Breakthroughs (75 page)

With that cheery prediction ringing in his ears, Pinkard marched with the men with whom he’d been through so much toward the nearest railhead. It was, he realized, the last time he would ever march with them. He tried to sort out how he felt about that. He wouldn’t miss marching, or the trenches, or the horror that went with war. The men, though, and the comradeship—those he would miss. He wondered if he would ever know their like back in Birmingham.

He kicked at the dirt. He’d thought he had that kind of comradeship with Bedford Cunningham, and what was left there? Dust and ashes, nothing more. After Bedford and Emily had let him down, could he ever trust anybody again? He wasn’t going to hold his breath.

He did hold his breath when the company got to the train. Almost all the cars were boxcars stenciled with the words
36 MEN, 8 HORSES.
They’d held a lot of horses lately; the stink made that plain. He clambered up into a car and made himself as comfortable as he could on none-too-fresh straw. After all the cars were filled, the train headed east. By the way the engine coughed and wheezed, it, like the boxcars, was what remained after all the better rolling stock had been used in more important places.

Nobody bothered feeding the soldiers or giving them water. Pinkard emptied his canteen and ate the tortillas and the chunk of sausage he had with him. After that was gone, he got hungrier and hungrier and thirstier and thirstier till, some time in the middle of the night, the train pulled into Fort Worth.

He’d fallen into an uneasy, unpleasant doze by then, and woke with a start. At the station, men shouted through megaphones: “Check the signboards! Find the train heading toward your hometown and get aboard! Men in uniform travel free, this week only!”

Amid handclasps and good-luck wishes and promises to keep in touch, the company broke apart. Jeff found a signboard and discovered, to his surprise, that a train that would stop in Birmingham was leaving early in the morning. He found the right platform after a couple of false starts and settled down to wait.

He hadn’t been there more than a couple of minutes before a woman came up to him and snapped, “If you men hadn’t been a pack of yellow cowards, you would have whipped those damnyankees.” She stomped off before he could answer. It was, he decided, a good thing he’d had to turn in his Tredegar. Otherwise, he might have answered her with a bullet.

Had he had the rifle, he might have shot eight or ten people, mostly women, by the time his train pulled up to the station. Everyone who spoke to him seemed to think he was personally responsible for losing the war. He boarded a second-class passenger car with nothing but relief. It didn’t end there, though. About half the people on the car were eastbound soldiers like him. The civilians who filled the other half of the seats showered them with abuse.

And the abuse got worse the farther east the train went. Every time a soldier got off and a civilian took his place, the abuse got worse. The farther from the front the train went, the more convinced people were that the war should have been won, and won in short order, too.

One heckler, a man who had plainly never seen the war at first hand, went too far. A soldier got up, knocked him cold with one punch, and said, “We might not’ve licked the damnyankees, but I sure as hell licked you.” After that, the rude remarks diminished, but even then they did not stop.

The train pulled into the Birmingham station just over a day after it set out from Fort Worth. No one sat close to Pinkard when he got on the trolley that would take him out to the factory housing by the Sloss Works. Maybe that was because he still wore his uniform. Maybe, too, it was because he’d had no chance to bathe since coming out of the line.

He walked from the trolley stop toward his house. He felt as if he were heading toward the doctor’s, and likely to be diagnosed with a deadly disease. He tried the front door. It was locked. Emily had gone to work, though how long she’d keep her munitions-plant job was anyone’s guess. He had a key in his trouser pocket—about the only thing he did have with him from when he’d gone into the Army. He let himself in. (He wouldn’t get that diagnosis till she came home.)

Doing nothing much felt strange and good. He took hot water from the stove’s reservoir and bathed and put on a shirt and trousers he found in the closet. They hung loosely on him; he’d lost weight. He got cold chicken out of the icebox, then read an old
Richmond Review
: so old, one of the articles talked about how to drive back the Yankees. Laughing bitterly, he tossed the magazine aside.

At last, the front door opened. Emily stared at him. “Jeff!” she exclaimed, and then, “Darling!”

Was there too much hesitation between the one word and the other? Pinkard didn’t get the chance to think much about that. His wife threw herself into his arms. They tightened around her. He’d never stopped wanting her, even though…

He didn’t get the chance to think about that, either. Her kiss made him dizzy. “Thank God you’re home,” she breathed in his ear. “Thank God you’re safe. Everything’s going to be fine now, just fine.” Her voice went low and throaty. “I’ll show you how fine.” She led him back toward the bedroom. He went willingly, even gladly. That would do for now. Later?

“I’ll just have to find out about later, that’s all,” Jeff muttered.

“What did you say, darling?” Emily was already getting out of her clothes.

“Never mind,” he said. “It’ll keep. It’ll keep till later.”

Sam Carsten sighed. The exhalation hurt. His lips were even more sunburned than the rest of him. They cracked and bled at any excuse or none. He’d filled out the forms for every kind of cream alleged to help; the pharmacist’s mates were all sick of the sight of him. He was sick of the baked-meat sight of himself. As usual, none of the creams did the slightest good against the onslaughts of the tropic sun.

“God damn Dom Pedro IV to hell and gone,” he said. “Stinking son of a bitch should have stayed out of the war.”

Vic Crosetti laughed at him. “You’re more worried about your hide than you are about licking the limeys.”

“Ever since the
Dakota
came up into Brazilian waters, my hide’s what’s been taking the licking,” Carsten said. “And we haven’t fought the Royal Navy or even seen more than a couple of British freighters. Waste of time, anybody wants to know what I think of the whole business.”

Crosetti laughed harder than ever. “Yeah, I’m sure Admiral Fiske is gonna call you up into officers’ country any second now, so he can find out what’s on your mind. He couldn’t’ve run the flotilla without you till now, right?”

“Makes sense to me,” Sam said. Crosetti grimaced at him. He was about to go on when his ears caught a distant buzzing. He searched the heavens, then pointed. “That’s an aeroplane. Now, God damn it, is it one of ours or one of theirs?”

“Escorts ain’t shooting at it, so I guess it’s one of ours,” Crosetti said. “Hope to Jesus it’s one of ours, anyways.”

“Me too.” Carsten kept watching, squinting, his eyes half shut against the bright sky, till he could make out the eagles and crossed swords under the wings of the aeroplane. He breathed easier then. “Aeroplanes,” he said. “Who would have thought, when the war started, they’d matter so much?”

“Bunch of damn nuisances, is what they are,” Crosetti said as this one splashed into the tropical Atlantic a few hundred yards from the
Dakota
and taxied across the water toward the battleship.

“They’re sure as hell nuisances when they spot us or strafe us,” Sam said. “But they couldn’t do a quarter of what they’re doing now back in 1914. I bet they keep right on getting better, too.”

“I think everybody on the
Dakota
except maybe Admiral Fiske has listened to you go on like this,” Crosetti said with exaggerated patience. “You like ’em so goddamn much, go and get yourself a pair of wings after the war’s done.”

“Don’t want wings,” Carsten said. “I like being a sailor just fine. But I like aeroplanes, too. Look at that, Vic—isn’t that bully?” The
Dakota
’s crane was hauling the flying machine out of the water and up on deck.

Crosetti yawned. “It’s boring, is what it is. I think everything about aeroplanes is boring till they start dropping bombs. Then they scare the shit out of me.”

“No, that’s not boring,” Sam agreed. “Tell you something else, though—I’d sooner be bored.”

Later that day, the
Dakota
and the flotilla with her, which had been lazing along at ten or twelve knots, suddenly changed course toward the northeast and put on speed. Carsten grunted, waiting for the klaxons to cry out the orders to battle station. One of the other aeroplanes from the flotilla must have spotted a British convoy. He looked forward to knocking it to pieces.

Then rumors started flying: rumors that it wasn’t a convoy after all, but a good-sized chunk of the Royal Navy. Sam didn’t like hearing that for beans. He’d fought the Royal Navy before, in the tropical Pacific, and had high respect for what the limeys could do. He’d had a lot more of the U.S. Navy sailing along beside him then, too. If they’d run up against a major British fleet, they would regret it as long as they lived, which might not be long.

When the klaxons did begin to hoot, running toward the forward starboard sponson was almost a relief. Once he started slamming shells into the breech of the five-inch gun, he’d be too busy to worry. Whatever happened after that just happened—he couldn’t do anything about it.

Hiram Kidde put that same thought into words: “Now we smash ’em—or else it’s the other way around.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Well, if they smash us, I hope to God we at least hurt them. We can afford the losses and they can’t, not fighting us and Kaiser Bill both.”

“I’ll die for my country if I have to,” Kidde said, “but I’d sooner live for it.” He puffed out his chest. “Where the hell else are the United States going to find a better chief gunner’s mate?”

“Under any flat rock, I expect,” Carsten answered, which won him a glare.

Commander Grady looked into the sponson. “It is the Royal Navy,” he announced. “If the flyboy who spotted them had it straight, they’ve got a force about the same size as ours.”

“That’s great,” Luke Hoskins muttered. “They’ll sink all of us, and we’ll sink all of them. Last one standing wins.”

“Why should this be any different than anything else in the war?” Sam whispered. Hoskins chuckled and shrugged.

Hiram Kidde peered through the sponson’s vision slit. “I see smoke,” he said, and then, “Jesus, if I see smoke from down here, the fire-control boys up at the top of the mast have been seeing it the past five minutes. And if they can see it, the big guns can hit it. Why the hell aren’t they shooting?”

As if to answer his question, the klaxons wailed once more. Sam dug a finger in his ear, wondering if that ear were playing tricks on him. “Was that the all-clear?” he asked, not believing what he’d heard.

“Sure as hell was,” Hoskins said.

“Why are they sounding the all-clear, though?” “Cap’n” Kidde demanded. “The enemy’s in sight, for Christ’s sake.” He took off his cap and scratched his head. “And why the hell aren’t the limeys shooting at us?”

Somebody ran shouting down the corridor. The shout held no words, only joy. Sam’s brother-in-law had shouted like that when his wife, Sam’s older sister, was delivered of a boy. “What the hell is going on?” he asked, though he didn’t think anyone would have the answer.

But someone did. When Commander Grady came into the sponson, he looked as exalted as the other sailor had sounded. “Boys, we just got it on the wireless telegraph from Philadelphia,” he said. “England has asked the Kaiser and Teddy Roosevelt for an armistice.”

“It’s over,” Carsten whispered, hardly believing his own words. To help see if they were, if they could have been, true, he repeated them, louder this time: “It’s over.” Nobody called him a liar. Nobody said he was crazy. Little by little, almost in spite of himself, he began to believe.

“Maybe not quite over,” Commander Grady said. “There’s still the Japs, out in the Pacific. But hell, you’re right, Carsten: that scrap is liable to peter out by itself. We’ve shot at each other, but they haven’t taken anything of ours and we haven’t taken anything of theirs. Shouldn’t be too hard to patch up a peace.”

Sam nodded. “Yes, sir. And they won’t have any big reason to fight us any more, either, now that all their allies have thrown in the sponge.”

“That’s right.” Grady nodded, too. “Matter of fact, if I were England and France, I’d worry about Hong Kong and Indochina and maybe Singapore, too. If the Japs want ’em bad enough, they’ll fall into their hands like ripe fruit.” He brought his mind back to the here-and-now. “And, since we have an armistice, you men are dismissed from your posts here.”

“Sir, since we’ve won, are we going to head back to the States?” Hiram Kidde asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that, not yet,” Grady replied. “I hope so, but that’s just me talking, not Admiral Fiske or Philadelphia. Go on up topside, boys. Take a look at the limeys we didn’t have to fight.”

For once, Carsten was glad to go up on deck: the glow of victory, the glow of peace ahead, made him forget about the glow of sunburn. Shading his eyes with a hand, he peered across the Atlantic at the Royal Navy force whose government had finally had to yield. The longer he looked, the gladder he was that the wireless telegraph had brought word when it had. The enemy force looked large and formidable.

In an odd way, he felt sorry for the Englishmen aboard those warships. They’d been top dogs for a hundred years and then some. Coming back to the pack would hurt them a lot. He wondered who the top dog was now: the United States or Germany? He looked east, toward Europe. Wouldn’t that be an interesting fight?

He shrugged. However interesting it was, he didn’t think it would happen any time soon. Teddy Roosevelt and the Kaiser had just won a war together. They’d take a while to pick up the pieces afterwards. Maybe they’d even stay friends while they were doing it. He hoped so.

One by one, the Royal Navy ships turned away from the U.S.-Chilean-Brazilian flotilla and steamed off toward the northeast, toward Britain. Sam wondered what would happen to them there. Would the limeys get to keep them, or would they have to surrender them to Germany and the USA? That wasn’t for him to decide; the boys in striped trousers would have to sort it out.