acquiescence. But then, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, in Dowling's view, had more brains in her fingernail than her illustrious husband did in his head.
The train proved splendid. Dowling wondered if the Pullmans and dining car had been borrowed from a wealthy capitalist to transport Custer in splendor-and he himself got only a reflection of the splendor Custer had to be enjoying to the fullest. As he ate another bite of beefsteak in port-wine sauce, he reflected that life could have been worse.
A brass band waited on the platform as the locomotive pulled into the Broad Street station-and not just any brass band, but one led by John Philip Sousa. Next to the band stood Theodore Roosevelt. Dowling watched Custer's face when he saw the president. The two men had been rivals since they'd combined to drive the British out of Montana Territory at the end of the Second Mexican War. Each thought the other had got more credit than he deserved-they'd quarreled about it in Nashville, as the Great War was ending.
Now, though, Roosevelt bared his large and seemingly very numerous teeth in a grin of greeting. 'Welcome to Philadelphia, General!' he boomed, and advanced to take Custer's hand as the band blared out 'The Stars and Stripes Forever' and photographic flashes went off like artillery rounds. 'I trust you will do me the honor of riding with me at the head of the Remembrance Day parade tomorrow.'
Dowling could not remember the last time he had seen George Custer speechless, but Custer was speechless now, speechless for half a minute. Then, at last, he took Roosevelt's hand in his and huskily whispered, 'Thank you, Mr. President.' Beside him, Libbie (who thought even less of Roosevelt than he did) dropped the president a curtsy.
And Abner Dowling felt something that might almost have been a tear in his eye. Roosevelt had done Custer honor, not the other way round. President Blaine had instituted Remembrance Day at the close of the Second Mexican War as a memorial to the humiliation of the United States by their foes. It had always been a day of mourning and lamentation and looking ahead to fights unwon.
And now the fight was over, and it had been won. Instead of lying prostrate in defeat, the United States stood triumphant. With Remembrance Day come round again, the country could see that all the sacrifices its citizens had made for so many years were not in vain. Flags wouldn't fly upside down in distress any more.
Custer asked, 'Mr. President, where will you seat my wife? That I have come to this moment is in no small measure due to her.'
'Thank you, Autie,' Libbie said. Dowling thought Custer dead right in his assessment. He hadn't thought Custer perceptive enough to realize the truth in what he said. Every once in a while, the old boy could be surprising. Trouble was, so many of the surprises proved alarming.
'I had in mind placing her in the motorcar directly behind ours,' Roosevelt answered, 'and putting your adjutant with her, if that be satisfactory to you all. Lieutenant Colonel Dowling has given his country no small service.'
Dowling came to stiff attention and saluted. 'Thank you very much, sir!' His heart felt about to burst with pride.
'The people will want to look at the general and the president, so I am perfectly content to ride behind,' Libbie said. In public, she always put Custer and his career ahead of his own desires. In private, as Dowling had seen, she kept a wary eye on Custer because his own eye, even at his advanced age, had a tendency to wander.
'Good. That's settled.' Roosevelt liked having things settled especially his way. 'We'll put you folks up for the night, and then tomorrow morning… tomorrow morning, General-'
Custer presumed to interrupt his commander-in-chief: 'Tomorrow morning, Mr. President, we celebrate our revenge on the world!' It was a typically grandiose Custerian phrase, the one difference being that Custer, this time, was inarguably right. Theodore Roosevelt laughed and nodded and clapped his hands with glee. The victory the United States had won looked to be big enough to help heal even this longtime estrangement.
Up until the war, the Hindenburg Hotel had been called the Lafayette. Whatever you called it, it was luxury beyond any Dowling had ever known, surpassing the train on which he'd come to Philadelphia to the same degree the train surpassed a typical wartime billet. He feasted on lobster, drank champagne, bathed in a tub with golden faucets, plucked a fine Habana from a humidor on the dresser, and slept on smooth linen and soft down. There were, he reflected as he drifted toward that splendid sleep, people who lived this life all the time. It was enough to make a man wish he were one of the elect-either that, or to make him a Socialist.
The next morning, he was whisked along with the Custers on a whirlwind inspection of the units that would take part in the parade. He endured rather than enjoying most of the inspection: he'd seen his share of soldiers. But some of the barrels and their crews were from the First Army brigade Colonel Morrell had assembled and commanded. They greeted Custer and Dowling with lusty cheers.
Dowling thought those cheers lusty, at any rate, till the parade began and he heard the Philadelphians. Their roar was like nothing he had ever imagined. It was as if they were exorcising more than half a century of shame and disgrace and defeat-Lee had occupied Philadelphia at the end of the War of Secession- in this grandest of all grand moments.
Some women in the crowd looked fierce as they waved their flags-thirty-five stars, now that Kentucky was back in the USA, and the new state of Houston would make it thirty-six on the Fourth of July. God only knew what would happen with Sequoyah and with the land conquered from Canada. Abner Dowling didn't, and didn't worry about it.
Other women, he saw, seemed on the point of ecstasy at what their country had finally achieved. Tears streamed down the faces of old men who remembered all the defeats and embarrassments, of boys who hadn't been old enough to go and fight, and of men of fighting age who had given of themselves to make this parade what it was. Even a young man wearing a hook in place of his left hand wept unashamed at this Remembrance Day to be remembered forever.
In the motorcar ahead, Custer and Roosevelt took turns rising to accept the plaudits of the crowd. And the crowd did cheer each time one of them rose. But the crowd would have cheered anyhow. More than anything else, it was cheering itself.
Libbie Custer leaned close to Dowling and said, 'Lieutenant Colonel, I thank God that He spared me to see this day and rejoice at what we have done.'
'Yes, ma'am,' he said, and then, half to himself, 'And what do we do next?'
III
Having been beached, Roger Kimball, like so many of his comrades, was making the painful discovery that very little he'd learned at the Confederate Naval Academy in Mobile suited him to making a living in the civilian world. He was a first-rate submarine skipper, but there were no civilian submarines. The C.S. Navy was no longer allowed to keep submersibles, either; otherwise, he would have stayed in command of the Bonefish.
He had a fine understanding of the workings of large Diesel engines. That also did him very little good. Outside the Navy, there were next to no large Diesel engines, nor small ones, either. He understood gasoline and steam engines, too, but so did plenty of other people. None of them seemed willing to sacrifice his own position for Kimball's sake.
'Miserable bastards, every last one of'em,' he muttered as he trudged through the streets of Charleston, South Carolina. Then he laughed at himself. Had he had a steady job, he wouldn't have let go of it, either. Maybe he should have headed down to South America, as he'd told Anne Colleton he might.
A lot of former Navy men were trudging the streets of Charleston these days, most of them overqualified for the jobs that turned up-when any jobs turned up, which wasn't often. Kimball kept money in his pocket partly because he wasn't too proud for any kind of work that came along-having grown up on a hardscrabble farm in Arkansas, he was no pampered Confederate aristocrat-and partly because he was a damn fine poker player.
He walked into a saloon called the Ironclad. 'Let me have a beer,' he told the barkeep, and laid a ten-dollar banknote on the bar.
He got back a beer and three dollars. Sighing, he laid some briny sardellen on a slice of cornbread from the free-lunch counter and gobbled them down. Pickled in brine, the little minnows were so salty, they couldn't help
