by John Jakes
At last he said, “Hello, George. I hear we won.”
George nodded. “There’s a commendation waiting for you. You’re a full second lieutenant now. So am I. Our friend Bent, unfortunately, is a brevet major. I’m told we were all great heroes on the road to Churubusco.”
He smiled but Orry didn’t. Orry stared at the ridgepole of the tent. George twisted his forage cap in his hands. “How do you feel?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Orry’s voice was so flat, it was impossible to tell what the answer meant. George sat perfectly still, his hat held in both hands. He wanted to tell his friend about some of the sharp fighting that had led to the surrender of Mexico City, but obviously it was the wrong time. Would there ever be a right one?
Somewhere outside an amateur musician started playing a popular tune on a mouth organ. George had always known the tune as “Zip Coon,” but some fiddlers were starting to refer to it as “Turkey in the Straw.” He wanted to go out and strangle the musician. The song was too zestful, too much of a reminder of the pleasures a man could enjoy if he was whole.
Presently Orry looked at him again. “I reckon I owe you thanks for saving my life. Most of the time I lie here wishing you hadn’t.”
With a hint of sharpness, George said, “Come on, Stick, don’t feel so sorry for yourself. You’re alive. Life’s precious.”
“It is if there’s something you care about,” Orry agreed. “I’ve come to understand that I never really had a chance with Madeline. She was lost to me before I met her. But I had a fine chance to have the only career I ever wanted. Now they’ll muster me out.”
“But you’ll be able to go home.”
When George saw the hurt in Orry’s eyes he felt like a fool. “To what?” Orry asked.
Anger erupted within George then. He kept it bottled up because he realized he was really angry with himself. He had botched things, failed utterly to raise his friend’s spirits. If he couldn’t, who could?
He tried one last time. “I’ll be back to see you tomorrow. Meanwhile, you rest and collect yourself, and you’ll soon be feeling—”
He stopped, scarlet. Thoughtlessly, he had reached down to squeeze Orry’s arm. His left arm. He had remembered when his hand was just inches from the sheet.
Orry’s dark eyes seemed to say, You see? I’m not the same as you anymore, so don’t pretend I am. As he turned away he murmured a listless, “Thank you for coming.”
George slipped out, whipped. He hoped time would heal his friend’s bitterness and melancholy, but he wasn’t sure. Orry had been robbed of the two things he wanted most in life. How did a man survive when that happened?
Only the arrival of a letter from Constance kept the day from being a complete disaster.
In the balmy October sunshine, George sat at an outdoor table in a cantina in Mexico City. The cantina faced the magnificent National Palace, where the American flag now flew from all the flagstaffs. With him were Pickett, Tom Jackson, and Sam Grant. The four were together for the first time in months.
Pickett and Grant had several empty beer glasses in front of them, as did George. Jackson had only a single, full glass of wine. Continually fretting about his digestion, he always bought one glass of wine and left it untasted.
The Mexican population had a surprisingly cheerful attitude about the outcome of the war. Civilian shopkeepers and tavern owners had shrugged off the loss and quickly settled-down to profiting from the occupation. In the European manner, the government had struck medals commemorating every major battle, whether won or lost. Pickett, who was holding forth about Robert Lee, had gotten hold of a Churubusco medal, which was pinned to his jacket.
“I’m not saying this as a Virginian, though you’ll probably think I am. Bob Lee is the best man in the Army. He proved it once and for all in the pedregal.”
Pickett was speaking of a field of volcanic rock that the Americans had encountered on the approach to Mexico City. It looked impassable, but Lee and Pierre Beauregard had scouted it and said otherwise. Then, during a thunderstorm, Lee had volunteered to recross the pedregal to carry important information to Scott. He had ridden over sharp ridges and through treacherous ravines with only lightning flashes to show him the way.
“Agreed,” Grant said, and drank some beer. “I don’t know of a smarter or more audacious soldier. Thank heaven he’s not our enemy.”
Generally, members of the Academy-trained officer corps had done well in the six-month campaign. Even Elkanah Bent was being regarded as a hero. Had George accused him of incompetence or attacked him physically, few would have sided with him, and he knew it.
The others at the table were actual proof that West Point was turning out brave and competent officers, George reflected. Grant, for instance, had been among the first to storm Molino del Rey, along with Captain Robert Anderson of the Third Artillery. Later, in the assault on the city proper, Grant had dragged a mountain howitzer up into a belfry overlooking the San Cosme Gate. He had done it on his own initiative. The howitzer’s fire had all but wiped out the garrison defending the gate.
Jackson had distinguished himself several times, most notably at the north wall of Chapultepec, where he had single-handedly manned a gun from John Magruder’s light battery. As for Pickett, during the same assault an Academy man named Lieutenant Lewis Armistead had fallen wounded while carrying colors up a scaling ladder. A second West Pointer, James Longstreet, had taken up the flag and climbed with it. He, too, was wounded. It was Pickett who finally bore the colors to the top.
George soon began to fidget. The others were lingering over their drinks, and he had two new letters in his pocket. One was from Constance. As the table talk turned to still another subject, he pulled out her letter and opened it. When he finished reading, he laughed and carefully put the letter away, intending to add it to all the others he was saving.
“Who’s that from?” Grant inquired. “Your fair colleen?”
George nodded.
“Planning to marry her?”
“I might.” He patted the bulge made by the letter. “She still likes me.”
“Naturally.” Pickett grinned. “You’re a flaming hero. We’re all flaming heroes this month. For a change even Congress agrees.”
The dour Jackson cleared his throat. “Does your young lady practice the Roman faith, George?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Only to remind you that your career might be impeded if you married a Papist. I’ve been cognizant of that lately because I—ah—I’ve been calling on a young woman of this city.”
Pickett leaned forward, agog. “You, General? Courting a señorita?”
Jackson blushed and stared at his wineglass. “I have that honor, yes. Regrettably, I am afraid marriage is out of the question. God creates all His children equal, but in the eyes of the general staff and the majority of Americans, Catholics are less equal than most.”
Grant and Pickett laughed, but George’s face remained sober. Loving Constance as much as he did, he tended to brush aside the question of religion. He knew it was a potential problem. He tried not to show that as he said:
“I don’t have much of a career to worry about. My hitch is up in less than three years.”
“That’s long enough for them to make it miserable for you,” Grant said.
“Especially the beloved Major Bent,” Pickett said.
Bells clanged in the nearby cathedral. A flock of pigeons took wing from the roof of the National Palace. The sunlight had changed to the amber of late afternoon. For George the happy reunion at the cantina table was spoiled.
Well, maybe there would be something cheering in the other letter he had received today. It came from Lehigh Station. While Grant and Pickett ordered one more round, George broke the wax wafer and read the first few lines of his mother’s fine hand. He turned pale.
“What’s wrong, Stump?”
He looked blankly at Grant. “It’s my father. Eight weeks ago he had a seizure at the mill. His hear
t. He’s dead.”
Maude Hazard’s short letter was followed by a much longer one from Stanley two days later. Stanley begged his younger brother to resign and hurry home. Hazard Iron was too large an enterprise for one man to run, especially now that the firm was putting a new mill in operation. William Hazard had designed that mill, supervised its construction, and had been struggling with an equipment problem the day he died.
Hazard’s latest addition was a three-high rolling mill, designed to roll wrought-iron rails of the T configuration. The T was rapidly replacing the inverted U as the standard on American railroads. In his letter Stanley repeated an earlier statement to the effect that their father had been prodded into the expansion by the opening of a competitive mill in Danville, Pennsylvania. Had the decision been his, Stanley wrote, he would have vetoed the idea as too novel and fraught with risk.
“Too novel,” George snorted to Orry, who was packing to go home. “Even though Henry Cort has been operating a three-high mill at Fontley, England, for more than twenty years. My fainthearted brother will probably go on crying ‘fraught with risk’ until the railroad boom’s over, the country’s covered with tracks from ocean to ocean, and the market’s gone.”
Orry folded a shirt and placed it in his footlocker. He was becoming adept at doing things with one hand. He had once said that the leather-capped stump hurt a good deal and often kept him from sleeping, but beyond that he never discussed his injury. He seldom smiled these days.
He sat on the edge of his cot to rest a moment. “Have you decided what you’re going to do, George?” Since his release from the hospital, Orry never called George by his nickname.
George nodded unhappily. “I’m going to he loyal to my family when they need me. Much as I hate the blasted Army—much as I want to see Constance again—I don’t feel good about the decision. I guess it’s because I agreed to serve four years, and a promise is a promise. Well, nothing I can do about that. I’m going to write Stanley and tell him I’ll come home. Of course, there’s no guaranteeing the War Department will release me. Not soon, anyway.”
He was in for a surprise on that score. On the day before Orry’s departure, another letter from Stanley arrived. Stanley said he had referred George’s case to a new friend, Simon Cameron, Democratic senator from Pennsylvania.
“The senator’s a prime reason the Democracy stinks to heaven in our state,” George told his friend. “He’s crooked as a snake with convulsions, and he taints the whole party. Stanley’s always mumbling about having political ambitions, but I never dreamed he’d cozy up to someone like Cameron.”
“Does your brother have a talent for politics?”
“In my opinion, Orry, you enter politics when you’re incapable of doing honest work. But the answer to your question is no. My brother has never been blessed with an overabundance of brains. Cameron would be interested in Stanley for only one reason: the size of his bank account. Wire pulling in Washington—God above!” George slapped a fist into a palm. “That makes me as bad as Bent. I’ll write Stanley and tell him to stop it immediately.”
Next morning the friends said good-bye. Orry was traveling to the coast in a wagon train carrying wounded and several companies of home-bound volunteers.
It was an awkward moment for both of them. Orry asked George to stop at Mont Royal on his way north. George said he’d try. He wasn’t anxious to be a witness to his friend’s continuing deterioration. Orry was peaked. He’d lost twenty pounds. There was a beaten look about him as he walked off to find the wagon to which he had been assigned.
George’s letter of protest was sent too late. Three weeks after he dispatched it, Captain Hoctor called him in.
“Your orders have just come through, specially processed by Secretary Marcy’s office. I didn’t know the sons of rich ironmakers qualified as hardship cases.” The sardonic remark was met by a bleak stare. Hoctor cleared his throat. “In any case, you’ll be discharged right here, one week from Friday.”
Afterward, Hoctor tried to understand why that piece of good news had caused the lieutenant to break into a storm of cursing. The captain was glad to be rid of such an obvious troublemaker.
The next wagon train was scheduled to leave the morning after George’s discharge became official. By then he had done a lot of thinking. He had been a pusillanimous worm to let Constance Flynn’s religion cause him even one moment’s hesitation. From Vera Cruz he would travel straight to Corpus Christi by whatever means of transportation was available.
The night before the wagons departed, George got roaring drunk with Pickett and Grant. He was awake an hour before daylight. His stomach ached, his head throbbed, and his mouth tasted brown. An hour later he encountered Major Elkanah Bent for the first time since Churubusco.
George hurried by without saluting; he feared that with the slightest provocation he might commit murder.
Bent called him back. “Why are you out of uniform, Lieutenant?”
“Because I’m out of the Army, Major.”
George’s temples hurt. He knew he was slipping out of control. He didn’t care.
Bent digested the news with a disappointed look. George went on, “Congratulations on your promotion. You earned it at the expense of my friend Orry Main. If it weren’t for you, he’d still be a whole man. Everyone thinks you’re a damn hero, but we both know what you tried to do on the Churubusco road, Major.”
“Let go of my arm, you arrogant little—”
George hit him then. He felt the impact all the way to his shoulder. Bent’s nose exploded with mucus and blood. George walked away with a slow, firm stride, the Ohioan too stunned—perhaps too frightened—to retaliate.
George’s fist felt as if it were broken. He had never known pain to be so satisfying.
13
GEORGE ARRIVED IN CORPUS Christi at the end of October. The air was bracing, cool even at midday. When he stepped from the lighter to the dock, it was just four in the afternoon, but the sun was already sinking. Buildings cast long shadows. The light had the unmistakable look of autumn, brilliant and feeble at the same time.
The scene induced feelings of melancholy. The year was hastening to an end, and so was his time on earth. Mexico had given him an awareness of death unusual in young men; he supposed that was a price you paid for going to war, even if you came out on the winning side. Still, having learned the lesson, he wouldn’t be so foolish as to ignore it. That was why he had come straight from Vera Cruz.
There was no one at the dock to meet him. His spirits fell even further. But they lifted suddenly when he heard a cry—”Here I am, George !”—and saw Constance appear around the corner of a building.
She wore one of those newfangled crinoline-stiffened skirts, which swayed back and forth like a ship in a storm as she tried to run. The color of the dress was emerald, very becoming.
“I’m so sorry I’m late. I took extra time getting ready—I wanted to look nice for you—and then I discovered it’s impossible to hurry when you’re dressed this way. Oh, I wanted to be waiting when your boat docked—”
She was laughing and crying too. He put his valise down. Her hand moved from his arm to his face, as if to test for wholeness, soundness, now that he was back from the war zone.
“I was devastated to hear about your father. I never expected you’d have time to stop here on your way home.”
“My father’s funeral was weeks ago. A few more days won’t matter. I have”—he nearly strangled over the words— “an important question to ask you.”
“What is it?” A joyous smile said she knew.
“I think I should speak to your father first.”
“He’s waiting for us. Minding the lamb roast I cooked for you. But I need a kiss.”
She released the front of her stiffened skirt, which she had been holding off the ground, and flung her arms around him. Because of the skirt’s bell shape, he had to lean forward from the waist to embrace her. His valise disappeared as her skirt dropped over it. T
hat didn’t matter, nor did the expressions of other people on the dock; some were amused, one or two outraged. All he cared about were the words she whispered as they hugged each other.
“Oh, George—how I missed you. I love you so.”
While Constance finished setting the table, George took her father for a stroll. The necessary question came as no surprise to the little lawyer.
“I thought the two of you would soon be wanting to marry. She has been preparing for your arrival for days. Did you notice all the issues of Godey’s near her sewing table? The patterns and other paraphernalia? The poor child’s driven me mad with her seams and thimbles—if that isn’t love, I don’t recognize the beast.”
Flynn locked his hands behind his black broadcloth coat. “I’ve no basic objection to the match. But I have one question, and it’s serious.”
He halted in the street and turned to face the younger man. “What will you do about the difference in your faiths?”
“I’ll have to speak to Constance about her specific wishes, sir. I’ll make any accommodation necessary.”
“Fair enough. But will your family welcome her?”
“I’m sure of it,” George lied.
“Then you may have her.”
“Oh, sir, thank—”
“On one condition!” Flynn’s upraised finger threw a long, skeletal shadow on the ground. Suddenly he gestured to the treeless horizon. “Marry her in the North. This is too dismal a place for a wedding. Besides, I’d like a trip. I’m sick of listening to people say that Congressman Wilmot is the son of the devil. A change of perspective is in order.”
“You’ll have it,” George promised with a grin. The two of them started back in response to Constance’s call to supper.
Later that evening the lovers walked hand in hand to the shore. Constance had donned a long, fur-fringed pelerine, but it was more decorative than functional. George put his arm around her to provide what warmth he could. A chilly breeze blew in across the harbor bar, bending the sea oats growing along the dunes. Stars shimmered in the river. Small white-water crests showed out in the Gulf.