The Bride of Texas (42 page)

The sergeant looked northward, past the burning turpentine refineries. Somewhere out there General Howard’s army was spending the night, but there was no sign of his campfires. The distance between Howard’s and Slocum’s armies must have increased during the day. The two corps were moving north-east like two immense pincers closing in on Goldsboro. Slocum marched along the only road. Ahead of him was the Fourteenth Corps of General Davis, who, despite Sherman’s reassurances, couldn’t shake from his mind the farmer’s stubborn insistence that Johnston was concentrating his infantry at Bentonville. Davis kept slowing down, his units advancing awkwardly along the narrow road towards the eastern horizon among the pine groves. Every so often a squadron of Wheeler’s riders would appear just within range, fire at the soldiers in Davis’s van, and withdraw to the pines. Davis and Morgan, who was commanding the forward line, couldn’t agree on what this meant. Were they simply random forays by a desperate cavalry, something to be swept out of the way, or were they trying to distract attention from the massing of Confederate infantry units under cover of the woods and scrub oak covering the countryside?

While Morgan and Davis pondered Wheeler’s raids, the Twentieth Corps at the rear of Slocum’s army and the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin under General Coggswell laboured on the muddy road. They filled impassable holes with logs, and reinforced bridges that were collapsing under the weight of munitions and supply wagons. At the campfire that evening a cursing Shake rubbed tallow on his bleeding calluses. The conversation turned to the armour which he claimed had saved his life at Perryville. It had stopped the projectile but had buckled under the impact, unfortunately leaving an indelible reddish badge of courage between the hero’s shoulder-blades. Shake pulled up his shirt and the mark was visible in the firelight, almost like the traces of a crown of thorns.

“I also nearly lost my hearing, friends,” Shake said. “Have you any idea of the noise a minnie ball makes when it hits armour?”

“You said it was a solid shot that hit you,” said Paidr.

“A slip of the tongue,” replied Shake. “I meant a minnie ball.”

“What you meant was that you think we’re stupid,” said Houska.

“Cenek Pechlat really went deaf,” Javorsky chimed in. “In an ironclad gunboat. They were bombarded by a shore battery at Fort Donelson. No one got hurt but they all went deaf. Pechlat says the din was indescribable. You have to imagine yourself being shut up inside a tin drum while some sadist is learning how to play it. He was as deaf as a post after that.”

“Did he get a discharge?” asked Fisher.

“He didn’t want one,” said Javorsky. “He said that now he couldn’t hear the hellish racket, he felt right at home in the ironclad boat. Later on he served with Farragut’s flotilla — it was Farragut who wanted to dig a canal at Vicksburg so they could get past the city. Last time I saw Pechlat, he said some Rebel engineer in Charleston had invented a boat that could go under water, and he said that when our side came up with something like that he was going to sign up for it, not to miss all the fun.”

“Did he volunteer?”

“Yep,” said Javorsky, “but before he could join up the underwater boat sank and they lost it. They’re supposed to be working on a new one, and as far as I know Pechlat is still waiting for his chance.”

They put more wood on the fire, and the conversation turned back to Shake’s armour and the famous Battle of Perryville.

“The smart ones,” said Shake, “went back to being Austrian subjects, and us dumb Americans, like the twelve Apostles, went
into battle.” He continued, counting on his fingers: “Ferda Filip, later to become Mihalotzy’s lieutenant, Joska Neuman, Franta Kouba, Lojza Uher, Franta Kukla, Pepik Dvoracek, Prokop Hudek, Franta Smola, Eda Kafka, Salek-Cup, Josef Jurka, and me. ‘Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles’. But we weren’t Slavonic any more. There were five times as many Germans in the company as Czechs, a few Hungarians, one Wend, and the commander, Captain Geza Mihalotzy. When he was three sheets to the wind on whisky at Slavik’s Tavern he claimed to be Czech, when he was hung over he said he was Slovak, and sober he’d claim to be a Hungarian-speaking American formerly of the Thirty-seventh Infantry Regiment garrisoned in Nagyvarad. So we had to drop the word ‘Slavonic’ from our name. They stuck the company with the Twenty-fourth Illinois, promoted Mihalotzy to lieutenant-colonel, and in September of ’62 we marched off for our trial by fire as part of Major-General Charles C. Gilbert’s division in the celebrated army of General Buell, who was famous at Perryville for falling off his horse the day before the battle, which might explain the hullabaloo that followed.”

Shake took a swig from the wooden canteen on which he had carved the Czech word for water, WODA, and choked on it as the stink of tallow on his calluses was overpowered by the smell of whisky.

“We were driven by patriotism,” he said, “and by thirst.”

“Were you drinking that much back then?” asked Fisher. “I thought it was the horrors of war that turned you to booze.”

“I meant thirst in the original sense of the word,” said Shake. “That year there hadn’t been a drop of rain in Kentucky. The wells were empty, the riverbeds had dried to a trickle that smelled like dung-water and tasted like it too. What’s worse, all we had to eat was herring, so we were starving as well. A seven-day march through bone-dry countryside and even Major-General Gilbert’s tongue was hanging out, never mind us
ordinary soldiers. Finally the scouts brought us some really good news: near the village of Perryville there was a creek that was still running, called Doctor’s Creek. General Buell — who was riding in a wagon in the rear because, as I said, he’d fallen off his horse and suffered an injury of a delicate nature so he was unable to continue on horseback — decided to throw his entire army at Perryville. The scouts also said that Doctor’s Creek was defended by General Polk.”

“The same one who got shot through with a cannonball later, at Kennesaw Mountain?” asked Stejskal.

“The very same,” said Shake. “But even so, Buell’s army advanced on Perryville without complaint. Gilbert’s division led the charge with the Twenty-fourth Illinois in the van, and spearheading the whole thing, rifles at the ready, were none other than Lincoln’s famous, formerly Slavonic, Rifles. And in the very front ranks, bayonets fixed, Geza Mihalotzy leading them, were us twelve Czech volunteers.”

“You did all this for water?” asked Houska.

“Czechs are capable of even that!” declared Shake.

The sergeant took a cigar-holder out of his pocket and stuck a stubby cigar into it. The silver was tarnished, the ivory was yellowed, but the snake still twined around the shaft —

— and he tapped his ashes into the heart-shaped ashtray. Through the smoke and the music, which had drifted off key in the late hour, he caught another signal from the grey eyes. He looked at Salek, who was weeping into his gin-laced beer for his dead Deirdre
.

“Listen,” Kapsa said. “You’ve been in Chicago for quite a while now. You said in the letter you’d run across a fellow called Frkac.”

Salek looked up at him with blank, bloodshot eyes
.

“Tall, probably well dressed. Probably pretty well off by now, too,” said the sergeant
.

Salek was trying to concentrate on what he was saying
.

“He goes by the name of Fircut.”

“That swine!” exclaimed Salek. “I could tell you stories!”

“So,” urged the sergeant, catching another blinding signal from the grey eyes, “tell me!”

He had seven dry months of duty behind him, and his cuckolded friend’s tipsy grievances cast Vlasta in the best possible light for Kapsa’s needs
.

“We ran to the top of the rise overlooking Perryville,” Shake went on. “We went over, and on the other side there was a steep drop down to the bottom, where there were lovely clean pools of water on either side of Doctor’s Creek, which otherwise was bone-dry. Water! And it looked drinkable! But the water was surrounded by armed Rebels, and as soon as they saw us they started scooping up water into their canteen cups, mocking us.”

A distant cannon boomed from the north-east.

“What was that?” the sergeant wondered.

“It’s just the devil farting,” declared Shake. “Well, gentlemen, we didn’t hesitate. We couldn’t have anyway, our thirst made us reckless. We didn’t wait for orders, but tore down the hillside.” Shake took a puff from his meerschaum, then nodded to Paidr for a light. “That hillside was so steep you couldn’t keep your balance. Eda Kafka tripped, and as he tried to get his balance he went flying over our heads right into one of the puddles and just lay there drinking from it. As it turned out, he was the only one who got a drink that night. The Rebs took him prisoner but just for an hour. We set him free on our second charge.”

“How could they stop you on a steep hillside like that?” asked Houska.

“They outnumbered us and they were in a better position. We had to retreat,” sighed Shake.

“But dammit!” asked Houska irritably. “How did you stop yourselves from literally falling into their hands?”

“The boys sat down on their butts and managed to skid to a stop, then did an about-face and scrambled back up the hill and over the top on all fours,” Shake replied coolly. “I was ashamed of them, though. That’s why I turned my back to the Rebs for an instant, to inspire our boys to greater feats of courage.”

“On a steep hill like that?” Houska said ominously. “How come you didn’t fall on your ass?”

But Shake replied calmly, “The minnie kept me from falling. The impact knocked the wind out of me and drove me back up the hill like a billiard ball. At the top I rolled over to the other side of the rise and just lay there gasping for breath. I was so winded I couldn’t join the second charge.”

“And you were gasping for breath the whole time,” said Fisher.

“I was indeed,” Shake assured him. “I wasn’t able to fight again until next afternoon, and then I almost took General Polk prisoner.”

“I’ll bet you did!” said Javorsky.

Salek’s account of Fircut’s activity in Chicago was delivered under the influence of too many gin-spiked beers, and all the sergeant could tell was that there had been some money at stake, perhaps as much as five hundred dollars. The exact nature of the con game wasn’t clear, however, and it was Vlasta who ended up throwing some light on that. They left Slavik’s Tavern with Salek as dawn was beginning to tinge the ragged skyline with gold. When they reached the building with the red shutters, which were closed on Sundays, they banged on the door, and the maid who opened it exclaimed, “Oh, not again, Massa Cup!” (she had arrived by the Underground Railroad and still hadn’t lost her plantation habits of speech). They put Cup to bed in the master bedroom and left him in the care of the maid, whose black eyes gave the sergeant a quick glance and got the picture
.

In the guest room, after making love, Vlasta shared his cigar with him. “Not that I doubt you, sergeant. Not at all. I believe you. But in this case Fircut was as pure as a lily. It was an honest investment in an honest deal —”

“Fircut? Honest?”

“Everybody has his own way to drum up capital. Some do it like Cup, and depend partly on hard work and partly on luck. Others like Fircut aren’t cut out for work, they just trust to luck. Did you say he was a valet? Did you ever see a valet who worked hard? They come by their capital in other ways. I don’t know what he stole from you, or even where you got it in the first place, but after all, darling, you were just a private then.…” She turned her grey eyes on him, and they seemed to be laughing at him
.

“Never mind,” he said. “Just tell me what happened.”

 … Salek, drowning another shot in another beer, had said, “I’m a sucker for stuff like that. Maybe it was a cannonball out of my cannon. I have a bad conscience about it anyway. But what else could you do under Windischgraetz?”

“Don’t tell me Fircut was on the barricades in ’48. He wasn’t even in Prague then. He was serving port to General Uhlmann in Mainz,” the sergeant had replied.…

“… whenever Ondra has too much to drink, he’s back loading that stinking cannon of his,” said Vlasta. “Naturally he and Fircut got drinking, and before he knew it he’d loaded his cannon; Fircut placed himself up on the barricade like a sitting duck, and the shot broke his leg.”

“But Fircut hasn’t even got a limp,” he said
.

“Maybe he got some first-class surgery in the imperial prison hospital,” said Vlasta. “Or else you fell for Fircut’s tall tale like Ondra did. Anyway, Ondra gave him a cheque for five hundred dollars.”

Vlasta stretched a bare arm towards Kapsa and held out her hand. A jagged bolt of lightning shot across the Chicago sky. He
placed the little cigar between her fingers. He said, “Why do you do this to Ondra?”

She inhaled, stuck the tip of her pink tongue between her lips, and blew smoke rings into the air. “Why did
you
do it to Ondra?”

Seven months without a woman. But he said, “I’m probably a rat.”

“What does that make me?”

He turned to her. She lay on the bed, resting on fluffy pillows. She had small firm breasts and nipples, and he cupped one of them in his large hand. “They’re so tiny,” he said
.

“That’s because I’m not a cow.”

“What are you?”

“Just a woman,” she said. “With no children. My late husband didn’t give me one. Cup didn’t. None of the others did. You won’t either. All I have is Ondra’s Annie. But I want —” She tapped the cigar ashes into the ashtray on the chair beside the bed. “Come here,” she said
.

The sergeant, caught between her soft legs, wondered how he would get through another seven months —

“… I can’t say no to somebody like that,” Salek had said. “I have a bad conscience. And besides, everything seemed proper. He showed me an endorsement, a bona fide endorsement from the Doctors’ College that said his ointment would restore hair in a month, six weeks at the latest. Six weeks, my arse! The results came in the next day!” Cup’s voice rose and his fist slammed down on the table-top, making the heart-shaped ashtray jump and scatter its contents. “By six in the morning, the first bald-headed man was banging on the door with a bagful of what was left of his hair. By nine there was a whole mob in front of Fircut & Co., heads as bald as billiard balls, every one. One of them was pushing a cart with a bucket of melted tar and another was carrying a feather bed and a knife and four bald men were dragging a rail. Fircut snuck out the back way. If he ever shows up here again, I’m going to —”