Breakthroughs

not to shoot first and ask questions later. But she didn’t think she would be spotted, and she wasn’t.

When she opened the door to Hal Jacobs’ cobbler’s shop, the bell over it jangled, as if cheerily announcing a customer. Jacobs looked up, candlelight exaggerating the surprise on his face. The two men huddled with him also looked startled. One was Lou Pfeiffer, a pigeon fancier who used his birds to carry messages out of Washington. The other, to Nellie’s horrified dismay, was Bill Reach.

“I came to check and make sure you were all right, Mr. Jacobs,” Nellie said in a voice that might have been carved from ice. “I see you are. Good evening.” She turned and started back across the street.

“Widow Semphroch-Nellie-please wait,” Jacobs said. “Mr. Reach has something he would like to say to you- don’t you, Bill?” He bore down heavily on the last three words.

Reach, for once, wasn’t obviously drunk. That did not make his tone any less raspy and rough when he said, “I’m sorry as he-as anything for all the trouble I caused you, Lit-uh, Nellie, and I sure as-as can be won’t do anything like that ever again, honest to God I won’t.” He took off his battered black derby, revealing a mat of unkempt gray hair beneath.

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. But it sufficed to bring Nellie back into the shop. Lou Pfeiffer’s round head went up and down on his fat neck. “That’s good,” he wheezed. “That’s very good.”

And then the thunder from the north that had died away started up again, not only started up again but was, impossibly, louder and fiercer than ever. Shells began crashing down, some very close by. Fragments whined off brick and stone and bit into and through rough wood. “To the cellar!” Jacobs shouted.

Nellie hesitated. Crossing the street to get back to her own cellar in the middle of the bombardment was nothing but madness. Going down into the cellar here, with a man who, she thought, loved her; a man who had used her; and a man about whom she knew next to nothing…

She hesitated, and was lost. “Come on! To the cellar!” Jacobs bawled again. He grabbed her by the arm and half dragged her down the stairs.

Meant for one, his cellar was obscenely crowded for four. Nellie sat in one corner of the tiny, stifling chamber, her skirts pulled in tight around her, willing no one to come near. And no one did. But they all kept looking at her in the flickering light of the candle flame. And they were all men, so she knew-she was sure she knew-what went through their filthy minds.

And then, to her horror, Bill Reach pulled from his pocket a flask and began to drink. She sprang to her feet and was up the stairs and shoving the cellar door open before Hal Jacobs could do anything more than let out a startled bleat. She slammed the door down on top of the three U.S. spies and fled.

When she got back to the cellar under the coffeehouse, she discovered flying fragments had sliced her skirt to shreds. Not one of them had touched her flesh. “You all right, Ma?” Edna asked. “I heard you at the cellar door right in the middle of all the guns-before that, I was afraid you were a goner, and then I thought you were nuts, coming out in that.”

“With where I was, I’d go out among the shells again in a minute.” Nellie spoke with great conviction. “In a second, believe me.” Edna shot her a quizzical glance. She shuddered but did not explain.

Far in the distance, off somewhere on the west Texas plains, a coyote howled, a wail full of hunger and loneliness and unrequited lust. Hipolito Rodriguez let out a soft chuckle. “He is not very happy, I don’t think. The way he sound, he might as well be a soldier, si?”

Before Jefferson Pinkard could answer, Sergeant Albert Cross said, “Need some men for a raidin’ party on the Yankee trenches tonight.”

Pinkard stuck up his hand. “I’ll go, Sarge.”

Cross looked at him without saying anything for a while. Then he remarked, “You don’t got to kill all the damnyankees in Texas by your lonesome, Jeff. Leave some for the rest of us.”

“I want to go, Sarge,” Pinkard answered. He had never been a particularly eloquent man. Instead of saying more with words, he folded his big hands into fists. “What they done-” He shook his head in frustration. The words clogged in his throat.

In the end, Sergeant Cross shrugged. “Well, hell, you want ’em that bad, reckon you can have ’em. Who else?”

“I go,” Hip Rodriguez said quietly.

One by one, Cross got the rest of the volunteers. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s mighty fine. We go out half past midnight. Y’all grab yourselves some shuteye before then. Don’t want any sleepy bastard yawnin’ out in the middle of no-man’s-land an’ lettin’ the damnyankees know we’re comin’. See y’all tomorrow mornin’- early tomorrow mornin’.”

After the sergeant went on his way, Rodriguez said, “Ever since you get back from leave, amigo, you want to go on all the raids, on all the attacks. You never used to do nothing like that before.”

“What about it?” Pinkard said. “Yankees ain’t gonna get out of Texas unless we grab ’em by the scruff of the neck and heave ’em on out. Somebody’s got to do it. Might as well be me.”

Rodriguez studied him. The little Sonoran farmer’s eyes might have been black glass in his swarthy face. “You don’t have such a good time like you think when you get back home?” he asked. He didn’t push. He didn’t raise his voice. He let Pinkard answer without making him feel he had to tell any deep, dark secrets.

But no matter how discreet he was, no matter how little pressure he applied, Jefferson Pinkard kept on saying what he’d been saying ever since he returned to the front from Birmingham: “Had a hell of a time back home.”

In a certain sense, that was even true. He hadn’t screwed so much on his honeymoon down in Mobile. Emily had done everything he wanted. Emily had done more than he’d imagined. He’d wakened one night to her sucking him hard and then pulling him over onto her. She’d been wet and waiting. He’d worn himself out by then, and hadn’t thought he could come, but he’d been wrong.

Bedford Cunningham had made himself scarce, too. After that first dreadful moment, Jeff hadn’t seen him at all. That suited Jeff fine. If he never saw Bedford again, that would suit him even better.

But now he was back here, somewhere east of Lubbock. Bedford Cunningham remained in Birmingham, remained next door to Emily. What were they doing now that Jeff was gone? Was she rubbing her breasts in his face? Was she teasing his foreskin with her tongue? Was she groaning and gurgling and urging him on, her legs folded around his back tight as a bear trap’s jaws?

Every filthy picture in Pinkard’s mind made him wish he were dead, and Cunningham, and Emily. And, at the same time, every filthy picture in his mind made him wish he were back in Birmingham, so Emily could do those things to him.

“Yeah, a hell of a time,” he repeated. Rodriguez plainly didn’t believe him. Well, too damn bad, Hip, Jeff thought.

He wrapped himself in his blanket, more to keep the mosquitoes away than for warmth, and did his best to sleep. Images of Emily naked and lewd made him sweat harder than the hot, muggy weather could have done by itself. At last, despite them, he dozed-and dreamt of his wife, naked and lewd. Whether awake or asleep, he could not escape her…except when he fought.

Sergeant Cross shook him awake at midnight. For a moment, he thought the hand on his shoulder was Emily’s. When he realized it wasn’t, he also realized he was liable to be killed inside the next hour. He scrambled eagerly to his feet. “Let’s get moving, Sarge,” he said.

“Keep your britches on, Jeff,” Cross answered. “Some of our buddies are still sawing wood. We got to wait on the artillery, too. They’re gonna lay down a box barrage for us, keep the Yanks from bringing reinforcements into the stretch of trench we hit.”

“That sounds pretty good,” Pinkard said. “They want us to bring back prisoners, or are we supposed to come back by ourselves?”

“Nobody told me one way or the other,” Cross said. “Reckon we’ll have to play that one by ear when we get over there.” Seeing Pinkard yawn, he went on, “Grab yourself some coffee. Pot on a little fire just down the way.”

The coffee was thick and tasted like dirt and was strong enough to strip paint, but it made Pinkard’s heart beat faster and his eyes open wide. He gulped it down, swearing as it burned his mouth. Several of his comrades took cups, too. Pretty soon, the pot was empty.

Sergeant Cross passed out burlap sacks of grenades. Jeff took one. The little round bombs-British style, not