'Please, won't someone come? Take my wife's name and write her?'
That came from the wagon nearest Charles. Feeling Sport stagger and slip in the mud, he tried to shut his mind to the noise. But it went on: the hiss of rain; the squeal of axles; the men crying out like children. It broke his heart to listen to them.
Jim Pickles rode up beside him. 'We're stopped. Somebody's mired up the line, I s'pect.'
'Won't someone come? I can't make it. I need to tell Mary —'
Bursting with rage, wanting to pull his Colt and blow out the screamer's brains, Charles whipped his right leg over the saddle. He jumped down, splashing deep in mud. He slapped Sport's reins into Pickles's palm.
'Hold him.'
He climbed the rear wheel of the ambulance wagon and fought his way under the canvas into the slithering stir and stink. He thought of Christmas in '61.
He was sick in his soul. Sick of the madness and folly of killing men on the other side to save some of his own. Why had they said not one damn word about this kind of thing back at the Academy?
Hands plucked his trousers, the shy, soft touches of frightened children. The rain beat hard on the hooped canvas top. He raised his voice in order to be heard, yet sounded quite gentle.
'Where's the man who needs to write his wife? If he will identify himself, I'll help.'
From the parlor window, Orry gazed along Marshall at the rooftops and row houses reddened by the cloudless sunset. An abnormal silence had enveloped the city for several days, for reasons the general populace did not as yet understand. But he did.
'Some of the fools in the department are trying to say Lee was successful — that he did what he set out to do: reprovision the army off the enemy's land.' Serious and silent, wearing gray, Madeline sat waiting till he continued. 'The truth is, Lee's in retreat. His casualties may have run as high as thirty percent.' 'Dear God,' she whispered. 'When will that be known?' 'You mean when will the papers get hold of it? A day or two, I suppose.' He rubbed his temple, aching suddenly in the broiling heat. 'They say Pickett charged the Union positions on Cemetery Hill in broad daylight. With no cover. His men went down like scythed wheat. Poor George — Why did we begin this damned business?'
She went to him, slipped her arms around him, pressed her cheek against his shoulder, wishing she could provide an answer. They held each other in the red light deepening to dark.
In a squalid taproom down by the river basin, Elkanah Bent ordered a mug of beer, which turned out to be warm and flat. Disgusted, he set it down as a white-haired man ran in, tears on his cheeks.
'Pemberton gave up. On the fourth of July. The
Bent added his sympathetic curse to those of others at the maghogany bar. In the distance, church bells began to toll. Had he slipped into Richmond just when everything was falling apart? All the more reason to locate that fellow Powell.
Mr. Jasper Dills suffered a headache even worse than Orry Main's. The headache started on Independence Day, a Saturday, when word reached the city of a stunning success at Gettysburg. Washington had been waiting for good news for days. Its arrival put some heart into the holiday celebration.
That very morning, he had returned from his vacation cottage on Chesapeake Bay, where he had prudently retired when rumors reached him of a possible rebel invasion. He was soon driven to distraction by the crackling of squibs that youngsters set off outside his house.
To add to the commotion, bands blared patriotic airs in the streets, and jubilant crowds surged through President's Park, serenading at the windows of the Executive Mansion as the news got better and better. Lee whipped; Vicksburg taken; Grant and Sherman and Meade heroes.
The glad tidings couldn't compensate for the debilitating effects of the din on lawyer Dills, nor for the familiar pattern that developed in the steamy days following the celebration. Like all the generals before him, Meade appeared to falter and lose nerve. He failed to pursue Lee aggressively, throwing away the chance to destroy the main Confederate army. The illuminations in the windows of mansions and public buildings went dark. The corner bonfires sparked and subsided into acrid smoke.
Head still pounding, Dills pondered two other pieces of unpleasant information, between which he ultimately perceived a relationship. His butler told him Bent had been at the front door, raving like a madman. And a sharp letter from Stanley Hazard informed Dills that the man he had recommended had nearly precipitated a catastrophe by beating a Democratic newsman when no such treatment had been ordered.
Stanton had demanded someone be held accountable. 'Ezra Dayton' was dismissed, ordered out of Washington — and Mr. Dills would be so good as to make no further recommendations to the special service, thank you.
For two days and nights, messengers employed by Dills's firm had been sent out to search the city. It was true — Bent was gone. No one knew where. Dills sat in his office, head throbbing, urgent briefs piling up on his desk while he thought of the stipend, the stipend that would end if he lost track of Starkwether's son. What should he do? What could he do?
'The day has been a disaster,' Stanley complained at supper on the Tuesday after Independence Day. 'The secretary's furious because Meade won't move, and he blames me for the mess with Randolph.'
'I thought you managed to hush that up.'
'To a certain extent. Randolph won't publish anything. That is, his paper in Cincinnati won't. But Randolph's on the streets again, and his bruises are a regular advertisement of what was done to him. Then this afternoon, we had more bad news. Laurette?'
He pointed to his empty glass. Isabel touched her upper lip with her handkerchief. 'You've had four already, Stanley.'
'Well, I want another. Laurette!'
The maid filled the glass with red Bordeaux. He swallowed a third of it while his wife shielded her eyes with her hand. Her husband was undergoing peculiar changes. The responsibilities imposed by his position and the huge sums accumulating in their bank accounts seemed too much for him somehow.
'What else went wrong?' she asked.
'One of Baker's men was in Port Tobacco. He heard that Mr. Dayton, the fellow who brutalized Randolph, apparently deserted to the enemy after Baker drove him out of town. God knows what sensitive information he took with him. The whole business reflects shamefully on the department. No one admits publicly that we control Baker, but everyone knows it. On top of that —' he guzzled the rest of the wine and signaled the maid, who poured another glass after casting an anxious glance at her mistress '— on top of that, as of today, the Conscription Act is officially in force. People hate it. We've already had reports of protests, incidents of violence —'
'Here?'
'New York, mainly.'
'Well, my sweet, that's far away from this house — and for once you might reflect on your good fortune. You could be drafted — you're still young enough — if you weren't in the War Department or sufficiently wealthy to pay for a substitute.'
Stanley sipped his wine, still looking morose. Isabel ordered Laurette out of the room and came around to his end of the long, shining table. Standing behind her husband, she restrained his hand when he reached for the wine glass again. Resting her long chin on the top of his head, she patted his arm in an unusual display of affection.
'Despite all your troubles, we're very lucky, Stanley. We should be grateful Congress had the wisdom to enact that substitute clause. Thankful that it's a rich man's war but a poor man's fight, as they say.'
But he wasn't comforted. He sat contemplating all of the changes in his life during the past couple of years. One was the development of a consuming thirst for strong drink — which could wreck a man's career. On the other hand, that tended to happen less often if you were wealthy. He must do his best to keep the tippling under control and keep selling shoes to the poor fools who were dying for slogans on both sides of the war.
