When the War Is Over (17 page)

Wet-eyed Fitz nodded, smiled, blinked and bleared, buried his veined nose in froth.

Catto broke open, and spewed autobiography. It was the absence of a clock. Time could be measured, or guessed, only by words or the level of the whiskey. With the second bottle, John and a number of strangers assisting, he veered to Charlotte, and old Fitz nodded solemnly. “What does it mean?” Catto asked him. Fitz shook his gray head. “I'm fine without her. Don't know much about the lady so I have nothing to think about except … well, you know, and when you think about that she might be anybody at all. You understand. Cash on the pillow.”

Fitz was a great one for nodding. Some hours and many stories later in the evening, or morning, Catto bowed out for a moment to empty himself against a wall, remembering in some confusion the dire punishments visited, hip and thigh, root and branch, on every man that pisseth against a wall, and in the drunken black silence he understood for the first time that these were not punishments for illegal pissing but compassion for blameless tots. Phelan of course knew that. Damn Phelan.

He found Fitz unchanged, swaying slightly, quenchless, yea a hogshead. “I look forward to the west,” Catto said. “We will civilize the place, but not too quickly. Plenty of room for fellows like me. John! Another one for the house. Trout is here!” He offered that in dim, instinctive wisdom; something must be done about this bottle and he could not do it alone. Not long after, or perhaps long after, there were hands at his armpits and knees, and he was muttering thanks, assuring John that he would be on his way shortly, fearing, but with no real passion, for his money, his boots—“My hat! My hat!”—“It's all right, Captain. We've got your hat right here.”—“The war's over, you know.”—“Yes sir, Captain. The war is over. You just take it easy now for a while.”—and his belt—“Fitz knows all about me. Anything you want to know,” the lamps bobbing and spinning, “whoooo! you just ask whoooo! old Fitz. I told him whoooo! about my father too. Not really a smith, you know. He followed the horses. You won't say anything. Whoooo Jesus! With a wagon and a bucket. Municipal employee, you under—whoooo!”—“Don't you worry a bit, sir. Old Fitz is a fine man. Stone deaf but a fine old man.”

The sun woke him, and a murmur. He forced his eyes open. He saw a boy of ten or so, in patched britches and a filthy shirt. The boy's nose was a cornucopia of tadpoles and snails, and Catto shut his eyes tight; when he opened them again he saw a calm ring of interested citizens. He was in the street, lying against a brick wall, his hat sitting modestly upon his crotch, his buckle twinkling up at him.

He sat up. “Take that boy away,” he croaked. He clapped the hat to his pumpkin head and sat breathing heavily, his tongue half out. He lowed hoarsely and licked his lips. Pride of the Union. He drew up his knees, and the action released a vile belch. “The name,” he said, “is Isaac M. Trout.”

“Well you better get up, Captain Trout,” a man said. He was fat and bearded, and wore a wool hat like a sailor. “They killed Mister Lincoln last night.”

VII

“I used to do all the right things on the Fourth of July,” Catto mourned. “Choke up, and hate the English; one year I went three months without telling a lie or swearing. All the churches cooked up beans or meatballs, and the band wore three-cornered hats. One time Stephen Douglas stopped by and made a speech. A lot of us went fishing or thieving but I always stayed to hear the band, and the volley. I saw my first soldier at one of those, a captain with a blond beard, a courtly man, bowing, saluting. I would have sold my soul to be him.”

“And now you are.”

“And now I am, and fought a war, and what the hell for. No, I don't mean that. What for wasn't so important. It was a great country and if a war had to be fought it was not for me to ask questions. I believed. How could you not believe in Mister Lincoln? And when the war is over we will all join hands again—that was a promise. If I had to go around shooting people, at least I knew that there would be an end to it, and we could get on with more important things. Not that I've put much stock lately in all the pretty sentiment. That's for the children. All I wanted was to snake my way through, and in the end I would be something—a soldier or a scout or a trapper, or at the worst a grocer or a cigar wholesaler or a bank clerk. Make a living, get children, live to be an old man.”

“Move your chair,” Phelan said, “And stop squinting into the sun.”

Catto hitched his chair around, clattering and scraping. He sat like a schoolboy with his hands flat on his thighs, his head bowed, his full lips pursed in a fat pout, his eyes dull and sad. “I was thinking of one of my masterpieces. It was a running shot, at an angle, and he spread his arms and went down on his face and slid along the grass that way. I was proud of it.”

“And now you're not.”

Catto shook his head slowly.

“All this because of Lincoln.”

“Well, maybe I'm only growing up. But I cried, Jack. I cried. That's for Europe, killing kings. Not for us. I'd like to move out of here and maybe settle in a whole new country somewhere. Or make one. On an island.”

“Go back to Scotland.” Phelan smiled halfheartedly. He rolled the r's richly: “Surround yourself with freckled get.”

“It was all over. Lee kept his sword. And now Lincoln is in a box on that train and the country is worse off than it was five years ago.”

“No. Five years ago there was a war coming. That much at least is done. Otherwise I can't cheer you up. I can only recommend that you start drinking again and remember that everybody dies.”

“Right. All men are created equal as soon as they die.”

“Omnia—”

“I know. Well. I suppose I better get over this. I wonder if that fellow Booth was proud of himself.”

“Go to Charlotte.”

“For Christ's sake, Jack. I can't even spell her last name.”

“Go to Charlotte. The flesh is half the cure for grief.”

“And half the cause of it. She doesn't like me any more. I wonder if Hooker's happy. He hated the man.”

“Hard to say about Hooker. He's off in Springfield now, for the funeral.”

“Oh, they'll all be there. With their heads bowed, mumbling all the right things. And thinking how he should have promoted them faster.” Catto rose. “I'm going out to walk around. A nice sunny day. I must see if the people are still grateful to their heroes.”

“They're still in mourning. This has been a quiet city, with the Copperheads afraid to say a word out loud.”

“Mm. Tell me something, Jack.”

“Your servant.”

“What's all this about the Catholics? Some rumor. Anything in it?”

“Why do you ask me?” Phelan glared. “Do I look like an assassin? They need somebody to blame, you know. If something goes wrong and there's one Catholic in it, it's a plot straight from the Pope.”

“Cheer up,” Catto said. “In fifty years we'll all be Catholic. I have it on good authority.”

“May your spleen wither, boyo.”

Catto fled the surgeon's curse.

He stood at the river with Silliman and they pitched pebbles into the scummy backwash. Silliman had aged, and appeared at least twenty-one. “You'll be off soon,” Catto said.

“A couple of weeks. I suppose my father saw to that.”

“Don't apologize. Country needs folks like you.” A momentary rage gripped Catto: “Don't let those stay-at-home rangers run things. You get in there and go to Congress or some such thing.”

“Maybe I will.” Silliman skimmed a flat stone at a placid river bird; the white bird squawked once and beat upward. “Come with me. You work the mill while I make laws to favor you.”

“You're a generous fellow and I thank you. I suppose everything's possible for you. Lucky man. Some bright young thing waiting too.”

“Several,” said Silliman, and blushed.

“Damn liar. I bet you never yet had your hand—”

“Never mind now. What about it? You have nowhere to go. Might as well make money.”

“I've thought of it. Let's get out of here.” They turned away, and trod cobblestones toward the center of the city. Catto was calmer of mind in the noonday sun; even in Cincinnati spring smelled good, the air a heady compound principally of manure and beer, yet fragrant. “I can't decide right now. Been feeling too low lately.”

“Me too. But you've only got a week or so.”

“Six days. But I could always let the hitch run out, and sign on later.”

“As a private.”

“Yeh. I had some higher rank in mind.” Catto was sleepy. The sun warmed his back and he remembered that day in the meadow, Thomas Martin rising like an angel to shoot him dead. Not a hundred miles from here. “Trouble is, old Ned, I don't want to sign on for something and find out later I'm wrong for it. Hell of a thing if you put me in the mill and I turned out to be a born poet.”

“But there isn't time to try everything.”

“True. I always thought that when the war was over I'd know. Have a vision. Instructions: Catto, rise up and go breed hogs. Instead of which they kill my president.”

“Mine too.”

“I thought once I might travel. Go to work on a boat. See the old country.”

“You won't see much without money. They pay about a dollar a week on boats. And you eat garbage.”

“Well, that's out.”

They walked on, inspecting shops.

“It's all so strange,” Silliman said. “Everything so empty. Like the sun would never set again. A war is your whole life, and when it ends you just stand there blinking.”

“That's how it is, all right. And I been in longer than you. Where we walking to, anyway?”

“Oh, anywhere,” Silliman said. “Let's go up and smell the canal. This is one city I don't plan to return to, and I might as well experience it to the full.”

Catto smiled. “Now look at that. You made me cheer up.”

“Good God,” said Silliman. “Next thing you'll be drinking again.”

They laughed, puzzled and ashamed, and fell silent once more, edging away from wagons and loaders and stacked baskets as they crossed a market square.

“How long do you suppose people feel this way?”

“I don't know. Never had a war end before. Or an assassination.”

“No.” Silliman was grave. “When the news came, or when I made myself believe it, I remember thinking I ought to keep close track of how I felt and what people said and all that, so I could tell my children about it someday. But all I remember is this gloomy, gray sort of sadness.”

Catto nodded and began an answer, but jumped a foot when the welkin dissolved in a sudden shimmering, golden clangor. The two stared upward. Bong. “Saint Peter in Chains,” Silliman said. Look at that.” Bong. “Over two hundred feet tall.”

“That's some bell.” Bong. “Must be noontime. It rings slow.”

“It's for the funeral,” Silliman said.

Bong, sang the great bell, and Catto thought, bong. Bong. He drew in a deep breath, trying to open his throat, but it contracted and tears sprang to his eyes; he fought them down, swallowed, took another breath, and could not look at Silliman. The bell boomed on, and Catto stood with his head down and his hat brim hiding his hot eyes, and said goodbye to Mister Lincoln. Goodbye, Abe. Goodbye, Mister President. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

He dreamed that night, dreamed a story the men told, of the girl who cropped her hair and enlisted to be with her brother. It was said to have happened in Massachusetts, in New York, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin, in 1861, 1862, 1863 and 1864, and the girl was aged fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, never older; had black, brown, red or blond hair; but invariably this sort of bosom—I mean to say, how could she possibly have bound it down, and what a loss to mankind! In his dream they found her in a grove with the horse sergeant, and Catto watched writhing and fuming. It was Hooker who caught them, and no escape; Catto leapt to his feet and covered his nakedness with one hand while saluting with the other, but it was insufficient, no hand could cover this unruly upstart, this extravagant indecorum. As a flag passed by in his dream, and a drummer-boy, Catto awoke; behind the drummer-boy a caisson clattered and rumbled under the weight of a coffin. He was sick with loss, and lay still hoping to recapture sleep, the woman, the consoling warmth; but hoping was a daylight activity, and woke him further.

Later he remembered the dream and pondered it, because he had little to do, wiling away a Friday morning like the ten-toed sloth he was, scribbling orders for batting and socks and fresh pork; he understood that he had dreamed about his sorrow, about Lincoln, perhaps about the sweet young lady he had yet to meet. But the horse sergeant? His own base behavior? He goggled at the memory of it, and was still smiling when the door flew open. He looked up in query, which altered to amiable welcome when he saw Jacob, but when Jacob said, “They goin to kill Thomas,” Catto betrayed unmannerly disgust, despairing of this black man who got things wrong, who could misunderstand what had doubtless been a perfectly plain, if unfunny, joke; already another thought was forming, a knowledge not yet knowledge because not yet made word, given flesh, image, but there, lurking and looming; so Catto sat back fighting irritation and fear, laughter and terror—as if his spirit were crying out, “I will not hear this”—and said to Jacob, “Don't be a blockhead.”

“Gen'l Willich say they have to kill Thomas.” Jacob's eyes shimmered.

Catto set down his pen in utter stupidity. “It was like I was suddenly turned into a potato,” he said to Phelan next day. “I know I quit breathing, and I think my blood quit running. After a moment I remembered that this country was a madhouse and Jacob might even be right. I got up in a hurry then and knocked some papers off the table and went out in the street and ran. I just left Jacob standing there. I also left my hat, so I was out of uniform the whole rest of the day. My blouse was open and the damn belt flapping. People looked at me and shied off, like the war might be starting up again and this crazy captain was rushing to save the city. I hooked up the belt while I ran. God knows what I looked like when I got to McLean Barracks.”