Walk in Hell (77 page)

And so, very slowly, she nodded. “You may be right after all, Isabella,” she said. “You may be right.”

Jonathan Moss had reached that pleasant stage of intoxication where his nose and the top part of his cheeks were going numb, but he was still thinking clearly—or pretty clearly, anyhow. As he generally did at such times, he stared into his whiskey glass with bemused respect, astonished the amber fluid could work such magic on the way he felt.

Dud Dudley stared around the officers’ lounge. “What we need here,” he declared, “are some women.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Moss said, and did. “They ought to bring some up from the States, as a matter of fact. All the Canuck gals treat us like we’re poisonous.” That wasn’t strictly true; every now and then a pilot would find a complaisant young woman in Ontario. Moss never had, though.

His flight leader nodded vigorously. “There’s an idea!” Dudley said. “They can call them something that sounds as if it’s military supplies, so the bluenoses won’t have conniptions. ‘Tool mufflers,’ maybe. Yeah, tool mufflers. How do you like them apples?”

It seemed funny and then some to Moss. “We ought to give Hardshell a requisition for ’em, start it going through the Quartermaster Corps. ‘Yeah, Fred, we need another couple dozen tool mufflers on the Toronto front.’” He spoke into an imaginary telephone. “‘Split ’em even between blondes, brunettes, and redheads.’”

He would have gone on embroidering that theme for quite a while, but an orderly poked his head into the officers’ lounge, spotted him, and brightened. “Lieutenant Moss, sir?” he said. “Major Pruitt needs to see you right away, sir.”

“I’m coming.” Moss got to his feet, a process that proved more complicated than he’d expected. “I’m coming. Lead on, Henry.”

Henry led on. As Moss left, Dudley called after him: “Requisition a couple extra redheaded tool mufflers for me, pal.” They both laughed. Henry the orderly grinned in a nervous sort of way, not getting the joke.

Major Shelby Pruitt raised an eyebrow when he saw the state Moss was in. That was all he did. The weather was too lousy to let aeroplanes get off the ground, so the pilots had little to do but sit around and drink. The salute Moss gave him was crisp enough, at any rate. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“At ease,” Pruitt said. He passed Moss a little velvet box with a snap lid. “Here. As long as you’re celebrating, you can have something
to
celebrate.” Moss opened the box. Two sets of a captain’s twin silver bars sparkled in the lamplight. He stared at them, then at Pruitt. The squadron commander grinned at him. “Congratulations, Captain Moss.”

Moss said the first thing that popped into his head: “What about Dud, sir?”

He made Hardshell Pruitt smile. “That does you credit. His are in the works. They should have come in with yours, but there’s some sort of paperwork foul-up. I’d have saved yours to give them to the both of you at the same time, but I can’t. You’re both getting shipped out, and to different places, and they’ve laid on a motorcar for you in an hour. As soon as you leave here, go pack up what you have to take with you. The rest of your junk will follow you sooner or later, maybe even by the end of the war.”

Things were moving too fast for Moss to follow. He thought—he hoped—they would have been moving too fast for him to follow had he been sober. “Sir, could you explain—?” he said plaintively.

“You’re a captain now.” Pruitt’s voice was crisp, incisive. He used it as a surgeon uses a scalpel: to slice through the fat to the meat. “You’ll be a flight leader for certain, maybe even a squadron leader if casualties keep on the way they’ve been going.”

“We keep flying Martins against these Pups, sir, we’ll have a lot of casualties,” Moss said with conviction.

“I understand that,” Major Pruitt answered. “Well, it just so happens the Kaiser’s come through for us. Wright is building a copy of the Albatros two-decker; a German cargo submarine finally made it across the Atlantic with plans and with a complete disassembled aeroplane. The orders detach you to train on the new machine.”

“That’s—bully, sir,” Jonathan Moss breathed. “Can we really fight the limeys in this new bus?”

“Everybody seems to think so,” the squadron leader answered. “The copied Albatros isn’t quite as fast as the Pup, but it’ll climb quicker and it’s just about as maneuverable. And we’ll have a hell of a lot more of them than the limeys and Canucks will have Pups.”

“Good—we’ll make ’em have kittens, then,” Moss said. When sober, he was sobersided. He wasn’t sobersided now.

Hardshell Pruitt also grinned. “Go pack your bags, Captain. Pack the undowithoutables and don’t worry about anything else. I want you back here at 2130, ready to move out for London. Here are your written orders.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Moss looked at the pocket watch he wore strapped to his wrist. Like a lot of fliers, he’d started doing that because of the difficulty of groping for a watch while wearing a bulky flight suit. Learning at a glance what time it was had proved so convenient, he wore the watch on a strap all the time now. “See you in forty-five minutes, sir.”

He seemed to float several feet above the muddy ground as he made his way back to the tent he shared with Dudley and with Phil Eaker and Thad Krazewski, who’d taken the place of Orville Thornley, who’d taken the place of Tom Innis. A match got a kerosene lantern going. The space around his cot was as full of junk as more than a year’s settling in and an easygoing view of military regulations would allow.

One green-gray canvas duffel bag didn’t seem enough. He wondered if he could lay hands on a White truck, or maybe two. He shrugged. He’d manage, one way or another. And whatever he left behind wouldn’t go to waste. Some would, as Major Pruitt had said, follow him wherever he went. The other fellows in the flight were welcome to the rest.

He heard Eaker and Krazewski coming. Eaker said, “Jonathan’ll be glad we sweet-talked the cook out of a corned-beef sandwich for him. I’ve never seen anybody as keen for the stuff as he is.”

The two young fliers came into the tent and stared. Grinning, Moss said, “I will be glad for the sandwich, boys. It’ll give me something to eat while they take me wherever I’m supposed to go.”

“Sir?” they said together, twin expressions of blank surprise on their faces.

Moss wanted to tell them everything. The whiskey in him almost set his mouth working ahead of his brain. He checked himself, though. Saying too much—saying anything, really—wouldn’t be fair to Dud Dudley, who had to stay a while longer because of his botched paperwork.

What Moss did end up saying was, “They’re shipping me out. I’m going into training on a new aeroplane.”

“That’s wonderful, sir,” they exclaimed, again in unison. Krazewski clapped his hands together. With his wide cheekbones, blue, blue eyes, and shock of wheat-blond hair, he would have made a gorgeous woman. He made a hell of a handsome man, and the Canucks and limeys hadn’t managed to kill him yet. He asked, “Does Lieutenant Dudley know, sir?”

That’s
Captain
Dudley
, Moss thought,
but Dud doesn’t know it yet
. “I’ll tell him as soon as I finish packing,” Moss said. He didn’t say anything about all the stuff he wouldn’t be able to pack. His tentmates would go through it soon enough, almost as if he’d died.

He had intended to head for the officers’ lounge as soon as the duffel bag was full. That didn’t happen, because Dud Dudley came in when he was trying to stuff a tin of shaving soap into a bag already full to the point of seam-splitting. “A fine day to you, Captain Moss!” he exclaimed in a voice to which whiskey gave only part of the glee.

He’s heard,
Jonathan realized.
Hardshell must have decided he couldn’t keep it a secret
. “A fine day to
you
, Captain Dudley!” he returned. The two men solemnly—well, not so solemnly—shook hands while Eaker and Krazewski gaped all over again.

“Too damn bad we’re going to different aerodromes to train,” Dudley said, which reconfirmed Moss’ guess. The flight leader slapped him on the back. “I’ll miss you, you son of a bitch. We’ve got to look each other up if we both come through this stinking war in one piece.” He scrawled his name and address on a scrap of paper. “Here. This is me.”

Moss found his own scrap and borrowed Dudley’s pen. “And this is me. I’ll miss you, too, Dud. And I’ll miss these two sorry ragamuffins—” At that, the pilots who would stay behind gave him a pair of raspberries. He shook hands with both of them, too, then slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. He mimed collapsing under the weight, which wasn’t far from being true, and tramped back toward Major Pruitt’s tent.

A Ford was waiting there for him, the motor running. The driver took the duffel, gave him a reproachful stare at its weight, and tossed it into the automobile. “Hop in, sir,” he said. “Off to London.”

The drive was less than a delight. The Ford’s headlamps were taped so they gave out only a little light; the enemy’s aeroplanes would shoot up anything that moved at night. The road would have been bad even had the driver been able to spot all the potholes. Not spotting them meant he and Moss got to fix several punctures along the way. They didn’t do better than ten miles an hour, which made a hundred-mile journey seem to take forever.

Dawn was breaking when they finally reached the aerodrome. No one seemed to be expecting Moss, which, after the time he’d had getting there, didn’t surprise him at all. “Well,” a sergeant said doubtfully, “I guess we’ll put you up in Tent 27. Basler!” A private appeared, as if by magic. “Take Captain Moss to Tent 27. He’ll fit in there, one way or another.” The noncom’s face bore a strange sort of smile.

Moss, who hadn’t managed to doze in the automobile, was too worn to care what a sergeant thought. The private led him to a green-gray tent distinguishable only by the number stenciled on its side. “Here you are, sir.”

“Thanks.” Moss went inside. Sure enough, there was a cot with no belongings nearby. The three officers in the tent, who were readying themselves for the day, looked him over. One of them, a tall, thin, good-looking fellow, exclaimed, “Jonathan!”

“Percy!” Moss said. “Percy Stone!” Then he burst out laughing. “Now I know why that billeting sergeant said I belonged here. Moss and Stone, like the old days.” He pumped Stone’s hand. “Jesus, it’s good to see you in one piece, chum.”

“It’s good to
be
in one piece again,” Stone said. He’d been Moss’ photographic observer when Moss was still flying two-seaters instead of fighting scouts, and a Canuck had badly wounded him. He pointed to the pilot’s insigne on his chest. “You see I’ve got both wings now.”

“Yeah,” Moss said enthusiastically. “Between us, we’re going to show the Canucks a thing or two.” Percy Stone nodded. They shook hands again.

Every time Abner Dowling walked into the Tennessee farmhouse where General Custer was staying these days, he braced for trouble. Since the First Army had basically stopped moving forward these days, Custer’s accommodations hadn’t shifted lately, either. That meant Libbie Custer had come down from Kentucky to stay with her husband.

It also meant Custer had to stop paying such avid attention to the pretty, young mulatto housekeeper he’d hired before Libbie came down. The wench, whose name was Cornelia, kept right on cooking and cleaning. Dowling didn’t know whether she’d done anything more than that before. He was sure Custer had wanted her to do more, though, and had hoped to convince her to do more. Libbie was sure of that, too, which made the farmhouse into a sort of front of its own.

The illustrious general commanding First Army was in the kitchen eating lunch when Dowling arrived. The tubby major’s nostrils twitched appreciatively. Regardless of whether Cornelia was helping Custer forget his years, the wench could cook.

“Why, that damned, lying little slut!” Custer shouted.

Waiting out in the parlor, Dowling jumped in alarm. The worst thing he could think of would have been for Cornelia to go telling Libbie tales. Whether the tales were true or not didn’t matter. Libbie would believe them. Custer would deny everything. Libbie wouldn’t believe that. By the sound of things, the worst had just happened.

But then, to the adjutant’s astonishment, Libbie spoke in soothing tones. Dowling couldn’t make out what she said, but she wasn’t screaming. Dowling wondered why she wasn’t screaming. How many damned lying little sluts besides Cornelia did Custer know? Dowling was sure Custer would have liked to know a regiment’s worth, but what he would have liked wasn’t the same as what was so.

A few minutes later, Custer came out of the kitchen, a scowl on his face and a newspaper in his hand. When Dowling saw that, he relaxed. So someone had savaged Custer in the press. The general commanding First Army would rage like a hurricane when a story threatened to tarnish his refulgent image of himself, but that kind of bluster didn’t amount to a hill of beans in the long run.

In the short run, putting up with Custer’s bad temper was what the War Department paid Dowling to do. As far as he was concerned, Philadelphia didn’t pay him enough, but he would have said the same thing had he raked in a million in gold on the first of every month.

“Is something wrong, sir?” he asked now, as if he’d heard nothing from the kitchen and had just chanced to notice the general’s frown.

“Wrong?” Custer thundered. “You might possibly say so, Major. Yes, you just might.” He flung the paper into Dowling’s lap.

Predictably, he’d folded it so the story that had offended him was on top. That way, he could reannoy himself whenever he glanced at it, and stay in a fine hot temper the whole day through. He would have pointed it out to Dowling had his adjutant not spotted it at once.

“Oh, the Socialist candidate in one of those New York City districts giving you a hard time about the Cottontown attack,” he said. “Don’t take it to heart, sir. It’s only politics. Goes to show women can play the game as dirty as men, I suppose.”

“What’s her name?” Custer demanded. “Hamburger, was that it? I’d like to make hamburger out of her, by Godfrey! Didn’t I tell you we needed a victory here to put a muzzle on those miserable, bomb-throwing anarchists?”

“Yes, sir, you did.” Dowling spoke with some genuine sympathy, being a Democrat himself. “And I see that Senator Debs—”

But Custer, once he got rolling, would not let even agreement slow him down. “And you were there, weren’t you, Major, when General MacArthur came to me with that half-baked plan for attacking southeast before shifting the direction of his advance? I warned him he needed to have more resources than I could afford to commit if that attack had even a prayer for success, but he wheedled and pleaded till I didn’t see what I could do but give in. And this is the thanks we get for it.” He reached out and slapped the newspaper onto the floor.

Bending over to pick it up gave Dowling the chance to pull his face straight by the time Custer saw him again. The general commanding First Army often rewrote history so it turned out as he wished it would have, but this was a particularly egregious example.

“General MacArthur did request more resources than you were prepared to provide, yes, sir,” Dowling said cautiously.

“That’s what I told you,” Custer said. It didn’t sound that way to Dowling, but arguing about what had happened was a pointless exercise. Trying to keep similar disaster from happening later occasionally even succeeded.

Libbie Custer came out and nodded to Major Dowling. “Did you see the lies they were telling about Autie, Major?” she said, setting a hand on Custer’s shoulder. “They’re all a pack of shameless jackals, jealous of his fame and jealous of the victories he’s won for his country.”

George Armstrong Custer was a blowhard. He’d blow hot, and then five minutes later he’d blow cold. Elizabeth Bacon Custer, as far as Dowling had been able to tell, wavered not at all. When she got angry at someone, she stayed angry forever. Some of that anger she aimed at anyone presumptuous enough to criticize her husband in any way. And some of it she aimed at Custer himself. From some of the things she’d said to Dowling, she’d been furious at the famous general for better than forty years.

Long-handled feather duster in hand, Cornelia came out and started cleaning. “Excuse me, Major Dowling, suh,” she said when she dusted near him. He nodded and smiled at her. Every time he looked at her—and she was worth looking at—he wondered how the men of the Confederacy reconciled their claims of Negro inferiority and their own mingling of blood with the Negroes in the Confederate States.

He shrugged a tiny shrug his uniform hid. The Rebs didn’t need to reconcile anything. They were the masters down here. They could do what they wanted. No. They had been the masters. Despite hard times on the battlefield, the United States were changing things.

Custer, now, Custer looked at Cornelia in exactly the way one of those Rebels might have done.
This is mine,
his eyes seemed to say.
If I want it, all I have to do is reach out and take it
.

Libbie Custer’s eyes said something, too.
If you do reach out, George,
they warned,
I’ll whack you on the wrist so hard, you’ll think you’re back in primary school again
. Dowling didn’t think the general commanding First Army was going to get away with much, not here, not now.

Having Cornelia go elsewhere was a relief. Tension in the front room went with her, as it did in a front-line bombproof when the barrage shifted to supply dumps farther back. Dowling found himself able to think about the war again. “Do you think we’ll be able to accomplish anything worthwhile this winter, sir?” he asked.
Or will we keep on wasting men the way we have been doing?

“We may have to make the effort, Major,” Custer replied. “For the moment, though, however reluctantly, I am accumulating men and matériel to make sure we have reserves and adequate stocks on hand in case we do have to make any mass assaults in the next few months.”

Digging a finger in his ear to make sure he’d heard correctly would have been rude. Dowling was tempted, even so. One thing he’d seen over and over again was Custer ignoring reserves and logistics. His gaze slid to Libbie. Brief acquaintance had convinced him she was a hell of a lot smarter than her heroic husband. If she was smart enough to have convinced him of the need to prepare, Dowling was ready to call her a genius.

Custer said, “It’s the election, of course. If that snake Debs slithers into the White House, we shall have to go all out to force the CSA to make peace before TR leaves office in March. I want to be ready.”

“I—see,” Dowling said slowly. Maybe Libbie had put that bug in Custer’s ear, but maybe he’d thought of it all by himself. He did pay attention to politics. And maybe word had come down from Philadelphia, quietly recommending buildups all along the line in case the U.S. Army had to try to force the Rebs to yield in the four months between Debs’ election and his inauguration.

“Do you know, Major,” Custer said, “that back in ’84 there was some talk of procuring the presidential nomination for
me
? I was quite the man of the hour, after all. But I had chosen to make the United States Army my life’s labor, and I would not resign my commission under any circumstances. I sometimes wonder how things might have turned out had I decided otherwise.”

Dowling valiantly didn’t say anything. He was convinced commanding First Army was beyond Custer’s capacity. For the life of him, he didn’t see why the War Department kept the old warhorse in the saddle instead of putting him out to pasture. Things were going well enough on most fronts that the retirement of an aging lion shouldn’t produce any great outcry, no matter how much the public revered Custer’s name.

President Custer? There was an idea to make any man who didn’t believe things could have been worse for the United States think twice. Even though it hadn’t happened—and probably hadn’t been so close to happening as Custer asserted now, thirty-two years after the fact—contemplating it was enough to make Dowling…

“Are you well, Major?” Libbie Custer asked sharply. “You look dyspeptic. Maybe the general should send this wench Cornelia over to your quarters to cook for you and bring you back up to snuff.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, dear,” Custer said. “Anyone can see that the good Major Dowling is not off his feed.” He chuckled.

Libbie Custer glared at him because he refused to remove the attractive housekeeper from his not very attractive house. Dowling glared at him because he’d called him fat. Dowling knew he was fat. He didn’t appreciate being reminded of it.

Oblivious to having angered both people with whom he was conversing, Custer went on, “Now we shall just have to wait until after the seventh. If God be kind, both Senator Debs and this ignorant, vicious Hamburger woman will get the drubbing they so richly deserve. And if the Lord should choose to inflict Debs on us because of our many sins, we shall still have four months in which to redeem ourselves.”

Dowling sighed. Agreeing with Custer on anything, even a matter of politics, tempted him to take another look to make sure he wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t dreamt anything might incline him toward Socialism, but if Custer loathed it, it had to have its good points.

Somebody knocked on the door of Socialist Party headquarters. “Another Western Union boy!” Herman Bruck shouted over the election-night din that filled the place.

Flora Hamburger happened to be standing close to the door. “I’ll get it,” she said. Opening the door for a moment would let a little of the tobacco smoke hazing the atmosphere escape. Her own father’s pipe was but one among a great many sources of that smoke, as he and the rest of the family had come down with her to learn whether she would be going to Philadelphia when the new Congress convened in January.

But it wasn’t another messenger with a fistful of telegrams standing out there in the hall. It was Max Fleischmann, the butcher from downstairs. He carried a tray covered with brown paper. “You people will be hungry,” he said. “I’ve brought up some salami, some bologna, some sausages…”

“You didn’t have to do that, Mr. Fleischmann. You didn’t have to do that at all. You’re a Democrat, for heaven’s sake.”

“You people—and especially you, Miss Hamburger—you don’t let politics get in the way of beings friends,” the butcher said. “This is the least I can do to show you I feel the same way.”

After that, Flora didn’t see what she could do but take the tray. “This is very kind of you,” she told the old man, “and if more people felt the way you do, the United States would be a better place to live.”

“Getting rid of those Soldiers’ Circle goons would be a good start,” Fleischmann said. “Well, I hope you win, even if you’re not from my party. What do you think of that?”

“I hope I win, too,” Flora blurted, which made the butcher smile. He bobbed his head to her and went back downstairs.

She put the tray on a desk near the door. People descended on it as if they hadn’t already demolished a spread of cold cuts and pickles and eggs and bread that would have done justice to the free-lunch counter at a fancy saloon. Everyone was eating as if there would be no tomorrow.

Someone else knocked on the door. This time, Maria Tresca got it. This time, it
was
a Western Union messenger. She took the sheaf of flimsy envelopes from him. “New returns!” she shouted. “I have new returns!” Something approaching silence fell.

She started opening envelopes. “Debs leading by seven thousand in Wyoming,” she said, and a cheer went up. “The Socialist there is going back to Congress, too, it looks like.” Another cheer. She opened a new telegram, and her face fell. “Roosevelt ahead by ten thousand in Dakota.”

Groans replaced the applause. Dakota had voted Socialist most of the time since being admitted to the United States. Herman Bruck let out a long sigh and said the thing most of the people in the room had been thinking for some time: “We aren’t going to elect a president this year. The people are too mystified to put aside the war.”