Drive to the East (16 page)

G
uards at the Andersonville prison camp often let U.S. POWs see Confederate papers. Sometimes they would offer their own editorial comments, too. They jeered whenever the CSA did something good. If the USA scored a success, it never showed up in the news in the Confederate States.

The guards also jeered at what they called U.S. atrocities. “Look at this here,” one of them said, waving a newspaper at Major Jonathan Moss. “Now you people are shooting women up in Canada.”

Moss glared at him. “Are you going to let me see it, or are you just going to flap it in my face?” The guard blinked, then handed him the paper, which came from Atlanta. Where Confederate newspapers came from hardly mattered. They all had the same stories in them: whatever the Freedom Party wanted the Confederate people to hear.

Moss read the story. The way the reporter told it, Mary Pomeroy was a martyr whose like the world hadn’t seen since St. Sebastian. That the damnyankees alleged she’d blown up a woman and a little girl in Berlin, Ontario, only proved what a pack of liars and murderers came out of the United States.

So the reporter said, anyhow. It proved something different to Jonathan Moss. He thrust the paper under his arm without a word. “Well?” the Confederate asked him. “What have you got to say about that there?”

“She had it coming.” Moss’ voice was hard and flat.

The guard gaped at him. “How can even a damnyankee say such a heartless thing as that?”

“Because she murdered my wife and my daughter, you cracker son of a bitch.” Moss braced himself. If the guard wanted to mop the floor with him, he could. The fellow was bigger than he was and only half his age—and carried a submachine gun besides.

But the guard’s gape only got wider. “She killed—
your
kinfolk?” He sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“That’s what I told you,” Moss answered. “It’s the God’s truth, too. If she hadn’t done that, I’d probably still be up in Canada. I’d be a damn sight happier than I am now, too. I wish I’d been up there even now. I’d have stood in that firing squad. I’d have pulled that trigger. You bet your life I would have.”

He wondered if the guard would call him heartless again. The man didn’t. He just went off shaking his head.
That’ll teach you to wave a newspaper in somebody’s face, you know-nothing bastard,
Moss thought savagely.

He was avenged. After a couple of years without any movement, he’d doubted he ever would be.
And so?
he wondered. Was he any happier because this woman was dead? He would gladly have killed her, yes, but was he happier? Slowly, he shook his head. That wasn’t the right word. He’d never be happy, not thinking of Laura and Dorothy dead. But he had a sense of satisfaction he hadn’t known before. It would have to do.

Of course it will, you fool. It’s all you’ll ever get.
His wife and his daughter wouldn’t come back. And neither would the woman who’d sent them the bomb. From what the Confederate newspaper said, she had a husband and a little boy. They’d miss her the way he missed his wife and daughter. There was no end to this. Try as you would to find one, there wasn’t any.

He read the story over and over. Rosenfeld, Manitoba . . . That rang a bell. He nodded to himself. Wasn’t that where that fellow tried to blow up General Custer and ended up blowing himself up instead? Moss was pretty sure it was, though it had happened almost twenty years earlier. Was this gal any relation to that bomber? He didn’t remember the fellow’s name, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Pomeroy. But then, the woman was married, and the paper didn’t say anything about her maiden name.

It wouldn’t. If she was related to the other Rosenfeld bomber, that would make her a murderer from a family of murderers. Somebody like that wouldn’t draw sympathy even from the Confederates. And so, if it was true, the C.S. propaganda machine just ignored it.

Here came that guard again. He had another one in tow. The second man, as Jonathan saw when he got closer, was an officer. He strode up to Moss. “What’s this I hear?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Moss answered. “What do you hear?”

“Conley here tells me you’re related to the people this woman the Yankees shot is alleged to have blown up.”

“Alleged?” The word made Moss furious. “I heard the explosion. I saw the building—and some of the other people she hurt while they were getting out. I buried what was left of my wife and little girl. Don’t you talk to me about alleged, goddammit.”

The guard officer gave back a pace. He hadn’t expected such vehemence.
Well, too bad for him,
Moss thought. Weakly, he said, “How do you know she really did it?”

“I don’t know for sure.” Now Moss did some paper-waving of his own. “But I’m a lawyer. It sure looks beyond a reasonable doubt to me.”

“A lawyer? How’d you get captured? Couldn’t run away fast enough?” The officer laughed at his own wit.

“I’m a fighter pilot. I fought at the front line or on your side of it,” Moss answered coldly. “I wasn’t making like a hero in a prison camp hundreds of miles away.” The guard officer retreated in disorder.

Moss started to throw the Atlanta paper to the ground, then checked himself. It might not be anything he’d wanted to keep—he had his vengeance, and now he knew it, but the price he’d paid!—but that didn’t mean the paper was useless. Torn into strips, it would come in handy at the latrine trenches.

He didn’t intend to say anything about the story to his fellow POWs. It was none of their business. But either the guard who’d given him the paper or the officer he’d routed must have blabbed, for the other prisoners found out about it even though he kept his mouth shut.

Every so often, one of them would come up to him, clap him on the back, and say something like, “You got your own back. That’s good.”

They meant well. He knew as much. That didn’t keep him from losing patience. Finally, after about the fourth time it happened, he snapped. “What do you mean, got my own back?” he growled at a luckless first lieutenant. “If I had my own back, I’d still be married. I’d still have my little girl. And I’d probably still be up in Canada.”

“Sorry, sir,” the lieutenant said stiffly, and he retreated as fast as the Confederate guard officer had. After that, fewer prisoners sounded sympathetic, which suited Moss fine.

In fact, fewer prisoners wanted anything to do with him. That also suited him fine—till he got a summons from the senior U.S. officer, a colonel named Monty Summers. “See here, Moss,” he said, “no man is an island.”

“Sir, isn’t it a little early in the morning for John Donne?” Moss asked.

“It’s never too early for the truth,” Summers said, which proved he’d never been a lawyer. “We don’t want you solitary. It’s not good for you, and it’s not good for the camp, either.”

“I’ll worry about me, sir,” Moss said, “and the camp can take care of itself, as far as I’m concerned.”

Summers snorted in exasperation. He was a corn-fed Midwesterner who’d been captured in Ohio when the war was new. He had sandy hair going gray, ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, and a rock of a chin that he stuck out whenever he wanted to make a point. He stuck it out now. “You haven’t got the right attitude,” he said.

“Sorry, sir,” said Moss, who wasn’t. “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“Well, you’d damn well better change it.” Summers sounded as if that were as easy as changing a flat tire. He aimed his chin at Moss again. “We’re still in the war. We’re still fighting the Confederates. We’re all in this together. We’re a team, dammit. And you let the team down if you don’t play along. Don’t you want to help drive these fucking goons nuts?”

“Well . . .” Moss nodded. “All right, Colonel. Maybe you’ve got a point.”

“You’d better believe I have,” Summer said. “If we weren’t all on the ball, for instance, we’d have Confederate spies raising all kinds of trouble.”

“How do you know we don’t?” Moss asked.

“There are ways.” The senior U.S. officer spoke with assurance. “There are ways, but they don’t work unless everybody’s on the ball. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Moss said.

“All right, then.” Monty Summers’ nod seemed amiable enough. “I won’t say anything more about it, then. A word to the wise, you know.” He seemed to like other people’s distilled wisdom.

Moss went on much as he had before—but not quite. He’d never been a back-slapping gladhander. He never would be, either. But he did try to stop making his fellow captives actively dislike him. They seemed willing enough to meet him halfway. He started hearing more camp gossip, which gave him something to chew on, if nothing else.

Nick Cantarella sidled up to him one warm spring morning. “How you doing, Major?” he asked.

“Not too bad,” Moss answered. “How’s yourself?”

“I’ve been worse. Of course, I’ve been better, too. This isn’t exactly my favorite place,” Cantarella said.

“I wouldn’t come here on vacation, either,” Moss said, and Cantarella laughed. Moss added, “The only people who like it here are the guards. They’re too dumb not to—and they get to carry guns, but nobody’s going to shoot back at them.” He was thinking of the officer he’d routed. Cantarella laughed again, even more appreciatively this time. Moss started to laugh, too, but swallowed the noise in a hurry. Captain Cantarella was somehow involved in escape plans—if there were any escape plans to be involved in. As casually as Moss could, he asked, “What is your favorite place?”

“New York City,” Cantarella replied at once.

With his accent, that didn’t surprise Moss at all. Still casually, the fighter pilot asked, “How soon do you expect to see it again?”

Cantarella didn’t answer right away. He scratched his cheek. Whiskers rasped against his fingernails; he was a man who got five o’clock shadow at half past one. Then he said, “Well, sir, I hope I don’t have to sit out the whole goddamn war here.”

“Who doesn’t?” Moss agreed. “Let me know if you have any other thoughts along those lines.”

“I’ll do that, Major,” Cantarella said. “You can count on it.” Off he went. He gave the impression of still being very much in the war even though he was hundreds of miles behind the lines and on the wrong side of the barbed wire and machine-gun towers. Moss looked after him. How long did he intend to stay on the wrong side of the barbed wire?
Will he take me with him when he goes?
That was the question that mattered most to Moss.

“
H
ello, General,” Brigadier General Irving Morrell said, walking up toward the frame house that held Brigadier General Abner Dowling’s headquarters.

“Hello, General,” Dowling replied. “Good to see you again, and it’s high time you had stars on your shoulders, if anybody wants to know what I think.”

“Thanks. Thanks very much,” Morrell said. “They do make me think I haven’t wasted the past thirty years, anyway.”

“I know what you mean,” Dowling said, and no doubt he did: he’d been in the Army even longer than Morrell had before trading his eagles for stars. He went on, “How are you feeling?”

“Sir, I’ll do,” Morrell answered. His shoulder chose that moment to twinge. He did his best not to show how much it hurt. It would sting him if he tried to move it too far—to move it as if he weren’t wounded, in other words—or sometimes for no reason at all: certainly none he could find. With a wry chuckle, he continued, “One of the so-called advantages of my new exalted status is that they don’t expect me to push back the Confederates singlehanded.”

Dowling snorted—a rude noise to come from a general. “You can’t fool me. I’ve known you too long. First chance you get, you’re going to climb back into a barrel. Five minutes later, you’ll stick your head out of the cupola, because you can’t see a damn thing through the periscopes.”

“Who, me?” Morrell said, as innocently as he could. Both men laughed. Dowling had him pegged, all right. Morrell added, “I don’t know that I like being so predictable.”

He’d thought Dowling would go on laughing, but the fat officer sobered instead. “You probably shouldn’t be that predictable, as a matter of fact. If you are, the Confederates are liable to take another shot at you.”

Morrell grunted. The other general might well be right. Morrell said, “It’s an honor I could do without. I never minded getting shot at because I was a U.S. soldier. I minded getting shot, that time in Sonora—it hurt like blazes, and it left me flat on my back for a hell of a long time. But it was one of those things that happen, you know what I mean? But if they’re shooting at me
because
I’m me . . . That’s assassination. It isn’t war.”

“They’re doing it,” Dowling said.

“I know they are,” Morrell answered. “We’ve lost some good people because they’re doing it, too—lost them for good, I mean, not just had them wounded the way I was.”

“Unofficially—and you haven’t heard this from me—we’re doing it, too,” Dowling said.

That made Morrell grunt again. “Well, I can’t even tell you I’m very surprised,” he said at last. “It’s the only thing we can do, pretty much. If they hit us like that, we have to hit back the same way, or else they get an edge. But I’ll be damned if I like it. It makes this business even filthier than it has to be.”

“Personally, I agree with you. You’ll find those who don’t, though.” Dowling paused, ruminating on that. After a bit, he went on, “When you were in Ohio, you met Captain Litvinoff, didn’t you?”

“The skinny fellow with the little mustache that looked like it was penciled on? The poison-gas specialist? Oh, yes. I met him. He gave me the cold chills.” Now it was Morrell’s turn to pause. He let out a long, sorrowful sigh. “All right, General. You made your point.”

“Over in Richmond or wherever they keep them, the Confederates have men just like dear Captain Litvinoff,” Dowling said. Morrell realized the other general liked the poison-gas expert even less than he did. He hadn’t imagined such a thing was possible. Dowling went on, “Now we’re finding assassins under flat rocks. And things are liable to get worse before they get better.”

“How could they?” Morrell asked in honest perplexity.

“Well, I don’t exactly know. But I can tell you something I heard from somebody I believe,” Dowling said.