"What do you propose, then, Major?" Custer sarcastically courteous was worse than Custer almost any other way. His ruling assumption seemed to be that, since he had no brains, no one else could possibly have any, either.
The trouble was, Dowling had no good answer for him here. That embarrassed the adjutant, but not as much as it might have. Nobody on the U.S. General Staff—or the Confederate General Staff, either, come to that—had any good answer on how to force a breakthrough. West of the Mississippi, the war was still mobile, but that was because there were a lot fewer men and a lot more miles west of the Mississippi. Wherever there were enough soldiers to man a solid trench line, offense literally stopped dead.
But if Dowling didn't know what the answer was, he had a pretty clear notion of what it wasn 't. "Sending men out by the division to charge into machine-gun fire wastes lives, sir," he said. "We'd be better off pounding the Rebs with artillery, using soldiers to create positions from which we could pound them from three sides at once, things like that."
"We have the advantage in manpower, Major," Custer said. "What good is it if we don't use it?"
If we keep using it your way, we won 't have it much longer, Dowling thought. Saying that aloud was probably fatal to a career. He braced himself to speak up anyway; maybe they'd give him an actual combat battalion as punishment for his crime.
Before he could make himself say anything, though, someone knocked on the door to Custer's office. The commanding general snarled something profane, then barked at Dowling: "See who the devil that is."
"Yes, sir," Dowling said resignedly. You interrupted Custer's meetings at your own risk. Dowling opened the door. Standing there was a scared-looking lieutenant from Cryptography, holding an enciphered telegram and a sheet of typewritten paper that was, presumably, the same message decoded. The lieutenant handed Dowling the paper—actually, thrust it into his hand—and then retreated at a clip not far short of flight.
As soon as Dowling had read the first two lines of the decryption, he understood why. But he was the one who'd have to break the news to Custer. Compared to that, the prospect of leading a combat battalion straight at the Rebel trenches looked downright delightful.
"Well?" the general commanding First Army snapped. "Don't just stand there like an upright piano. Tell me what in tarnation this is all about."
Dowling stiffened to rigid attention. Doing his best to keep vengeful glee from his voice, he said, "Yes, sir. Sir, you are ordered to detach two divisions from your front for immediate transfer to another theater."
That had about the same effect on Custer as hitting him between the eyes with a two-by-four would have done. He went white, and then a red that rapidly deepened to a dusky purple. "Who's stealing my men?" he whispered hoarsely. "If it's Pershing, I'll kill the son of a bitch with my own hands if it's the last thing I ever do. That upstart whippersnapper wants to steal all the glory for the Kentucky campaign, and damn me to hell if I aim to let him. I'll defy the order, that's what I'll do, and I'll fight it out in the paper if TR sacks me for it. First Roosevelt keeps me from the northern command he knows I want—and he knows why I want it, too—and now, just when I'm beginning to make decent progress here, he robs me of my forces."
"They aren't being transferred to General Pershing, sir." Now Dowling concealed regret: Pershing had made far more progress against the Rebels than Custer had. He'd also had the sense to save lives by pinching off Louisville from the flanks instead of going straight into the city, as the U.S. Army had tried to do during the Second Mexican War. "The order comes directly from General Wood, at General Staff headquarters in Philadelphia."
Custer expressed an opinion of the relationship between Wood and Roosevelt that reflected poorly on the heterosexuality of either man. Like any underling with an ounce of sense, Dowling knew when to feign deafness. "Why the devil is Wood stealing my men, then?" Custer said, rather more pungently than that.
"Sir, a major Mormon uprising has broken out in Utah," Dowling said, waving the decipherment of the telegram to show the source of his news. "They're right on one of our cross-country rail lines; we have to bring them back under the flag as fast as we can."
"God damn them to hell, and may the U.S. Army send them there," Custer exclaimed. "We should have done it before the War of Secession, and we really should have done it during the Second Mexican War, when they tried to sneak out of our beloved Union. If anyone had listened to me then—" He shook his head. "But no. We had to clasp the viper to our bosom. I was there, by God. I wanted them to hang all the Mormons' leaders, not just a handful of them. I wanted them to hang Abe Lincoln, too, while they had the chance. But would anybody hear a word I said? No. Are we better off because no one would? No again."
"Sir, I wouldn't call what we did in Utah during the Second Mexican War clasping the Mormons to our bosom, or afterwards, either," Dowling said; Custer had a selective memory for facts. John Pope and later military governors in Utah had jumped on the Mormons with both feet then, to make sure they didn't try giving the USA any more hard times. He supposed he could see why they'd outlawed polygamy, but suppressing public worship along with all other public meetings had always struck him as far too heavy-handed. Even after Utah joined the Union, public worship by groups larger than ten remained illegal; since the Second Mexican War, the Supreme Court hadn't been much inclined to interfere with claims of military necessity. And so the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City remained empty to this day. No wonder the Mormons didn't love the U.S. government.
Custer coughed rheumily. Still glowering at his adjutant, he asked, "Are the damned Mormons in bed with the Rebs or the Canucks or both at once?"
“That's—not immediately clear from the reports I have here, sir," Dowling answered, studying his boss with an emotion he wasn't used to feeling: respect. The sole piece of the military art with which Custer was familiar was the headlong smash, but his red-veined nose had a genuine gift for intrigue. 'There are some foreign agitators in the state, but no details as to who they are."
"Could be either one," Custer judged. 'The Mormons don't like niggers much better than the Rebels do, but the Canadians could be seducing them with lies about freedom of religion." He laughed unpleasantly. "If they were up in Canada, they'd have gotten the same short shrift the Germans who settled that town called Berlin did, and you can bet your bottom dollar on it."
"That's probably true, sir," Dowling said, and for once simple agreement was just that, nothing more. He went on, "Shall I draft orders implementing this command for your signature, sir?"
"Yes, go ahead," Custer said with a melodramatic sigh. 'They must have timed their damned uprising with a view to spoiling my offensive and robbing me of the breakthrough I surely would have earned. They'll pay, the scum."
Dowling signed as he bent over the situation map to figure out how he'd pull thirty thousand men or so out of the line. That let him turn away from Custer, which in turn let him snigger wickedly. If the Confederates and Canadians didn't have worse threats than First Army to worry about, the war was going better than he'd figured. A sharp explosion close by made Reggie Bartlett jump and look around for the nearest hole in the ground in which to dive. People in civilian clothes on the streets of Richmond gave him odd looks: why on earth would a soldier be frightened of a backfiring motorcar? The Duryea, plainly having engine trouble, backfired a couple of more times before finally beginning to run a little better.
Another soldier coming his way, though, nodded in complete understanding. "Just back from the front, are you?" he said.
Bartlett nodded. "Sure am." His laugh was self-deprecating. "You can take the soldier out of the trenches, but it's not so easy taking the trenches out of the soldier. This is my hometown, and I feel like I'm a stranger here."
"Know what you mean, pal," the other soldier said. "You get away for a while and it doesn't seem like the real world's real, if you know what I mean." He stuck out a hand. "Name's Alexander Gribbin—Alec, they call me." He had swar
thy, handsome features and a neat little chin beard that made him look like a Frenchman.
Giving his own name, Reggie shook hands with him. He said, "Alec, shall we find someplace where the only pops we're likely to hear come from corks going out of bottles?"
"Friend, I like the way you think," Gribbin said enthusiastically. "If this is your town, you ought to know about places like that, eh?"
"You just want a drink, we can do that anywhere," Bartlett said.
"I've seen that," Gribbin agreed. "Thank your lucky stars, Reggie my friend, the Drys haven't gotten their way here in Virginia. Down in Mississippi, where I come from, it's a desert, nothin' else but."
"That's hard. That's cruel hard," Bartlett said, and his newfound companion nodded, his mournful expression showing just how hard it was. Bartlett went on, "What we could do, though, if you want the chance of something livelier, is to go to the saloon over at Ford's Hotel, right across the street from Capitol Square. It's only a couple blocks from here. Never know who's liable to show up there—congressmen, foreigners, admirals, who can say?—but they don't turn common soldiers away."
"They'd better not," Gribbin said indignantly. "I'm a white man, by Jesus, and I'm as good as any other white man God ever made."
"Not only that," Reggie Bartlett said, "but I've got money in my pocket—some, anyhow—and it spends as good as any other money the mint ever made."
Alec Gribbin grinned widely. "I'm the same way, and so is my money. Let's go."
Ford's Hotel, on the corner of Broad and Eleventh Streets, was a four-story building of white marble, with a fancy colonnaded entrance. The Negro doorman, who wore a uniform with more gold buttons and ribbons and medals than a French field marshal could have displayed, tipped his hat in salute as the two Confederate soldiers in their plain butternut walked past him.
"Hell of a place," Gribbin said with a low whistle, gazing around at the rococo splendor of the lobby. He winked and lowered his voice: "Wouldn't it make the bulliest damn sporting house in the whole wide world?"
"Matter of fact, it would," Bartlett said, "but I wouldn't have the money to go into a sporting house tricked out this fancy." He walked down the hall. His boots sank into the thick pile of the Turkish carpets underfoot. That wasn't so bad; the rugs didn't try to pull the boots off his feet, the way the trench mud had in the Roanoke River valley.
The saloon was a saloon: long bar, brass rail, mirror behind it so the bottles of whiskey and gin and rum looked to be twice as many as they really were, free-lunch counter with a painting of a nude above it. But the place catered to a prosperous crowd. Not only was the free lunch more appetizing than the usual run of sardines and sausage and limp cheese, but the nude, a voluptuous redhead, was a lot more appetizing than the common saloon daub.
"Makes me wish I was an artist," Gribbin said, eyeing her with genuine respect. "Get to see girls like that, and in the altogether—I tell you for a fact, Reggie, it just beats the stuffing out of freezing your feet in a trench in Pennsylvania. That country's so cold in the wintertime, the Yanks are welcome to it, far as I can see."
They strode off to the bar, squeezing in alongside of a couple of portly, middle-aged men in expensive suits. "Beer," Bartlett said. Gribbin ordered a whiskey. Reggie put a quarter on the bar. It disappeared. No change came back.
"Not your five-cents-a-shot place," Gribbin observed. Then he knocked back the whiskey. His eyes got big. "I see why, too. That's the straight goods there. Those cheap joints, they put in red peppers and stuff, make you think you're getting better'n raw rotgut. You know, real whiskey's good." He watched Bartlett drink half his schooner of beer, then said, "Come on, finish that so as I can buy you another one. We can hit the free lunch, too. We drink enough, they won't care how much we dent the profits with what we eat."
Bartlett drained the schooner. "Ahh," he said. His new friend slapped down a quarter. The barkeep, a Negro in a boiled shirt, fixed refills.
The two portly fellows were talking about pension plans for soldiers after the war was over: congressmen, or else lobbyists. Important people, yes, but Bartlett wasn't much interested in pension law. He wished he had more money now, sure, but he wasn't going to worry about fifty years down the line, especially not when his life expectancy once he got back to the front was more likely to be measured in weeks than in years.
Gribbin returned with salami and radishes on rye bread, a couple of deviled eggs, fried oysters, pickles, and pretzels. Reggie went and got some food for himself. The spread the Ford Hotel set out was another reason to come here, and the congressmen or lobbyists or whatever they were didn't have too much pride to keep them from raiding it, either.
A tough-looking fellow in a foreign naval uniform came up and stood at the bar next to Bartlett. He ordered scotch, which, with his accent, gave a pretty clear notion of his nationality. Nodding affably to Bartlett, he said, "Confusion to the Yankees, what?" and lifted his glass.
"I'll drink to that." Reggie proceeded to prove it.
The Englishman made his drink disappear so fast, he might have done it by magic or inhalation. He got another, then raised his glass again and proceeded to elaborate on his earlier toast: 'To the Empire and the Confederacy, and to keeping the United States in their place."
"And out of ours," Bartlett added, which made Alec Gribbin laugh and the naval officer smile wide enough to show a pair of front teeth a rabbit would have been proud to claim. He drank his second shot of scotch as fast as he had the first. Emboldened by his friendly manner, Reggie asked, "How's it going, out on the ocean?"
Before replying, the Royal Navy man ordered a third scotch. Then he said, "Damned if I know how it will all turn out. Damned if anyone knows how it will all turn out. Honors about even thus far in the Atlantic. Argentina's coming in on our side, I'd say, outweighs Chile's joining the Americans and Germans, though none of the South American navies is important enough to swing the balance in any decisive way." Then, seeming to contradict himself, he went on, "I do wish the Empire of Brazil would come to a decision of one sort or the other."
'They damn well better come in on our side when they come," Reggie said angrily, to which Alec Gribbin gave an emphatic assent. Bartlett went on, "Hell, they held on to their slaves longer than we did."
He had thought that a convincing argument. He kept on thinking it a convincing argument. The Royal Navy man called for yet another drink and gulped it with the same alacrity he'd shown with the ones before. "Allies," he muttered, but it didn't sound like a toast. Mostly to himself he went on, "The South and the czars. God have mercy on a free country."
"And what the devil is that supposed to mean?" Alexander Gribbin demanded. He sounded a lot hotter with whiskey in him than he had without. "You saying we aren't free? Is that what you're saying? Go up to the USA and see how you like it there. The Confederacy is the freest country in the world, and that's a fact."
"Is it?" The Englishman had taken on whiskey, too. He pointed to the bartender. "Would you agree with that statement, sir? The statement that this great nation is the freest country in the world, I mean."
The bartender looked from the English officer to the two Confederate privates and back again. He didn't say anything, though his eyes were wide in his dark face. "Oh, hell, what are you asking him for, anyway?" Bartlett said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "He's just a nigger. He doesn't know anything."
"Something more than one man in three of your populace falls into that category," the Royal Navy man said. "In spite of that, you still call yourself the freest country in the world?"
"Of course we do," Reggie said. "We are."
He and the Englishman stared at each other in mutual incomprehension. "Enjoy it, then," the fellow said at last. He called for one last drink, drained it, and left after adding a tip for the bartender.
Bartlett shook his head. "Can't figure out what's chewin' on him. I'd say lice, but he's never seen the inside of a trench, not the likes of him."
"Don't w
orry about it, soldier," one of the prominent men in dark suits said. 'There's a certain kind of Englishman who thinks that if you're not English, you're sort of halfway to being a nigger yourself."
"Is that a fact? Well, to hell with him, then," Gribbin said, and started after the naval officer. "Anybody who thinks I'm halfway to a nigger, he's halfway to the hospital."
Reggie grabbed him by the arm. "Ease off, Alec," he said urgently. "You beat on an ally, you get yourself in more trouble than you can shake a stick at."
'That, in essence, is correct," the man in the suit said. "It doesn't matter whether we love the limeys and they love us. What matters is that, no matter what else we do, we don't do anything to make them like us less than they like the USA. Should that misfortune ever strike us, boys, you can buy a coffin, on account of we are dead and buried."
"I don't want to buy me a coffin," Reggie said. "All I want is another schooner." He raised his voice to call to the Negro tending bar: "Boy, another beer!"
"Yes, sir," the bartender said, and brought him one.
After he paid for it, he turned to Gribbin and said, "You know what's nice about niggers? You don't have to waste time bein' polite with 'em."
"I'll drink to that," Alec said, and did.
The bartender picked up a rag and polished the gleaming surface of the bar, over and over again. He did not look up at the two soldiers. Sam Carsten slept in the middle bunk on the Dakota, which made him feel like the meat in a sandwich. You had a guy on top of you and a guy underneath, to say nothing of a whole bunk room full of guys all around. Your skinny mattress creaked and groaned on the iron frame, as did those of your two bunkmates. Everybody snored. Everybody farted. Nobody washed his feet often enough.
And, half the time or more, you didn't even notice, not from lights-out to the klaxon that yanked you from your bunk as if it physically grabbed you and threw you down on the deck. If you weren't dead beat when you lay down, you'd figured out how to screw around so well, it looked as if you were working to some chief petty officers who'd long since seen every kind of screwing around known to man.
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