Blood and iron ae-1 Read online

  "Don't pour the soft soap on me, even if you're shaped like a barrel of it," Custer growled. His description of Dowling's physique was, unfortunately, accurate, although he was hardly the dashing young cavalryman himself these days. He tapped at the four stars on the shoulder of his fancy-as fancy as regulations permitted, and then some-uniform. "Took me long enough to make full general, by God. When I think of the fools and whipper-snappers promoted ahead of me… I could weep, Lieutenant Colonel, I could just weep."

  Custer's slow promotion had also meant Dowling's slow promotion. Custer never thought of such things, nor that calling a fat man fat to his face might wound his feelings. Custer thought of Custer, first, last, and always.

  Dowling scratched at his mustache, in lieu of reaching out and punching the distinguished general commanding the U.S. First Army right in the nose. He took a deep breath and said, "Sir, they may have taken a while to recognize your heroism, but they've gone and done it."

  In an odd sort of way, he was even telling the truth. As with the rest of his life, Custer knew only one style of fighting: straight-ahead slugging. First Army had paid a gruesome toll for that aggressiveness as it slogged its way south through western Kentucky and northern Tennessee.

  When Custer saw his first barrel, he'd wanted to mass the traveling forts and beat his Confederate opponents over the head with them, too. War Department doctrine dictated otherwise. Custer had ignored War Department doctrine (lying about it along the way, and making Dowling lie, too), assembled his barrels exactly as he wanted to, hurled them at the Rebs-and broken through. Other U.S. armies using the same tactics had broken through, too. If that didn't make him a hero, what did?

  If he'd failed… if he'd failed, he would have been retired. And Dowling? Dowling would probably be a first lieutenant in charge of all the battleship refueling depots in Montana and Wyoming. He knew what a narrow escape they'd had. Custer didn't even suspect it. He could be very naive.

  He could also be very canny. "I know why they're calling me to Philadelphia," he said, leaning toward his adjutant so he could speak in a conspiratorial whisper. "They're going to put me out to pasture, that's what they're going to do."

  "Oh, I hope not, sir," Dowling lied loyally. He'd fought the good fight for a lot of years, keeping Custer as close to military reality as he could. If he didn't have to do that any more, the War Department would give him something else to do. Anything this side of latrine duty looked more pleasant.

  "I won't let them," Custer said. "I'll go to the newspapers, that's what I'll do." Dowling was sure he would, too. Publicity was meat and drink to him. He might even win his fight. He'd won many of them in his time.

  All that was for the moment beside the point, though. "Sir, you are ordered to report in Philadelphia no later than Sunday, twenty-first April. That's day after tomorrow, sir. They've laid on a special Pullman car for you and Mrs. Custer, with a berth in the next car for me. You don't have to take that particular train, but it would be a comfortable way to get there." Dowling was, and needed to be, skilled at the art of cajolery.

  Custer sputtered and fumed through his peroxided mustache. He did know how to take orders-most of the time. "Libbie would like going that way," he said, as if to give himself an excuse for yielding. Dowling nodded, partly from policy, partly from agreement. Custer's wife would like going that way, and would also approve of his acquiescence. But then, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, in Dowling's view, had more brains in her fingernail than her illustrious husband did in his head.

  The train proved splendid. Dowling wondered if the Pullmans and dining car had been borrowed from a wealthy capitalist to transport Custer in splendor-and he himself got only a reflection of the splendor Custer had to be enjoying to the fullest. As he ate another bite of beefsteak in port-wine sauce, he reflected that life could have been worse.

  A brass band waited on the platform as the locomotive pulled into the Broad Street station-and not just any brass band, but one led by John Philip Sousa. Next to the band stood Theodore Roosevelt. Dowling watched Custer's face when he saw the president. The two men had been rivals since they'd combined to drive the British out of Montana Territory at the end of the Second Mexican War. Each thought the other had got more credit than he deserved-they'd quarreled about it in Nashville, as the Great War was ending.

  Now, though, Roosevelt bared his large and seemingly very numerous teeth in a grin of greeting. "Welcome to Philadelphia, General!" he boomed, and advanced to take Custer's hand as the band blared out "The Stars and Stripes Forever" and photographic flashes went off like artillery rounds. "I trust you will do me the honor of riding with me at the head of the Remembrance Day parade tomorrow."

  Dowling could not remember the last time he had seen George Custer speechless, but Custer was speechless now, speechless for half a minute. Then, at last, he took Roosevelt's hand in his and huskily whispered, "Thank you, Mr. President." Beside him, Libbie (who thought even less of Roosevelt than he did) dropped the president a curtsy.

  And Abner Dowling felt something that might almost have been a tear in his eye. Roosevelt had done Custer honor, not the other way round. President Blaine had instituted Remembrance Day at the close of the Second Mexican War as a memorial to the humiliation of the United States by their foes. It had always been a day of mourning and lamentation and looking ahead to fights unwon.

  And now the fight was over, and it had been won. Instead of lying prostrate in defeat, the United States stood triumphant. With Remembrance Day come round again, the country could see that all the sacrifices its citizens had made for so many years were not in vain. Flags wouldn't fly upside down in distress any more.

  Custer asked, "Mr. President, where will you seat my wife? That I have come to this moment is in no small measure due to her."

  "Thank you, Autie," Libbie said. Dowling thought Custer dead right in his assessment. He hadn't thought Custer perceptive enough to realize the truth in what he said. Every once in a while, the old boy could be surprising. Trouble was, so many of the surprises proved alarming.

  "I had in mind placing her in the motorcar directly behind ours," Roosevelt answered, "and putting your adjutant with her, if that be satisfactory to you all. Lieutenant Colonel Dowling has given his country no small service."

  Dowling came to stiff attention and saluted. "Thank you very much, sir!" His heart felt about to burst with pride.

  "The people will want to look at the general and the president, so I am perfectly content to ride behind," Libbie said. In public, she always put Custer and his career ahead of his own desires. In private, as Dowling had seen, she kept a wary eye on Custer because his own eye, even at his advanced age, had a tendency to wander.

  "Good. That's settled." Roosevelt liked having things settled especially his way. "We'll put you folks up for the night, and then tomorrow morning… tomorrow morning, General-"

  Custer presumed to interrupt his commander-in-chief: "Tomorrow morning, Mr. President, we celebrate our revenge on the world!" It was a typically grandiose Custerian phrase, the one difference being that Custer, this time, was inarguably right. Theodore Roosevelt laughed and nodded and clapped his hands with glee. The victory the United States had won looked to be big enough to help heal even this longtime estrangement.

  Up until the war, the Hindenburg Hotel had been called the Lafayette. Whatever you called it, it was luxury beyond any Dowling had ever known, surpassing the train on which he'd come to Philadelphia to the same degree the train surpassed a typical wartime billet. He feasted on lobster, drank champagne, bathed in a tub with golden faucets, plucked a fine Habana from a humidor on the dresser, and slept on smooth linen and soft down. There were, he reflected as he drifted toward that splendid sleep, people who lived this life all the time. It was enough to make a man wish he were one of the elect-either that, or to make him a Socialist.

  The next morning, he was whisked along with the Custers on a whirlwind inspection of the units that would take part in the parade. He endured
rather than enjoying most of the inspection: he'd seen his share of soldiers. But some of the barrels and their crews were from the First Army brigade Colonel Morrell had assembled and commanded. They greeted Custer and Dowling with lusty cheers.

  Dowling thought those cheers lusty, at any rate, till the parade began and he heard the Philadelphians. Their roar was like nothing he had ever imagined. It was as if they were exorcising more than half a century of shame and disgrace and defeat-Lee had occupied Philadelphia at the end of the War of Secession- in this grandest of all grand moments.

  Some women in the crowd looked fierce as they waved their flags-thirty-five stars, now that Kentucky was back in the USA, and the new state of Houston would make it thirty-six on the Fourth of July. God only knew what would happen with Sequoyah and with the land conquered from Canada. Abner Dowling didn't, and didn't worry about it.

  Other women, he saw, seemed on the point of ecstasy at what their country had finally achieved. Tears streamed down the faces of old men who remembered all the defeats and embarrassments, of boys who hadn't been old enough to go and fight, and of men of fighting age who had given of themselves to make this parade what it was. Even a young man wearing a hook in place of his left hand wept unashamed at this Remembrance Day to be remembered forever.

  In the motorcar ahead, Custer and Roosevelt took turns rising to accept the plaudits of the crowd. And the crowd did cheer each time one of them rose. But the crowd would have cheered anyhow. More than anything else, it was cheering itself.

  Libbie Custer leaned close to Dowling and said, "Lieutenant Colonel, I thank God that He spared me to see this day and rejoice at what we have done."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said, and then, half to himself, "And what do we do next?"

  III

  Having been beached, Roger Kimball, like so many of his comrades, was making the painful discovery that very little he'd learned at the Confederate Naval Academy in Mobile suited him to making a living in the civilian world. He was a first-rate submarine skipper, but there were no civilian submarines. The C.S. Navy was no longer allowed to keep submersibles, either; otherwise, he would have stayed in command of the Bonefish.

  He had a fine understanding of the workings of large Diesel engines. That also did him very little good. Outside the Navy, there were next to no large Diesel engines, nor small ones, either. He understood gasoline and steam engines, too, but so did plenty of other people. None of them seemed willing to sacrifice his own position for Kimball's sake.

  "Miserable bastards, every last one of'em," he muttered as he trudged through the streets of Charleston, South Carolina. Then he laughed at himself. Had he had a steady job, he wouldn't have let go of it, either. Maybe he should have headed down to South America, as he'd told Anne Colleton he might.

  A lot of former Navy men were trudging the streets of Charleston these days, most of them overqualified for the jobs that turned up-when any jobs turned up, which wasn't often. Kimball kept money in his pocket partly because he wasn't too proud for any kind of work that came along-having grown up on a hardscrabble farm in Arkansas, he was no pampered Confederate aristocrat-and partly because he was a damn fine poker player.

  He walked into a saloon called the Ironclad. "Let me have a beer," he told the barkeep, and laid a ten-dollar banknote on the bar.

  He got back a beer and three dollars. Sighing, he laid some briny sardellen on a slice of cornbread from the free-lunch counter and gobbled them down. Pickled in brine, the little minnows were so salty, they couldn't help raising a thirst. He sipped the beer, and had to fight the urge to gulp it down and immediately order another. Provoking just that response was the free lunch's raison d'etre.

  A couple of men farther down the bar were talking, one of them also nursing a beer, the other with a whiskey in front of him. Kimball paid them only scant attention for a bit, but then began to listen more closely. He emptied his schooner and walked over to the fellow who was drinking whiskey. "You wouldn't by any chance be from the United States, would you?" he asked. His harsh Arkansas drawl made it very plain he was not.

  He was looking for a yes and a fight. As the man on the bar stool turned to size him up, he realized the fight might not be so easy. He was a little heavier and a little younger than the other man, but the fellow owned a pair of the steeliest gray eyes he'd ever seen. If he got in a brawl, those eyes warned he wouldn't quit till he'd either won or got knocked cold.

  And then his friend laughed and said, "Jesus, Clarence, swear to God I'm gonna have to stop taking you out in public if you don't quit talking that way."

  "It's the way I talk," the man with the hard eyes-Clarence- said. He turned back to Kimball. "No, whoever the hell you are, I am not a damnyankee. I sound the way I sound because I went to college up at Yale. Clarence Potter, ex-major, Army of Northern Virginia, at your service-and if you don't like it, I'll spit in your eye."

  Kimball felt foolish. He'd felt foolish before; he expected he'd feel foolish again. He gave his own name, adding, "Ex-commander, C.S. Navy, submersibles," and stuck out his hand.

  Potter took it. "That explains why you wanted to wipe the floor with a Yankee, anyhow. Sorry I can't oblige you." He threw a lazy punch in the direction of his friend. "And this creature here is Jack Delamotte. You have to forgive him; he's retarded- only an ex-first lieutenant, Army of Northern Virginia."

  "I won't hold it against him," Kimball said. "Pleased to meet the both of you. I'd be happy to buy you fresh drinks." He wouldn't be happy to do it, but it would make amends for mistaking Potter for someone from north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  "I'm pleased to meet damn near anybody who'll buy me a drink," Delamotte said. He was a big, fair-haired fellow who sounded as if he was from Alabama or Mississippi. He kicked the bar stool next to him. "Why don't you set yourself down again, and maybe we'll get around to buying you one, too."

  Being closer to Clarence Potter, Kimball sat beside him. The bartender served up two more beers and another whiskey. Kimball raised his schooner on high. "To hell with the United goddamn States of America!"

  Potter and Delamotte both drank: no Confederate officer cut loose from his country's service in the aftermath of defeat could refuse that toast. The ex-major who talked like a Yankee and looked like a tough professor offered a toast of his own: "To getting the Confederate goddamn States of America back on their feet!"

  That too was unexceptionable. After drinking to it, Kimball found himself with an empty schooner. He wasn't drunk, not on two beers, but he was intensely and urgently thoughtful. He didn't much care for the tenor of his thoughts, either. "How the hell are we supposed to do that?" he demanded. "The United States are going to be sitting on our neck for the next hundred years."

  "No, they won't." Potter shook his head. "We will get the chance."

  He sounded positive. Roger Kimball was positive, too: positive his new acquaintance was out of his mind. "They made you butternut boys say uncle," he said, which might have come close to starting another fight. Confederate Navy men, who'd battled their U.S. counterparts to something close to a draw, resented the Army for having to yield. But now, not intending pugnacity, he went on, "Why do you reckon they'll be fools enough to ever let us do anything again?"

  "Same question I've been asking him," Delamotte said.

  "And I'll give Commander Kimball the same answer I've given you." Potter seemed to think like a professor, too; he lined up all his ducks in a row. In rhetorical tones, he asked, "Toward what have the United States been aiming ever since the War of Secession, and especially since the Second Mexican War?"

  "Kicking us right square in the nuts," Kimball answered. "And now they've finally gone and done it, the bastards." He'd done some nut-kicking of his own, even after the cease-fire. That last, though, was a secret he intended to take to the grave with him.

  "Just so," Clarence Potter agreed, emphasizing the point with a forefinger. "Now they've finally gone and done what they've been pointing toward since 1862. Up till now, they had a
goal, and they worked toward it. Christ, were they serious about working toward it; you have no notion how serious they were if you've never seen a Remembrance Day parade. Scared me to death when I was up in Connecticut, believe you me it did. But now they don't have a goal any more; they've achieved their goal. Do you see the difference, Commander?"

  Before Kimball could answer, Jack Delamotte said, "What I see is, I'm thirsty, and I bet I'm not the only one, either." He ordered another round of drinks, then ate some sardellen and lit a cigar almost as pungent as the fish.

  After a pull or two at his beer, Kimball said, "Major, I don't follow you. Suppose their next goal is wiping us out altogether? How in blazes are we supposed to stop 'em?"

  "Goals don't work like that, not usually they don't," Potter said. "Once you got to where you always thought you were going, you like to ease back and relax and smoke a cigar-a good cigar, mind you, not a stinking weed like the one Jack's stuffed into his face-and maybe marry a chorus girl, if that's what you reckoned you would do after you made it big."

  "So that's what you figure is going to happen, eh?" Kimball chuckled. "You figure the United States scrimped and saved for so long, and now they'll buy a fancy motorcar and put a beautiful dame in it? Well, I hope you're right, but I'll tell you this much: it won't happen as long as that goddamn Roosevelt is president of the USA. He hates us too much to care about chorus girls."

  "I never said it would happen tomorrow," Potter replied. "I said it would happen. Countries live longer than people do." He knocked back his whiskey with a sharp flick of the wrist and ordered another round.

  While the bored man behind the bar was drawing the beers, Jack Delamotte leaned toward Kimball and said, "Now you're going to hear Clarence go on about how we need to find a goal of our own and stick to it like the damnyankees did."

  "It's the truth." Potter looked stubborn-and slightly pie-eyed. "If we don't, we'll be second-raters forever."