"I've been places I liked more than some of those bridges," Bartlett agreed with a reminiscent shudder. His comrade's chuckle said Jenkins appreciated the understatement. Reggie went on, "It might not have been hell on earth, but if it wasn't, you could sure as blazes see it from there."
"You got a good way with words," Jenkins said. "You ever try your hand at writin' or anything like that?"
"Oh, all the time," Bartlett answered. Jasper Jenkins stared at him, maybe wondering whether he'd been serving alongside a famous author without knowing it. Jenkins could sign his name, but that was about as far as his read ing and writing took him. Reggie explained: "I worked in a drugstore in Richmond. The pharmacist would make the pills and the syrups, and I'd write 'Take four times a day' or 'Take two before meals' or 'Do not take on an empty stomach' and glue the label to the bottle. It was a wild and exciting life, I tell you that."
"Sounds like it." Jenkins tramped on for another few paces, then said, "Bet you'd trade this for it in a red-hot minute."
"No takers," Reggie said with considerable feeling. Both men laughed as they marched back toward the base camp.
That was near the little town called Clearwater, a name it might once have lived up to but no longer deserved. No little town suddenly inundated by a great sea of butternut tents could hope to keep its water clear. The wonder was that it still had enough water for the men to drink. To men who had spent a turn in the trenches, the idea of sleep under canvas on veritable cots looked very attractive indeed.
But before they could approach the earthly paradise, they had to pass through purgatory. Purgatory was guarded by stern-looking military policemen, and bore the banner, delousing station. "Peel off by squads," one of the military policemen shouted, and then, seeing how small the squads were (What does he know about the front? Reggie thought scornfully), corrected himself: "No — by sections."
The men had been through the drill before. They didn't need the military policeman, exultant in his petty authority, to tell them what to do. Along with the rest of the men in his section, Reggie went into one of the big delousing tents. He got out of his clothes and handed them to a Negro attendant, who threw his underwear into a pile that would go back to the corps laundry farther from the front and put his outer garments into a bake oven that went by the name of a Floden disinfector, after the genius who had invented the exercise in futility.
That done, Bartlett soaped himself at a footbath. The soap was strong and stinking. He rubbed it into his scalp, his half-grown beard, and the hair around his private parts anyhow, in the hope that it would get rid of the nits he was surely carrying. Then, along with the rest of the men in his section — and, he saw with amusement, with Major Colleton-he leaped with a splash into a great tub, almost a vat, of steaming-hot water.
Everyone was splashing and ducking everyone else. The major joined in the horseplay with no thought for his rank. He came up spluttering by Reggie after someone else pulled him under. Saluting, Reggie said, "It's a rare honor to share an officer's lice, sir."
"Don't know what's so damned rare about it," the battalion commander retorted. "You've been doing it in the trenches for the past year." And he ducked Reggie, holding him under till he thought he was going to drown.
The disinfector baked the soldiers' uniforms for fifteen or twenty minutes. When they were done, more colored attendants issued fresh underwear.
"Feels good — not itching, I mean," Reggie said, buttoning up his tunic. The laundrymen had ironed and brushed it, so he looked as smart as he was going to.
"Enjoy it while it lasts," Jasper Jenkins said.
They went with the rest of the unit to stake places in the tents assigned to them, and then had the rest of the afternoon to themselves. Before they even found the tents, they spotted a crowd of men listening to a tall, thin man in a black sack suit and a straw hat. Reggie's eyes widened. "That's the president!" he exclaimed.
"I'll be a son of a bitch if you're not right," Jenkins said. "Shall we find out what the devil he's got to say for himself?"
"Might as well," Reggie answered. "I was there in Capitol Square in Richmond when he declared war. Might as well find out how he likes it now that he's seen a year's worth." They hurried over and joined the crowd.
Woodrow Wilson was speaking earnestly, but without the changes in tone and volume and the dramatic gestures that were likeliest to win his audience over. He sounded more like a professor than the leader of a nation at war: "We must continue. We must dedicate our lives and fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when the Confederate States are privileged to spend their blood and their might for the principles that gave them birth and happiness and the peace they have treasured.
"The challenge, in fact, is to all mankind. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperament of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of which we are but a single champion in concert with our allies."
"That's pretty fancy," Reggie murmured to Jasper Jenkins.
"Too goddamn fancy for me," Jenkins whispered back. "What I want to do is, I want to smash those damnyankee bastards. If he'd tell me how we're going to do that, I'd be a sight happier."
"We must stay the course," Wilson said, though a few soldiers drifted away as others came to listen. "We must not swerve suddenly in the middle of the great conflict upon which we have embarked. Giving ourselves over to foolish radicalism at a time like this would only spell disaster for our nation and for all we hold dear."
A light dawned on Reggie. He'd wondered why Wilson had come to the base camp when speaking before soldiers was so obviously unnatural, even uncomfortable, to him. "Presidential election's less than three months off," he said. "He wants to make sure we don't go and elect the Radical Liberal."
"He don't have a hell of a lot to worry about," Jenkins said. "We've never sent one of those crazy bastards to Richmond yet, and I don't reckon we will this time, neither."
"Politicians take all sorts of crazy chances — don't suppose we'd be in this damn war if they didn't," Bartlett said. "But they sure as hell don't take chances about what happens to their party. Wilson can't run again himself, so he wants to make damn sure the vice president, whatever the devil his name is, gets the job."
"Sims? Sands? Something like that," Jenkins said. "Whoever the hell he is, I'm gonna vote for him."
"Me, too, I think," Reggie said, "but I've got better things to do than listen to speeches that tell me to do what I'm already going to do."
"Yeah," Jenkins agreed, and they both walked off. Signboards here and there in the base camp listed attractions. "Let's go watch a boxing match," Reggie suggested.
"White men or colored?" somebody asked.
Bartlett ran his finger down the list of matches to see who was fighting whom. "Our division's colored champion is taking on a fellow from the Confederate Marines who's touring base camps," he said. "That's gonna be the best fight today, no doubt about it."
Nobody argued with him. The crowd around the squared circle was al ready large by the time he got there. He and Jasper Jenkins so effectively used their elbows to get closer to the ring that they almost started a couple of fights of their own.
They cheered Commodus, the division champion, and lustily booed the Negro from the Confederate Marines, whose name was Lysis. "Which," shouted the soldier doing duty as announcer, "means Destruction." More boos.
Reggie bet another soldier two dollars that Commodus would win. He had to pay up depressingly soon: Lysis knocked Commodus cold in the third round. Attendants had to flip water into the fallen champion's face before he could get up and groggily stagger out of the ring.