There was a variation on this theme. When it wasn’t hot and muggy and sunny, it was hot and muggy and pouring rain. Moss didn’t bother pointing that out. He doubted the other POW would find it an improvement.
With another nod, Hal Swinburne went on his way. He didn’t move any faster than he had to. In this heat and humidity, nobody moved any faster than he had to. Sweat coated Moss’ skin, thick and heavy as grease. It welded his shirt and even his trousers to his body.
Coming into the shade inside the barracks hall was a small relief, but only a small one. “A little warm out there,” Moss remarked.
That made even the men in the unending corner poker game look up. “Really?” one of them said.
“Never would have guessed,” another added.
“Come on, Major,” a third poker player put in. “You knew hell was supposed to be hot, right?”
Moss laughed. A moment later, he wondered why. If this wasn’t hell, it had to be one of the nastier suburbs of purgatory. He went over to Colonel Summers. “Could I talk with you for a moment, sir?” he asked.
The senior U.S. officer in the camp nodded. “Certainly.” He closed the beat-up paperbound mystery he’d been reading. “I already know who done it, anyhow.” Moss knew who done it in that one, too. The camp library didn’t hold enough books. Anyone who’d been here for a while and liked to read had probably gone through all of them at least once. Monty Summers got to his feet. “What’s on your mind, Major?”
Till they walked outside again, Moss kept it to small talk. Summers didn’t seem surprised or put out. When Moss was sure neither guards nor fellow prisoners could overhear, he asked, “Are we still working on an escape?”
“Officially, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Colonel Summers answered. “Officially, I had no idea there was a tunnel under these grounds till the rain showed it. I was shocked—shocked, I tell you—to learn that some men here were planning to break out. The Confederates couldn’t prove any different, either. I’m glad they couldn’t. It would have been troublesome if they could.”
He wouldn’t admit a damn thing. That was bound to be smart. The less he said, the less the Confederates could make him sorry for. The less Moss heard, the less the enemy could squeeze out of him. All the same . . . “I do believe I’m going to go smack out of my mind if I stay cooped up here much longer.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Summers said. “They’ll put you in a straitjacket, and those things are uncomfortable as the devil, especially in this weather.”
“Yes, sir,” Moss said resignedly. He should have known he wouldn’t get a straight answer. As a matter of fact, he had known it, or had a pretty good idea. That he’d squawked anyhow was a telling measure of how fed up and cooped up he was feeling.
Voice far drier than the dripping air they both breathed, Summers said, “Believe me, Major, you aren’t the only one incompletely satisfied with the accommodations around here.”
“No?” Moss’ spirits revived, or tried to. “Is there anyone in particular I should talk to? Is anybody besides me especially unhappy about them?”
“If someone is, I’m sure he’ll get in touch with you,” Colonel Summers said, which again told Moss nothing. “Was anything else troubling you? As I say, you’re not the only one who doesn’t like it here. Remember that and you may keep from winning one of the guards a furlough.”
“Bastards,” Moss muttered. The POWs didn’t know for a fact that their guards got time off for shooting a prisoner who’d set foot on the smoothed ground just inside the barbed wire—or, sometimes, for shooting a prisoner who looked as if he was about to do such a thing. They didn’t know it, but they believed it the way a lot of them believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
“Of course they’re bastards,” Summers said. “They get paid to be bastards. You don’t want to make things easy for them, do you?”
“Well, no, sir,” Moss said.
“Good.” Summers nodded in a businesslike way. “I should hope not.” He waved to Lieutenant Swinburne, who was on his way back to the barracks. “What do you think of the guards, Lieutenant?”
“Me, sir? Pack of bastards,” Swinburne answered at once. The word was bahstuds in his mouth, giving it only a vague resemblance to what Moss had called the guards.
“Thanks. I couldn’t have put that better myself,” Summers said. The officer from Maine touched his cap with a forefinger and went on his way. Colonel Summers turned back to Moss. “You see? You’re not the only one who loves these people.”
“I never said I was, sir.” Moss scowled. “I’ve got more right to complain than he does. I’ve been here longer.”
“Yes, but they interrogate him more. They’ve already squeezed everything out of you that they’re going to get,” Summers said. “He’s new, so they still have hopes.”
“If there’s more than three Confederate officers between here and Richmond who don’t know my name, rank, and pay number, I’d be amazed. And not a goddamn one of them knows anything but that.” Moss spoke with a certain somber pride.
“They’ve grilled all of us, Major,” Summers replied, wearily rolling his eyes as if to say, Haven’t they just! “I know they get more out of some people than they do from others.” He held up a hasty hand. “I’m not talking about you, and I’m not talking about Swinburne, either.”
“I know, sir. I understood that. Some men will talk more than others, and they lean on some harder than others, depending on what they think the poor sons of bitches know.” Moss sighed. “I can’t even cuss ’em for that, or not real hard, because I know damn well we do the same thing.”
Monty Summers shrugged. “It’s war,” he said: two words that covered a multitude of sins. “We all do the best we can.”
“Yes, sir,” Moss agreed mournfully. “And look what that’s got us.” His wave encompassed the camp. “God knows what would have happened if we tried to screw up.”
“Heh,” Colonel Summers said—a noise that sounded like a laugh but wasn’t. “A hell of a lot of people who didn’t do their best are dead right now.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Moss agreed. “And some of them are back in Philadelphia with stars on their shoulder straps. They’re drinking good booze and eating steaks and screwing their secretaries. For them, the war’s a nuisance or an opportunity, depending on how you look at things.”
Summers eyed him for a long moment before saying, “That holds on both sides of the border, you know.”
“I sure hope so, sir,” Moss said. “But what worries me is, the Confederates may have done a better job of sweeping away their deadwood than we have, and that’s liable to cost us. It’s liable to cost us a lot.”
XIII
DR. LEONARD O’Doull wondered how many places he’d set up his aid station since returning to the war. A lot of them—that was all he knew for sure. After a while, they started blurring together. So did cases. What made that worse was, he never saw them again after they went back for more treatment. He never found out whether they got better or worse. They were just arms or legs or bellies or chests or heads—not that he or anybody else this side of God could do much for too many head wounds.
When he complained about that outside the aid tent one day, Granville McDougald said, “Well, Doc, remember the fellow who had the round burrow under his scalp and come out the back?”
“Calisse! I’m not likely to forget him,” O’Doull said. That one would stay in his memory forever. “I haven’t come that close to crapping myself since I was three years old. But most of the bullets don’t go around. They go in.”
McDougald grimaced. He crushed a cigarette under his foot. They’d set up in some woods north of Pittsburgh. Catbirds mewed and squawked in the trees. They made an ungodly racket, not all of it catlike. You didn’t see them all that often. They were gray with black caps and rusty brown under their tails—good camouflage colors—and stayed where leaves and bushes were thick. A cardinal scratching for seeds on the ground, on the other hand . .
.
“I used to love those birds,” O’Doull said sadly, pointing towards it. “Nowadays, though, the color just reminds me of blood.”
“You are cheery this morning, aren’t you?” McDougald studied the plump, crested cardinal. “I still like ’em.”
“To each his own.” O’Doull looked up at the leaves and branches overhead in a different way. “I wish we were a little more out in the open. A tree burst right above us would fill the aid tent with shrapnel.”
“If we were out in the open, we’d get shrapnel from ground bursts that the tree trunks will stop,” McDougald answered, which was also true. “Only way not to worry about artillery is not to have a war, and it’s a little late for that now.”
“Just a bit, yeah,” O’Doull said. “And ain’t it a shame?”
His head came up like a pointer’s taking a scent. So did McDougald’s. But they didn’t smell anything. No, they heard heavy footsteps: the footsteps of stretcher bearers bringing back a casualty. “Doc!” Eddie yelled. “Hey, Doc! Here’s a new model for you!”
“Back to work,” O’Doull murmured, and Granville McDougald nodded. The doctor raised his voice: “Bring him to us, Eddie!” He went inside and washed his hands with soap and disinfectant, taking special care to clean under and around his nails. McDougald did the same. They slipped on surgical masks together. Sometimes O’Doull wondered how much good that did when wounds were often already filthy before they got back to him. He supposed you had to try.
Another groaning wounded man, this one shot in the leg. Except, as Eddie had said, he wasn’t what O’Doull was used to seeing. He was short and swarthy and black-haired, and wore a uniform of cut and color—a khaki more nearly yellow than brown—different from either U.S. green-gray or C.S. butternut. When words broke through the animal noises of pain, they came in Spanish, not English.
“Heard there were Mexican troops in front of us,” McDougald remarked.
“So did I.” O’Doull nodded. “Poor devil came a long way just to let some nasty strangers put a hole in him.”
McDougald shook his head. “He came to put holes in the nasty strangers himself. Suckers always do. They never figure the guys on the other side are gonna shoot back.”
The Mexican soldier’s moans eased. Eddie or one of the other corpsmen must have given him morphine. He said something. O’Doull couldn’t figure out what it was. Spanish and French were related, sure, but not closely enough to let him understand one even if he knew the other.
He spoke in English: “You’ll be all right.” From what he could see of the wound, he thought that was true. The bullet looked to have blown off a chunk of flesh, but not to have shattered any bones. He turned to McDougald. “Put him under.”
“Right you are, Doc.” McDougald settled the ether cone over the wounded man’s face. He and Eddie had to keep the soldier from yanking it off; a lot of men thought they were being gassed when they inhaled the anesthetic. After a few breaths, the Mexican’s hands fell away and he went limp.
O’Doull cleaned out the wound and sewed it up. Had men from the soldier’s own side brought him in, it would have been a hometowner: good for convalescent leave, but nothing that would keep him from coming back to the front. As things were, he’d sit out the rest of the war in a POW camp.
When the job was done, O’Doull nodded to Eddie. “You can take him back to the rear now. If they have anybody who speaks Spanish handy, they’ll probably want to grill him.”
“I suppose,” Eddie said. “Like worrying about the Confederates wasn’t bad enough. Now we’ve got the greasers jumping on us, too.”
No matter what he called Mexicans, he handled this one with the same rough compassion he would have shown any wounded soldier, white, brown, black, or even green. He and the other stretcher bearers carried away the still-unconscious man.
“Interesting,” Granville McDougald said. “Does this mean the Confederates are starting to run low on their own men?”
“Don’t know,” said O’Doull, who hadn’t looked at it like that.
“Well, neither do I,” McDougald allowed. “I don’t think like Jake Featherston or Francisco José, thank God. I hope I’m not a son of a bitch or a moron.” That startled a laugh out of O’Doull. The medic went on, “But even if I don’t know, that’s sure how it looks to me.”
“It makes sense,” O’Doull said. “We beat the CSA last time by hammering on them till they couldn’t hammer back anymore. If we’re going to win this war, we’ll have to knock ’em flat again.”
“Flatter,” McDougald said. “Last time, we let ’em up again. If we beat ’em this time, we’d better not do that again. I don’t know how long we’ll have to sit on ’em, but we need to do it, however long it takes.”
“I suppose so,” O’Doull said mournfully. “But remember what Kentucky and Houston were supposed to be like before the plebiscite?”
“I’d better remember—I was in Houston for a while. Half of what went on never made the papers in the USA, let alone in Quebec, I bet.” Granville McDougald paused. He looked very unhappy. “I don’t want to think about how much trouble sitting on the whole Confederacy would be. Those people purely hate us, no two ways about it. But if we don’t occupy them and control them, we’ll have to fight ’em again in another twenty years, and I sure as hell don’t want to do that, either.”
“So what you’re telling me is, we’re in trouble no matter what happens,” O’Doull said. “Thanks a lot, Granny.”
“There’s trouble, and then there’s trouble,” McDougald said. “Trouble is us occupying the Confederate States. Trouble is the Confederates occupying us. If I’ve got a choice, I know which one I’d take.”
“Yeah, me, too,” O’Doull said. “Here’s hoping we’ve got a choice.”
“Now why would you say something like that?” McDougald inquired. “Haven’t you got confidence in our brilliant leaders? Doesn’t the fact that we’re fighting in Pennsylvania mean victory’s right around the corner?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” O’Doull answered. “The only trouble is, whose victory are you talking about?”
McDougald laughed, for all the world as if they were sitting in a saloon telling jokes. The fate of nations? Who could get excited about the fate of nations if the beer was cold and the joint had a halfway decent free-lunch spread? The medic said, “If we were a little farther back of the line and we talked like this, we’d catch hell for defeatism, you know?”
“Yeah, they’d yell at us,” O’Doull agreed. “But that’s all they’d do. If we talked like this on the Confederate side of the line, they’d probably shoot us.”
“Y’all are damnyankee sympathizers.” McDougald’s Southern drawl wouldn’t get him into espionage. “Y’all can have blindfolds. I ain’t gonna waste good Confederate tobacco on you, though—that’s for damn sure.”
“A Kentucky colonel you’re not,” O’Doull said. But then he thought about the warning that had come in: Confederate soldiers in U.S. uniform were supposed to be operating behind U.S. lines. They were supposed to have good U.S. accents, too. O’Doull had no idea if that was true, or how you went about telling a disguised Confederate from an average screwup. He also wondered what to do if one of those Confederates in U.S. clothing came into the aid station. Then he wondered how the devil he’d know.
****
Scipio got more frightened every day. Nothing had changed in the Terry since the sweep that would have swept out his family and him. Nothing had changed, no, but trouble was in the air. Something new was stirring, and he didn’t know what it was.
He came right out and asked Jerry Dover. The manager at the Huntsman’s Lodge just shrugged and said, “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Do Jesus!” Scipio said. “Them Freedom Party stalwarts, they looks like they gwine kill all o’ we, an’ you ain’t heard nothin’?”
“If I had, I’d tell you,” Dover said. “This time, I think you’re flabbling over nothing.”
; “Ain’t you got no mo’ errands fo’ me to run? Ain’t you got no errands fo’ me an’ my whole fambly to run?” Scipio paused, then switched dialects to the one he hardly ever used: “Mr. Dover, please understand me—I am a desperate man, sir.” He had to be desperate to use his white man’s voice.
It rocked Dover, the way it would have rocked any white in the CSA. Biting his lip, the restaurant manager muttered, “If I’d known you were that goddamn sharp, I never would’ve sent you to Savannah.”
Scipio wanted to laugh, or possibly to scream. Jerry Dover had worked alongside him for more than twenty years. If that didn’t give Dover the chance to figure out what kind of brains he had . . . Scipio knew what the trouble was, of course. All that time, he’d talked like a nigger, and an ignorant nigger at that. Perception clouded reality. Like so many whites, Dover had assumed anybody who sounded like an illiterate field hand had to be as ignorant and probably as stupid as a field hand.
Of course, there were holes in that line of thought. Dover had known all along that he could read and write and cipher. Set that against sounding like a buck from the Congaree swamps, though, and it suddenly became small potatoes.
“What was in that envelope I took there?” Scipio pressed his advantage. He didn’t get one very often, and knew he had to make the most of it. “Something for the United States? Something for the Freedom Party? Something for a lady friend of yours, perhaps?” Even to himself, he sounded smarter when he talked like a white man. If that wasn’t a measure of what living in the Confederate States his whole life had done to him, he didn’t know what would be.
Jerry Dover turned red. “Whatever it was, it’s none of your damn beeswax,” he snapped. “The less you know about it, the better off we both are. Have you got that?”
He made sense, no matter how much Scipio wished he didn’t. If they arrested Scipio instead of just hauling him off to a camp, he couldn’t tell them what he didn’t know. Of course, he could tell them Dover’s name, at which point they’d start tearing into the restaurant manager. And how would he stand up to the third degree? Scipio almost looked forward to finding out. If Dover’s ruin didn’t so surely involve his own, he would have.
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