Walk in Hell (73 page)

To make his joy with the world complete, the lead gun went into a puddle and bogged to the hubs. The horses strained in their harness, but it did no good. That gun wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, not with just the team trying to get it out. And the others piled up in back of it.

Along with the rest of the gun crew, he lent his own strength to the work, pushing from behind as the horses pulled. The gun remained stuck. Jake spotted Metellus, the cook, lounging on the limber that traveled behind the gun. “Get your black ass up here and do something to help, damn you,” he snarled. “The Yankees do find this here road with their guns, the shells won’t care what color you are. They’ll blow you up, same as me.” His grin was ferocious. “If that ain’t nigger equality, I don’t know what the hell is.”

Metellus got down and got as dirty as any of the white men, but the gun wouldn’t budge. “Sarge, the horses are gonna founder if we work ’em any more right now,” Michael Scott said. “They’ll plumb keel over and die.”

“Shit.” Featherston looked around, feeling harassed by too many things at once. The whole battery would bog down if he didn’t move the rest of the three-inchers around the lead gun. But if he had to abandon it, the higher-ups would crucify him. The only way he’d kept his head above water was by being twice as good as anybody else around. If he showed he was merely human, they’d cook his goose in jig time.

Here came a battalion of infantry, marching through the mud by the side of the road because the guns were occupying the mud in the middle of the road. “Give us some help, boys!” Jake called to the foot soldiers. “Can’t afford to lose any guns.”

Some of the infantrymen started to break ranks, but the lieutenant in charge of the company shouted, “Keep moving, men. We have our own schedule to meet.” He gave Featherston a hard stare. “You have no business attempting to delay my men, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Jake said, as he had to: he was just a sergeant, after all, not one of God’s anointed officers. How he hated that smug lieutenant. Because of his arrogance, the Confederate States would lose a gun they could have kept, a gun they should have kept.

“What’s going on here?” someone demanded in sharp, angry tones. An officer on horseback surveyed the scene with nothing but disapproval.

Featherston kept quiet. He was only a sergeant, after all. The lieutenant answered, “Sir, this, this enlisted man is trying to use my troops to get out of his trouble.”

“Then you’d better let him, hadn’t you?” Major Clarence Potter snapped. The lieutenant’s jaw dropped. He stared up at Potter with his mouth wide open, like a stupid turkey drowning in the rain. The intelligence officer went on, “Break out some ropes, get your men on that gun, and get it moving. We can’t afford to leave it behind.”

“But—” the infantry lieutenant began.

Major Potter fixed him with the intent, icy stare that had impressed Jake on their first meeting up in Pennsylvania—and how long ago that seemed. “One more word from you, Lieutenant, and I shall ask what your name is.”

The lieutenant wilted. Featherston would have been astounded had he done anything else. Twenty men on a rope and more on the hubs and carriage got the three-inch gun up out of the morass into which it had sunk. On more solid ground, the horses could move it again.

“Thank you, sir,” Jake said, waving the rest of the guns from the battery around the bad spot in the road.

“My pleasure,” Potter said, crisp as usual. “We’ve done a pretty fair job of fighting the enemy in this war, Sergeant, but God deliver us from our friends sometimes.”

“Yes,
sir
!” Jake said. That put his own anger into words better than he’d been able to do for himself.

“Keep struggling, Sergeant,” Potter said. “That’s all you can do. That’s all any of us can do.”

“Yes, sir.” Jake stared furiously after the now-vanished infantry lieutenant. “He could have been heading up a labor brigade, and if he was, he wouldn’t have let me use any niggers, either.”

“I’d say you’re probably right,” Potter said. “Some people get promoted because they’re brave and active. Some people get promoted for no better reason than that all their paperwork stays straight.”

“And some people don’t get promoted at all,” Featherston said bitterly.

“We’ve been over this ground before, Sergeant,” Potter said. “There’s nothing I can do. It’s not up to me.”

Jake would not hear him. “That damn lieutenant—beg your pardon, sir—wouldn’t pay me any mind, on account of I wasn’t an officer. I command this battery, and I damn well deserve to command it, but he treated me like a nigger, on account of I’m just a sergeant.” He glanced over to the intelligence officer. “It’s true, isn’t it? They are going to give niggers guns and put ’em in the line?”

“It’s passed the House. It’s passed the Senate. Since President Semmes was the one who proposed the bill, he’s not going to veto it,” Major Potter said.

“You know what, sir?” Featherston said. “You mark my words, there’s gonna be a nigger promoted to lieutenant before I get these here stripes off my sleeve. Is that fair? Is that right?”

Potter’s lips twisted in what might have been a sympathetic grin or an expression of annoyance at Jake’s unending complaints. The latter, it proved, for the major said, “Sergeant, if you think you’re the only man unfairly treated in the Army of Northern Virginia, I assure you that you’re mistaken.” He squeezed his horse’s sides with his knees. The animal trotted on.

“Ahh, you’re just another bastard after all,” Jake said. Thanks to the rain, Potter didn’t hear him. Featherston turned back to the battery. “Come on. Let’s get moving.”

They bogged down again, less than half a mile in front of the bridge. This time, Jake had no trouble getting help, for a Negro labor gang was close by, and the white officer in charge of it proved reasonable. Featherston worked the black men unmercifully hard, but he and his comrades were working hard, too. The guns came free and rattled toward and then over the bridge.

The firing pits that waited for them on the south side of the Potomac were poorly dug in and poorly sited. “Everything’s going to hell around here,” Featherston growled, and went tramping around to see if he could find better positions no other guns would occupy.

He had little luck. If the artillery hadn’t had to stay close to the river to defend the crossing, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with the area. When the Yankees came down and got their guns in place, his crew was going to catch it.

He’d come down close by the Potomac when the engineers blew the bridge and sent it crashing into the water, as he’d predicted. Somebody near him cheered to see it fall. Featherston’s scowl never wavered. How long would the wrecked bridge keep the Yankees out of Virginia? Not long enough, he feared.

Destroyers and a couple of armored cruisers screened the
Dakota
and the
New York
as the two battleships steamed southeast through the Pacific. On the deck of the
Dakota
, Sam Carsten said, “I won’t be sorry to leave the Sandwich Islands, and that’s a fact.” As if to emphasize his words, he rubbed at the zinc-oxide ointment on his nose.

“You’re gonna bake worse before you get better,” Vic Crosetti said with a chuckle. He could afford to laugh; when he baked, he turned brown. “We’re going over the equator, and it don’t get any hotter than that. And besides, it’s heading toward summer down in Chile.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Carsten said mournfully. “Sure as hell, I forgot all about that.” He looked at his hands, which were as red as every other square inch of him exposed to the sun. “Why the devil didn’t the Chileans get into trouble with Argentina six months ago?”

Crosetti poked him in the ribs. “Far as I’m concerned, all this means is, we’re doing pretty well. If we can detach a squadron from the Sandwich Islands to give our allies a hand, we got to figure ain’t no way for the limeys and the Japs to get Honolulu and Pearl away from us.” He paused, then added, “Unless that John Liholiho item tells them exactly what we’ve got and where everything’s at.”

“You know, maybe we ought to send a letter back to the Sandwich Islands when we get to Chile,” Sam said. “About him being a spy, I mean. They’ll rake him over the coals, you bet they will.”

“Yeah, maybe we should do that,” Crosetti said. “Hell, let’s.”

“Reckon you’re right about the other, too, dammit.” Carsten scratched one of his sunburned ears. Did being happy for his country outweigh being miserable at the prospect of still more sunburn? That one was too close to call without doing some thinking.

“Right about what?” Hiram Kidde asked as he came up. Carsten and Crosetti explained. The veteran gunner’s mate nodded. “Yeah, the brass has got to think the islands are ours to keep. We’ve got enough guns and enough soldiers on ’em now that taking ’em away would cost more than the limeys can afford.”

“What about the Japs?” Sam said. “They showed better than I ever figured they could, there in the Battle of the Three Navies.”

“Yeah, I suppose the Japs are a wild card,” Kidde admitted. “But as long as we don’t fall asleep there at Pearl, I expect we’ll be able to take care of them all right.” He studied Carsten. “You’re looking a little down in the mouth. You find a gal in Honolulu you didn’t feel like leaving?”

“Nah, it’s nothing like that, ‘Cap’n,’” Carsten answered. “I was hoping I’d get out of the damn sun for a while, but Vic here just reminded me the seasons do a flip-flop down there.”

Kidde let out an undignified snort. “Old son, that ain’t gonna matter a hill of beans. How long you think we’re going to stay in Valparaiso? Not anywhere near long enough to get to know the señoritas, I bet. Once we refit and refuel there, we’re gonna head south to join the Chilean fleet. I don’t care whether it’s summer or not, your poor, miserable hide won’t burn in the Straits of Magellan.”

Sam considered that. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said happily—so happily that Kidde snorted again.

“Listen, Sam,” he said, “sunburn’s not the only thing that can go wrong with you, you know. We get down there, you’ll find out what kind of a sailor you are. The
Dakota
’s a good sea boat, and she’s gonna need to be. Down in the Straits, they’ve got waves that’ll toss around a ship as big as this one like she was a wooden toy in a tin tub with a rambunctious five-year-old in it. I’ve made that passage a couple-three times, and you can keep it for all of me.”

“‘Cap’n,’if I start puking, I know it’ll be over sooner or later, no matter how bad I feel while it’s going on,” Carsten said. Ever so gently, he touched his flaming face. “This here sunburn never stops.”

“I’m gonna remember you said that,” Vic Crosetti told him, “and if I ain’t too sick myself, I’m gonna throw it in your face.”

“And if you are that sick, you’ll throw somethin’ else in his face,” Hiram Kidde said. “I’ve done my share of puking down in that part of the world, I’ll tell you. You take a beating there, you and the ship both.”

That made Sam think of something else: “How’s our steering mechanism going to do if we take a pounding like that? The repairs were a pretty quick job.”

Kidde grunted. “That’s a good question.” He laughed without humor. “And we get to find out what the good answer is. Hope we don’t have to do it the hard way.”

“Can’t be any harder than the last time,” Crosetti said. “No matter what Argentina’s got, we ain’t sailin’ straight at the whole British and Japanese fleets—and a damn good thing we ain’t, too, anybody wants to know.”

“Amen,” Sam said solemnly. Hiram Kidde nodded. After a moment’s contemplation, Crosetti crossed himself.

“
New York
took the next biggest beating in the Battle of the Three Navies after us, now that I think about it,” Kidde said. “Looks like they’re sending what they can most afford to be rid of at the Sandwich Islands.”

“That makes sense to me,” Carsten said. “It probably means they don’t think the Argentines are very good, either.”

“Listen,” Hiram Kidde said positively, “if we fought the goddamn Royal Navy to a standstill, we ain’t gonna play against a tougher team anywhere in the whole damn world—and that includes the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet. The limeys are bastards, but they’re tough bastards.”

Vic Crosetti started to say something—maybe agreement, maybe argument—but klaxons started hooting all over the ship, summoning the sailors to battle stations. Everyone ran, and ran hard. Sam ran as hard as he could. He’d never yet beaten Hiram Kidde to the five-inch gun they both served. Since the two of them were starting from the same place, and since he was younger than Kidde and had longer legs, he thought this was going to be the time.

It wasn’t. Kidde stuck to him like a burr on the deck. Once they went below, the gunner’s mate’s broad shoulders and bulldog instincts counted for more than Sam’s inches and youth. The “Cap’n” shoved men aside, and stuck an elbow in their ribs if they didn’t move fast enough to suit him. He got to the sponson a couple of lengths ahead of Carsten.

The rest of the gun’s crew tumbled in seconds later. “All right, we’re ready,” Luke Hoskins said, his hand on a shell, ready to heave it to Sam. “What do we do now?”

Kidde was peering out of the sponson, which gave a very limited field of view through a couple of slit windows. “I don’t see anything,” he said, “not that that proves one hell of a lot. Maybe somebody here or aboard one of the destroyers heard a submersible through the hydrophones or spotted a periscope.”

“If they’d spotted a periscope,” Sam said, “we’d be making flank speed, to get the hell away from it.” Hoskins and the rest of the shell-heavers and gun-layers nodded emphatic agreement.

But Hiram Kidde spoke in thoughtful tones: “Maybe, maybe not. Remember how that aeroplane decoyed us out of Pearl and into that whole flock of subs? They might be letting us see one so we don’t think they’ve got any more waiting up ahead.”

“Mm, maybe,” Sam said. “Wouldn’t like to charge straight into a pack of ’em, and that’s the Lord’s truth.” His wave encompassed the vast empty reaches of the Pacific. “This isn’t the best place to get torpedoed.”

Hoskins spoke with great authority: “Sam, there ain’t no good place to get torpedoed.” Nobody argued with that, either.

The klaxons stopped hooting. Commander Grady stuck his head into the sponson a moment later. “Good job, men,” the commander of the starboard secondary armament said. “Only a drill this time.”

Luke Hoskins let out a sigh of relief. Sam was relieved, too: relieved and angry at the same time. “Damnation,” he said. “It’s almost like the shore patrol raiding a cheap whorehouse when you’re the next in line. I’m all pumped up and ready, and now I don’t get to do anything.”

“Don’t you worry about
that
,” Kidde said. “Nothing wrong with shore leave in Valparaiso, no sir. Nothing wrong in Concepción farther south, either. There’s some pretty, friendly—and pretty friendly, too,” he amended, noting his own pause, “señoritas in Chile, and that’s the truth.”

In more than twenty years in the Navy, Kidde had been to just about every port where U.S. warships were welcome—and some where they’d had to make themselves welcome. He had considerable experience in matters pertaining to señoritas, and wasn’t shy about sharing it.

Sam hadn’t been so many places. His working assumption was that he’d be able to find something or other in the female line almost anywhere, though, and he hadn’t been wrong about that very often. So, instead of asking about women, he said, “What’s Valparaiso like?”

“Last time I was there was—let me think—1907, I guess it was,” Kidde answered. “It was beat up then; they’d had themselves a hell of an earthquake the year before, and they were still putting things back together.”

“That’s the same year as the San Francisco quake, isn’t it—1906, I mean?” Sam said.

“Now that I think about it, I guess it is.” Kidde laughed. “Bad time to be anywhere on the Pacific Coast.”

Luke Hoskins said, “What were the parts that weren’t wrecked like?”

“Oh, it’s a port town,” the gunner’s mate answered. “Good harbor, biggest one in Chile unless I’m wrong, but it’s open on the north. When it blows hard, the way it does in winter down there—June through September, I mean, not our winter—the storms can chew blazes out of ships tied up there. I hear tell, though, they’ve built, or maybe they’re building—don’t know which—a breakwater that’ll make that better’n it was.”

“Not storm season now, then,” Hoskins said.

“Not in Valparaiso, no,” Kidde answered. “Not in Concepción, either. Down by the Straits of Magellan, that’s a different story.”

“You know what I wish?” Sam said. “I wish there was a canal through Central America somewhere, like there is at Suez. That would sure make shipping a lot easier.”

“It sure would—for the damn Rebs,” Hiram Kidde said. “Caribbean’s already a Confederate lake. You want them moving battleships through so they could come up the West Coast? No thanks.”

“I meant in peacetime,” Carsten said. For once, his flush had nothing to do with sunburn. He prided himself in thinking strategically; his buddies sometimes told him he sounded like an officer. But he’d missed the boat this time.

Kidde drove the point home: “I guess you were still a short-pants kid when the Confederates talked about digging a canal through Nicaragua or one of those damn places. President Mahan said the USA would go to war the minute the first steam shovel took a bite, and they backed down. Reckon he’s the best president we had before TR.”

Commander Grady peered into the sponson again. One of his eyebrows rose quizzically. “Not that much fun in here, boys,” he remarked.

He might have broken a spell. The gun crew filed out. Hot and stuffy as the sponson was, Sam wouldn’t have minded staying there a while longer. Now he’d have to go out in the sun again. Out of the entire crew of the
Dakota
, he might have been the only man looking forward to the Straits of Magellan.

Arthur McGregor hitched his horse to the rail not far from the post office. His boots squelched in mud till he got up to the wooden sidewalk. He scraped them as clean as he could before he went inside.

Wilfred Rokeby looked up from a dime novel. “Good day to you, Arthur,” the postmaster said. “How are you?” He spoke cautiously. Everyone in Rosenfeld, like everyone in the surrounding countryside, knew of Alexander McGregor’s execution. Arthur McGregor had been into town once since then, but he hadn’t stopped at the post office.

“How am I, Wilf?” he said, and paused to think about it. That was probably a mistake, for it required him to come out with an honest answer in place of a polite one: “I’m right poorly, is how I am. How would you be, in my shoes?”

“The same, I expect.” Rokeby licked his thin, pale lips. Lamplight glistened from the metal frames of the half-glasses he was wearing, and from the lenses that magnified his eyes without making them seem warm. “What can I do for you today, eh?”

“Want to buy some postage stamps,” McGregor answered. “When I need beans, I’ll go to Henry Gibbon.” In a different tone of voice, it would have been a joke. As he said it, it was only a statement of fact. He’d seldom joked before Alexander was shot. He never joked now.

“Sure enough.” Rokeby bent his head down and looked over the tops of those glasses as he opened a drawer. McGregor studied the part that ran down the middle of his crown, dividing the brown hair on one side from that on the other as if Moses had had a bit of a miracle left over after parting the Red Sea. To make sure none of his hairs got Egyptian tendencies, Rokeby slicked them all down with an oil reeking of spices. The odor was part of coming to the post office for McGregor, as it was for everyone in and around Rosenfeld. After taking out a sheet of stamps, Rokeby looked up at the farmer. “How many you need?”

“Let me have fifteen,” McGregor answered. “That’ll keep me for a while.”

“Should, anyway,” the postmaster agreed. “Sixty cents’ll do it.”