Faded Coat of Blue

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  There is lovely when a city wakes to morning. But there was no peace for me.

  Cheating the law, a saloon stood open for the devil’s breakfast. A painted bit of a girl leaned near the doorway.

  “Special price for the first of the day, sweetie,” she told me.

  I walked by, but she would not leave well enough alone, and called after me, “I’ll make you feel like a real big man. You won’t feel like a cripple no more.”

  Now I am not given to light conversation with such, although I will not be the hypocrite who pretends his youth was a model of Christian deportment, but something set off my powder that morning. Perhaps it was the undelivered trousers, or the child’s voice issuing from the harlot’s mask—if she was fourteen, I’m the Maharajee of Mysore. In truth, it might have been her lack of charity as to my person. All up, I turned on the girl, swiveling on my cane.

  “How old are you?” I demanded.

  “How old d’you want me to be?”

  “Now, now, missy. Just tell us the truth, and there’s a good girl.”

  “I’m old enough to show a fellow a time.” She had the look of a farm lass a week in the city and fallen in with its refuse.

  “Look you,” I said. “This is a bad business. If you’re hard upon it, you can go to the Reverend Abernathy’s mission for help. It’s but a walk up 9th Street, where you’ll find it clean and orderly.”

  She looked at me with the disdain of youth. “Oh, I know them kind. What all they want’s a free tossing between the hymn howling, no thanks. And don’t you talk queer like? ‘Ye cane goo tah ta Revrent Meegillicutty…’ ” She laughed a laugh I would not wish on a girl so young. “Maybe you’re a Reb spy?”

  Now I understood the silliness about spies, for there was a great deal of rumor that autumn, and rumor would be such a girl’s fact. But my speech has always been incontestably normal.

  A man with a mustache as wide as his shoulders appeared in the door and addressed me in terms I will spare you. I turned to be on my way, but the girl called after me, with the sad spite of a child, “Go on, Cap’n Gimpy Leg. Look at the little sucker, would you?” I heard the sound of a blow then, followed by weeping and a man’s voice commanding her to remove an indiscreet part of her anatomy to the interior of the saloon.

  I am not blind. I have seen war, from the plains of Chilltanwala to the hills of Virginia, and I know what it brings in its train. But I do not like that which is done to children, nor what is often made of them.

  Seventh Street had begun to stir as I turned up its fine pavings. The daughters of the German shopkeepers were out clearing away the storm debris, scrubbing their windows and entranceways, ever the earliest, for they are a clean and industrious people. A few of them knew me to be Mrs. Schutzengel’s boarder and greeted me as Herr Hauptmann. It seemed that all the Germans in Washington were quietly prosperous and acquainted one with the other. Great singers, they were, too, with their little societies for it, though they could not hold a candle to the Welsh. I think the Germans a fine people for an artisan class and keeping shops, and an honest race, but you will never make soldiers of them.

  I turned at the Patent Office. My leg wanted an end to the walk, but we cannot indulge the flesh. A pair of ragamuffins who should have been to bed aped my limp and saluted. When I did not respond, they soon lost interest. It is an odd thing to remember. My injury that seemed so great to me then was nothing to what others would suffer in the war. We had no sense of the coming terribleness or its duration. By the end of it, a man with a bothered leg would hold no attraction for even the worst of boys.

  I could smell Mrs. Schutzengel’s house from half a block away, but this was a fine smell, the baking of bread and cakes, and a great frying. I never understood my fellow officers who mocked me for taking a simple room at an unfashionable address, for what more could a man desire in a boardinghouse than cleanliness, good cooking, and a fair price? Which left a nice remittance for my Mary Myfanwy. Now you might say the Welsh are tight in the purse—and I have heard that said—but your Germans and Welsh understand one another. A fair service for a fair price, and all are made happy.

  I came in and the hall was cold, but I hung up my coat on the peg. The dining room would be warm now. Mrs. Schutzengel could be depended upon, and that is always a fine thing in life.

  I was early, of course, with the other boarders still in their sleep. I surprised Mrs. Schutzengel in the kitchen, though I did not mean to do so.

  She was a great door-filling woman, akin to the Low Dutch we had encountered about our new home in Pottsville. When I come in, she was bent to the oven—a spectacle from which a gentlemen of sense would avert his eyes—and the effort of straightening her back left her out of breath and red and tottering. Her hands grabbed the air.

  “Oooch,” she said, “Mein lieber Gott, oooch, ist nur Sie, Herr Hauptmann? Oooch, mein Gott, Sie haben so eine Angst in mich gejagt!”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Schutzengel,” I said. “There is sorry I am, if I gave you a fright.”

  She sweated like an old sergeant in the summer of Hindoostan, and the moisture clung to her cabbage of a nose.

  “Ist nichts, ist nichts! Oooch, now I am always so bad to speak German. I speak Deutscb to you, I am sorry. When I am so frightened. Maybe it is them Rebels. Come und sit, Captain Jones.”

  “No, no. I’m sorry. It’s only that I thought—”

  “Now you has been in the cold and all wet, I think? You must become warm. Sit, sit. I make you a breakfast.”

  “Only a little coffee, see.”

  “No! Nein to only coffee. Your wife, Gott erbarme, she will think, ‘Who is this terrible person, the Schutzengel?’ when you are coming home all in bones like Sensenmann. You will have ein gutes Fruhstuck now. Think of your wife, of the little Kind.”

  “I think of them all the time, Mrs. Schutzengel. That I do. It’s only that I seem to be developing this American craving for coffee, and I hoped—”

  She resettled her apron, and a great apron it was, then she planted her fists on her hips. I must say she was dauntingly large. Though good of heart.

  “Sit,” she commanded. “Eat.”

  I stepped back in from the yard, prepared to leave the house for the day, when I heard a ruckus in the dining room. The other boarders were up and at their victuals, with a steady sound of cutlery. But Mister Mager, a drummer of uncertain wares and a fellow countryman of Mrs. Schutzengel’s, was in high complaint.

  “Where ist sausages?” he demanded. “I smells sausages.”

  “Es gibt keine Wurst heute,” Mrs. Schutzengel roared, for she was not pacific when aroused. “No sausages today.”

  “I smells sausages,” Mager insisted.

  I closed the front door behind me. Twas the politic thing to do. At my captive breakfast in her kitchen, Mrs. Schutzengel had thrust fine, bursting swells of sausage upon me, and I will not say I did not respond with appetite. Now Mrs. Schutzengel kept an abundant board, and she was generous with her potatoes and puddings, her biscuits and stuffings and breads—all gleaming with gravy or slathered with lard, as I see her table still—but the portions of meat she kept under firm control. I had eaten the day’s entire ration of sausage, though not with ill intent or knowledge of the deed. Mrs. Schutzengel was a woman of great drive, and she was always driven to feed me. Perhaps she thought I was not done growing. I never understood her, but women are deep as a pit mine.

  Now Saturday was a quiet day to work in the War Department. There were many who should have been at their desks, but the young gentlemen always found reason to be away, paying court to women honorable and less so, and when the officers are absent you must not expect great diligence from the ranks. I was not alone in the great brick building, but I might have been for all the work being done, war or no.

  Evans the Telegraph, a good Glamorgan man, come by with a set of newspapers in the crook of his arm. I will admit that I examined them with him. But they had gone to press too early to report on General Sc
ott’s departure. Nor did they yet tell of the death that would so affect my life. I soon laid them aside. If I am to be honest, my newspaper was The Evening Star, and none of the morning folders. Now if there was sensation in The Star, it was also a sheet that knew how to tell a story, and Mr. Wallach had a scent for news. Three good cents for four good pages, I always said.

  A barricade of ledgers and bills my desk was, but Evans the Telegraph said, “A letter I’ve had, Captain Jones. From my Keziah’s folk.” His speech was slow and considered, as becomes a chapel man. “They would send young Dafydd to America. No work but bad in the valleys, see. How do you think on it?”

  I thought on it. “Mr. Evans, I would counsel a delay. For war is a great temptation to the young. I expect an end to it with the spring campaigning.”

  Evans nodded. “Just so. But young Dafydd is taken with young Madlin Rhys. Of the Pontypridd line. You see how it is.”

  I shook my head. “No good to come of that.” Evans drew out his pipe and I feared a long stay. There were figures to reckon, battles to be fought with pen and ink and rule. But I will admit I find a good talk with another Welshman hard to resist.

  “No,” Evans went on. “No good. For there’s English blood on that side. Low people out of Hereford.”

  “Perhaps the boy should come on then. Better a war than an English wife.”

  Evans lit his tobacco with one of those blazing American matches. He nodded, puffed up the smoke, and sighed like a heartsick dragon. “Just so, just so. Had the girl but been a Pendoylan Rhys, that would have been a fine pairing…”

  We settled that I would write to my Mary Myfanwy about the matter. I wrote to her each day. She could inquire of her uncle, Mr. Evan Evans of Pottsville—no relation to Evans the Telegraph—who had set me to a fair job in the mining administration in my own time of need. The collieries were short of able hands, with the outflux of volunteers. There were not even Irish enough.

  “And how is Mr. Lincoln?” I asked, as I asked at the close of each visit. Mr. Lincoln was a great one for visiting the telegraph office. The question was a notice that I had no more time, not even for a buttie.

  “A great sad man. Full of jokes,” Evans said. “I believe his health sustains. But a cloud hangs over him since the scrap by Leesburg.”

  He left me then, in his goodness, taking up his papers and puffing his pipe like a steam engine.

  The department’s accounts were a horror. Twas not only that a man began to suspect dishonesty and graft. Not a line tallied. Now as you will learn, I have little enough nostalgia for the service of old John Company or even the Queen, God bless her, but we never would have allowed the books of the remotest regiment to get into such a state. No, sir, I tell you. The provisioning sergeant would have been broken to the ranks and the responsible officer sent off to map the Kush. With the best will in the world, I could make but little progress.

  I worked till the light left me, then shut up my papers under lock. I had not seen a general all day, nor a colonel nor major. Of course, the sharp ones would be over to General McClellan’s headquarters. But how my new countrymen neglected the necessaries, from the Army’s feeding to the good harnessing of its horses, was a mortal sin to me. Now it was a mighty task to go from a small establishment to a great battling army in a matter of months. We could not expect perfection. Yet the neglect of duty was everywhere, and I could not like it. War was still a lark to them. I would have liked to see only one general at his post that day, but all I saw as I left was Mr. Lincoln making his way to the telegraph office, shawl about his shoulders. He looked for all the world like a railway inspector on a county line.

  I walked home past the supply yard put up behind Mr. Corcoran’s new mansion, where an Irish sergeant called for cavalry boots and the devil. The gas lamps were on and carriages halted before the fine houses, delivering ladies from their afternoon visits. Cooking smells rose, and Fine Jim stood bandy on his corner.

  “I’ll have my Evening Star, thank you,” I told the lad. He looked at me. “You won’t, sir.” Now that was not in the order of things. “Ain’t come out yet,” he told me. “They’re holding it back. There’s a great story, they says. Coming any time now.”

  It ruffled me. Now a man must make allowances for wartime, certainly, but a regular fellow has his habits. My evening newspaper was a pleasant, indeed, a necessary thing to me. It was my day’s rest to read in the parlor after dinner, while Mrs. Schutzengel sat in her martyred velvet chair and fingered her way through those great German tomes of hers, all the while keeping an ear to the boarders working off their debts in the kitchen. Then I would go up to my room and write to my wife by lamplight, for Mrs. Schutzengel saw no joy in a wasted penny and had not put in gas above the stairs.

  Now the world was out of kilter. I am, I hope, a reasonable man. But I was unsettled without my newspaper. My leg pained me doubly much as I made my way home.

  It is at such times that the decency in men redeems us.

  I grumbled my way to Mrs. Schutzengel’s block. Twas near the end of the last decent street, bordering a sharp drop in quality beyond, where God’s image deteriorated until it reached the Irish snags down in Swampoodle. The lamps wore haloes in the damp air, and the wind sparked up. The rain would return as sleet, you could feel it. More storms we would have.

  Ahead, I saw a gathering of soldiers, more than a dozen of them, just at the boardinghouse porch. I could not figure it. There was not a saloon nor one house of disgrace in our street.

  Then I come up closer, and I recognized them just as they spotted me.

  “It’s Captain Jones,” a voice called. “Down there.” Private Pierce. His sound high and thin as a cheap bugle.

  There stood a dozen lads from my old company, come to town from camp. To the Lord knew what end. But I will tell you fair, I was glad to see them. My heart leapt. Then I remembered the terrible, sad look on General Scott’s face that morning and warned myself to be steady.

  They gathered around me. Though a few had come by the hospital, a convalescent ward is a trial for young men and they did not last it. But now they had come. Try as they might, they could not hold their eyes from my limp. They were such young men, and so helpless.

  Mrs. Schutzengel stood on her porch, a human bulwark.

  “Oooch, Captain Jones. You are come home now, Gott sei Dank. These mens do not listen. They spits on my stones. On the stones I have scrubbed, they spitted. ”Save me.“

  I braced up my back.

  “Masters? You spitting again?”

  “No, sir, Captain. No, sirree. Not much.”

  “And you, Farmer?”

  Yes, a culprit there. I could tell by the face on him. Yet I could not be hard. I was so glad to see my boys.

  “I will tend to them, Mrs. Schutzengel. They will behave. Now, what is wanted here, boys?”

  They were lads out of the anthracite mines, or off the low farms, young Pennsylvania bucks, and speech was a burden to them. They shuckered about. Finally, Corporal Mays took charge.

  “If the captain don’t mind,” he said, “would the captain climb up the steps there. So it’s official like?”

  I would have done anything for the boys. Anything legal and honest, you understand. But I could not let them see it. I put on my dependable face, the one I learned in the sweat and blood of the Punjab as a young fusilier.

  I climbed the steps toward the scent of dinner. Private Berry moved to assist me, but I turned on him a face that stopped that quick. I would not be helped, for I was not an invalid, but a serving officer. With a slight crook to the leg, but no matter that.

  “Will the captain face about, sir?”

  “I am facing about, Corporal Mays. All in good time, see.”

  “Yes, sir. Captain Jones, sir.”

  I looked them over in the lamplight and shadows. Their uniforms still did not fit, still had not settled to their bodies, and flaps of cloth rose with the wind. Their buttons were badly polished at best. But at least they had tro
users.

  “Now, Mays… all of you… if you’re in town for the drink, you know I do not approve of intoxicants, to say nothing of the breakdown in judgement that can lead a man to—”

  “Begging your pardon, Captain Jones…” Twas Pierce of the bugle voice. Speaking out of turn. As always.

  “What is it, Pierce?”

  “Sir, Corporal Mays has something to say to you. If you please, sir.”

  Yes. I knew it, of course. But I am coward in matters of the heart, see.

  “Go on, Corporal.”

  Mays put the boys into two ranks before Mrs. Schutzengel’s garden fence. Then he come to the foot of the steps with a wooden case under his left arm. He snapped his heels together and saluted.

  “Now, Mays,” I said. “You’ll do to unlearn that salute. I taught you wrong, and you’re to learn the ways of our own army. Hide that palm, man. Finger tipped to the brim of the cap.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve learned it right, sir. I just done it that way for you.”

  “Go on, Mays.”

  “Captain Jones,” he began, with the heaviness of a man who has memorized his speech, “sir, we come to apologize. The whole company would’ve come, but we couldn’t get the let for all. So we’re the elected volunteers come to resent the entire—”

  “ ‘Represent,’ Corporal Mays. ‘Represent’”

  “Pardon, sir. To represent the entire company.” He began to step toward me, then caught himself. “We come to say we’re sorry we run away. We’re sorry we let you down. After how good you trained us. Wasn’t right, what we done out at Bull Run. And to think of your leg…”

  “My leg will be fine, Corporal. As for running, you will not do it again. That is enough.”

  “After how good you trained us…” he started again.

  “ ‘Bayonets fore! Second rank, up! Third rank, ready!” That was Roberts. Who was often light of heart and not the best representative of the Welsh race.

  “Shut up, Bob,” Corporal Mays told him.

  “Roberts,” I said, “we’ll have no more of those improper commands. I taught you what I knew, and twas from another army. An expedient measure, no more. It’s Hardee’s Tactics for you now.”