House, the Capitol, all the departments-dynamite them all, I say. The Yankees only maintained their presence here after the War of Secession to irk us.”
Nellie glanced over toward Edna, hoping her daughter was listening as the Rebel officers calmly discussed the destruction of the capital of the United States. Edna, however, was casting sheep’s eyes at Lieutenant Kincaid.
The lieutenant-colonel said, “Too bad about the Washington Monument. No matter what we did with the rest of the town, I would have left that standing. Washington was a Virginian, after all.”
“Fortunes of war,” the colonel said. “Can’t be helped-it was in the way of our barrage when the war started, and of the damnyankees’ fire once we forced an entrance into the city.”
“That sort of destruction is one thing,” the lieutenant-colonel said. “But deliberately wrecking the monuments as we retire may cost us Yankee retribution elsewhere.”
For a wonder, that made both colonels thoughtful. Before the war, the arrogant Rebs wouldn’t have worried about how the USA might respond to anything they did. Now-Now Nellie had a hard time holding on to her polite mask. Now they’d learned better.
Edna got up and filled Nicholas Kincaid’s coffee cup. She didn’t charge him, which annoyed Nellie but about which she could say nothing. She didn’t want Edna to marry the Confederate lieutenant-she didn’t want Edna marrying any man-but she knew she couldn’t do anything to stop it. She consoled herself by thinking that marrying Kincaid might get Edna out of Washington before the United States battered their way back into the city. Had Nellie had some way of escaping the bloodbath that likely lay ahead, she would have taken it.
She did have a way to escape the coffeehouse, if only for a little while. “I’m going across the street to see Mr. Jacobs,” she said to Edna. “Take care of everybody while I’m gone, would you, dear?”
“All right, Ma,” Edna said sulkily. She no doubt suspected that her mother wanted to keep her from spending so much time with Nicholas Kincaid. She was right, too, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
The bell above Jacobs’ door jangled when Nellie came in. The cobbler looked up from the boot he was resoling. “Why, hello, Nellie,” he said, as if his fondest wish had just been realized. “How good to see you this morning.”
“Good to see you, too, Hal,” Nellie said, a little stiffly. She was still nervous about having let him kiss her once, and even more nervous about having liked it. But that didn’t matter, or didn’t matter much. Business was business, and wouldn’t keep. “You remember how I told you not so long ago that the Rebs would do anything to try and hang onto Washington, on account of they reckoned it was their capital by rights, and not ours?”
“Yes, of course I remember that,” Jacobs said, peering at her through his spectacles. Then he took them off, blinked a couple of times as he set them on the counter, and looked up at her again. He smiled. “That’s better.”
Nellie said, “I think they’re starting to get the idea they can’t keep Washington no matter what they do. The USA won’t get it back in one piece, sounds like.” She told the shoemaker what the Confederate officers had been discussing in the coffeehouse.
Jacobs clucked reproachfully. “This is foolish wickedness,” he said. “No other word for it, Widow Sem-Nellie. I promise you, I will make certain it is known, if you happen to be the first to have heard of it. Your country owes you a great debt if we can use this knowledge to keep the CSA from carrying out such a vile scheme.”
“That would be good, I guess,” she said. “If they want to show they’re grateful, they can keep from shelling this part of town when their guns get into range.”
“Yes, I also think this would be an excellent reward,” Jacobs said with a smile. But that smile did not last long. He coughed before continuing, “Widow Semphroch, I am glad you came by today, because there is something of importance I need to take up with you.”
“What’s that?” she asked. It was something important, or he wouldn’t have returned to the formality with which they’d once addressed each other.
He coughed again. It wasn’t something he wanted to bring up, plainly. At last, he said, “Widow Semphroch, what have you done to Bill Reach?”
“I haven’t done anything to him, except tell him to stay away,” Nellie answered. “You know I don’t want anything to do with him.” She cocked her head to one side. “Why?”
Even more reluctantly than before, he said, “Because he is acting-strangely-these days. I believe he is drinking far too much for a man in his position. He often speaks of you, but gives no details.”
“If there is anything you can do for him-” Jacobs began.
“No, Mr. Jacobs. I am sorry, but there is nothing.” Now Nellie threw up the chilling wall of formality. “Good day. I will call again another time.” She left the cobbler’s shop without a backwards glance, and without giving Jacobs the chance to say a word.
She supposed she should have been warned. But all she wanted to do with Bill Reach was put him out of her mind, and so she did not pay as much heed to Jacobs as she might have done. Two evenings later, Reach threw open the door to the coffeehouse and lurched inside.
Nellie was in back of the counter, pouring coffee, making sandwiches, and frying ham steaks and potatoes. Edna was out among the customers: the usual crowd of Confederate officers, the sleek Washingtonians who collaborated with them, and a sprinkling of fancy women who collaborated more intimately with both Rebels and local cat’s-paws.
All of them stared at Bill Reach, who looked even more disreputable than usual. By the boneless way he stood, Nellie knew he’d had his head in a bottle all day, or maybe all week. His eyes held a wild gleam she didn’t like. She started out toward the front of the coffeehouse, certain he was going to do something dreadful.
She hadn’t taken more than a step and a half before he did it. “Little Nell!” he said loudly-but he wasn’t looking at Nellie at all. He was looking at Edna, so drunk he couldn’t tell daughter from mother. “Makes me feel young just to see you, Little Nell, same as it always did.” Edna was less than half his age-no wonder seeing her made him feel young. A leer spread over his face.
“Get out of here!” Nellie shouted, but he was too drunk, too intent on what was going on inside his own mind, to hear her.
And Edna, after a glance back at her mother, a glance filled with both curiosity and malice, smiled at him and said, “What do you want tonight, Bill?”
It wasn’t quite the right question, but it was close enough. Over Nellie’s cry of horror, Reach pulled a quarter-eagle out of his pocket, slapped the gold coin down on a tabletop as if it were a nightstand, and said, “Tonight? Well, we’ll go upstairs like always”-he pointed to the stairway leading up to Nellie and Edna’s rooms, which was just visible from where he stood swaying-“and then you can suck on me for a while before you get on top. I’m feelin’-
“Get him out of here!” Nellie screamed.
A couple of Confederate officers were already rushing toward Bill Reach. They landed on him like a falling building, pummeling him and flinging him out into the street with shouts of, “Get your foul mouth out of here!” “Never show your face here again or you’re a dead man!” One of them noticed the quarter-eagle. He threw it out after Reach, then wiped his hand on a trouser leg, as if to clean it of contamination. That done, he bowed first to Edna and then to Nellie. “You tell us if that cur comes back, ladies. We’ll fix him for good if he dares show his ugly face in here again.”
Nellie nodded. Her customers worked hard to show good breeding by pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Edna didn’t say a thing. Edna didn’t need to say a thing. Whatever else she was, Edna was no fool. She could figure out why Bill Reach thought he had any business saying those filthy things to Nellie-or to someone he thought was Nellie. The only possible answer was the right one.
Edna glanced back at Nellie again. Her mother could not meet her eye. That told her everything that still needed telling. Nellie hung her head. She’d tried to stay respectable for her daughter’s sake. That was over. Everything was over now.
Over the past couple of winters, Lucien Galtier had discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that he liked chopping wood. The work took him back to his youth, to the days before he was conscripted. He’d swung an axe
