known him when he had none, “go into town, find yourself a pretty girl, and marry her, then, if that’s how you feel about it.”
“Only when you open your mouth,” Ben answered. “Sir.”
McSweeney gave him a dirty look. “You are godless,” he said. “You have made my life a trial since the moment we began serving together. Why God has not called you to Him to judge you for your many sins, I cannot imagine. By failing to call you, He proves Himself a God of mercy.”
“Reckon you’re right about that, Captain McSweeney, sir,” Carlton said, but the gleam in his eyes warned that he did not expect to be taken altogether seriously. “Maybe He figures that, with you riding herd on me, He doesn’t have to do any nagging of His own.”
“Get out of my sight,” McSweeney snarled. Then he held up a hand. “No. Wait. Get down.” Carlton was already throwing himself flat. No more slowly than McSweeney, he heard the screech of cloven air and, intermixed with it, the roar of a river monitor’s big gun.
The roar of the shell was like the end of the world. Face down in the black, sweet-smelling mud-McSweeney could tell by his nose how rich the soil was-he felt the world shake as the round thudded home. Splinters hissed and squealed past overhead. Dirt pattered down on him and Carlton both. The Rebs hadn’t missed them by much. The crash of the shell left his ears stunned, battered.
Dimly, as if from far away, he heard Carlton shouting, “I hate those goddamn fucking monitors-unless they’re ours!”
Foul language aside, McSweeney agreed with all his heart. That was why he had sent one of them to its no doubt less than heavenly reward. The U.S. Army still had not brought up guns that could match the monitors’ firepower. As a sergeant, he would have guessed about why that was, and only his strong belief would have kept his guesses from being profane. As an officer, he heard official explanations in place of guesses. The only trouble was, the explanations changed from day to day.
Once, he’d been solemnly told that all the really large-caliber cannon were in service east of the Mississippi. A few days later, he heard that the roads down from Missouri were too bad to let the Army move super-heavy cannon down as far as Memphis. The roads
Another shell came whistling down out of the sky. This one struck even closer than had the first. The force of the explosion sent him tumbling along the ground. He felt something wet on his upper lip. When he raised a hand, he discovered his nose was bleeding. If he’d been breathing in rather than out, he might have had his lungs torn to shreds inside his chest, and died without a mark on his body except blood from his nose. He’d seen that happen. After almost three years, he’d seen everything happen.
Ben Carlton was screaming. Because his ears had taken a beating, McSweeney needed longer to realize that than he would have otherwise. He crawled toward Carlton, then stopped and grimaced and shook his head. A shell fragment had gutted the company cook like a trout. His innards spilled into the mud. It put McSweeney in mind of the last time he’d butchered a calf.
“Oh, Mother!” Carlton wailed. “Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus fucking Christ!”
That was not the way McSweeney would have called on the Son of God, but he did not criticize, not here, not now. As he took a better look at Carlton’s wound, he became certain the cook was beyond his criticism, though not beyond that of a higher Judge. Not only were his guts spilled on the ground, they were also gashed and torn. If he didn’t die of blood loss or shock, a wound infection would finish him more slowly but no less surely.
He wasn’t in shock now, but too horribly aware of what had happened. “Do something, God damn you!” he shrieked at Gordon McSweeney.
McSweeney looked at his contorted face, looked at the wound, and grimaced again. He knew what needed doing. He’d done it before for wounded comrades. It never came easy, not even for him. He drew the trench knife he wore on his belt and showed it to Carlton. The wounded man was awake and aware and deserved the choice.
“Yes,” he groaned. “Oh, God, yes. It hurts so bad.”
McSweeney got up on his knees, used one hand to tilt up Ben Carlton’s chin, and cut his throat. His comrade’s eyes held him for a few seconds, then looked through him toward eternity.
Looking at Carlton, McSweeney hardly noted yet another shell screaming in. Had he noticed, it would have mattered little. The shell burst only a couple of feet away. For an instant, everything was gold-glowing light. Then it was dark, darkness absolute. And then Gordon McSweeney found out whether or not everything in which he had so fervently believed was true.
Richmond shocked Anne Colleton. She hadn’t been in the capital since the night of the first big U.S. bombing raid, most of a year before. It had taken a beating then; she’d seen as much as she made her way to the train station. But that had been a house gone here, a shop gone there, and a few piles of rubble in the street.
Now, after months of nighttime visits from U.S. bombing aeroplanes, Richmond was a charred skeleton of its former self. Whole blocks had been burnt out. Hardly a building had escaped getting a chunk bitten out of it. Windows with glass in them were rare enough to draw notice. More were boarded over; still more gaped empty.
“Things have been hard, sure enough,” the cab driver told her as he pulled up in front of Ford’s Hotel. “Last time they were this hard, I was a little boy, and the Yankees were comin’ up the James instead of down from the north.” He wore a neat white beard, at which he plucked now. “We druv ’em back then, but I’ll be switched if I know how we’re going to do it this time.”
A colored attendant took charge of her bags. When she registered, she smiled to find her room was on the same floor as it had been during her last visit. The smile held a hint of cat’s claws; she’d kept Roger Kimball out of her bed then, much to his annoyance.
After she’d unpacked, she telephoned the president’s residence. The aide with whom she talked seemed surprised she’d come into Richmond so nearly on time, but said, “Yes, Miss Colleton, the president looks forward to seeing you. You’re booked for tomorrow at ten. I trust that will be acceptable.”
“I suppose so,” she answered. “Or will we have surrendered by then?” The flunky spluttered. Anne said, “Never mind. That will be fine.” She hung up in the middle of an expostulation.
Supper that evening wasn’t what it had been the year before, either. “Sorry, ma’am,” the Negro waiter said. “Cain’t hardly get food like we used to.” He lowered his voice. “A couple o’ the bes’ chefs went an’ joined the Army, too.”
Anne sighed. “I wish I’d known that before I ordered. I think this so-called beefsteak would neigh if I stuck a fork in it.”
“No, ma’am, that really an’ truly is beef,” the waiter insisted. He dropped his voice to a whisper again: “But if you stick a fork in the rabbit with plum sauce, it’ll meow, sure as I’m standin’ here. Roof rabbit, nothin’ else but.” Having thought about ordering the rabbit, Anne let out a sigh of relief.
U.S. bombers pounded Richmond again that night. Anne grabbed a robe and went down to the cellar of the Ford Hotel, where she spent several crowded, uncomfortable, frightened hours. Even in the cellar, she could hear the
Just after she’d managed to fall asleep in spite of the racket, the all-clear sounded. She went back to her room and lay awake again for a long time before finally dropping off once more.
Ham and eggs the next morning tasted fine. The coffee was muddy and bitter, but strong enough to pry her eyes open, which counted for more. She walked outside, flagged a cab, and went up Shockoe Hill to the presidential residence.
Antiaircraft guns had sprouted on the lawn since her last visit. Holes-actually, they were more like craters- had sprouted in the lawn. Boards took the place of glass here as elsewhere in Richmond. Other than that, the mansion seemed undamaged, for which Anne was glad.
