When the War Is Over (15 page)

“Your men!”

Catto laughed shortly, snorting like Godwinson. From the window, carnival: the world freed, sprung, its first exercise of liberty doubtless a monumental debauch. He jammed boots onto sockless feet, stuffed socks within his shirt, strode to his jacket, his hat, the plume bedraggled and dusty. “Jesus. I can't believe it.” And he paused, because that was true: he could not believe it. There opened before him a bleak vista, icy, deserted: his future. He was a soldier, but being a soldier was already not the same thing.

“You wait a minute,” she said. “You're not going to leave me here like this. What about Sunday dinner? And a cab?” As if the next payment were due, she covered her breasts haughtily, contriving to flaunt them also.

“For Christ's sake,” Catto said. “I'll leave you money for dinner and a cab, but I've got to go.” He would keep Haller with him. Haller had good years left, and the stripes could be politicked somehow. He dug up a couple of dollars and set them on the chest of drawers. “Here. Look, I'll see you next week. I'll send a note around.”

“Soldiers!” she snarled, and he stopped in alarm. “You and your money. You and your men. Never mind next week.”

“Charlotte,” he pleaded half-heartedly, and reached to tousle her tousled hair. She ducked away, peeling off the sheet, and jumped to her feet, and he saw a squarish woman, running a bit to flesh, who could be dowdy in a nightgown. But he remembered more than that, and resolved to be gentle. “This has been my life for four years. Since I was a boy this is all I know. I have to be with them now. That's how it is.”

After a moment she said sullenly, “Oh, all right.” He thought how little he knew her.

“I'll send you a note,” he said.

“Don't trouble yourself.” She slouched to the basin, poured from the pitcher. Catto could think of nothing to say.

He closed the door with considerable relief.

And ran down the stairs and into the street, where he was whirled into a crazy reel, fiddler and all, with shouts and laughter breaking over him, and cries of “Hey sojer!” A burly man in a round hat, a cloth knotted about his throat, squeezed the breath out of him and spilled whiskey on his jacket, roaring, “Good work, mate! You did it!” Catto freed himself and plunged into another mass of mankind. A shrill cur nipped at his boots. A woman kissed him; she had breakfasted on fish and beer. Catto laughed and slapped her rump and laughed again, standing on the cobblestones clutching his hat, thinking that it was not every day he slapped two rumps in ten minutes; he worked his way across the street slapping rumps, and counted seven before he flopped, panting and woozy, against the shutters of the small shop, a jeweller's, he saw. “Thomas,” he blurted. “Jacob. Is it true?”

“That's what they say. On the telegraph from Washington, they say. Lee surrendered this morning.”

“Lee.” Catto grinned foolishly.

The boy too smiled; Jacob nodded and nodded, quietly cheerful; and Catto nodded, and they stood for a time wordless.

“Thomas,” Catto said then, “how are you? It's been a month now.”

“Just fine,” the boy said. “A little tired. And what a scar! But the war is over.”

The carnival swirled before them, thundered and screeched, a fiddle here and a bugle there and a banjo somewhere else struggling valiantly against the press and holler, the bell and blare, the happy irony of rebel yells, the drunken whoops of victors who had never fought.

“How does it feel, Jacob?”

Jacob squinted up at the sun, amused; he rubbed the back of his neck. “Feels good,” he conceded.

“Yes sir,” Catto said. “It feels good. What will you do now?”

Thomas Martin too waited in friendly curiosity.

“Stay here,” Jacob said. “Get some work. Maybe … maybe …”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe find me a wife.” Jacob smiled, shy. “I got—” and he paused warily, looking from the captain to the boy, from the boy to the captain, visibly wrestling his way from the little privacy he owned toward an act of commemorative trust—“I got almost a hundred dollars.”

Catto found himself moved by the confidence, and awkwardly sought a reply: “Why, that's fine. That's more than I have right now.”

Gravely Jacob pursed his lips; gravely, sorrowfully, he nodded again; gravely he meditated; gravely he said, “Lend you some, if you want.”

Startled, Catto stood blinking until Thomas Martin crowed laughter and Jacob smiled, and Catto understood, with immense shock, that he had once more been the butt of a joke. He chuckled appreciatively. The chuckle took hold suddenly, the joke seemed to be bursting, echoing, multiplying within him, and then he was whinnying, guffawing, rollicking in breathless and tearful jubilation, racked by a fierce, idiotic jollity, by gusts and bellows of joy and mockery, helplessly shouting cosmic peals of merriment celebrating and deriding himself, Jacob, the boy, all men and women, all war and peace; the universe dissolved in this seizure of truth.

He recovered. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and sobbed a last laugh. “I'm obliged to you,” he said. “Maybe later. Right now I'm hungry. I'm off to the hospital. Thomas, what about you?”

“That's up to Gen'l Willich.”

“Yeh. But you get that rifle back and scoot out of here as soon as you can. Back to Greenup County. Hear?”

“Well, maybe,” the boy said.

Catto paused, feeling that more was required. “Tell you what,” he said. “You remind me some day, say ten years from now, and I'll buy you a dinner and tell you about the time I took a ball in the shoulder, back during the big war.”

“I never told you,” the boy said, “but I was mad at myself for missing.”

They all grinned stupidly. On an impulse Catto shook the boy's hand, and then Jacob's.

Routledge, Routledge! That poor, sad, stupid old man! Soon or late they would find him, and he would pay. If only he had waited! Suppose the unlikely, that he had reached home: he would be skulking now, sleeping in the loft, diving for cover at a dog's yap. Lincoln had decreed an amnesty for deserters who rejoined their regiments by May tenth; Routledge might never hear of that, buried to his terrified eyes in hay, cowering at every alien footfall. Two days—if he had waited two days! Nine children. Catto imagined Routledge in prison, still a Jonah, stumbling over his own chains, turning an ankle on the ball, smashing his foot with the heavy sledge. Poor fool! So many of them were fools, Captain Catto not excepted. Franklin was a filthy fool. Padgett was an innocent fool. Silliman was a rich fool. Phelan was a wise fool. Hooker was the greatest fool of all because he had gone furthest among fools. Dunglas was a dangerous fool because he had stingy eyes and was elegant and graceful. Godwinson was a vain fool and Haller a bitter fool. Uniform of the day: cap and bells. All of them.

A rank of young girls shouted and blew kisses; he smiled politely and saluted, a loose wave. True, he had survived. That was not foolish.

Stunned, he halted: the war was over! He was alive and unhurt! All his limbs! With two bars and a fine mustache! Glory hallelujah!

Catto entered the hospital shouting for bread and coffee, and marched toward the day room. Godwinson and Carlsbach crossed him in the corridor and Godwinson's mouth flew open but Catto was saying, “Right, right. I did it, as I promised. The men may present me with a gold watch.” Carlsbach thought that extremely clever and grew hysterical by degrees. Godwinson and Catto were slapping shoulders and muttering good things. “Poor Routledge,” Catto said. “Poor Routledge,” Godwinson said. “Poor Routledge,” Carlsbach said.

Catto went to his room, disinterred an exhausted toothbrush and smeared upon it a dab of ointment, a mysterious, vile-tasting and highly mutable substance invented by Phelan, constantly drying, flaking and diminishing in puffy, spontaneously generated clouds of white calx; the drawer was coated. He washed his face and stood there moist, adrip, scrubbing at his teeth, abrading away the night's frass, the yellow skin of war, the taste of the inner man. He spat, drank, buffed gently with a fresh tongue. “Good morning all,” he said aloud, “or whatever time it is,” and changed his clothes, not omitting clean socks. He donned slippers, extracted three cigars from a box and struck out for the day room, lightening the day further with cheery jibes for assorted cripples, amputees and simples, for one blind, one relatively jawless, one with a pack of dressings strapped to his middle like a money belt. In the day room he deflated himself, emptying his lungs in a growlish, relieved, relaxing rush. Home again. “It is even he,” said Phelan.

“Marius!” Silliman beamed. “You've heard.”

“Heard what?”

“The war. It's over, man. Lee surrendered.”

“Where's my coffee? What is this about a war?”

Silliman blushed perfectly.

Catto relented. “Nice work, Ned. You scared them to death.”

Franklin entered, bearing a tray, and set it before his captain.

“Piggy,” Catto said.

“Yes sir.”

“The war is over.”

“I heard, sir.”

“You'll be going home soon.”

“Yes sir.”

“Where's that?”

“Decatur, sir.”

“Decatur. So I don't have to be nice to you any more.”

“No sir.” Franklin spoke warily, glancing from Phelan to Silliman, searching desperately for the point of the jest.

“Then I want to tell you,” Catto said lazily, “and you will never know how much pleasure it affords me, that you are beyond all doubt and all comparison the filthiest, stinkingest soldier it has ever been my misfortune to serve with.” Phelan was smiling, but Silliman stared at Franklin with cold eyes. Franklin attempted a smile, gave it up, looked from one officer to another. “I used to pray for rain,” Catto went on, “because the stench of wet cotton was easier on the nostrils than the stench of dry Franklin. You're a dagtailed pig and you pollute the company and we are all sick of it. Now get out of here so I can eat.”

Franklin was white about the nose and mouth. “Yes sir,” he managed, and faced about snappily and left them.

“Now why did you do that?” Phelan asked.

Catto bit into his bread and swigged coffee. “That damned civilian! It did give me pleasure,” he said after a moment, and paused to swallow; “ah, that's good, that's good. Thank God for coffee, even this coffee. It gave me pleasure, and I think it gave Ned pleasure, and it was a little revenge on behalf of the company, and ah! how I am sick of stinks, and it may have been the best thing anyone will ever do for Decatur. Also it was pleasant to act like an officer for a change and not a politician.” He showed his teeth; his eyes sparkled. “By God, me lads. The war is over. I can get on out west now.”

“You can get on out west when Hooker says so,” Phelan grumbled.

“You're really going west, are you?” Silliman asked.

Catto smiled beatifically, warwhooped quietly, and stuffed his young self with bread and coffee.

All that week they traded news and gossip, and were uncomfortable with one another. Lee was finished but Johnston was still fighting, or was not; and Morgan; and Jessee; a small force of Johnnys still held out in Georgia; no, in South Carolina; no, in North Carolina; no, in Tennessee. Older men were sure to be sent home first. No, it was time in uniform that counted. No, it was how many battles. And how many wounds. No, the officers would make recommendations. “I will recommend you all for garrison duty in the south,” said Catto, and was answered by gratifying jeers. “None of you can be sent home until the last patient here is well.” More jeers. “On the outside remember that if you are hungry or thirsty or need money, Silliman's father will be pleased to oblige.” Or, “No claps released for two years.” Franklin did not chuckle, and Catto was now rather sorry to have bullied him. Farewell hung thick as fog, and the bad jokes were only feckless shafts of watery sunlight. “It's a long time, three years,” he said to Silliman. “If I was on the way out I'd be scared. I got habits now that don't mean much out of the army.”

“All the same,” Silliman said, “I don't see how you can do it. They'll bust you down to sergeant probably, and on the outside you could go far. You could run a mill, handle men, maybe even go into politics. You've got that touch.”

“Politics!” Catto did his best to look ashen. “Christ Almighty, Ned. Mind your language.”

“You know what I mean,” Silliman rebuked him. “You're a leader. But a wiseacre too.”

“Piss-ant lieutenant. Watch what you say, lad. I'll have you burying horses.”

“No, I mean it.” Silliman colored again, suffused by his own solemnity. “You listen to me for a minute, Marius. You're a fine man, but you've got to learn to take things seriously. You could rise straight to the top of the heap.”

“And sit at Hooker's right hand.”

“I mean outside.”

“I don't know one damn thing about outside. I know everything about inside.”

“You're better than the army.”

“That'll do. The army's been mother and father to me. Anyway I want to try the cavalry now. I'm tired of mud and I'm tired of walking and I like the smell of horses. Also their conversation.”

“Go to the devil,” said Silliman.

Men washed. Some shaved. Some sorted out the petty acquisitions of the war and turned up, or discarded, strange objects. Franklin owned a crucifix that made him uneasy; he showed it off, blustering—heavy silver, finely wrought, nails, gash, crown of thorns—but he wriggled and frowned, hazily glimpsing his own blasphemy: robbing the dead of Christ himself! Jesus! Lowndes had a snuff-box, Carlsbach a small pistol four inches long, a muzzle-loader with the ramrod cunningly lodged along the barrel. Catto would not have tolerated wedding rings. A collector of dead men's wedding rings had no place in his company. He suspected that some of his boys had gleaned jewelled rings on one or another battlefield. That was all right; it was not the value of the piece that mattered. Even in God's country a man had to get ahead the best way he could. But a wedding ring.