Harry Turtledove: Last Orders

The explosive in one of the eels would have been plenty to blow up the steamer. But the blast that followed a midships hit from one of the eels was far bigger than a torpedo warhead alone could have caused. The U-30 staggered in the water; it felt and sounded as if someone were pounding on the boat with iron rods the size of telegraph poles.

“Der Herr Gott im Himmel!” Lieutenant Beilharz exclaimed. “What the devil was that?”

“I don’t exactly know,” Lemp answered. “No, not exactly. But whatever it was, I think the Reich is lucky it never got to Norway.” He peered through the periscope. Nothing was left of the steamship but small bits of flotsam and a hell of a lot of smoke. Somebody in England and Norway would be disappointed, but he wasn’t.

Shibe Park was a pretty good place to see a ballgame no matter where you sat. With the Philadelphia A’s duking it out with the St. Louis Browns to see who’d have bragging rights to seventh place and who’d mope in the basement, Peggy Druce felt as if she had the grandstand to herself.

She didn’t quite. A couple of thousand other optimists raised a cheer for Connie Mack’s men. But, though she’d bought a ticket well back in the lower deck, the ushers didn’t fuss when she moved down closer to the action. When you had a small crowd in a big ballpark, nobody worried about such details.

From right behind the third-base dugout, she could hear the players chattering among themselves. They cheerfully swore at one another and at the umpires. As far as they were concerned, they were by themselves out there. A delicately raised woman might have been shocked-they talked as foully as soldiers. Peggy found herself more amused than anything else. The filthy language held no malice she could find.

“Hot dogs! Get your hot dogs!” a vendor shouted. Peggy got herself two. At her request, the man slathered them with mustard and onions. She liked onions. And she was here by herself. If her breath smelled strong, she wouldn’t offend anyone she cared about.

She got herself a couple of sacks of roasted peanuts, too, and a bottle of beer, and then another bottle of beer. She was good for the long haul, in other words. The game would have been more fun with Herb sitting next to her and complaining about how lousy the Athletics were.

But Herb wasn’t there. Herb wouldn’t be there. She glanced down at her left hand. Yes, she could still see the pale line on her fourth finger, the line where her wedding ring had shielded the skin from the sun for so long. She didn’t wear a ring on that finger any more, though. Why should she, when she wasn’t married any more? Herb had gone on a trip to Nevada for the government, and he’d Reno-vated her while he was there.

Now that he was back in Philadelphia, they were both doing their best to be civilized about it. He’d been more than generous in the settlement. She had the house and the Packard. He was living in a flat near his law office and driving a ratty old Hupmobile.

The war and the long separation it forced on them had killed their marriage as surely as a U-boat’s torpedo killed the luckless sailors aboard a destroyer. Peggy didn’t want to be divorced. But being married hadn’t been a whole lot of fun lately, either.

The A’s went ahead, 3–2, in the bottom of the fourth. There were a lot of short fly balls. The horsehide didn’t go smack! off the bat, the way Peggy was used to. It made kind of a dull thud instead. The cork that livened up the center of the ball was a strategic national resource these days. She didn’t know what they were using instead. By the way the ball didn’t move, she suspected it was a cheap grade of cement.

But the Philadelphia cleanup hitter somehow caught one square. He put it over the head of the Brownies’ center fielder. It rolled all the way to the base of the center-field fence. In Shibe Park, that was 468 feet from the plate. The batter wasn’t a gazelle on the bases, but he didn’t need to be. He didn’t even have to slide to score on his inside-the-park homer.

She whooped and hollered and raised a beer bottle high in salute. A gray-haired man sitting a few seats down from her was cheering, too. They grinned at each other, the way people will when they’re both rooting for the same team. Then he said, “Now let’s see if we can hold on to it.”

“It’s only the Browns,” Peggy answered. “They’re as rotten as we are, or just about. Half their guys are in the Army.” Half the Athletics were, too, but she didn’t dwell on that. She was a fan, not a sportswriter.

In the top of the fifth, the first St. Louis batter took four in a row high and wide and trotted down to first base. The second Brownie up swung at the first pitch and missed. Over in the St. Louis dugout on the first-base side, the manager screamed “Shit!” at the top of his lungs. Everybody in the park must have heard him. In his shoes, Peggy would have said the same thing. If the pitcher was wild, you wanted to make him throw a strike before you started flailing away.

He eyed the runner, went into his stretch, and delivered again. And the Brownie batter swung again. This time, he lofted a lazy pop foul. The third baseman ran toward the stands to see if he could get it. But he ran out of room-it came down in the seats.

It came down, in fact, in the hands of the guy sitting a few seats away from Peggy. He made a smooth two-handed catch, a catch that said he’d played the game a time or three.

“Sign him up!” yelled a leather-lunged fan a bit farther back. Any nice catch in the stands meant you’d hear that. With the goons the A’s had in the outfield, it might not even have been a terrible idea.

The gray-haired man looked as pleased with himself as if he were seven years old. Peggy didn’t blame him. “I’m so jealous,” she said. “I’ve been coming to games since before the turn of the century, and I never once got a foul ball even before they started letting you keep them. This is about as close as I ever came, as a matter of fact.”

He tossed the baseball up and down a couple of times. Then, to her amazement, he tossed it to her. She managed to catch it-not so neatly as he had, but at least it didn’t land on the concrete and roll away. “Enjoy it,” he said. “Give it to your son so he can play with it.”

He could have said grandson; she’d admitted she was no spring chicken. But he was too nice. “I don’t have kids,” she said. She’d miscarried with Herb till her doctor told her she’d be putting herself in danger by trying again. After that, it was French letters and perversions. She wondered what kind of mother she would have made. She’d never get the chance to find out now.

“No?” He raised a busy eyebrow. “Too bad.” He touched the brim of his fedora. “I’m Dave-Dave Hartman.”

Peggy gave her own name. Meanwhile, the Browns’ batter struck out. Their manager gave him more hell when he glumly slammed his bat into the rack in the dugout.

She and Dave kept talking while the game moved forward. She found out he was a master machinist currently between jobs because he had a bad back and the shop he’d been working for didn’t want to give him a chair while everybody else had to stand in front of a lathe.

“Well, to heck with ’em, then,” Peggy said, full of irate sympathy.

“That’s what I told ’em,” he answered. “ ’Course, I might’ve put it a little stronger-yeah, just a little.”

“I sure hope you did.” Peggy nodded emphatically.

By then, he’d slid over till he was only a couple of seats from her so they could talk more readily. When the fellow with the tray of beer bottles came by, Dave held up his hand with two fingers raised. He handed Peggy one of the bottles. “Well, thank you,” she said, and reached over with it. They clinked. They drank. They smiled.