Raintree County (97 page)

—Who is it? said a hoarse man's voice.

—A friend, Madame, the Perfessor said. On the recommendation of one of your regular clients, Madame.

—Who's that? said the hoarse voice.

—A Mr. Perkins, the Perfessor said.

—We try to keep a respectable house here, the hoarse voice said argumentatively.

—Of course, Madame, the Perfessor said. One hears only good things of your establishment.

—Course it's pretty hard under the circumstances——

—One does not expect perfection, Madame, the Perfessor said, laughing jovially. One merely wants a little relaxation and a place to chat among congenial spirits.

—Flash Perkins sent you? the voice said.

—I believe they call him that, the Perfessor said. You know him?

—Yeah, I know the big lug, the voice said. He owes three dollars. Come on in.

—Thank you, thank you, Madame, the Perfessor said.

He and Johnny walked into an ill-lighted hallway, in which an elderly woman with powdered pouches under her eyes and a slack, painted mouth was waiting for them. Her eyes were hostile and suspicious.

—This one too? she said, in her man's voice.

—Another friend of Perkins, the Perfessor said. An excellent young man.

—The place is full now.

—We only want some drinks, the Perfessor said.

They followed the proprietress to another door and into the main
downstairs room. Drawn blinds made the place dark. It was full of smoke and badly lighted by oil lamps, but Johnny could see that it was furnished with plank tables and crude benches. There was a door leading into a kitchen. Three or four ugly young women sat at the tables, and the other half a hundred occupants of the room were soldiers. A woman and a soldier got up from a near-by table and went through a door at the far end of the room. Heavy boots banged on stairs. The planks overhead shook unmysteriously. Johnny and the Perfessor took the empty chairs.

Johnny looked around but didn't see Flash. An aged waitress brought drinks, and the Perfessor insisted on paying. He tossed off his drink, but Johnny didn't touch his.

—Ouch! said the Perfessor. Now, John, tell me about yourself.

Johnny began to tell, in more detail than his infrequent letters had made possible, what had happened to him since the night when he had last seen the Perfessor's blackwinged form spring from darkness to the passing train.

—Well, John, the Perfessor said after they had talked a while, I should have known you'd go and do all these damfool things. I had hoped that with my shining example before you, you would escape the Philistine snares of Raintree County. That was quite a fuss I stirred up, wasn't it?

—I felt sorry for you and the Reverend's wife, Johnny said. It looked like a real passion to me and——

—By the way, what was her name? the Perfessor said.

Later Johnny and the Perfessor talked mostly of the War.

—What's the War in the East like? Johnny said.

To him the War in the East was still the storybook War in a mythical Theatre of Operations between two capitals.

—Gettysburg was a beautiful battle, the Perfessor said. Three days of dramatic corpsemaking and a real chance for Meade to end the War. But he muffed it, and since then he and Mars Robert have been blowing kisses at each other across impregnable positions. My boy, war is the same everywhere. A great stink in the nostrils of God.

He looked around the room.

—Perhaps the whores are a trifle better looking on the Eastern front. What was Chickamauga like?

Johnny tried to give him some idea of the battle, but all he could tell him was his own confused picture of the fighting.

—You poor boy! the Perfessor said. For this you left Raintree County.

—What's going to happen anyway, Professor? Where are we heading?

The Perfessor began to drink directly out of his bottle.

—I just report the news, he said.

—Here we are—getting ready to fight on the same ground where we fought two months ago and got whipped.

—And while you boys kill and cuss on the battlefields, and squitter and whore in the camps, back home a lot of bastards and bounty-jumpers are marrying all the beautiful women and wallowing in gravy. But who are we to question the ways of the Eternal?

Someone was arguing about cardhands in the measured syllables of drunkenness. A woman giggled and squeaked weakly in the alcoholic mist. A song started near-by to the accompaniment of a clattering, tuneless piano. A woman stood up, one hand sentimentally supporting her flabby left breast, and sang one of the War's most popular songs.

—Dearest love, do you remember,

When we last did meet,

How you told me that you loved me,

Kneeling at my feet?

O, how proud you stood before me,

In your suit of blue,

When you vowed to me and country

Ever to be true.

The room stank of sweat, spilled whiskey, powdered flesh, cheap perfume, a jakes.

—Weeping, sad and lonely,

Hopes and fears how vain!

Yet praying, when this cruel war is over,

Praying that we meet again.

The Perfessor sucked moodily at his bottle.

—By the way, he said, I just came from Gettysburg on my way over here. They had a patriotic ceremony there on the 19th to commemorate
the establishment of a great National Cemetery. The President was there and spoke. I talked with him.

—What did he say?

The Perfessor smiled, remembering something.

—He told a little story and said we would win the War. The story was a damn good one. I picked up a paper in Cincinnati.

He pulled a rolled newspaper from his pocket and tossed it on the table.

—I haven't seen a newspaper for two months, Johnny said. He unrolled the paper and started reading:

THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG

The President arose and delivered the following short address. . . .

—By the way, the Perfessor said, standing up, I've got an appointment with Grant in ten minutes. The press will be admitted to the august presence for a while. Want to go along?

Johnny put the newspaper in his coatpocket and left with the Perfessor. They walked to a house where Grant was in conference with his generals. There was tremendous activity around the house as couriers came and went. Several generals entered while Johnny was watching. He heard famous names whispered by bystanders. After about twenty minutes, the Perfessor came out.

—Let's stay a minute, he said. The General's leaving.

In a few minutes, several officers came out of the house. General Ulysses S. Grant was a medium-sized man in a sloppy uniform. He had a black beard, fair skin, pale blue eyes. He looked like a commissary man or an engineer. He had a cigar in his mouth.

A spontaneous cheer went up from the crowd.

—Hurrah for old Ulyss!

—You just give the word, General, and we'll whup 'em.

General Grant got on a horse and rode away. He looked like someone who was going off for a day's work at the office.

—The Hero of Vicksburg, the Perfessor said, as he and Johnny walked away, was in an uncommunicative mood. He said he hoped to give the Rebels some trouble and had no objection to my sticking around to see the fuss. He smokes foul cigars, drinks his whiskey straight, and graduated twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine at West Point. There is no subtlety in the man and very little syntax. In
peace time, he would make a bad grocer. In fact, he failed farming and business before the War and got cashiered from the Army once. Nevertheless, he's a good general and perhaps a great one. Of such stuff are the heroes of the Republic fashioned. Let's get back to the shanty.

—Do you think we'll fight soon?

—The General declined to say. But it's no great secret that Sherman is on the other side of the river with maybe twenty thousand men waiting to cross. Anyone can see that Grant is making a concentration. The way we understand it in the East, this damn, dull, whiskey-drinking brute of a general lacks the finesse of our Eastern prima donnas, and when he gets his army concentrated, he can only think of one thing to do with it. Wham! He fights.

It was dark out when Johnny and the Perfessor got back to the shanty and found empty seats at a table in the corner. Johnny opened the newspaper and went on reading the President's Address.

. . . a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to . . .

—Meet the girls! said a loud and happy voice.

Flash Perkins smote Johnny and the Perfessor simultaneously between the shoulderblades. The Perfessor's hat fell on the table.

—This one's yours, Jack, Flash said. Doris, this is Jack Shawnessy, the smartest son-of-a——

—Please, Johnny said, rising and looking helplessly at the Perfessor, I was supposed to be back at camp an hour ago, and——

—Sit down, boy! Flash said. Drinks on me. I'm already lit to the roof and rarin' to go. Hell, I aim to have me a time tonight!

He pushed Johnny down. Doris, a skinny woman who snarled when she spoke, sat down on the table beside him, swinging her legs.

—Honey, she snarled, you're the best-lookin' sojer I seen since I left Louisville. I din't think they made your kind no more.

—Look, Johnny said resolutely. I was reading this paper. Have a drink on me, Doris. Then I have to leave. Honest, I'm sorry, but I'm carrying the regimental mail, and also I have a girl back home. Besides——

—Take it easy, honey, Doris snarled. Nobody's goin' to bite yuh.

I don't mind if I have that drink, though. Go on and read your paper, honey.

Johnny stubbornly put the paper up and tried to go on reading. He could hardly see the words.

. . . dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense . . .

Flash upset a glass; his girl, who was tall, rawboned, and drunk, giggled. The Perfessor was reciting verse.

—Is this the face that launched a thousand ships

And burnt the titless towers of Ilium.

Sweet Hesper, make me unconscious with a kiss!

—You
are
crazy, Hesper said, but I like you. You're kinder cute and diffrunt.

The Perfessor fitted his thin, hawklike face and beard snugly between Hesper's bosoms.

—I salute the Army of the Cumberland, he said. I salute the Commissary Department of the Army of the Cumberland. I salute the Quartermaster of the Commissary Department of the Army of the Cumberland—for provisioning us with these excellent pillows whereon to rest our battle-wearied brows.

This was so good that even Johnny had to laugh.

—Ain't he a scream! Hesper giggled, as Johnny put the paper up again.

. . . we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember . . .

—Come on, girls! Flash said. I feel like dancin'. Tell Flo to thump that ole pile a wire and ivory over there, and le's have a little dance.

—Come on, honey, Doris snarled, fluttering a hand over the newspaper. Let's dance little.

—You haven't had your drink yet, Johnny said. Better have your drink.

The Perfessor smiled sympathetically and recited,

—Virginei volucrum vultus foedissima ventris.

—He cain't even talk plain now, Hesper said, giggling. He's so drunk.

—Same old war, the Perfessor said, on both fronts.

. . . what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great . . .

—Jerusalem! Flash Perkins yelled. I feel a jig a-kickin' in my limbs.

Without warning, he upset the table. His forehead was tight with ridges. He clumped his great shoes on the floor. Someone was hitting the piano, and a space was cleared in the middle of the floor. Flash Perkins began to call the figures.

—Ladies and gennulmen, start tew dance.

Jist watch me a-jiggin' in muh bran-new pants.

The crowd roared approval. The square dance started. The rough soldier forms jostled and jumped on the wide boards. The young faces glowed with sweat in the yellow glare of the lamps. The dancers looked bigger than natural size, as they clumped their club-shaped shoes on the floor, flapped their huge, ill-fitted blue coats. Flash Perkins was cutting in and out like a great rhythmical bull, yelling above the racket:

—I got a gal, her name is Jane.

We're headin' for Memphis on the midnight train.

O, I got a gal in Kalamazoo.

You jist oughta see the things she kin dew!

. . . task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve . . .

—Come on, Jack! Flash yelled, whirling out of the crowd and grabbing Johnny by the arm. Git into the dance, boy! Grab yerself some fun!

Johnny rolled the paper and stood up. As the dance went on, he backed uncertainly toward the door.

—If you got a gal that's a mite tew fat,

You kin melt her down with a dance like that!

But if you got a gal that's a mite tew thin,

You won't have a dern thing left but skin!

But if you got a gal——

A table upset at the far side of the room, glasses splintered, a girl screamed. There was a confused shoving and shouting. A tangle of struggling bodies burst apart. Flash Perkins stood in the middle.

—Come on, you bastards! Come on and fight! I kin lick any man in this whole goddam Army! Come on, you sons-a——