When the War Is Over (3 page)

Phelan came by to renew dressings, and to adjust the sling, fussing like a grandmother and gossiping even worse. Half the time Catto could not understand this nervous, prancy Irish high-stepper with rolling eyes, who gabbled on and on, throwing in his bits of the Bible and Shakespeare and God knew what. Being inactive and unemployed Catto noticed it more. “It is perhaps a drop of Welsh blood,” Phelan said. “My own people are more solemn and judicious.”

“Yeh. The Ninetieth Illinois.”

“Now, now,” Phelan said. The 90th Illinois was an Irish regiment and known for babble. It was said that they jabbered the Johnnys into surrender; two days across the lines from them and you gave up just for a bit of silence. One of them was supposed to have reported the death of their colonel, and when this was questioned he said, “Indade he is kilt; I heard him say so wid his own mouth.” Phelan was sensitive about this. He was sensitive about many things. When his eyes stopped rolling and flashing they grew melancholy. Somewhere in him was a great bitterness. Perhaps it had to do with doctoring. Or with being so educated. Schooling was some years behind Catto. Phelan had revealed once that he studied at the Cooper Union in New York before learning medicine, and with the priests before that. “I don't like this,” he said now, and undid the dressing. “This is not as clean as I would want.”

“I don't like it either. It hurts.”

“It is mortified somewhat.”

“Then do something about it. What are you paid for?”

“Paid! I have not been paid since the month of June. They keep the money in a barrel in Cincinnati. By the way, they say Atlanta is all burned down.”

“Give me a cigar.”

Phelan struck a pine match for him.

“Where do you get those?”

“A good doctor has his little oddments,” Phelan said. “These are dangerous. They fly apart and burn holes in your shirt. Also do not breathe the phosphorous. Anyway, you have fine weather for your convalescence.”

That was true. The days were beautiful, and the finches were company. In the light breezes of late summer the trees seemed to breathe.

“And you are not out there being shot full of holes.”

“One is enough.”

“Yes. And a nasty one. You must pray.”

“Just cover it up again,” Catto said. “I don't like the look of it, and when it's open like that I can't help squinting at it.”

“Yes.” Phelan brooded. “We are all full of life and juices, and then something pops or splits or swells up, and we are dead in a day. I wonder if Adam and Eve ever cut themselves. Were there thorns in Eden. Did he ever choke on a pomegranate seed, and cough it up with a spot of blood. Did she moan with the gripes when the courses were upon her. Aquinas is obscure on the question.”

“For God's sake.”

“There. You'll live to fight another day. You have my promise.”

“Thanks. What about this mortification? Is it serious?”

“I hope not,” Phelan said. “It is just some dead flesh and a small angriness. Threads and bone chips. We'll give it a few days more and see what happens. Keep the sling on. If you die I will recommend you for promotion.”

“But I don't want to be a captain,” Catto said. “Captains talk too much.”

Young and restless, Catto wandered, and chaffed the cooks, and leaned on the fence at the corral to watch the mules. He went to the river every day and washed his feet, which was not easy with one hand. He ate his S.B. and black beans and daydreamed of steaks and pigeon pie. S.B. was what they all called sowbelly. He would have enjoyed something to read, but there was not much. Some almanacs full of bad jokes and groteque women. A Bible. He played cards one night, also not easy with one hand, though he quit richer. Colonel Bardsley sent for him and said, “Lieutenant Catto. Sit down there. Rest easy. How does it feel?”

“Not good,” he said. “I'm weak at times.”

“Phelan will have you right. I want to know about this boy.”

“All I know is in my report.”

“Yes. What do you make of this story about Colonel Jessee?”

“It could be true. All the boy had to do was raise his right hand and be sworn in.” Catto smiled wearily. “Anyway, we're all guerrillas here. That's how we licked the British.”

“Yes.” The colonel was one of those stocky red men, like a big feed-and-grain dealer. Seemed almost to smell of mash. A professional soldier, though. Bald. Reddish chin-whiskers. “Well. You'll have to testify.”

“Court-martial?”

“Yes.”

“Seems silly,” Catto murmured. “If you don't mind my saying so. The boy's only sixteen. You can't try him like a man. And it was me he shot, and I'm not upset.”

The colonel smiled. “In the classic words of the bard,” he said, “you showed your ass that time.”

“Yes sir. I feel embarrassed, but I have nothing against the boy.”

“Well, it's only a formality. Nobody's going to hurt the lad.”

“That's fine. When's the trial?”

“Not until we go back. I expect that will be soon.”

“Very good.”

“Take care of that shoulder,” the colonel said. “We'll see if we can get you another bar to sew on top of it. Captain Catto. Sounds good.”

“Thank you, sir.” That was twice it had come up. Perhaps an omen. It would mean more money.

Meanwhile he went on wandering. They were at half strength and it was not much of a bivouac. Rubbish lay neglected, scraps of paper and cigar butts, old tobacco sacks and spills, rags, empty paper cartridge cases, splinters of wooden crates, condensed-milk cans. If Catto had been their colonel he would have ordered a general policing. He might have been a colonel once. At twenty-three. Over black troops. The Union freed them but could not persuade officers to lead them. Catto had declined.

Probably it was the sight of Jacob that made him think about the colonelcy, with a light nip of regret. Jacob was at the corral, leaning on the bars with his pipe stuck in his mouth. Catto went the other way, and found Haller, and told him to see that the platoon kept its own area clean.

But a few days more and he could not abide the smell of his wound, and Phelan rubbed mint into the dressings. “It's not good,” the surgeon said. “Now I don't like it at all.”

“I'm hot. Silliman is worried.”

“Silliman worries about the Ten Commandments. Ignore him. But you have dead flesh there that is not sloughing. Some of it is inside and I don't want to cut that deep but something must be done about the mortification.”

They were sitting outside Catto's small tent at dusk. Phelan smoked and Catto chewed. With only one free hand chewing was easier than waving a cigar about. Weeks before there had been a myriad of bats at dusk, tiny swift-shuttling shadows to weave a new night, but now there were none; the presence of men had driven them off. Men. Huge land-bound creatures with no grace. There was not much grace to chewing tobacco either, but it was a pastime. Though even spitting, the turn of the head and the stretch of the neck, caused Catto pain. And he was sleeping badly: unwearied, galled.

“Yes,” Phelan said, and then, pensively, “I am going to clap a small poultice on you, full of medicine. It will feel creepy and crawly but don't mind that. It is an old remedy and the best thing.”

“What kind of medicine?”

“The kind every veterinarian is familiar with,” Phelan said, cheerful again. “I won't tell you now. Later.”

Catto groaned. “An experiment. It will be manure, or mud made with horse piss.”

“No. Neither. I promise you.”

Half an hour and he was back with dressings and a small box. He laid bare the wound and grimaced. “Ah, my poor boy. Should have joined the navy.”

“That's a joke too,” Catto said. “I joined the army because I like horses, and have been in the infantry from the first day. Careful. That hurts.”

“Courage,” Phelan said, in the French way. “Just removing some loose garbage.” With his back to Catto in the lantern light he prepared his mysterious poultice, and then he turned to press it against Catto's shoulder. It was roundish like a small breast, and in the hollow of it was his witches' brew. “Hold that tight now while I tie it on. Tight now. Under the arm,” he crooned, “and across the back, and around the neck, and there. Good. It must be kept tight. Remember. Sleep on your back. Don't cheat about the sling.”

“You ass,” Catto said. “Of course on my back. Do you think I've been sleeping on the wound? It does feel creepy and crawly.”

“It will do the job,” Phelan said. “And now I think a nip would help, and I have a piece of gossip to cheer you.” He pulled a flask from his pocket and passed it to Catto. Uncle Mungo's whatever. Catto's body seemed to blot it up; it was warm and jolly. With the flask Phelan sketched a salute, and drank.

“Cheer me,” Catto said.

“Cincinnati, my boy. Early next week. The whole regiment. Garrison duty, and with luck we will not see a field or a forest again until this war is over.”

“Ah.”

“Ah, indeed. Payday. Some juicy beef.”

“Juicy—”

“I thought that might occur to you. Ah to be a lusty cock of twenty-five again.”

“Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four. Ten years between us.” Phelan now sucked long at his flask, and passed it blindly back, and Catto wondered what those sad eyes saw. “My God,” Phelan said as if answering, “I would like to step inside a real church again and smell incense. I am an old man of thirty-four and I miss the Mass as much as I miss the lass … I've embarrassed you.”

“Only that you talk about them in the same breath.”

“Not only that.”

“I never had a Catholic friend before. You people seem to believe so much harder.” Catto was uneasy again. If only he had been sure of anything. But his uncertainties left him naked.

“Well, we don't talk back,” Phelan said, and then more briskly, “However. The subject at hand is Cincinnati, and not only Cincinnati, but a new commanding general for the department. One to whom the, ah, masculine necessities and prerogatives are of the first importance.”

This was news. “Who's that?”

“Fighting Joe Hooker himself.”

Catto groaned.

“Now, now,” Phelan said. “You are wrong to bleat so. That's the fellow the glass of whiskey is named after, not to mention the scarlet woman. A distinction you and I cannot claim, or even better men. Have we a class of ladies known as Shakespeares? Or a tot of liquor called a Byron? No. But hookers we have, and thank God for both sorts.”

Catto whimpered his pleasure. “It's been a while. Make me well, doctor. Make me well soon.”

“For I fain wad lie doon.” Phelan laughed and then said primly, “Something must be done about your soul.”

“When the war is over.”

“Good enough.” Phelan blessed him in a flutter of fingers. “There is precedent for the request. When the war is over you will look to your soul.”

“Righty-oh,” said Catto. “Now that flask, please.”

In a day or two the fever did subside, and Catto felt a bit more bright-eyed and hairy-chested. The bivouac was livelier, with good news circulating, and the usual speculations and embellishments. Even Godwinson smiled with his thin lips and icy eyes. But when he said, “How's the shoulder, Lieutenant?” Catto wondered if the man's smile was for the good news or at a foolish man who had let himself be shot by a child. Godwinson did that to you. He said “Nice day” and you wondered what he meant. He should have been a scout, alone. Even in time of peace he was at war. Carlsbach and Lowndes and the others were calmer, more ordinary; you could see them marching home to a wife and a cow, grateful for a whole skin and the war forgotten in a week, to be remembered in maybe twenty years when it would make a good story. But not Godwinson. Anyway Catto said, “Better today, thanks,” and they traded talk about Cincinnati. Then Godwinson said, “You know, they're just letting that kid run around loose.”

“The boy?”

“Yeh. He don't seem to mind at all. Eats his head off.” Godwinson's eyes were empty. He was waiting judiciously.

“Whose orders?”

“The colonel's.”

“Then I guess it's all right,” Catto said with a hint of cold reproach. “They parole Johnnys and send them home, you know.”

“The kid's a guerrilla.”

“Oh, come on, Godwinson. The kid's a kid.”

Godwinson shrugged, and let be: “You wouldn't talk that way if you were dead.”

The corral was a makeshift of saplings beside a disused barn. Theirs was strictly light infantry; even lieutenants went on foot. Captains and more exalted orders rode. Phelan commanded a couple of wagons, for his supplies and the badly wounded or very sick. Except for Catto his practice was now confined to disorders of the bowels. Thank God. Catto could remember pest camps worse than prisons, with typhus and smallpox wedged together and not much to be done for anyone. Spotted fever killed quite a few. They all worried about ticks. In 1862 a friend of his had survived three months in a pest camp and come out bald. Catto wondered if the man had ever grown another crop.

The old barn was well built, a cool and musty place. They had shut the boy in there under guard for a day or two and then, with the sensible indifference that alone makes army life bearable, let him out and told him to behave himself. He should have run for it. Later on it was easy to see that. But he hung about, cheerful and willing, and gave Jacob a hand with the mules. Sergeant Hillis—a private, but the horse-sergeant was always a private, and was always called sergeant—was an old hostler and handled the horses himself, jealously. They were handsome animals. All they had to do was to carry officers here and there; they were quick and long-boned, sleek, well fed now in September and October. Catto would not have bet much on their endurance, but they had little need of it. They lived a good life. Let them geld you and brand USA on your rump, and let some fool sit on you, and your troubles were over.