Walk in Hell (61 page)

“Not going anywhere at all,” her husband agreed. George had drunk more than she had, but showed it less. The whiskey wasn’t making him laugh, either. It was just making him very certain about things. His certainty had swept her along, too, so that she lay altogether naked beside him even though the children couldn’t have been in bed more than fifteen minutes themselves.

If George, Jr., came in right now—well, that would be funny, too. Whiskey was amazing stuff, all right. Sylvia ran her hand over George’s chest, the hair there so familiar and so long absent. From his chest, her hand wandered lower. Ladies didn’t do such things. Ladies, in fact, endured it rather than enjoying it when their husbands touched them.
If George gets angry, I’ll blame it on the whiskey,
she thought as her hand closed around him.

“Oh,” he said, more an exhalation than a word. Nor was that the only way he responded to her touch.

“Is that what you learned in the Navy—how to come to attention, I mean?” she said. He laughed. Then, without even being asked, she slid down and took him in her mouth. Ladies not only didn’t do such things, they didn’t think of such things. A lot of ladies had never heard of or imagined such things. Since she had…His flesh was smooth and hot.
The whiskey,
she thought again. Being inexperienced in such things, she bore down more than she should have, and had to withdraw, choking a little.

If they hadn’t been married, if she hadn’t wanted him as much as he wanted her, what followed would have been a rape. As it was, she wrapped her arms and legs around him while he plunged above her, and whispered endearments and urged him on.

He shuddered and groaned sooner than she would have liked, which was, she supposed, a disadvantage of doing as she’d just done. Instead of pulling free, though, he stayed in her. In an amazingly short time, he was hard again. The second round was almost as frantic as the first, but, kindled by that first time, she felt all thought go away just as he spent, too.

“Always like a honeymoon, coming back to you after I’ve been away at sea,” he said, a smile in his voice. “I’ve been at sea a long time this time—and I never even saw the ocean.”

Sylvia didn’t answer right away. She felt lazy and sated, at peace with the world even if the world held no peace. But the body had demands other than those of lust and love. “Let me up, dear,” she said, and, regretfully, he rolled off her. She regretted it, too, when he came out.
Nothing good ever lasts,
that seemed to say.

She pulled the chamber pot out from under the bed and squatted to use it. Some of his seed ran out of her, too. That she did not mind; it made getting pregnant less likely. She got back into bed. George stood and used the chamber pot, too, then lay down beside her in the darkness once more.

“I got the telegram that said you were missing,” she said, “and—” She didn’t, couldn’t, go on with words. Instead, she clutched him to her, even tighter than when his hips had pumped him in and out of her as if he were the piston of a steam engine and she the receiving cylinder.

He squeezed her, too. “I hid in the woods with my pals till another boat got down there to see if anybody had lived through the explosion. They were the brave ones, ’cause the Rebs had that spot zeroed. None of the shells hit, though, and we rowed out to them and they got us away from there.”

“Four,” she said wonderingly. “Four, out of the whole crew.”

“Luck,” George answered. “Fool luck. We were up at this colored fellow’s shack on the riverbank. Charlie White would have killed anybody who kept a place that dirty, and they made the whiskey right around there. You drank it, you could run a gaslight on your breath. I had a glass, and some food—place was dirty, yeah, but they cooked better than anything our galley turned out—and I had some more whiskey, and then I went outside, and then…the Rebels dropped two, right on the
Punishment
.” Remembering made him shiver.

“What did you go outside for?” Sylvia asked.

She meant the question casually.
To stand next to a tree
was the answer she’d expected, or something of that sort. George stiffened in her arms, and not in the way she’d found so enjoyable. “Oh, just to get a breath of air,” he said, and she knew he was lying.

“What did you go outside for?” she repeated, and tried to see his face in the darkness. No good: he was only the vaguest blur.

He stayed unnaturally still a little too long. Was that the glitter of his eyes opening wide to try to see her expression, too? “It wasn’t anything,” he said at last.

Where the whiskey had made her giddy and then randy, now it made her angry. “What did you go outside for?” she said for the third time. “I want you to tell me the truth.”

George sighed. When Sylvia breathed in as he breathed out, she could smell and taste that they’d been drinking together. Sober, he might have found a lie she would believe, or else might have been able to keep his mouth shut till she got sick of asking questions. He’d managed that, every now and then.

He sighed again. “There was another place, next to this saloon or tavern or whatever you call it. I was going over there, but I never made it. I hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps that way when the shelling started.”

“Another place?” she echoed. George nodded, a gesture she felt instead of seeing. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” she demanded. “What kind of place was…?” All at once, she wanted to push him away from her as hard as she could. “You were going to a—” Her hiss might have been more deadly than a shout.

“Yeah, I was.” He sounded ashamed. That was something, a small something, but not nearly enough. He went on, “I didn’t get there. Sylvia, I swear to you it’s the only time I was gone that I was going that way. I’d been away so long, and I didn’t know when I’d be back or if I’d ever be back.” He laughed, which enraged her till he went on, “I guess God was telling me I shouldn’t do things like that even once.”

“And I let you—” Her voice was cold as the ice in the hold of a steam trawler. She hadn’t just let him touch her, she’d wanted him to touch her, she’d wanted to touch him. She couldn’t say that; her body had fewer inhibitions than her tongue did. Her tongue…She’d had that part of him in her mouth, and she thought she’d throw up. She gulped, as if fighting back seasickness.

“Nothing happened,”
George said.

She believed him. She wanted, or part of her wanted, to think he was lying; that would have given her all the more reason to force him away from her. Had he been telling the truth when he said that was the only time he’d gone to—or toward—such a place? Again, she thought so, but she wondered if it mattered when you got down to the bottom of things. Still in that frozen voice, she said, “Something would have happened, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess it would,” he answered dully.

He wasn’t trying to pretend. That was something, too. Try as she would, she had trouble keeping the flame of her fury hot. Being apart from him had been hard on her, too, and she’d known he wasn’t a saint before she married him. “You were pretty stupid, do you know that?” she said.

“I thought so myself,” he answered, quickly, eagerly, a man splashing in the sea grabbing for a floating spar. “If I hadn’t had that second glass of whiskey, I never would have done it.”

“Whiskey gets you into all sorts of trouble, doesn’t it?” she said, not quite so frosty now. “Makes you go after women you shouldn’t, makes you talk too much when you’re with the woman you should—”

He laughed in relief, feeling himself slide off the hook. His thumb and forefinger closed on her nipple; even in the dark, he found it unerringly. Sylvia twisted away: he wasn’t
that
forgiven yet.

“I was plenty stupid,” he said, which not only agreed with what she’d just said but had the added virtue of likely being truer than
I’m sorry
.

“I hope to heaven this terrible war ends soon, so you can come home and spend the rest of your days with me,” Sylvia said.
And,
she added to herself,
so I can keep an eye on you
. She’d never thought she’d need another reason for wishing the war over, but George had given her one.

He understood that, too. “I hope they’ll really send me out to sea this time,” he said. “Then I’ll be away from everything”—
everything in a dress,
he meant—“for months at a time.”

Sylvia nodded. George didn’t mention what happened when sailors came into a port after months at a time at sea. Maybe he was trying not to think about it. Maybe he was hoping she wouldn’t think about it. If so, it was a forlorn hope. Boston was a Navy town. More than one sailor had accosted Sylvia on the street. She did not imagine her husband was a great deal different from the common lot of men. Had she so imagined, he would have taught her better.

He clutched her to him. “I don’t want anybody but you,” he said.

Now you don’t,
she thought. He gave proof with more than words that he did want her. With a small sigh, she let him take her. He was her husband, he had come home alive out of danger, he hadn’t (quite) (she didn’t think) been unfaithful to her. So she told herself. But, where only the speed of his explosion the first time had kept her from joining him in joy, where she had done just that the second time, and been as eager, even as wanton, then as ever in her life, now, though she tried, though she strained, though she concentrated, pleasure eluded her.

George didn’t notice. Somehow that hurt almost worse than anything he’d told her. In a while, she supposed, he’d want a fourth round, too. “Have we got any more whiskey?” she asked.

Arthur McGregor tramped through the snow toward the barn. The harvest was in, and just in time; freezing weather had come early this year. But the livestock still needed tending. He shook his head. Alexander should have been out here helping him. But Alexander still languished in the Rosenfeld gaol. If he ever got out—

Sometimes, now, hours at a time would go by when McGregor didn’t think of his son’s being freed. Every fiber of him still hoped it would happen. (
How could it not happen?
he thought.
The only thing the boy did was hang about with a few of the wrong people and let his tongue flap loose. Not one in a hundred would be left free if you locked up everybody who did that
.) He didn’t count on it or expect it as he had right after Alexander’s arrest, though. Scar tissue was growing over the hole the extraction of his son from the family had left.

He fed the horses, the cows, the pigs, the chickens. He forked dung out of the stalls. He gathered eggs, storing them inside his hat. The hens pecked at his hands, the way they always did when he robbed their nests. The rooster couldn’t have cared less. All he had eyes for was his harem, as splendid to him as the Ottoman sultan’s bevy of veiled beauties.

McGregor’s breath smoked as if he’d just lighted a cigarette when he left the barn. The first inhalation of cold outside air burned in his lungs like cigarette smoke, too. After a couple of breaths, though, he felt all right. Once winter really came down, he’d feel as if he were breathing razors whenever he stuck his head out of any door.

Off to the north, artillery coughed and grumbled. It was farther away than it had been halfway through the summer, when Canadian troops and those from the mother country had pushed the Yankees south from Winnipeg. “But not south to Rosenfeld,” McGregor said sadly. Winnipeg still held, though. So long as Winnipeg held, and Toronto, and Montreal, and Quebec City, Canada lived. The Americans had claimed Toronto’s fall a good many times. Lies, all lies. “What they’re good for,” McGregor told the air, and started back toward the farmhouse with the eggs.

As usual, the north-south road that ran by the farm was full of soldiers and guns and horses and trucks on the move, most of the traffic heading north toward the front. What went south was what didn’t work any more: ambulances full of broken men, trucks and horses glumly pulling broken machines. The more of those McGregor saw, the better he reckoned his country’s chances.

And here came an automobile, jouncing along the path toward the farmhouse. The motorcar was painted green-gray. Even had it not been, he would have known it for an American vehicle. Who but the Americans had gasoline these days?

As if it had not been there, McGregor brought the eggs in to Maude. “Trouble coming,” he said. His wife didn’t need to ask him what he meant. Automobiles were noisy things, and you could hear their rattle and bang and pop a long way across the quiet prairie.

“Americans,” Mary said fiercely, sticking her head into the kitchen. “Let’s shoot them.”

“You can’t say that, little one, not where they can hear you,” McGregor told his younger daughter. “You can’t even think it, not where they can hear you.” Mary’s nod was full of avid comprehension. She had an instinctive gift for conspiracy the war had brought out young in her, as a hothouse could force a rose into early bloom.

The automobile sputtered to a stop. A door slammed, then another. Booted feet—several pairs of booted feet—came stomping toward the door. “Shall we open it?” Maude whispered.

McGregor shook his head. As quietly, he answered, “No. We’ll make ’em knock. They have to know we’re here—where else would we be? It’ll annoy them.” By such tiny campaigns was his war against the invaders fought. Mary’s eyes glowed. She understood without being told the uses of harassment—but then, she had an older brother and sister.

“Damn Canucks,” said one of the American soldiers outside. McGregor nodded, once. Mary giggled soundlessly.

“Quiet.” That was a voice McGregor recognized: Captain Hannebrink. All the farmer’s pleasure at annoying the occupiers changed to mingled alarm and hope. What was the man who had arrested Alexander doing here? He hadn’t come out to the farm since the day of the arrest.

Maude knew his voice, too. “What does he—?” Her voice cut off in the middle of the question. Hannebrink was knocking at the door.

It was an utterly ordinary knock, not the savage pounding it should have been with a car full of American ruffians out there. Stories said they used rifle butts. Not here, not today.

McGregor went to the door and opened it. The captain nodded, politely enough. Behind him, the three private soldiers came to alertness. They had rifles, even if they hadn’t used them as door knockers. Hannebrink didn’t say anything, not right away. “What is it?” McGregor asked as silence stretched.

From behind him, Mary asked, “Are you going to let my brother go?”

“Hush,” Maude said, and pushed Mary back to Julia, hissing, “Take care of her and keep her quiet”—not an easy order to follow.

Captain Hannebrink coughed. “Mr. McGregor, I have to tell you that over the past few days we obtained information confirming for us that your son, Alexander McGregor, was in fact an active participant in efforts to harm United States Army occupying forces in this military district, and that he should therefore be judged as a
franc-tireur
.”

“Information?” McGregor said, not taking in all of the long, cold, dry sentence at once. “What kind of information?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss that with you, sir,” Hannebrink said stiffly. He scratched at the edge of his Kaiser Bill mustache, careful not to disturb its waxed perfection.

“Means somebody’s been filling your head up with lies, and you don’t have to own up to that or say who it is,” McGregor said.

The American shrugged. “As you know, sir, the penalty for civilians resisting in arms the occupying forces is death by firing squad.”

Behind McGregor, Julia gasped. He heard Maude stop breathing. Through numb lips, he said, “And you’re going to—shoot him? You can’t do that, Captain. There has to be some kind of appeal, of—”

Hannebrink held up a hand. “Mr. McGregor, I regret to have to inform you that the sentence was carried out, in accordance with U.S. Army regulations, at 0600 hours this morning. Your son’s body will be released to you for whatever burial arrangements you may care to make.”

Mary didn’t understand. “Father—?” Julia said in a halting voice; she wasn’t sure she understood, and desperately hoped she didn’t. Maude set her hand on McGregor’s arm. She knew. So did he.

They shot him at sunrise,
he thought dully.
Before sunrise
. It would have been dark and chilly, even before they wrapped a black rag over Alexander’s bright, laughing eyes, tied him to a post or stood him up against a wall or did whatever they did, and fired a volley that made him one with the darkness and ice forever.

The American soldiers behind Captain Hannebrink were very alert. McGregor would have bet they’d had this duty before, and knew hell could break loose. “If it is any consolation to you, sir,” the captain said, “he went bravely and it was over very fast. He did not suffer.”

McGregor couldn’t even scream at him to get out. They had Alexander’s body, the body that, the Yank said, had not suffered, but was now dead. “Take it,” McGregor said, stumbling over the words, “take it to the Presbyterian church. He’ll go in, in the graveyard there.”

Julia shrieked. So did Mary—she knew what the graveyard meant. She sprang for Captain Hannebrink as she had for the U.S. officer in Rosenfeld when he’d wanted to arrest her father. McGregor grabbed her and held her. He didn’t know what those narrow-eyed soldiers behind Hannebrink might do to an attacker, even an attacker who was a little girl, and he didn’t want to find out.

“I shall do as you request,” Captain Hannebrink said. “As I told you, sir, I deeply regret the unfortunate necessity for this visit.”

“Somebody went out and told you one more lie, Captain, and you piled it on top of all the other lies you heard, and it finally gave you enough of a stack so you could shoot my boy, the way you’ve been looking to do all these months,” McGregor said.

“We do not believe it was a lie,” Hannebrink said.

“And I don’t believe you,” McGregor said. “Now get out of my sight. If I ever set eyes on you again—” Maude’s hand tightened on his upper arm and brought him a little way back toward himself.

“Mr. McGregor, I understand that you are overwrought now,” the U.S. officer said, trying to be kind, trying to be sympathetic, and only making McGregor hate him more on account of it. He turned to his soldiers. “Come on, boys. We’ve done what we had to do. Let’s go.”

All the men walked back to the Ford. Hannebrink got in. So did the private soldiers, one at a time, ever so warily. When one cranked the engine back to life, another covered him. McGregor wondered how often they’d been fired on after delivering that kind of news. Some people, after hearing it, wouldn’t much care whether they lived or died.

He didn’t much care whether he lived or died himself. But he did care about Maude and Julia and Mary. His family. All the family he had left.

He turned back to his wife. Tears were running down her face. He hadn’t heard her start crying. He was crying, too, he suddenly realized. He hadn’t noticed that start, either. They clung to each other and to their daughters—and to the memory of their son.

“Alexander,” Maude whispered, her faced pressed against his shoulder.

“Alexander,” he echoed slowly. His mind raced ahead. Look ahead, look behind, look around—if you didn’t look at where you were, you wouldn’t have to think about how bad things were here at the focused moment of
now
.

He saw Alexander laid to rest in the churchyard, the grass there already sere and brown. He saw past that. His son had said—had no doubt said up until the very moment the rifles fired—he’d had no part in the things he was accused of doing. McGregor believed him.

Someone had lied, then. Someone had lied to bring him to death before sunrise. Someone, probably, whose son really had done the things Alexander stood accused of doing, and wanted to see the McGregors suffer along with him, no matter how unjustly. Whoever it was, McGregor figured he could find him, sooner or later.
An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth
.

And the Americans had believed the lie. They must have known it was a lie. But they hadn’t shot anybody lately, and maybe they needed examples to keep the Canadians quiet.

Whatever their reasons, he vowed they weren’t going to keep him quiet. They’d shot Alexander for a
franc-tireur
. He hadn’t been one. McGregor was sure of that, down to the marrow of his bones. But in shooting him, they’d made themselves a
franc-tireur
, all right.

“I’m twenty years out of the Army,” he murmured. Maude stared at him. She would know what he was thinking. He didn’t care, not now he didn’t. He’d forgotten a lot of things over half a lifetime or so. If he had to use them again, though, he expected they’d come back soon enough.

Having wished that, after so long in river monitors, he might go back to sea, George Enos was repenting of his decision. He had gone to sea in fishing boats since before the time when he needed a razor. Going to sea in a destroyer was an altogether different business, as he was discovering day by day.

“It’s like you’ve ridden horses all your life, and they were the horses the brewery uses to haul beer barrels to the saloon,” he said to Andy Conkling, who had the bunk under his. “Then one day they put you on a thoroughbred and they tell you you’ll do fine because what the hell, it’s a horse.”

Conkling laughed at him. He had a round red face and a big Kaiser Bill mustache, so that he put George in mind of a clock with its hands pointing at ten minutes to two. He said, “Yeah, she does go pretty good, don’t she?”

“You might say so,” Enos answered, a New England understatement that made his new friend laugh again. To back it up, he went on, “She cruises—just idles along, mind you—at fifteen knots. No boat I’ve ever been on could do fifteen knots if you tied down the safety valve and stoked the engine till it blew up.”

“Not brewery horses,” Conkling said. “Mules. Maybe donkeys.”

“Yeah,” George said. “And the
Ericsson
gives us what, going flat out? Thirty knots?”

“Just under, at the trials. Some other boats in the class made it. But she’ll give twenty-eight easy,” Conkling told him.

Fifteen felt plenty fast to Enos. He stared out at the Atlantic racing past under the destroyer’s keel. The USS
Ericsson
was a bigger, more stable platform than any steam trawler he’d ever sailed, displacing over a thousand tons, but the waves hit her harder, too. And besides—“You’ve got to remember, I’m just off a river monitor. After that, any ocean sailing is rough business.”

“Those things are snapping turtles,” Andy Conkling said disdainfully. “This here is a shark.”

From what Enos had seen and heard, deep-sea sailors had nothing but scorn for the river-monitor fleet. From what he’d seen aboard the
Punishment
, the monitors didn’t deserve any such scorn. Trying to convince shipmates of that struck him as a good way to waste his breath. He kept quiet.