us. We’ve got the
Remembrance
for mobility, and we’ve got as many land-based airplanes as we could ferry over here. We’ve got submersibles—oh, and battleships and cruisers, too. The enemy won’t have an easy time if he comes.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. Back during the Great War, the battlewagons and cruisers would have taken pride of place. He knew that full well; he’d served aboard the
Dakota
back then. In this fight, Commander Cressy tossed them in as an afterthought, and that was only fitting and proper. They could still hit hard—if they ever got close enough to do it. But airplanes, either land-based or flying off carriers, were likely to sink them before they got the chance. Even in the Pacific War, airplane carriers had attacked one another without coming over the horizon.

“The other thing we’ve got is Y-ranging,” Cressy said. “That gives us early warning. We don’t think the Japs do. Most of their engineering is pretty good; their ships and airplanes measure up to anybody’s.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Carsten agreed. “We’ve found that out the hard way.”

“So we have,” the exec said. “But they’re just a little bit slow in electrical engineering. Most of their gear is like what we were using, oh, five years ago. They get the most out of it—never underestimate their skill. It’s one place where we know a few tricks they don’t, though.”

“That could be a big edge,” Sam said.

“It could be, yes. Whether it will be . . .” Commander Cressy shrugged. “It’s like anything else: it’s not only what you’ve got, it’s how well you use it.” He nodded. “I always enjoy passing the time of day with you, Lieutenant. But now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” He hurried away. He always hurried. That added to the impression that nothing ever got by him.

When Sam got leave, he took the trolley from Pearl Harbor east to Honolulu. Hotel Street was where the ratings congregated: an avenue full of bars and dance halls and brothels, all designed to make sure a sailor out on a spree didn’t leave any money in his wallet and had a good time with what he spent. Shore patrolmen tramped along in groups of three or four; traveling in pairs wasn’t enough. Men called them names behind their backs, and sometimes to their faces.