“Well, I believe you,” Morrell said. “Haven’t got a whole lot to spoil with, though. And this damn rain…”
“How much trouble can they cause if they break through there?” the voice asked.
Morrell looked at the map again. He did some more muttering. If everything went precisely wrong, the Confederates could retake Resaca. That would complicate his life. It would mean Atlanta wouldn’t fall any time soon. And it would put him in hot water with the War Department, where you were only as good as what you did yesterday.
“How big a buildup is it?” he asked. If it was brigade strength, maybe even division strength, he would put in a spoiling attack. He wouldn’t just put it in, either—he’d lead it himself. He knew he couldn’t put his hands on anywhere near a division’s worth of men and matériel, but he didn’t care. The Confederates wouldn’t be so sure of that. When barrels came at them out of a curtain of rain, wouldn’t they think twice before they tried attacking? He thought so—they couldn’t afford to get too intrepid. On the other hand, they couldn’t afford not to get too intrepid, either. How did you judge?
He knew how he judged. If they were there in corps strength, he’d have to receive an attack instead of delivering one. That was where he drew the line between aggressiveness and stupidity.
“Sir, best estimate is division strength,” said the man at the other end of the wireless connection.
“Heigh-ho,” Morrell said. “Let’s go.” He thumbed the TRANSMIT button. “Well, we’ll see if we can knock ’em back on their heels. Out.” Then he started calling the armored and infantry in the neighborhood. He wondered if their COs would groan and fuss and flabble and say they couldn’t possibly move in this downpour. Nobody did. They wanted to hit the Confederates. “We’ve been thumping ’em like a big bass drum from Pittsburgh down to here,” an infantry colonel said. “Let’s do it some more.”
Clark Ashton beamed at him when the command barrel squelched forward. “Frenchy told me to expect action when I rode with you,” he said. “He wasn’t blowing smoke, was he?”
“We aren’t here to give those butternut bastards a big kiss,” Morrell answered. “We’re here to blow ’em to hell and gone. And I aim to.”
His scratch force pushed in the Confederate pickets with the greatest of ease. Featherston’s men didn’t seem to dream that anybody could bring off an attack in weather like this. Some of them panicked when they found they were wrong.
Barrels loomed up out through the rain. Morrell called out targets. Clark Ashton hit one after another. Maybe Frenchy Bergeron had told him he’d better be a good gunner if he was going to get along with his new commander. Or maybe even the powers that be feared what Irving Morrell would say and do if they saddled him with a gunner who didn’t know his trade.
The Confederates fell back. Morrell started laughing fit to bust. The rain that had helped the CSA was helping him instead now. The enemy couldn’t tell how small his force really was. The way the U.S. barrels and soldiers pushed forward, they had plenty of weight behind them. They’d have to be nuts to push like that if they didn’t. Featherston’s men, sure they were sane, fell back. Irving Morrell, just as sure he wasn’t, laughed and laughed.
Carefully conned by a pilot who knew his way through the minefields, the Josephus Daniels came into New York harbor. Sailors stood at the rail admiring the tall buildings and boasting of the havoc they would wreak when they got liberty. Sam Carsten remembered leaves of his own when he was a rating, from Boston all the way to Honolulu.
He fondly recalled the lady—well, woman—he’d visited just before he first met George Enos, Jr. And wasn’t that a kick in the head? Funny the kid remembered it after all these years. Actually, Enos was no kid any more—he had to be past thirty. And how many miles have you got? Sam asked himself. Some questions were better left unanswered.
As usual, the pilot knew his business. A good thing, too, since in his line of work your first mistake was much too likely to be your last. Blowing a ship halfway to the moon would get you talked about, and not kindly, even if you lived through it.
“We have the first liberty party ready?” Sam asked Myron Zwilling as the ship approached its assigned quay.
“Yes, sir,” the executive officer answered. “All men with good disciplinary records.”
“That’s fine for the first party,” Sam said. “But I want everybody to be able to go ashore unless we get called back to sea sooner than I expect right now.”
“Yes, sir,” Zwilling repeated, but he didn’t sound happy about it. “Some of them don’t deserve the privilege, though.”
“Oh, come on,” Sam said. “Nobody’s knifed anybody, nobody’s slugged anybody, nobody’s got caught cooking hooch.” There was some illicit alcohol aboard the Josephus Daniels. There’d been some aboard every ship in which Carsten ever served. As long as the chiefs kept things within reasonable bounds, as long as nobody showed up at his battle station too toasted to do his job, the skipper was inclined to look the other way.
“No one’s been caught, no.” By the way the exec pursed his lips, he was inclined to act like a revenuer in the hills of West Virginia. Only Sam’s manifest unwillingness to let him held him back. “But I’m morally convinced there’s a still on this ship, and I’d like to get rid of it as soon as possible.”
“We’ll see,” Sam said. “Meanwhile, though, we’ll do it the way I said.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Zwilling couldn’t disobey an obviously legal order, no matter how much he wanted to.
Happy sailors poured ashore after the destroyer escort tied up. Sam went ashore, too, not to roister but to consult with his superiors. “We keep getting good reports about you, Carsten,” said a captain not much younger than he was.
“Sir, I deny everything,” Sam said, straight-faced.
The officers in the conference room chuckled. One of them sent up smoke signals on his pipe. The captain who’d spoken before said, “How’s the new executive officer shaping?”
“He’s brave and he’s diligent, sir.” Sam believed in getting the good out ahead of anything else. But there was more to say, and he said it: “He’s…kind of a stickler for rules and regulations, isn’t he?”
“Does that interfere with how well he does his job?” the captain asked.
“No, sir, but I had a happier ship with Pat Cooley in that slot,” Sam answered.
“Would you say he’s disqualified from command?”
“No, sir.” Sam left it right there.
He tried to, anyhow. The captain asked, “Would you be happy serving under him?”
Sam had to answer that one truthfully, no matter how little he wanted to. “No, sir,” he repeated.
One of the officers who hadn’t said anything wrote a note in a little book whose pages were held together by a spiral wire. Sam hoped he hadn’t just murdered Lieutenant Zwilling’s career. “Why not?” the captain asked.
“He’ll do everything by the book,” Sam replied. “We need the book. It’s a good thing we’ve got it. But you need to know when to throw it out, too.” He waited to see if they would contradict him. When they didn’t, he went on, “I’m afraid he doesn’t.”
The officer with the notebook wrote in it again. “Thanks for being frank with us,” he said.
“Sir, I’m not happy about it,” Sam said. “Within his limits, he’s a solid officer. He’s plenty brave—I already said that. He’s conscientious. He works hard—nobody on the ship works harder.”
“That’s what the exec is for,” said the captain who did most of the talking.
“Well, yes, sir, but over and above that,” Sam said. “He sticks his nose in everywhere—sometimes, probably, when people wish he wouldn’t. Even when somebody who does that is right all the time, ratings resent it. When he isn’t, that only makes things worse.”
“You’re saying Lieutenant Zwilling sometimes intervenes mistakenly?” the captain asked.
He wasn’t twisting Sam’s words, but he was interpreting
them harshly. “It’s not too bad, sir,” Carsten said.
“It’s not too good, either, or you wouldn’t be talking about it,” the captain returned. “Will you tell me I’m wrong?”
“No, sir,” Sam said once more. Lieutenant Zwilling wouldn’t love him—he knew that. But he didn’t love his new exec, either. Pat Cooley had spoiled him.
“Anything else about your ship that we ought to know?” the captain asked.
“Nothing you don’t already know about the class, sir,” Sam answered. “She’s not fast enough to run from a fight, and she doesn’t have the guns to win one.”
That made the officer taking notes smile. “Didn’t you outfight one of the limeys’ merchant cruisers?” he said.
“Yes, sir, but only ’cause they couldn’t shoot straight,” Sam said. “If they’d hit us a couple of times, it would have been all over—the wrong way.”
“Destroyer escorts do a fine job in the roles for which they’re designed,” the captain who did most of the talking said primly.
“Yes, sir,” Carsten agreed. “For escorting convoys, for going after submarines—no problems there. But the Josephus Daniels has done a lot of things she’s not designed for, too. If she keeps doing them, her luck’ll run out one day. I know it’s a busy war. I’m not complaining—but you asked.”
“Most people would say everything was fine and let it go,” the captain remarked. “They’d be afraid of messing up their careers if they popped off.”
Sam laughed. “What have I got to worry about, sir? I’m never going to command a cruiser, let alone anything bigger. Either I stay on my ship till the war’s over or I get a real destroyer. The difference isn’t worth flabbling about. So I guess I can tell the truth if I feel like it.”
“Yond Carsten has a hard and mustang look,” the note-taking officer said. “Such men are dangerous.”
That rang a bell in Sam’s mind. He had to reach way back to figure out why. “Julius Caesar!” he exclaimed. “We did that in English the semester before I chucked school and chucked my father’s farm and joined the Navy.”
“If you still remember, you either had a really good teacher or a really bad one,” the officer said. “Which was it?”
“Miss Brewster was good,” Sam answered. “I can still quote the start of The Canterbury Tales, too…. But this isn’t a literature class.”
“No,” the other officer said—wistfully? “But you’ve told us what we need to know. Why don’t you go enjoy New York City? If you can’t have a good time here, chances are you’ve got no pulse.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll do that.” Carsten got to his feet and saluted. The captain who’d done most of the talking returned the gesture. Sam left before the assembled officers changed their minds. A young lieutenant commander was waiting to go before them next. Saluting him as he went, Sam hurried out.
He flagged a cab. “Where to, Skipper?” the driver asked. He almost dropped his teeth—she was a woman, a brassy blonde somewhere around forty-five.
But why not? If she was pushing a hack, a man could do something more closely connected to the war. “Why don’t you take me to a show?” he said. “Something with singing and dancing and pretty girls in it?” He didn’t want to go to a burlesque house and watch strippers. Well, actually, he did, but he didn’t want to run into sailors from his ship when he did it. Being the skipper had a few drawbacks.
So he let the lady cab driver take him to Broadway instead. That was a longer ride and a classier destination than he’d had in mind, but what the hell. The Winter Garden was a big, fancy theater. JOSÉ’S HAYRIDE, the marquee said. “This’ll do it?” Sam asked as he paid the driver.
“Pal, if this doesn’t do it, you’re dead,” she answered, unconsciously echoing the officer with the notebook.
Quite a few Army and Navy men were buying tickets, which seemed encouraging. They cost a five-spot, which was either encouraging or appalling, depending on how you looked at things. A pretty usherette guided Sam to his seat.
He liked the music—Woody Butler was one of his favorites. The comic had his trademark greasepaint glasses marked on his face. He spent most of his time leering at the female lead. So did Sam. The cab driver hadn’t been kidding. Daisy June Lee had a beautiful face, legs to die for, and a balcony that outdid anything in Romeo and Juliet. By the howls and whistles from the audience, she was wreaking havoc on every man there. Sam gave forth with his share and then some.
She didn’t show as much of herself as a stripper would have, but what she did show was more worth watching. It wasn’t one of Woody Butler’s best scores, but it was better than most of what the competition put out. Besides, when Daisy June Lee was on stage the orchestra could have been playing kazoos and bazookas for all Sam cared. And even when she wasn’t, the comic with the painted-on spectacles kept him laughing.
He joined the standing ovation when the show ended. When Daisy June Lee took her bows, he hoped she would explode out of her tight top. She bowed extra low, too, as if challenging the laws of gravity. That made the applause even louder and more frantic. The top, of course, stayed in place. She grinned out at the servicemen; she knew what they wanted.
Then the comic came out and made as if to unbutton his shirt. He looked wounded unto death when the crowd laughed instead of cheering. That only made people laugh louder, which made him look more wounded yet.
Sam hated to leave, even if he knew perfectly well that Daisy June Lee was bound to have a boyfriend—and even if she didn’t, she wouldn’t give a damn about an overage two-striper. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what’s a heaven for?—another fragment from his lit class ran through his head.
He waved down another cab in front of the Winter Garden. This driver was a man: a man with a hook doing duty for his left hand, the one that stayed on the wheel. He drove well enough. Sam tipped him better than he had the woman who’d taken him to the theater.
“Everything all right?” he asked Lieutenant Zwilling when he came aboard the Josephus Daniels.
“Yes, sir,” the exec said. “You’re back sooner than I expected.”
Sam shrugged. “I had a good time.” Except when I was talking about you, I’m afraid. “You want to see a gal you’ll never forget, go watch José’s Hayride at the Winter Garden.”
“Maybe I will, sir.” By the way Zwilling spoke, he didn’t mean it. What did he do for fun? Anything? Poor bastard, Sam thought. Zwilling probably got his kicks telling other people what to do. If that wasn’t a dead-end street, Sam had never seen one.
Flora Blackford turned on the wireless in the kitchen and waited for it to warm up as the coffee started to perk and she used a spatula to turn the eggs frying in a pan. The eggs got done about the time the wireless came on. A few seconds later, two slices of toast popped up. The coffee, running behind schedule, didn’t get dark enough to suit her till she’d almost finished breakfast.
She almost didn’t recognize the patriotic song coming out of the wireless. The singer and her band didn’t seem well matched. She was more than good enough, in a conventional way. The band, by contrast, did things with syncopation and harmonies nobody else in the USA would have imagined. Flora paused with a bite of fried egg halfway to her mouth. Is that…? she wondered.
The song ended. “That was Kate Smith, with ‘God Bless the Stars and Stripes,’” the announcer said. “Backing her is the famous colored combo, Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces.”
“Thought so!” Flora said, and got up to pour herself a cup of coffee.
“Satchmo and his musicians do bless the Stars and Stripes,” the announcer continued, laying on the propaganda with a trowel. “They know too well the bars in the Stars and Bars stand for the imprisonment of their people. We’ll be back with the news on the hour following these important messages. Please stay tuned.”
Those messages were important only to the advertisers who paid for them: a soap company, a cosmetics company, a prominent brand of fountain pens, and a cigarette maker th
at said its products came from “the finest tobacco available.” She didn’t know how many letters she’d had from constituents in the armed forces complaining about the cigarettes that came with their rations. She couldn’t do anything about those complaints, however much she wanted to; U.S. tobacco simply didn’t measure up to what the Confederates grew.
“And now the news,” the announcer said once his station finally ran out of commercials.
“U.S. forces report significant advances in northern Georgia and western Tennessee despite the rainy weather that has slowed operations in recent days,” the newscaster said. “Our bombers punished Atlanta and Birmingham in heavy raids on industrial areas. Damage to both cities is reported to be extensive.”
“Good,” Flora murmured, though she wondered how true the reports were. If clouds covered the targets, the bombers would drop their loads anywhere they could. If the bombs came down on houses instead of factories…well, who lived in the houses? People who worked in the factories. Any which way, bombardment hurt the C.S. war effort.
“Farther north, our bombers also pounded Richmond,” the newscaster said. “Our losses were light. Little by little, we continue to beat down the enemy’s air defenses. Confederate strikes against Washington and its environs produced only slight damage. No enemy bombers appeared over Philadelphia last night.”
As far as Flora knew, that was true. She hadn’t heard any sirens. They were loud and insistent enough to make sleeping through them almost impossible. She’d done it once or twice, but no more than once or twice.
“Significant advances have also taken place in northern Arkansas, in Sequoyah, and in western Texas, where Confederate resistance seems to be crumbling,” the newsman said.
Flora hoped that wasn’t intended only to keep listeners happy with good news from a front far enough away that they couldn’t easily check up on it. The U.S. Eleventh Army was driving on Camp Determination now. If it fell, U.S. propagandists really would have something to crow about. And, if it fell, wouldn’t that also mean the Freedom Party would have a harder time killing off Negroes in the CSA?
The Grapple Page 69
