to it. He ambled over to the officers’ lounge. You could always find somebody there. It was nearly sunset, too, which meant the place ought to be filling up for some heavy-duty, professional drinking, the way it did every night.
Except tonight. Oh, a couple of pilots from another squadron were in there soaking up some whiskey, but the place was dead except for them. “Somebody get shot down?” Moss wondered out loud. It was the only thing he could think of, but it didn’t strike him as very likely. When a fellow died up in the sky, his comrades usually drank themselves stupid to remember him and to forget they might be next.
Drinking alone wasn’t Moss’idea of fun, and the other two pi-lots didn’t seem interested in company. Having nothing better to do, he was about to wander off and sack out when a groundcrew corporal poked his head into the lounge, spotted him, and exclaimed, “Oh, there you are, sir! Jesus, I’m glad I found you. Hardshell-uh, Captain Pruitt-he wants to see you right away. I was you, sir, I wouldn’t keep him waiting.” He disappeared.
Moss hopped to his feet. Whatever trouble his flightmates were in, maybe he’d found a piece of it after all. He hurried over to the captain’s tent, which was only a few feet away, wishing he hadn’t been so blithely agreeable about Hardshell’s court-martialing his friends. He was liable to be seeing a court himself.
Captain Pruitt stood outside the tent. Moss didn’t think that was a good sign. Shadow shrouded the squadron commander’s face. He grunted on seeing Jonathan approach. “Here at last, are you?” he growled. “Well, you’d better come in, then.”
Rudely, he ducked through the tentflap by himself and didn’t hold it for Moss. Shaking his head, Moss followed. He was going to get it, all right. Braced for the worst, he lifted the canvas and followed Captain Pruitt inside.
Light blazed at him. All the fliers he hadn’t been able to find packed the inside of the tent. They lacked only a coating of olive oil to be sardines in a can. Tom Innis pressed a pint of whiskey into Moss’ hand. “Congratulations!” everybody shouted.
Moss stared in astonishment. “What the devil-!” he blurted.
Laughter erupted and rolled over him in waves. “He doesn’t even know!” Dud Dudley hooted.
“Clear a space and we’ll show him, then,” Captain Pruitt said.
Clearing a space wasn’t easy. A few people, grumbling, had to go outside. When Moss finally saw Pruitt’s desk, it was for once clear of papers. A cake sat on top of it instead, a rectangular cake with white frosting. A big chocolate symbol turned it into an enormous playing card, with chocolate A’s at the appropriate corners.
“My God!” Moss said. “Was that my fifth?” He counted on his fingers. “Jesus, I guess it was.”
“Here we have something new,” Pruitt observed: “the unintentional ace.”
More laughter rang out. Dud Dudley said, “It’s a good thing you finally showed up. We were going to eat this beauty without you in a couple of minutes, and then spend the next five years gloating about it.”
“Give me a piece,” Moss said fiercely.
“You want a piece, go to the brothel,” Innis told him. “You want some cake, stay here.” A bayonet lay next to the cake. He picked it up and started slicing.
Cake and whiskey wasn’t a combination Moss had had before. After he’d taken a couple of good swigs from the pint, he didn’t much care. The hooch was good, the cake was good, the company was good, and he didn’t think at all about the man he’d killed to earn the celebration.
IX
Jake Featherston went from gun to gun, making sure all six howitzers in the battery were well positioned, supplied with shells, and ready to open up if the Yankees decided to pay the trenches a call. He didn’t think that would happen; the drive through Maryland had taken an even crueler toll on U.S. forces than on those of the Confederacy, and the latest Yankee push had drowned in an ocean of blood a couple of days before.
All the same, he made sure he hunted up Caleb Meadows, the next most senior sergeant in the battery, and said, “You know what to give the damnyankees if they hit us while I’m gone and you’re in charge.”
“Sure do.” Meadows’ Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he spoke. He was a scrawny, gangly man who spoke as if he thought somebody was counting how many words he said. “Two guns sighted on that ridge they got, two right in front of our line, and t’other two ready for whatever happens.”
“That’s it,” Jake agreed. “I expect I’ll be back by suppertime.”
Meadows nodded. He didn’t say anything. That was in character. He didn’t salute, either. How could he, when he and Featherston were both sergeants? Jake had commanded the battery ever since Captain Stuart went out in a blaze of glory. He was still a sergeant. He didn’t like still being a sergeant.
He went back through Ceresville, past a couple of mills that had stood, by the look of what was left of them, since the days of the Revolutionary War. They weren’t standing any more. U.S. guns had seen to that.
The bridge over the Monocacy still did stand, though the ground all around both ends of it had been chewed up by searching guns. Military policemen stood on the northeastern bank, rifles at the ready, to keep unauthorized personnel from crossing. Jake dug in his pocket, produced his pass, and displayed it to one of the men with a shiny MP’s gorget held on his neck by a length of chain. The fellow examined it, looked sour at being unable to find anything irregular, and waved him across.
He had to ask several times before he could find his way to the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia. They were farther back toward Frederick than he’d thought, probably to make sure no long-range U.S. shells came to pay them a call. Once he got into the tent city, he had to ask for more directions to get to Intelligence.
A corporal who looked more like a young college professor was clacking away on a typewriter inside the flap of the tent, which was big enough to be partitioned off into cubicles. He finished the sentence he was on before looking up and saying, “Yes, Sergeant?” His tone said he outranked Featherston regardless of how many stripes each of them wore on his sleeve.
“I have an appointment with Major Potter.” Jake displayed his pass once more.
The corporal examined it more carefully than the military policeman had done. He nodded. “One moment.” He vanished into the bowels of the tent. When he came back, he waved for Jake to accompany him.
Major Clarence Potter was typing, too. Unlike the corporal, he broke off as soon as he saw Featherston. “Sit down, Sergeant,” he said, and then, to the noncom who’d escorted Jake back to him, “Fetch Sergeant Featherston a cup of coffee, why don’t you, Harold? Thanks.” It was an order, but a polite one.
“
“I’d say you’ve earned good coffee,” Major Potter said equably. “Glad you like it. We get the beans shipped up from a coffeehouse in Washington. But enough of that.” He glanced down to whatever paper he had in the typewriter. “I’d say you’ve earned any number of things, but my opinion is not always the one that counts. Which is, I suppose, why you asked to see me today.”
“Yes, sir,” Featherston said. And then, as he’d feared it would, all the frustration came boiling to the top: “Sir, who the devil do I have to kill to get myself promoted in this man’s Army?”
Potter frowned at him. The major didn’t look like much, not till you saw his eyes.
And Potter looked down first. He fiddled with some of the papers on his desk, then sighed. “I’m afraid killing Yankees doesn’t do the job, Sergeant. I wish it did. It’s the criterion I’d use. But, as I told you, my views, while they have some weight, are not the governing ones.”
“I been running that battery every since Captain Stuart went down, sir,” Jake said, and Clarence Potter nodded. “We’ve fought just as good with me in charge of things as we did with him, maybe better. Besides”-he had enough sense to hold his voice down, but he couldn’t keep the fury out of it-“that damned fool would have got every man jack of us killed for nothin’ better than him goin’ out in a blaze of glory. We would have lost every man and
