When the War Is Over (8 page)

“I believe that.”

From the saloon peered a slight man of some distinction; his hair was brushed, his shirt ruffled. He was bare of whiskers, and wore black. “Jack Phelan.”

“Hello, host. This is Lieutenant Catto.”

“How do,” Catto said.

Their host bowed. “Stanley. Give me your hats and coats. Gloves. There's a bottle of the best inside. Go on. Ladies be along shortly.”

The saloon was properly dark, three or four candelabra, and a low fire in a long stone fireplace. Catto, jittery, stepped to the fireplace and performed traditional rubs, claps and hand-wringings until he realized that he was not at all cold. “God's sake,” he said, “give me a drink.”

The barkeep, who might have been Stanley's brother, announced that his name was Horgan and handed a bottle to Phelan. “All alone tonight,” Phelan said.

“Place is yours,” Horgan agreed.

With bottle and glasses and boots Phelan clinked and creaked to a table; he drew the cork, whiskey flowed. “Drink, boy. This is more like.”

But Catto paused. He sniffed the whiskey, and dipped the tip of his tongue, and then stood calming his flutter, telling himself that he was a silly fellow: this was a beautiful night in November, a fitting fall night, and there was not a man in the house that he could not put down if necessary, and there were steaks and ladies to look forward to. So there was no need for shakes, and no need to force himself into the evening with quick whiskey, and really no need to think of this, or of himself, as unusual. A soldier's night. No: an officer's night. And by God! but I am glad to be an officer! Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow you will not die, and what is the sense of living if you cannot eat, drink and be merry?

Phelan raised his glass. “Now what are you thinking of?”

“Whiskey and women,” Catto said lazily. “I was wondering if you wanted advice.”

Phelan jeered silently and said, “I know your kind. Ignorant and blustery.”

“I can't be ignorant. I spent ten years in school and was given a certificate.”

“And what did you learn?” Phelan sipped whiskey; his eyes roved. He was not listening much.

But then Catto, also sipping whiskey, was not talking to be heard. “I can read and write, and spell pretty well, and multiply and divide. I know where babies come from and I know where the continents are. I know some Latin words like amicus amici and omnis morris. The orphanage taught me all that, also to be on time for meals.”

“Even Australia?”

“Especially Australia.”

“That's not bad. You see there is something to be said for institutions.”

“Yeh.” Catto drank again and was suddenly, almost miraculously, calm. Slightly amused. After all. Just whores. And that Stanley is only a pimp and this mansion is only a fancy house.

The whiskey stung merrily inside him, and life took on a certain clarity. There were eighteen several candles in this room. He had been shot twice and had killed eleven times for sure. He had no living kin that he knew of. He was handsome, with light brown hair, now and again reddish, and brown eyes and a ruddy face and a bushy mustache and a handsome, almost hooked, highland nose. Not merely handsome but handsome in a notably healthy way; not like a pale handsome Frenchman. But there must be red-faced Frenchmen too. “Horgan. Bring us some apples.”

“Good God.”

“I like apples. Leave me be.”

He was mercurial and sanguinary, as the almanacs had it, of noble port, and demeaned himself well in society. At the moment he was in the pink in all respects, and had washed with soap. With the war over, for most purposes, and apples arriving for his private tooth. He began—it lasted only a moment—to grope toward honest thought: always this man was within me, and what I was was the beginning of what I am, and someone else is still in the making here, with the rules and patterns already laid out.

It was almost inevitable that he would someday be a general, and wear a purfled hat. “Some day,” he said, and stopped. Horgan had come to set a dish of apples upon the grainy table.

“Some day what?”

“Nothing. You're quiet tonight.”

“I am not here to entertain lieutenants,” Phelan said. “I was thinking of maggots and my own wisdom.”

“Ah. Surgeons know everything.”

“Surgeons know nothing,” Phelan began. He saw Catto's eyes then, and turned.

The door had opened and two ladies were entering. Good God, Catto thought, as he was burned alive. These are
beautiful
. These are not just whores. These are
lady
whores.

He proved to be perfectly right. The one with black hair glared. “Hodja do,” she enunciated. “Do you not rise?”

Some hours later Catto whispered, “Listen,” low and urgent, “help me. Please. Teach me things.”

“Oh you great bull,” she breathed in retail delight, “oh you hot lover,” and he grinned in the dark and judged himself a devilish sly fellow, though uncomfortably breathless and scared silly of sin.

IV

Often that winter they saw Thomas Martin on a mule, the brainless beast (“But horses are dumber,” the boy said) shuffling through the snow at dusk, slipping here and there on the hard-packed company streets. The boy was usually in a wool cap, a heavy sweater under the blue blouse, knit gloves, whiter blue trousers, stout half-boots. He knew his way about, even outside the city, and delivered promptly: messages, small parcels, incidental greetings, once a sack of mail (“That's illegal,” he said, almost proudly). And confidential intelligence: turning a corner one December day, his mule almost ran Catto down, but the boy hauled up with a grin and chirruped, “Hey, Lieutenant! How's your shoulder?”

“Good as new,” Catto assured him. “How's yourself?”

“Very good. Got a steady job with the general. I eat right and I sleep warm.” The boy giggled. “Those loads of knit goods come in from old ladies and churches, and he sees to it I get first pick. This sweater.” He unbuttoned the blouse and Catto admired a heavy yellow cable-stitched pullover with a collar that unrolled to become a hood. “Fine and dandy, hey?”

“Pretty good,” Catto said. “Smartest thing you ever did was get yourself caught. Probably eat better than you did at home.”

“That's a fact.” The boy smiled, and Catto saw again that innocence, that careless and uncomplicated acceptance of pain or joy. “More snow coming. Where's Jacob?”

“No idea. Haven't seen him for days.”

“I'll find him. Tell you what, Lieutenant.”

“Tell me.”

“The Fifth Indiana got a thousand bushels of apples. All piled up in the cold.”

“That right.”

“That's right.”

They kept silence for a bit, Catto nodding and considering, the boy hunched forward almost between the mule's ears, staring innocently at Catto with the dead pan of the true conspirator. “That's interesting,” Catto said. “You don't happen to smoke cigars?”

“Nope. But I know someone who does.”

“Have one. Take care of yourself, boy.”

“Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

So with Haller and four men and a wagon, all very military, orders ringing out, colonels' names invoked, “Work fast, move in, load up, move out, nobody talks but me,” Catto made away with fifty bushels of Albemarie pippins, forty-eight of which reached his men. “Very good,” Phelan said. “Anti-scorbutic, for one thing, and it beats spuds, onions and dried turnips.”

“What's a spud?”

“A potato. You never heard that?”

“Never.”

They were munching Catto's private stock in Phelan's tepee, by the light of a couple of candles. Phelan's blouse was off; he was lolling in a red wool shirt, unmilitary and unmedical. “How's the shoulder?”

“Why? You got some hungry worms?”

Phelan cackled. “Still offended, are you?”

“It made me feel like meat.”

“You are meat. Only the divine soul makes you different from a hog.”

“That again.”

Phelan's glance exiled him: it was the glance of a man who looked not at but beyond, and it expressed indifference, superiority, certainty, pity—all those at once. It was dissolved by a smile. “Yes. That again. Someday you'll know. In fifty years the whole world will be Catholic again.”

“Ah yes.” Catto parried: “Have you heard the latest about the Ninetieth Illinois?”

Phelan puckered in grief.

“A certain Sergeant Houlihan,” Catto went on, “drilling his men, and at the end of his rope, he was, they were that awkward, and he says to them, he says, ‘Phwat a ragged line, bhoys! Come over here and take a look at yerselves!'”

Phelan bellowed and jubilated. “I hate you for it,” he said at last, “but it's a good one. And you do it well enough, you do. Somewhere back there was a Bridget or a Paddy.” He cackled a bit more.

“Och aye,” said Catto drily.

“Okay indeed,” Phelan said.

Catto met Hooker after all, on an afternoon in January. The seeker after wisdom was lallygagging about with Silliman, losing thousands at head-to-head stud. “You cheat. You must cheat.”

“Never.” Silliman popped a pastille past his avaricious grin, and sucked. “Just natural born lucky.”

“What are those candies?”

“Cherry drops. M'mother sends them. Take some. One hundred dollars on the ace-king.”

Catto pondered invective; at a thunderous tattoo both officers started like rabbits. “Come in,” Catto bawled.

It was Godwinson. “Lieutenant.”

“Yeh. Hello. What?”

“At the barracks. General Hooker.”

Catto's first thought was, Thank God I shaved. “Here? Out here in the country?” He was already up and bustling, and so was Silliman: buttons, greatcoat, hat, cockade bobbing. They hit the company street with a stamp and a clatter; they might have struck sparks from the frozen earth. Halfway to the barracks Catto remembered to thank Godwinson. “When did he come?”

“Just a few minutes ago. I slipped out right away.”

“Yeh. You studied tactics.”

From Silliman a bubble of mockery.

“You laugh,” Catto puffed. “But you piled out fast enough. And you've got that yessir-nossir look on your face. Ramrod up the ass.”

“I favor a more refined manner of speech,” Silliman said.

“God Almighty. These are critical times.”

“What do we do?”

“Bounce right in,” Catto said after a moment. “We don't know he's there.”

“Fine. You first.”

“Damn right. No. Godwinson, go in first and get them up.”

“They'll be up.”

“I know that. But make the right noises. Here we are—in you go.”

And in he went, Godwinson; flung the door wide and bellowed “Ten-shah!” and the lieutenants came striding in like a color picture from a boys' book,
Our Union Heroes
, one ruddy and mustached and big, the young bull, the other blond with no hair on his face, slim, elegant, handsome, almost dapper and delicate, the golden colt. Their men were frozen in pairs before the double-decked bunks, and far down the aisle, near the stove, there flourished a stand of officers. Catto and Silliman clacked to attention as one, saluted as one, and Catto saw the poster, Music Hall
To-Night
Catto & Silliman
Simultaneous Acrobatics and Maneuvers
A Colorful Display of Extraordinary Precision
Also Charlotte's Arabian Dance
, but pulled himself together in time. Hooker returned their salute.

Catto liked him cautiously. Hooker was a handsome man and had not run to fat. He was rosy-cheeked and not weather-beaten; he had dark hair, carelessly trimmed, curling out beneath his hat; and blue eyes. An aide murmured. “Lieutenant Catto,” Hooker said amiably. The men were shockingly still, like wax exhibits; a chill plucked at Catto. “Sir,” he said. “And Lieutenant Silliman.” “Sir.” Waxworks, the air of a morgue. One of Hooker's aides was young, a captain, tall and fair, smiling a thin, overly pleasant smile. The other two were majors.

“You've done well,” Hooker said. “Nobody was drunk, these gloves are still white, I see no spit on the floor. Despite your distance from headquarters.” Catto glowed; a rainbow of decorations sprouted on his breast, stars, sunbursts, golden crosses. “At ease, by the way.” The two relaxed stiffly. “All of you,” Hooker said, not raising his voice, and the men slumped and settled as if they had been warmed. “However,” Hooker said, “there is one problem. Perhaps you'd like to come over here.”

The two marched forward, grave, all business, and then, only then, Catto saw Haller at the foot of his bunk, masked by the officers, now unmasked, his face empty of all expression save fury, and even the fury visible only to Catto. “You know Sergeant Haller, of course,” Hooker said mildly. “Well, here we were, conducting an informal inspection, keeping in touch with the troops.” He was beardless, affecting long sideburns; below the rosy cheeks his half day's growth of whisker was black. Some days he would shave twice. “And Captain Dunglas here,” still smiling his thin, overly pleasant smile, that was Captain Dunglas, who bowed slightly, “thought to take a look inside that chest under the bunk. I don't suppose you could guess what he found.”

“No sir.”

Hooker stared for a moment at Haller, the damning neutral glance, the blue eyes cold. “He found several pounds of coffee, and several pounds of sugar, and some tea; twenty-two small candles, seventeen bars of yellow soap, and four pairs of brand-new boots size nine.”

Catto's mind shuffled replies, all inadequate. After a time the swollen silence grew painful.

“Did you know of this?”

Catto waited too long, so long that he deprived himself of choice and found the truth necessary. “Yes sir.”

“You almost lied.” Hooker was inspecting him, and soon Catto ceased to take refuge in eyes-front, and looked full at him.