Settling Accounts_ Drive To The East Part 54

The church was as rundown as everything else in the Terry. The preacher's coat and trousers were s.h.i.+ny with age. The reverend preached a careful sermon, praying for peace and for justice and for an end to misery and oppression. He made a point of not saying that the members of his congregation should rise up against oppression. Somebody was bound to be listening for the authorities. If the government or the Freedom Party-a.s.suming there was any difference between the two-didn't like what he said, he would vanish off the face of the earth as if he'd never been born.

He might have preached fire and brimstone. He might have preached revolt and revolution. It wouldn't have mattered. He was just finis.h.i.+ng his sermon when somebody at the back of the church exclaimed, "Lord have mercy, dey is out dere!"

n.o.body wondered who they they were. With gasps of horror, people sprang up from their rickety seats and hurried out of the church, hoping to get away before it was too late. "G.o.d be with you, brothers and sisters!" the preacher called after them. He didn't try to get them to stay. Maybe he had his own escape route planned. were. With gasps of horror, people sprang up from their rickety seats and hurried out of the church, hoping to get away before it was too late. "G.o.d be with you, brothers and sisters!" the preacher called after them. He didn't try to get them to stay. Maybe he had his own escape route planned.

Scipio and Bathsheba and Antoinette scurried away with the rest of the congregation. Like rats, Like rats, he thought. Any kind of hiding place would do now. he thought. Any kind of hiding place would do now.

But there were no hiding places. Augusta policemen and Freedom Party stalwarts and guards waited out in the street. They had smiles on their faces and rifles and submachine guns in their hands. One of them s.h.i.+fted a wad of tobacco into his cheek so he could talk more clearly: "Y'all can come along with us quiet-like, or y'all can get shot right here. Don't matter none to us. Which'll it be?"

One young man, only a little older than Ca.s.sius, ran for it. A submachine gun spat fire. The young man fell and writhed on the cracked pavement. The stalwart who'd cut him down ambled over and put a bullet through his head. The Negro groaned and lay still.

"Anybody else?" asked the cop with the chaw. No one moved. No one spoke.

Ca.s.sius. Thank G.o.d Ca.s.sius isn't here. Someone may get away, Scipio thought. He glanced over at his wife. She nodded when their eyes met. She had to be thinking along with him. Scipio thought. He glanced over at his wife. She nodded when their eyes met. She had to be thinking along with him.

The policeman spat a brown stream of tobacco juice in the dead man's direction. "All right," he said. "Get moving."

Away the Negroes went. The congregation was only part of the cleanout. Some men tried to offer money to get away. Some women tried to offer themselves. The white men only laughed at them.

Out of the Terry they went. A lot of white Augustans were wors.h.i.+ping and praying at this hour of the day. Maybe G.o.d listened to them. He sure hadn't paid any attention to the colored preacher. The whites who weren't at church stared at the Negroes herded along like cattle. Some just stared. Some jeered. No one called out a word of protest.

Confederate Station was by Eighth and Walker, right next to St. Patrick's Catholic Church. Did G.o.d listen harder if you called on Him in Latin? Scipio wouldn't have bet on it. The station wasn't far from the Terry. The captured Negroes were lucky in that, because he was sure they would have had to walk no matter how far it was.

And then all their luck ran out. Everything happened so fast, neither Willard Sloan nor anyone else had the slightest chance to do anything. "In! Get in, G.o.d d.a.m.n you!" shouted the white men with guns. They stuffed cars tighter than should have been humanly possible. By the way the boxcar Scipio and his family went into smelled, it had hauled cattle the last time. The whites packed it till no one could sit down, then slammed the door shut. That cut off almost all of the air. Scipio resigned himself to dying before he got wherever the train was going. With a jerk and a lurch, it began to roll.

Dr. Leonard O'Doull sometimes thought he was trapped in one of the nastier suburbs of h.e.l.l. One bleeding, mangled, screaming man after another, from the time he gulped coffee to wake up to the moment he lay down for a stolen bit of sleep. Some of the soldiers wore green-gray, others b.u.t.ternut. He'd almost stopped noticing which color uniform he had to cut away to get at the latest mutilation.

"When will this end?" he groaned to Granville McDougald after amputating a shattered arm.

"You're asking the wrong guy," the medic answered. "Only one who can tell you is the Confederate CO."

"He should have quit three weeks ago," O'Doull said.

McDougald shrugged. "He's got orders to hold to as long as he can, and he's got ammo for his guns. Featherston would probably send a people bomb after him if he did throw in the towel. As soon as we smash him flat, that frees up all of our men here to roll west and knock the Confederates out of Ohio. So he's holding down a lot more men than he's still got left himself."

"You spent all these years as a medic, right?" O'Doull asked. McDougald nodded. The doctor went on, "So how come you talk like you come from the General Staff?"

"Me?" Granville McDougald laughed. "I'm just picking up stuff I hear from the wounded. We've got enough of 'em."

"Well, G.o.d knows you're right about that," O'Doull said. The University of Pittsburgh hospital held U.S. wounded ranging in rank from private to brigadier general-and Confederates ranging from private to full colonel. It was always stuffed. Men lay on gurneys in the hallway, sometimes on mattresses on the floor, sometimes-when things were at their worst-on blankets on the floor.

The Confederates never had made it over the Allegheny River. They never had tried to break out of Pittsburgh to the west, either. They'd waited till the relieving column could link up with them-but it never did. Now, outside the pocket, there were no Confederate soldiers for miles and miles. The men who'd tried to relieve Pittsburgh had turned west themselves, to try to stem the U.S. advance out of northwestern Ohio and Indiana.

"One thing," O'Doull said. McDougald raised an eyebrow. O'Doull went on, "I bet the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds stuck here don't think Jake Featherston is always right anymore."

"That doesn't matter," McDougald said. "What matters is the people down in the CSA. When they figure out Featherston's led 'em down the primrose path, that's when things get interesting."

"Maybe-but maybe not," O'Doull said. "Yeah, some of them may hate Featherston after things go wrong. But won't they go on hating us even worse? They really do, you know." He'd listened to wounded men, too, and some of the captured Confederates were alarmingly frank.

"I don't care if they hate us. I hate them, too." Granville McDougald was so matter-of-fact, he might have been talking about the weather. "What I want 'em to remember is, if they mess with us, we're going to pound the kapok out of 'em, and they better get used to the idea."

"Oderint dum metuant," O'Doull murmured. McDougald made a questioning noise. Half embarra.s.sed, O'Doull explained: "I did a lot of Latin when I was an undergrad-in those days, you had to when you went to college. It's helped with the medical terms, I will say. But the Emperor Caligula said that." O'Doull murmured. McDougald made a questioning noise. Half embarra.s.sed, O'Doull explained: "I did a lot of Latin when I was an undergrad-in those days, you had to when you went to college. It's helped with the medical terms, I will say. But the Emperor Caligula said that."

"Caligula? The crazy one?"

"That's him. He was nuttier than Jake Featherston, to h.e.l.l with me if he wasn't. But it means, 'Let them hate, as long as they fear.' "

"Three words," McDougald said admiringly. "Boy, that packs more into three words than anything this side of 'I love you.' There I was, yakking about how I feel about the Confederates, and that old son of a b.i.t.c.h got it into three words."

"He wasn't an old son of a b.i.t.c.h. He was a young son of a b.i.t.c.h," O'Doull said. "I think he was twenty-seven when they murdered him."

"Well, he's been dead long enough that he seems old," McDougald said. O'Doull nodded; he was right about that. It was something over 1,900 years now.

He didn't get the chance to cudgel his brains over exactly how many years it was, because the PA system brayed, "Major O'Doull! Sergeant McDougald! Report at once to OR Three! Major O'Doull! Sergeant McDougald! Report at-"

"No rest for the wicked," McDougald said.

"I thought that was 'weary,' " O'Doull said.

"Works both ways, don't you think?" McDougald was right about that, too.

They hastily scrubbed in and gowned and masked. Then they found what they were dealing with: a soldier who'd stepped on a mine. That was an even worse misfortune than it might have been, because the Confederates, or possibly the Devil, had come up with a new model. Instead of just exploding and blowing off a man's foot or his leg, it bounced up to waist height and then burst . . . with the results they had in front of them.

The kid on the table was shrieking in spite of surely having had a morphine shot. He held his hands in front of his crotch like a maiden surprised, and wouldn't move them no matter what. "My nuts!" he moaned. "It got my nuts!"

"You're gonna be all right, son." O'Doull feared he was lying through his teeth. He turned to McDougald and spoke in a quick, low voice: "Get him under."

"Right, Doc." In one swift, practiced motion, McDougald put the ether cone over the soldier's face and turned the valve on the gas cylinder. The wounded man choked on the pungent fumes, but didn't try to yank off the mask the way a lot of people did. His hands stayed right where they were till the ether got him and he went limp.

"Let's see how bad it is," O'Doull said grimly. Now he could move those blood-dripping hands. When he did, he wished he hadn't. What he saw made him want to cover himself up the same way.

"How bad?" McDougald asked.

"Well, he won't need to worry about getting a girl in trouble anymore-that's for d.a.m.n sure," O'Doull answered. "I'll see if I can put his d.i.c.k back together well enough for him to p.i.s.s through it. And he's got some nasty belly wounds, too."

"Remember we were talking about the Geneva Convention a while ago?" McDougald said as O'Doull, his mouth a tight line behind the mask, got to work.

"Yeah," he answered absently, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g mangled tissue as conservatively as he could. "What about it?"

"n.o.body'd thought of Popping Paula back when they were hammering it out," McDougald said. "Otherwise, it'd be on the list for sure."

"It's filthy, all right," O'Doull agreed. "And you know what's even worse? I bet you anything the engineer who came up with it got a bonus."

"I won't touch that," McDougald said. "If you look at it the right way-or the wrong way, depending-it's almost the perfect weapon. Who'd want to maybe trade his family jewels for a hundred-yard advance?"

"I'm just glad they don't have many of those little toys here," O'Doull said. "And we've got all their airstrips under our guns now, so they won't be bringing in more."

"Always parachute drops," McDougald said helpfully. But there weren't many of those anymore. Pittsburgh had cost the CSA a G.o.d-awful lot of transports. No more than a handful tried to make the trip these days; U.S. Wright fighters ruled the skies above western Pennsylvania.

Outside the hospital, the thunder of U.S. guns went on around the clock. O'Doull hardly noticed it. He might have looked up in surprise if it stopped. Incoming rounds were growing scarcer. That Confederate Army might have got into Pittsburgh. It didn't look as if it would get out.

"How are you doing there?" McDougald asked after a while.

"Oh, he'll live. I'm not so sure he'll think that's doing him a favor, though," O'Doull said. "I think think he'll have a p.e.n.i.s that works, even if he won't get much fun out of it. I sure hope it works-otherwise, it's catheter time." he'll have a p.e.n.i.s that works, even if he won't get much fun out of it. I sure hope it works-otherwise, it's catheter time."

"Ouch." McDougald winced. "Don't even want to think about that."

"It's a b.i.t.c.h." O'Doull used the smallest needles and finest catgut for his sutures. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done such delicate work. He wished he could have done more for the wounded soldier, but the essential parts were gone.

At last, the job was done. McDougald surveyed the site. "Well, I think you did about as much as anybody would have been able to," he said.

"Yeah." O'Doull gave back a somber nod. "I wish I could say more. I wish I had a drink, too."

"Don't blame you a bit. Why don't you, once you get out of the OR?"

"When I come off, maybe I will," O'Doull said. "Don't want to do it now-odds are I'll be operating again before long."

"There is that," McDougald allowed. "I'll tell you something, though-I've known plenty of docs that wouldn't have stopped for a second, let alone a minute. Some of the old-timers in the last war, the guys who'd been in the Army since 1880-hoo-boy!" He rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, I ran into some of those fellows, too," O'Doull said. "This one surgeon named Schnitzler-I don't think he drew a sober breath all the time I knew him. But put a wounded man in front of him and a scalpel in his hand and he'd do as good a job as anybody you'd ever want to meet. He could operate in his sleep. I think he did sometimes."

"That's the kind I mean," McDougald said. "There's the drunk who goes and drinks till he pa.s.ses out. And then there's the other kind, the guy who gets a buzz in the morning and stays buzzed all day long, and as long as he is, he's fine."

"Till his liver c.r.a.ps out on him, anyway," O'Doull said.

"Oh, sure." By the way McDougald said that, he took it for granted. "Of course, there are some of the first kind, too. Part of the way I learned surgery was when one of the docs who should have been doing it got too toasted to see, let alone operate. If I didn't cut, this soldier was ruined for sure. If I did, maybe he had a chance. So I did, and he made it-and I thought, Son of a b.i.t.c.h! I can do this s.h.i.+t! Son of a b.i.t.c.h! I can do this s.h.i.+t! I was hooked." I was hooked."

"It grows on you, all right," O'Doull agreed. "What happened to the drunken doctor?"

"He kept at it whenever he was sober enough to work," McDougald answered. "After a while, people said I was doing better work than he was. I don't know about that. He had the training, after all, and I was amateur city. But I sure was doing more more work than he was, 'cause he got loaded more and more often." work than he was, 'cause he got loaded more and more often."

"They should have discharged the fool." Though a Catholic, O'Doull had more than a little New England Puritan sternness in him.

Granville McDougald shook his head. "It was a war, Doc. If he was only a quarter of what he should have been, that was still a quarter of a surgeon more than they would have had if they canned him. h.e.l.l, he may be in the Army yet. He may be in the OR next door, for all I know."

"He probably killed patients he should have saved," O'Doull said.

"So have I," McDougald said. He didn't ask if O'Doull had. That was generous of him. Like any doctor, O'Doull had buried some of his mistakes. It came with being human. The most important thing was trying not to make the same mistake twice.

Hotel Street in Honolulu was a raucous, drunken place twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Sailors who had liberty got drunk and got laid, caring about nothing but the moment. George Enos, Jr., knew exactly how they felt. He should have-he was one of them.

He'd drunk enough to make the sidewalk seem to sway and twist under his feet like the Townsend Townsend's deck in a heavy sea. But the pavement wasn't listing-he was.

"Where do we go now?" he asked Fremont Dalby. He'd pretty much given up thinking on his own. If the gun chief could manage it, George would follow along.

Dalby made a production out of pondering. He'd taken plenty of antifreeze on board, too. "Well, do we want to drink some more, or do we want to screw?" he asked.

George frowned. He didn't want to decide anything. He wasn't sure he could decide anything. Fritz Gustafson settled things by walking through the next open door they pa.s.sed.

If it had been a brothel, they would have done their best there. But it was another gin mill. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and spilled beer and vomit. A record player was cranking out Hawaiian music much too loud. George's head started to ache, and he wasn't even hung over yet. That would come tomorrow morning, and tomorrow morning might as well be ten years away.

He and his buddies from the Townsend Townsend elbowed their way up to the bar. A couple of the men they muscled by gave them sour stares, but n.o.body threw a punch. "What'll you have, gents?" the barkeep asked. elbowed their way up to the bar. A couple of the men they muscled by gave them sour stares, but n.o.body threw a punch. "What'll you have, gents?" the barkeep asked.

"Whiskey," Fremont Dalby said. George nodded. So did Fritz Gustafson. The man behind the bar poured the booze into three gla.s.ses, added ice, and waited till he saw money before sliding the drinks across the bar. Dalby gulped his. So did Gustafson. George went a little slower. By himself, he would have stuck with beer. He liked it better. But when he was out with friends, whiskey got him drunk faster. On a forty-eight-hour liberty, speed mattered.

He wasn't sorry this had turned out to be a bar, not a cathouse. He always felt bad about being unfaithful to Connie. Oh, not while he was in the act-it felt wonderful then. It always did. How could it not, even with a bored Chinese floozy who chewed gum while you pounded away? But he never failed to feel guilty afterwards.

"Drink up, George," Dalby said. "The night is young, and you are-h.e.l.l, I ain't drunk enough to think you're beautiful."

George laughed. He knocked back his drink, then coughed two or three times. The rotgut in the gla.s.s was smooth as sandpaper. Gustafson pounded him on the back. "Thanks," he wheezed.

"Sure," the loader said. Even pretty well lit up, he spent words as if he paid for them out of his own pocket.

"Another round," Dalby told the the bartender.

"Coming up." The man's gray hair said he'd been around a while. So did his faint British accent. The Sandwich Islands had belonged to the limeys before the USA took them away in 1914. A lot of the old-timers had been here since the Union Jack flew alongside the flag of the Sandwich Islands, which joined it to the Stars and Stripes in what had been the old Kingdom of Hawaii's doomed effort to keep everybody happy.

George would have loved to spend the rest of his life in the Sandwich Islands. He didn't suppose many people who came here didn't want to stay. After the winter he'd just been through, he would never look at January in Boston the same way again. He wouldn't look at the North Atlantic in January the same way again, either. Oh, they had swells here. But nothing he'd seen came within miles of the Nantucket sleighride. And you'd never have to worry about working on deck in the middle of an ice storm.

Again, Dalby and Gustafson poured down their drinks in nothing flat. Again, they waited not too patiently for him to finish his. He was about to go bottoms up when a brawl broke out behind him.

He never knew what started it. An argument over a barmaid? Two sailors from the same s.h.i.+p who didn't like each other? Sailors from two s.h.i.+ps that didn't like each other? The roll of the dice at a corner table?

Whatever got it going, it was everywhere fifteen seconds later. n.o.body tried to stop it; everyone just joined in. If that didn't prove there were a lot of drunks in the place, nothing ever would have.

Somebody swung at George: a big, burly machinist's mate. The haymaker would have knocked him into the middle of next week had it landed, but it missed by at least a foot. George threw what was left of his drink in the other sailor's face. The man roared and rubbed frantically at his eyes. George hit him in the belly. He folded up with an explosive, "Oof!"

Oh, s.h.i.+t! The bartender was probably yelling it, but George had to read his lips to understand it. Everybody in the joint was shouting at the top of his lungs. The noise of things breaking didn't help. The bartender was probably yelling it, but George had to read his lips to understand it. Everybody in the joint was shouting at the top of his lungs. The noise of things breaking didn't help.

Somebody took a swing at Fremont Dalby. The gun chief ducked so the punch caught him on top of the head. That hurt the puncher much more than it hurt Dalby. One of the things you learned in a hurry was not to punch bony places. By the way the sailor clutched his wounded hand, he'd probably broken a knuckle or two. A heartbeat later, he had other things to worry about. Dalby, a barroom veteran, didn't waste time fighting fair. He kneed the sailor in the crotch. The man howled like a wolf.

George stopped a punch with his forehead. He saw stars. It probably hurt the other guy worse than it hurt him, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it. Plenty of sailors got into fights for the fun of it. George didn't understand that. Watching a fight was fun. Getting punched and kicked and elbowed? That wasn't what he called a good time.

He hit the other guy in the ribs. He'd aimed for the sailor's solar plexus. If he'd hit it, that would have taken the SOB out of the brawl till his motor started working again.

But a shot to the ribs just p.i.s.sed the sailor off. He gave George a punch identical to the one he'd just taken. George grunted and swore. That would leave a bruise, and he'd probably be sore whenever he breathed for the next week.

n.o.body in a barroom brawl played much defense. George slugged the guy in front of him again. Then Fritz Gustafson hauled off and belted the sailor in the chops. The man went down like a felled tree. With a small smile, Gustafson displayed a set of bra.s.s knucks. He would have made a h.e.l.l of a Boy Scout. He was prepared for anything.

Halfway down the bar, somebody who didn't have bra.s.s knuckles improvised. He picked up a long-legged stool and swung it like a flail, felling whoever he could reach. Maybe the rising and falling screech that burst from him was intended for a Rebel yell. Maybe it just meant he was enjoying himself.

Whatever it meant, the screech abruptly cut off. Someone coldc.o.c.ked the stool swinger from behind with a beer bottle. The bar stool crashed to the floor. So did the sailor, bleeding from a scalp wound.

A fighting knife gleamed in the hand of a Marine in a forest-green uniform. George didn't see the leatherneck stick anybody. All the same, he decided he was up way past his bedtime.