The Mormon saluted and left. Lieutenant Craddock said, "Sir, forgive me, but I didn't think that was a very thorough interrogation."
"Neither did I," Morrell said. "The way I see it is, if I rake these people over the coals when they haven't done anything, I'll give them a reason to be disloyal even if they didn't have one before. Now go fetch me Corporal"-he checked the list-"Corporal Thomas."
Corporal Orson Gregory Thomas-who made a point of asking to be called Gregory-echoed Brigham Dinwiddie's comments almost word for word. Lieutenant Craddock found that suspicious. Morrell found it natural- put two men of the same beliefs in the same awkward situation and you could expect to get the same kind of answers out of them.
Homer Benson, another private, again gave almost the same set of responses. Lieutenant Craddock's granite jaw stuck out like the Rock of Gibraltar as he listened, his face even more disapproving than it had been at the start of the interrogations. He didn't say anything when Morrell dismissed Benson back to his unit, but his stiff posture and even stiffer manner spoke volumes.
Dick Francis, still another private, was the last man on the list Craddock had so laboriously compiled. He looked enough like Dinwiddie to have been his first cousin, and shared his diffident manner. But when Morrell asked him what he thought about the Mormon uprising in Utah, he said, "I hope they kick the Army out of there, sir. That's our land. All the United States ever did was give us grief."
Morrell pointed to the green-gray uniform Francis had on. "What are you doing wearing that, then?"
"Sir, I was rendering unto Caesar," the private answered. "When the Prophet and the Elders said that, since we were part of the United States, we should take part in this war, I obeyed: it was a teaching inspired by God. But now that they see things differently, I won't lie and say I'm sorry. I think Deseret should be free, so we can worship as we please."
"Want a whole houseful of wives, do you?" Lieutenant Craddock said, a nasty leer on his face.
"That will be enough, Lieutenant," Morrell said sharply.
But the damage was done. "You see what I mean, sir?" Francis said. "Why should I love a government that looks at us like that? The way we get treated, we're the niggers of the USA."
From what Morrell had heard, the Mormons didn't treat Negroes as if they were their brothers. That, though, was neither here nor there. Morrell rubbed his chin. "What the devil am I supposed to do with you, Francis?" he asked. He hadn't expected this problem, assuming all the Mormons in the battalion would stay loyal. Craddock looked vindicated.
Dick Francis shrugged. "Why are you asking me, sir? You're the United States Army officer." While sounding perfectly respectful, he somehow man aged to turn Morrell's title into one of reproach.
Morrell thought hard about doing nothing whatever to him. When the Rebs started shooting his way, he'd have to shoot back if he wanted to go on living. But Morrell couldn't take the chance, not with somebody who'd openly admitted he was hoping for the ruination of the USA.
"I'm going to send you back to divisional headquarters," he said. "I don't want any man on the front line whose first loyalty isn't to his country and to the men on either side of him."
He didn't know what Division HQ did with people like Francis. The Mormon soldier did; he'd had more incentive to learn such things. "Detention camp for me, then," he said, sounding not a bit put out. "I'll pray for you, sir. For a gentile, you're a good man."
Not knowing what to do with such faint praise, Morrell turned to Craddock. "Take him back to Division," he said. "Tell them he doesn't feel in good conscience he can go on being a soldier." He tried not to think about what lay in store for Francis. He hadn't made a point of learning about detention camps, either, but they bore an evil reputation.
"Yes, sir," Craddock said enthusiastically. He turned to Francis. "Let's go, you."
Watching them tramp away from the front, Morrell shook his head. War would have been a much simpler, easier business with politics out of the mix.
XII
Emily Pinkard looked at the alarm clock, which, as she did every morning, she'd carried out from the bedroom to the kitchen. "Oh, goodness, I'm late," she said, and gulped down her coffee.
Jefferson Pinkard was still plowing his way through bacon and eggs. He got up, though, when his wife set her cup in the tin sink, and grabbed her. "Give me a kiss before you go," he said. When she did, he tightened his arms around her. Her lips and tongue were warm and sweet and promising. "Mm," he said, still holding her. "I don't think I want you to leave."
She twisted away from him. "I got to, Jeff," she said. "You can just walk on over to the foundry, but I got to catch the trolley if I'm gonna get where I'm going. They dock you every minute you're not there, too. I'll see you tonight, honey." Her eyes told what she meant by that. It was everything he could have hoped for and then some.
Reluctantly, he nodded, no matter how much he wanted to take her back to the bedroom now. By the time they got home tonight, they'd both be worn to nubs. "Miserable war," he growled, and sat back down to finish his breakfast.
Emily nodded from the front hall. "Sure enough is." She pointed to the stove. "I got supper goin' in there. Don't forget to soak your dishes 'fore you leave. Makes 'em a lot easier-and quicker-to wash." She blew him another kiss, then hurried out the door, closing it after herself.
Jeff did soak his breakfast dishes. The quicker Emily got them clean, the more time she'd have for other things. He'd been doing more chores around the house than he'd expected when she started working, just to keep her from being too tired to feel like making love. Life got crazy sometimes, no two ways about it.
He grabbed his dinner pail and headed out the door himself. Walking to work alone still felt unnatural, but Bedford Cunningham was toting a gun these days, not a sledgehammer or a crowbar or a long-handled slag rake. The Cunningham house looked sad and empty. Fanny was gone, too, on her way to work. Pinkard wondered if she and Emily were riding the same trolley car.
He had his own job to worry about, though, and trudged off to Sloss Foundry. You had to take care of your business first, and worry about the rest later. What he did didn't take a wagonload of brains, but his life had got a lot more complicated, these months since the shooting started.
He'd got used to greeting Vespasian and Agrippa when he came down onto the casting floor every morning. It wasn't the same as talking with the white men who'd been there before, but it wasn't so bad. Both of them were old enough to have been born before manumission, and they both understood their place in the scheme of things. You could work with a nigger like that, Pinkard thought. When the time came for them to go back to stoking the furnaces or whatever they'd done before the war, they'd do it, and keep whatever complaint they had to themselves.
Pericles, now… "Mornin', Pericles," Pinkard said. He talked to the young black man now, the same way he did with Agrippa and Vespasian. He'd decided life was too short to get yourself all in an uproar over little things, and working the day through without gabbing with the guy alongside reminded him of nothing so much as a fellow who'd had a fight with his wife trying to show her who was boss by clamming up. It didn't work at home, and it didn't work here, either.
"Mornin', Mistuh Pinkard," Pericles answered. There wasn't anything wrong with the way he acted, not so you could put your finger on it there wasn't, but his manner was somehow different from those of the older Negroes who worked the night shift. Pericles acted as deferential to Jefferson Pinkard as they did, but Maybe that was it, Pinkard thought as a huge crucible swung by over his head and positioned itself to pour a fresh load of molten steel into the big cast-iron mold that waited to receive it. Then he stopped thinking about such things for a while. You had to watch the pouring like a hawk. If anything went wrong, you needed to be ready to jump and run-either that or you got yourself burned to a crisp, dead or wishing you were. Sid Williamson had lingered a week before he finally died, poor bastard.