Rescue

dinner.“
    “Okay.“
    After his car was out of the driveway, Doris stared at me. “You heard him, right?“
    “Heard him?“
    “The way he sounded. The last time he sounded that way was when we visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Howard and I went there after we saw the Wall.“
    I nodded, thinking of my own trip there.
    “We found Mike’s name on the Wall, Panel 3-East, and then Howard said we should go to the museum, it wasn’t that far. So we did. You’re supposed to order tickets in advance, but it was sunny outside, not so many people wanted to go in and ruin a nice day visiting with horrors. And so they took us.
    “And everything we saw, John, was a horror. The replica of Daniel’s House, the kind of place where the Jews and others lived. An office bridge with the names of the towns they were taken from, towns that got wiped out by their being taken. Replicas of the cattle cars they were moved in and the camps they were moved to. The worst for me was the room of shoes.“
    “Shoes?“
    “Shoes, piled up in heaps on both sides of the walkway in between. Thousands and thousands of shoes the Nazis took off the victims before they killed them. And I broke down there, John, broke down and cried at all the shoes, all the children’s shoes that the monsters were saving for somebody else to use. But Howard? He was like he was tonight, kind of even-keeled, planning our time there to be sure we’d see everything. The only time he showed anything was when we got to the rooms with the soldiers, our soldiers, liberating the camps. And he stood there and cried, John. But as much for the soldiers as the victims, because he’d been in the South Pacific and hadn’t seen the war in Europe, what the Nazis did to the children there.“ Her voice suddenly changed. “You’re going to get my husband killed tonight.“
    “Not if I can help it, Doris.“
    She shook her head. “No. No, you don’t understand. What I’m saying, John, is Howard never quite forgave himself for living through the war. I know that sounds stupid, but he never quite did. He’s been glad for our life together, glad we had Mike to raise, even after we lost him. But Howard always thought he himself would die a hero, like so many of his friends did when he was spared.“
    “ Doris —“
    “Let me finish here. Even his son died a hero. Not in Howard’s war, but in yours. Do you see?“
    “Doris, all I can do—“
    “—is see that my Howard dies well.“
    I stared at her, thinking back to Howard’s three questions the first time I’d met him.
    She said, “You saw Howard on the bay today, heard him. Making little asides about his cancer, that comment about the horizon and optimism. We had a good day together, John. The best we had in years, like he said. Howard doesn’t want to go out with twelve tubes sticking out of him and some bag to pee in. What you heard on the water was his way of dealing with that, his way of telling me he’s not going to have so many more good days. You got us into this, you owe him that much, okay, John? You owe it to my Howard that he dies well.“
    Doris dropped her eyes to the floor, nodding once, more to herself than to me, I thought. Then she stood up and walked into the kitchen.

28

    K ind of wish we’d done a trial run with all of this.“
    I said, “Howard, there isn’t that kind of time.“
    “Agreed.“
    “Plus, somebody sees us practicing, they might be able to identify your boat.“
    “Same.“
    We were under way, heading south from the Mercy Key Marina toward the channel to Little Mercy, the only boat on the water under a hazy quarter-moon. Doris sat on the fish cooler in the bow while Howard stood at the helm, me next to him. He and I were wearing the lightweight shorty wet suits, throat-to-belly zippers in the front to easily access what we’d carry against our chests. The suits were black, so the/d help on land, too, though they’d also make us hot after a while.
    In a locker next to the dashboard were the weapons, waterproof plastic around them and taped tightly. The boom box, a recorded cassette already inside it, was wrapped the same way. The plastic gallinule decoys, holes cut for our eyes and snorkel spouts, lay on the deck nearby with the three deflated life vests.
    Howard lowered his voice, though with the wind coming past her ears, Doris probably couldn’t have heard him anyway. “How are you getting out of this afterward?“
    I said, “If I can make Miami,