Blood and Iron

by Harry Turtledove

  Morrell and Jenkins strode past a large bronze statue of John Brown the citizens of Leavenworth had erected after the Second Mexican War. Brown was and always had been a hero to many Kansans. He’d become a national hero during the 1880s, when people in the United States began to see that he’d known what he was doing when he’d attacked the Southerners not only here but also in their own lair down in Virginia.

  The dance was at a social hall next to a white-painted Baptist church with a tall steeple, a spare building that might have been transported bodily from New England to the prairie. Sounds of piano and fiddle music drifted out into the night. “That’s not the best playing I’ve ever heard,” Morrell said, which was, if anything, a generous assessment, “but they do go right after a tune.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jenkins answered. “Now we just have to hope it’s not one of the dances where they’ve got maybe half a dozen girls and five hundred guys waiting to dance with them. A little bit of that kind goes a long way.”

  It was chilly outside; a coal stove and the dancers’ exertions heated the social hall, so that a blast of warm air greeted Morrell when he opened the door. After looking around, he nodded approval: men did not hopelessly outnumber women. Not all the men were soldiers—close to half wore civilian clothes. Morrell had never feared competition of any sort.

  A punch bowl sat on a table at the far end of the hall. He went over to it, got himself a glass, and leaned against the wall, watching couples spin and dip more or less in time to the music. Scouting the terrain before advancing was a good idea in other things besides warfare.

  Lije Jenkins, on the other hand, plunged straight into the fray, cutting in on a civilian in a sharp suit. The fellow gave him a sour look as he retired toward the sidelines. Leavenworth might have liked soldiers pretty well, but cutting in like that was liable to start a brawl anywhere.

  With a final raucous flourish, the little three-piece band stopped its racket. People clapped their hands, not so much to applaud the musicians as to show they were having a good time. Men and women headed over to the punch bowl. Morrell quickly drained his own glass and, with the empty glass as an excuse, contrived to get to the bowl at the same time as a woman in a ruffled shirtwaist and maroon wool skirt.

  He filled the ladle, then, after catching her eye to make sure the liberty would not be unwelcome, poured punch into her glass before dealing with his own. “Thank you,” she said. She was within a couple of years of thirty herself, with hair black as coal, brown eyes, and warm brown skin with a hint of blush beneath it. When she took a longer look at Morrell, one eyebrow rose. “Thank you very much, Colonel.”

  He was, he suddenly realized, a catch: glancing around, he saw a couple of captains, but no soldiers of higher rank. Men were not the only ones playing this game. Well, on with it: “My pleasure,” he said. “If you like, you can pay me back by giving me the next dance.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said at once. “My name is Hill, Agnes Hill.”

  “Very pleased to meet you.” Morrell gave his own name. The musicians struck up what was no doubt intended to be a waltz. He guided her out onto the dance floor. He danced with academic precision. His partner didn’t, but it mattered little; the floor was so crowded, couples kept bumping into one another. Everyone laughed when it happened: it was expected.

  They talked under and through the semimusical racket. “My husband was killed in the first few weeks of the war,” Agnes Hill said. “He was up on the Niagara front, and the Canadians had lots of machine guns, and—” She shrugged in Morrell’s arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he answered. She shrugged again. Morrell said, “I got shot myself about that time, in Sonora. Only reason I’m here is luck.”

  His dancing partner nodded. “I’ve thought about luck a lot the past few years, Colonel. That’s all you can do, isn’t it?—think, I mean.” She whirled on with him for another few steps, then said, “I’m glad you were lucky. I’m glad you are here.” As the music ended, Morrell was glad he was there, too.

  Lucien Galtier did not converse with his horse while driving up to Rivière-du-Loup, as he usually did. The horse, a heartless beast, seemed to feel no lack. And Galtier had conversation aplenty, for, instead of going up to the town by the St. Lawrence alone, he had along Marie, his two sons, and the three daughters still living at home with them.

  “I can’t wait to see the baby,” Denise said. She’d been saying that since word came from Leonard O’Doull that Nicole had had a baby boy the evening before.

  “I want to see Nicole,” Marie said. “Not for nothing do they call childbirth labor.” She glared at Lucien, as if to say it was his fault Nicole had endured what she’d endured. Or maybe she was just thinking it was the fault of men that women endured what they endured.

  Soothingly, Galtier said, “All is well with Nicole, and all is well with the baby, too, for which I give thanks to the holy Mother of God.” He crossed himself. “And I also give thanks that Nicole gave birth with a doctor attending her who was so intimately concerned with her well-being.”

  “Intimately!” Marie sniffed and slapped him on the leg. Then she sniffed again, on a slightly different note. “A midwife was plenty good for me.”

  “A midwife is good,” Lucien agreed, not wanting to quarrel with his wife. But he did not abandon his own opinion, either. “A doctor, I believe, is better.”

  Marie didn’t argue with him, for which he was duly grateful. She kept looking around, as if she didn’t want to miss anything her sharp eyes might pick up. She didn’t get off the farm so often as he did, and wanted to make the most of the excursion in every way. After a bit, she said, “Traveling on a paved road all the way to town is very nice. It is so smooth, the wagon hardly seems to be moving.”

  “Traveling on a paved road all the way to town is even better when it rains,” Galtier said. The road had not been paved for his benefit. Paving had been extended as far out from Rivière-du-Loup as his farm only because the Americans then occupying Quebec south of the St. Lawrence had built their hospital on land they’d taken from his patrimony, not least because he hadn’t cared to collaborate with them.

  And now his daughter had collaborated on a half-American child. He shook his head. He had not expected that. He had not expected it, but he welcomed it now that it was here.

  Clouds drifted across the sky, hiding the sun more often than they let it show through. Snow still lay on the ground to either side of the road. More might fall at any time in the next month. The calendar said it was April, and therefore spring, but the calendar did not understand how far winter could stretch in this part of the world. Lucien and his wife and children were as well muffled as they would have been going out in January, and needed to be.

  Here and there, bomb craters showed up as dimples under the snow. British and Canadian aeroplanes had done what they could to harm the Americans after their soldiers were driven north across the river. But now the wounds in the land were healing. The antiaircraft guns that had stood outside of Rivière-du-Loup—guns manned at the end of the war by soldiers in the blue-gray of the new Republic of Quebec—were gone now, stored away heaven only knew where. Lucien hoped they would never come out of storage.

  Rivière-du-Loup itself perched on a spur of rock jutting out into the St. Lawrence. Inside its bounds, a waterfall plunged ninety feet from the small river that gave the town its name into the greater one. In the late seventeenth century, when Rivière-du-Loup was founded, it would have been a formidable defensive position. In these days of aeroplanes and giant cannons, Galtier wondered if there were any such thing as a formidable defensive position.

  His daughter and son-in-law lived only a couple of blocks from Bishop Pascal’s church, not far from the market square. Galtier reckoned that a mixed blessing; the bishop—who had been simply Father Pascal when the war began—had jumped into bed with the Americans so quickly, he had surely endangered his vows of celibacy. There were still times when Lucien had mixed feelings about the way the war
had gone. He suspected he would have those times as long as he lived.

  The houses on either side pressed close to that of Dr. Leonard O’Doull. “How cramped things are here in the city,” Marie said, and clucked in distress. Lucien was inclined to agree with her. Coming into town on market day was all very well, but he would not have cared to live here.

  As he was tying the horse to an apple tree in front of the house, Dr. O’Doull opened the door and waved. “Come in, all of you,” he called in his ever more Quebecois French. “Nicole can’t wait to see you, and of course you will want to see little Lucien.”

  Galtier froze in his tracks. Slowly, he said, “When you sent word, you said nothing of naming the baby after me.”

  “When I sent word, we had not yet decided what we would name the baby,” his son-in-law returned. “But Lucien O’Doull he shall be.” He reached into his pocket and held out cigars. “Come on. Smoke with me. It’s the custom in the United States when a man has a son.”

  If the cigars were anything like the ones O’Doull usually had, Galtier would have been glad to smoke one regardless of whether he had a grandson or not. Shaken out of his startled paralysis, he hurried toward the house.

  A coal fire in the fireplace held the chill at bay. Nicole sat in a rocking chair in front of the fire. She was nursing the baby, and did not get up when her family came in. She looked as if she’d been through a long spell of trench warfare: pale and battered and worn. Had Galtier not seen Marie look the same way after her children were born, he would have been alarmed. His other children, who did not remember such things so well, were alarmed. Even Georges had no snide comments ready.

  Marie spoke in tones of command: “When he is finished there, hand him to me.”

  “Yes, Mother. It shouldn’t be long.” Nicole sounded battered and worn, too.

  Lucien Galtier stared at Lucien O’Doull as he nursed. The baby looked very red and wrinkled, its head somewhat misshapen from its passage out into the world. His children exclaimed about that, too. He said, “Every one of you looked the same way when you were born.”

  Georges said, “Surely I was much more handsome.”

  “What a pity it hasn’t lasted, then,” Denise said. She and her sisters laughed. So did Charles. Georges looked something less than amused.

  Presently, Nicole lifted the baby from her breast to her shoulder. She patted him on the back. Lucien would have patted harder, but he’d had more practice than his daughter; he realized babies didn’t break. After a while, his grandson gave forth with a belch a grown man would not have been ashamed to own.

  “Good,” Marie said. “Very good. Now he is settled. Now you will give him to me.” Nicole held the baby out with great care. Marie took him with an automatic competence she would never lose, supporting his head in her right hand as she shifted him into the crook of her left arm. “He is so small,” she murmured, as little Lucien flailed his arms at random. “When you have not had one in the house for a while, you forget how small a newborn baby is.”

  “He’s a good-sized fellow,” Leonard O’Doull said. “Almost eight pounds.”

  “He felt like an elephant when I was having him,” Nicole added.

  Marie ignored them both. “So small,” she crooned. “So small.”

  “Here, give him to me,” Lucien said. His wife gave him a dirty look, but passed him the baby after another minute or so. He discovered he still knew how to hold an infant, too. His tiny namesake stared up at him from deep blue eyes. He knew they would get darker over time, but how much darker might prove an interesting question: Leonard O’Doull had green eyes. Galtier murmured, “What are you thinking, little one?”

  “What can he be thinking but, Who is this strange man?” Georges said.

  “He could be thinking, Why is this man about to clout his son in the side of the head?” Galtier returned. He and Georges were both laughing. Had Lucien tried clouting his son in the side of the head, he suspected Georges could and would have made him regret it.

  O’Doull said, “He probably is thinking, Who is this strange man?” Before Galtier could do more than raise an eyebrow, his son-in-law went on, “He is also thinking, What is this strange world? Everything must seem very peculiar to a baby: lights and sounds and smells and touch and all the rest. He never knew any of that before, not where he was.”

  Galtier found it indelicate to mention where the baby had been before he was born. By their expressions, so did both his sons. He reminded himself O’Doull was a doctor, and thought differently of such things.

  “Let me hold the baby now, Father,” Denise said. As Lucien handed his grandson to her, someone knocked on the front door.

  “Who’s that?” O’Doull said in some annoyance. Then he laughed at himself. “Only one way to find out, n’est-ce pas?” He opened the door.

  There stood Bishop Pascal, plump and pink and looking as impressive as a plump, pink man could in miter and cope and cassock. He almost always had a broad smile on his face, and today was no exception. “Did I hear correctly that this house had a blessed event last night?” he asked, and then, seeing little Lucien in Denise’s arms, he pointed. “Oh, very good. Very good indeed. I see that I did hear correctly.” His eyes twinkled. “I am glad to know that my sources of information remain good.”

  What he meant was, I am glad my spies are on the job. Lucien understood that perfectly well. If O’Doull didn’t, it wasn’t because Galtier hadn’t told him. But Bishop Pascal was not an overt foe to Galtier these days, and had never been a foe to any American: on the contrary. Dr. O’Doull said, “Come in, your Grace, come in. Yes, Nicole had a little boy last night.” He handed the bishop a cigar.

  “How wonderful!” Bishop Pascal exclaimed. He held out his arms. Denise glanced at Galtier, who nodded ever so slightly. She passed the bishop the baby. He proved to know how to hold him. Beaming, he asked, “And how is he called?”

  “Lucien,” Leonard O’Doull answered.

  “Ah, excellent!” No, Bishop Pascal never stopped smiling. He aimed that large mouthful of teeth at Galtier. “Your name goes on.” Lucien nodded. Bishop Pascal turned back to O’Doull. “You should make sure that, as this little fellow grows up, he learns your language as well as the tongue of the Republic of Quebec.”

  He surely meant it as good advice. It probably was good advice. It made Galtier bristle all the same. Leonard O’Doull answered in a mild voice: “These days, and I expect the rest of my days, the language of the Republic of Quebec is my language.”

  “I meant no offense,” Bishop Pascal said quickly. “With the world as it is today, though, knowing English will help a young man throughout his life.”

  That had been true before the war. It was, as the bishop had said, likely to be even more true now, with Quebec so closely involved with the USA. That didn’t mean Lucien had to like it worth a damn, though, and he didn’t.

  Sylvia Enos lit a cigarette. She sucked smoke down into her lungs, held it there, and blew it out again. Then she took another drag. She didn’t feel nearly the exhilaration she had when she’d started the habit, but she did enjoy it. When she couldn’t smoke, as on the line at the galoshes factory, she got tense, even jittery. Like so many of the other women working there, she’d taken to sneaking smokes in the restroom. The place always smelled like a saloon.

  Then she had to return to the line. Into the can of paint went her brush. She painted a red ring around the top of one of the black rubber overshoes sitting there in front of her, then around the other, working fast so the endless belts of the factory line would not carry them away before she could finish.

  Another pair of galoshes, still warm from the mold, appeared before her. She put rings on them, too. Down the line they went. The next girl, armed with knives and shears, trimmed excess rubber from the galoshes. She threw the scraps into a bin under her foot. When the bin filled, the scraps would go back into the hopper along with fresh rubber, to be made into new overshoes. The factory wasted nothing and did everything
as cheaply as possible. That was why Sylvia still had a job. Had a man taken it, they would have had to lay out a little more money every week.

  After a while, the stink of rubber started to give her a headache. That happened every morning by ten o’clock. It also gave her another reason to wish for a cigarette, or maybe a whole pack. What she’d discovered the first day she lit up got truer the more she smoked: tobacco did blunt her sense of smell.

  Frank Best headed her way. She groaned silently; the foreman was carrying an overshoe where she’d missed part of the red line around the top. She knew what he’d say before he said it. That didn’t stop him: “Thought you were going to slip this one by, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Best,” Sylvia said. She didn’t want him to have any kind of hold on her. “Here, give it to me. I’ll fix it.”

  He held on to it. “You know, Sylvia, it really is too bad I have to take one out of a pair like this. It holds up the line and delays everybody. I hope I won’t have to do it very often from now on.”

  He was holding up the line, too, by lecturing her. She didn’t say so; she knew a lost cause when she saw one. “I’ll do my best not to let it happen again,” she said. “Please let me fix it.”

  At last, Best did. As if she were Leonardo working on the Mona Lisa, Sylvia completed the red ring. She handed the rubber overshoe back to Best. Please, she thought. Take it back to wherever you spotted it and leave me alone. Lectures were one thing, and bad enough. The rest of his routine was worse.

  That didn’t keep him from trotting it out. “You really should pay more attention to what you’re doing,” he said. “I would be disappointed, and I know you would be, too, if you made mistakes like this very often. Work is sometimes hard to find these days.”

  “Mr. Best, I don’t make mistakes like this very often,” Sylvia answered. “You’ve said so yourself.”