Homeland

by John Jakes

  He took Leo aside in the yard; told him of the disaster. They knew the culprit. There was nothing they could do without starting a fight, risking exposure if one of the teachers broke it up.

  When they returned from recess, Mrs. Petigru was seated at her desk, spots of color burning in her white cheeks. Her eyes raked the room, alighting on Paul. He had seen Mrs. Petigru angry, but never like this.

  In a low tremulous voice Mrs. Petigru addressed the class. “At the end of recess I found something lying on this desk. Something unfit for young people. Something filthy, vile, and obscene.” Her left hand dropped to a drawer. Slid it out. She laid the folded sales sheets on the desk blotter and quickly covered them with her right hand, fingers splayed. Sweat ran down inside Paul’s collar. Mrs. Petigru shut the drawer. The sound was loud as a pistol shot. Her wrathful eyes found him again.

  “Paul Crown, come up here.”

  Maury Flugel snickered, but everyone else was rigid with fear. They recognized a special fury in the teacher.

  Paul walked forward and stopped beside the desk, standing as straight as he could. Between Mrs. Petigru’s spread fingers, he could see that on the back of a sales sheet, someone had printed in block letters PAUL C.

  Mrs. Petigru stared him down.

  “Whose are these, Paul?”

  He kept his voice level, as strong as possible. “I see my name on them. They are mine.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  He couldn’t say From Leo. Nor could he say something like, My uncle’s house. He gave the answer she would believe.

  “I bought them from a man at a beer garden.”

  “More of that fine German morality, eh? What is the matter with you, what sort of person are you? These are only fit to be burned. That’s what I’ll do with them. I’ve given you my best, Paul. I’ve pleaded, struggled, helped you conscientiously. And how do you thank me? You bring beer-hall filth into my classroom.”

  With each phrase, she grew louder. Little bits of spittle flew from her lips. “You’re a good-for-nothing. What’s more, you’re stupid. That thick German head of yours. You can’t learn anything.”

  Something gave way in him. He blurted, “I could learn something if I liked it.”

  “Oh, indeed?” Leaning back, she folded her arms. “Such as? Loafing? Besotting yourself with beer, amusing yourself with smut?”

  “That is not fair, I did not ever—”

  “Be still! Now, step back from the desk one step. Put both your hands here.” Behind him, Paul heard a girl utter a strangled, “Oh.”

  Paul swallowed, stepped back. He leaned down, placed his palms on the blotter. In the classroom, someone’s foot scraped.

  “Mrs. Petigru, those pictures are mine, I brought them.”

  “Sit down, Leopold Rapoport. I detest liars. You can’t right one wrong with another. Paul, spread your fingers.”

  He obeyed. Mrs. Petigru opened the center drawer and took out her long thick ruler.

  23

  Joe Crown

  THE TRAIN FROM CINCINNATI carried him deep into western Tennessee. He stepped down from his car at Henderson Station, a trim genteel figure in a white suit and dark cravat. The stares he drew from depot loungers were no different than those any well-dressed stranger would attract in any small town. Yet he feared his guilt was splotched on his face like a birthmark.

  He hired a buggy, stowed his grip under the seat, and wended his way south and east, toward the river: Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh Church.

  It was pretty country, just as he remembered. Rural, with only here and there a farm in what was otherwise dense woodland. Flimsy wooden bridges spanned creeks and ravines on the dirt roads; he remembered that, too, from thirty years ago, the eve of battle, when he was twenty …

  Shortly after dawn on the morning of April 6, 1862, the Union Army lay at rest, preparing breakfast. No one anticipated hostilities, least of all General Grant, who was somewhere on the Tennessee River in a Union gunboat. After its triumphant capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the Army was slowly pushing south toward Corinth, a strategic rail junction in northern Mississippi. The Army was still essentially amateur, and it showed. Picket lines were poorly maintained, cavalry patrols carelessly scheduled. Contempt for the enemy led to a lazy overconfidence.

  So they were taken by surprise that peaceful Sunday when the young soldiers of the young Confederacy came howling and smashing out of woodlands to the south.

  The 5th Ohio Cavalry was flung into action that morning to try to prevent a rout. Joe remembered the frightened boyish faces—he assumed his was no different—as the 5th Ohio charged around the Union infantry, jumping fences, trying to shoot, while Reb shells landed with ferocious detonations and geysers of blown-up earth …

  In his rented buggy, Joe arrived at the weedy and deserted battlefield late in the day. At sunset he found the familiar oak woods where the 5th had engaged the Rebs to save the Union infantry from being flanked on the right on that long-ago Sunday afternoon. Joe had ridden behind Major Ricker, on the regiment’s left. He remembered well that breakneck charge, the smoke so thick you could hardly see an enemy ahead, let alone a comrade next to you. Standing in the cool evening shade of a huge oak that still bore battle scars, Joe swallowed and felt his eyes mist as he remembered with pride all the young voices screaming their brave defiance during the charge. The senior officers had started the yell, which outdid any vaunted Rebel yell he heard later …

  An orange fire like the heart of a steel-making furnace suffused the western sky. Joe Crown leaned against the ball-pocked oak, lightheaded, his face chilly as the wind cooled his sweat. How young they were that beautiful Sunday, which became another night of rain. How ardent and heroic both armies were, until they saw, for the very first time, hundreds and hundreds of dead men with bodies bullet-riddled, limbs blown off, or heard at midnight, in the drenching rain, the screaming of amputees in the hospital tents …

  In the storm that night, Joe had patrolled the perimeter of their encampment. A glare of lightning showed him a figure creeping through the trees, moving away, a pack slung on his back. Joe immediately pulled his sidearm from under his rubber poncho. “Halt. Halt or I’ll shoot.”

  The soldier froze. “Walk back here to me. Hands in the air,” Joe commanded.

  Above the noise of the rain, he heard the man’s shoes crackling and squishing on soggy ground. He sensed the man near him. Heard his rapid breathing. Another lightning bolt forked down, painting the fugitive’s face.

  “Private Linzee!”

  Joe saw the boy’s face in memory, wet with tears as well as rain …

  Hans Linzee was eighteen, an apprentice wheelwright from Hamilton, Ohio; a good soldier. He spoke English with an accent. He was a shy, sensitive boy, and a favorite of Joe’s because of his artistry. Linzee carried a paintbox and brushes and a block of special paper in his kit. Did the most remarkable small studies of landscapes, encampments, soldiers at rest. Linzee had enormous promise; Joe wanted to encourage him to look beyond the wheelwright’s trade after the war and develop his talent.

  “Linzee, what are you doing out here?” Joe slipped the revolver under his poncho. There was no danger. “Were you running away?”

  Miserably, Linzee said, “Yes, sir.”

  “I can’t let you do it. I don’t give a hang for the rules, it’s for your sake. If you got away it would ruin the rest of your life. You would hate yourself. I would rather shoot you down for desertion.”

  Joe tugged gently at the boy’s sleeve. “Come with me, there’s a little bit of shelter under that tree.” The rain still struck them there, but not so fiercely.

  Joe squatted down. “Now, Hans, I want you to tell me why you started to run.”

  “I was back in the woods, relieving myself,” Linzee said in a faint voice. “There I stumbled upon a body without a head. There were farmyard hogs eating the neck stump—oh, sir, oh, sir, this war—es ist furchtbar—terrible. I hate this war.”

&nbs
p; “With good reason. But you’ve never let it affect you before. You mustn’t now, you’re one of my best soldiers.”

  “Thank you, but I have no more heart for it. Will we fight tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I’m sure of it. General Grant and General Sherman won’t tolerate a defeat.”

  Linzee burst out crying. “Mein Gott, Herr Leutnant—ich habe Angst. So viel Angst!”

  Joe cradled the boy like an infant. He was precisely two years older than Hans Linzee. “So are we all. Every man jack in this Army is frightened. If he isn’t he’s crazy. Rest now. Rest and collect yourself. There’s nothing to fear tonight.”

  He continued to soothe the boy while the downpour soaked them both.

  The Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston fell at Shiloh in the Sunday battle. Thousands of others, lesser lights, fell too. Close to twenty-five thousand men in all, from both sides; ten times the number killed at First Bull Run. Joe’s prediction made in the midnight rain came true. Sunday’s stalemate and near defeat became a qualified Union victory on Monday; the Confederates under Beauregard slipped away toward Corinth.

  It was after Pittsburg Landing that Joe Crown began to hate the war, as passionately as he had once favored it. He hated the dirt and confusion. The randomness of suffering and death. The heavy hand of mischance. He hated the way it reduced decent, honorable young men like Hans Linzee to cringing cowards. Everything in his nature cried out against the seemingly senseless disorder that prevailed so much of the time. The only way he kept his faith and courage up was by thinking of the cause. The Union. An end to black servitude. But it was hard.

  Linzee came to him a few days later, his spirits seemingly restored. “Herr Leutnant, I thank you for saving me from myself, from disgrace, the other night. I will make you a special gift.” Joe smiled and waved and said it wasn’t necessary. “Oh, yes, definitely, it is,” Linzee replied. So Joe said all right.

  And then, in Mississippi, he found himself on a winding red dirt road.

  May 1862.

  Led by General Halleck, “Old Brains,” the Union Army was crawling south from the rail junction of Corinth, which General Beauregard’s entrenched commanders, Generals Van Dorn and Bragg, had abandoned at the end of May.

  Brick-red dust swirled in powdery clouds from the twisting road as the horses passed. Detachments of the 5th Ohio were searching for enemy ambushes, enemy stragglers; twice they’d exchanged fire with Rebel horsemen.

  The day was sultry and still. Lieutenant Joe Crown’s dark blue blouse was unbearably hot. He smelled his own unwashed body as he bent his head to avoid low festoons of Spanish moss.

  Leading the patrol, his commanding officer, Captain Frank Ehrlich, was laughing and chatting as though on a picnic. Ehrlich ran a hardware store in civilian life, in Lebanon, up the pike from Cincinnati. He had a grade school education. In Joe’s opinion he wasn’t qualified for his command; too disorganized, and, for a German, inordinately lazy. But Ehrlich had a brother in the Ohio legislature. The 5th was riddled with appointments won by influence.

  Not that the rank and file was much better. Very few of the troopers had useful experience with horses. Most were townsmen—storekeepers, schoolteachers, office clerks—not trained to the saddle like the men in the Southern cavalry.

  In the van, sitting stiffly and heavily on his McClellan saddle, Captain Ehrlich gradually sank out of sight as he rode into a depression where a creek ran. Joe watched him come up the other side, near a wooden sign crudely cut like an arrow pointing ahead.

  HELL FIVE MILES

  COME ON YANKS!

  The thick woods seemed peaceful enough this hot morning. But the sign silenced conversations, and the men were soon darting nervous glances into gloomy thickets.

  After a quarter of a mile the road leveled again. Captain Ehrlich was pointing left. Joe jogged ahead to join him. An old Negro had stumbled from a heavy stand of myrtle.

  Revolvers were drawn. Captain Ehrlich raised his hand. “Hold fire, I don’t see a weapon.”

  The black man clutched his old straw hat to the bosom of his patched and faded work shirt. “That’s right, Cap’n, nothin’ to hurt you. I’m Erasmus, your friend. Sign back there, it mean what it say. They’s bad people up ahead.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “Some. Mos’ly old men, boys from ’round here. But they blood-mad to kill some of you Yankees. They got plenty of guns. Don’ go on, turn back. It be bad for you when night fall.”

  Frank Ehrlich looked stern, fearless as he said, “Thank you, Erasmus, but we have orders to advance. We’ll be watchful.”

  Ehrlich raised his hand again and signaled for the column to move forward. Joe Crown rode by the old sad-eyed Negro crushing the straw hat to his chest. He was seized by a terrible foreboding.

  They camped off the road that night, beside a rushing creek where the men bathed in the dark. A cook fire was lit, but the officers warned the men to approach it only when absolutely necessary. Joe felt they shouldn’t have built a fire at all, but the men had gone thirty-six hours without hot food and Captain Ehrlich insisted.

  Joe sat well away from the fire, gnawing on a piece of salt pork. The only sounds were the purl of the creek, the calls of night birds, the splash of bathers. Yet he was uneasy. Constantly searched the dark woods beyond the picket perimeter. Were unseen Rebs moving out there …?

  “Sir?” Joe looked up. It was Linzee. “This is the gift I made,” he said, smiling proudly. Joe was astonished to see a white china shaving mug.

  “Where on earth did you get that?”

  “At the crossroads store, yesterday. The storekeeper didn’t want to sell it to a Yankee. I showed him my rifle. Then he begged me to take this, for nothing.”

  With a ceremonious flourish of his left hand, Linzee turned the mug around, revealing a painted side. Joe laughed with surprise and delight. Some men stretched out nearby turned to look. The firelight flickered on a painted king, fat and jolly and robed in red, sitting on a gold throne wearing a jeweled crown nearly as large as his head. Exquisitely lettered, the word CROWN was painted above the figure, and the word Rex below.

  “Hans, I am overwhelmed. It wasn’t necessary to do this, but I thank you, I’ll use it proudly.”

  One of his sergeants, reclining, called out, “Hey, Lieutenant, can we see?” Joe nodded to Linzee, who turned around.

  “Too dark, move a little closer to the fire.”

  Joe listened; he thought he heard unusual small sounds blending with the creek noise. “No, I don’t think you should—”

  While he was speaking, Linzee stepped two paces nearer the fire. He was brightly lit, grinning happily. The bullet hit the back of his skull and blew away his brow and eyes, spraying Joe with a fan of blood.

  Linzee fell sideways into the fire. His blood made a hissing sound as it splashed onto the coals. The men were running, away from the fire. More shots rang out. Captain Ehrlich was shouting, taking charge. Joe was shaking. He had something in his hand. Astounded, he saw the shaving mug, which had evidently flown from Linzee’s hand as he fell. Joe didn’t remember catching it.

  “Take cover,” Captain Ehrlich shouted, jumping to the fire, kicking and scattering the wood to put it out.

  “Captain,” Joe screamed, “get back before—”

  Guns in the darkness volleyed again. Frank Ehrlich danced like a marionette whose strings were jerked. His eyes dimmed to death while his rubbery legs gave way, throwing his body on the ground near the fire. Joe was rapidly stepping backward, slapping his holster, dragging his revolver out. A hard blow struck his left arm.

  When he glanced down, he saw his wool sleeve glistening. When he realized he’d been hit, it started to hurt. He dragged his Colt from the holster, waved it over his head and shouted for his men to pour their fire into the sector of the woods where the Rebs were hiding. Soon the noise of Union small arms fire filled the night. After five minutes of this, feeling faint, Joe shouted, “Cease your fire.”

  His left
arm hung at his side, leaking blood down the back of his wrist and off his fingers to the sandy ground. He stepped on something that cracked and broke under his boot sole.

  A piece of broken china.

  He didn’t remember dropping the mug. The pieces were scattered near Hans Linzee’s body.

  “Lieutenant, listen! They’re gettin’ away …”

  He heard galloping horses, fading away south. Joe shoved his hot revolver into his belt, steeled himself and pulled Linzee’s uniform blouse off him, then his undershirt. It was bloody, but it would serve as a tourniquet.

  He called for assistance. One of his noncoms ripped the undershirt into strips and knotted them tightly, one after another, above Joe’s wound. He told his men to tear down tree branches, light them for torches. He thought the danger was past.

  Lightheaded, he walked around the campsite, assessing the damage. Ehrlich dead. Linzee dead. Four men wounded, two of them badly.

  He stood for a bit looking down at Linzee’s stripped torso; the pale soft chest with little flabby breasts and no hair. Linzee’s right hand was almost touching a piece of the shattered mug. Joe turned away.

  He took himself down to the creek bank and there, with heavy brush to shield him, he cried. If anyone saw him, they respected his grief.

  At the end of five minutes he straightened up, weak and sick of soul, but able to function again because he must. He climbed the bank on shaky legs. His head buzzed. Like Linzee at Pittsburg Landing, he wanted to quit. It was out of the question. Ehrlich was dead, Joe was in command, he had wounded men, he must find a field hospital. He went about the disrupted campsite marshaling his noncoms, helping to bury the dead and rig litters for the wounded.

  Before they left the campsite at dawn, he picked up the pieces of the mug and dumped them in his saddlebag, then led the retreat north along the road, holding his throbbing arm tightly against his side.

  He was never the same man afterward.

  A field surgeon wanted to amputate his injured arm but Joe refused. Smashed the bottle of anesthetic whiskey out of the surgeon’s hand with his right fist as the surgeon leaned over the wooden examination table.