Walk in Hell

had held trouble at arm’s length from him. Then it couldn’t do that any more, and the regime under which he now lived made trouble as close as a punch in the eye.

He might not have crawled for himself. For Alexander, for his only son, he would crawl. What was pride worth, set against your boy? He began again: “Captain Hannebrink, sir, by now you must know Alexander didn’t have anything to do with that bomb on the train tracks.”

“I must know it?” The American officer shook his head. “Here, sit down, both of you. I’ll hear what you have to say.” The chairs to which he pointed were hard, angular, and functional: U.S. Army issue, as out of place in the office as his sharp American accent. He let Arthur McGregor do the fussing for his wife, accurately surmising she would not want him pushing the chair about for her. When she was as comfortable as she could be, he sat back down himself. “All right, tell me why I must know that.”

“Because of what you done to the other boys you caught,” McGregor blurted. His lips skinned back from his teeth in a snarl of anger at himself: he hadn’t meant to say it like that. Saying it like that made him think about how harsh the occupying authorities really were.

Captain Hannebrink steepled his fingers. “The penalty for sabotage against the United States Army is death, Mr. McGregor,” he said. “We have made that very plain. It cannot come as a surprise to anyone, not now.”

“Boys,” McGregor said thickly. “You shot boys.”

“They were playing a man’s game, I’m sorry to say. If they’d succeeded, what they would have done to our train would have been no different because they were young,” Hannebrink said. “This way, perhaps, other boys here in Manitoba will come to understand that this is not a bully, romantic lark. This is a war, and will be waged as such.”

He didn’t look particularly fearsome. He was on the lean side, with sandy hair, mild gray eyes, and a long, thoughtful face. Only his uniform and his waxed Kaiser Wilhelm mustache said he wasn’t a Canadian. Somehow, that very plainness made him more frightening, not less.

Licking his lips, Arthur McGregor said, “But you didn’t shoot Alexander. That must mean you know he didn’t have anything to do with it, because-” Because if you had even the slightest suspicion, you would have dragged him out against a wall, given him a blindfold, and sent him home to me in a pine box for burial. But he couldn’t say that to the American.

“Your son’s case is not clearcut: I admit as much,” Hannebrink said. “It is possible he did not know about this particular explosive device.” He held up one finger, as if expecting McGregor to interrupt. “Possible, I say. By no means proven. There appears to be no doubt he associated with these subversives and saboteurs.”

“They’re his friends,” Maude McGregor burst out. “Captain, they’re boys he’s known as long as he’s been on this earth. And besides, where in Canada will you find any boys that age who don’t-”

Conversations with Captain Hannebrink had a way of breaking down in midsentence. This one should have broken down a few words sooner. Hannebrink fiddled with one point of that absurd, upjutting mustache, then finished for Maude: “Where will I find Canadian boys that age who don’t despise the United States and everything they stand for? There are some, Mrs. McGregor, I assure you of that.”

His matter-of-fact confidence was more chilling than bluster would have been. And Arthur McGregor feared he was right. Some people had to be on the winning side, no matter what, and the USA looked like the winning side right now. Bootlickers, McGregor thought.

But that did not help Alexander. McGregor said, “You can’t blame him for what these others tried to do.”

“Why can’t I?” Hannebrink returned. “Canadian law recognizes the concepts of an accessory before the fact and of concealment of knowledge of a crime to be committed.”

“You’ve never claimed you had anyone who said Alexander knew about this, only that he knew some of the boys you say did it,” Arthur McGregor said stubbornly. “Is that enough to go on holding him?”

“Of course it is,” Captain Hannebrink answered. “I assume anyone who consorts with saboteurs and says nothing about it either is a saboteur himself or wants to be one.”

“You don’t want reasons to let my boy go.” Maude’s voice went shrill. “You just want an excuse to keep him in an iron cage when he hasn’t done anything.”

Arthur McGregor set a big-knuckled, blunt-fingered hand on his wife’s arm. “That doesn’t help,” he said mildly. If Maude lost her temper here, it wouldn’t just be unfortunate. It would be disastrous.

Captain Hannebrink said, “Mrs. McGregor, I can understand how you feel, but-”

“Can you?” she said. “If we’d invaded your country and dragged your son away to jail, how would you feel?”

“Wretched, I’m sure,” he answered, though he didn’t sound as if he meant it. He went on, “Please let me finish the point I was trying to make. You still do not seem to fully understand the situation. You are in occupied territory, Mrs. McGregor. The military administration of the United States does not need any excuses to confine individuals. We have the authority to do it, and we have the power to do it.”

Maude stared at him, as if she’d never imagined he would put it so baldly. And McGregor stared, too, catching as his wife had not quite done what lay behind the American captain’s words. Hoarsely, he said, “You don’t care whether Alexander had anything to do with that bomb or not. You’re going to keep him locked up anyhow.”

“I did not say that, Mr. McGregor.”

“No, you didn’t, Captain, did you? But you meant it, and that’s worse, if you ask me.” McGregor got to his feet. Maude rose with him, uncertainty on her face. He took no notice of it. He took no notice of anything but his contempt, and that was big as the world. “But then, what do you care what Canuck trash thinks? I’m sorry we wasted your time-and ours. I had chores I could have done instead of coming here.” He walked out onto the street, Maude following.

Maybe Captain Hannebrink stared at his back. He didn’t turn to see.

Nellie Semphroch was about to cross the street to visit Mr. Jacobs, the cobbler, when the guns started roaring north of Washington, D.C. As if drawn by a lodestone, her head turned in that direction. She nodded in slow, cold satisfaction. For a while, Washington had been too far south of the front line to let her hear much artillery fire. Then the rumble had been distant, like bad weather far away. Now it was guns, unmistakably guns, and louder, it seemed, every day.

A Confederate dispatch rider trotted past her, mounted on a bay gelding whose coat gleamed in the hot June sun. He tipped his slouch hat to her. Taken all in all, the Rebs were a polite lot. That made her distrust them more, not like them better.

Flies buzzed in the street as she crossed. She flapped with a hand to drive them away. There were fewer than there had been ten years before. Say what you would about motorcars, they didn’t attract flies.

She opened the door to Mr. Jacobs’ shop. The bell above it chimed. Jacobs looked up from the buttery-soft black cavalry boot to which he was fitting a new heel. The wrinkles on his face, which had been set in lines of concentration, rearranged themselves into a smile. “Good morning, Nellie,” he said, setting down his little hammer and taking from the corner of his mouth a couple of brads that hadn’t interfered with his speech at all. “It’s good to see you today. It’s good to see you any day.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Hal,” she answered. She didn’t view him with the relentless suspicion she aimed at most of the male half of the human race. For one thing, he was at least fifteen years older than she. For another, he’d never tried to get out of line with her. Up till the year before, they hadn’t even called each other by their Christian names.

“Would you like some lemonade?” he asked. “I made it myself.” He sounded proud of that. He’d been a widower for a good many years, and took pride in everything he did for himself.

“I’d love some, thank you,” Nellie said. He went into the back room and brought it out in a tumbler that didn’t match the one sitting by his last. Nellie sipped. She raised an eyebrow. “It’s very good lemonade.” And it was-tart and sweet and cool and full of pulp.

“For which I thank you,” he answered, dipping his head in what was almost a bow. His courtly, antique manners were another reason why he set off no fire bells of alarm in her mind. “I am going to fill my glass again. Would you like another?”

“Half a glass,” she answered. “I had a cup of coffee a couple of minutes before I came over here.”

“Did you?” He chuckled. “Drinking up your own profits, eh?” He went into the back room again, returning with his glass full and Nellie’s, as she’d asked, something less than that. After giving it to her, he asked, “And what do you hear in the coffeehouse these days?”