McGregor’s breath smoked as if he’d just lighted a cigarette when he left the barn. The first inhalation of cold outside air burned in his lungs like cigarette smoke, too. After a couple of breaths, though, he felt all right. Once winter really came down, he’d feel as if he were breathing razors whenever he stuck his head out of any door.
Off to the north, artillery coughed and grumbled. It was farther away than it had been halfway through the summer, when Canadian troops and those from the mother country had pushed the Yankees south from Winnipeg. “But not south to Rosenfeld,” McGregor said sadly. Winnipeg still held, though. So long as Winnipeg held, and Toronto, and Montreal, and Quebec City, Canada lived. The Americans had claimed Toronto’s fall a good many times. Lies, all lies. “What they’re good for,” McGregor told the air, and started back toward the farmhouse with the eggs.
As usual, the north-south road that ran by the farm was full of soldiers and guns and horses and trucks on the move, most of the traffic heading north toward the front. What went south was what didn’t work any more: ambulances full of broken men, trucks and horses glumly pulling broken machines. The more of those McGregor saw, the better he reckoned his country’s chances.
And here came an automobile, jouncing along the path toward the farmhouse. The motorcar was painted green-gray. Even had it not been, he would have known it for an American vehicle. Who but the Americans had gasoline these days?
As if it had not been there, McGregor brought the eggs in to Maude. “Trouble coming,” he said. His wife didn’t need to ask him what he meant. Automobiles were noisy things, and you could hear their rattle and bang and pop a long way across the quiet prairie.
“Americans,” Mary said fiercely, sticking her head into the kitchen. “Let’s shoot them.”
“You can’t say that, little one, not where they can hear you,” McGregor told his younger daughter. “You can’t even think it, not where they can hear you.” Mary’s nod was full of avid comprehension. She had an instinctive gift for conspiracy the war had brought out young in her, as a hothouse could force a rose into early bloom.
The automobile sputtered to a stop. A door slammed, then another. Booted feet-several pairs of booted feet-came stomping toward the door. “Shall we open it?” Maude whispered.
McGregor shook his head. As quietly, he answered, “No. We’ll make ’em knock. They have to know we’re here-where else would we be? It’ll annoy them.” By such tiny campaigns was his war against the invaders fought. Mary’s eyes glowed. She understood without being told the uses of harassment-but then, she had an older brother and sister.
“Damn Canucks,” said one of the American soldiers outside. McGregor nodded, once. Mary giggled soundlessly.
“Quiet.” That was a voice McGregor recognized: Captain Hannebrink. All the farmer’s pleasure at annoying the occupiers changed to mingled alarm and hope. What was the man who had arrested Alexander doing here? He hadn’t come out to the farm since the day of the arrest.
Maude knew his voice, too. “What does he-?” Her voice cut off in the middle of the question. Hannebrink was knocking at the door.
It was an utterly ordinary knock, not the savage pounding it should have been with a car full of American ruffians out there. Stories said they used rifle butts. Not here, not today.
McGregor went to the door and opened it. The captain nodded, politely enough. Behind him, the three private soldiers came to alertness. They had rifles, even if they hadn’t used them as door knockers. Hannebrink didn’t say anything, not right away. “What is it?” McGregor asked as silence stretched.
From behind him, Mary asked, “Are you going to let my brother go?”
“Hush,” Maude said, and pushed Mary back to Julia, hissing, “Take care of her and keep her quiet”-not an easy order to follow.
Captain Hannebrink coughed. “Mr. McGregor, I have to tell you that over the past few days we obtained information confirming for us that your son, Alexander McGregor, was in fact an active participant in efforts to harm United States Army occupying forces in this military district, and that he should therefore be judged as a franc-tireur.”
“Information?” McGregor said, not taking in all of the long, cold, dry sentence at once. “What kind of information?”
“I am not at liberty to discuss that with you, sir,” Hannebrink said stiffly. He scratched at the edge of his Kaiser Bill mustache, careful not to disturb its waxed perfection.
“Means somebody’s been filling your head up with lies, and you don’t have to own up to that or say who it is,” McGregor said.
The American shrugged. “As you know, sir, the penalty for civilians resisting in arms the occupying forces is death by firing squad.”
Behind McGregor, Julia gasped. He heard Maude stop breathing. Through numb lips, he said, “And you’re going to-shoot him? You can’t do that, Captain. There has to be some kind of appeal, of-”
Hannebrink held up a hand. “Mr. McGregor, I regret to have to inform you that the sentence was carried out, in accordance with U.S. Army regulations, at 0600 hours this morning. Your son’s body will be released to you for whatever burial arrangements you may care to make.”
Mary didn’t understand. “Father-?” Julia said in a halting voice; she wasn’t sure she understood, and desperately hoped she didn’t. Maude set her hand on McGregor’s arm. She knew. So did he.
They shot him at sunrise, he thought dully. Before sunrise. It would have been dark and chilly, even before they wrapped a black rag over Alexander’s bright, laughing eyes, tied him to a post or stood him up against a wall or did whatever they did, and fired a volley that made him one with the darkness and ice forever.
The American soldiers behind Captain Hannebrink were very alert. McGregor would have bet they’d had this duty before, and knew hell could break loose. “If it is any consolation to you, sir,” the captain said, “he went bravely and it was over very fast. He did not suffer.”
McGregor couldn’t even scream at him to get out. They had Alexander’s body, the body that, the Yank said, had not suffered, but was now dead. “Take it,” McGregor said, stumbling over the words, “take it to the Presbyterian church. He’ll go in, in the graveyard there.”
Julia shrieked. So did Mary-she knew what the graveyard meant. She sprang for Captain Hannebrink as she had for the U.S. officer in Rosenfeld when he’d wanted to arrest her father. McGregor grabbed her and held her. He didn’t know what those narrow-eyed soldiers behind Hannebrink might do to an attacker, even an attacker who was a little girl, and he didn’t want to find out.
“I shall do as you request,” Captain Hannebrink said. “As I told you, sir, I deeply regret the unfortunate necessity for this visit.”
“Somebody went out and told you one more lie, Captain, and you piled it on top of all the other lies you heard, and it finally gave you enough of a stack so you could shoot my boy, the way you’ve been looking to do all these months,” McGregor said.
“We do not believe it was a lie,” Hannebrink said.
“And I don’t believe you,” McGregor said. “Now get out of my sight. If I ever set eyes on you again-” Maude’s hand tightened on his upper arm and brought him a little way back toward himself.
“Mr. McGregor, I understand that you are overwrought now,” the U.S. officer said, trying to be kind, trying to be sympathetic, and only making McGregor hate him more on account of it. He turned to his soldiers. “Come on, boys. We’ve done what we had to do. Let’s go.”
All the men walked back to the Ford. Hannebrink got in. So did the private soldiers, one at a time, ever so warily. When one cranked the engine back to life, another covered him. McGregor wondered how often they’d been fired on after delivering that kind of news. Some people, after hearing it, wouldn’t much care whether they lived or died.
He didn’t much care whether he lived or died himself. But he did care about Maude and Julia and Mary. His family. All the family he had left.
He turned back to his wife.
Tears were running down her face. He hadn’t heard her start crying. He was crying, too, he suddenly realized. He hadn’t noticed that start, either. They clung to each other and to their daughters-and to the memory of their son.
“Alexander,” Maude whispered, her faced pressed against his shoulder.
“Alexander,” he echoed slowly. His mind raced ahead. Look ahead, look behind, look around-if you didn’t look at where you were, you wouldn’t have to think about how bad things were here at the focused moment of now.
He saw Alexander laid to rest in the churchyard, the grass there already sere and brown. He saw past that. His son had said-had no doubt said up until the very moment the rifles fired-he’d had no part in the things he was accused of doing. McGregor believed him.
Someone had lied, then. Someone had lied to bring him to death before sunrise. Someone, probably, whose son really had done the things Alexander stood accused of doing, and wanted to see the McGregors suffer along with him, no matter how unjustly. Whoever it was, McGregor figured he could find him, sooner or later. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.
And the Americans had believed the lie. They must have known it was a lie. But they hadn’t shot anybody lately, and maybe they needed examples to keep the Canadians quiet.
Whatever their reasons, he vowed they weren’t going to keep him quiet. They’d shot Alexander for a franc-tireur. He hadn’t been one. McGregor was sure of that, down to the marrow of his bones. But in shooting him, they’d made themselves a franc-tireur, all right.
“I’m twenty years out of the Army,” he murmured. Maude stared at him. She would know what he was thinking. He didn’t care, not now he didn’t. He’d forgotten a lot of things over half a lifetime or so. If he had to use them again, though, he expected they’d come back soon enough.
Having wished that, after so long in river monitors, he might go back to sea, George Enos was repenting of his decision. He had gone to sea in fishing boats since before the time when he needed a razor. Going to sea in a destroyer was an altogether different business, as he was discovering day by day.
“It’s like you’ve ridden horses all your life, and they were the horses the brewery uses to haul beer barrels to the saloon,” he said to Andy Conkling, who had the bunk under his. “Then one day they put you on a thoroughbred and they tell you you’ll do fine because what the hell, it’s a horse.”
Conkling laughed at him. He had a round red face and a big Kaiser Bill mustache, so that he put George in mind of a clock with its hands pointing at ten minutes to two. He said, “Yeah, she does go pretty good, don’t she?”
“You might say so,” Enos answered, a New England understatement that made his new friend laugh again. To back it up, he went on, “She cruises-just idles along, mind you-at fifteen knots. No boat I’ve ever been on could do fifteen knots if you tied down the safety valve and stoked the engine till it blew up.”
“Not brewery horses,” Conkling said. “Mules. Maybe donkeys.”
“Yeah,” George said. “And the Ericsson gives us what, going flat out? Thirty knots?”
“Just under, at the trials. Some other boats in the class made it. But she’ll give twenty-eight easy,” Conkling told him.
Fifteen felt plenty fast to Enos. He stared out at the Atlantic racing past under the destroyer’s keel. The USS Ericsson was a bigger, more stable platform than any steam trawler he’d ever sailed, displacing over a thousand tons, but the waves hit her harder, too. And besides-“You’ve got to remember, I’m just off a river monitor. After that, any ocean sailing is rough business.”
“Those things are snapping turtles,” Andy Conkling said disdainfully. “This here is a shark.”
From what Enos had seen and heard, deep-sea sailors had nothing but scorn for the river-monitor fleet. From what he’d seen aboard the Punishment, the monitors didn’t deserve any such scorn. Trying to convince shipmates of that struck him as a good way to waste his breath. He kept quiet.
In a thoughtful tone of voice, Conkling went on, “Of course, this here is a little shark. That’s why we need to be able to run so damn fast: to get away from the big sharks on the other side.”
“Yeah,” Enos said again. He looked out across the endless sweep of the Atlantic once more. That was no idle sightseeing-far from it. Spotting smoke on the horizon-or, worse, a periscope perilously close-might mean the difference between finishing the cruise and sliding under the waves as smoking refuse. “The limeys are out there looking for us, too.”
“You bet your ass they are, chum,” Conkling said. “They don’t want us running guns to the micks. They don’t want it in a really big way. If they can, they’re gonna keep us from doing it.”
“I know about micks,” Enos said. “Coming out of Boston, I’d damn well better know about micks. If the ones on our side of the ocean can’t stand England, what about all the poor bastards over there, living right next to it? No wonder they rose up.”
“No wonder at all, at all,” Conkling said, winking to make the brogue he’d put on seem funnier. He set a finger by the side of his nose. “And no wonder the good old Kaiser and us, we all got to give ’em as big a hand as we can.”
“Hell of a mess over there, if half what you read in the papers is true,” George said, though that was by no means guaranteed. “Shooting and sniping and bombs on the bridges and the Ulstermen massacring all the Catholics they can catch and the Catholics giving it right back to ’em and more limeys tied down there every day, sounds like.”
“England’s got to do it.” Now Andy Conkling made himself sound serious, as if he were a Navy Department bigwig back in Philadelphia. “They let the Irish go and we or the Germans put men in there, that’s curtains for the King, and they know it damn well.”
“I don’t know it,” Enos said. “The Kaiser can’t supply soldiers in Ireland. When the Germans send guns to the Irishmen, they have to do it by submarine. And look at us, sneaking in like we’re going to bed with somebody else’s wife. Don’t suppose we can go at it any other way, not in England’s back yard.”
“Say you’re right,” Conkling replied. “I don’t think so, but say you are. How come England’s making such a big to-do over something that can’t happen?”
“A lot of times people make a big to-do over things that didn’t happen.” For about the hundredth time, George wished he hadn’t had to tell Sylvia where he’d been going when the Punishment was wrecked. I was drunk when I went and I was drunk when I told her, he thought. That tells me I shouldn’t get drunk. She still blamed him for what he hadn’t done. She probably wouldn’t have been much angrier if he had gone and done it, which made part of him wish he had. Only part, though: Mehitabel, looked back on in memory rather than at with desire, wasn’t much.
Smoke poured from the Ericsson’s four stacks. George thought the design was ugly and clumsy, but nobody cared what a sailor thought. The destroyer picked up speed, fairly leaping over the ocean. “Getting close to wherever we’re going,” Conkling remarked.
“Yeah,” George answered. Nobody bothered telling sailors much of anything, either. Ireland the crew knew, but only a handful knew where they’d stand off the coast of the Emerald Isle.
Officers and petty officers went up and down the deck. “Be alert,” one of them said. “We need every pair of eyes we’ve got,” another added. A third, a grizzled CPO, growled, “If we hit a mine on account of one of you didn’t spot it, I’ll throw the son of a bitch in the brig.”
That drew a laugh from Conkling, and, a moment later, after he’d worked it through, one from Enos as well. He said, “If they’ve laid mines, how the devil can we spot ’em, going as fast as we are? The monitor I was on just crawled along the Mississippi, and we had a sweeper go in front of us when we thought the Rebs had mined the river.”
“Turtles,” Conkling said again. That didn’t answer George’s question. After a few seconds, he realized the question wasn’t going to get answered. That probably meant you couldn’t spot mines very well w
hen you were going full speed ahead, an imperfectly reassuring idea.
“Land ho!” somebody shouted. George stared eastward. Sure enough, in a couple of minutes he saw a smudge on the horizon too big for a smoke plume and too steady to be a cloud. After a moment, he realized that, if he could see land, people on land could also see the Ericsson. Someone might be tapping on a wireless key or cranking a telephone even as he stood on the deck, in which case the boat would have visitors soon.
Moved by that same thought, Andy Conkling murmured, “The limeys on shore’ll take us for one of their own. Always have before.” Whether that was expectation or mere pious hope, George didn’t know. He did know it was his hope, pious or not.
“Landing parties to the boats,” a petty officer shouted. Enos hurried to the davits. He had more practice in small boats than most of the men aboard the Ericsson, and less experience on the destroyer herself. That made him a logical man for the landing party.
Each boat had a small gasoline engine in the stern, and each was packed with crates that bore no markings whatsoever. Enos scrambled up into a boat. “Steer between Loop Point and Kerry Head,” the petty officer told him and his five comrades. “Ballybunion’s where you’re going, on the south side of Shannon-mouth past the lighthouse. You’ll know the place by the old castle-a big, square, gray, ugly thing, I’m told, not hardly what you think of when castle goes through your head. Your chums’ll be waiting for you a little west of the castle. Good luck.”
Hoists lowered Enos’ boat and two more into the sea. They rode low in the water. Those crates weren’t stuffed with feathers. George got the motor going and steered for the distant land. “Jesus,” said one of the sailors in the boat with him, a big square-head named Bjornsen, “I feel naked in something this small.”
“Italians go fishing out of T Wharf back home every day in boats smaller than this,” George said.
“Crazy damn dagos,” Bjornsen muttered, and fell silent.
“Should have taken along a line and some hooks,” Enos said. “Might have brought back something the cooks could have fried for our supper.” He peered down into the green-gray sea. “Wonder what they have in the way of fish over here.”
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