Harry Turtledove - Cayos in the Stream

You nod to your crew. “Well, boys, we did it,” you say. “Now we go home.” For, you realize, this is the end of it. Publicity will mean you can never take the Pilar U-boat hunting again. Reporters and newsreel cameras will come down on you like vultures onto a dead cow. You will have to tell them something. You do not intend to tell them too much. You want to write about this yourself, after all-and to get paid for writing about it.

“Right, boss.” “Sure thing, boss.” “ Si, Senor .” Everyone on the boat talks to you the way Josep did. You are a hero to the crew. They are heroes, too, though they may not feel it yet. If they did not shoot straight and fast when you gave the word, you could not have done what you did.

You are greeted as heroes when you come into Havana. Guantanamo must have spread the word. Tugboats blow their steam whistles. Fireboats shoot streams of water high in the air. American and Cuban Navy officers come aboard. They pound you on the back. They shake your hand. One of the Cubans quietly slips you a shot of rum. It is some of the finest you ever drank. It slides down smooth as mother’s milk, then explodes like a frag in your belly.

As soon as you go ashore, the reporters jump on you. Flash bulbs pop as fast as a Tommy gun can fire. Movie cameramen grind away. You give them as much of the story as you want to let other people write. They want more, and more, and more yet. Soon, you almost wish you never set eyes on the U-boat.

Almost.

“What kind of medal will the Navy give you for this?” one of them asks.

“I didn’t do it for a medal. I did it because I hate Hitler,” you answer, which is true enough. They write it down. You are not even sure the Navy can give you a medal. As you told the j.g. in Guantanamo, you are not in it. It would be nice if they could, though.

You drink your way through the night. In the morning, you feel exactly like death. They give you the hair of the dog that bit you. It was one big, mean dog. The hair warms you up to death warmed over. They pour you onto a C-47 and fly you to Miami. It may be an Army transport, but it has rum on it. By the time the landing gear hits the runway, you feel amazingly lifelike.

More reporters. More newsreel cameras. You give the same spiel you gave in Havana. You give as much of it as you can remember, anyhow. You look manly. You smile. You shrug. “We were in the right place at the right time,” you say. “Anybody who goes out hunting U-boats needs some luck on his side. We had it.” Heroes do not brag. They do not need to. What they have done speaks for them.

The Navy puts you on a train to Washington. You sleep well in a Pullman. You have had plenty of practice. And there is a club car on the train, even if the dry Navy put you on it. You get to Washington the next day. You are just fine when you do.

Still more photographers and reporters meet you at Union Station. It is almost in the shadow of the Capitol. The flashbulb barrage seems brighter in the gloom than it did in Havana. When you blink, green-purple blotches cloud your sight.

A vice admiral also meets you at Union Station. He pumps your hand up and down like a man working a jack to fix a flat. “Congratulations, Mr. Hemingway!” he booms. “You have done your country proud. And you have done the Hooligan Navy proud, too.”

You like him better for that. “Thank you very much, sir,” you say, and you sound as if you mean it.

Then damned if he does not pin a gong on you. It is the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. “This medal is given for exceptionally meritorious service to the government in a duty of great responsibility,” he says. “It is awarded to persons in the Navy and the Marine Corps. It has also been given to officers in the Royal Navy. Because of that, we decided a skipper in the Hooligan Navy should be eligible to win it, as well.”

Except for a blue enamel circle, the body of the medal looks like a goldpiece. There is a gold star with an anchor on it above the body. The ribbon is sky blue, with a vertical gold stripe. But you do not care what it looks like. It could be a Blatz bottle cap with a ribbon of silver paper from a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint. You care about what it means.

“Thank you, sir,” you say again. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Doing what I did was my privilege. And it was my pleasure.” The reporters write it down. Their pencils scritch across their notebooks. You give good copy. You always have. You always will.

The vice admiral whisks you away to a studio. They want you to record a spot for buying war bonds. You ask if you can fiddle with the script before you read it. They let you. They had better! It sounds a lot better once you go through it. You give good copy all kinds of ways.

Then they take you to the White House for dinner with the President and the First Lady. Dinner with photographers, too, of course. Martha is friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. They write back and forth. Eleanor has personality, no doubt about it. But she is as homely and dumpy in person as she is in photos. For his sake-for the country’s sake-you hope Franklin gets some on the side.

He says, “You had to be crazy to pull a stunt like that. It may have worked, but you had to be crazy to try it. That’s my professional judgment, Mr. Hemingway.” He was assistant secretary of the Navy during the last war. His professional judgment is worth something.

“I may have been crazy to try it, Mr. President, but it worked,” you answer.

FDR likes that. He laughs. His cigarette holder twitches. Then he gets back to dinner. It is nothing special. The lamb has been cooked to death. You hope he gets some decent chow on the side, too.

They take you up to New York so you can tell your story on the radio. Once you have told it three or four times, it might as well have happened to somebody else. But while you are there, you make a book deal to tell it properly. After For Whom the Bell Tolls , you are hot. You get a fat advance. And the hat-check girl at your hotel is frisky in the sack.

By then, other news starts to crowd you out. The war makes sure there is plenty of other news. The publicity machine has done what it can with you-and to you. It spits you out and lets you go.

Go you do, gladly. Back to Cuba. Back to your life. Back to your wife.

No man is a hero to his valet. You do not know who said that. You do not even know if it is true. But it sounds as if it ought to be true, which is nearly as good.

You also do not know whether no man is a hero to his wife. You soon know too damn well you are no hero to Martha. She is even angrier now than she was before you sank the U-boat.

You do not want an angry woman at Finca Vigia. You want a woman who will give you a proper hero’s reward-and never mind the hat check girl. The hat check girl was for the fun of it. Yes, Martha takes you to bed. She knows it means something to you, although it has never meant so much to her.

The two of you are still in bed together, though, when she starts in on you. As soon as you roll off her, she says, “Good Lord, Ernest, you must have been out of your mind.”

“What?” you say irritably. You did not mind when the President made cracks like that. But your own temper always catches fire from the sparks she strikes. “Can’t you at least give it a rest till we’ve both had a cigarette, for Christ’s sake?”

“No.” Still naked, she sits up. Looking at her, you remember why you had to have her. One hell of a lot of woman there. One stubborn bitch, too. You ground down your other women till they suited you. Martha does not grind down. She grinds back. “It was bad enough when I thought you were playing games out on the ocean.”

“I told you I wasn’t,” you growl.