Among the butternut uniforms in the West Virginia prisoner-of-war camp were a few dark gray ones: Navy men captured by the damnyankees. Reggie Bartlett found himself gravitating toward them. For a while, he wondered why; he’d never had any special interest in the Confederate States Navy before the war began. After a bit, he found an answer that, if it wasn’t the whole picture, was at least a good part of it.
The trouble was, soldiers were boring. He’d done as much hard fighting as any of them, and more than most—war in the Roanoke valley was as nasty a business as war anywhere in the world. He’d seen almost all the horrors there were, and heard about the ones he hadn’t seen. Soldiers told the same kinds of stories, over and over again. They got stale.
Navy men, now, Navy men were different, and so were their stories. They’d been in strange places and done strange things—or at least things Reggie Bartlett had never done. Those tales made the time between stretches of chopping wood and filling in slit trenches and the other exciting chores of camp life pass more quickly.
Even when things went wrong in the stories, they went wrong in ways that couldn’t happen on dry land. A senior lieutenant who somehow managed to look clean and spruce and well-shaved in spite of the general camp squalor was saying, “Damnyankees suckered me in, neat as you please. There sat this fishing boat, out in the middle of the Atlantic, no ships around her, naked as a whore in her working clothes. So up came my boat to sink her with the deck gun—cheaper and surer than using one of my fish—”
“One of your what, Lieutenant Briggs?” Reggie asked, a beat ahead of a couple of other prisoners who had gathered around the Navy lieutenant for reasons probably similar to his own.
“Torpedoes,” Briggs explained. Under his breath, he muttered, “Landlubbers.” But he resumed after a moment, as glad to tell the story as the others were to hear it: “You can’t always trust a whore, though, even when she’s naked. And sure enough, this was the badger game. The fishing boat was towing a Yankee sub on a cable with a telephone line attached. I let the fishermen go over the side before I sank their boat, and what thanks did I get? Their damned submersible blew me out of the water.” His face clouded. “Only a couple-three of us lived. The rest went right to the bottom, never had a chance.”
“It’s almost like what the Mormons done to the damnyankees, blowin’ up all that powder right under ’em,” somebody said.
“More like sniper’s work,” Reggie contradicted. “A lot of times, a sniper’ll be hiding, and he’ll try and make somebody on the other side look up to see what’s going on further down the trench. And if you’re dumb enough to do it, the bastard with the scope on his rifle, he’ll put one right in your earhole for you.”
“Good analogy,” Briggs said, nodding. He wasn’t a whole lot older than Bartlett, but better educated and also stiffer in manner; had he been a civilian, he would have been something like a junior loan officer at a bank. He was steady, he was sound, he was reliable—and Reggie would have loved to play poker against him, because if the Yankees could play him for a sucker that way, Reggie figured he could, too.
He’d just noticed that his analogy, whether Briggs approved of it or not, took things back to the trenches when the U.S. guards started shouting, “Prisoners form by barracks in parade ranks!”
Senior Lieutenant Briggs frowned. “This isn’t right. It’s not time to form parade ranks.” The break in routine irked him.
“Probably got some kind of special announcement for us,” Bartlett said. The guards had done that before, a time or two. The special announcements they handed out weren’t good news, not if you backed the Entente.
He didn’t get the chance to learn Briggs’ opinion of his guess; he had to hurry off to form up outside his own harsh, chilly building, a good ways away from where the Navy man was holding forth. The uniforms he and his comrades in misery wore would have given a Confederate drill sergeant a fit, but the ranks the men formed were as neat and orderly as anything that sergeant could have wanted.
“What do you reckon this is?” Jasper Jenkins asked, taking his place beside Bartlett.
“Dunno,” Reggie told his friend. “I hope it’s that we’ve had a couple more escapes, and they’re gonna make the rest of us work harder on account of that. I don’t mind paying the price they put on it. Worth it, you ask me.”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” Jenkins agreed. “They haven’t figured out that we’re gonna keep on tryin’ to break out o’ here no matter what they do. Only a fool’d want to stay, and that’s a fact.”
A U.S. captain strode importantly to the front of the prisoners’ formation. He unfolded a sheet of paper and read from it in a loud, harsh voice: “The Imperial German government, the loyal ally of the United States, has announced the capture of the city of Verdun, the French having evacuated the said city after being unable in six weeks of battle to withstand the might of German arms. Victory shall be ours! Dismissed!”
The neat ranks of prisoners broke up into pockets of chattering men. Jasper Jenkins tugged at Bartlett’s sleeve. “Hey, Reggie, where’s this Vair-done place at?” he asked. Before the war, he probably would have asked the same thing about Houston or Nashville or Charleston; his horizon had been limited to his farm and the small town where he sold his crops and bought what little he couldn’t raise for himself.
Reggie could have done better at the geography of the Confederate States. When it came to foreign countries, even foreign countries to which the CSA was allied…“I dunno, not exactly,” he admitted. “Somewhere in France, it has to be, and I reckon somewhere near Germany, or the Huns wouldn’t have been fighting for it. Past that, though, I can’t tell you.”
“Damnyankees sound like losin’ it’s about two steps from the end o’ the world for the Frenchies,” Jenkins said.
“I know they do,” Reggie answered, “but you’ve got to remember two things. First one is, for all you know, they’re lying just to get us downhearted. Second one is, even if they’re not, I expect they’re making it out to be more important than it really is. What are we going to do, call ’em liars?”
“They’re damnyankees—of course they’re liars,” Jenkins said, as if stating a law of nature. “You got a good way of lookin’ at things, pal. Thanks.” He went off, whistling a dirty song.
Having made his friend happy, Reggie discovered he was unhappy himself: Jenkins had made his bump of curiosity itch. He went off looking for Senior Lieutenant Briggs. The naval officer being an educated man, he would be the one to know where Verdun was and what its fall meant.
He found Briggs without much trouble, then wished he hadn’t. The Navy man sat on the ground in front of his barracks, head in hands, the picture of misery. Bartlett didn’t think the news the Yankees had announced could do that to a man, and wondered if Briggs had just got word his brother had been killed or his sweetheart had married somebody else.
But when he asked what the matter was, Briggs, like Poe’s raven, spoke one word and nothing more: “Verdun.”
“Sir?” Reggie said. Losing one town didn’t sound like that big a catastrophe to him. The Confederacy had lost a good many towns, all along the border, but was still very much in the fight.
“Verdun,” Briggs repeated, and climbed heavily to his feet. “From everything I heard, the French were swearing they’d defend the place to the last man. Now they’ve pulled back instead. The Germans have hit ’em such a lick, they couldn’t afford to keep on fighting where they were, not if they wanted to hang on. Best they think they can do now, looks like, is make the Huns pay such a price for the land they get that they decide it’s not worth the cost.”
“That’s not so bad,” Reggie began, but then corrected himself: “It’s not so good, either. The Germans, they’re inside France, and the French, they don’t have any soldiers inside Germany.”
“Now you’re getting the picture,” Briggs agreed. “Same sort of picture we’ve got over here, too—a goddamn ugly one.”
“Yes, sir.” Regg
ie tried to look on the bright side: “We’ve still got us Washington.”
“For now,” the Navy man said—the report from France seemed to have taken all the wind from his sails. “I tell you this, though, Bartlett: our country is going to need every man it can lay its hands on if we’re going to give the American Huns what they deserve.” He paused to let that sink in, then added in a low voice, “It is the positive duty of every prisoner of war to try to escape.”
Reggie felt a sudden hollow in the pit of his stomach having nothing to do with the hunger that never left. “The Yankees can shoot you if they catch you trying to escape,” he remarked. “They catch you after you’ve got out, they can pretty much do what they want to you.” Under the laws of war, Confederate guards had the same rights with U.S. prisoners, but he didn’t dwell on that.
Briggs just nodded, as if he’d remarked on the weather. “If we once get out, we can get away. We wouldn’t be like Frenchmen stuck in the middle of Germany. We speak the same language as the Yankees.”
“Not just the same language,” Reggie objected. “They talk ugly.”
“I think so, too,” Briggs said. “But I know how they talk and how it’s different from the way we talk. I can teach you. Come with me.” The last three words had the snap of an order. Bartlett followed him into the barracks. The senior lieutenant picked up an object made of galvanized sheet iron and walked across the room with it, asking, “What am I doing?” as he walked.
“Why, you’re toting that pail, sir.” Reggie stated the obvious.
But Briggs shook his head. “That’s what I’d be doing in the CSA,” he said. “If I’m doing it in the USA, I’m carrying this bucket. You see?”
“Yes, sir,” Bartlett said, and he did see. For that last part of the sentence, Briggs hadn’t sounded like a Confederate at all. He’d not only chosen different words, he’d sort of pinched his mouth up, so all the vowel sounds were somehow sharper. “How’d you do that?”
“Got started in theatricals at the Naval Academy down in Mobile,” Briggs answered. “If we can get outside the wire, it’ll come in handy. Like I say, I can teach you. Do you want to learn? Do you want to do the other things you’ll have to do to get outside the wire?”
It was a good question. If he stayed here, Reggie could sit out the war, if not in comfort, at least in security. If he tried to escape, he guaranteed himself all the risks involved with Yankee guards and patrols. If he managed to evade them and got back to the CSA, what would happen next? He knew exactly what would happen: they’d pat him on the back, grant him a little leave, and then hand him a new uniform and a Tredegar and put him back in the line. Hadn’t he had enough of that for a lifetime?
“I’m carrying the bucket,” he said, trying to pronounce the words as Briggs had. He wasn’t getting them right. He could hear that.
“Listen.” Briggs repeated the phrase. Bartlett tried it again. “Better,” the Navy man said. Reggie didn’t know exactly how he’d agreed to try to escape from the prisoner-of-war camp, but, by the time he left Briggs’ barracks, he had no doubt he’d done just that.
“Closing time, gentlemen,” Nellie Semphroch said as the clock in the coffeehouse finished striking nine. When none of the Confederate officers—or the Washingtonians who’d grown rich dealing with them—showed any sign of being ready to leave, she added, “I’m following the regulations you people set down. You wouldn’t want me to break your own rules, would you?”
A plump, gray-haired colonel who did not look to be the sort for late night adventures rose from his chair, saying, “We must set an example for the lovely ladies here.” He tossed a half-dollar down on the table and walked out into the night.
With him taking the lead, the rest of the men and the handful of women—loose women, Nellie thought, for what other kind would consort with the occupiers?—drifted out of the coffeehouse. Last of all went Nicholas H. Kincaid, who paused outside the doorway to send a mooncalf look back at Edna till Nellie almost broke his nose by slamming the door in his face.
“Ma, you keep doin’ things like that, he won’t come back no more,” Edna said, gathering up cups and saucers and plates and tips, some in scrip, some in good silver money.
“God, I hope he doesn’t,” Nellie said. “He’s not here for the coffee and victuals. He’s here because he’s all soppy over you.” The reverse, as she knew, also held; she’d caught them kissing and well on their way to worse a year before, and had watched Edna like a hawk ever since.
Her daughter just tossed her head. “He’s all right,” she said carelessly. “There are plenty of others, though.” That was calculated to make Nellie steam, and achieved the desired effect. Nellie was bound and determined that her daughter should go to the altar a maiden—she knew too well how grim the alternative could be. But Edna, and Edna’s hot young blood, weren’t making things easy.
Work helped. Running the coffeehouse kept the two of them hopping from sunup till long past sundown. If you were busy, you didn’t have time to get into trouble. Nellie said, “Start doing up the dishes. I’ll help in a minute—I want to count up what’s in the till first.”
“All right, Ma,” Edna said. She would work, Nellie admitted to herself, more than a little grudgingly. She wasn’t a bad girl, not really, just a wild girl, wild for life, wild for anything she could get her hands on, wild to let life—and the men crawling through life—get their hands on her.
The cash box was nicely heavy. Nellie had thought it would be. If she could do any one thing, it was gauge how busy the place had been through the day. Most of the take was in silver, too; as her place had become a favorite stop for the occupiers, they became more likely to give her real money and fob off their nearly worthless scrip on merchants whose goodwill mattered less to them.
“A couple of dollars less than I thought there would be,” she murmured, and then shrugged. She was doing well enough that a couple of dollars one way or the other mattered much less to her than they would have before the war started. She had no use for the Rebs, she spied on them whenever their loose talk gave her the chance, but she was getting, if not rich, at least well-to-do off them. Serves them right, she thought, and went to help her daughter clean up.
Artillery rumbled, off to the north and northeast, the noise clearly audible through splashing and the clank of china on china. “Louder these days,” Edna remarked, glancing in the direction of that deep-throated roar.
“Were you listening to the Rebs tonight?” Nellie asked. Edna shook her head. That exasperated her mother; Edna saw the war only in terms of how it affected her—not least by supplying her with handsome young Confederate officers to meet. Nellie went on, “They say they think they can stop our attack out of Balti-more, but it didn’t sound to me like they were real sure about it. If we’re lucky, we may run the Rebs out of here this summer.”
Edna kept right on drying saucers. She didn’t say anything for a while. The way she stood, though, suggested she wasn’t altogether sure it would be good luck. She liked the way things were going. Business wouldn’t be the same with the USA holding Washington again.
That wasn’t all that wouldn’t be the same. Mother and daughter spoke together. Nellie said, “The Rebs won’t want to give this town back,” while Edna put it more gamely: “They’ll fight like bastards to hold on to Washington.”
They finished doing the dishes in gloomy silence. There wouldn’t be much left of Washington after a big fight for it. The city had been badly damaged when the Rebels overran it in 1914, and they’d taken it pretty quickly. What would it look like if they chose to defend it street by street, house by house?
Nellie lighted a candle at one of the downstairs gas lamps, then turned them out. She and Edna went up the stairs to their bedrooms by the light of the candle. She used it to light the lamps in those rooms, then blew it out. “Good night, Ma,” Edna said around a yawn.
“Good night,” Nellie answered, hiding a smile. Keep Edna busy enough and she wouldn’t have time for misc
hief, all right. Maybe she wouldn’t. Nellie undid the hooks and eyes that held her skirt closed, then unbuttoned the long row of mother-of-pearl buttons on her shirtwaist. She tossed it into the wicker clothes hamper. The hamper was almost full; she’d have to go to the laundry soon. The corset came off next. She sighed with pleasure at being released from its steel-boned grip. She put on a long cotton nightdress, turned off the gas lamp, and climbed under the blankets.
Falling asleep seldom took her long. She’d almost done it when the Confederates sent a column marching up the street in front of the coffeehouse. The tramp of boots on pavement, the rattle of steel-tired wagon wheels, and the clop of horses’ hooves made her sit up. It was a good-sized column; they hadn’t sent so many men north in a while.
She tried to figure out what that meant. Was it good news or bad? Good, if the Rebs were moving because they needed men against the U.S. attacks. Not so good, if these were troops freed up because the Negro uprisings in the CSA were collapsing. She’d have to see if she could find out tomorrow.
When the column had passed, she settled back down again. She was drifting toward sleep when someone knocked on the door. The knock was soft but insistent, as if whoever was there wanted to make sure she and Edna heard but also wanted to be equally sure no one else did.
She got out of bed in the dark. Her first suspicious glance, when she reached the hall, was to Edna’s bedroom. But Edna was in there snoring. She’d never been able to fool her mother about being asleep. Scratching her head, Nellie slowly and carefully went downstairs.
The knocking persisted. She wished she had a pistol down there by the cash box. She’d never thought she’d need one, though, not with so many Confederate soldiers always in the coffeehouse. And the Rebs had made it against their rules for locals to keep firearms, with penalties harsh enough to make her not want to take the chance of hiding one right under their noses.
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