“Bully,” Lije Jenkins said softly when he got his first look. “If that’s not a machine for the 1920s, I’ll be darned if I know what is. Compared to what we had in the Great War, that’s a machine from out of the 1930s, by God.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty on the outside,” Morrell said, “but what it reminds me of is a homely girl with a lot of paint and powder on.” He started to rap the barrel’s hull with his knuckles, but checked himself; it was cold enough that he’d lose skin on the metal. He contented himself with pointing. “That’s just mild steel, not armor plate, and it’s thin mild steel to boot. That makes the barrel lighter, so the one White engine they threw in there can give it even a halfway decent turn of speed. But you couldn’t take it into combat; it’s not even proof against rifle fire, let alone anything else.”
But even as he spoke, his eyes caressed the test barrel’s lines as they did Agnes Hill’s whenever he saw her. Here, in metal, was the shape he’d sketched not long after coming to the Barrel Works. The turret cannon and machine gun stared at him. So did the machine gun mounted in the front of the hull.
“It doesn’t look as…as busy as one of our regular barrels,” Lieutenant Jenkins said.
“No, I suppose not,” Morrell said, “but I hope it’ll keep the enemy busier than one of the regular sort. And we won’t need to put a whole regiment of soldiers inside here when we go into action, either.” He strode to the rear of the flatcar. “Hurry up with that ramp, if you please, gentlemen.”
“We’re just about ready, Colonel,” one of the soldiers replied. A couple of minutes later, he said, “All right, sir, everything’s in place.”
“Do you want to back it off the car, Major?” Morrell asked.
“I will if you want me to, sir,” Wilkinson answered, “but go right ahead if you’d rather do the honors.”
Morrell needed no more urging. He opened the hatch in the top of the hull that led down into the driver’s compartment, then wriggled inside. The controls were identical to those of the older barrels. He’d learned the driver’s art since coming to the Barrel Works, but had applied himself to it as he applied himself to everything that caught his interest. His finger stabbed the electric-starter button.
Behind him, the White engine grunted, coughed, and came to life. It was loud. It was not, however, deafening, as the engines in old-style barrels were. That wasn’t because the test model had only one, where normal machines needed two. It was because, instead of sitting right there in the middle of the barrel’s interior, the engine had a compartment of its own, separated from the crew by a steel bulkhead.
He wished he didn’t have to back the barrel down the ramp to get it off the flatcar. Even with his head out of the hatch, even with the rearview mirror the manufacturer had thoughtfully provided (a little bonus that might possibly last thirty seconds in combat), he couldn’t see behind himself for beans. That was something he hadn’t thought about when he decided on a turret-mounted cannon.
Well, that was what the test model was for: to discover all the things he hadn’t thought of, and nobody else had, either. With luck, he’d be able to get rid of them before the new model went into production. He knew perfectly well that he wouldn’t find them all; he was human, and therefore fallible. But he’d do the best job he could.
He’d do the best job he could of getting this beast off the flatcar, too. All he had to do was back straight. If he looked ahead, he ought to be able to judge how well he was doing that. And he couldn’t keep sitting up here forever. His left foot came down on the clutch. He threw the shift lever into reverse and gave the barrel a little gas.
It was peppier than the ones in which he’d fought the Great War: not peppy like a fancy motorcar, not peppy enough to suit him, but peppier. It went down the ramp faster than he’d expected. Almost before he knew it, he was on the ground. From the flatcar, Major Wilkinson waved and Lieutenant Jenkins gave him a thumbs-up.
“Come on!” he shouted to Jenkins over the rumble of the engine—which seemed a lot louder with his head out the hatch. The lieutenant jumped down from the train, clambered up the side of the barrel, and scrambled into the turret through a hatch on the roof.
“There’s no ammunition in here,” he said indignantly. Morrell snorted—as if anyone would be crazy enough to put ammunition in a barrel that would be traveling by train. Accidents didn’t happen very often, but who would take the chance on sending an expensive test model up in smoke? Then Jenkins went on, “I wanted to shoot up the landscape as we drove along,” and Morrell snorted again, this time on a different note. His subordinate was just acting like a kid again.
Morrell put the barrel into the lowest of its four forward speeds. It rattled over the railroad tracks and off toward the muddy prairie northwest of Fort Leavenworth. He built up to full speed as fast as he could. If the speedometer wasn’t lying, he was doing better than ten miles an hour, more than twice as fast as a Great War barrel could manage on similar ground. The power-to-weight ratio of the test model was supposed to be the same as that of the eventual production machine. If so, these barrels would do tricks their ancestors had never imagined. They still weren’t fast enough to suit him.
“Hell of a ride!” Jenkins shouted, sounding as exhilarated as a skilled horseman on a half-broken stallion. “Hell of a ride! Now we’ve got the cavalry back again, by Jesus!”
“That’s part of the idea,” Morrell said. Men on horseback had been poised throughout the Great War, ready to exploit whatever breakthroughs the infantry could force. But infantry alone hadn’t been able to force breakthroughs, and cavalry melted under machine-gun fire like snow in Death Valley summer. The old barrels had broken through Confederate lines, but hadn’t always been swift enough to exploit to the fullest the breaches they made.
Maybe these machines would, even in their present state. In his mind’s eye, Morrell saw barrels clawing at the flank of a foe in retreat, shooting up his soldiers, wrecking his supply lines, keeping reinforcements from reaching the field, pushing the front forward by leaps and bounds, not plodding steps.
It was a heady vision, so heady it almost made Morrell see with his mind’s eye to the exclusion of the pair at the front of his head. Had he not paid attention to the gauges in front of him, he would have missed noting how little fuel the test model carried in its tank. Stranding himself out on the prairie was not what he had in mind when it came to getting acquainted with the new machine. Reluctantly, he steered for the muddy field where half a dozen survivors of the Great War sat.
He turned off the engine, climbed out of the hatch, and got down off the test model. Lije Jenkins came down beside him. The youngster looked from the new barrel to the old ones. “It’s like stacking the first Duryea up against an Oldsmobile, isn’t it, sir?” he said.
“Something like that, anyway,” Morrell said. “Of course, there is one other difference: there really are Oldsmobiles, but this baby”—again, he remembered in the nick of time not to rap his knuckles on the hull—“is just pretend, for now.”
“I hope we don’t take twenty years to get the real ones, sir,” Jenkins said.
“So do I, Lieutenant, with all my heart. We may need them sooner than that,” Morrell said. He started off toward the barracks. Jenkins tagged along after him.
As Morrell walked, he wondered what he could tell Agnes Hill about his new toy. She knew, in a general way, what his duties were. Being a soldier’s widow, she also knew not to ask too many questions about what exactly he did. But the next time he saw her, he was going to be excited. He wanted to share that excitement. He also needed not to talk too much. He was awfully glad he’d gone to that dance with Jenkins. He wanted to go right on being glad. The only place where taking chances was a good idea was on the battlefield.
A fat man with a nasty cough came up to the counter of the drugstore where Reggie Bartlett worked. “Help you?” Reggie asked.
“Hope to God you can,” the man answered, hacking again. “If I don’t shake this damn thin
g, it’s going to drive me right up a tree.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and tapped one in the palm of his hand.
“Here you go.” Reggie handed him a box of matches with HARMON’S DRUGS printed on the top—good advertising. He waited till the man lit up, then went on, “I can give you a camphorated salve to rub on your chest and under your nose. And we’ve got a new cough elixir in. It’s got a kind of denatured morphine in it—not nearly as strong, and not habit-forming, but it does the job.”
“Give me some of the salve, and a bottle of that stuff, too,” the sufferer said. He coughed some more and shook his head. “This is killing me. I can’t even enjoy my smokes any more.”
“Another thing you can do is, you can set a pot of water on the stove to boil, put in some of the salve, and breathe in the steam,” Bartlett said. “That’ll help clear out your lungs, too.”
“Good idea,” the fat man answered. His face took on a kind of apprehension that had nothing to do with his ailment. “Now—what do I owe you?”
“Two thousand for the salve,” Reggie said. The customer nodded in some relief. Reggie continued, “The elixir, though, it’s new stuff, like I said, and it’s expensive: $25,000.”
“Could be worse,” the fat man said. He took three $10,000 banknotes from his wallet and shoved them across the counter at Bartlett. Reggie gave him three $1,000 banknotes in change. As the fat man tucked them away, he shook his head in wonder. “It’s like play money, ain’t it? Reckon I’m a millionaire, and a whole hell of a lot of good it’s doing me.” He coughed again, then picked up the squat blue bottle of salve and the taller one of the elixir. “Much obliged to you, young fellow, and I hope these here give me some relief.” As he headed for the door, he called a last word over his shoulder: “Freedom!”
Bartlett started violently. He had all he could do to hold his tongue, and indeed to keep from running after the fat man and screaming curses at him. “Christ!” he said. His hands were trembling.
Jeremiah Harmon looked up from the tablets he was compounding. “Something troubling you, Reggie?” He was in his late forties, with a brown mustache beginning to go gray, and so quiet Bartlett was always straining to hear him. That wasn’t bad, not so far as Reggie was concerned. He’d walked out on McNally, his previous employer, because the man wouldn’t stop riding him.
“Yes, sir,” he answered. “That fellow who just left used the Freedom Party salute when he went out the door. I don’t fancy those people, not even a little I don’t.”
“Can’t say I do, either,” Harmon said, “but I doubt they’re worth getting very excited about.” As far as he was concerned, nothing was worth getting very excited about.
“Lord, I hope you’re right, but I just don’t know,” Bartlett said. “I watched their goons bust up a rally. They almost busted me up, too. That’s not the only brawl they’ve gotten into—not even close. And now Richmond’s got a Freedom Party Congressman. Makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Bicarbonate of soda will do the trick there,” Harmon remarked; he was a druggist down to the tips of his toes. After a moment, though, he realized Reggie had used a figure of speech. With a shrug, he went on, “My guess is, they’re a flash in the pan. Having a few of them in Congress is probably a good thing. Once they show they’re nothing but a pack of noisy windbags, people will wise up to them pretty fast.”
Bartlett grunted. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. Maybe you’ve got something there.” He didn’t take the Freedom Party seriously even now. When more people had a chance to see it in action, how could they take it seriously, either? “Sometimes the best thing you can do is let a fool prove he is one.”
“That’s right,” Jeremiah Harmon said. A customer came into the store. Harmon bent to his work again. “Why don’t you see to Mrs. Dinwiddie there?”
“All right. Hello, Mrs. Dinwiddie,” Reggie said. “What can I get for you today?” He thought he knew, but he might have been wrong.
He was right: Mrs. Dinwiddie answered, “I need a bottle of castor oil. My bowels have been in a terrible state lately, just a terrible state, and if I don’t get something to loosen them up, well, I swear to Jesus, I don’t know what I’ll do. Explode, I reckon.”
She went on in that vein for some time. She bought castor oil every other week; the purchases were regular as clockwork, even if her bowels weren’t. Every time she bought it, she gave the same speech. Bartlett was sick of listening to it. So, no doubt, was Jeremiah Harmon. Since Harmon was the boss, he had the privilege of avoiding Mrs. Dinwiddie. Reggie didn’t.
By the time she ran down, he was on much more intimate terms with her lower bowel than he’d ever wanted to be. “Well, I won’t keep you any more,” she said, having already kept him too long. She opened her handbag. “What do I owe you?”
“That’s $15,000, ma’am,” Reggie answered.
“It was only ten the last time I came in,” she said sharply. He shrugged. If she didn’t like the way prices jumped, she could take that up with Harmon. He figured out how much to charge. But, after grumbling under her breath, Mrs. Dinwiddie gave Bartlett a pair of $10,000 banknotes. He returned her change and the bottle of castor oil.
So the day went. It was something less than exciting, but it put money in his pockets. It put tens of thousands of dollars in his pockets. Those tens of thousands of dollars left him somewhat worse off than he had been before the war started, when he’d been making two dollars a day. Inflation made a bitter joke of everything he’d thought he knew about money.
He supposed that was one reason people voted for the Freedom Party and other outfits like it. They loudly proclaimed they had the answers to all the problems bedeviling the Confederate States. Proclaiming they had the answers was the easy part. Really having them, and making them work—that looked harder. That looked a hell of a lot harder to him. But some people would buy castles in the air because they were short of beans on the ground.
When six o’clock rolled around, he said, “See you tomorrow, Mr. Harmon.”
The druggist looked up in vague surprise. “Oh, yes, that will be fine.” He made no move to leave himself. Reggie was just hired help, and could come and go as he pleased—so long as he pleased to be on time most of the time. The drugstore belonged to Harmon. He worked as long as he thought he had to.
Reggie put on his overcoat and went out into the cold. It wasn’t too bad—no snow lay on the ground—but it wasn’t anything he enjoyed, either. He walked quickly, his feet clicking along the sidewalk. As long as he kept moving, he didn’t feel the chill too badly. And Bill Foster’s flat, where he had a supper invitation, lay only a few blocks away.
Sally Foster opened the door. “Hello, Reggie,” she said. “Come in, get warm, make yourself at home. How are you today?”
“I’ve been worse,” he answered, and heaven only knew that was true.
“Bill, hon,” Sally called, “Reggie’s here.” She was a short, slightly pudgy blonde in her mid-twenties. For reasons Bartlett couldn’t quite fathom, she thought well of him. He’d wondered if he would keep Bill Foster as a friend after Bill and Sally got married; a lot of men gave up their bachelor friends after they stopped being bachelors themselves. But Sally had gone out of her way to be cordial, and so the friendship stayed warm.
“Hello, Reggie,” Bill Foster said. Married life plainly agreed with him; he’d put on ten pounds, easy, since Sally started cooking for him. “Can I get you a little something to light a fire inside?”
“Thanks. I wouldn’t mind,” Reggie answered.
Foster took down a whiskey bottle and a couple of glasses. “Do you want water with that?” he asked. Sometimes Reggie did, sometimes he didn’t.
Tonight, he didn’t. “Pipes are rusty enough already,” he said. Sally laughed. Maybe she hadn’t heard it before. It was an old joke in the trenches, though, as Foster’s resigned chuckle showed. When Reggie had the glass in his hand, he raised it and said, “Here’s to a long walk off a short pier for Jake Featherst
on.”
“Lord knows I’ll drink to that,” Bill said, and he did. So did Bartlett. Sure enough, the whiskey warmed him nicely. Foster said, “I’ll drink to that any day, and twice on Sunday, as a matter of fact. But what made you come out with it just then?”
Reggie told him about the fat man with the cough who’d called out the Freedom Party’s one-word slogan, and finished, “When he walked out, I was standing there wishing I’d given him rat poison instead of his cough elixir.”
“I’ve heard it, too,” Bill Foster said. “It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, same as the noise of a shell coming in. You’d reckon people had better sense, but a lot of ’em don’t.”
“The other thing I wondered was whether he was just somebody who voted for the Freedom Party, or if he was one of the tough guys who put on white and butternut and go out looking for heads to break,” Bartlett said. “He didn’t look like the type, but you never can tell.”
“They don’t need very many ruffians,” Foster said. “As long as folks think the fellows with the clubs are doing the right thing, they won’t try and stop ’em. And that worries me more than anything.”
It gave Reggie something new to worry about, too: “We can’t even write our Congressman and complain. He’d likely send goons right to our door.”
“What you can do,” Sally said, “is come and sit down and have supper. Once you get some food in your bellies to go along with the whiskey you’re pouring down, the world won’t seem like such a rotten place.”
Ham and applesauce and canned corn and string beans cooked with a little salt pork might not have changed the world, but Sally was right: they did improve Reggie’s opinion of it. Peach pie improved it even more. He patted his stomach. He had no trouble understanding how Bill had put on weight. “You don’t happen to have a sister, do you?” he asked Sally, knowing she didn’t.
Blood and Iron Page 30