Return Engagement

by Harry Turtledove

  Another chorus, this one full of deep, masculine voices, urged people to buy Confederate war bonds. Rodriguez had already done that: as many as he could afford. "Bonds and bullets, bonds and bombs!" they chanted, drums thudding martially in the background. Just hearing them made you want to give money to the cause.

  Their music faded. The familiar fanfare that led off the news followed. "Now it is time to tell you the truth," the announcer said. "Yankee air pirates were severely punished in raids over Virginia and Kentucky last night. Confederate bombers struck hard at Yankee shipping in the Great Lakes yesterday. U.S. industry cannot keep making munitions if it cannot get supplies."

  "Es verdad. Tiene razón," Rodriguez said. His wife nodded–she thought it was true and the newsman was right, too.

  "In Utah, poison-gas attacks did not make the Mormon freedom fighters rebelling against Yankee tyranny pull back from Provo," the newsman went on. "And in New Mexico, a daring raid by the Confederate Camel Corps caused the destruction of a U.S. ammunition dump outside of Alamogordo. The shells and bombs would have been used against Confederate women and children in Texas."

  Rodriguez found himself nodding. That was how the damnyankees did things, all right.

  "There were minor raids by Red mallate bandits in Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina over the past few days," the newsreader said. "None of them did much damage, and the Negroes were driven off with heavy losses." Rodriguez nodded again. If blacks in the CSA took up arms against the government, they deserved whatever happened to them. Even if they didn't . . .

  "And in Richmond, President Jake Featherston announced the formation of the Confederate Veterans' Brigades," the newsman said. "These men, while no longer fit for the demands of modern war, will free younger men now serving behind the lines to go up to the front."

  More singing commercials followed. Rodriguez listened to them with half an ear. When they went away, the newsman gave football scores from across the CSA. Rodriguez waited for the score of the Hermosillo-Chihuahua match. It had ended up 17–17. He sighed. He'd hoped for a win, but Chihuahua had been favored, so he didn't suppose he could be too disappointed that the team from the Sonoran capital had managed to earn a tie.

  After the sports came the weather forecast. Rodriguez did about as well by going outside and watching the clouds and feeling the breeze as the weathermen did with all their fancy gadgets. He listened anyway, not least so he could laugh at them when they turned out to be wrong.

  Music came back after more commercials. He listened for a while, then got up and yawned and stretched. "Estoy cansado. I'm going to bed," he said.

  "I'm tired, too," his wife agreed. She turned off the wireless. Rodriguez didn't say anything. If he had, she would have told him she was closer to the set than he was. It would have been the truth, too, but not all of the truth.

  When they lay down together, he wondered if he would know the sweetness of desire. It had been a while. But nothing happened. He sighed once more, yawned, rolled over, and fell asleep.

  He was chivvying a chicken into the henhouse the next morning when an auto pulled off the road and stopped not far from the barn. He blinked. That didn't happen every day–or every month, either. The motorcar wasn't new, and hadn't been anything special when it was: a boxy, battered Birmingham with bulbous headlights that stuck out like a frog's eyes. Out of it stepped Robert Quinn.

  The Freedom Party organizer hadn't come to Baroyeca to get rich–or if he had, he'd been out of his mind. He hadn't got rich, either. That was one of the reasons he commanded so much respect in town. He was doing what he believed in, not what would serve his own selfish interests.

  Rodriguez waved to him. "Hola, Señor Quinn. What can I do for you today?"

  "Well, I thought I'd come by and see how you were doing, Señor Rodriguez," Quinn replied. "How do you feel?"

  "From what the doctor said, I am doing about the way I should be," Rodriguez said. "I wish I were better, but I could be worse. I am not shockingly bad, anyhow."

  Quinn made a face at him. "I see the electricity did not fry your brains–or maybe I see that it did."

  "Would you like to come in the house?" Rodriguez asked. "If you have the time, we could drink a bottle of cerveza."

  "Muchas gracias. I would like that," Quinn said. "I have a question I would like to ask you, if you don't mind." I want something from you, was what he meant. But he was too smooth, too polite, to say so straight out. Maybe he would have when he first came to Baroyeca from the more bustling northeast of the Confederate States. But he'd learned to fit into the Sonoran town's slower rhythms.

  "I would be very pleased to hear it," Rodriguez said. "Just let me attend to this miserable hen first. . . ." He waved his hat. The hen, which had paused to peck in the gravel, squawked irately and retreated. He got it back where it belonged and slammed the door on it. Then he raised his voice: "Magdalena, we have company. Señor Quinn has come to ask me something."

  His wife came out onto the front porch. She nodded to Robert Quinn. "Very good to see you, señor."

  "And you as well." Quinn's answering nod was almost a bow.

  "Come in, come in," Rodriguez said. "Magdalena, would you get us some beer, por favor?"

  "Of course," she answered. If they'd been down to their last bottle of beer and had nothing else on the farm, Quinn would have got it. Not only that–he would have got it in a way that said they had plenty more, even if they didn't.

  Rodriguez settled his guest in the most comfortable chair. That was the one he usually sat in himself, but the next best would do. Magdalena brought in two bottles of beer. She served Quinn first. "Thank you very much," he said, and raised his bottle to Rodriguez. "¡Salud!"

  The simple toast–health–meant more than it would have before Rodriguez almost electrocuted himself. "¡Salud!" he echoed feelingly. He sipped at the beer. "Ask me your question, Señor Quinn."

  "I will, never fear." Quinn nodded to the wireless set. "Did you hear any news last night?"

  "Some," Rodriguez said, surprise in his voice: that wasn't the sort of question he'd expected.

  Robert Quinn went on, "Did you hear the news about what President Featherston is calling the Confederate Veterans' Brigades?"

  "Yes, I did hear that," Rodriguez answered. "It struck me as being a good idea."

  "It struck me the same way," Quinn said. "It is something this country needs when we fight an enemy larger than we are. I was wondering if you had thought about joining the Veterans' Brigades yourself."

  "I see," Rodriguez said. "Before my . . . my accident, I was wondering whether los Estados Confederados would call me back to the colors to fight at the front, not behind it."

  "Así es la vida," Quinn said. "The way things are now, you would probably not do well with a Tredegar automatic rifle in your hands." He was being polite, and Rodriguez knew it. If he put on the butternut uniform again, he would be almost as big a danger to his own compadres as he would to the damnyankees. Robert Quinn added, "But you also serve your country if you free up a fitter man to fight. That is what the Confederate Veterans' Brigades are for."

  "I understand. But one thing I am not so sure I understand is who would take care of the farm if I went away. My one son is already in the Army. The other two are bound to be conscripted soon. Magdalena cannot possibly do everything by herself."

  "People can do all sorts of things when they find they have to," Quinn remarked. "But the Freedom Party looks out for the people. You would have your salary, of course. And the Party would pay your wife an allowance that would go a long way toward making up for your being gone."

  "Well, that is not so bad," Rodriguez said. "It gives me something to think about, anyhow."

  "You might do better not to think too long. So far, the Confederate Veterans' Brigades are voluntary." Quinn paused to let that sink in before continuing, "I do not know when, or if, men our age will be conscripted into them. But I know it could happen. This is war, after all. If you volunteer, you will
have the best chance to get the assignment you might want. You could patrol the dams in the Tennessee Valley to guard against sabotage, or you could guard the mallates taken in arms against the Confederate States, or–"

  He knew what levers to pull. He even knew not to name guarding the Negroes first, lest it seem too obvious. "I will think about that," Rodriguez said. Robert Quinn didn't even smile.

  ****

  THE FIGHTING off to the west, in the direction of Sandusky, had picked up again. If the racket of the small-arms and artillery fire hadn't told Dr. Leonard O'Doull as much, the casualties coming into the aid station near Elyria, Ohio, would have. There seemed to be no easy times, just hard ones and harder.

  O'Doull stepped out of the tent for a cigarette. He made sure everyone did that, and set his own example. Smoking around ether wasn't the smartest thing you could do. All he'd had before was green-gray canvas with a big Red Cross on it between him and the noise of battle. Somehow, things sounded much louder out here. Back in the tent, of course, he'd been concentrating on his job. That helped make the world go away. A cigarette couldn't equal it.

  He smoked anyway, enjoying the ten-minute respite he'd given himself. His boots squelched in mud as he walked about. It wasn't raining now, but it had been, and the gray clouds rolling in off the lake said it would again before too long. He would have thought both sides would have to slow down in the rain. Things had worked like that in the Great War, anyhow. Here, they didn't seem to.

  And then the shout of, "Hey, Doc! Doc!" made him stamp out the cigarette and mutter a curse under his breath. So much for the respite. War didn't know the meaning of the word.

  "I'm here," he yelled, and ducked back into the tent.

  Stretcher-bearers brought in the casualty half a minute later. At first, O'Doull just saw another wounded man. Then he noticed the fellow wore butternut, not green-gray. He made a small, surprised noise. Eddie–one of the corpsmen–said, "We found him, so we brought him in. Their guys do the same for our wounded. Sometimes we bump into each other when we're making pickups–swap ration cans for good tobacco, shit like that."

  Such things were against regulations. They happened all the time anyhow. O'Doull wasn't about to get up on his high horse about them. They wouldn't change who won and who lost, not even a little bit. And he had the wounded Confederate here. "What's going on with him?" he asked.

  What was going on was pretty obvious: a shredded, bloodied trouser leg with a tourniquet on it. "Shell blew up too damn close," Eddie answered. "You think you can save the leg?"

  "Don't know yet," O'Doull said. "Let's get his pants off him and have a look." As the corpsman started cutting away the cloth, O'Doull added, "You gave him morphine, right? That's why he's not talking and yelling and raising a fuss? He's not shocky? He doesn't look it."

  Eddie nodded. "Right the first time, Doc. Gave him a big old dose. He was screamin' his head off when we found him, but the dope's taken hold pretty good."

  The wounded Confederate opened his eyes. They were startlingly blue. O'Doull wasn't sure the man was seeing him or anything else this side of God. In a faraway voice, the soldier said, "Don't hardly hurt at all no more."

  "Good. That's good, son." O'Doull tried to sound as reassuring as he could. One look told him that leg was going to have to come off. It was a miracle the Confederate hadn't bled out before Eddie got to him. Or maybe not a miracle–his hands were all bloody. Maybe he'd held on literally for dear life and slowed things down enough to give himself a chance to survive. O'Doull turned to Granville McDougald. "As soon as he's on the table, get him under. We've got work to do." With the soldier conscious, he didn't want to say any more than that.

  McDougald nodded. "Right, Doc." He didn't say anything else, either. But he could see what was what at least as well as O'Doull could.

  Grunting, Eddie and the other corpsman got the Confederate off the stretcher and onto the operating table. Granville McDougald stuck an ether cone over the soldier's nose. The fellow feebly tried to fight; ether was nasty stuff. Then he went limp. Eddie said, "You are gonna have to amputate, aren't you?" He could see what was what, too.

  "You bet," O'Doull answered. "Got to be above the knee, too. That makes learning to walk with an artificial leg harder, but look at his thigh. I'll be damned if I see how the burst missed cutting the femoral artery. That would've been curtains right there. But it sure as hell tore everything else to cat's meat."

  "If it's above the knee anyhow, do it pretty high," McDougald advised. "You can pack more tissue below the end of the bone for a good stump."

  "Right," O'Doull said. "You want to do it yourself, Granny? He'd have just as good a result with you cutting as he would with me." He meant it; the other man was a thoroughly competent medical jack of all trades.

  But McDougald shook his head. "Nah. You go ahead. You got me up here passing gas. I'll go on with that." He didn't say he made a better anesthetist than O'Doull would. Whether he said it or not, they both knew it was true.

  "All right, then." The more O'Doull considered the wound, the less happy he got. "It will have to be high. Some of this flesh is just too damn tattered to save. Tabernac!" Every once in a while, he still swore in Quebecois French. Constant use had brought his English out of dormancy in a hurry, though.

  He got to work, repairing what he could, removing what he had to, picking out shell fragments and bits of cloth driven into the Confederate's wounds, and dusting sulfa powder over them. That could have gone on a lot longer than it did, but he didn't need to worry about the damage below mid-thigh.

  "Give me the bone saw, Eddie," he said when he was ready for it. The corpsman handed it to him. He used it. Cutting through even the longest, strongest bone in the body didn't take long. The leg fell away from its former owner.

  "Very neat, Doc," McDougald said. He'd watched the whole procedure with his usual intelligent interest. "You fixed that up better than I thought you could."

  It wasn't over yet. O'Doull still had to make the fleshy pad below the femur and suture the flaps of skin he'd left attached for that purpose. But McDougald was right: that was just follow-up. He'd finished the challenging part.

  "How's he look?" he asked.

  "He's pretty pink. Pulse is strong. These young ones are tough. He's got a decent chance of coming through," McDougald answered.

  "Keep him doped up," O'Doull said. "I don't want him feeling all of this till it's had the chance to settle down a little bit. Be a shame to lose him to shock when we've got what looks like such a good result."

  "Too bad he's not one of ours," Eddie said, though he'd brought in the Confederate.

  "Nothing we can do about that," O'Doull said. "Geneva Convention says we take care of wounded from both sides the same way. Only common sense that we do, too. If we don't, the Confederates won't for our guys."

  "I suppose." But Eddie still didn't sound happy about it.

  "We can question him while he's all doped up," Granville McDougald said. "If he knows anything, he'll spill his guts."

  That bent the rules if it didn't actually break them. O'Doull thought about saying so. Then he looked at the Confederate soldier's tunic: two stripes on his sleeve. The man was only a corporal. Whatever he knew, it wouldn't matter much. Besides, O'Doull had no doubt the Confederates did the same thing. Who wouldn't? He kept his mouth shut.

  Eddie took the canteen off his belt and sloshed it suggestively. "Want to celebrate pulling him through?"

  Where had he come up with booze? O'Doull laughed at himself for even wondering. It wasn't hard. The corpsman would just claim it was medicinal if anyone came down on him for it. He didn't let whatever he scrounged interfere with the job he did. As far as O'Doull was concerned, nothing else mattered.

  As for the offer . . . The doctor shook his head. "Ask me when I'm not on duty and I'll say yes. Till then, I'll pass. I don't want to do anything that might make me screw up a case. That wouldn't be fair to the poor sorry bastards who depend on me to patch 'em up the best w
ay I know how."

  "I know plenty of docs who'd say yes so fast, it'd make your head swim," Eddie said.

  O'Doull only shrugged. "That's their business. I've got to mind mine."

  "All right. All right." By his shrug, Eddie thought O'Doull was nuts, but most likely in a harmless way. The corpsman went on, "I'm going to clean up and go see who else got lucky out there." He spoke with a casual lack of concern that sounded more cold-blooded than it was. When he went out there, he could "get lucky" as easily as anyone else–more easily than most, for he exposed himself to more fire than any normal soldier in his right mind would have. Yes, he wore Red Cross armbands and smock and had Red Crosses on the front and back of his helmet, but not everybody paid attention to that kind of thing. And machine-gun bullets and shell fragments flew more or less at random. What did they care about the Red Cross? Not a thing, not a single thing.

  After Eddie headed off toward the front, McDougald said, "You've got pretty good sense, Doc."

  "Oh, yeah? Then why did I put the uniform back on? What the hell am I doing here?" O'Doull said. "It isn't for the pay and it isn't for the scenery, that's for goddamn sure."

  The other man chuckled. "Why? On account of you're good at what you do, that's why. Sometimes, if you're good at what you do, you've got to go do it where it's hardest or where you can do the most good with it. That's how it looks to me, anyway. But what the deuce do I know? If I had any brains, I'd be out in California laying on the beach and soaking up something with a lot of rum in it."

  O'Doull scrubbed at his hands with water and disinfectant. He used soap and a toothpick to get blood out from under his nails. He always kept them trimmed short, which helped, but not enough. Lying on a beach soaking up something with a lot of rum in it sounded pretty good to him, too. But he knew what sounded better: "I wish I were home."