Last Orders: The War That Came Early Read Online Free Page A

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 herselftwo. 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