American Front (38 page)

Chester Martin knew the Roanoke River lay only a few hundred yards ahead, though he also knew better—much better—than to stick his head up and see just how close the river was. The latest U.S. push had moved the battle line in western Virginia forward into the suburbs of Big Lick again. A couple of more pushes and they’d be over the river at last so they could clean out the eastern side of the Roanoke valley.

“That’s what Captain Wyatt says, anyhow,” Martin remarked to Paul Andersen, summarizing the latest Army bulletins. “You believe it any more than I do?”

“Hell, no, Sarge,” the corporal answered. “What’s gonna happen next is, the Rebs’ll put on a push of their own, knock us halfway back to Catawba Mountain again. You wait and see.”

“
I’m
not gonna argue with you,” Martin said. “We push them, they push us, we push them some more…These lines aren’t going to move more than a couple of miles either way from now till doomsday, doesn’t look like.” He wished he hadn’t said
doomsday
. Too many men with whom he’d started the war—too many replacements, too—had already found their doom here.

“I can see it in the fancy history some fool will write after the war,” Andersen said: “you know, some educated fool, the kind who wears those spectacles that stick on your nose but don’t have any side pieces to hook ’em to your ears. He’ll talk about the thirty-seventh battle of the Roanoke, and that’ll be us pushin’ the Rebs back a ways, and then he’ll talk about the thirty-eighth battle of the Roanoke two weeks later, and that’ll be the Rebs kickin’ us back to where we started from, and maybe another half a mile besides.”

“That all sounds pretty likely,” Martin agreed. “I just hope to Jesus we ain’t any of the ones who get buried before that thirty-eighth battle.” Most of the time, you didn’t like to think about such things, not when the whole battlefield stank of death to the point where, if you weren’t used to it and just fell here from, say, Philadelphia, you’d puke your guts up for a week. It wasn’t cold enough to fight the stink, as it had been a few weeks before.

“Heads up.” Andersen pointed down the trench. “Visiting fireman coming this way.”

Sure enough, here came Captain Wyatt with a fellow Martin hadn’t seen before, an older man wearing a major’s uniform cleaner than those of most soldiers who actually made their living in the front lines.
Some sort of inspector, snooping around to see what he thinks we’ve done all wrong
, Martin thought. He hated people like that, hated them with the cold contempt a practical man gives a theoretician’s high-flown, useless notions.

He started to laugh, and turned his face away so the new major, whoever he was, wouldn’t see. The fellow had spectacles just like the ones to which Paul Andersen had slightingly referred, and a sandy mustache heavily streaked with gray, and a mouth full of big, square teeth…

Chester Martin’s head whipped around. It couldn’t be, but it was. Andersen was staring and staring. Captain Wyatt said, “Boys, here’s the President of the United States, come to see the war for himself.”

Martin hadn’t come to attention in the front-line trenches in months. Now he stiffened to straightness so suddenly, his backbone cracked like knuckles. Beside him, Andersen also came to a stiff brace. “At ease,” Teddy Roosevelt said. “As you were. I came here to see soldiers, not marionettes.”

“Yes,
sir
!” Martin relaxed, though not all the way. If the battlefield stench bothered TR, he didn’t let on. He acted like a soldier, though he hadn’t led troops into battle in thirty years or so. But he really could have been an elderly major, not just some politician posturing for the newspapers.

As if picking that thought out of Martin’s mind, Roosevelt said, “Reporters don’t know I’m here. Far as they know—which isn’t far, believe me, not with most of them—I’m still in Philadelphia. If the papers don’t know, maybe the Rebs don’t know. You think they wouldn’t like to put one between my eyes?”

“Yes, sir, they sure would,” Martin said. If the Confederates did know the president was here, they’d do everything they could to keep him from getting away again.

“This isn’t what war was like out on the plains back before you were born,” Roosevelt said. “There was glory in that, the sweep of horses rushing forward, movement, adventure. This…The most I can say for this, gentlemen, is that it’s necessary, and what we gain from it will make certain that the United States of America take their proud and rightful place among the nations of the world once more.”

When you listened to the president talking, you forgot the reek of unburied bodies, the mud, the lice, the barbed wire, the machine guns. You saw farther than your length of trench. You got a glimpse of the country that would come out the other side of this war. It was a place where you wanted to be, too.

Yeah, and what are the odds of that?
asked the part of Martin that had been under fire for months.
Do you really think you’re going to come through alive, or with all your arms and legs if you do live?

Captain Wyatt said, “We hope, sir, that the next offensive will bring us up to the river, and from there we’ll proceed toward the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

“Bully,” TR said. “Our German allies have offensives in the works, too. With God’s help, they’ll strike the French and the English a heavy blow on the continent.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what we would have done without Germany, boys. With England and France backing up the Rebels, we were fighting out of our weight when we tried to scrap with them. Not now, though, by jingo, not now.”

“Yes, sir,” Martin said. “We have friends in high places, eh?”

“The All-Highest place,” TR answered with his famous chuckle, still boyish though he was in his mid-fifties. “Kaiser Wilhelm’s done everything he could for us, and we’ve paid him back, thanks to soldiers like you men.”

Martin didn’t stand straighter now; Roosevelt had ordered him to be at his ease. But he felt tall and proud just the same. Again, TR made him believe the war had a point, a goal, beyond the miseries of the front. He wondered how long he’d go on believing that once the president left.

A few hundred yards off, a couple of U.S. machine guns started hammering away at some Confederate target or other. Rifle fire answered from the Rebel lines, and then their machine guns. After a few minutes, U.S. field guns started pounding the enemy’s forward trenches.

Captain Wyatt frowned. “They shouldn’t be doing that, not now. It’s going to bring down—”

“Captain, I didn’t come here to watch a Sunday-school debating society,” President Roosevelt said. “This is war. I know what war is. I—”

Before he could finish, the Confederates’ quick-firing three-inch guns started raining shells down, on and near the U.S. front lines. The Rebs seldom wasted time replying to an artillery bombardment.

Paul Andersen threw himself flat, Captain Wyatt threw himself flat. To Martin’s horror, he saw TR start to stand up on a firing step so he could get a better look at what was going on. Without thinking, he knocked the president down with a block from behind that would have been illegal in a football match, then flopped over TR’s squirming body. “Stay flat, dammit!” he shouted. He’d never expected to have the president’s ear. Now that he did, this was what he got to tell him? It would have been funny if he hadn’t worried about getting killed.

Shrapnel balls and jagged bits of shell casing whined through the air. Bigger U.S. guns started firing, trying to silence the Confederate field pieces. Bigger Rebel guns struck back at the bigger U.S. guns. Both sides forgot about the men at the front for a while.

Warily, Chester Martin sat up. That let TR get up, too. Martin gulped, wondering what the penalty was for leveling the president. But all Roosevelt said was, “Thank you, Sergeant. You know conditions here better than I.”

“Uh, thank you, sir.” Martin looked at Roosevelt, whose green-gray uniform was now as muddy as his own. “You look like a real, modern soldier now, sir.” The president of the United States laughed like a man possessed.

X

Lucien Galtier muttered unhappily to himself as he loaded the jug of kerosene into the back of his wagon. The ration the American soldiers allowed people was ridiculously small. Thank God, nights were shorter now than they had been in the middle of winter, but he still had to leave a lot of his lamps dry. The world, he was convinced, held no justice.

“No, it certainly is not fair,” he told his horse, which, for once, forbore to argue with him. “When a man comes into a town, he cannot even buy for himself a drink of a sort he cannot get at home.”

Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true. None of the taverns in Rivière-du-Loup had signs up ordering—or even advising—townsmen and local farmers to stay out. Nor were the taverns out of liquor; a lot of their stock these days was shipped up from the United States, but that did not mean it would not burn in your boiler. Drinks, in fact, were actually cheaper these days than they had been before the war started, because the occupying authority taxed liquor at a lower rate than the provincial government had.

All of which was silver lining on a large, dark cloud. If you went into a tavern, you were almost certain to find it full of American soldiers, which was the reason the occupying authority held down liquor prices. And American soldiers, especially American soldiers with drink in them, did not take kindly to sharing what they thought of as their taverns with the locals.

“Oh, you might go in, have a whiskey, and get out again,” Lucien said. His horse’s ears twitched, perhaps in sympathy but more likely, knowing the beast, in mockery. “But if there should be a fight, what is one to do? There are always many soldiers, they are always all against you, and, even if your countrymen come to your aid, it leads merely to riot and then to punishment of the entire unfortunate town. All this for one little drink? It is not worth it!”

The horse snorted. Maybe that meant it agreed. Maybe that meant it thought Galtier was complaining too much, too. If it did, too bad. He could complain to the horse without worrying his wife—and without making her angry, too, for she was less than delighted when he went into a tavern even for one whiskey, her fixed view of the matter being that no one ever went into a tavern for only one whiskey.

Galtier was just climbing up into the wagon when, from behind him, a cheery voice said, “God bless you, Lucien.”

He turned. “Oh, Good day to you, Father Pascal. Pardon me, if you please. I did not hear you come up. I am desolate.”

“There is no need to apologize, my son,” Father Pascal said with an amiable wave of his hand. “You are full of your own concerns, as any busy man would of course be.” He studied Galtier. His black eyes, though set rather close together, were clever and keen. “I pray your affairs march well?”

“They march well enough, thank you, Father.” Lucien would complain to his horse. He would complain to his wife. He would not complain to Father Pascal. These past months, he had even taken to editing his confessions, which he knew imperiled his soul but which helped keep his mortal flesh secure. Father Pascal was too friendly to the Americans to suit him.

“I am glad to hear that.” The priest salted his words with the lightest sprinkling of irony. Lucien sometimes thought he talked like a lawyer. Father Pascal went on, “I am glad to see you have survived a winter difficult in so many ways.”

“Yes, I have survived,” Galtier agreed.
I would have done better than that had the Americans whom you love so well not stolen everything that would have let me get through with something more than bare survival
.

“And your family, they are all thriving?” Father Pascal asked.

“We are well, thank you, yes.” No one had starved, no one had come down with tuberculosis or rheumatic fever. Was that thriving? Lucien didn’t know, not for certain. Whatever doubts he had, though, he would not admit to the priest.

Father Pascal raised his hands in a gesture of benediction. His palms were pink and plump and soft, with none of the calluses ridging Galtier’s hands. His nails were clean, and not a one of them broken. Truly, he lived a different life from that of a farmer.

“God be praised they are well,” he said, turning his clever eyes toward heaven for a moment. “And how do your prospects seem for the coming year?”

“Who can guess?” Lucien said with a shrug. “The course of our health, the course of the weather, the course of the war—all these things are in God’s hands, not mine.”
There. Now I have been pious for him. Maybe he will go away
.

But Father Pascal did not go away. “In God’s hands. Yes. We are all in God’s hands. The course of the war—who can guess the course of the war? But then, who would have guessed a year ago the Americans would be here?”

“You are right in that regard, Father,” Galtier said. Some priests might have compared the coming of the Americans to the Ten Plagues God had visited upon the Egyptians. Father Pascal didn’t. Every line on his chubby, well-fed face said he was content with the military government.

Maybe Lucien let some of that thought show on his own face: a mistake. Father Pascal said, “I am but a humble religious, a priest of God. Who the secular ruler over my parish may be is not my concern.”

Father Pascal was a great many things, but humble was none of them. Was he lying, or did he think of himself so? Galtier couldn’t tell. “Certainly, Father, I understand,” he said, still seeking a polite way out of this meeting.

“I am so glad you do,” the priest said heartily, laying one of those smooth, well-manicured hands on Lucien’s arm. “For too many people, impartiality is often mistaken for its opposite. Do you believe it, I am often accused of favoring the Americans?”

Yes, I believe that. I have good reason to believe that
. “What a pity,” Galtier said, but he could not bring himself to shake off Father Pascal’s hand, climb into the wagon, and get away as fast as he could. That might arouse suspicion, too.

“If you should hear this vicious lie, I beg of you, give it no credit,” Father Pascal said, with such earnestness in his voice that for a moment Lucien wondered whether what everyone said was wrong. But then the priest continued, “Should you hear such calumnies, my son, I would be in your debt if you would be generous enough to inform me who has spoken them, that I may pray for the salvation of his soul.”

“Of course, Father,” Lucien said. Clocks in the church towers began chiming eleven, which gave him the excuse he needed. “Father, forgive me, but I have a long ride back to my farm, and the hour is later than I thought.”

“I would not keep you. Go with God.” Smiling, sleek, doing ever so well under the new regime, Father Pascal went on down the street with the determined strides of a man who has important places to go, important things to do. He nodded to two American soldiers and then to an old woman in mourning black.

“Does he think me a simpleton, a certain?” Lucien asked his horse when they were well out of Rivière-du-Loup and the animal’s ears were the only ones that could hear. “Tell me who is saying bad things about me and I will pray for him, he says. He will pray, by God: pray that the Americans catch the poor fellow. And he will tell the American commandant, to help make his prayers come true. What do you think of that, my old?”

The horse did not answer. The Lord had not chosen to do for it as He had once for Balaam’s ass.

To Lucien’s silent, patient audience of one, he went on, “A simpleton? A cretin? No, he thinks me worse than that. He thinks me a collaborator, as he is himself. And this, this is what I think of him.” He leaned over the side of the wagon and spat in the dirt. The very idea offended him. Why would anyone collaborate with the Americans?

Whenever Scipio went to Cassius’ cottage, he went with fear and trembling in his heart. The fear was not a simple one, which only made it tougher to deal with. Half the time, he was afraid the mistress had found out what he was doing and that white patrollers—or maybe white soldiers—with rifles and bayonets and dogs with long sharp teeth were on his trail. The other half, he was afraid Cassius and his fellow would-be revolutionaries had somehow divined he was not heart and soul with them in their Red fervor, and that they were going to get rid of him because of that.

Sometimes, too, he carried both fears at once. In odd moments, he tried to figure out which was deeper, more compelling. It was like trying to decide whether you’d rather be hanged or shot—
just like that
, he thought uncomfortably. When all your choices were bad, did worse matter?

Here was the cottage. He felt conspicuous coming out to the huts in his fancy butler’s livery, though he’d been doing it for years. He’d been passing a good deal of time in Cassius’ cottage for years, too. He kept telling himself no one should notice anything amiss. Making himself believe it was harder. Never till the previous fall had he done the kinds of things in this cottage he was doing now.

He knocked. “That you, Kip?” came the question from within: Cassius’ voice.

“This me,” Scipio agreed, swallowing the misery he dared not show.

The door opened. There stood Cassius. “Come in wid we,” he said, smiling, slim, strong, dangerous as a water moccasin in the swamps. “Set a spell. We talk about things, you ’n’ me.”

“We do dat,” Scipio said, and stepped into the cabin. He never saw anyone there but the people who had been reading
The Communist Manifesto
together the night he’d found out they weren’t just laborers but Reds. That made sense; the less he knew, the less he could betray.

“Wet yo’ whistle?” Cassius asked, and pointed to a jug of com whiskey sitting up on the mantel.

Scipio started to shake his head, but found himself nodding instead. Cassius handed him the jug. He took a long pull. The raw, illegal whiskey ran down his throat like a river of fire and exploded in his belly.

The woman named Cherry said, “You he’p we learn dese prayers, Kip?” She handed him a paperbound book with an orange cover. The printing on that cover did indeed proclaim it a tract, just as the blue-covered book that had got him into this mess had said it was a hymnbook. You couldn’t tell a book by its cover, though, not in Cassius’ cottage you couldn’t.

Island and a couple of other people did start to sing hymns, in case anybody was snooping around outside. Under cover of their racket, Cassius sat down by Scipio at the rickety table in his cottage and bent over the book with the orange cover with him. The hunter’s finger pointed out a passage. “Read dat,” he said.

Obediently, Scipio’s eyes went back and forth.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital
, he read.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration
.

“What you think o’ that there?” Cassius asked.

“All fit in wid everything else,” Scipio answered. “Sound like de trut’.” He almost slipped out of the dialect of the Congaree; the words he’d just read did not fit in with that ignorant speech.

Cassius’ finger—scarred, callused—found another place. “Now you read dat.”

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same
word
we do not all mean the same
thing, Scipio read.
With some, the word means for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and with the product of his labor. With others, the same word means for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. The fullness of time, I am convinced, will prove to the world which is the true definition of the word, and my earnest hope remains that the United States of America shall yet lead the way in the proving
.

“Who write this?” Scipio asked. A lot of what he’d read here had the taste of being translated from a foreign language. Not this; it was simple and direct and powerful, English as it was meant to be written. One of the things he’d acquired serving Anne Colleton, and which he discovered he could not simply abandon, was a sense of style.

Cassius’ eyes gleamed with amusement. “Same fellow write the other.”

Scipio gave the hunter a dirty look. Cassius enjoyed leading him around by the nose, the same way he enjoyed all reversals and practical jokes. Cassius also enjoyed having an intellectual advantage on him. Scipio had never believed Cassius did much thinking at all. He hadn’t even known the hunter could read. He’d turned out to be wrong. Cassius’ thought was anything but wide-ranging, but in its track it ran deep.

Patiently, Scipio asked the next question. “And who that is? Not them Marx and Engels fellers, I bet.”

Everybody looked at him. When your thought ran in a narrow track, and ran deep in that track, climbing up and peering over the edge became suspicious. These Reds despised the way all the white folks in the Confederate States thought alike. But if any of their own number presumed to deviate from their doctrine, he got in just as much trouble, maybe more.

“Why for you say dat?” Cherry demanded. She looked as if she wanted to drop Scipio in the Congaree swamp right then and there.

He wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He’d wished that a lot of times around these people. But, since he hadn’t, he had to answer the question: “It ain’t wrote like t’other stuff I read.”

Cassius laughed. “Got we a
per
fesser here. But is he
dat
smart?” He shook his head. “No, or he know who do dat work.” Unlike a lot of jokers, he knew when to cut a joke short, as he did now. “These words wrote by Abraham Lincoln.”

“Lincoln? Do Jesus!” Scipio thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Should cipher that out my own self.”

“He see the truth early on,” Cassius said. “He say that first one while he president of the USA, an’ de second one years after, in Montana Territory.”

“Do Jesus!” Scipio said again, impressed. Lincoln had served only one term as president of the United States; he’d been unceremoniously booted out of office after the Confederacy broke away from the USA. But he hadn’t left politics even then. He’d led most of the Republicans into union with the Socialist Party after the Second Mexican War. “No wonder he sound like one o’ we.”