"I suppose you're right," McGregor said. The big fish-the big Yank fish-hadn't let him get along. But he could still bite. He'd show them he could still bite. His features revealed none of that. Nodding to the postmaster, he went on, "Thanks for the stamps, and thanks for the paper, too."
"Any time, Arthur," Rokeby said. "And congratulations again for your daughter. She's a nice gal; I've always thought so. She deserves to be happy."
She d have been a lot happier if the Yanks hadn 't come up over the border. But McGregor kept that to himself. He'd kept a lot of things to himself since Alexander was shot. With a last nod to the postmaster, he headed across the street to Henry Gibbon's general store.
Snow crunched under his boots. The calendar said it would be spring any day, but the calendar didn't know much about Manitoba. As he walked, he thought hard. If Custer came to Rosen-feld… If Custer paraded through Rosenfeld… If he did, McGregor was going to try to kill him, and that was all there was to it.
He could see only one way to do it: toss a bomb into Custer's motorcar. That was how the Serbs had touched off the Great War. McGregor couldn't see doing it and getting away with it. The prospect of not getting away with it had held him back in the past. He looked deep into himself. No, he really didn't care any more. If he paid with his life, he paid with his life. He'd never have the chance to strike another blow like this against the Yanks. The next commandant they appointed would probably be some faceless functionary whose own mother had never heard of him. If someone like that got blown to smithereens, so what? But Custer had been famous for more than forty years. Killing him would mean something. The USA didn't have an Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but Custer came close.
Murder on his mind, McGregor walked right past the general store. He turned around, shaking his head, and went back. Henry Gibbon nodded from behind the counter. "Morning, Arthur," he said. "What can I do for you today?"
"I've got a list here somewhere," McGregor said, and went through his pockets till he found it. Handing it to the storekeeper, he went on, "It's Maude's stuff, mostly: canned goods and sundries and such. We need kerosene, too, and there's a couple of bottles of cattle drench on there for me, but it's mostly for the missus."
Gibbon ran his finger down the list. "Reckon I can take care of just about all of this." He looked up. "Hear tell your daughter's going to tie the knot. That's a big day, by heaven. Congratulations."
"Thank you, Henry," McGregor said. He pointed to Gibbon. "I bet the Culligans came into town in the last couple of days. Mercy, even Wilf Rokeby's heard the news."
"You know it's all over creation if Wilf's heard it, and that's a fact," Henry Gibbon said with a chuckle. He turned to the shelves behind him. "This'll take a little bit. Why don't you grab a candy cane-or a pickle, if one'd suit you better-and toast yourself by the stove while I rustle up what you need?"
"I don't mind if I do." McGregor reached into the pickle barrel and pulled a likely one out of the brine. It crunched when he bit into it, the way a proper pickle should.
"I'm going to give you a crate," Gibbon said. "Bring it back and I '11 knock a dime off your next bill."
"All right. I would have brought one with me this time, only I didn't think."
"I noticed that. It's why I started knocking a dime off the bill," the storekeeper answered. "Plenty of people who won't think about anything else will remember money."
McGregor would have been one of those people before the Great War. He would have been one of those people up until 1916. Now the only thing he remembered was revenge. "What do I owe you?" he asked when Gibbon set the last can in the crate.
"Well, when you bring in the kerosene can and I fill it, everything put all together comes to $8.51," Gibbon said. "You did bring the kerosene can, I reckon?" By his tone, he reckoned no such thing.
"Yeah, I did." McGregor shook his head in dull embarrassment. "Lucky I remembered to hitch the horse to the wagon. I'll go get the can."
"You'd have been a mite longer getting here, Arthur, if you'd forgotten about the horse," McGregor called after him as he left.
He didn't answer. He would have walked back to the wagon for the kerosene can before going to the general store had Rokeby not given him a copy of the Register. Seeing that Custer was leaving Canada, seeing that Custer was going to celebrate while here, realizing that Custer might come through Rosenfeld, had taken everything else from his mind. He wanted to go back to the farm. He wanted to go back into the barn and get to work on a bomb he could throw.
He would have forgotten the crate of groceries had Henry Gibbon not reminded him of it. The storekeeper laughed as he carried it out toward the wagon. McGregor was glad he didn't own an automobile. He wasn't altogether sure he recalled how to get back to the farmhouse. The horse, thank heaven, would know the way.
When he carried the crate indoors, the Rosenfeld Register was stuck on top of the cans and jars. Naturally, Maude grabbed it; new things to read didn't come to the farm often enough. As naturally, McGregor's wife noticed the story about Custer right away. "Is he going to parade through Rosenfeld?" she asked.
"I don't know," McGregor answered.
"If he does parade through Rosenfeld, what will you do?" Sharp fear rode Maude's voice.
"I don't know that, either," McGregor answered.
Maude set a hand on his arm. His eyes widened a little; the two of them seldom touched, except by accident, outside the marriage bed. "I don't want to be a widow, Arthur," she said quietly. "I've already lost Alexander. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you, too."
"I've always been careful, haven't I?" he said, coming as close as he ever did to talking about what he did besides farming.
"You go on being careful, do you hear me?" Maude said. "You've done what you had to do. If you do anything more, it's over and above. You don't need to do it, not for me, not for Alexander." She wasn't usually so direct, either.
"I hear you," McGregor said, and said no more. He was the only one who could judge what he had to do. He was the only one who could judge how much revenge was enough for him. Now, he was the only one who could judge how much revenge was enough for Alexander. As far as he was concerned, he might kill every Yank north of the border without it being revenge enough for Alexander.
"Maybe he won't come through Rosenfeld," Maude said. Did she sound hopeful? Without a doubt, she did.
"Maybe he won't," McGregor said. "But maybe he will, too. And even if he doesn't, don't you think the newspapers will print where he's going to be and when he's going to be there? If he's having parades, he'll want people to turn out. I suppose I can go meet him somewhere else if I have to."
"You don't have to," Maude said, as she had done before. "Will you please listen to me? You don't have to, not any more."
"Do you think Mary would say the same thing?" McGregor asked.
Maude's lips shaped two silent words. McGregor thought they were Damn you. He'd never heard her curse aloud in all the years he'd known her. He still hadn't, but only by the thinnest of margins. When she did speak aloud, she said, "Mary is a little girl. She doesn't understand that dying is forever."
"She's not so little any more, and if she doesn't understand that after the Yanks murdered Alexander, when do you suppose she will?" McGregor asked.
Maude spun away from him and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook with sobs. McGregor stamped past her, back out into the cold. When he strode into the barn, the horse snorted, as if surprised to see him again so soon.
He didn't pick up the old wagon wheel and get out the bomb-making tools he hid beneath it. Time enough for that later, when he knew exactly what sort of bomb he needed to build and where he'd have to take it. For now, he just stood there and looked. Even that made him feel better. Slowly, he nodded. In a sense more important than the literal, he knew where he was going again.
Colonel Irving Morrell slammed his fist against the steel side of the test-model barrel. "It's not right, God damn it," he ground out. He couldn't r
emember the last time he'd been in such a temper. When the doctors said his leg wound might keep him from going back to active duty in the early days of the Great War? Maybe not even then.
"What can we do, sir?" Lieutenant Elijah Jenkins said. "We're only soldiers. We haven't got anything to do with deciding which way the country goes."
"And I've always thought that was how things should be, too," Morrell answered. "But when this chowderhead-no, this custardhead-of a Socialist does something like this… I ask you, Lije, doesn't it stick in your craw, too?"
"Of course it does, sir," Jenkins said. "It's not like I voted for the Red son of a bitch-uh, beg pardon."
"Don't bother," Morrell said savagely. "That's what Upton Sinclair is, all right: a Red son of a bitch." He seldom swore; he was not a man who let his feelings run away with his wits. Today, though, he made an exception. "That he should have the gall to propose canceling the rest of the reparations the Rebs still owe us-"
"That's pretty low, all right, sir," Jenkins agreed, "especially after everything we went through to make the CSA have to cough up."
But he'd put his finger on only part of Morrell's fury. "Giving up the reparations is bad enough by itself," Morrell said. "But he wants to throw them away-however many millions or billions of dollars that is-and he won't spend the thousands here to build a proper prototype and get the new-model barrel a step closer to production."
"That's pretty damn stupid, all right," Jenkins said. "If the Rebs can start putting money in their own pockets again instead of in ours, they'll be spoiling for a fight faster than you can say Jack Robinson."
"That's the truth," Morrell said. "That's the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Why can't Sinclair see it? You can't get along with somebody who's bound and determined not to get along with you." He did his best to look on the bright side of things: "Maybe Congress will say no."
"Socialist majority in each house." Jenkins' voice was gloomy. He kicked at the dirt. "After the Confederates licked us in the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War, they weren't dumb enough to try and make friends with us. They knew damn well we weren't their friends. Why can't we figure out they aren't our friends, either?"
"Why? Because workers all across the world have more in common with other workers than they do with other people in their own country." Morrell wasn't usually so sarcastic, but he wasn't usually so irate, either. "What happened in 1914 sure proved that, didn't it? None of the workers would shoot at any of the other workers, would they? That's why we didn't have a war, isn't it?"
"If we didn't have a war, sir, where'd you get that Purple Heart?" Jenkins asked.
"Must have fallen from the sky," Morrell answered. "Pity it couldn't have fallen where Sinclair could see it and have some idea of what it meant."
"Why don't you send it to him, sir?" Jenkins asked eagerly.
"If I did, I'd have to send it in a chamber pot to show him how I felt," Morrell said. "And I'll bet I could fill that chamber pot with medals from men on just this base, too." For a moment, the idea of doing just that held a potent appeal. But then, reluctantly, he shook his head. "It wouldn't do. I'd throw my own career in the pot along with the medal, and somebody has to defend the United States, even if Sinclair isn't up to the job."
"Yes, sir, I suppose so." Jenkins was a bright lad; he could see the sense in that. He was still not very far from being a lad in the literal sense of the word, though, for his grin had a distinct small-boy quality to it as he went on, "It would have been fun to see the look on his face when he opened it, though."
"Well, maybe it would." Morrell laughed. He knew damn well it would. He slapped Jenkins on the back. "See you in the morning." Jenkins nodded and hurried away toward the officers' club, no doubt to have a drink or two or three before supper. In his bachelor days, Morrell might-probably would-have followed him, even if he would have been sure to stop after the second drink. Now, though, he was more than content to hurry home to Agnes.
She greeted him with a chicken stew and indignation: she'd heard the news about Sinclair's proposal to end reparations down in Leavenworth. "It's a disgrace," she said, "nothing but a disgrace. He'll throw money down the drain, but he won't do anything to keep the country strong."
"I said the same thing not an hour ago," Morrell said. "One of the reasons I love you is, we think the same way."
"We certainly do: you think you love me, and I think I love you," Agnes said. Morrell snorted. His wife went on, "Would you like some more dumplings?"
"I sure would," he answered, "but I'll have to run them off one day before too long." He still wasn't close to fat-he didn't think he'd ever be fat the way, say, General Custer's adjutant was fat- but now, for the first time in his life, he wondered if he'd stay scrawny forever. Agnes' determination to put meat on his bones was starting to have some effect. He was also past thirty, which meant the meat he put on had an easier time sticking.
"You served under General Custer," Agnes said a little later. With a mouth full of dumpling, Morrell could only nod. His wife continued, "What do you think about him taking a tour through Canada before he finally comes home for good?"
After swallowing, Morrell said, "I don't begrudge it to him, if that's what you mean. He did better up there than I thought he would, and he's the one who really broke the stalemate in the Great War when he saw what barrels could do and rammed it down Philadelphia's throat. He may be a vain old man, but he's earned his vanity."
"When you're as old as he is, you'll have earned the right to be just as vain," Agnes declared.
Morrell tried to imagine himself in the early 1970s. He couldn't do it. The reach was too far; he couldn't guess what that distant future time would be like. He couldn't guess what he'd be like, either. He could see forty ahead, and even fifty. But eighty and beyond? He wondered if anybody in his family had ever lived to be eighty. He couldn't think of anyone except possibly one great-uncle.
He said, "I hope I don't have the chance to get that vain, because I'd need another war, maybe another couple of wars, to come close to doing all the things Custer's done."
"In that case, I don't want you to get old and vain, either," Agnes said at once. "As long as you have the chance to get old, you can stay modest, for all of me."
"I suppose that will do," Morrell answered. Agnes smiled, thinking he'd agreed with her. And so he had… to a point. Old men, veterans of the War of Secession, talked about seeing the elephant. He'd seen the elephant, and all the horror it left in its wake. It was horror; he recognized as much. But he'd never felt more intensely alive than during those three years of war. The game was most worth playing when his life lay on the line. Nothing felt better than betting it-and winning.
He had a scarred hollow in the flesh of his thigh to remind him how close he'd come to betting it and losing. Agnes had a scarred hollow in her heart: Gregory Hill, her first husband, had laid his life on the life-and lost it. Morrell knew he ought to pray with all his heart that war never visited the borders of the United States again. He did pray that war never visited again. Well, most of him did, anyhow.
The next morning, he put on a pair of overalls and joined the rest of the crew of the test model in tearing down the barrel's engine. They would have done that in the field, too, with less leisure and fewer tools. The better a crew kept a barrel going, the less time the machine spent behind the lines and useless.
Morrell liked tinkering with mechanical things. Unlike the fluid world of war, repairs had straight answers. If you found what was wrong and fixed it, the machine would work every time. It didn't fight back and try to impose its own will-even if it did seem that way sometimes.
Michael Pound looked at the battered engine and sadly shook his head. "Ridden hard and put away wet," was the gunner's verdict.
"That's about the size of it, Sergeant," Morrell agreed. "It does a reasonably good job of making a White truck go. Trying to move this baby, though, it's underpowered and overstrained."
"We oug
ht to build something bigger and stronger, then," Pound said. "Have you got the three-sixteenths wrench, sir?"
"Matter of fact, I do." Morrell passed it to him. He grinned while he did it. "You always make everything sound so easy, Sergeant-as if there weren't any steps between we ought to and doing something."
"Well, there shouldn't be," Pound said matter-of-factly. "If something needs doing, you go ahead and do it. What else?" He stared at Morrell with wide blue eyes. In his world, no steps lay between needing and doing. Morrell envied him.
Izzy Applebaum, the barrel's driver, laughed at Pound. "Things aren't that simple, Sarge," he said in purest New York. His eyes were narrow and dark and constantly moving, now here, now there, now somewhere else.
"Why ever not?" Pound asked in honest surprise. "Don't you think this barrel needs a stronger engine? If it does, we ought to build one. How complicated is that?" He attacked the crankcase with the wrench. It yielded to his straightforward assault.
Morrell wished all problems yielded to straightforward assault. "Some people don't want us to put any money at all in barrels," he pointed out, "let alone into better engines for them."
"Those people are fools, sir," Pound answered. "If they're not fools, they're knaves. Hang a few of them and the rest will quiet down soon enough."
"Tempting, ain't it?" Izzy Applebaum said with another laugh. "Only trouble is, they make lists of people who ought to get hanged, too, and we're on 'em. The company's better on their list than on ours, but none of them lists is any goddamn good. My folks were on the Czar's list before they got the hell out of Poland."
"Down south of us, the Freedom Party is making lists of people to hang," Morrell added. "I don't care for it, either."
Michael Pound was unperturbed. "Well, but they're a pack of wild-eyed fanatics, sir," he said. "Go ahead and tell me you don't think there are some people who'd be better off dead."
"It is tempting," Morrell admitted. He had his mental list, starting with several leading Socialist politicians. But, as Applebaum had said, he was on their list, too. "If you ask me, it's just as well nobody hangs anybody till a court says it's the right and proper thing to do."
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