When the War Is Over (9 page)

“Yes sir. I almost lied.”

“Tell me about it.”

Catto fought to keep his head clear. Hooker ignored the others. He made Catto feel that this was something between the two of them, as if they had been through many campaigns together and these other soldiers were of no importance. He invited affection, confidence and confidences, truth, order, a kind of official serenity; you see, he seemed to be saying, we share powers and obligations.

“General, could we dismiss the men?”

“I think not,” Hooker said. “Tell me why you told the truth.”

“All right,” Catto said. “If I had said no, the responsibility would still have been mine. But you would have come down hard on him and I wouldn't have been able to speak up for him.”

“Ah. Then you told the truth not simply because it was the truth.” Still he ignored the others.

“No sir. I would have lied if it would have done him any good. But it wouldn't have helped.”

“I see.” Hooker nodded thoughtfully. “Then if you knew about it, why didn't you stop it?”

“Because he's my best soldier,” Catto said, “and he's been in the army a long time, and he's gone without coffee and tea and sugar and shoes longer than the rest of us all together—my platoon, I mean. He's the army. We can manage without lieutenants but not without sergeants. If he wants to be his own quartermaster it's because the army's taught him he has to. He can't trust his officers. It's not for me to turn him in. Sir.” Catto shut up then, too late, he knew.

Hooker nodded again, staring off into some other year; then he glanced sharply at Catto and turned to his aides. Dunglas was smiling away. “Reduction to private,” Hooker said. “Buck and gag for twelve hours, to start tomorrow at reveille. The stolen goods to be distributed among the men of his platoon before his eyes.”

“General!”

“Lieutenant Catto.” Hooker's voice fell among them like sleet.

Catto's anger kept pace with his fear; for one brief and awful instant his gaze and Hooker's blazed up, and Catto's died first. He turned away. “Dammit, Haller, haven't you anything to say for yourself?”

They all watched the old sergeant, this small man, a bit wizened but with an air of survival about him. He stood, permanent, untouchable, faintly baleful, like a statue at the entrance to a military cemetery. When he spoke it was to Hooker. “I was a private in Mexico when you were a lieutenant-colonel down there. I've been in the army every day of my life since I was eighteen. What the lieutenant says is right. I done without. I see these paper-collar soldiers with money from home—”

“That's enough,” Hooker said. “Buck and gag for six hours, then.”

“His stripes, General.” Catto was firm.

“Reduction to private,” Hooker repeated, with a trace of impatience. “And I want a word with you, Lieutenant. This way, please. Not you, Silliman.”

“Let us walk together a way,” the general said. “You others follow along behind.”

Out of doors, Catto cooled; only pride kept him impassive. He quaked. Fool!

“Cold. I don't like the winter out here.”

Catto muttered.

“You're a goddam fool, Lieutenant.”

Catto found the courage to be silent.

“Discipline isn't only a matter of keeping order in battle. Or even of habit. We discipline some to protect the others. As simple as that. Why bother to follow orders, if others can contravene and go scot-free? When a sergeant steals, a private goes hungry. I will not have my men go hungry. I will not have my sentries sleeping. I will not have courtesy neglected, and I will not have rank ignored. You were close enough to insolence back there, as you are now, with that childishly surly expression, and by your refusal to face a superior officer when addressed.” Catto turned immediately, though there seemed little he could do about the surly expression; he moderated it to fretful. “I spare you an official reprimand for one reason only: you stood up for your own sergeant. An officer who will not stand up for his own men—against the enemy, against a general,” and Hooker was frowning, flapping his gloved hands, glaring at Catto, “against Lincoln himself—
Lincoln would not let me shoot a sleeping sentry
. Because the boy's mother wept. Bah! That sentry jeopardized a whole regiment.” Hooker bore himself now like a man in great physical pain; his step slowed.
“My men
. I was responsible for every man jack of them—to the country, to their wives, to their children—and that sentry slept … Well.” Hooker stepped out again, and flashed a friendly smile at Catto. “You see. I value an officer who will take care of his own. Pride. I cannot tell you too often how important is pride. You know I am responsible for the system of corps badges.” It was a wild, rakish air he had, marred, Catto noticed, by the beginnings of a double chin. A lady-killer for sure. Hooker sucked in a great swallow of cold air. “By God. I need the healing draught. You're dismissed, Lieutenant Catto.”

Catto came to attention and saluted. Hooker saluted formally in return, and for a moment his eyes burned icily at Catto's: “Buck and gag, Lieutenant. Six hours. See to it. Don't ever try to shit a general.”

“No sir.” Catto dropped his salute, faced about, and strode off, profoundly shocked.

The morrow did not dawn bright; as Phelan put it, Phoebus' fiery chariot never left the barn. The army was shouted awake by its corporals, who had been routed out by the guard when the hired cock declined to crow: at ten degrees below zero buglers balked. Without benefit of their morning call a shivering mob emerged, keening and complaining, leaning together, eyes half shut, uniforms half on half off, one boot on a foot, one in a hand, blouses and greatcoats unbuttoned. The usual calls of nature evoked the usual impatient groans and gavottes. Carlsbach was in full and proper uniform because he was a Minuteman: he slept dressed. “Saves time on retreats.” Routledge shuffled out whimpering; genuine tears froze on his cheeks. Piggy Franklin, rheumy, was sustained by the hope of a whiskey-and-quinine before breakfast. From a barracks doorway Catto observed, not without loathing, this malodorous rabble. He and Silliman and the boy Padgett were well turned out, because this week Padgett was their orderly and had risen an hour before the others to report at the officers' little cabin by half past five, bearing a kettle of hot water and a bucket of cold so that the officers could rise, dash to the officers' sink, dash back, and perform the necessary ablutions in relative comfort. Like most orderlies Padgett cheated his way into the officers' sink (who cared, at that hour?), which was indoors and boasted an iron stove, so that if he took the corner seat he could even warm his hands while pooing. He was famous for that, though his comrades were men enough to keep it within the company: “I got to poo,” he said one day, and in utter silence every man laid down his tool, cigar, checker, ramrod, plug, pamphlet, pen: “You got to what?” Padgett said it again. When Carlsbach said later, “Come on, Poo, dinnertime,” Padgett came along in some bewilderment, and eventually, as such men must, he asked. “It's just that there's other words,” Lowndes said, and suggested three or four. Next day Padgett announced his intent in more soldierly fashion, and in utter silence every man laid down his tool, cigar, checker, ramrod, plug, pamphlet, pen, and Carlsbach said gently, “The word is ‘poo,' Padgett.” Padgett accepted his doom.

Haller too accepted his doom. He marched to the color line like a sergeant, but today he glanced up and rubbed his hands; the sky was opaque, hostile, and there would be no respite, no warming gleam. Men stamped and flapped, breath misting thickly. Haller called the roll from memory. Catto, tapping his boot with a stout stick, a coil of rope in his left hand, strolled down to the sergeant and took his report. “Last time,” Haller said.

“You'll have them back fast as I can work it,” Catto said, “but as of now you're a private. No breakfast either. And no visitors. Go bundle up.”

“I got no warm mittens.”

“Silliman has. Just thank God for Silliman's mother. Go on. Be back here in five minutes.” He turned to the men: “Dismiss. Go eat.”

Catto waited in the iron cold. He stood, calm, unhappy, listening to the crackle of the hairs in his nose at each breath, hearing also the shouts and clatter of an army at dawn. Unhappy, yes, and yet happy: this was his kingdom. He was a resident and not a visitor, and he felt proprietary about the camp; about the barracks, the weapons, the horses and mules, the men themselves. Hooker for a father! The company cook for a mother!

“All right,” Haller said. “Let's have it done with.”

“Noon sharp.”

“Noon sharp.” Haller sat upon the frozen ground, his knees together and drawn up. There was not much to be seen of him: beneath his cap a scarf covered his ears and forehead; he bowed his head and huddled, and the collar of his greatcoat hid most of his face. Silliman's dark blue mittens covered his hands, and he seemed to be wearing several pairs of socks. Catto smiled unseen. The survivor. The scavenger and survivor, the pack rat.

Catto passed the long stick under Haller's knees; Haller hunched, docile, resigned, and thrust his arms forward beneath the stick, and joined his hands on his shins. Catto tied his wrists together tightly. Haller flapped his elbows an inch; the stick held them down. “You're bucked,” Catto said. He produced a smaller stick, six inches long and an inch in diameter. Haller opened his mouth and Catto laid the stick across it; Haller's yellow teeth bit down on the wood. Catto bound twine to one end, passed it behind Haller's neck, bound it to the other end. “You're gagged.”

Haller grunted.

“Don't bitch this up,” Catto said. “Just sit tight for six hours. Going to be all sort of people passing by, and some of them going right back to Hooker and tell him what's what. If you fall sideways just lie there. I'll check in every half-hour. Whiskey in my shack after the noonday meal.”

Haller tried to smile, but settled for bright eyes and greedy nodding.

By ten the tip of Haller's nose was blue. He shivered, long shudders, racking. “Ah God,” Catto said aloud. Across the wind-swept drill ground a troop of horsemen reined in; two hundred yards, Catto estimated, aiming instinctively, and wondered who they were, but could not tell. “Two hours,” he said. “Can you do it?” Haller nodded. “Back soon,” Catto said. Haller blinked.

Catto found his men (“I have to go look for them,” he had complained to Silliman. “They don't really belong here. My orphans were better men”) badgering the company cook about one thing and another, jests and jibes and many a laugh. He called them to attention savagely. They milled. Routledge was lost in conversation with a mule driver, a man bundled up to the hair, and a wool hat on top of the bundle. Hardly a human being at all. The mule stood glum, steaming. Routledge and the man turned, and Catto recognized Thomas Martin. He warmed for a moment: “Hey boy! Martin waved and grinned. Routledge had tottered around to inspect the mule's teeth (“It's the urge to be an authority,” Phelan said later. “The supreme moment of a country boy's intellectual life”) and was soothing the beast with strokes along the muzzle. Catto knew, absolutely, he maintained to the end of his life that something—God, the signs of the zodiac, instinct, or an utter and perfect communion with earth, air, fire, water and other essential atomies—had told him, given him a second, two seconds, of clear, unmistakable warning; and he told this story for almost sixty years because he saw, in his life, prodigies of evil and prodigies of good but only one prodigy that was simply a prodigy, a violation for its own sake of all natural law, expectation, probability and philosophical or biological principle—Catto knew, then, that the rules were about to be suspended, and in those two seconds he forgot about Haller, and the war, forgot the entire existing universe save Routledge and that mule. He had faith.

And was rewarded. He was the only man to see it. Routledge was standing directly in front of the mule, stroking its muzzle, crooning and kissing, and the mule knocked him down
with a hind foot
. Like lightning. And was instantly his old feeble-minded unmoving self. Routledge got up slowly, with the look on his face of a man who has seen God; he stared at the mule and at Thomas Martin and straight up for a time. Then he shrank. He shriveled visibly, walked over to Catto, his eyes pleading up from the bottom of a deep, dark well of misfortune, and said, “You got to get me out of the army, Lieutenant.”

“You bet your ass,” Catto said with feeling.

He marched them to the company area and made a speech. “I meant what I said: nobody's to touch Haller or talk to him. But I want you all out there, close by the color line, ten or a dozen at a time anyway while the rest get warm. Just talk and make jokes. You all owe him something. Some of you your heads. And where do I find you? Clowning it with the cook, looking to get hot coffee I suppose. Sons of bitches.” For a moment he was shaken; his voice blazed. “Go on out there. Godwinson, you're my sergeant now. It's official. Have a couple of men bring that chest.”

Catto paced near Haller in the yellow cold, the wind congealing him, turning Haller to stone. Silliman joined them. Haller nodded, blue. The chest was brought. The men lined up, sheepish, with their squares of cloth or oilskin pouches or silken bags. Haller watched while Godwinson quickly distributed several pounds of coffee, and several pounds of sugar, and some tea; twenty-two small candles, seventeen bars of yellow soap. “What do we do with these boots, Lieutenant?”

“Find the four men with the dirtiest feet,” Catto snarled. “Now haul that stuff out of here and come back to keep the man company.” He noticed then another small troop of horsemen, far across the drill field, the wind sawing down between him and them like a river; they seemed to tremble. “Spies,” he muttered. Silliman said, “More than that. You just look close.”