but it doesn’t taste quite the same as the ones you usually have in there.”
“Can’t get those any more,” Gibbon answered. “These here pickles, they come up out of Michigan. Like you say, they aren’t bad.”
McGregor stared at the pickle in his hand as if it had turned on him. He almost threw it down. But, even if it came from the United States, he’d already bought it, and he was a man who hated waste. He ate it and licked the last of the vinegar off his fingers.
“Didn’t come to town just for pickles,” Gibbon said. “Go on-tell me I’m wrong.”
Before McGregor could tell him anything, a couple of soldiers in green-gray walked into the general store and looked around as if they owned the place. They were occupying this part of the province, so in effect they did. McGregor bought another pickle and diligently ate it, finding that preferable to having to talk to the Yanks. One soldier bought a spool of thread-Gibbon had a good-sized display of stuff that made a fair match for the U.S. uniform. His pal bought a tin-plated potato peeler. Out they went.
“You’ll be rich, Henry,” McGregor remarked.
“Oh, yeah,” the storekeeper said. “I’m going to take this here and retire on it to the south of France-unless the damn Germans get there first. Now what can I do for you today?”
“Need some beans,” McGregor answered, “and my kerosene ration, and white thread for Maude-she ain’t got any uniforms to mend-and five yards of calico for her, too, and a new bobbin for the sewing machine.”
“You’ve got to give me your ration coupon for the kerosene,” Gibbon reminded him. “Never seen people like the Yanks for dotting every
“Life’s hard enough.” McGregor said no more. “Here you are.” He pulled the coupon out of his pocket and handed it to Gibbon. “Yanks sold it to me. They’re willing to let me have lights in my house this month, long as I haven’t got too many.”
Chuckling, Gibbon got a funnel and a bucket and filled the kerosene tin from the barrel he kept not far from the ones that held pickles and crackers. “You sound a mite better these days.”
“Maybe a mite,” the farmer allowed. After a short pause, he went on, “That Hannebrink almost ran me over when I was coming round the corner to the post office. Things must be a mite better for him, too, or more than a mite: Wilf Rokeby said he was in a hurry to get down to Elsie Kravchuk’s place and see how bad her bed linen’s rumpled.” Rokeby hadn’t said any such thing. But if anyone in town knew where Major Hannebrink really was going, Henry Gibbon was the man.
And, sure enough, Gibbon looked disgusted. “That damn Rokeby. All I can say is, it’s a good thing he ain’t got a cold, on account of he’d blow out his brains if he was to bring a hanky up to his nose. It ain’t Elsie that Hannebrink’s laying pipe for, it’s Paulette Tooker, three farms over.”
“He seemed pretty sure,” McGregor said doubtfully.
“Only holes Wilfred Rokeby knows a goddamn thing about are the ones between his stamps,” the storekeeper said. “Christ on His Cross, Arthur, when have you ever known Wilf to have his gossip straight?”
“Well, you’re right about that,” McGregor said. “Damn shame. I don’t know the Tookers what you’d call well, but I never heard anything bad about Paulette till now. I’d still sooner believe it was Elsie. She hasn’t been right since her husband went into the prisoner camp.”
“Believe what you want.” Gibbon’s voice showed his indifference.
“What other gossip have you got?” McGregor asked. “Spin it out and let’s see how much of it I believe.” Gibbon was happy to oblige. He knew something scandalous about almost all the Canadians in town, about half the Canadians on the farms, and about maybe one American in three. Whether what he knew bore any relation to the truth was a different question.
When the storekeeper finally ran down like a phonograph that needed winding, McGregor went out, brought his wagon around to the front of the store, and loaded his purchases onto it. He was very quiet and thoughtful all the way home. When he was almost there, he smiled.
Dirt fountained up as U.S. artillery pounded a Confederate machine-gun position in front of Jonesboro, Arkansas. “That’ll teach the goddamn sons of bitches,” Ben Carlton said gleefully as the barrage went on and on.
“Don’t blaspheme.” Sergeant Gordon McSweeney had lost track of how many times he’d warned the company cook about that. Carlton was as stubborn in sin as he was in reproof.
“Blow ’em to hell and gone,” Carlton said. McSweeney did not reprove that sentiment. He agreed with it. He expected Carlton would go to hell, too, but that had nothing to do with his hatred for the Confederates in their nest of sandbags and concrete. They were a good crew and they were brave and they had cost the U.S. troops across from them too many casualties.
At last, the guns fell silent. They’d been going on so long, McSweeney imagined he still heard them roaring for a few seconds after they’d quit. He didn’t put his head up over the parapet to see what they’d done to that position. If they hadn’t done enough, that was asking for a bullet in the face.
And they hadn’t. Defiantly, cockily, the Confederate machine gunners squeezed off a few quick bursts to let their foes know they were still in business at the same old stand.
“Bastards,” Ben Carlton snarled. “God damn those bastards to the hottest fire in hell for the next million years, and then think up somethin’ really bad to happen to ’em.”
“For the million years after that, they could eat your cooking every day,” McSweeney said, “for you will surely go down to that place of eternal torment yourself unless you leave off taking the name of the Lord in vain every time you open your mouth.”
Carlton glared at him. “Fine. I’m just tickled pink them brave, upstanding Confederate gentlemen lived through everything we flung at ’em. I’m dancin’ in the daisies that they get the chance to blow off the tops of some more of our heads. There. You satisfied, Mr. Holier-than-Thou?”
“No,” McSweeney said in a flat voice. “I am not satisfied. Bombardment by artillery is the wrong way to put a machine-gun nest out of action. You might as well try to kill a mosquito with a shotgun.”
“When the mosquitoes start bitin’ around here, we’ll kill ’em any which way we can,” Carlton said.
“You misunderstand,” McSweeney said. Carlton smirked. McSweeney fixed him with a pale-eyed glare that made the smirk drip off his face. “Not only that, you misunderstand on purpose. If that isn’t sinful, it is insubordinate. Shall we talk this over with Captain Schneider?”
Carlton visibly considered it. Whatever Schneider did to him was liable to be milder than what he’d get from McSweeney. Finally, he shook his head and ate crow. “No, Sarge. I’m sorry, Sarge.”
He didn’t sound sorry. McSweeney reluctantly decided not to press the point. He had other things on his mind anyhow. “Artillery, I tell you, is the wrong tool to use. I know the right tool.”
His eyes blazed. That was metaphorical, not literal, but Ben Carlton followed his thoughts even so. “How in…blazes you going to get close enough to those Confederate…bums to toast ’em before they put about a belt’s worth of bullets through you and your gaslight there?”
“It would have to be at night,” McSweeney thought aloud. “It would have to be at night, and I would need a diversion.”
“You need your head examined, that’s what you need.” Carlton went off down the trench line shaking his head.
McSweeney, on the other hand, went off and found his company commander. “Permission to stage a raid on the enemy’s trenches tonight, sir?” he asked. Captain Schneider nodded. McSweeney saluted. Sometimes things were very easy to arrange.
But, to his annoyance, Schneider came up to the forwardmost trench while the men who would take part in the raid were scrambling over the parapet. The company commander frowned. “It’s usual for raiders to take along an extra sack of grenades or two,” he remarked.
“Yes, sir, so it is,” McSweeney agreed. “We have them. You must have seen.”
“I saw,” Schneider said grimly. He pointed to McSweeney. “It is highly unusual, however, for a man to go on a trench raid festooned with a flamethrower.”
“I suppose it may be, sir.” When McSweeney shrugged, the heavy tank of jellied gasoline on his back dug into his kidneys. His voice sounded more innocent than it had any business being. “Of course, there aren’t that many flamethrowers in action.”
“There aren’t that many people crazy enough to want to use the damned things, either,” Schneider said.
