A few days after dining with Lisa McKenzie-McKenzie, Matt Pfarrer sat at a workspace desk. There, he made final preparations for his portion of their southbound journey. Recalling what McKenzie Squared had told him about Florencia Cardinale, the workspace receptionist, her circumnavigations around the office floor when he appeared, this time he charted her various courses.

Indeed, the Porteña did manage turning every room crossing into station-to-station ellipticals which invariably swung by his desk. Coming and going.

He did what he could to avoid any gazes McKenzie Squared cut at him. However, her determination outlasted his. Her ruthless smirk ignited his uncontainable guffaw. If the object of their observation noticed, she remained coolly undemonstrative.

Pfarrer was aware of subsequent aspects of his and the receptionist’s Rosario trip. Several of the bangles he’d bought Florencia in Rosario now rattled on her wrists. Since the wine trail more than a month distant, he wondered how long he’d missed these signals at work. Funny, when they dined, Pfarrer was cognizant she wore the bracelets he’d bought her in Rosario, particularly their glimmer. But in the office, at work? If McKenzie Squared hadn’t alerted him to the bangles, he would’ve remained unconscious of them.

He and McKenzie Squared were to head south the next morning. Early at that. Damned early.

His contact, a James Hueffer, eagerly anticipated him. Not only would it be nice to see another norteamericano in his town, Hueffer said during a phone call, but strange. Besides merchant sailors, rarely few foreigners of any kind found ways to the Argentine locale of Puerto Asturias. The last one had been the Finnish engineer who’d clued in Pfarrer of the submarine.

If all went according to schedule, a long luxury bus ride ought to drop off the writer and McKenzie Squared sometime around early/mid-afternoon. Plenty of daylight ought have remained to get the lowdown from Hueffer, view the true gen, the submarine, absorb whatever color availed, then prep for an even longer distance of miles and miles of smiles into the decidedly cold part of Southern Argentina the next day.

The McKenzie Squared portion of their southern traverse had him buy long-sleeved flannel shirts. These were hard to procure. Seemingly, larger sizes outside the United States did not correspond with American extra-large measurements. The triple-X’s his torso needed, and were labeled as such in Argentina, would’ve had him squeezing into double-X weaves.

Anyway, the shirts eventually bought would augment his two sweaters, knit watch cap, and winter coat. Only the last two had been worn during his little over two months in South America. And that for the taxi ride to JFK International. Otherwise, it was bowling shirts, luau shirts, and chinos.

Since he started coming to Argentina, Pfarrer had always packed sweaters. He knew their wear unlikely. Yet there was always a possible chance that some story developing in late-May/early June might lure him far below Mar del Plata, or deeper into Patagonia, when the precursor of winter further chilled the Southern Hemisphere.

For years those knits had been unused bulk that had just taken up luggage space. But habit would not allow him to leave them in New York. This year foresight let Pfarrer pat himself on the back.

Awake and sober inside the sickly fluorescent bus depot at an hour usually devoted to merrymaking and swyving, Pfarrer met his travel companion. He saw she knew the drill. McKenzie Squared had packed light – for a man or woman. Luggage got slid into bins beneath the passenger compartment. The travelers occupied two seats in the middle of the dark half-filled bus. He let her have the window. Not there would’ve been much to see for hours yet. But any aisle seat let him stretch out his legs further.

She’d brought along a bag of cream cheese and grape jelly filled sandwiches. Of course, at passenger pickup and dropoffs, local entrepreneurs would pendle through the bus selling empanadas, maybe chivitos, other kinds of sandwiches, postres, galletas, and soft drinks as well as pour maté.

Okay. Likely not chivitos. This wasn’t Uruguay. Anyway, chivitos anywhere could be sloppy handfuls. Tough enough to eat off plates in stationary settings. Pfarrer couldn’t imagine where those fixings might wind up on a moving bus.

Both had packed several liters of water in their carry-ons. In his, Pfarrer had swaddled a maté cup, a dried gourd purposed into a cup really, and a bombilla, a short, filigreed metal straw.

Neither adventurer had checked the bus timetable thoroughly. Somewhere along the ride there’d be a driver’s break, say, of half an hour. At that stop there should’ve been a restaurante. One having an approximation of a grillman who could slap meals together quickly for rushed diners who needed to wolf them down.

Certainly, the second longer leg of their journey after Puerto Asturias offered such a respite.

They rolled from a sedate and dark Buenos Aires.

Pfarrer thought the pair might drop into Nod until dawn. Instead, McKenzie Squared wanted to chat. That didn’t bother him. In BA when wasn’t he awake at this hour of morning, anyway?

“I downloaded your Rosario feature, read it,” McKenzie Squared said in a voice not meant to disturb other passengers. “It was great for a guy who entered only knowing red, rosé, and white.”

Quietly, he thanked her. “Yeah, Florencia ran a velvet-glove bootcamp.”

Pfarrer continued. He added aspects excluded from the article yet bolstered its heft. That and personal asides.

“Things that would mean little to readers,” he said. “Not even color.”

During one of their vineyard treks, maybe on the first or second hot day, Florencia asked whether he smelled the life around them. Whether he felt the life around them. Plenty occurred around them, above them, later between them.

Yes, though the land didn’t pulse, the grapes and blossoms they walked past, the tilled earth they walked upon rendered a muted vibrant opera best absorbed through eyes and nostrils. The fecundity shook neither but seeped into both.

As throughout their stay in Rosario, no clouds blotted the sky. He thought it unnaturally blue but then reconsidered. Most of his time spent in BA, a conurbano, whose atmosphere bore heavy traces of industrial and automotive pollution, that would be enough to dilute or wash out nature altogether.

When out in the vineyards Florencia wore cat frame sunglasses. These complemented a white knee-length sundress whose wide straps lightly burdened her small, tanned shoulders.

Pfarrer naturally wore his clodhoppers out in the rows. The Porteña’s field footwear surprised him. Cracked, black, faded lace-up work boots that reminded him of his youth’s mosh pits. The writer wondered why he’d never assumed her to have owned such. He chuckled, realizing there was no way she’d sport those jollystompers in a Buenos Aires club.

Maybe on the second or last day, Florencia and a vineyard owner had a little fun with Pfarrer. He’d observed how the field hands adroitly snipped grapes from vines. Afterwards they’d pile the future treasure into plastic baskets. Like any stoop labor, the writer knew it intensive. Florencia and the landowner decided to torment him.

In concert, they insisted he gain a fuller appreciation of the effort witnessed. That he should participate. He would need to perform the same labors. But he couldn’t just cut and dump. He would need to exhibit the same diligence as the learned hands. After all, not every grape could be harvested. Some needed more time to ripen.

Gamely, Pfarrer accepted the small snips. Along the row he clipped, not one foot went without his taskmasters critiquing his choices or method used to detach those chosen bunches from vines. While these weren’t the longest 30 yards of his life, they became some of the most arduous.

At the “finish line,” Florencia joined the grinning owner in a laugh. There, he then good-naturedly suggested Pfarrer stick to writing. The boss believed the other a man better suited to wrestle with words rather than snips.

Dripping sweat, Pfarrer told the planter, “I believe you’re right.”

McKenzie Squared asked her traveling partner whether the experience might’ve humbled him somewhat.

“Not in the least,” Pfarrer said. “Sure. The short bit I did was on the way to busting my ass. But it made me admire all the more harvesters who steady do that sort of backbreaking work for 8-10 hours, 5-6 days a week. Your next glass of wine, you better savor it like you’ve never enjoyed wine before or else I’ll have you doing the kneeling and snipping.”

Their blue and silver bus reached Puerto Asturias early in the afternoon. It was a compact harbor town which let into the South Atlantic Ocean. There in its bay, waiting for tides to empty moorings, freighters and other working vessels sat anchored under light blue sky striated by thin clouds.

Birds wheeled along the shore, mostly avoiding man and his intrusions.

Perhaps the visitors were too far away, but the sea pushed no scent. Or maybe the area’s industrial lubricants overwhelmed the brine.

Bus passengers deboarded and boarded at a frills-absent two-storey hotel. A squat cube surrounded by drab commercial buildings and rusting warehouses. The metal-on-metal clamor of industry buzzed or clanged across streets.

Heavy trucks and pickups formed light vehicular traffic.

Unlike the mild conurbano weather, air in Hueffer’s town held a snap. Cool on the way to chilly enough for both North Americans to unpack sweaters from carry-ons then stuff arms into woolen sleeves.

Luggage at their feet, McKenzie Squared remained a bit dopey from the haul. Fortunately, Pfarrer saw a maté seller. The man had a rude samovar strapped on his back. From it he dispensed to the bus driver, passersby as well as other just-arrived passengers or those awaiting permission to board the conveyance. Out of his carryon, Pfarrer pulled out his own cup and straw then drew the seller’s attention. Because of the coolness perhaps the steam between the spout and cup billowed thickly.

After paying and receiving the man’s generous thanks, Pfarrer drew a long sluck through the straw. There’d been no reason to drink maté in Buenos Aires. He would’ve regarded such as an affectation. But here in an industrial zone, especially after their ride, the herbal drink ought to have vanquished much of whatever sluggishness weighed both. He offered the cup to McKenzie Squared. She regarded it suspiciously, then asked what he foisted upon her.

Pfarrer scoffed. “Weren’t you down the coast earlier in the year? Working like hell at that! Don’t tell me you didn’t have one of the national drinks.”

Sheepishly, McKenzie Squared shook her head. She beseeched him not to be disappointed in her.

“I’m disappointed in you,” Pfarrer mocked. “So. Maté. It’s a stimulant. A mild one. The indigenous people drank it to fuel their civilizations. The Conquistadors appropriated it for the jolts. If the Incas had drank this instead of zonked out on hallucinogens, they might’ve kicked the Spaniards back to Iberia. It’s loaded with caffeine. But nowhere near enough to give you the shakes. Sip.”

McKenzie Squared hesitated before lipping the straw. Distaste quickly pulled her face.

“Jesus!” she said. “This is lethal!”

Pfarrer answered, “The bitterness takes a little getting used to. Have another swig. Afterwards you’ll be ready to leap tall buildings in single bounds in no time.”

What maté McKenzie Squared left, Pfarrer polished off. Revitalized, the pair entered the hotel. The establishment lacked charm. It solely existed as a hostelry for mechanically-dexterous travelers. Surely the town held sweller accommodations. Yet Pfarrer chose this lodging because not only had the Finn engineer recommended it but the address sat near Hueffer’s place of business, a machine shop.

Hotel check in was so efficient, it was astringent. Luggage inside respective rooms, Pfarrer chucked his bowling shirt to slide into one of his newly-bought flannels. This he let his sweater cover. Then he dialed Hueffer on his cellular. As before when Pfarrer had first contacted him, hearing an American voice again startled Hueffer. A moment passed until he could respond.

Hueffer said he’d be right down “in a couple of shakes.” As usual when chasing a prospective story, Pfarrer pocketed three pens with his notepad. Both North American visitors awaited Hueffer outside the hotel.

In several minutes, a dusty white and tan two-tone pickup vintage 1970s swerved up to them. Out from the driver’s side stepped a man as hefty as Pfarrer. Faded workshirt, denims, and dirty work boots completed his uniform. An open-faced brown-haired man, one who smiled unconsciously, walked around the hood towards them with the sort of easy confidence that assured Pfarrer.

Both liked what the other reflected. The writer sussed Hueffer to have been in his early-to-mid 50s. Same as McKenzie Squared.

The first words from the stranger’s mouth correctly identified the visitor. Both exchanged the kind of firm handshakes which defined the other.

Pfarrer presented McKenzie Squared. Hueffer greeted her graciously. Preliminaries finished, Hueffer invited the pair into his pickup. McKenzie Squared slid in between the men on the bench. Pfarrer watched her try and make sense of the vehicle’s stick. A three on the tree.

Once Hueffer got his wheels in gear and they moved, Pfarrer asked how many miles had he piled on the vehicle.
“Odometer’s flipped several times since I’ve had her,” the driver said. “Who knows how many miles the original owner piled up on her. Nothing’s original left. Except dents and rust. Rebuilt the motor twice. Thrown in three trannies.”

“Bet you’re a fiend for regular maintenance,” Pfarrer said.

Hueffer cut eyes at him and smiled. “I’m such a stickler, you might mistake it as my religion.”

The two men shared a good chuckle.

Quitting town was quick. Driving parallel to the ocean, the northbound trio passed many unremarkable well-spaced houses before turning off pavement onto a dirt road leading toward the shore. Maybe in less than a mile they stopped. Here, the South Atlantic formed the horizon. Hueffer shifted his pickup into neutral, mashed the parking brake, killed the motor. His visitors gazed across the sea until he told both to exit his vehicle.

The driver handed each a flashlight. Then asked both to check whether theirs worked.

Pfarrer wondered if the birds he now saw larking above them were the same species as those glimpsed from town. If so, were they terns or kestrels?

The trio walked almost 50 uncertain yards until seeing the plain they trod upon ended at a cliff. Down this precipice sight revealed rough stairs led into an inlet adroitly shielded by camouflage webbing. Stare hard enough a lengthy dark object could be discerned among the disguise and the cove holding it.

They descended. Bare inlet walls sloped until the last several feet. On these last few feet where tides played moss crawled.

Once steps took them beneath the webbing, the vessel became clear. A World War II German U-boat. Neither of the visitors exclaimed the obvious – “It’s a submarine!”

Besides anchors, hawsers off the bow and aft kept the boat fast to a ship-length pier.

Stairs dropped onto the dock. That led onto a gangplank. The slightly bobbing bridge kept easy rhythm with the fatigue gray and rust spotted hull. Both men boarded. McKenzie Squared remained a landlubber.

Pfarrer spoke to her. “You’re not coming?”

She shook her head.

He teased her. “You went digging around the Yukon with all those bears nearby. How didn’t that bother you? This boat is safely anchored.”

Pfarrer snatched a quick glance at Hueffer, then hissed his words. “This boat is securely anchored, right?”

Grinning so hard he could’ve been mistaken for lying, Hueffer said, “Sure!”

McKenzie Squared answered, “When we were there, the bears were hibernating.”

To her Hueffer said, “Tell you what. You hear any RAF buzzing around, you start yelling like hell, okay?”

Neither man waited to hear how she responded to his joke. They climbed the conning tower’s exterior ladder onto the bridge. Rising above them the periscope mast and a snorkel. Hueffer squatted down and unscrewed the hatch. The hole punched into darkness. Practiced Hueffer slipped his flashlight into a pants pocket then climbed down the hatch, on rungs of an unseen ladder. Pfarrer followed him.

Inside the tower air became stale. Later when they walked aft, faint diesel fumes fouled the atmosphere.

Feet on the level, Hueffer’s flashlight cut the dark. He didn’t bother performing a cursory search. Muscle memory led him to a panel. There, he toggled a few switches, pressed a button or two, then from somewhere an engine rumbled to life. Seconds later jerry-rigged lamps flickered alive. Low-watt bulbs dimly illuminated the ship’s lifeless gray interior.

Only then did Hueffer welcome Pfarrer aboard. Medium watt bulbs revealed a ghost ship. Items for sailing were there; however, all human touches were absent. Despite this Pfarrer felt the space close. The men stood in the ship’s control room. A table where navigation charts would’ve been unfolded stood between instrument consoles and seats. The configuration created strict mazes. Given a tight circumference in which to swivel, the bulky periscope was a gleaming bottom-heavy brass stalactite descending from the planks.

Hueffer flicked a button. The assembly rose smoothly. The guide gestured for his guest to gander through the eyepiece. After lowering handles, Pfarrer did so gladly. Tall as the writer was, he needed to bow somewhat before aligning an eye to the lens. While there wasn’t much to see – the inlet’s rocky sides, the outlet which opened a meager portion of ocean to sight – these bits nonetheless roused torpedo-run memories of every submarine movie he’d ever watched. All he lacked was an officer’s peaked cap.

Thrill enjoyed, Pfarrer clapped the handles upright then stepped back. Hueffer’s reversed operating sequence lowered the device.

“That was cool,” Pfarrer said a bit reverently.

Hueffer led them towards the bow first. Walking through the open watertight doors exercised Pfarrer at first. He needed to lift his legs high and duck low entering and leaving compartments.

Hueffer saw his initial distress. “First thing we did after getting the hatches open was install lights. That became urgent because of all the tripping and lowbridging. Flashlights aren’t good for depth perception down here.”

Before continuing, Hueffer commended the writer for bringing his wife along on this “Patagonian Safari.” It took a few seconds for Pfarrer to grasp his guide meant McKenzie Squared. Rather than regurgitate their whole trial and tribulations thus far, Pfarrer simply summarized his and McKenzie Squared’s connection as being one of “Tag-a-long buddies.”

He missed how his guide reacted to that. He imagined Hueffer’s a double-clutch expression.

Pfarrer’s pen and pad out now, Hueffer explained which quarters likely would’ve contained who and what. Along the way, Pfarrer asked the necessary dry questions: displacement, maximum depth, length, draft, sailing range, surface and submerged speeds, crew, armament. Did Hueffer have any clue of the ship’s commissioning date, what operations it completed?

Hueffer spoke. “Once we found out its original designation, we got ahold of the German navy. The Deutschemarine. They were astounded this thing still floated somewhere. After getting over the surprise, they were pleased to provide what information remained from Kriegsmarine archives. I got that stuff somewhere at home. I’ll give you copies.”

Then Hueffer answered the writer’s queries. When they reached the torpedo room, Hueffer asked Pfarrer if he could imagine bunking in this space. Low and tight as the compartment was empty, could he envision it stuffed with humans, their requirements, provisions as well as “devilfish”?

“That would’ve been more than enough to have given claustrophobics fits,” Hueffer said.

“From what I’ve seen that could be said of anywhere on this boat,” Pfarrer said.

They retraced their steps towards the aft into the engine room. The ship’s loud throbbing heart reminded Pfarrer of a straight eight. A large straight eight. Hueffer looked upon this relic proudly. With a skilled professional’s satisfaction, he announced his shop had torn down and rebuilt it. They also remanufactured parts age and use had eroded.

“Fortunately, whoever left this boat here, or found it later, removed the batteries,” Hueffer said. “Otherwise, acid eating away at them and corroding them as they would’ve, well, can’t have any trouble imagining walking into a ready-to-go bomb.”

Both walked back to the ship’s control room. Among the follow-up questions Pfarrer asked was, “Jim, is this boat seaworthy?”

After hesitating, Hueffer answered, “It functions. Would I weigh anchor, take it onto open water, flood the tanks and dive? Let me ask you, Matt, ‘Who’s chasing me?’”

Hueffer throttled the engine. It rumbled into quiet. The lights winked into darkness. The pair climbed up the ladder into daylight. On the conning tower bridge once more, Pfarrer got out of the way to let Hueffer secure the hatch. Disembarked, the two then walked up the stairs where they rejoined McKenzie Squared now waiting at the pickup.

Gentle sea breezes carelessly ruffled the short dark brown and gray curls atop her head.

She asked, “So, did you boys enjoy the depth charge attack?”

This trio slid onto the truck’s bench and drove off. Along the way Hueffer informed his visitors they would be his and his wife’s dinner guests. Pfarrer didn’t know about McKenzie Squared, but an invitation to a home-cooked meal ought have been celebrated.

On the flat drive past widely spaced homes, Pfarrer asked the most obvious question of Hueffer. Here, the driver added further dipsy-do’s to the boat’s already presumed circuitous route to South America.

At the end of its World War II service, the vessel must’ve been part of “the rat line.” Through this escape network, Nazis deemed essential to continuing the postwar “struggle” evaded capture by the Allies. Also along for the journey gold bullion, sterling, jewels stolen from the formerly occupied lands. These troves would’ve financed further activities as well as help sustain die Kameraden.

In the mid-to-late 1940s Argentina would’ve been an ideal hidey-hole because of its affinity for the collapsed Third Reich. Scratch an Argentine back then and likely beneath his civil veneer there seethed a fascist’s unsparing virulence for all the “others” – communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, gays.

For reactionaries Argentina offered a quite welcoming bosom.

“Who knows how many of these ‘arks’ reached the South Atlantic from the North Sea?” Hueffer said. “All we may say with certainty is once safely moored here, their journeys, passengers, crews, contraband, manifests were erased from accounting.”

He continued. Official Argentina must’ve regarded the advanced Nazi warships as godsends. Naval surplus on the cheap. After all, would the country have gone to the expense building them? Improbable.

“What!?” Hueffer said. “To blockade Montevideo? Bring Uruguay to its knees?”

Since Germany’s misfortunes had bestowed such gifts, the Argentine rationale must’ve become one which integrated these submarines into the fleet. The vessels’ presence, their menace, could raise the nation’s regional stature.

And for a time did.

Now the second part of these ships’ usefulness.

In 1982, faced with an increasingly restive populace, Argentina’s ruling junta opted to take the despots’ easy way out. It started a war. The pretext being a group of British dependent islands off the country’s southern coast. In English, the Falklands; in Spanish, las Malvinas.

The Argentines had always regarded the islands as theirs. They invaded to take them.

Nothing like a brief successful war to coalesce divergent segments around national leadership. But only victory produced that result. No one in Argentina thought England would place any value in a few rocks on the other side of the world. Nor make any effort to regain them.

Surprising everyone in Argentina, Britain dispatched its Royal Navy to retake the Falklands. The conflict lasted 10 weeks. In this time, the British behaved like the varsity. HRM’s flotilla smacked the Argentines around as if they were a Chinese Bandit Squad.

Easy to imagine how after witnessing the murderous efficiency of the Royal Navy, Argentine naval skippers must’ve reasonably decided it prudent to abandon the fray. Better that than become dead heroes. Hence possibly how a former Nazi U-boat then converted into an Argentine warship Pfarrer had decades later toured sought and found safe harbor.

The Hueffer home could’ve been a ranch style house stuck in Anywhere, America. Homes along this stretch sat on big lots. Pfarrer was glad this North American outpost lacked pink flamingos or lawn jockeys. Hueffer parked his work truck behind a shiny silver SUV. It pleased the writer not to hear any barking dogs from inside the residence.

El senor announced their arrival. From the kitchen the rattle of pots and pans stopped. Momentarily Cristina Hueffer appeared. Against her husband she was trim, diminutive, her olive complexion trending towards dark. Plumb-straight kohl-black hair and coal-black eyes further whitened her generous smile. She’d dressed for comfort in her own home, not to impress strangers.

Rather than shake hands upon introductions, Cristina Hueffer gave her guests’ cheeks besos. The gesture caught McKenzie Squared unawares.

Likely presuming both guests Spanish deficient norteamericanos, la ama de casa welcomed them in precise English. Pfarrer did nothing to dissuade this view. He intended keeping McKenzie Squared thoroughly involved.

When ama retreated into her kitchen, Hueffer gave them a once-through. The Hueffer abode held the requisite comforts. The trail led outside to the back. On a patio table waited a bottle of malbec and four wine glasses. The guests sat and their host opened the wine then filled each glass. Distributing these, he raised his glass and briskly welcomed both to the Hueffer residence. He sat while they sipped then partook of his own. A hurried moment later Cristina Hueffer joined them and sipped from her waiting glass.

She performed the socializing rituals. Through these Pfarrer learned McKenzie Squared wasn’t just a Canadian, but Saskatchewanian. One whose younger unattached self had ventured to San Francisco for her undergraduate education – of all kinds. She had a son. And left it at that. Cristina Hueffer picked up the marked limit then diverted to the Hueffers’ own children. Three sons. Here the father took the baton.

“Our oldest boy works alongside me. But he and his family are squeezing the last joys of June up in Mar del Plata right now. Our middle one is in the States racing after a graduate engineering degree. The youngest is his mother’s prince. He’s an artiste.”

Cristina Hueffer took jokey umbrage, the kind mixed with motherly enthusiasm.

“Ferdinand, Ferdy, is an artist. He does these marvelous things with glass. Jaime knows this. He’s just teasing.”

Hueffer made a show of being flabbergasted. “He’s only a glassblower!”

Cristina Hueffer rose intending to reenter their home. As a parting shot, she corrected her husband. With emphasis.

“Glassmith. Then why do you always have cátalogos of his work nearby, handy to show, to brag, to people?”

After his wife departed, Hueffer explained to his guests. “That’s just for inspiration. Never know from where the urge will strike.”

His guests laughed. The host chuckled with them. Thinking him local, or at least in Argentina, McKenzie Squared asked the location of this son’s atelier. Studio. Workspace. Hang out.

“Trieste,” Hueffer answered.

“There’s a Trieste in Argentina?” she asked.

“No,” Hueffer said. “The one in Italy.”

He clarified. Cristina was of Italian heritage. As did those immigrant waves which populated and colored the United States, the same influenced Argentina. Her people descended from Italy. Puglia. Near the heel. Unlike Hueffer’s own forebearers who got the hell out of Germany after the failed 1848 Revolution and hardly looked back, Cristina’s later arriving New World family kept connected with those who remained behind in the Old World.

“Let me tell you,” Hueffer said, “Cristina is a fiend for RIA. Radiotelevisione Italiana. No joke. I bet her Italian is better than her Spanish. And she’s an Argentine! She knows what’s going on over there better than whatever the hell is going on over here. We fly over every so often. Every other year maybe. It’s like she’s a native. Strangers ask her for directions! That probably further influenced Ferdy.”

Pfarrer asked Hueffer whether he traveled back to the States at all.

“We go maybe every three/four years,” Hueffer said. “Maybe. My people are in Ohio. They’re rooted in Ohio. Let me be honest. When we go back, it’s an obligation. At least on my part. Cristina’s a good wife. She humors me on this. Every time we go back, I understand better why Chrissie Hynde left.”

Cristina Hueffer reappeared with a big casserole. Filling it, lasagna. She set that platter in the middle of the table. The contents sizzled. The pasta reminded Pfarrer of New York dinner nights around the family table. His eyes absorbed the dish while she left to gather stone-, silverware, utensils, serviettes, and condiments, a k a, Parmesan and oregano.

Upon the hostess’ return, Pfarrer said, “I don’t believe you found ricotta down here!”

“And pepper, too,” Hueffer said.

Smiling, seated again, Cristina Hueffer said, “As you Americans say, ‘Dig in!’”

As they heartily dined and further conversed and imbibed the blue vault above shaded violet then blackened into a starry canvas. When Pfarrer heard someone mention it would be a mild evening, “somewhere around eight,” snowdrifts filed his mind. Then he relaxed. Eight degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

After dinner, Cristina Hueffer started clearing the patio table of their detritus. McKenzie Squared surprised her hostess by jumping in and helping. While the women cleared away plates, Hueffer and Pfarrer removed themselves from the patio flagstones to an object on the lush lawn the guest had mistaken as some kind of art. In a way it was an objet. One that could’ve been mistaken as an idol to be worshipped by the lawn chairs arrayed before it. One whose future sacrifices were a bundle of newspapers held down by a big rock and a small pile of wood stacked beside.

Discerning the item, Pfarrer said, “You have a chimenea?”

Hueffer bent down, pulled sheets from the paper stack, crumpled then tossed them in the Mexican fireplace. Atop these he threw several chunks of wood. That done, he conjured a fireplace lighter and sparked the newspaper.

Flames rose engulfing the belly of the chimenea.

“Yeah,” Hueffer said his face brightening into orange planes slashed by sharp shadows. “When he was a hobo college student in the US, Ferdy’s travels took him through the Southwest. Says he saw these things. He liked how their functionality also translated into, how did he put it, ‘esthetic purpose.’”

Here Hueffer shrugged, the continued. “So he comes back. He throws this thing after making sure there’s a local company around with an oven large enough to fire it. And here we are tonight.”

Pfarrer said, “Frankly, Jim, I was kind of hoping you told me one of the extraterrestrials who communed with the Incas left this in your yard. As a sign.”

“That would’ve been my fallback story,” the host said.

He insisted his guest seat himself then returned indoors. About 10 minutes later Hueffer reappeared. He carried two bottles of malbec, four wine glasses, and two paper-stuffed manila envelopes. First things first, glasses on the table. Then he opened the wine and sloshed into every glass. Pfarrer grabbed one glass as well as took both envelopes from his host.

By way of explanation, one envelope held copies of the technical information about the submarine. The other, copies of serendipity perhaps. Or guilt acknowledged.

In Puerto Asturias the submarine wasn’t a secret. Like much in Argentina, it was known by many but mentioned by few. In the late 1990s, several years into James Hueffer having established his machine shop as a reputable concern, municipal fathers hired him. They’d come up with a scheme to use the submarine as a “tourist attraction” of sorts.

“I love how small towns off beaten tracks always come up with way out of the box ideas that ought to drive city folk in by droves,” Pfarrer said.

The chimenea started kicking out heat and spat sparks. The prophesy of a “mild night” aside, heat from the furnace further improved Pfarrer’s good mood. Yet he also asked himself, ‘When did 48-50° become chilly?’

One of the “rewards” of being 66, he mused.

Upon receipt of the ship’s schematics, and after thoroughly inspecting the hulk, elbow grease pretty much got it running again. At the same time in the world, however, reactionary resurgence elsewhere threw aspersions upon what local figures simply saw as a lure.

They realized how easy it would’ve become for their “attraction” to have been perverted into a shrine for black shirts. Aware of Argentina’s history, how certain aspects of its past welcomed, hid, nurtured, mid-20th century criminal ideologues, the thought of a restored relic harkening back to modern mankind’s worst impulses that would eagerly draw its inheritors erased the boat’s appeal.

“But before reason struck entirely, word got around,” Hueffer said. “When we were making the boat fit, some old Kameraden, Kriegsmariners, they wandered out of the dark, emerged from the bush, here. Who knows? Maybe one or two actually served on that ship’s first incarnation. That said, none of those old sailors wanted to stoke the old flames. No rallies in Puerto Asturias.

“I speak plenty of get-by German. Good enough to manage most of the declensions. I bet my last name helped, too. To a man, those pensioners wanted to talk, uh, recollect about their service. Their duty. If they’d ever been rabid Heilers, the years cleaned out that rot.

“I took notes. Or later I wrote notes. We all would’ve been self-conscious if I’d whipped out a pad and pen like you do. So, a little later when still fresh in my mind, I came home and wrote down what I recalled of our conversations. Since these all never happened at once, I could also remember particulars like names, ages, birthplaces, the more memorable missions. Also, things like their last mission here. Then, what new lives fate allowed them to create.”

Pfarrer glanced down at the envelopes he held, regarding one as possible treasure. His host continued.

“I’m telling you now, Matt, to you it’ll all probably come across as bone dry. As an engineer, any writing I’ve ever done is tech writing. If there’s a cure for insomnia, tech writing is it.”

The pair laughed. The happy chatter of approaching Cristina Hueffer and McKenzie Squared segued nicely into this effusion. The women joined them seated. The fireplace also bathed them in orange and shadows. Hueffer gestured at the two untouched glasses. The women would sip appreciatively.

Cristina Hueffer spoke. “Lisa tells me she works in movies.”

“Yeah,” Pfarrer said, snickering. “She’s an artist, too. Artist. Not artiste.”

McKenzie Squared turned towards him and smirked. The flames lent her a sinister cast. Releasing Pfarrer from her might-be malevolence, she slowly lifted her sight to gaze above.

Her voice led the eyes of all upward.

“This is one of the few aspects I regret about city living,” McKenzie Squared said. “Light pollution blots out stars. Growing up, I grew up on a farm. We raised lentils. There was next to nothing around. Or next to no one around. Both, I guess. Full moons and cloudy nights, certainly, dimmed the show. Otherwise, nighttime skies could let your imagination soar and spiral. Especially if you were a farmgirl.”

Pfarrer knew he wasn’t alone contemplating McKenzie Squared’s admission.

Back on earth, Cristina Hueffer broke the spell.

“I read somewhere depending where you stand on either hemisphere, north or south, you may only see between 82-88% of the stars. Something about the curvature of the earth and the watcher’s angle. I think that makes sense.”

Ama took a sip of wine. Her audience joined this interlude.

Refreshed, Cristina Hueffer said, “After all, we living in the South Hemisphere are familiar with the North Star. Polaris. And surely thanks to that singer, um, what’s his name, Jaime?”

“Crosby, Stills, & Nash,” Hueffer replied.

“Sí,” his wife said. “Yes. Crosby, Stills, & Nash. Norteamericanos also know of the Southern Cross. La Crux. But unless one or the other travels above or below the Equator, each phenomenon, though known, remains unseen.”

“Like a submarine,” McKenzie Squared said under her breath. The men cut eyes at her and grinned.

Whether she heard the comment or not, or heard it and dismissed it, Cristina Hueffer remained on her heavenly tangent.

“I wonder if the missing percentages of stars unseen might contain what would be lucky stars for those without luck?”

“Or maybe improve the fortunes of those just down on their luck,” McKenzie Squared said, impishly.

Hueffer grunted. “In any case, let’s consider ourselves lucky not to have to worry about it. Our stars are aligned.”

(Mehr noch)

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