American Front (54 page)

He and Herodotus lifted a crate. It was heavy enough to need two men on it, sure enough. “You niggers want to watch out what you’re doin’,” Lieutenant Kennan said as they started up the gangplank. “Anybody who drops one of these here crates, he doesn’t just get his ass fired. He gets himself blacklisted—no work at all for him. And you want to know what I think about that, I hope the fucker starves, and all the little pickaninnies he’s spawned, too.”

“Give that man a whip and put him in the cotton field, he get five hundred bales on the acre,” Herodotus said.

“Yeah, till one fine mornin’ they find him with his head broke in, and what a shame, nobody knows who done it,” Cincinnatus said. “Wouldn’t take long, neither.” Herodotus nodded. That sort of thing happened, every so often.

But Lieutenant Kennan had more than a whip to back him up. He had the United States Army on his side. If anything happened to him, the Yankees would take hostages and shoot them. That had happened before, too.

Cincinnatus and Herodotus loaded the long, narrow crate into the back of a motor truck. Whatever it was, that said it had a certain amount of importance, because things that weren’t of high priority got hauled to the front in horse-drawn wagons. More than the usual number of U.S. soldiers were standing around the trucks, too, keeping an eye on the loading but not, of course, deigning to help with what they, like whites in the CSA, called nigger work.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Cincinnatus was glad he was wearing leather gloves. His hands were hard, but the rough boards of the crates would have torn them up anyhow. He didn’t want to stop for the dinner break. He’d got into a rhythm. Pausing to eat took him out of it. When you were working like a machine, that happened sometimes. But stop he did. If you didn’t take whatever breaks the Yankees doled out to you, they were liable to figure you didn’t need ’em and not dole out any; they were nasty in a more efficient, cold-blooded way than Confederate whites.

Sure enough, when he went back to work after his sowbelly and greens and his canteen full of cold coffee, he needed a while to get used to things again, and he never did quite find the trancelike state in which he’d been working before dinner. Thinking about what he was doing made the afternoon seem to last three times as long as the morning had.

About halfway through the afternoon, another big barge came across the river from Cincinnati. It too was loaded almost to the wallowing point with long, skinny crates stenciled
BATTERY F
and
DISINFECTION
. As the Negro laborers unloaded the crates, U.S. soldiers strung up electric lamps so another crew could eventually replace them and keep working through the night.

Herodotus raised an eyebrow. “Ain’t never seen ’em do that before,” he said. Cincinnatus nodded; he hadn’t seen them do that before, either.

At last, Lieutenant Kennan shouted, “All right, nigs, knock off. Anybody back here even one minute later than seven o’clock tomorrow morning, he can kiss my ass, but he still won’t get any work. Go on now, get the hell out, and we’ll put some fresh mules on the job.”

“That’s how he thinks of us—mules,” Cincinnatus said as he and Herodotus lined up to get their day’s pay. Cincinnatus knew he’d busted his hump, but Kennan wasn’t handing out fifty-cent bonuses to anybody, not today.

“Mus’ be his time of the month,” Herodotus said. “He’s sure enough cranky like that.”

Some of the work gang stood at the trolley stop and waited for a ride back to the Negro district of Covington. Others—men who saved every nickel—left them with waves and weary calls of, “See you in the mornin’,” and started walking south, away from the Ohio. Cincinnatus was one of those. He hadn’t ridden the trolley since he found out Elizabeth was in a family way.

A little south of downtown, he peeled off from the group of laborers. “Got to buy me some new laces for my shoes,” he said. “Got so many knots holding these ones together, it’s like puttin’ rocks in my shoes.”

“You could pick a better place,” Herodotus said. “Conroy there”—he pointed to the name on the awning above the storefront—“he don’t like black folks much. Feldman down the street, he’s a better bet.”

“I ain’t never had no trouble with Conroy, an’ he’s cheaper to buy from than the Jew,” Cincinnatus answered. Herodotus shrugged, waved, and kept on walking.

Conroy’s general store was typical of the breed. The proprietor, a big, red-faced fellow with a formidable grizzled mustache and a wad of tobacco in one cheek, looked a lot more pregnant than Elizabeth did. He had dry goods at the right of the store, yard goods at the back, groceries to the left, with barrels of flour, sugar, and crackers in front of his counter. Cigars and candy reposed in glass jars on the counter.

A white man and a couple of white women were in the store. Cincinnatus took off his cap and waited till Conroy served them. Another white man came in after Cincinnatus but before the storekeeper was done taking care of the others. He got served ahead of Cincinnatus, too.

At last, the laborer’s turn came. The storekeeper got him three pairs of shoelaces and gave back ninety cents change on the day’s dollar Cincinnatus handed him. Some of the coins were Confederate, others U.S.

“Seen somethin’ interesting,” Cincinnatus remarked, making sure Conroy hadn’t shortchanged him. Casually, as if it were no particular import—and, for all he knew, it wasn’t—he described the unending loads of crates he’d hauled all day long, and the curious words on them.

Conroy tugged at one end of his mustache. “That a fact?” he said. “Well, you’re right. Mebbe that is interesting.” He spat, and fell a little short of the cuspidor. By the brown stains on the pale pine boards near the spittoon, he missed a good deal of the time.

With ninety cents in change clinking in his pocket, Cincinnatus irrationally felt richer than he had with a single silver cartwheel. He got out of the store as fast as he could; passing the time of day like that with a white man felt unnatural to him, and, by Conroy’s attitude, to the storekeeper as well.

When he got home, Elizabeth had a stew of chicken and okra and rice waiting for him. “I was startin’ to be worried about you,” she said, and then yawned. She’d been tired all the time since she was expecting, but she hadn’t worked any less. With everything more expensive because of war and occupation, she couldn’t afford that.

“Put in some extra time,” Cincinnatus explained. “Didn’t get any extra money for it, but I didn’t have no choice, neither. And afterwards, I stopped by Conroy’s, bought me some shoelaces.”

“Did you?” Elizabeth said, and let out a long sigh. “Dear God, I wish we didn’t have to have nothin’ to do with Conroy or any of the other people still spyin’ for the CSA up here.”

“Lord have mercy, so do I,” Cincinnatus said, “but after we didn’t give Tom Kennedy to the Yankees, they got themselves a hold on us.”

“No good will come of it,” Elizabeth predicted gloomily. “No good at all.”

Cincinnatus couldn’t argue, and didn’t try. While Kennedy was in the house, he’d had the upper hand on the white man. Once Kennedy had left, though, despite whatever profuse thanks he gave, the upper hand was his again, because he could blackmail Cincinnatus and Elizabeth, threatening to let U.S. authorities know what they’d done. He hadn’t ever made that threat, but when he asked Cincinnatus to let Conroy the storekeeper know about anything intriguing he picked up on the wharfs, his former driver didn’t see how he could say no.

“Besides the shoelaces, why did you stop by Conroy’s?” Elizabeth asked him. He explained. His wife nodded. “That’s peculiar, it sure is. Did Conroy say anything about it when you told him?”

“Not a word,” Cincinnatus answered. “But he wouldn’t. If I don’t know it, I can’t blab it.”

“That’s so,” Elizabeth said. “What do
you
suppose is in them crates?”

“No way to know,” he replied, “but I expect we’ll find out.”

XIV

Lucien Galtier looked up in the sky with something like approval. Winters were long. Winters were hard. They wore at a man; it seemed he never saw the sun for weeks at a time. But spring, when it finally burgeoned, made up for that…at least until winter came again.

Fluffy white clouds drifted from west to east, their shadows sailing across the farmland like clipper ships across a smooth sea. The weather—he paused to thank God—had been very good this year. True, from time to time, there were Americans on the road, in trucks or on horseback or in long columns afoot, but God didn’t take care of all the little details in your life. You had to do some of the work for yourself. If the farm survived the ravages of rabbits and rats and insects, it was likely to survive the ravages of Americans, too.

Here came Georges, running up the path that separated potatoes on the one side from rye on the other. “Papa!” he called, and waved when Lucien straightened up from weeding the potato plot. “Papa, Father Pascal is back at the house with an American officer, and they want to see you.”

“
Calisse
,” Galtier said; he’d been so engrossed in his hoeing, he’d paid no attention to traffic on the road for a while. Now he put the hoe up on his shoulder, as if it were a rifle. “Well, if they want to see me, then see me they shall. It is an invitation I cannot refuse, not so?”

His younger son’s eyes twinkled. “They want to see you, but they did not bother to ask if you wanted to see them,” Georges said with Gallic precision.

“They do not care. They have no reason to care. They are the authorities, and I? I am but a farmer of the humblest sort.” Lucien sounded too humble to be quite convincing, but that was what happened when you took on an unfamiliar role. And, as he had said, whether he wanted to see them was an irrelevance. He tramped back toward the farmhouse, Georges running ahead to let the important visitors know he was coming.

Father Pascal and the American officer, whoever he was, had come in the priest’s buggy; the horse bent its head down to crop grass by the rail to which it was tethered. Seeing the buggy relieved Galtier’s mind. He would have thought senility closing in on him had he missed the noisy arrival of a motorcar.

Inside, Marie and Nicole had already presented the priest and the officer—he was, Lucien saw, the heavyset major with whom Father Pascal had been talking when Galtier first went into Rivière-du-Loup not long after the Americans arrived—with coffee and cakes. He would have been astonished had his wife and eldest daughter done anything less. Even if your guests’ going would have been more welcome than their coming, you had duties as a host—or hostess.

“Here he is,” Father Pascal said, rising from the sofa with a wide smile on his smooth, plump face. “Allow me to present to you the truly excellent husbandman, Lucien Galtier. Lucien, I have brought here Major Jedediah Quigley.”

“
Enchanté, Monsieur Galtier
,” Quigley said in the elegant Parisian French Lucien had heard him using up in town. “Father Pascal has been loud in singing your praises.”

“He honors me far beyond my poor worth,” Galtier replied, wishing the priest had chosen to throw himself into the St. Lawrence rather than praising him to the occupying authorities. The less notice he attracted from them, the happier he was.

“You are a modest man,” Father Pascal said. “This is the mark of a godly man, a Christian man of solid virtue. I have also taken the liberty of passing on to Major Quigley your generous willingness to inform me of anyone who misunderstood my role in the situation as it is.”

Galtier spread his hands. They were hard and rough, with callused palms and dirt under his nails and ground into the folds of skin at each knuckle. “I am desolate, Father, that I have had nothing of which to inform you. Spring is a busy season for a farmer, and I have had little to do with anyone of late.”

“Galtier, Lucien.” Major Quigley took a piece of paper from one of the many pockets with which his uniform was adorned. From another pocket he drew a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, which he set on his nose. He unfolded the paper and studied it for a moment. “Ah, yes. I regret that the requisitions drawn from this farm were so heavy last winter. I should not be surprised if it turned out that the soldiers who carried out the program did so with an excess of zeal. As a result, you must think less than kind thoughts of the American military government for this district.”

“Major, in a war, each side does what it can to win,” Galtier answered with a shrug. “I am not a soldier now, but you must know I served my time. I know these things.” He chose his words with great care. This American major who talked like a Parisian aristocrat was liable to be as dangerous as half a dozen of the likes of Father Pascal.

Quigley folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. He got out a pipe, a pouch of tobacco, and a match safe. After a glance toward Marie for permission, he lit the pipe. Once it was drawing well, he spoke in musing tones: “I am confident that, when requisition time comes round again, it will be easier to restrain the enthusiasm of the soldiers carrying out their duties.”

Not,
it may be easier to restrain them
—if
you cooperate
. Most men, trying to establish such cooperation, would have spelled out the terms of the bargain to be struck. That was how Father Pascal operated, for instance. Not Major Quigley. He started at the point of assuming cooperation and went on from there. A man to reckon with, indeed.

And, of course, it would be impossible to keep the neighbors from learning he and Father Pascal had been here. Some of them would assume that alone meant Lucien was collaborating with the Americans: why else would the major and the priest have come? Keeping his good name was going to take Galtier some work.

He wanted to glance over at Marie, to see what she was thinking. A winter free of requisitions—or anything close to that—would all but guarantee a successful year. A full belly, peace of mind against what was in essence robbery at gunpoint—those were not small items on the balance sheet…provided he grew a beard so he did not have to look at himself in the mirror when he shaved every morning.

But looking at yourself in the mirror was not a small item, either. “As I say, Major, I am only a farmer, and spend most of my time here on my land. I am not a man who often hears things of any sort—certainly not scandal and slander spoken about the pious father here.”

“No, eh? Father Pascal led me to believe it might be otherwise. What a pity,” Major Quigley said. He didn’t snarl and bluster at Lucien. He didn’t turn and glower at Father Pascal, either. He just spread his hands. “Such is life.” He got to his feet, which meant the priest also had to rise hastily. Major Quigley bowed to Marie. “Thank you, Madame Galtier, for your generous hospitality. We shall not take up any more of your time, or of your husband’s—he is, as he says, a busy man.”

He didn’t even warn Galtier that the requisitions, instead of being extra gentle when harvest time came around, would be extra harsh. If Lucien couldn’t figure that out for himself, he’d learn come fall.

But Lucien knew perfectly well what would happen come fall. He also knew he’d have to spend almost as much time working to make the farm seem poor as he would making sure it really wasn’t. As the major with the strange Christian name had said, that was life.

Major Quigley climbed into the buggy. Father Pascal untied his horse, then joined the American soldier. The priest was expostulating violently and gesturing with such passion, he could hardly handle the reins. But the horse must have been used to his theatrics. It turned around and started back up the road toward Rivière-du-Loup.

Lucien Galtier sighed. Now he did turn to Marie, wondering if she was going to shout at him for guaranteeing the whole family a harder time when autumn rolled around. Instead, she ran to him and squeezed the breath out of him with the tightest embrace she’d given him outside the bedroom in years. A moment later, Nicole and Georges piled onto him, too, and after that his three younger daughters, who must have been listening somewhere out of sight. Only his son Charles, busy in the barn, didn’t know to join and mob him, and Galtier knew perfectly well how Charles felt about the American occupiers.

“Oh, Papa, you were so brave!” Nicole exclaimed.

“I was?” Lucien said: that had not occurred to him. “What was I supposed to do, turn my coat? For a little more in the barn? It is not worth it.”

“You were very brave, Lucien,” Marie said; if she thought so, it was likely to be true. “We would have loved you whatever you told the American, but after what you did—we are proud of you.”

“Well,” Galtier said, “this is all very good, I am sure, and I am glad you are proud of me, but pride does nothing to weed the potato patch. I shall have to work harder today because of the
Boche américain
and the foolish priest. For that, I do not thank them. I work long enough as it is.” He disentangled himself from the arms—the proud arms—of his family, went outside, picked up his hoe, shouldered it, and headed back toward the potatoes.

Not much was left of Slaughters, Kentucky, a few miles north of Madisonville. U.S. troops pushing east had managed to drive the Confederates out of it only a few days before, after fighting that fully lived up to the name of the place fought over. As far as Abner Dowling was concerned, the fight, like most of those General Custer planned, had been far more expensive than it was worth.

However much he wanted to, he couldn’t say that to the war reporter walking through the ruined streets of Slaughters beside him. Custer’s famous name was what had drawn Richard Harding Davis out to Kentucky to see the American troops in action.

Davis had seen a lot of wars, all around the world. His reports from Manila as the Japanese were entering the city were classics in their way. So were his reports on what they’d done to the Spanish prisoners they’d taken, though those hadn’t been filed till he was safely out of the Philippines.

And now here he was with Custer’s First Army—and with the chance, even if he hadn’t known it when he got here, to write stories about something new in warfare on the North American continent.

“You’re sure the general will let me go right up to the front?” the reporter asked Dowling for about the fourth time. Davis was fifty or so, ruggedly handsome (though his color wasn’t all it could have been, and he panted a little as he walked along beside Dowling), and wore a green-gray jacket halfway between a military style and one a big-game hunter might have used. It had more pockets than you could shake a stick at. Dowling wished he owned one like it.

“Mr. Davis,” he answered, “General Custer is going up to the front. He wants to see this for himself. He has already told me repeatedly, you are welcome to accompany him and me.
Now that you’re here, Mr. Davis, General Custer would strangle with his own liver-spotted hands anyone who had the gall to try to get between him and headlines, which is to say, between you and him
.

Custer had billeted himself in one of the few houses in Slaughters only lightly damaged: a two-story Victorian structure whose windows had only jagged shards of glass in them but whose walls and roof remained intact. A couple of sentries stood outside the front door. They’d dug foxholes nearby, into which they could dive in case the Rebs started shelling the town again. They saluted Dowling and eyed Richard Harding Davis with respectful curiosity. He wasn’t just a reporter, but had a name as a novelist and playwright as well.

“Go on in,” one of them said, opening the door. “The general should be finishing up his breakfast about now, and I know he’ll be glad to see you.”

As the sentry had said, Custer sat at the kitchen table. The view through the bay window had probably been lovely, back before it turned into a prospect of charred rubble and shell holes. The general was attacking his plate with knife, fork, and great gusto.

He turned when Dowling and Davis came into the room. Pointing down at his breakfast, he exclaimed, “Raw onions!” Such was his delight that, had he been writing, he probably would have used capital letters and four exclamation points.

Dowling did not share that delight. He coughed and did his best not to inhale, but his eyes started watering to beat the band in spite of the improved ventilation the shattered bay window gave the kitchen. He’d known about Custer’s love for onions—anyone who had anything to do with Custer found out about that—but why had the general chosen today of all days for them?

Richard Harding Davis did his best to take the potent vegetables in stride. “A warmup for the rest of the day’s show, eh?” he said, but could not help wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

“That’s right, by jingo!” Custer said, shoveling another odorous forkful into his mouth. He went on till he was done. When he’d finished the whole plate, he spoke in meditative tones: “Those onions could have used some salt. Well, can’t be helped. Shall we go disinfect some Rebels, gentlemen?”

Off they went. Custer’s motorcar, despite having to veer off the road a couple of times to avoid craters, brought them past the artillery posts, where men without shirts stood waiting in the June sunshine for the order to rain death down on the Confederate lines. Custer talked gaily about Custer all the while. Davis scribbled an occasional note. Dowling wished the commanding general would shut up, not only because he’d heard all the stories before but also because, even with the wind streaming by in the open motorcar, Custer’s breath was still hideously vile.

Once they came to the rear of the trench system, the motorcar could advance no farther. Dowling wondered if Custer would make it to the front under his own power. The commanding general was a long way from being the spry, dashing soldier of thirty-odd years gone by, though obviously he was convinced that time’s wrinkled hand hadn’t touched him at all.

He was spry enough to reach the trenches without undue difficulty, though. Richard Harding Davis proved to be the one who had trouble there. “Wind isn’t what it used to be,” he said apologetically, letting a hand rest on his chest for a moment, as if his heart pained him. He lighted a cigarette and went gamely on.