'Don't hurry off,' Jacobs said. 'Mr. Pfeiffer — Lou-was telling me some thing very interesting. You might even want to hear it yourself. If you're not too busy, why don't you stay?'
'Well, all right,' Nellie said, a little surprised. She'd intended giving Mr. Jacobs some of the dirt she'd gleaned from the coffeehouse, and he had to know that. He wouldn't have wanted her to do it while anyone else was around. So why keep her here when she couldn't speak of what really mat tered? She shrugged. 'Go ahead, Mr. Pfeiffer.'
'I was just telling Hal here what a nuisance it is to try and keep pigeons in Washington these days,' Pfeiffer said. Hal — Nellie raised an eyebrow. Years across the street from Mr. Jacobs, and she'd never known his first name. His friend went on, 'The Rebs don't want anybody having birds these days. Pi geons aren't just pigeons, not to them. A pigeon can carry a message, too, so they've confiscated all the birds they could find.'
'But they haven't found all of them, eh, Lou?' Jacobs said.
Pfeiffer shook his head. He had a sly look to him that had nothing to do with his rather doughy features — more the glint in his eye, the angle at which he cocked his head. 'Not all of 'em, no. Not mine, for instance. Not some other people's, too. We've got an underground, you might say. We keep birds, but the Rebs don't know it. Makes life exciting, so to speak.' He set a finger by the side of his nose and winked.
A few months before, Nellie would have taken his jaunty talk at face value and not even thought to look below the surface. Now — Now she was convinced everything had unplumbed depths. 'That is interesting, Mr. Pfeiffer,' she said. She looked at him, then at Mr. Jacobs: a silent question.
Ever so slightly, the shoemaker nodded. He turned to Pfeiffer and started to laugh. 'You see, Lou? Not just a nice lady, but a clever one, too.'
'I see,' Pfeiffer said agreeably. 'I've thought so, from what you've said about her every now and then.'
That cleared up the last small doubt Nellie had had. 'Can I tell you some interesting things I've heard in the coffeehouse, Mr. Pfeiffer, or would you rather have me wait and tell Mr. Jacobs so he can tell you?'
'She is a clever lady,' Pfeiffer said, and then, to Nellie, 'You can tell me — eliminate the middleman.' He and Jacobs both wheezed laughter.
So Nellie, as if casually gossiping, told of the troop movements and other interesting bits of news she'd heard in the coffeehouse over the past couple of days. She got interrupted once, when a colored servant brought in a Confeder ate officer's boots for resoling. The Negro paid no attention to anything but his business, and was soon gone. Nellie finished her — report was the right word for it, she thought.
'Well, well,' Lou Pfeiffer said. 'Yes, I am glad I still keep pigeons, that I am. Thank you, Widow Semphroch.'
'Nellie, isn't it?' Mr. Jacobs said suddenly.
'That's right — Hal,' she answered, smiling at him. He smiled back. They'd knocked down a barrier, one they'd taken for granted but one that had been there for a long time. She smiled at Mr. Pfeiffer, too, partly for being what he was, partly for his help in making that barrier fall. 'Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back across the street and keep the Rebs in or der at the coffeehouse. A pleasure to have met you, Mr. Pfeiffer.'
'And you, Widow Semphroch,' Pfeiffer said as she went out the door.
When she got back into the coffeehouse, Edna discreetly beckoned her over. She went, curious to see what could make her daughter circumspect. In a low voice, Edna said, 'There was a man came in here askin' after you, Ma, and I didn't fancy his looks even a little, if you know what I mean.'
Fear leaped up and bit Nellie. The Rebs would have people hunting U.S. spies. 'What did he look like?' she asked, forcing herself to speak quietly, too.
'Old and ugly,' Edna answered with the callousness of youth. 'Either he ought to shave or else he ought to let his whiskers grow, one way or the other. Said his name was Bill or Phil or Pill or something like that.' She shrugged. It hadn't been important to her.
A chill ran through Nellie. That sounded altogether too much like Bill Reach to suit her. 'If he ever comes back, tell him I don't want his business here. If he doesn't like that, throw him out. I'm sure some of our customers would be delighted to help you do anything you ask.'
'Yeah, probably,' Edna said; she enjoyed being attractive to the Rebs. Her gaze sharpened. 'He's known you for a long time, this fellow, whoever he is, hasn't he?'
'Why do you say that?' Nellie asked, at the same time as she was think ing, Longer than you've been alive.
Edna gave back some of that thought: 'He said I looked just like you did when you were my age, maybe even younger. Did he know you way back then, Ma? That's a long time ago now.'
Don't I know it. Nellie made her shrug quiet, casual, easygoing. 'I knew a lot of men when I was a young lady.' And even more when I wasn't being a lady. 'I don't remember anybody named Phil or Pill, though.' She hoped her smile was disarming.
It wasn't disarming enough. 'How about somebody named Bill?' Edna said.
'A lot of Bills back then.' Nellie tried a small joke: 'Always a lot of bills, never enough money to pay 'em.'
'You're giving me the runaround, Ma.' Edna didn't raise her voice, but sounded very certain. She had a right to sound that way; a lifetime with her mother had made Nellie transparent to her. 'How well did you know this fel low, anyways? Did you…?' She wouldn't say it, but she was thinking it.
'None of your business,' Nellie hissed, and then, louder, 'Go serve that man there, would you? He wants himself filled up again.'
Edna glared at her, but went over to give the Confederate lieutenant an other cup of coffee. 'There you go, Toby,' she said, smiling a smile very close to the ones Nellie had once had to paste onto her own face.
'Thank you, Miss Edna,' Toby said. She put a little extra wiggle into her walk, too; the Reb's eyes followed her every inch of the way back behind the counter. Nellie wanted to grab her daughter and shake her or, better yet, pour a pitcher of iced coffee over her head.
And serving the Confederate hadn't distracted Edna or made her forget what she'd asked her mother. 'C'mon, Ma,' she said. 'Don't tell me you actually had a life back then?'
'Whatever I had back then, it wasn't very good,' Nellie said. 'All I'm try ing to do is keep you from going through the same things I did.'
Edna shrugged. 'You got through 'em, looks like, even if you're too goody-goody to talk about it now. You don't want me to have a good time, that's all. It ain't fair.'
Nellie sighed. They'd had this fight before. Likely they were going to go right on having it, too. 'You don't know what you're talking about,' Nellie said. That was true. It was also the problem. Edna didn't know, and was wild to find out. I won't let her, Nellie told herself fiercely. I won't.
Bremen, Kentucky, had been a coal-mining town before the U.S. First Army drove the Confederates out of it. Abner Dowling had no doubt the place had been grimy and ugly and smelly back in peacetime. Now it was grimy, ugly, doubly smelly thanks to so many dead horses nearby, and wrecked to boot. Given a choice, it was not where Dowling would have made First Army headquarters. He had not been given a choice.
'Dowling!' George Armstrong Custer shouted. His rasping, old man's voice put his adjutant in mind of the braying of the donkey in the fairy tale about the musicians of Bremen. Dowling had done plenty of braying himself, reading his nieces the fairy tale. They'd giggled wildly, back ten years before. 'Dowling!' Custer yelled again.
'Coming, sir,' Dowling said. Listening to a real donkey bray wasn't nearly so much fun as impersonating one. The major squeezed his bulk through the narrow doorway of the house Custer had taken over. He came to attention; Custer was a stickler for courtesy-from subordinates. 'What can I do for you, sir?'
'Bring me some coffee from the mess,' Custer said. 'Put some fuel in it before it gets here, too.'
'Yes, sir,' Dowling said resignedly. He turned to go. Custer didn't drink so much as some officers he'd known-but then, they hadn't been in command of whole Armies, either.
'Do you know,' Custer said, 'I hardly drank at all-no more than for medicinal purposes-till after we lost the Second Mexican War. No matter the renown I won in that last campaign, the thought of my beloved country having gone down to defeat at the hands of rebels and traitors and stabbed in the back by foreign foes twice in a generation's time was too much for me to bear. Since then, I have been known to indulge myself, as an anodyne if nothing else.'
'Yes, sir,' Dowling repeated. He didn't know whether the lieutenant general was telling the truth or not. He didn't much care, either. However Custer had first made the acquaintance of the brandy bottle, he'd since become
