by Bowen, Peter
“Eighty seems a sort of large ...” I glanced back of me. The window was closed and the glass whole.
“The point was to meet Teddy,” said Butch. “Some of the boys was awful disappointed.”
It seemed that the votes in the West was secure for Teethadore. I didn’t count. I’d met him. I wouldn’t vote for the goddamned fool if he had a gun to my head.
“Where’s Cuba?” said Sundance, I mean Hoopoe. “I never heard of it till now.”
“South of Florida,” I said.
“I never heard of that neither.” For a boy born in New Jersey, Sundance’s scholarly upbringing had not been top-notch. Well, I was wrong there, too.
I drew a map, using the back of a recruitment poster and a pencil borrowed from the barkeep.
“Why does Theodore want that?” said Hoopoe, pointing at the island.
“Why are you named Hoopoe?” I says.
“Great Mormon prophet,” says Sundance.
“Teethadore is a great general,” I says.
We drank to that. I watched them go off looking for a game of cards.
The instructions was to recruit one thousand men at each of three stops. After the three thousand enlistment forms was done our work was finished. Since the sergeants did all the paperwork, my labors tended to be in the saloons. As military duty goes, I have had worse.
We saw the first thousand boys off on a special train to a camp in Florida where they would be taught how to ride and shoot. I figured only half of them was actually escaped from prison, and the other half ought to be in the jug on general principles, so it was as fine a bunch of soldiers as ever I seen.
No sooner was the train over the horizon than all hell broke loose at Fort Sedgewick, where it had been discovered that the payroll was gone, all the whiskey from the officers’ mess had taken wing, and then there was a long list of miscellaneous lost items—all the musical instruments from the post band but the bull fiddle and bass drum, all the flags, all the officers’ silverware, two mountain howitzers, a flagpole, and a shipment of six hundred Krag .30-40 rifles that was being held for another cavalry division to send an armed guard to pick up.
“The bastards stole every damn thing but the dust and the sunlight,” said the Fort’s colonel, shaking his head sadly.
The next two places was just the same, and we sent on a picked bunch of renegades, gunfighters, tinhorn gamblers, card sharks, dice-shavers, horse thieves, bushwhackers, and a couple hundred Injuns I’d shot at one time or another and vice versa.
“I ain’t scalped anybody in so I long I can’t hardly recall how,” said one, Rains Black, his voice rising and falling. He’d got most of his English from books, but the song in the words was Sioux.
I waited as long as I decently could to go back to the camp in Florida, only a couple thousand miles away. I had good reason for this, as I suspected that these trains full of our recruits would pick any town they passed through clean as raked sand, and I did not want to arrive in them towns just as folks was getting their breath back. I did pass one pathetic sight, some old geezer wailing from the platform at some tank town in Mississippi.
“They even stole my teeth!” he wailed, sort of sloppily as his diction weren’t too good.
The day that I arrived news had just come that Admiral Dewey had met the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay and the Spanish fleet was on the bottom of the Bay and Dewey hadn’t lost a single man. I did not care much for the news, for though I always like to be on the winning side, long casualty lists do have a sobering effect on the country and all this victory did was whip up the blood lust to a frenzy. There was also a lot of hoorah about how the vicious Spaniards was shooting women and children and little puppy dogs, and trampling the petunias—and Wee Willie Hearst and his godawful newspapers was out with a fresh batch of horror stories every morning. The Spanish was like every other colonial power on earth about then. They were tired, is what they was.
Teethadore had gone to his tailor and got a dozen uniforms made up, ones with epaulets that unzipped to reveal a couple pair of spectacles in each, plus padded pockets here and there in which a dozen more was hid, so that Teddy would never want for being able to see. Unfortunately, there was no lightweight uniforms for the men, who was issued heavy wool garrison uniforms. Though it was only April, Florida was a sweltering and damp place, and the uniforms were sheer torture.
Teethadore had been a rancher for about two years maybe fifteen years before, and in the time passed he seemed to have plumb forgot what cowboys is like. If you tell a cowboy to do something, he will tell you to do something involving your mother and a goat. Cowboys is gentlemen, they know it, and they expect to be asked polite. In town, cowboys practiced their in-town manners, which was beating each other witless.
The Regular Army sergeants was mostly in the hospital time I got there, with injuries mostly to lower jaws and noses. This threatened discipline something awful, especially when the Provost Guard would be told to arrest someone for telling a sergeant to go find his mother and a goat and the guard would sort of shuffle and spit and one of ’em would say, “Wal, damn it, I think ya want old Red thar arrested you ought to do it your own damn self, what I think.” Chorus of yups and spits. (Chewing tobacco was a popular item. You could do a lot of things with it to an officer’s shirtfronts and braid and blame the damn wind.)
Teethadore solved this problem with his typical flair and style. He made his scrawny little Harvardlings sergeants, and the recruits was so amused by these outlandish creatures that they would follow orders more or less so as not to upset the digestion of the little twerps. Also the little Harvardlings were accustomed to dealing with gentle men, and so they prefaced their orders with “If you don’t mind ... could we form right?”
Teethadore’s Lambs didn’t mind. So this was how the Rough Riders was trained. An officer would give an order, some pale, weedy youth would take counsel with the privates in his care, they’d vote, and it would be done right quick if they’d a mind to.
Weapons was another problem. The recruits was armed like the bandits as they was, and they thought the Springfield rifles and black powder crude and beneath them.
Butch and Sundance ended up corporals in one company, and as Nephi and Hoopoe they had the troops in stitches all the time. Sundance was still wearing his gunbelt and Colts and a visiting officer commented disapprovingly upon them, whereupon Sundance whipped them both out and shot twelve times at a flock of pigeons racketing past overhead, and twelve birds exploded into puffs of feathers and blood. The officer nodded and went on, quite pale.
Some of the fellers had brought their buffalo rifles, antiques now, the buffalo having been gone for twenty years, and after it got through to the officers (me) how useful they would be for sniping at ranges up to a mile with plenty of force to kill when it got there, the buffalo riflemen was formed into a special company and allowed to wear their own clothes with an issue hat. Next day all the Rough Riders had to wear their own clothes because there was an accident in the night involving the garrison uniforms, lamp oil, and a match. The uniforms was all piled together, no one quite could figure how. The officer on duty ordered all them lounging bastards to put out the fire. One Stuff Simpson drawled as to how he and the boys here wouldn’t piss on Major Kelly here if he was on fire, and with apologies that’s the way things was. I nodded and said I understood the situation. Some kind soul gave me a bottle, and we jawed in the stinking wool-smoke and drank.
“Well, how does the work go, hey?” said Teethadore one evening as he looked out upon the serried rows of Rough Riders standing at attention if they wasn’t scratching or pitching pennies or hunkered down playing poker.
“That is the most frightening collection of insubordinate sonsof-bitches on the face of the planet. And you will be the very first dead hero of the war you don’t think over very careful them orders you plan to give just when they collide with the Spanish.”
“I don’t understand,” said TR. He seemed genuinely puzzled.
/> “When you holler ‘Follow me’ just be sure the boys here can see just why they ought to roller you. Any one of them bastards would charge hell with a washrag if they thought it a good idea. If they think your orders are a bad idea they will shoot you right quick as a menace to their health and dignity.”
“I know,” said Theodore, twinkling.
“This is a stupid war,” I said. “The Spanish would like nothing better than to allow Cuba and the Philippines to be commonwealths, like England done with Canada.”
“But I can’t be President with that Spineless Creature in the White House preventing a good war. Why, he’s done all he can to avoid war!”
“He was an officer in the Civil War,” I said. “He’s seen war.”
“I simply cannot understand him.”
“I can,” I said. There was nothing else to say to Teddy, except perhaps go to hell.
3
TAMPA, FLORIDA, IS AN ugly, hot, sweaty, bug-ridden festering sumphole. It can be even more unattractive if you are stuck on a troopship out in the Bay, dead in the water, so the bugs can find you easy. There we sat, awaiting orders to go fight the Spanish. There was only one place to bother fighting at for either of us, and that was down to Santiago, on the south coast. It was no secret to anybody but the Department of War, apparently. We was in the books as cavalry, though cavalry in war (chasing Indians didn’t count) was of no use at all except maybe as a messenger service. A horse and rider is a big target, and men fought from holes in the ground now. A horse will not go in a hole in the ground. You try it some time.
It was hard enough on us men, but the horses in the ship’s hold died at a great rate. One by one the horses we was supposed to ride in some unstaged death-or-glory charge was pitched over the side for the sharks.
The Bay was full of bloated horse carcases and sharks and carrion birds. The flies was so thick that you actually got used to them crawling on you, and the bad food and bad sanitation began killing the soldiers and was to kill fifteen for everyone that got shot. Two thousand good men could have mopped up the Spanish, so America sent thirty thousand but not the supplies and food and medicine to keep them. I think that amounts to murder, just like I have always thought bad generalship amounts to murder.
The Spanish-American War was the easiest to avoid of any war we ever had. It was fought for other reasons, for promotions in the Army and Navy, for Theodore and Hearst, for the Sugar Trust, for money. As a war, it is damned hard to brag on it.
Any of ’em ain’t much to brag on, you ask me.
A couple of TR’s scrawny Harvardlings come by one afternoon and fetched me ashore to where Teethadore was holding court next to a polo field. The soldiers was out on the troopships and beginning to die off and TR was playing a fine, manly, masculine game of polo with his like chums, all of whom would end up in the goddamned government. They was that sort of folks.
After a few more fast chukkers TR cantered over to where I was leaned up against a live oak and drinking lemonade with ice in it. He swung down and a lackey took the horse’s reins and led the animal off to be cared for a lot better than the troopers sweating in the stink out there in the transports.
“Luther, my good man, I have a job for you,” said TR. I felt like breaking his teeth. My good man. Shit.
“You want me to go to Santiago and spy out the Spanish and let you know of their troop dispositions and numbers, artillery, supply, morale, fortifications, and such. When you arrive in the harbor you would like me to be bobbing around and easy to see so you can haul me aboard to hear me sing. Well, I did that three years ago (saving the bacon of that little shit Winston Churchill) and I can assure you that not one goddamned thing has changed because the Dons don’t like to rush things. There’s a report on file in my office.”
“I would hardly think a three-year-old report could possibly still be accurate,” said Teddy.
“The war is unnecessary, the report’s unnecessary,” I said, mad clean through, “and I assure you all is as it was three years ago.”
“It’s the only possible war,” said Teethadore.
“The poor, pisswilly Dons do not want this war, they do not want what they have left of an empire, they are old and tired and they need a lot of rest. They’d give you everything but Spain itself if you’d just allow them to save a little pride. Oh, to hell with it, I don’t know why I bother.”
Teddy braided a hangman’s noose in string and played cat’s cradle with the rest.
Now, Theodore enjoys pissing me off, which he is quite good at and I don’t do so bad myself on him. (He once called me “his conscience,” which set me to shivering. I gave the world a week to live.) I roared and cussed and stomped and snorted and kicked things and I still caught the nine-ten southbound, which would put me in reach of a fast boat in the morning. I had a couple of friends who was in the gunrunning trade down to Key West, and I thought I might work something out with these pirates. I always have a moneybelt full for emergencies like this.
The train pulled out and I stuck out my tongue at the gigantic Roosevelt choppers beaming lighthouse-like on the platform.
Friends I got I ought to shoot myself.
I took a coaster down to Key West, a five-day proposition, and when I got there and hopped out upon the dock, still in a red rage over this nonsense, it was about a hundred and ten in the shade and the air so humid if you breathed deep you’d drown. The cockroaches on Key West is six inches long and they have been known to carry off the impolite. Me, I don’t throw things at them or raise my voice much.
I stumped on up into the town—twelve shacks, two saloons, and a warehouse. There had been several attempts to start a church here but all of ’em had starved out or burned down; on the point there was a customs station and a lighthouse.
The local residents was all fugitives from justice somewhere—this was as far south as you could go in America and still not be swimming. It was my kind of place.
I went off to look up the import-export firm of McGarrigle and Deleage, and I supposed them two worthies was in the saloon if they wasn’t hanging from a Spanish gibbet somewheres. I went in to the cool dark and it was about half an hour ’fore my eyes widened out enough to see the damned floor, the glare on the sea and sand was so bad outside.
There I am, blind as TR without his specs.
“Looky there, it’s familiar, I think I knew it once; yes, memory speaks. It is that coyote and buffalo and grizzly-bear molesting hero of our great West as told us by Ned Buntline. Who speaks the truth. Perhaps we should hose the sea gull shit offen it and see if it’s thirsty,” says this voice, the Irish one.
“I perspect it’s down here wanting to make money on the misfortunes of others. It’s the best time, because they are distracted, but here it is anyway. I wonder does it drink only whiskey, or if it would stoop to drinkin’ rum as we ain’t stole no boatloads of whiskey lately,” says the Froggy one. They didn’t have much in the way of accents left, but they were there.
“I don’t get a goddamned drink soon I swear when my eyes work I am going to have a terrible attack of the hydrophobia,” I says. “And I’ll make sure you both get it, too.”
“Just walks in here and starts to threatening,” says the Mick. “His damn manners never improves as he gets uglier. I could give up hope.”
Someone screwed a tall cold glass of something into my hand. I could about see them setting at a table and I slurped and staggered over and flopped down in a chair.
“You ask it to sit here?” said the Frog to McGarrigle.
“I’se terrified to ask it to leave, though,” said the Mick.
“Why don’t the pair of you fuck some clams—they’re right out that door and turn right,” I says.
“Yup,” says the Frog, “I think it must be exactly who we thought it was. Been a bad day all day, I think it must be him.”
“Oh, it’s him all right. No other man would walk in here feigning blindness to make us pity him and give him a drink.”
“Right, no morals; it’s him.”
“Couldn’t be nobody else.”
“The genuine article.”
“Luther the Kelly,” they chorused happily.
“Gaddamned good to see you boys,” I says.
“We expected you,” says Deleage.
I was stumped.
“Who else would Teddy send? An admiral?”
I didn’t know how much more of this good luck I could stand.
I could see now. There was an oilskin packet on the table. I reached for it.
“It’s the truth as of a week ago. ’Course, another hundred poor Dons is dead since of that slop they feed ’em.”
I looked at my friends. McGarrigle weighed about two-eighty and Deleage about ninety-four. Spending so much tense time together smuggling made them chirp like caged birds.
“We was worried about you,” said McGarrigle.
“Looked like the war would be over and you wouldn’t even stop in to say hello and borrow money.”
“Day after day we have worried ourselves flat drunk here over you, that there had been an accident or a husband who was a good shot.”
“That four-eyed little shit has his war, all right,” I said, thinking on that dignified scene with us in the hedge and Long getting into the carriage. All them thugs, thieves, and bunco artists I had bagged for Teddy. Christ on a bicycle.
“God, how we worried. We thought maybe Teddy was fighting someone else we hadn’t heard about. Good wars are so hard to find. In our line of work we hope to hear of every one of them,” said McGarrigle. “But we thought that four-eyed little bastard would want some information so he can wring the last possible bunch of votes out of this war by him being a hero and all.”
“We even worried that you and Teddy had had a falling out and he wouldn’t let you come to his war.”
“Nothing’s changed since I was here three years ago?” I says.
“Just like it was, only more so,” said McGarrigle.