They weren’t panicking quite so much now. They were starting to figure out ways to blow up barrels, too. The armored machines had proved vulnerable to artillery fire, though artillery had trouble hitting moving targets even if the movement was no swifter than the barrels’ mechanized waddle. Still, Dowling had thought he’d grow old and die in Kentucky, and here he was in Tennessee, or at least on the border.
“Next stop-Nashville!” Custer declared, waving his staff as if he were a train conductor. Dowling wished he thought it would be so easy.
“General, what will your men do if they come up against black troops in Confederate uniform?” the reporter asked.
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Custer answered. Here, for once, Dowling agreed with him completely. He went on, “If it does happen, it will be only one more sign that the Rebels are scraping the bottom of the barrel-heh, heh. The frogs are padding their lines with African savages these days, so I suppose the Rebs
“Er-yes.” The fellow with the camera and notebook hadn’t bargained for a speech. He came back to the question he’d really asked: “But how will your soldiers respond to them, if they are enlisted?”
Custer’s drooping mustache and even more drooping jowls made his frown impressively ugly. “How will they respond to them?” he repeated, not caring for the fact that his earlier answer hadn’t satisfied the man. “I expect they’ll shoot them in great carload lots, that’s how.”
“Great-carload-lots.” The reporter scribbled furiously. “Oh, that’s good, sir, that’s very good. They’ll like that- it’ll probably get a headline.”
“Do you think so?” All of a sudden, the general commanding First Army was sweetness and light once more. Even Dowling thought it was a pretty good line, and he was not inclined to give his commander much credit for such things.
The reporter asked a couple of more questions. Custer, having succeeded with one joke, tried some others, all of which fell flat. They fell so flat, in fact, that the reporter put away his notebook, picked up his camera, and departed faster than he might otherwise have done.
Custer, as usual, was oblivious to such subtleties. Puffing out his flabby chest, he turned to Dowling and said, “I think that went very well.”
“And now back to headquarters. I want to prepare the orders for our next attack against the Rebs’ positions.”
“Yes, sir,” Dowling said again. Custer was taking a more active interest in the campaign these days, partly, Dowling supposed, because Libbie was still with him and partly because, like a child with new Christmas toys, he was playing with the barrels to find out what all they could do.
When he got back to the building doing duty for headquarters these days-a whitewashed clapboard structure with the legend GENERAL STORE: CAMP HILL SIMES, PROP.-orders got delayed for a while. Someone had brought in a wicker basket full of ripe, red strawberries and a bowl of whipped cream. Custer dug in with gusto, pinkish juice dribbling down his chin and bits of clotted cream getting stuck in the peroxided splendor of his mustache. Since Major Dowling wasn’t shy about enjoying the bounty either, he refrained from even mental criticism of the general.
“Where did we come by these?” Custer asked after he’d eaten his fill.
“Little town called Portland, sir,” said Captain Theodore Heissig, one of the staff officers. “Just south of the Tennessee line. They grow ’em in bunches.”
“No, no,” Custer said. “Bananas grow in bunches.” Unlike the man with the notebook and camera, the staff officers were obliged to find all his jokes funny, or to act as if they did. Dowling bared his teeth in what bore at least some resemblance to a grin.
Once the strawberries were all disposed of, Custer walked over to the map and examined it with less satisfaction than he might have shown, considering the amount of progress First Army had made since the Confederate States were distracted by their own internal turmoil, and especially since barrels had begun to make trenches something less than impregnable. “We need more help from the Navy,” he grumbled. “How long have they been stuck just past this miserable Clarksville place? Weeks, seems like.”
“Sir, they’re saying they need Army help to go farther,” Captain Heissig said.
“Balderdash!” Custer boomed, a fine, bouncing exclamation that sprayed little bits of cream onto the map.
“Sir, I don’t think it is,” Abner Dowling said, gingerly trying, as he so often had to do, to lead Custer back toward some vague connection to military reality. “The Rebs have mined the Cumberland heavily, and they’ve got big artillery south of the river zeroed on the minefields. The Navy’s lost too many monitors to be very eager to push hard any more.”
“Then what the devil good are they?” Custer demanded. “If they can’t get where we need them, they might as well not be there at all.” That conveniently ignored several facts, some small, some immense, but Custer had always been good at ignoring facts he didn’t like. He rounded on the luckless Captain Heissig. “I want you to arrange cooperation on our terms, Captain, and I want you to do it by this afternoon.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” the young captain said.
“You’ll do it, Captain, or this time next week you’ll be chasing redskins and bandits through the parts of the Sonoran desert we were supposed to have pacified a year and a half ago,” Custer said. He meant it, too, as the luckless Captain Heissig had to know; his staff had the highest turnover of any commander of an army’s.
There were times-a lot of times-when commanding a battalion in the Sonoran desert would have looked very good to Dowling. But Custer, worse luck, didn’t threaten to ship him out. He just used him as a whipping boy. Dowling sent poor Captain Heissig a sympathetic glance. Misery loved company.
Cincinnatus’ nostrils dilated as he approached the Kentucky Smoke House. When the wind was right, you could smell the barbecue all over Covington. Even when the wind was wrong, as if was tonight, the irresistibly savory smell made spit flood into people’s mouths for miles around.
And when you walked into Apicius’ barbecue place, you felt certain you were going to starve to death before you got your pork or your beef, smothered in the hot, spicy sauce that made the Smoke House famous and spun on a spit over a hickory fire. Even if you weren’t coming in for the food, as Cincinnatus wasn’t, you wanted some-you wanted that splendid sauce all down your shirtfront, was what you wanted.
Blacks ate at the Kentucky Smoke House. So did Covington’s whites, unwilling to let their colored brethren have such a good thing to themselves. And so did Yankee soldiers and administrators. A man who kept his ears open there would surely learn a lot.
Lucullus, Apicius’ son, was turning the spit in the main room. The carcass of a pig went round and round above the firepit. However much his mouth watered, Cincinnatus ignored the prospect of barbecued pork. That Lucullus was working the spit meant Apicius had to be in one of the back rooms, and Apicius was the man he’d come to see.
But when he headed for the back rooms, Felix, Apicius’ other son, stood in front of him to bar the way. “Pa’s already in there talkin’ with somebody,” he said. “Be a good idea if you see him later.”
“Who’s he talkin’ to that I ain’t supposed to know nothin’ about?” Cincinnatus answered scornfully. “Be a good idea if I see him
Felix was a couple of years younger than Lucullus. He hadn’t quite got his full growth, and he hadn’t quite acquired the arrogance that would have let him tell a grown man no and get away with it. He looked toward Lucullus for support, but Lucullus kept basting that pig with a long-handled brush. When Cincinnatus took a step forward, Felix scowled but moved aside. Cincinnatus knew which back room Apicius was likely to use-why not? He’d been in there himself, often enough.
The fat Negro barbecue cook looked up in startlement when the door opened. So did the man with whom he’d been bent in intent conversation. All at once, Cincinnatus wished he’d paid attention to Felix. The man with whom Apicius had been talking was Tom Kennedy.
