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When Pappas had looked around Tarpon Springs and considered his options, he found few. He had not excelled academically—it had taken some tutoring for him to actually graduate high school—and he certainly had not performed well in any sport. Working long hours on the boats had not allowed for any athletics.
Then, last summer, as the Sophia, one of his father’s two wooden work boats, headed for port loaded with sea sponges and grouper and snapper, he had seen a Coast Guard cutter rumble past. The ship was at least one hundred feet long—more than three times the length of the Sophia—and fast. More impressive, though, was a crew member at the stern: He stood at what Pappas was pretty sure had to be a machine gun. Maybe a .50 caliber. And he seemed to be making a slow salute or wave in Pappas’s direction as the cutter continued past.
Pappas, hosing fish guts off his boots and the deck, had made his decision then and there. Joining the Coast Guard would give him the opportunity to be paid to travel far, if he wanted. Or he could stay close to home, as this cutter proved was possible. And with the United States having just been bombed into the war, women loved a man in uniform. Including Ana.
When Pappas went to enlist, the United States Coast Guard recruiter down there in Tampa could not have agreed with him more.
“And I can request where I’d want to be assigned?” Pappas had asked him.
“Hell, son,” the recruiter said, handing him a pen and the enlistment papers, “you can request anything you want!” He pointed. “Your autograph goes right there.”
Pappas had not requested Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
The last place on God’s green earth that Pappas expected to be in the middle of winter was on a deserted beach in a cold rain. With the world at war and being two-thirds water—that was one thing he had actually absorbed when he hadn’t been daydreaming at Tarpon Springs High—Pappas figured the odds should have been in his favor that, rain or shine, he would instead be manning, say, a USCG cutter .50 caliber machine gun in the act of protecting U.S. merchant marine ships shuttling war supplies.
Or something, for Christ’s sake.
Certainly not a yeoman third class on coast watch, standing on a dune in wet sand up to his ankles and looking out through binoculars at the black-gray seas of the Atlantic under an even blacker-grayer layer of clouds.
Sure, there had been more than a little hysteria about the security of America’s shores after they caught those Kraut spies last summer, but that had long ago died down. And what idiots would again try doing something with subs that had already failed them? Even the Krauts couldn’t be that stupid.
So far, Pappas had heard only what sounded like some drunken celebrating—at one point that naughty, deep-throated laugh of a female having too much fun—but that had been inland, toward the bungalows and bars of the town of Jacksonville Beach, the voices carried out on the wind.
Here on the beach, he had not seen anything all night, and he had no reason to think he would see anything all morning. Especially in this impossible soup.
And, he thought, for Christ’s sake, what if I did? They didn’t even issue me a weapon. Just a damned whistle, these binocs, and as a special treat—whoopee!—a hoagie sandwich.
Peter thought about Ana.
At least that part of his plan had not soured. Yet. They still wrote to one another, though the span between her letters seemed to be getting longer each time, and the length of her letters shorter and less, well, personally detailed.
He reached inside his poncho and felt in his breast pocket for the letter that he’d received from her just a few days ago. She had written after Valentine’s Day, all excited about the chocolates he had arranged to have sent to her, but the letter otherwise was filled with generalities, and certainly no specifics about their plans together.
Peter was more than aware that if he had not volunteered to join the Coast Guard, he very likely would have been with Ana on Saturday night—and maybe into this Sunday morning—and there would have been absolutely no chance that she was with some other guy who also had found her many fine qualities desirable.
He suddenly felt very sad and lonely.
And while he was a little hungry—Hell, I always seem hungry—the hoagie sandwich, a thick, soft roll slathered with butter and packed with turkey, was really not going to be much of a consolation.
Pappas walked toward one of the footpaths between the dunes until he found a weather-beaten log that looked as if it had been beached there for decades. He sat on it.
He considered rereading Ana’s letter—it was upbeat and would probably cheer him—but realized it simply was too dark to see much of anything, let alone read a piece of paper. Besides, the rain would make the ink on the letter run and likely dilute the delicate fragrance of the perfume that she had misted it with and he didn’t want to risk ruining a letter that he had read only three times so far. And who knew when she’d write next?
Instead, he put the binoculars beside him on the log, then dug down in his wool coat till he found the inside pocket that held the wrapped-in-waxed-paper hoagie. He pulled it out, pulled back the paper, and was surprised to discover that it was somewhat warm, at least in relation to the conditions outside his poncho.
Pappas again thought of the letter and the perfume and suddenly had a mental image of Ana. The vision caused a stir in his groin. He could see Ana, deeply tan and in her black swimsuit, the one with the low-cut front and the back open impossibly far down. She was lying on her side, on a towel just above where the gulf surf rolled to its highest point on the bright white sand.
He looked at the sandwich, looked into the dark distance, shrugged.
Pushing back the pangs of hunger, he ducked his head completely inside the poncho, brought the sandwich in under the same cover, then unbuttoned his fly, made himself accessible, ran his fingers through the bun in order to coat them with the butter, and, his hand thus lubricated, reached down and found himself again as he pictured Ana peeling off her black swimsuit.
[ THREE ]
Unterseeboot 134
30 degrees 36 minutes 5 seconds North Latitude
81 degrees 39 minutes 1 second West Longitude
