When the War Is Over (19 page)

“Day after tomorrow, General.”

“His last command.”

“It won't matter,” Booth said. “He's a dumb roughneck.”

“Yes,” said Willich, “and we are clever gentlemen.”

“Will you go?” Dickson asked him.

“No. No, I will not. Catto?”

“Yes. I have to.”

Willich nodded. “Now. That Sands is at the telegraph office, with a fast horse. Silliman is with him. If word comes there will be no time wasted.”

“Silliman? Silliman knows? Silliman is part of this?”

“Yes. He feels as we all do.”

“You could have left him out of it,” Catto said. “The surgeon is Phelan?”

“Yes.”

“I'll ride behind,” Catto said. He looked at their faces. “I suppose you're going to tell me this is life, or c'est la guerre.”

“No, Catto,” Stallo said. “It is not life, and the war is over. It is cruel, it is wrong, and it is happening by law in an exhausted republic.”

“The beloved republic,” Willich said softly.

They stood with nothing more to say, as if in a last moment of prayer, as if they were about to part forever.

“It is time,” Willich said. “God forgive us.”

“If he does, he isn't worth a damn,” Catto said. “Booth, have you got a horse for me?”

The clouds had thickened, merged, turned gray, and a breeze harried the procession. Catto mounted and fell in beside Phelan, who was subdued and owlish and asked, “Where have you been?”

“In there,” Catto said, “and I'll not talk about it now. Just shut your gob.”

“I got an order an hour ago. I'd heard nothing.”

“Have you seen Jacob?”

“No. My God, man, my God.”

“Ah, be quiet,” Catto said.

Strollers stared and murmured, all the way to Mount Auburn, and some ragtag and bobtail followed; Catto turned once to curse them. There was no sign of Jacob.

It was two miles to the execution ground. Toward the end of the march Phelan said, “The bloody war.”

“Yes.”

But it was not the bloody war and they knew it.

“A little conscientious drinking afterward,” Phelan said.

“It won't help,” said Catto, and there was the ravine. They had come up a long, winding, uneven trail, tricky for the horses even at a walk. They debouched into the ravine; it was squarish, a hundred feet or so wide. One wall of it was a bluff, almost perpendicular, some twenty feet high, and the soldiers drew Thomas Martin's coffin from the hearse and placed it about twenty-five feet from the face. The boy would be blindfolded and would stand directly before the coffin, his back to the bluff. Eight men would face him with loaded rifles, one cartridge a blank. Prentice would load the rifles and pronounce the three words. Prentice was a dumb roughneck.

The boy and the priest stepped down, Garesche murmuring. The boy was pale but in command of himself. He stared straight before him and did not see Catto. There was no sun to warm his last moments.

Booth issued orders, stationed the men and conversed with Prentice.

“What do you do?” Catto asked. “Pronounce him dead?”

“Yes.” Phelan too was pale. “Will you speak to him?”

“No. What would I say? You speak to him. Tell him all about heaven. How he will be at God's right hand. With the angels and all. And the Virgin Mary baking up a batch of corn bread for him. He's having the last rites and every prayer and attention that money can buy, or the might and majesty of the United States of America.” Catto's eyes brimmed. “And he will shortly be circling above us on wings of purest white, garbed in a silken bedsheet. Go on. Tell him.”

“God forgive you,” Phelan said. “He will be in heaven this night, the boy will. Never talk to me like that again.”

“Ah, for God's sake,” Catto said. “There can't be a heaven! If there's a heaven what the hell's the sense of living?”

Booth inspected the muskets. Behind Catto a murmur: twenty or thirty spectators. He did not see Jacob among them. He damned them again, then stared off beyond them for the horseman who would not come.

Booth led the boy to the open coffin and shook out a blindfold. He seemed to take forever and Catto realized that he was delaying, stretching every motion and word; gazing beyond the crowd, listening. Catto examined them once more. What were they? Shopkeepers? Wives and mothers? He saw a child, a boy of six or seven. The undertaker sat respectfully, his face carefully dismal, on the cab of the hearse.

I should pray, Catto said to himself. For what it's worth. Who knows? Be good to him, God. Forgive him. Don't forgive us.

When there remained no more shilly and no more shally Booth retired toward Catto and signaled to Prentice. Prentice called to Father Garesche, who blessed the boy one last time, placed a gentle hand upon his fair hair, and moved away.

Prentice stood beside his squad, a dark, thick-set man with a full, fanning black beard. Even he, even the dumb roughneck, seemed at a loss: how to begin? He stood for a moment scratching the back of his neck. The mob was silent. Catto fought nausea. Phelan closed his eyes. The undertaker removed his silk hat.

If Catto had not been present he would have believed none of this: not the tragic possibility, not the sickening reality, surely not the mock-heroic climax. The firing party was awaiting its orders, and the crowd stood dead silent before an enormity, even those who approved or enjoyed, standing there some of them holding their breath. This last pause seemed interminable. It dragged on. The crowd murmured, fell silent again.

And then they heard hoofbeats. They heard hoofbeats, and they all turned, all but Thomas Martin, who was facing that way to start with, though blindfolded, and the hoofbeats grew louder, and a man named Lawrence Sands, on a foaming horse, came crashing through the brush, panting and whooping and waving a telegram.

The telegram was signed by Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War of these United States, and it said: “Suspend the execution of Thomas Martin, who was to be executed today, until further orders. By order of the President.”

The reporter for the
Gazette
wrote that the officers looked blank and the soldiers looked curious, “as they about-faced and marched down the hill again. The crowd though evidently disappointed, manifested no uncivil or ferocious feelings.… The undertaker, we thought, seemed to occupy the most unpleasant position, as he drove back with a second hand coffin to dispose of.”

The
Enquirer'
s man demurred: “We never saw so happy a set of men in our lives as these soldiers.… Too much commendation cannot be bestowed upon President Johnson for his promptitude in thus, at the outset of his career, imitating the humane example of his illustrious predecessor, in putting his veto upon the shedding of any more blood; while to General Willich … and all the military officers having charge of this execution, there is just praise and gratitude for staying the tragic scene until the very last minute and using the utmost diligence in preventing the effusion of blood.”

And Catto? When they were all gone back down the hill Catto was still there, with Phelan, and he dismounted and sat heavily upon the grassy earth and bawled like a lamb.

VIII

Out of war, Captain Catto fussed with odds, fumed with ends. This cleaning up, he informed Phelan, was woman's work: tidying a number of privates and corporals, wiping their noses, pinning their nappies and sending them home to mama. “Peace, peace. All those generals are storekeepers to start with, but this sort of bookkeeping and inventory is not for me.”

“You mean you'd like to get back to killing.”

“Why yes. And I suppose you feel the same.”

“Go to hell. I plan to settle in Chicago and become the world's foremost baby doctor. A million red-cheeked Americans scampering back to the nuptial couch and unoriginal sin. I will see to it that their creations survive. The maieutic function.”

“Don't talk dirty.”

“That was a Greek one,” Phelan said comfortably. “I will minister to these viviparous drudges through term, swab the puling infant and slap it into voice, and guarantee one year of life or your money back. All for six bits. Think of it. Six bits times a million or two. I will do yours gratis.”

“Not for a while, old friend. Any little Cattos will be born into a house and not a tent. And I have my hands full now with other folks' children.”

“The rude and licentious soldiery.” Phelan yawned, stretched, blinked. “After which you will go on to high deeds as a killer of redskins, is that it?”

“Now, now. After all, it is what I have been taught to do.” Catto executed a knee-bend, flapped his arms, breathed deeply. “The army held us together in a time of peril and so on. An honorable profession. Also the grub is always there, and the finest of medical attention, and there is plenty of company, and a pretty blue suit, and a country worth having is a country worth warding.”

“Hear, hear.”

“And as for killing …” Catto dropped to a chair and rubbed his thighs. “This is hard to say. But if I must tell the truth then I tell you there was a moment each time when I loved it. I put a ball through a man's body, and in principle that was wrong but at the time—ah, God.” With a dismayed, embarrassed cluck he added, “That's pretty awful, I know.”

“Yes,” Phelan said. “We are a pretty awful species. I won't remind you of the perfections we ought to be imitating.”

“Thanks for that.”

“I will even go further.” Phelan tilted his chair back, smoothed his mustache, and sniffed loudly. “I have my moments too. When I have a man under the knife, every so often I think how odd it is that I could kill him instanter if I cared to, and no one the wiser.”

“But you never do.”

“Never. I was only trying to show you that we are all full of fell impulse and deadly wish. I once knew the desire to scar Silliman because his face is beautiful and his skin is like a peach.”

Catto said, “I learn something new every day, and sometimes it's as if I'd always known it.”

Still the men hung about. The ponderous machinery of demobilization creaked, broke down, creaked again. Catto grew tired of the same questions and avoided his troops—save Haller, who fretted only about his lost stripes and his next post. The two of them walked the city, and on Wednesday—May 10th, an important date in Catto's life—they betook themselves to McLean Barracks on a double errand: they would say hello to the boy, and Catto would confer with General Willich on matters of military importance—to wit, Catto's future rank. His commission was temporary, and he fretted. “You won't make it,” Haller said. “You're brevet all the way. They'll cut you down to sergeant.”

“Then they can't have me,” Catto said briskly. “The pistol is at their head, not mine. Phelan says I can make a fortune on the outside. Silliman pleads with me to be a millionaire. Anyway, Hooker likes me.”

“I wish you luck. They may let you keep your epaulets and then hand you a bad assignment.”

“Like what?”

“Some Indian war in the cold country.”

“Won't be cold for another six months. I'll worry about it then.”

“Fair enough. You just get me my stripes back. Nothing brevet about them.”

“Damn,” Catto said, and at Haller's look went on, “that fat fellow there. Did you see him?”

“No.”

“Reminded me of Routledge. Today's the last day of the amnesty.”

“Sooner or later they'll amnesty everybody.”

“I hope so. That poor fat fool.”

They walked on in silence beneath a clouding sky. Cincinnati bustled gently, shops, wagons, barrels, work gangs, elegant ladies crowding on sail. Catto thought of the boy who had shot him so long ago and how little it meant now; of Sands pounding into the ravine—what if his horse had pulled up lame a mile short!—and Phelan on the ride home from Deer Creek Valley, nervous, relieved, his tongue wagging: “You see, Marius. Man proposes, God disposes. There is some strange and lovely force at work. The Union wins, which is right and just. The killing is at an end, and your passenger pigeons are back, and the dogwood has flowered again. Redemption and resurrection.” Catto had kept silence, overwhelmed, rejoicing in clemency, shaken to his soul that the army, his army, had survived a peril greater by far than war; rejoicing not only in clemency but also in the luck that had placed him in that ravine at that moment.

He and Haller entered the barracks ceremoniously. General Willich was occupied but would be theirs in half an hour. Captain Booth bade them welcome and led them to Thomas Martin's room, while Catto complained that the young fellow ought to be let loose. “We can't,” Booth said. “It was a reprieve, not a pardon. The sentence stands. Got to wait for Hooker.”

“And where is that worthy? Tanking up all the way home? Lying under a table somewhere in Indiana?”

“I'll tell him what you said,” Booth suggested. “He'll be along some time today.”

“Booth, where's the boy's rifle? That Kentucky rifle.”

“I told you once, locked up right here. He'll have it back.”

“Good. I promised him.”

The door swung wide; Thomas Martin chirruped at them. He was sitting Indian-fashion on his bunk, laying out a pack of tattered cards. He swept them into a heap and swung his feet to the floor. “Lieutenant!”

“Captain,” Catto said sternly. Haller said, “Hello, boy,” and the boy said, “Hello, Sergeant.”

“He'll never learn,” Haller said.

“How they treating you?” Catto took a chair. “No more ball and chain, I see.”

Thomas Martin grimaced. “I hated that. Like I was a criminal.”

“That's what you are, all right. No, I guess you're not old enough. What are your plans now?”

“Plans.” The boy fell thoughtful and made a kissing sound. “Well, you'll never guess.” Without waiting for guesses he smiled shyly and told them: “I'm going to join the army, if they'll have me.”