Call to Arms

by Frederick Nolan

  ‘Get the bounty before the whole thing’s over, they say.’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll be that quick,’ Sam said.

  ‘You serious?’ Travis said. ‘Father Abraham seems to have taken a beating every damn place he’s stood to fight, from Manassas on.’

  ‘It’ll change,’ Sam said confidently. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory,’ Travis said sardonically. Before they could say more the door opened and Henry Strong came in. His eyes widened when he saw Travis, but the smile he put on was not assumed quite quickly enough.

  ‘Travis!’ he said, coming across the room with his hand extended. ‘My dear chap, how splendid! Father, you didn’t say Travis was coming home!’

  ‘Didn’t know,’ Sam said grumpily.

  ‘How are you, Henry?’ Travis said, allowing his brother to pump his hand up and down. ‘How’s the leg?’

  ‘The leg? Oh, fine, fine,’ Henry said. ‘Pretty much back to normal, now.’

  He wondered why he lied; probably because he did not like to admit the imperfection, that he was not like other people. So he always said ‘fine’ when anyone asked him. In fact, his leg was never ‘fine’, never would be. But it was easier to say ‘fine’. That was what people wanted to hear. Even the doctors.

  Well, well, and how are we today?

  Fine, thank you.

  Let’s have a look at that leg, then, shall we?

  Nods. Pursed lips. Frowning examination of the charts at the end of the bed. Patient blandness as the nurse unwinds the bandages. There is worship in her eyes as she looks at the surgeon: one of the leading specialists in Washington, they said, gives his services to the Military Hospital free. Nothing too good for our brave lads in blue, eh, especially ones who could be exhibited at the recruiting drives and all the charity balls to which they’d wheeled Henry. Here he is, one of our valiant lads, a hero of Fort Sumter in the flesh. It was a fraud. Everyone knew that. The real heroes were rotting in gullies on the battlefield of Manassas or beneath the battlements of Fort Donelson.

  ‘Well, lieutenant, you’ll be leaving us soon.’

  ‘How soon is that, sir?’

  ‘Ah, mustn’t rush it, y’know.’

  ‘About my leg, sir. Is it fully healed?’

  ‘Hmm. Difficult to give you a simple answer to that one. It all depends. Matter of the muscles knitting right, you see. Some people heal better than others, faster.’

  ‘But I’ll be all right, won’t I? I won’t be a cripple?’

  ‘No reason why you should, my dear fellow. No reason at all. You’ll be as right as rain before you know it. Well done, well done.’ And off he went in a miasma of brandy fumes, handing the charts to the nurse without looking at her, smiling for the man in the next bed. Well, well, and how are we today?

  Fuck them.

  Henry learned all the terminology. It was the only way. Once you knew their jargon, they could not confuse you or misinform you. When you asked them questions in their own jargon, they had to answer. He borrowed a copy of Gray’s Anatomy and learned all the names. Inguinal ligament, pectineus, sartorius, soleus, biceps, femoris, gastrocnemius, plantaris. Femur, patella, fibula, tibia. At night when everyone was asleep he lifted his charts off the book at the foot of his bed and read them by candlelight. He learned that the chunk of red-hot shrapnel which had torn through his leg during the bombardment of Fort Sumter that felt as though someone had kicked him, and then he found he was sprawled on the wet ground four feet from where he had been standing. The top of his leg looked like a pound of chopped steak and he screamed as much in terror as in pain had entered at a slightly rising angle, tearing through the outer muscle (vastus lateralis) and the central (vastus intermedins) ricocheting off and fracturing the thighbone (femur) and bursting out through the inner muscle wall (vastus medialis) ripping it, and the control muscle inside the thigh (adductor longus) apart. Surgery had shortened those muscles by an inch and a quarter. This would cause a permanent lift of the heel from the ground. The patient would wear a caliper for six months, possibly permanently. The prognosis was that he would never walk normally again. Any attempt at strenuous exercise would result in severe pain and possible relapse, with damage to the compensating muscles and/or the other leg.

  Thank you very much, doctor, he thought. Now I’ll show you. And he did. They said they’d never seen a recovery like it, phenomenal was the only word. Their faces were self-congratulatory, as though they had done it, not he. They asked him if he was sure there was no pain and when he lied, it seemed to please them even more. Fuck you, he thought. I can live with this pain. As I live with all the others.

  ‘I thought you joined the army in Texas,’ he said now to Travis.

  ‘That’s right,’ Travis said. ‘I was invalided out.’

  ‘What with?’

  Travis looked at Sam. ‘Back trouble,’ he said and did not elaborate. Henry looked puzzled for a moment. He could see that Travis had said something which amused Sam, but if it was a joke he did not get it. When it became apparent that no explanation was forthcoming, he shrugged.

  ‘I’d better go and wash up before supper,’ he said. ‘We can talk some more then.’

  ‘Sure,’ Travis said, with no enthusiasm at all. Henry ducked his head and went out of the room. Sam looked at Travis and frowned.

  ‘You don’t like Henry, do you?’

  ‘Does anybody?’

  ‘Tell me why,’ Sam said.

  ‘I can’t. It’s nothing specific. I mean, he’s my brother, for God’s sake. Yet … there’s something, I don’t know, crawly about him. As if everything he does is learned, rather than felt.’

  ‘You know what your mother would say if she heard you?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘She’d say you overpower him,’ Sam said, with a grin. ‘Here, pass that whiskey over.’

  Henry Strong felt wretched.

  He always did, afterwards. He knew it was stupid, knew before he ever went near them. It was always the same, always would be. It started out with you using them. It ended up with you being used. You felt even more soiled because you knew that was how it would be before you began. But there was no way to resist the … urge. The urge itself was exciting. Even when you knew it would end the same, sordid way it inevitably did, you still had to do it. Sometimes, just once in a while, you would find one who was startlingly beautiful, and you would think perhaps this time, but it never happened. They always did it and then said the same filthy, degrading things as they ran away.

  Once, three of them had ganged up and beaten him and kicked him, rolled him into a filthy alley stinking of ordure, and then urinated on him as he lay there sobbing. Yet still he went back to them. It made no difference which city he was in. Chicago, Cincinnati, Boston, Washington, New York. It was as if you had a brand on your forehead. Somehow they knew just by looking at you. And the knowing eyes would fasten on yours, and the chin lift in that inviting gesture.

  Fight it, something inside him would say, fight this evil urge. Then something deeper and darker down further inside would whisper why? And then the next lithe body or the next pouting mouth would catch his eye, and he would nod, trembling with anticipation and need, and the boy would retreat into the darkness as Henry followed ....

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said, as he sat on the bed with his head in his hands. ‘Oh, God, help me!’

  He felt, rather than heard, the woman come into the room. He looked up, frowning. Standing in the doorway was a complete stranger. She was small with a pert, oval face and bright blue eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ he whispered.

  ‘My name is Louise,’ she said. ‘I am your new sister-in-law.’

  She came across the room and sat in a chair opposite him. She seemed to radiate a warmth, an invitation. He felt extraordinarily uneasy in her presence.

  ‘I couldn’t help overhearing,’ Louise said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Henry said, trying for certainty and failin
g.

  ‘There must be,’ she said. ‘You looked so … sad.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Go on,’ Louise said. ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘No,’ he said, agonies of wanting to tell, agonies of being unable to tell anyone putting lexicons of meaning into the word.

  ‘You wouldn’t shock me, you know,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard just about every kind of men trouble there is.’

  He shook his head and Louise smiled. She came and sat beside him on the bed. He felt her arm go around his shoulder and he tensed. He turned to face her and her eyes met his.

  ‘You have lovely eyes,’ he said.

  ‘Not so bad yourself,’ Louise said. Her hand fell lightly on his thigh. It seemed perfectly natural and yet Henry knew it was not. His heart bounded inside his chest like a captive animal. His throat felt locked. He tried to say no. He was afraid to move. Something black and awful was rising, rising inside him. Her hand moved again. He could smell her perfume and it made him feel ill. Oh Jesus! he thought, revolted. He leaped to his feet.

  ‘No!’ he gasped ‘No!’

  ‘Well, well,’ Louise said. She did not get up off the bed. She sat there looking at him and now he could see that the cornflower blue eyes were full of knowingness. Her smile seared his soul like a red-hot scalpel.

  ‘Get out!’ he panted. ‘Get out of here!’

  ‘Sure will,’ Louise said, getting to her feet. She gave him a look of infinite contempt and left the room. She knows, Henry thought, she knows, oh Jesus, she knows. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes looked like the holes in a skull. Downstairs he heard May, the maid, sounding the gong for supper. I can’t, he thought, his mind swimming in panic. I can’t go down there and face her.

  Dinner was a subdued affair.

  Travis listened politely to Sam’s Washington stories, but after a while they petered out. It was as if Henry’s glum announcement that he must go out without eating had cast a damper on the meal. While May cleared the table, Abby – having given Sam a scowl for being boring – invited Travis to tell them how he and Louise had met.

  ‘He already told me that,’ Sam said. Louise’s head came up sharply and Sam looked at her warily. Her eyes had fire in them, a readiness to fight not unlike Travis.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’ she said.

  Sam looked across at Travis but his son avoided his gaze, like a man will who’s afraid he may laugh over a shared joke no one else knows. I knew there was something wrong, Sam thought, I knew it.

  ‘He said he met you in Dallas,’ he said. ‘That you were working in Neely’s store.’

  ‘Is that what you told him, Trav?’ Louise said, her face a study in amused disbelief. ‘That I worked in Neely’s?’

  ‘Ahuh,’ Travis said.

  ‘Well, shee-it!’ Louise shouted, slapping her thigh and bursting into raucous laughter. Abby looked at her as if Louise had suddenly turned into a cobra.

  ‘Travis?’ she said. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Hell, no, Travis!’ Louise said, dabbing her eyes with her napkin. ‘Don’t you tell, now. That’s my privilege, I reckon!’

  ‘Take it easy, Louise!’ Travis said.

  ‘Kiss my butt!’ Louise replied. The sweet blue eyes were mocking and unfriendly. She looked from Sam’s shocked face to Abby’s, and then at Travis, who was grinning like a devil.

  ‘Told you I worked in Neely’s, huh?’ she said with a feral grin. ‘You silver-tongued sonofabitch, Travis Strong, whyn’t you tell them the truth?’

  ‘The truth?’ Abby said, weakly. ‘What truth?’

  ‘He knows goddamned well I wasn’t workin’ in no store,’ Louise said, jerking a thumb at Travis. ‘Hell, I was runnin’ my own cathouse!’

  ‘What?’ Abby said, faintly.

  ‘You want it spelled out?’ Louise said. ‘I’m a whore, lady. A whore!’

  Eleven – The Story of Andrew Strong

  November 1861

  The letter was written in a bold, mannish hand. It was addressed, properly and in full, to Major-General George Brinton McLellan, general-in-chief of the Army of the Potomac, War Department, Washington DC.

  It is, or ought to be, self-evident [it said] that the Union’s true strategy should be to avail itself of the navigability of our two great rivers, the Mississippi and the Tennessee, and to use them as a road to the rear of the Confederate forces in Kentucky and Tennessee. Once secured, these mighty streams would provide not only a supply line, but also a route to the very center of the enemy’s power.

  I urge the general-in-chief to give earnest consideration to this proposal, for it must surely be evident that it is in the West, and not the East, that the Union can win this war.

  It was signed ‘Jessica McCabe’ and the address was one in Annandale. And who the devil, Andrew wondered, was Jessica McCabe?

  He went to the map department and took out a Topographical Corps map covering the area. Drawing an imaginary line from Columbus to Bowling Green in the east – very roughly the line presently held by the Confederate forces – it was easy to see that Jessica McCabe’s plan had considerable merit: by flanking the Confederates by means of a powerful push downriver, the doorway to their heartland would be burst wide open. He decided that, unlike most of the crank letters which he and the three other officers in his department weeded out daily from the general-in-chief s post and dispatches, this one ought to go upstairs. He went back to his office and took the letter to General McLellan’s personal secretary, Colonel Simeon Masters.

  ‘I say, surely you’ve heard that hoary old theory before, old chap,’ Masters drawled when he read the letter. His mother was British and he affected the clipped English style of speaking. Andrew thought him to be an incomparable ninny, but of course, one did not voice such opinions about one’s superior officers, especially if one was anxiously waiting, as Andrew was, for a field posting.

  ‘It’s really old hat, y’know,’ Masters went on, languidly lighting a thin cheroot. ‘General Frémont had one of his spies mappin’ Kentucky and western Tennessee last summer. General McLellan did talk of some sort of diversionary action down there, but it came to nothing. No, old chap, I’d file this one and forget it, if I were you. You’d be backing a loser if you showed it to the chief.’

  ‘I still think I’d like to put it before him,’ Andrew said quietly. Masters looked at him for a long moment, the lazy look disappearing.

  ‘I’ll suggest, major, that you take my advice on this,’ he said, danger signals flying in his eyes.

  ‘The colonel is very kind,’ Andrew said. ‘I would still like to submit a memorandum to General McLellan.’

  ‘That, Major, is your privilege, of course,’ Masters said. His whole demeanor was hostile. ‘I trust you realize what you are doing.’

  ‘I think so, sir,’ Andrew said.

  Andrew submitted a report with his own observations; a feasibility paper for possible further discussion. He sent a copy of the memorandum to the secretary of war’s office for good measure. He was still awaiting an acknowledgement when, three weeks later, he was summoned to Colonel Masters’ office. The Bostonian looked very pleased with himself.

  ‘Well, Major Strong,’ he said, with a friendliness as unconvincing as his smile. ‘I’ve got some good news for you.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘You’ve been breveted. Lieutenant-Colonel, no less.’

  ‘Promoted?’ Andrew said. It was not at all what he had expected. ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘No thanks necessary,’ Masters said, with enough of a gloat in his voice for Andrew to know that he had been told the good news first, and that now he was going to get the bad news. Masters picked up a sheet of paper lying on his desk and looked at it. He took his time about it. Then he looked up at Andrew again. Get on with it, you sadistic bastard! Andrew thought.

  ‘I have here,’ Masters said, ‘orders transferring you to the District of Southeastern Missouri, at Cairo, I
llinois. You will proceed there as soon as feasible and place yourself at the disposal of General Grant, commanding.’ He laid down the piece of paper as if it were made of glass, and when he looked up again, every trace of the smile he had been wearing was gone.

  ‘Lovely place, I’m told,’ he said. ‘Cairo.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Masters regarded him levelly for another long moment. His eyes were set very close together. I never noticed that before, Andrew thought.

  ‘A piece of advice, colonel.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘If you want to get anywhere in this man’s army, you’re going to have to learn a little humility. You’re going to have to learn not to go over the head of your superior officer, no matter what your reasons. And you’d better learn both very thoroughly, Colonel. Or the army will break you.’

  There was no reply possible. Andrew stood rigidly to attention while Masters stared at him as though deciding whether to say more.

  ‘I have a lot of friends in high places, Strong,’ he said at last, ‘I intend to see to it that they are made aware of the embarrassment you have caused me!’

  ‘Sir?’ Andrew said. He had no idea what Masters was talking about.

  ‘You know damned well what I mean!’ Masters hissed. ‘You have your orders, Colonel! Now get the hell out of my office!’

  ‘Very good,’ Andrew said, with just enough of a pause to make it an insult, ‘sir.’

  In the few days he had left before embarking for Cairo, Andrew found out that Jessica McCabe was the daughter of Senator Angus McCabe of Oregon, that she was unmarried and that she and her parents lived in a house in the nearby hamlet of Annandale. He also learned that the McCabes were usually ‘at home’ on Thursdays. Taking his courage in both hands, Andrew called at the big house, presented his card and his compliments and asked to see Jessica McCabe.

  It was a big place, a mixture of Romanesque and Gothic. The hall into which he had been shown was positively baronial and occupied the entire center of the house. Somewhere he could hear the loud thunder of many voices. After a while, the butler who had taken his card led him to a huge conservatory, packed full of men in uniform, others in civilian clothes, women in beautiful dresses. There was a long buffet table on which were arrayed canapés and a punchbowl. The thunder of voices he had heard from the hall was now positively deafening. Nodding to one or two faces he recognized from the War Department, Andrew found himself an unoccupied corner and backed into it, watching the assembled guests as he sipped his punch. He learned later that the McCabe ‘at home’ days were a highlight of the Washington week. No one who was invited failed to come; everyone who was trying to be someone vied to be invited.