Walk in Hell Page 4

  Paul heard the lyingly cheerful sound of rounds cooking off inside the farmhouse. McSweeney dashed toward it. He stuck the nozzle right up against the slit and let loose another tongue of fire.

  Along with the sound of cartridges prematurely ignited came another—the sound of screams. Gordon McSweeney’s face was transfigured with joy, as if he’d just taken Jerusalem from the pagans. And then something happened that Paul had never before seen in Utah: three or four men came stumbling out through a hole in the side of the adobe, their hands lifted high in surrender.

  Joyfully smiling still, McSweeney turned the nozzle of the flamethrower hose on them. “No, Gordon!” Paul yelled. “Let ’em give up. Maybe we can break this rebellion yet.”

  “I suppose it could be so,” McSweeney admitted reluctantly. The Mormons shambled off into captivity. Out from the adobe floated the strong stench of burnt meat. Mantarakis didn’t care. With its linchpin lost, this line wouldn’t hold. One fight fewer, he thought, till Utah was done.

  For this first time since the land was settled in the seventeenth century, a paved road ran between Lucien Galtier’s farm and the town of Rivière-du-Loup on the St. Lawrence. If Lucien had had his way, the road would have disappeared, and with it the American soldiers and engineers who had built it. But, regardless of what he wanted, the Americans maintained their hold on Quebec south of the St. Lawrence, and had pushed across the mighty river at Rivière-du-Loup, intending, no doubt, to sweep southwest toward Quebec City, and then toward Montreal.

  The push across the river and the newly paved road were anything but unrelated. As Lucien trudged in toward the white-painted wood farmhouse with the steep red roof after feeding the horse, he glanced at the much larger wooden building, painted what he thought a most unattractive shade of green-gray, that had gone up not far away, on what had been some of his best wheat land.

  While he watched, a green-gray ambulance bearing on each side panel a large red cross inside a white circle pulled up to the building. The driver leaped out. He and an attendant who emerged from the rear of the vehicle carried a man on a stretcher into the U.S. military hospital. They hurried back and brought in another injured man. Then the ambulance, engine snarling, headed back toward Rivière-du-Loup to pick up more casualties.

  Lucien wiped his feet before he went into the farmhouse. Though not a big man himself, he towered over his wife, Marie. That did not mean he could track muck inside without hearing about it in great detail.

  “Warm in here,” he said approvingly. “It is only October, but the wind outside is ready for January.”

  “May it freeze the Americans,” Marie answered from the kitchen. Like her husband, she spoke in Quebecois French. It was the only language she knew. Lucien had picked up some English during his conscript time in the Canadian Army, just as English-speaking Canadians soaked up a little French there. He’d forgotten most of what he’d learned in the twenty-odd years since he’d served, though having to deal with the Americans had brought some of it back.

  He walked toward the kitchen, drawn not only by the warmth of the stove but also by the delicious smells floating out toward him. He sniffed. He prided himself on an educated nose. “Don’t tell me,” he said, pointing to the covered pot. “Ham baked with prunes. And are there potatoes in the oven, too?”

  Marie Galtier regarded him with mixed affection and exasperation. “How am I supposed to surprise you, Lucien?”

  He spread his hands and shrugged. “As long as we’ve been married, and you still expect to surprise me? You make me happy. That is enough, and more than enough. What do I need of surprises?”

  Also in the kitchen, helping her mother, was their eldest daughter, Nicole. She was slight and dark like Marie, and put Lucien achingly in mind of what her mother had been like when he’d first started courting her. Now she said, “I can surprise you, Papa.”

  “Of this I have no doubt,” Lucien said. “The question is, my little bird, do I want to be surprised?” He didn’t remember only what Marie had been like when he was courting her. He also remembered, all too well, what he had been like. He did not think the young male of the species likely to have shown any dramatic improvement over the intervening generation.

  And when Nicole answered, “Papa, I do not know,” his heart sank. She took a long, deep breath before going on, and that heart, seemingly a relentless gymnast, leaped into his mouth. Then she said, “I have been thinking of doing nurse’s work at the American hospital. It is very close, of course, and we could use the money the work would bring.”

  After all the dreadful possibilities he had imagined, that one seemed not so bad…at first. Then Lucien stared. “You would help the Americans, Nicole? The enemies of our country? The allies of the enemies of France?”

  His daughter bit her lip and looked down at the apron she wore over her long wool dress. To Galtier’s surprise, his wife spoke up for her: “If a man is hurt and in pain, does it matter what country he comes from?”

  “Father Pascal would say the same thing,” Lucien replied, which made Marie wince, because the priest at Rivière-du-Loup, whatever anyone’s opinion of his piety might be, collaborated eagerly with the Americans.

  “But, Papa,” Nicole said, “they are hurt and in pain. You can hear them moaning in the night sometimes.” Lucien had heard those moans, too. They had been sweet to his ears. He shook his head in dismay to discover his daughter did not feel the same. Nicole persisted, “You know what I think of Father Pascal. You know what I think of the Americans. None of that would change. How could it? And they would be giving money to people who despise them.”

  “You don’t even speak any English,” Galtier said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew he was in trouble. When you had to shift your reasons for saying no, you were liable to end up saying yes.

  And Nicole pounced: “I can learn it, I know that. It might even be useful for me to know if, God forbid—” She didn’t go on. She didn’t need to go on. Lucien had no trouble completing the sentence for himself. If, God forbid, the United States win the war and try to make us all use English afterwards. That was what she’d meant, or something very much like it.

  He didn’t try to answer on the spur of the moment. Believing Canada and France and England and the Confederacy could be defeated went dead against all his hopes and dreams. What he did say was, “How Major Quigley will laugh when he learns you are working for the Americans.”

  He spoke with more than a little bitterness. Nicole bit her lip. The French-speaking U.S. major had placed the hospital on Galtier land not least because Lucien would not collaborate with the American occupying authorities.

  Marie spoke up again: “Actually, that may be for the best. The major may believe we are coming round to his view of things after all, and so become less likely to trouble us from now on.”

  Lucien chewed on that. It did make a certain amount of sense. And so, instead of putting his foot down as he’d intended, he said, “We shall speak of this more later.” His wife and eldest daughter nodded, outwardly obedient to his will as women were supposed to be. He knew they both had to be smiling inside, though. Sooner or later, they would get what they wanted. Talking about things later was but one short step from giving in.

  At supper, he discovered he was the last one in the family to hear about what Nicole had in mind. That saddened him but didn’t unduly surprise him. For one thing, he did more work away from the farmhouse than anyone else. For another, he was the one from whom permission would have to come. Nicole would have wanted to know she had support from the rest before bearding him.

  “I wish I could go there, too, and make money of my own,” his daughter Susanne said wistfully. Since she was only thirteen, they would not have to worry about that unless the war went on appallingly long. Or, of course, unless there is another war after this one, Lucien thought, and then shivered, as if someone had walked over his grave.

  His older son, Charles, did not approve of Nicole’s plan. “I say th
e Americans are just another pack of Boches, and we should have as little to do with them as we can.” He spoke with the certainty of seventeen. In another year, he would have gone into the Canadian Army to serve his time. The only good thing about the war was that it had rolled over this part of Quebec before he could take part in it.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Georges, who was a couple of years younger than his brother and almost the changeling of the family: not only was he larger and fairer than his parents and brother and sisters, but he also had a rollicking wit out of keeping with the pungent sarcasm Lucien brought to bear on life. Now he grinned at Nicole across the table. “Maybe you’ll meet a handsome American doctor and he’ll sweep you off your—Oww!”

  By the dull thud from under the table, she’d kicked him in the shin. To underscore a point that needed no underscoring, his littlest sister, Jeanne, said, “That was mean.” Eight-year-old certainty wasn’t of the same kind as the seventeen-year-old variety, but it wasn’t any less certain, either. Denise, who was a couple of years older than Jeanne, nodded to show her agreement. Jeanne turned to Nicole and said, “You’d never do anything like that, would you?”

  “Certainly not,” Nicole said, frost in her voice. The look she turned on Georges should have turned him into a block of ice, too. It didn’t. He stayed impudent as ever, even if he did have to bend over to rub his injured leg.

  “Now wait, all of you,” Lucien said. “No one has said that Nicole will have any opportunity to meet American doctors, even if she wanted to do such a thing, which I already have no doubt she does not.”

  “But, Papa,” Nicole said, “are you changing your mind?”

  “No, for I never said yes,” he answered. His eldest daughter looked stricken. He glanced down to Marie at the foot of the table. He knew what her expressions meant. This one meant she’d back him, but she thought he was wrong. He sighed. “Perhaps it might be possible to try…but only for a little while.”

  Lieutenant General George Armstrong Custer slammed his fist down on the table that held the maps of western Kentucky. “By heaven,” he said, “the War Department’s finally come out with an order that makes sense. General attack all along the line! Draft the orders to implement it here in First Army country, Major Dowling. I’ll want to see them by two o’ clock this afternoon.”

  “Yes, sir,” Abner Dowling said, and then, because part of his job as adjutant was saving Custer from himself, he added, “Sir, I don’t believe they mean all units are to move forward at the same moment, only that we are to take the best possible advantage of the Confederates’ embarrassment by striking where they are weakest.”

  Saving Custer from himself was a full-time job. Dowling had broad shoulders—there wasn’t much about Dowling that wasn’t broad—and needed them to bear up under the weight of bad temper and worse judgment the general commanding First Army pressed down on him. Custer had always been sure of himself, even as a brash cavalry officer in the War of Secession. Now, at the age of seventy-five, he was downright autocratic…and no more right than he had ever been.

  His pouchy, wrinkled, sagging face went from pasty white to dusky purple in the space of a couple of heartbeats. Neither color went well with his drooping mustache, which he peroxided to an approximation of the golden color it had once had naturally. The same applied to the locks of hair that flowed out from under his service cap. He wore the cap all the time, indoors and out, for it concealed the shiny expanse of the crown of his head.

  “When I see the order ‘general attack,’ Major, I construe it to mean attack all along the line, and that is what I intend to do,” he snapped now. The only time his voice left the range from petulant to irritable was when he was talking to a war correspondent: then he spoke gently as any sucking dove. “We shall go at the enemy and smash him up.”

  “Wouldn’t it be wise, sir, to concentrate our attacks where he shows himself to be less strong, break through there, and then use the advantages we’ve gained to make further advances?” Dowling said, doing his best—as he’d done his best since the outset of the war, with results decidedly mixed—to be the voice of reason.

  Defiantly, Custer shook his head. Those dyed locks flipped back and forth. Not even the magic word breakthrough had reached him. “Without their niggers to help ’em, the Rebs are just a pack of weak sisters,” he declared. “One good push and the whole rotten structure they’ve built comes tumbling down.”

  “Sir, we’ve been pushing with all we have for the past year and more, and it hasn’t tumbled down yet,” Dowling said. If it had, we’d be a lot deeper into the Confederacy than we are—and even good generals have trouble against the Rebs.

  “We’ll drive them out of Morehead’s Horse Mill,” Custer said, “and that, thank God, will have the added benefit of getting us out of Bremen here. You can tell why this town is so small: no one in his right mind would want to live here. And once we have the railroad junction at Morehead’s Horse Mill, how in the name of all that’s holy can the Rebs hope to keep us out of Bowling Green?”

  Dowling suspected there would be a number of ways the Confederate forces could keep the U.S. Army out of Bowling Green, even with Negroes in rebellion behind Rebel lines. He didn’t say that to Custer; a well-developed sense of self-preservation kept his lips sealed however much his brain seethed.

  What he did say, after some thought, was, “So you’ll want me to prepare the orders with the Schwerpunkt aimed toward Morehead’s Horse Mill?” With the Confederates in disorder, they might actually take that town. Then, after another buildup, they could think about moving in the direction of—not yet on—Bowling Green.

  “Schwerpunkt.” General Custer made it sound like a noise a sick horse might make. “It’s all very well to have the German Empire for an ally—without them, we’d be helpless against the Rebs and the limeys and the frogs and the Canucks. But we imitate them too much, if you ask me. A general in command of an army can’t walk to the outhouse without the General Staff looking in the half-moon window to make sure he undoes his trouser buttons in the proper order. And all these damned foreign words fog up the simple art of war.”

  The United States had lost the War of Secession. Then, twenty years later, they’d lost the Second Mexican War. Germany or its Prussian core, in the meantime, had smashed the Danes, the Austrians, and the French, each in short order. As far as Dowling was concerned, the country that lost wars needed to do some learning from the side that won them.

  That was something else he couldn’t say. He tried guile: “If we do break through at Morehead’s Horse Mill, sir, we’ll be in a good position to roll up the Rebel line all the way back to the Ohio River, or else to push hard toward Bowling Green and make the enemy react to us.”

  All of that was true. All of it was reasonable. None of it was what Custer wanted to hear. Much of Dowling’s job was telling Custer things he didn’t want to hear and making him pay attention to them. What Dowling wanted was to get up to the front and command units for himself. The only reason he didn’t apply for a transfer was his conviction that more men could handle a battalion in combat than could keep General Custer out of mischief.

  Before Custer could go off like a Yellowstone geyser, a pretty young light-skinned colored woman poked her head into the room with the map table and said, “General, suh, I got your lunch ready in the kitchen. Mutton chops, mighty fine.”

  Custer’s whole manner changed. “I’ll be there directly, Olivia. Thank you, my dear,” he said, courtly as you please. To Dowling, he added, “We’ll resume this discussion after I’ve eaten. I do declare, Major, that young lady is the one redeeming feature I have yet found in western Kentucky.”

  “Er—yes, sir,” Dowling said tonelessly. Custer took himself off with as much spry alacrity as a man carrying three quarters of a century could manage. He didn’t bother hiding the way he pursued Olivia. Amused First Army rumor said she’d been caught, too, not just chaste. Dowling thought the rumor likely true: the general carried on like an ass
otted fool whenever he was around his cook and housekeeper. The adjutant was more inclined to fault Olivia’s taste than Custer’s. You’d think the old boy would have had his last stand years before.

  An orderly came in with the day’s mail. “Where shall I dump all this, sir?” he asked Dowling.

  “Why don’t you give it to me, Frazier? The general’s eating his lunch.” Or possibly his serving wench. Dowling shook his head to get the lewd images out of it. Coughing, he went on, “I’ll sort through it for him so he can go through it quickly when he’s finished.”

  “Yes, sir.” Frazier handed him the bundle and departed. Dowling made three piles on the map table. One was for administrative matters pertaining to First Army, most of which he’d handle himself. One was for communications from the War Department. He’d end up handling most of those, too, but Custer would want to look at them first. And one was for personal letters. Custer would answer some of those—most likely, the ones full of adulation—himself. Dowling would get stuck with the rest, typing replies for the great man’s signature. His lip curled.

  And then, all at once, the sour expression vanished from his broad, plump, ruddy face. He arranged the piles and waited with perfect equanimity for General Custer to return. Meanwhile, he studied the map. If they could break through at Morehead’s Horse Mill, they really might accomplish something.

  Custer came back looking absurdly pleased with himself. Maybe he’d managed to get a hand under Olivia’s long black dress. “The mail came in, sir,” Dowling said, as if reporting the arrival of a new regiment.

  “Ah, capital! Let’s see what sort of big thing it brings us today,” Custer said grandly, hauling out a piece of slang forgotten by almost everyone since the War of Secession. As Dowling had known he would, he picked up the stack of personal mail first. As Dowling had known he would, he went from grand to glum in a matter of moments. “Oh. A letter from my wife.”