Breakthroughs (67 page)

It is better to marry than to burn.
So Paul had said in First Corinthians. To hear the same advice from Ben Carlton was jolting; few people struck McSweeney as being less like Paul than did the longtime and stubbornly inept company cook. “Do I tell you how to arrange your life, Carlton?” he demanded.

“Only when you open your mouth,” Ben answered. “Sir.”

McSweeney gave him a dirty look. “You are godless,” he said. “You have made my life a trial since the moment we began serving together. Why God has not called you to Him to judge you for your many sins, I cannot imagine. By failing to call you, He proves Himself a God of mercy.”

“Reckon you’re right about that, Captain McSweeney, sir,” Carlton said, but the gleam in his eyes warned that he did not expect to be taken altogether seriously. “Maybe He figures that, with you riding herd on me, He doesn’t have to do any nagging of His own.”

“Get out of my sight,” McSweeney snarled. Then he held up a hand. “No. Wait. Get down.” Carlton was already throwing himself flat. No more slowly than McSweeney, he heard the screech of cloven air and, intermixed with it, the roar of a river monitor’s big gun.

The roar of the shell was like the end of the world. Face down in the black, sweet-smelling mud—McSweeney could tell by his nose how rich the soil was—he felt the world shake as the round thudded home. Splinters hissed and squealed past overhead. Dirt pattered down on him and Carlton both. The Rebs hadn’t missed them by much. The crash of the shell left his ears stunned, battered.

Dimly, as if from far away, he heard Carlton shouting, “I hate those goddamn fucking monitors—unless they’re ours!”

Foul language aside, McSweeney agreed with all his heart. That was why he had sent one of them to its no doubt less than heavenly reward. The U.S. Army still had not brought up guns that could match the monitors’ firepower. As a sergeant, he would have guessed about why that was, and only his strong belief would have kept his guesses from being profane. As an officer, he heard official explanations in place of guesses. The only trouble was, the explanations changed from day to day.

Once, he’d been solemnly told that all the really large-caliber cannon were in service east of the Mississippi. A few days later, he heard that the roads down from Missouri were too bad to let the Army move super-heavy cannon down as far as Memphis. The roads
were
bad. He knew that. Whether they were
that
bad, or whether the other half of the explanation was true, he did not know. He did know the U.S. artillery that had made it down opposite Memphis could not match what the Rebels’ river monitors carried.

Another shell came whistling down out of the sky. This one struck even closer than had the first. The force of the explosion sent him tumbling along the ground. He felt something wet on his upper lip. When he raised a hand, he discovered his nose was bleeding. If he’d been breathing in rather than out, he might have had his lungs torn to shreds inside his chest, and died without a mark on his body except blood from his nose. He’d seen that happen. After almost three years, he’d seen everything happen.

Ben Carlton was screaming. Because his ears had taken a beating, McSweeney needed longer to realize that than he would have otherwise. He crawled toward Carlton, then stopped and grimaced and shook his head. A shell fragment had gutted the company cook like a trout. His innards spilled into the mud. It put McSweeney in mind of the last time he’d butchered a calf.

“Oh, Mother!” Carlton wailed. “Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus fucking Christ!”

That was not the way McSweeney would have called on the Son of God, but he did not criticize, not here, not now. As he took a better look at Carlton’s wound, he became certain the cook was beyond his criticism, though not beyond that of a higher Judge. Not only were his guts spilled on the ground, they were also gashed and torn. If he didn’t die of blood loss or shock, a wound infection would finish him more slowly but no less surely.

He wasn’t in shock now, but too horribly aware of what had happened. “Do something, God damn you!” he shrieked at Gordon McSweeney.

McSweeney looked at his contorted face, looked at the wound, and grimaced again. He knew what needed doing. He’d done it before for wounded comrades. It never came easy, not even for him. He drew the trench knife he wore on his belt and showed it to Carlton. The wounded man was awake and aware and deserved the choice.

“Yes,” he groaned. “Oh, God, yes. It hurts so bad.”

McSweeney got up on his knees, used one hand to tilt up Ben Carlton’s chin, and cut his throat. His comrade’s eyes held him for a few seconds, then looked through him toward eternity.

Looking at Carlton, McSweeney hardly noted yet another shell screaming in. Had he noticed, it would have mattered little. The shell burst only a couple of feet away. For an instant, everything was gold-glowing light. Then it was dark, darkness absolute. And then Gordon McSweeney found out whether or not everything in which he had so fervently believed was true.

Richmond shocked Anne Colleton. She hadn’t been in the capital since the night of the first big U.S. bombing raid, most of a year before. It had taken a beating then; she’d seen as much as she made her way to the train station. But that had been a house gone here, a shop gone there, and a few piles of rubble in the street.

Now, after months of nighttime visits from U.S. bombing aeroplanes, Richmond was a charred skeleton of its former self. Whole blocks had been burnt out. Hardly a building had escaped getting a chunk bitten out of it. Windows with glass in them were rare enough to draw notice. More were boarded over; still more gaped empty.

“Things have been hard, sure enough,” the cab driver told her as he pulled up in front of Ford’s Hotel. “Last time they were this hard, I was a little boy, and the Yankees were comin’ up the James instead of down from the north.” He wore a neat white beard, at which he plucked now. “We druv ’em back then, but I’ll be switched if I know how we’re going to do it this time.”

A colored attendant took charge of her bags. When she registered, she smiled to find her room was on the same floor as it had been during her last visit. The smile held a hint of cat’s claws; she’d kept Roger Kimball out of her bed then, much to his annoyance.

After she’d unpacked, she telephoned the president’s residence. The aide with whom she talked seemed surprised she’d come into Richmond so nearly on time, but said, “Yes, Miss Colleton, the president looks forward to seeing you. You’re booked for tomorrow at ten. I trust that will be acceptable.”

“I suppose so,” she answered. “Or will we have surrendered by then?” The flunky spluttered. Anne said, “Never mind. That will be fine.” She hung up in the middle of an expostulation.

Supper that evening wasn’t what it had been the year before, either. “Sorry, ma’am,” the Negro waiter said. “Cain’t hardly get food like we used to.” He lowered his voice. “A couple o’ the bes’ chefs went an’ joined the Army, too.”

Anne sighed. “I wish I’d known that before I ordered. I think this so-called beefsteak would neigh if I stuck a fork in it.”

“No, ma’am, that really an’ truly is beef,” the waiter insisted. He dropped his voice to a whisper again: “But if you stick a fork in the rabbit with plum sauce, it’ll meow, sure as I’m standin’ here. Roof rabbit, nothin’ else but.” Having thought about ordering the rabbit, Anne let out a sigh of relief.

U.S. bombers pounded Richmond again that night. Anne grabbed a robe and went down to the cellar of the Ford Hotel, where she spent several crowded, uncomfortable, frightened hours. Even in the cellar, she could hear the
crump!
of bursting bombs, the barking roar of the antiaircraft guns, and the seemingly endless buzzing snarl of aeroplanes overhead. She realized how isolated from the war she’d been in South Carolina. It left no one here untouched.

Just after she’d managed to fall asleep in spite of the racket, the all-clear sounded. She went back to her room and lay awake again for a long time before finally dropping off once more.

Ham and eggs the next morning tasted fine. The coffee was muddy and bitter, but strong enough to pry her eyes open, which counted for more. She walked outside, flagged a cab, and went up Shockoe Hill to the presidential residence.

Antiaircraft guns had sprouted on the lawn since her last visit. Holes—actually, they were more like craters—had sprouted in the lawn. Boards took the place of glass here as elsewhere in Richmond. Other than that, the mansion seemed undamaged, for which Anne was glad.

Inside, a flunky of higher grade than the one with whom she’d confirmed her appointment said, “Ma’am, the president will see you as soon as he finishes his meeting with the British minister.”

President Semmes stayed closeted with the British minister till nearly noon, too. Had he been with anyone else save perhaps the secretary of war, the delay would have offended her. But the British Empire and the Confederate States were the last of the Quadruple Entente still in the fight against the USA and Germany (Anne didn’t count Japan, and didn’t think she should—the Japanese were fighting more in their own interest than as allies of anyone else). It was only natural for them to take counsel together.

When the British minister left Semmes’ office and came out through the antechamber where she was sitting, she grimaced. His expression would have had to lighten to seem grim. He hurried past without looking at her. Without false modesty, she knew that any man who did that had a lot on his mind.

“The president will see you now,” the flunky said, appearing in the waiting room as if by magic.

“Thank you,” Anne said, and went into the office from which presidents of the Confederate States had led their nation from one success to another for better than half a century. Gabriel Semmes still led; where the success was to come from, however, Anne could not imagine.

Semmes seemed to have aged a decade since Anne had seen him the previous year. He was grayer and balder than he had been; his skin hung slack on his face, and dark shadows lay under his eyes. When he said, “Come in, Miss Colleton. Do come in,” his voice was an old man’s voice.

“Thank you, your Excellency,” Anne said, and then, as she sat, “Are things really so bad as that?”

“By no means.” President Semmes let out a gallows chuckle. “They are a great deal worse. The British Isles
will
starve—save, perhaps, that part of Ireland that has risen in revolution—and we
are
taking blows not even an elephant could hope to withstand for long.”

“But the truce in Tennessee is holding,” Anne said. “Why would Roosevelt let it hold if the United States weren’t also at the end of their tether?”

“So he can hammer harder at other fronts,” Semmes said. “So he can threaten us with starting up the war again there, too, if we do not lay down our arms on all fronts. If he does…” Semmes shook his head. “We could not hold the Yankees at the line of the Cumberland. I do wonder if we should be able to hold them at the line of the Tennessee.”

He shook his head again; Anne got the idea he wished he hadn’t said so much. “They’ve licked us, then,” she said. “Colored soldiers and all, they’ve licked us. We might as well not have bothered with them.”

“As it turned out, that is true,” Semmes said, “though they did buy us some extra time. Had Russia not collapsed, had France held out, our own circumstances would be very different. And then, when the Empire of Brazil stabbed England in the back…our Allies are in a bad way, Miss Colleton, even as we are.”

“We had better cut our losses, then, and get out of the fight with the best bargain we can make,” Anne said.

“For one thing, that would mean casting aside our allies once and for all,” the president answered. “For another, but for the cease-fire in Tennessee, I have seen no sign that the United States want to bargain. All they want is to rub our faces into the dirt. The men I have sent forth to treat with them leave me in no doubt as to how much they want to rub our faces in the dirt.”

“We did it to them twice,” Anne said, “and they’ve been burning for revenge since the Second Mexican War.”

“We’ve embarrassed them since, too,” Semmes said gloomily. “With Britain and France at our backs, we’ve been too strong for them to challenge, and so, up till now, we have for the most part had our own way.”

“Up till now,” Anne echoed. “
Can
we yield? Or do they aim to wipe us off the face of the earth? If they do, I already know how to use a rifle. Teaching the rest of the women in the CSA wouldn’t take long.”

“I admire your spirit, Miss Colleton,” the president said. “But we are not in the state we are in because of any want of spirit. We are in our present state because our allies have failed, and because our Negroes rose up against us, and most of all because the United States outweigh us by about two to one. They outweigh us and Canada combined, and they have been able to take advantage of it. I wish I had something more hopeful I could tell you.”

“We must never let this happen again,” Anne said.

“In principle, I agree with you,” Gabriel Semmes replied. “In practice…in practice, I fear, living up to that principle shall not be so easy. The Yankees will grow as a result of whatever peace they force upon us; we shall shrink correspondingly. They will not make it easy for us to gain redress for the grievances they leave us.”

“They waited fifty years and more for their revenge,” Anne said. “If we have to, we can do the same. But I hope and pray it will come sooner.”

“They also spent a lot of time and money preparing that revenge,” Semmes pointed out. “Can we do the same, under their watchful eye?” Just when Anne thought his manhood altogether quenched, he added, “Whether we can or not, I don’t know, but we shall have to try.”

“Yes,” Anne said. “I never understood what drove them to want the revenge so badly. Now I do. Nothing like losing to make you want to take back what you’ve lost and to get even with the fellow who took it from you.”

She thought of Jacob, gassed by the Yankees and murdered when the Negroes raised the red banner of revolution. She’d had some measure of revenge—not enough, but some—on the Reds. How could she avenge herself upon the United States of America?