“Yeah, you try and dodge conscription, they land on you with both feet.” Pinkard yawned. Exhaustion was landing on him with both feet. He spread his blanket under him-too hot to roll himself in it-and smeared his face and hands with camphor-smelling goo that was supposed to hold the mosquitoes and other bugs at bay. As far as he could see, it didn’t do much good, but he was happier with it in his nostrils than with what he smelled like after God only knew how long since his last bath.
The next morning, Captain Connolly got the company moving before sunup. The promised drive on Lubbock hadn’t happened. Nobody was saying much about that, but nobody was very happy with it, either. Trying to build a front to keep the damnyankees from moving deeper into Texas wasn’t the same as throwing them out of the state when they had no business there.
What can anyone do? Hip Rodriguez’s question echoed in Jeff’s mind. So did his own answer. You do the best you can, is all. If the best the CSA could do was keep the USA from pushing deeper into Texas, the war wasn’t going the way everybody’d figured it would when it started.
The Yankees were extending their line northward, too. Texas, Jeff thought wearily as he tramped through it, had nothing but room. The invaders kept hoping they could get around the Confederates’ flank, and the job for the boys in butternut was convincing them they couldn’t.
A brisk little fire fight developed, both sides banging away at each other from little foxholes they scraped into the hard earth as soon as the bullets started flying. Neither U.S. nor C.S. forces were there in any great numbers; it was almost like a game, though nobody wanted to be removed from the board.
“Hold ’em, boys,” Captain Connolly yelled. “Help’s on the way.” Firing at a muzzle flash, Jeff figured the Yankees’ commander was probably shouting the same thing. One of them would prove a liar. After a moment, Jeff realized they both might prove liars.
But Captain Connolly had the right of it. A battery of three-inch howitzers came galloping up behind the thin Confederate line and started hurling shrapnel shells at the equally thin Yankee line. The U.S. soldiers, without artillery of their own and not dug in to withstand a bombardment, sullenly drew back across the prairie. The Confederates advanced-not too far, not too fast, lest they run into more than they could handle.
“We licked ’em,” Jeff said, and Hip Rodriguez nodded. Pinkard took off his helmet to scratch his head. Victory was supposed to be glorious. He didn’t feel anything like glory. He was alive, and nobody’d shot him. He fumbled for tobacco and a scrap of paper in which to wrap it. Right now, alive and unshot would do.
Barracks swelled Tucson, New Mexico, far beyond its natural size. In one of those barracks, Sergeant Gordon McSweeney sat on a cot wishing he were someplace, anyplace, else. “I want to get back to the field,” he murmured, more than half to himself.
Ben Carlton heard him. McSweeney outranked Carlton, but, as cook, the latter enjoyed a certain amount of license an ordinary private soldier, even a veteran, would not have had. “Rather be here than that damn Baja, California desert,” he declared, “and you can take that to church.”
McSweeney shook his head. He was big and tall and fair, with muscles like rocks, a chin and cheekbones that might have been hewn from granite, and pale eyes that looked through a man, not at him. He said, “A soldier’s purpose is fighting. If I am not fighting, I am not fulfilling my appointed purpose in life.” If he did not do that, his infinitely stern, infinitely just God would surely punish him for it in the days to come.
Carlton would not be silenced. “To hell with my appointed purpose, if the damn fool who appointed me to it gets his brains out o’ the latrine bucket. Sendin’ us down there with no support or nothin’, that was murder, and that’s all it was.” He stuck out his own chin, which was nowhere near so granitic as McSweeney’s. “Go ahead and tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.”
From most men, to most men, that would have been an invitation to fight. Gordon McSweeney reserved his wrath for the men on the other side, a fact for which his mates had had a good many occasions to be thankful. “God predestined our failure, for reasons of His own,” he said now.
Ben Carlton looked as if he had bitten into something that tasted bad-something he cooked himself, then, McSweeney thought. “Damn me to hell if I can see how God’s will had anything to do with poor Paul bleedin’ to death like a stuck pig way the devil out in the middle of the desert,” Carlton said.
McSweeney’s gaze fixed on him as if over the sights of a Springfield. “God will surely damn you to hell if you take His name in vain.” His expression softened, ever so slightly. “Paul Mantarakis, as I saw, was a brave man, for all that he was a papist.”
“He weren’t no Cath-o-lic,” Carlton said. “He was whatever Greeks are-orthosomething, he called it.”
“He carried with him a rosary of beads, which condemns him of itself. A pity, I admit, for he was a man of spirit.” McSweeney spoke with the assurance of one who knew himself to be a member of the elect and thus assured salvation.
Carlton gave it up. “There’s worse men than Paul as are still breathing in and out,” he said.
“Such is God’s will,” McSweeney answered. “Only a fool, and a blasphemous fool at that, would question it. Be assured: the unjust shall have their requital.”
He got left alone after that, which suited him well enough. Even in the crowded trenches of western Kentucky, he had been left alone a good deal. He knew why: a man of fixed purpose naturally confounded the greater number who had none, but drifted through life like floating leaves, going wherever the current chanced to take them. God anchored him, and anchored him firm.
That he used the time to make sure his flamethrower was in good working order also helped ensure his privacy. Few in the company seemed eager to associate, either in the field or away from the fighting, with anyone who carried such horror on his back. In the field, the enemy made flamethrower operators special targets, so McSweeney could see the sense in staying away from him, even if it filled him with scorn. Back here? He shrugged. If the men gave in to superstition, how could he stop them?
After evening mess call, the soldiers gossiped and smoked and gambled till lights out. McSweeney read the Book of Kings, an island of rectitude in the sea of sin all around. Then one of the men in his squad shouted “Goddammit!” after losing a poker hand he thought he should have won.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain, Hansen,” McSweeney said, glancing up from the small type of the Bible.
“Yes, Sergeant. Sorry, Sergeant,” Private Ulysses Hansen said hastily. He was not the smallest nor the weakest nor the least spirited man in the regiment, but his sergeant not only outranked him but also intimidated him. He kept his language circumspect thereafter.
In the morning, McSweeney inspected the persons and kits of his squad with his usual meticulous care. When he’d reported to Captain Schneider the infractions he’d found, the company commander raised an eyebrow and said, “Sergeant, can’t you learn to let some of that go? You gig men for things that aren’t worth noticing.”
“Sir, they are against regulations,” McSweeney answered stiffly.
“I understand that, Sergeant, but-” Schneider looked exasperated. For the life of him, Gordon McSweeney could not understand why. He stood at stolid attention, not showing his perplexity. Schneider was a brave soldier, and not altogether ungodly; he might perhaps have been numbered among the elect. After a pause to marshal his thoughts, he went on, “A smudged button or a speck of dust on a collar won’t cost us the war. These are real soldiers, remember, not West Point cadets.”
“Sir, I did not invent the infractions,” McSweeney said. “All I did was note them and report them to you.”
“You’d need a magnifying glass to note some of them,” Schneider said.
McSweeney shook his head. “No, sir, only my eyes.”
Schneider looked unhappier still. “Could you stand the kind of inspection you’re giving your men?”
“Sir, I hope so,” McSweeney answered. “If I fail, I deserve whatever punishment you care to inflict on me.”
Now the captain shook his head. “You don’t get it, Sergeant. I don’t want to punish you for small things. I don’t want you making your men hate you so much they won’t follow you, either.”
“Sir, they will follow me.” McSweeney spoke with a calm, absolute confidence. “Whatever else they may feel about me, they’re afraid of me.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Captain Schneider muttered, perhaps more to himself than to McSweeney. But he shook his head again. “That won’t do, I’m afraid. A U.S. noncom or officer whose men hate him or fear him ends up with a wound from a Springfield, not a Tredegar.”
Gordon McSweeney considered that. “Whoever would do such a thing would surely spend eternity in hell.”
“As may be,” Schneider said. “That’s not the point. The point is to keep your men from wanting to shoot you in the first place.”
“If they would only do that which is required of them, we would not have this problem,” McSweeney said.
Captain Schneider sighed. “Sergeant, have you ever, even once in your life, considered the wisdom of tempering justice with mercy?”
“No, sir,” McSweeney answered, honestly shocked.
“I believe you,” Schneider said. “The one thing-the only thing-I’ll give you is that you hold yourself to the same standards as everyone else. That time a couple of days ago when you reported yourself for not polishing the inside of your canteen cup-that was a first for me, I tell you. But what did I do about it?”
“Nothing, sir.” McSweeney’s voice reeked disapproval.
Captain Schneider either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “That’s right. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing when you bother me with tiny things, too. Sergeant, I order you not to report trivial infractions to me until and unless they constitute a clear and obvious danger to the discipline or safety of your squad. Do you understand me?”
“No, sir,” McSweeney said crisply.
“All right, then, Sergeant. I am going to leave you with two quotations from the Good Book, then. I want you to concentrate on the lessons in John 8:7 and Matthew 7:1.” With an abrupt about-face, Schneider stalked off.
Gordon McSweeney knew the Scriptures well. But those were not verses he was in the habit of studying, so he had to go and look them up. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her, he read in John. The verse in Matthew was even shorter and more to the point, saying, Judge not, that ye be not judged.
He stared out the door through which Captain Schneider had departed. The captain, as far as he was concerned, had the letter without the spirit. If God chose to urge mercy, that was His affair. Could a man not so urged by the Lord afford such a luxury? McSweeney didn’t think so.
He was, in any case, by temperament more drawn to the Old Testament than to the New. The children of Israel, now, had been proper warriors. God had not urged them to mercy, but to glorify His name by smiting their foes. And their prophets and kings had obeyed, and had grown great by obeying. Against such a background, what did a couple of verses matter?
Jesus Christ hadn’t always been meek and mild, either. Hadn’t He driven the money-changers from the Temple? They hadn’t been doing anything so very wrong. Trivial infractions, Captain Schneider would have called their business, and thought Jesus should have left it alone.
McSweeney flipped back a few pages in the Book of Matthew and grunted in satisfaction. “Chapter 5, verse 29,” he murmured: And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
He looked at the men in his squad. None of them dared meet his eye. Would any have the nerve to shoot him under cover of battle? He shook his head. He didn’t believe it, not for a moment. Would they leave him in the lurch when he attacked? Maybe they would. His glance flicked to the flamethrower. Anyone who carried one of those infernal devices was on his own anyhow.
“Justice,” McSweeney said, and gave a sharp nod. Only the wicked feared justice, and with reason, for they deserved chastisement. Thus the United States would chastise their seceded brethren, and chastise as well the wicked foreigners who had made secession possible.
God wills it, McSweeney thought, for all the world like a Crusader before the walls of Jerusalem. And Jerusalem would fall. He would make it fall, and break anyone and anything standing in the way.
XIV
Achilles smiled at Cincinnatus, a smile that showed one new tooth in a wide, wet mouth. The baby said something wordless but joyful. Cincinnatus smiled back. To Elizabeth, he said, “He’s in a happy mood this mornin’, ain’t he?”
His wife smiled back, wanly. “Why shouldn’t he be happy? He can sleep as long as he wants, an’ he can wake up whenever he please. An’ he’s still too little to know his ma can’t do likewise.”
“I heard him there in the middle of the night,” Cincinnatus said, digging into the ham and eggs Elizabeth had made. “He sounded happy then, too.”
“He was happy,” she said, rolling her eyes, which were still streaked with red. “He was so happy, he wanted to play. He didn’t want to go back to bed, not for nothin’ he didn’t. Did you?” She poked Achilles in the ribs. He thought that was the funniest thing in the world, and squealed laughter. When he did, his mother visibly melted. All the same, she said, “What I wanted to do was give him some laudanum, so he’d go back to sleep and I could, too.” She yawned. Achilles squealed again-everything was funny this morning.
No sooner had Cincinnatus shoveled the last fluffy scrambled egg into his mouth than someone knocked on the door. He grabbed for his mug of coffee and gulped it down while hurrying to let in his mother. “How’s my little grandbaby?” she asked.
Cincinnatus was still swallowing. From the kitchen, Elizabeth answered, “Mother Livia, he must be sleepin’ while you got him, on account of he sure don’t do none o’ that in the nighttime.”
“He jus’ like his father, then,” Cincinnatus’ mother said. She turned to him. “You was the wakinest child I ever did hear tell of.” Without taking a breath, she went on in a different tone of voice: “Looks like it’s fixin’ to storm out there, storm somethin’ fierce.”
“Does it?” Cincinnatus looked outside himself. His mother was right. Thick, dark clouds were boiling up in the northwest, over Ohio, and heading rapidly toward Covington. The air felt still and heavy and damp. He reached into the pocket of his dungarees and pulled out a nickel. “Gonna ride me the trolley down to the docks.”
“Gettin’ pretty la-de-da, ain’t you?” his mother said. “Trolley here, trolley there, like you got all the money is to have. Pretty soon you gwine buy youself a motorcar, ain’t that right?”
“Wish it was,” Cincinnatus said, and gave her a kiss as he hurried out the door. When the CSA had ruled Covington, a motorcar for a black man would have been out of the question, unless he wanted to be branded as uppity-and, perhaps, literally branded as well. Under the USA…maybe such a thing would be possible, if he got the money together. Maybe it wouldn’t, too.
The rain began just before he got to the trolley stop, which wasn’t particularly close to his house. One stop served the entire Negro district near the Licking River. He remembered the complaints he’d heard about routing the track even so close to his part of town.
When the trolley car rattled up, he threw his nickel into the fare box and sat down in the back. The Yankees hadn’t changed the rules about that sort of thing; they had rules of their own, not quite so strict as those of the Confederacy but not tempered by intimate acquaintance, either. He sighed. If your skin was dark, you had trouble finding a fair shake anywhere.
Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. Rain started coming down in sheets. The trolley filled up in a hurry, as people who usually would have walked to work decided against it today. Whites started moving b
ack into the Negro section. One by one, Cincinnatus and his fellow blacks gave up their seats and stood holding the overhead rail. None of them complained, not out loud. Men down from the USA ousted them as casually as did native Covingtonians.
Water sprayed up from the trolley’s wheels as it slid to a stop near the wharves. Cincinnatus and several other Negro men leaped down and ran for their places. The others were all roustabouts; they’d be drenched by the time the day was through. Cincinnatus didn’t expect to be much better off. For one thing, it was almost as wet inside the cab of a White truck as it was outside. For another, he’d be outside a good deal of the time, certainly while loading and unloading his snarling monster, and probably while fixing punctures as well.
“Morning, Cincinnatus,” Lieutenant Straubing said when he splashed into the warehouse that served as headquarters for the transportation unit. “Wet enough out there to suit you?”
“Sure enough is, suh,” Cincinnatus answered. As usual, his color seemed not to matter to Straubing. He still had trouble believing that could be true, but had seen no evidence to make him suppose it was an act, either.
The lieutenant looked troubled. “Cincinnatus, we have a problem, and I think we could use your help to solve it.”
“What kind of problem you talking about, sir?” the Negro asked, expecting it to be something to do with the bad weather and what it was doing to the schedule and to Kentucky’s miserable roads.
Lieutenant Straubing looked even less happy. “A sabotage problem, I’m afraid,” he answered. Just then, an enormous clap of thunder gave Cincinnatus an excuse for jumping, which was just as well, because he would have jumped with an excuse or without one. Straubing went on, “An unhealthy number of fires have broken out in areas we’ve served. Please be on the alert for anything that seems suspicious.”
“Yes, suh, I’ll do that,” Cincinnatus said, knowing everyone would be on the alert for him, a distinctly alarming notion.
Walk in Hell gw-2 Page 46
