Walk in Hell

Ford’s Hotel did right by its dinner spread. “Wouldn’t hardly know there’s a war on,” Kimball said happily, digging into almost fork-tender leg of lamb.

Anne Colleton stayed serious. “What do you think of President Semmes’bill?” she asked. She didn’t need to say which bill. Only one mattered now.

“I’m against it,” he answered firmly. “As long as we’re holding our own, or even anything close, we should go on doing what we’ve been doing. Far as I can see, we’re giving the darkies a kiss on the cheek, right after they tried to up and knock our heads off.”

She nodded, slowly. “Is that how most Navy men feel?”

Kimball knocked back the whiskey in his glass. “It’s not even the way my exec feels. All you hear these days is arguments.”

“What if we can’t win the war, can’t hope to win the war, if things keep on going as they have been?” Anne said. “Would you want to arm Negroes then?”

“Hung for a sheep or hung for a lamb, you mean?” He shrugged, unable to come up with a better answer. “If we’re that bad off, putting rifles in niggers’ hands won’t help us, far as I can see. And if we do that, and we lose anyhow, what will the country look like afterwards? Be a hell of a mess, begging your pardon-not that it isn’t already.”

“A point,” she said. “It may be the most serious point in opposition I’ve heard yet.” A colored waiter came up and cleared away plates. After a tutti-frutti ice, brandy, a cigar for Kimball and a couple of cigarettes for Anne, the waiter came back. “Charge this to my room,” she told him, and he dipped his head with practiced obsequiousness.

Roger Kimball’s hand had been going to his wallet. He scowled, angry that she’d accepted the bill before he had the chance. “I’m not broke-” he began.

“I know,” she answered, “but, for one thing, I invited you to supper, not the other way round, and, for another, I promise I have more money than you do; I know what naval officers make. It’s my pleasure, believe me.”

“Weren’t you the one talking about making your own way when we came in here?” he asked, unhappy still.

“I didn’t suggest annoying your friends by being stubborn when that’s plainly foolish,” she said, a touch of sharpness in her voice.

He subsided, looking for a word he’d heard a few times but had had little occasion to use. Gigolo, he thought. She’s made me her gigolo tonight. He seemed to have no choice but to accept that. Well, all right. Gigolos had privileges of their own. He remembered how she looked under that maroon silk, and how she felt, and how she tasted, too.

If the Ford Hotel boasted a house detective, he was good at making himself invisible. Kimball and Anne went up to her floor and walked down the richly carpeted hallway to her room without interference. She opened the door with her key, leaned forward to brush his lips with hers…and then said, “Good night, Roger. I hope you sleep well.”

It was not an invitation to come in. “What the devil-?” he said roughly. “We’ve been-”

“I know what we’ve been,” she answered. “We won’t be, not tonight. The very first time we met, you did a splendid job of seducing me.” Her eyes glinted, half amusement, half remembered anger of her own. “And so, tonight, no. Call it a lesson: never, ever take me for granted. Maybe another time, probably another time-but not tonight.”

He wasn’t that much bigger than she, but he knew he was stronger. With a lot of other women, he would have picked them up, thrown them on the bed, and taken what he wanted. If he tried that with her-even if he succeeded, because he knew she’d fight like a wildcat-he figured she was liable to stab him or shoot him as he left.

“You are a bitch,” he said, reluctantly admiring.

“I know.” She knew, all right, and she was proud of it.

He seized her, jerked her chin up, and kissed her, hard. He figured she’d fight that, too, but she didn’t. Her body molded itself against him. When the kiss broke, though, she pushed him away. She was laughing-and panting a little. So was he. “Thanks for supper,” he said, and tipped his hat. He strode down the hall toward the elevator without a backward glance.

Out on the sidewalk, a drunken artillery sergeant walked right into him. “Watch where you’re going, you goddamn medal-wearing son of a bitch,” the fellow snarled. By the way his mouth twisted, he was looking for a fight wherever he could find one.

Kimball didn’t feel like fighting, which, since he hadn’t got laid, surprised him. “I’m an officer,” he warned, meaning the sergeant would catch special hell if he fought with him.

“Watch where you’re going, you goddamn medal-wearing son of a bitch, sir,” the sergeant said.

Laughing, Kimball peeled off a five-dollar note he hadn’t spent at supper and pressed it into the noncom’s hand before that hand could close into a fist. The sergeant stared. “Go on, get drunker on me,” Kimball said. He slapped him on the back, then headed off to his barracks close by the James.

Jake Featherston gaped in owlish disbelief at the banknote that had magically appeared in his hand. Even if the fellow who’d given it to him was a Navy man, he had, until the grayback pressed it on him, wanted to smash his face: not only was he an officer, he was a decorated officer. Jake knew damn well he deserved to be an officer. He also knew he deserved several medals, not just one.

“And am I gonna get ’em?” he asked the empty air around him. “Sure I am-same time as I get promoted.” He laughed a loud, raucous, bitter laugh. He wasn’t holding his breath.

He ambled around Capitol Square, like a sailing ship tacking almost at random. That was how he felt, too. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just letting his feet and the crowds in the streets take him wherever they would. Half seriously, he saluted the statues of Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston in the square.

“They’d know how to take care of a soldier,” he muttered to himself. Muttering did no good. Complaining out loud did no good, either. He’d seen that when he went to Major Clarence Potter. Maybe if he walked into the Capitol itself and started screaming at congressmen and generals-

He shook his head, which made the world spin alarmingly. No good, no good. It was late. He didn’t know how late it was, but it was late. No congressmen working in the Capitol now, by Jesus. They’d all be in bed with their mistresses. And the generals…the generals would be in bed with Jeb Stuart, Jr. He laughed. The truth in that hurt, though. If the powers that be in the Confederate War Department hadn’t been sucking up to the father of his late, brave, stupid company commander, they would have given him his due. But they did suck up, they hadn’t given it to him, and they damn well never would.

“Bastards,” he said. “Sons of bitches.” The words were hot and satisfying in his mouth, the way the whiskey had been at that saloon-those saloons-earlier. Pretty soon, he figured he’d go looking for another saloon. He was sure he’d have no trouble finding one.

Around him, Richmond didn’t so much ignore the war as take it in stride. He wandered south and east, away from Capitol Square. Plenty of soldiers and sailors on leave clogged the sidewalks and the streets themselves, making people in buggies and motorcars yell at them to get out of the way. They didn’t want to get out of the way, not with so many women to look for, so many stores open so late, so many saloons…

Most of the men in civilian clothes were Negroes. Featherston glowered at them. They were out celebrating as hard as the white people. They had their nerve, he thought. Here white men went out to fight and die, and all the blacks had to do was stay home and have a high old time. Stories of lazy niggers his overseer father had told him ran through his head. He had no doubt every goddamn one of them was true, too.

A big buck in a sharp suit-too sharp for any Negro to deserve to wear-bumped into him. “Watch it, you ugly black bastard,” he snarled.

“Sorry, suh,” the Negro said, but he wasn’t sorry-Jake could see it in his eyes. If people had been paying better attention, the whole Red uprising would have been nipped in the bud. When the fellow didn’t get out of the way fast enough, Featherston shoved him, hard. The black’s hand closed into a fist as he staggered.

A fierce joy lit Jake. “So you want to play, do you?” he said genially, and gave the black buck a knee square in the balls. The fellow went down as if he’d been shot. Jake wished he had shot him. He wished he could shoot all of them. Brushing his hands together, he headed off down the street, leaving the Negro writhing on the pavement