Breakthroughs

high praise.

They got off the train together. Rehoboam slowly headed toward a platform from which a train would leave for Mississippi. He didn’t need to hurry; it wasn’t scheduled to head out for another six hours, and might well run late. Bartlett left the station. He would have to stay in his parents’ home till he found work.

A taxi driver hailed him: “Hey, pal, take you anywhere in town for three beans. Won’t find anybody cheaper.”

“Three dollars?” Reggie stared at him as if he’d started talking Hindustani. The paymaster back at the hospital had known what he was talking about. Bartlett’s hand went into his pocket and closed on a coin. “I’ll give you a quarter, U.S.”

“Deal,” the driver said at once.

Reggie wondered if he’d offered too much. By the way the cabbie bounced out of the motorcar-a Birmingham that had seen better days-and held the door open for him, he probably had. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. No help for it now. He gave the driver his parents’ address.

“Hope you didn’t get hurt too bad,” the cab driver said, evidently recognizing the kind of clothes Bartlett had on. Reggie only grunted by way of reply. Not a bit put out, the driver asked, “What’ll you do now that you’re home?”

“Damned if I know,” Reggie said. “Try and find my life again, I reckon.” By the way the cabbie nodded, he’d heard that answer plenty of times already.

Colonel Irving Morrell scrambled down into the Confederate works that would have defended Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Without soldiers in them, the trenches seemed unreal, unnatural. Before the armistice, Morrell would have had to pay in blood, and pay high, for the privilege of examining them. Now he had Colonel Harley Landis, CSA, as his personal guide.

Not that Landis was delighted with the job. “If I had my choice, Colonel,” he said, “the only excavation of ours I’d show you would be six feet by three feet by six feet deep.” He raised an eyebrow. “Nothing personal, of course.”

“Of course,” Morrell agreed with a dry chuckle. “Believe me, if you were going through our trenches outside Chicago, I’d feel the same way.”

“Chicago?” The Confederate officer snorted ruefully. “In my dreams, maybe. You have the stronger power. We aimed at nothing more than defending ourselves.”

Now Morrell was the one to arch his brows. “Aimed at Philadelphia, you mean. Aimed at Kansas, too, for that matter, and Missouri. Talk straight, Colonel, if you don’t mind. This poor-little-us business wears thin after the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War.”

Colonel Landis stared at him. “But surely you can see…” He checked himself, then shook his head. “Maybe not-who knows? But if you can’t, the world must seem a very strange place from the Yankee side of the hill.”

“Looking at the world from the other fellow’s side of the hill is always a useful exercise.” Morrell regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Landis was an enemy-Landis was the enemy. If he hadn’t figured that out for himself, why hand it to him?

Fortunately, his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. “All we’ve tried to do is hold you back a little and keep up with you ourselves. You Yankees have got to be the pushingest people in the whole wide world.”

“Thank you,” Morrell said, which made his Confederate counterpart’s mouth twist: Landis hadn’t meant that as a compliment. Morrell held his smile inside. Too bad.

He took his own advice, climbing up onto a firing step that was already starting to crumble and peering toward the northwest. If he’d been a C.S. officer defending this position against a whole great swarm of barrels, what would he have done? His first thought was, turn tail and run like hell.

Say what you would about the Rebels, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times they’d done anything like that. He turned and looked back over his shoulder, studying the earthworks he hadn’t yet explored in person. After perhaps half a minute of contemplation, he grunted softly. “You’d have mounted your guns up there,” he said, pointing, “and fired at us over open sights, or as near as makes no difference. I don’t know how many barrels you had left at the end, but you’d have put them behind that little swell of ground there”-he pointed again-“to keep us from spotting them for as long as you could.”

Harley Landis examined him the same way he’d examined the terrain. The C.S. colonel started to say something, stopped, and started again after a pause: “Has anyone ever told you, sir, that you may be too damn smart for your own good?”

“A whole raft of people, Colonel Landis,” Morrell answered cheerfully. “Once or twice, they’ve even been right.” He remembered all too well his own temporary eclipse after the Mormon rebels in Utah had hurt in a way he hadn’t anticipated the U.S. troops battling to put them down.

“Only once or twice?” Landis was still eyeing him in speculative fashion. “Well, maybe I’m not too surprised.” He took a look at the ground, too, then asked, “How do you think we would have done?”

“You’d have hurt us,” Morrell said. “No doubt about that, Colonel, not a bit. You’d have hurt us-but we would have got through. You couldn’t have had enough barrels to stop us.”

He waited for Landis’ irate disagreement. But the Confederate colonel had been the man who brought his commander’s request for a cease-fire through the U.S. lines. As well as anyone could, he knew how things stood with his army. He looked as if he’d bitten into something sour. “You’re likely right, dammit, but how I wish you weren’t.”

He got out a pack of Raleighs, scraped a match on the sole of his boot, and lit a cigarette. “Can I steal one of those from you?” Morrell asked eagerly. “You wouldn’t believe some of the dried horse manure that passes for tobacco in the United States these days.”

“Yes, I would,” Landis said. “When we’d capture Yankees, the men’d always let ’em keep their smokes. Here, keep the whole pack.”

He tossed it to Morrell. The U.S. officer tapped a cigarette against the palm of his hand, then leaned forward to get a light from Landis. He sucked the fragrant smoke deep into his lungs. At last, reluctantly, he exhaled. “Thank you, Colonel. That is the straight goods. You Rebels make better smokes than we do, and that’s the truth.”

Landis sighed. “I’d trade that for being somewhere up in Illinois right now, the way you said before.”

Morrell nodded as he took another drag. “I haven’t tasted tobacco like this in years, though. It’s bully stuff.” He walked rapidly along the firebay till he came to a communications trench. Then, Colonel Landis in his wake, he zigzagged back until he could inspect the gun position he’d spotted from the front line. He nodded to himself. Field guns there would have done some damage, but not enough to stop a major assault.

He found a question for Landis: “What’s your opinion of our barrels as compared to your-you usually call them tanks, don’t you?”

“These days, we say barrels more often, too,” Harley Landis answered. “My opinion? My opinion is that you had too damned many of them, no matter what name you care to use.” Past that, he declined to say anything. Morrell hadn’t expected him to say much, but had hoped.

To prod the Confederate a little more, Morrell said, “We’ll probably confiscate the ones you do have, you know, and do our damnedest to make sure you don’t build any more of them.”

Colonel Landis muttered something under his breath: “Chicken thieves.” Morrell needed a few seconds to understand it. When he did, he thought it wiser to pretend he hadn’t.

He did say, “If England and France and Russia had smashed Germany in a hurry and then helped you turn on us, I don’t think you’d have given us a big kiss when the war was over.”

“No, I reckon not,” Landis admitted, which made Morrell like him better, or at least respect him more. He went on, “But that’s the way things were supposed to work out, and they didn’t.” His chuckle had barbs. “I know you’re not thinking the same thing I am here.”

“No, not quite,” Morrell said. They both laughed then, a couple of professionals who understood each other even though they stood on opposite sides of the hill.

“Ask you something?” Landis said.

“You can ask,” Morrell said. “I don’t promise to answer.”

“Here-I’ll ply you with liquor first.” Colonel Landis took a flask from his belt. To show Morrell it was safe, he drank first. Morrell took a swig. He’d expected moonshine, or at best its more dignified cousin, bourbon. What he got was a mouthful of damn fine cognac.