Winter Duty (17 page)

Lost in the sleep of the exhausted that night, Valentine dreamed he was back in Weening.

The last time Valentine had stopped in Weening, they were using the Quickwood tree he’d planted as a maypole, dancing around it every spring. One of the local preachers accused the family who organized the event of being druids.

Valentine had placed the seed there years ago. What Valentine wanted were some specimens of Quickwood tucked away here and there throughout the Ozarks, just in case—a Johnny Appleseed of resistance to the Kurians.

The tree he’d planted in Weening would be mature in another year or two, if what Papa Legba had told him on Hispaniola about the tree’s life cycle was correct. It would be producing seeds for others to distribute.

That was the essence of his dream. The young coffee bean- like Quickwood seeds were dropping off the tree and rolling into the brush while he and Gabby Cho stood waist deep in the nearby stream. The seeds turned into scarecrows, and the scarecrows divided and turned into more scarecrows, all of whom stood in the fields and woods around Weening, all subtly turned toward himself and Cho as they shivered, naked and exposed in the river.

CHAPTER FIVE

“
Repurposed.” Southern Command doesn’t call it a retreat, or abandonment, or evacuation. Word has come down from on high: What’s left of Javelin is being “repurposed.”

They were making vests and long johns out of the polyester felt Valentine had brought. It was good-quality material, warm even when wet and so light you hardly knew you were wearing it. They had some doubts about durability, so they were adding coverings and liners made out of old uniforms or Evansville tenting.

The workshop was churning out bush jackets and fatigue pants in “Evansville timber”—a mottled camouflage that was a light bleach wash of the dark uniforms the Evansville militia wore. Then they dabbed it with two colors of camouflage in a vaguely leopard-spot pattern. Of course there were variations that came from a small group of people working long hours at a fast pace. Sometimes it streaked and ran into tiger stripes; other times the pattern was so tight and tiny it resembled a sort of houndstooth.

The end result might not have impressed a discerning Old World eye, civilian or military, but Valentine was oddly proud. Once again, the uniform was one of Ediyak’s designs. A big overcoat with drawstrings at waist and sleeves hung to midthigh. Beneath it was a padded riding vest of the insulating felt and canvas with plenty of utility pockets, and beneath that their uniform shirts. Trousers had reinforced knees and seats and a removable felt liner, but it turned out the buttons meant to secure the liner weren’t comfortable, so they were removed and replaced by hook-and-eye loops.

Boots were still a problem. Most of his recruits had come over in civilian duty shoes, fine for the streets of Evansville but no match for the tough field exercises in wet fall weather that Patel put them through.

Hobbled men were no use to anyone. Bad feet made men even more miserable than bad teeth. Southern Command had little in the way of spares after the retreat across Kentucky, so Valentine had to settle for tire rubber “retreads” cobbled together with rawhide lacing, scraps of webbing, and heavyweight canvas for breathability.

The men called them “Kentucky galoshes” and suffered through the inevitable blisters and abrasions, but the footwear protected ankles and kept off trench foot.

Valentine spent long hours recruiting from the soon-to-depart brigade.

A few NCOs volunteered to stay because they wanted to finish the fight in Kentucky. Many were the best of Javelin, and Bloom crossed a few names off Valentine’s list, as she doubted she’d be able to make it back to the Mississippi without them. Others accepted the extravagant promises Valentine made. One or two old soldiers elected to stick because they understood the devil in Kentucky and only God knew where they might be sent when they were “repurposed.” Might as well spend the remaining time until land allotment or pension, riding herd on ex-Quislings.

Of course, beggars can’t be choosers, nor can they expend much mental effort determining the motivations for those willing to help. Valentine was content to take names, get them approved by Bloom and Lambert, and then work out his battalion’s order of battle—without having any of his volunteers “demoted,” so to speak. He did this by creating an on-paper staff company.

One benefit of the rumors in Evansville about the departure of much of Southern Command’s forces was a near panic about what might happen if the Kurians returned, especially with rumors about forces massing in Illinois, or Bloomington, or outside of Louisville for a dash down the old interstate.

So he had volunteers looking to join Fort Seng in any capacity—on the condition that their families would be able to come along if Fort Seng were abandoned. With food running short, Valentine couldn’t accept all the volunteers, and even with enough to feed them he wouldn’t be able to arm them, but he was able to fill out his uneven companies by taking, for once, the cream of the overflowing pail.

Bloom and Lambert both agreed that Southern Command needed some kind of send-off. The only point of contention was whether the piece that remained still be known as Javelin, or if the designation belonged to the brigade proper.

Bloom finally relented, mostly because Lambert had organized the whole party to begin with. If Fort Seng became a monument to the Cause’s attempt to create a new Freehold east of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon, the tombstone might as well bear the proper name.

The headquarters staff kept the news of the celebration quiet to avoid raising expectations and just in case word traveled to the Kurian lengths of the river, either toward Paducah or in the direction of Louisville. No telling what the Kurians might choose to create in the way of their own farewell.

They detailed a few cooks to roast a pair of pigs and a lamb. Valentine spent the day in the field with his new battalion, returning to see beautiful paper lanterns lining the patio before the great estate house.

“The basement’s full of that sort of crap,” Bloom told him. “The guy who used to live here loved to throw a party.”

Valentine’s recruits stayed off to the side as Southern Command’s soldiers occupied tables and chairs and benches. The two groups tolerated each other. Valentine’s men oddly matched each other in the redyed uniforms they’d crossed over to wearing. Southern Command’s troops had their patched fatigues, spruced up with their new medals and odds and ends picked up in Kentucky, mostly raccoon tails and legworm claw feet.

A band filled the chilled night air with noise. It was a merry-go-round collection of musicians as the players stopped to eat or drink and rejoined as the mood and tempo suited them.

Valentine listened to some soldiers warming themselves around a fire pit with even warmer spiked punch.

“Hope we get repurposed to Oklahoma or Texas—some kind of steer country,” a corporal said. “If I never swallow another mouthful of those caterpillars, it’ll be too soon.”

“You’re forgetting the good lean Kentucky horse meat, Corp. Meals fit for a dog.”

A private leaned back, fingers interlaced behind his head as he reclined. “Soon as I get home to the wife, my johnson’s being repurposed from peeing, that’s for sure.”

“Good woman, that. Puts up with that wood tick of a dick for more’n one night.”

“What do you say, Williams?” one of the group called to a woman idly tossing cards into her helmet. “You think the bride said, ‘I do,’ knowing the triple-A battery Dalrymple here’s sporting?”

“Size is for sluts. Give me a man with a quick tongue.”

The men laughed, even Dalrymple. She added, “I meant interesting conversation, you lunk.”

“Glad we’re getting out of here. Only tongue you’re likely to see otherwise would be out of a Reaper.”

“Home alive in ’seventy-five.”

“Worn-down dicks in ’seventy-six.”

The chatter stopped when they noticed Valentine watching from the shadows.

“I miss the two-for-one whores of ’seventy-four, myself,” Valentine said. Valentine headed for the barbecue spits, purposely altering his course so they wouldn’t have to rise from their coffee and rolls and salute.

He found his old company headquarters staff passing a bottle of homemade wine, with vanquished soldiers tucked out of the way beneath their chairs.

Valentine wasn’t feeling social. He passed in and out of the conversing groups, shaking hands and wishing well, never lingering to be included in a conversation.

He danced once with Bloom, who found his clumsy steps quietly amusing, and once with Lambert, who did her best to hide his offbeat lurches by holding her body so erect and stiff he had to move with her to avoid looking like he was trying to pull down a statue.

The Evansville group—“Valentine’s Legion,” some were beginning to call them, though Valentine himself corrected anyone who used the phrase—had an uneasy relationship with the Southern Command regulars. The average soldier had a low opinion of Quislings—they either ran from danger or knuckled under it when the Reapers hissed an order—and the soldiers preferred to keep thinking about them in familiar terms: as targets to shoot at or prisoners to be counted. So the ex-Quislings were relegated to the “back of beyond” at Fort Seng, a chilly field far from hot water.