At last, the dreadful task was done. By the time it was, Mary Jane was get ting cranky. Sylvia carried her over to the line in front of Window C. "You stay here," she told George, Jr., "and no more bugs, not if you want to be able to sit down when we ride the trolley home." If we ever get a chance to go home, she thought wearily. But she'd got through to her son, who sat on both hands, as if to protect the area she'd threatened.
The line moved about as slowly as U.S. troops advancing on Big Lick, Virginia-Big Licking, the papers had taken to calling it. Some of the people must have made mistakes on their forms, because, faces set and angry, they had to go back to the previous window and get new copies to fill out. They had to stand in line again there, too.
When she finally reached him, the clerk who reigned supreme over Window C proved to be a fresh-faced young fellow who, for a miracle, seemed friendly and anxious to help. He smiled at Mary Jane, who stared back at him over the thumb she had in her mouth.
Then he glanced down at the coal ration form. "I don't see your husband listed here, ma'am," he said to Sylvia. "You're a widow?" He actually sounded sympathetic, which, from Sylvia's previous experience with Coal Board clerks, should have been more than enough to get him fired.
"No," she said, and explained what had happened to George.
"That doesn't matter," the clerk said. "If he's a captive of the Confederate States, you're entitled to the coal for him."
"Back there-" Sylvia pointed to the window from which she'd come. "Mister, uh, Colfax said I wasn't, because George is a detainee, not a prisoner of war."
"Doesn't matter," the clerk repeated, his voice firm. "Mr. Colfax doesn't know everything there is to know."
Sylvia shot a venomous look back at that window. But when she started to cross lines out and make changes on the form, the clerk said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but these forms must be perfect the first time, to eliminate any suspicion that the changes originated in this office. I'm afraid you do have to go back and get a fresh copy to fill out."
She stared at him, at Mary Jane, at George, Jr. (would he catch a mouse instead of forbidden bugs?), and at the line to the window from which she'd thought she'd escaped. She needed the coal. Coal Board rations were stingy. Even with what she'd get for George, she'd have none too much. But standing in line again-in two lines again-and then having to fill out the requisition form once more, even if this time she could copy from what she'd done before… Another half hour? Another hour? Was it worth the time? When could she shop?
"Come on, lady," a gruff voice said behind her. "I ain't got all day."
Sylvia didn't have all day, either. But she did need the coal. Sighing, ignoring George, Jr.'s, stricken look, she walked across the room and got back into the line in which she'd stood before.
XI
Sometimes you dished it out, sometimes you had to take it. Jake Featherston knew that was true, even if he didn't like it for beans. He was taking it now, and his whole battery with him.
"Fire!" he yelled, and the field gun blasted a shell back at the damnyankees on the far side of the Susquehanna. The whole battery was pounding the U.S. positions, as far back as it could reach.
Trouble was, the battery couldn't reach far enough. The Confederacy's three-inch field guns had been the most wonderful thing in the world when the war was new and positions changed not just from day to day but from hour to hour. They moved with the advancing columns of men in butternut and slaughtered the U.S. soldiers who opposed them: slaughtered by tens, by hundreds, by thousands.
Because they did that job so well, the CSA had a lot of them. What the Con federates didn't have, and what they were needing more and more now that the front wasn't going anywhere fast, was a lot of big guns, guns that could reach well behind the enemy line and do some damage when they did reach. Nobody had thought the Confederacy would need so many guns like that.
"Only goes to show," Featherston muttered. "People ain't as smart as they wish they was."
The USA had the big guns, or more of them than the CSA did. Now that the front had stabilized along the Susquehanna, the United States had brought up their heavy artillery, and their gunners were using the big, long-range shells to raise hell deep among the Confederates' secondary positions. If the Yankees decided to try to force the Susquehanna line, they could beat down the opposition with their artillery till the Confederate forces would have a tough time fighting back.
"Wish we could do more to those damned six- and eight-inch guns," Jethro Bixler said as he set another shell in the breech of the field piece.
"Yeah." Featherston adjusted the elevation screw for maximum range, then pulled the lanyard. The field gun bucked and roared, but the muzzle brake kept the recoil short. If they hadn't worn the rifling out of the barrel of the gun, it wasn't because they hadn't tried. As Bixler slammed yet another shell into the breech, Jake went on, "What I wish is, we weren't so damned far forward. We got to be, I know, but if they do start dropping stuff on us, they'll be awful damn accurate on account of it won't be way out at the end of their range, like we are when we try to reach where they're at."
Another shell screamed off. Featherston wondered if he'd have any hearing left by the time the war was done. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he realized it contained two possibly false assumptions: that his hearing was the most important thing he risked, and that the war would ever end.
Pompey came up to Featherston and waited to be noticed. When the sergeant gave him a curt nod, he said, "Cap'n Stuart's compliments, suh, and we gonna shift our fire to a new Yankee position, range 5,300 yards, bearing 043."
"Range 5,300, bearing 043," Featherston repeated; he had to work to keep from imitating Pompey's mincing accent. Captain Stuart's servant nodded and went off to give the word to the next howitzer in the battery.
Featherston sighed. He didn't know whether Major Potter had investigated Pompey or not. If the major had, nothing had come of it. Pompey remained Jeb Stuart Ill's trusted servant: too trusted, as far as Jake was concerned. He knew Captain Stuart had given the command. All the same, getting it from Pompey was too close to taking orders from a Negro to suit him.
He glanced over at Nero and Perseus, who were combing down the horses. They were all right. They knew white men gave the orders and they took them. Pompey, just because he worked for somebody important, thought his own station improved, too. Thinks his shit don't stink, is what he does, Jake thought.
And then he stopped worrying about things as trivial as the right status of the Negro in the Confederate States of America. At any other time, that would have been important. Not now, not when Yankee shells came whistling in straight toward where he was standing.
Big ones, he thought with a chill as the freight-train noises in the sky grew to a roar, a scream. The damnyankees' three-inchers fired more slowly than the Confederacy's guns, but their shells gave the same scant warning coming in. A little whizz before the bang, that was all you got.
Not these. Through the growing shriek of torn air, Jethro Bixler screamed something. If it wasn't "Get down!" it should have been. A split second before the shells went off, Featherston threw himself flat.
Back home outside of Richmond, he'd gone to church a lot of times to hear a preacher work himself up into a good sweat over hellfire and damnation and brimstone. You listened to a preacher who was good enough, who threw off his jacket and waved his white-shirtsleeved arms at the congregation, you could get the feeling hell wasn't more than half a mile off.