Steam pumps played water on the fires closer to the Cumberland, from which they could easily draw a good supply. Other fire engines struggled against those here close by and in the state capitol, but pressure in the mains wasn’t all it should have been; Dowling wondered if some of the bombs had damaged the water works. He sighed. The USA had finally got them running again, and now…
But Custer, far more than in an office or conferring with his subordinates around a map, took charge. “Don’t worry, pal,” he called to a soldier whom other men in green-gray were digging out from under bricks and stones. “If you think this is bad, just wait till you see what we do to those Rebel sons of bitches.”
“That’s bully, sir,” the wounded man answered. By the blood soaking his leg and by the way he held it, he wouldn’t be doing any more fighting any time soon, but he was smiling as his comrades carried him away. Dowling shook his head in amazement. He wouldn’t have been smiling with a broken leg. He would have been screaming his head off. Would listening to Custer have made him shut up? He didn’t think so, but it had sure as hell done the job for the wounded soldier.
Custer turned and said, “Major, get on the telegraph to Philadelphia. Let the War Department know I am well and tell them First Army has just begun to fight.”
Dowling, whose ears were still stunned, had to get him to repeat that several times before he had it straight. Custer gladly repeated himself: the only thing he liked better than hearing his own voice was seeing his name in the newspapers. But the men he’d been directing listened avidly, no matter how pompous he sounded.
“Sorry, sir,” said the telegrapher to whom Dowling brought the message, “but the lines north are all down right now.”
“They had better be fixed soon, for the future of the nation may ride on them,” Dowling boomed. He was appalled at how much he sounded like Custer. A moment later, he was appalled again, this time by the telegraph operator’s fervent apology. It made him blink and scratch his head. Damned if the old boy didn’t have something after all.
Barrels crawled north up the road past Arthur McGregor’s farm. They chewed the dirt to hell and gone, kicking great clouds of dust into the air. McGregor wouldn’t have wanted to be one of the Yankee soldiers marching behind the noisy, smelly barrels. But then, he wouldn’t have wanted to be a Yankee soldier under any circumstances.
He looked out across his fields. They were beginning to go from green to gold. He would have a fine crop this year if the weather held-and the only way he would be able to dispose of it was to the U.S. authorities. He grimaced. Almost better to touch a match to the wheat than sell it to the USA.
The barrels passed- like a kidney stone, he thought, remembering a torment of his father’s. More men in green-gray slogged north on foot. Watching them, McGregor thought of ants swarming round spilled molasses. You could smash some, but more kept coming. How many columns of U.S. soldiers had he watched trudging up that road? How many men did the United States hold, anyway? One answer fit both questions: too many.
Southbound traffic was sparser. The farm near Rosenfeld was a long way from the front these days; few Americans needed to withdraw this far. Gloomily, McGregor headed for the barn to muck out and to get in a little work on his latest bomb. He thought he had a way to get it into town, but he wasn’t sure yet.
Here came a U.S. Ford, painted green-gray as Army motorcars often were. McGregor paused, wondering if it was Major Hannebrink trying to catch him in the act. If so, the Yank would be disappointed. McGregor had nothing out now, and would have nothing out ninety seconds after he stopped work. He did not believe in taking foolish chances with his revenge.
When the Ford stopped just outside the lane that led to his farmhouse and barn, he laughed quietly, sure he’d pegged things aright. “Not today, Major,” he murmured. “Not today.”
But then the automobile sped up again, rolling south toward the border. McGregor scratched his head, wondering why it had stopped in the first place. He got his answer a moment later, when a great exultant shout ripped from the throats of the marching American soldiers: “Winnipeg!”
McGregor took two quick steps to the barn and leaned against the timbers by the door. He didn’t think he could have stood up without that support; he felt as punctured, as deflated, as the inner tubes on the motorcars that had come with Hannebrink after Mary got through with them.
“Winnipeg!” the U.S. soldiers cried, again and again. “Winnipeg!” Every repetition felt like a fresh kick in the belly to Arthur McGregor. Since the war began, the city through which passed the railroads linking Canada’s east and west had held out against everything the United States threw at it. McGregor knew fresh train lines had been built north of Winnipeg, but if the Yanks had broken into it, could they, would they, not move past it as well?
Slowly, grimly, he walked back toward the farmhouse. The bomb would wait. The bomb would wait a long time. The United States looked to be in Canada to stay.
When he went inside, Julia gave him a severe look and said, “Don’t you dare slam the door, Father. Don’t you dare stomp around the way you usually do, either. I’ve got bread in the oven, and I don’t want it to fall.”
“All right,” McGregor said meekly, and shut the door with care. The last time he could remember sounding meek, he’d been about eight years old. He shook his head like a bear bedeviled by dogs and wondered what the devil to do next. He had no idea. With Winnipeg lost, what did anything matter?
His older daughter noticed that he sounded strange. “What’s wrong, Father?” she asked.
He cocked his head to one side. With the door closed, with the windows closed, he had trouble hearing the Yankees yelling. If Julia had been busy with the bread, she probably hadn’t even noticed them. “Winnipeg’s fallen,” he said baldly. “I think the Americans mean it this time.”
Julia stared at him as if he’d started spouting gibberish. “But it can’t have,” she said, though she had to know perfectly well it could. Then she burst into tears and threw herself into his arms. He held her and stroked her hair as if she were a little girl and not turning ever more into a woman day by day.
Hearing Julia start to cry was enough to bring Maude and Mary at a run. McGregor knew what was in his wife’s mind, at least-Maude had surely feared the Yanks were seizing him. Seeing him there, she stopped dead. “Dear God in heaven, what is it?” she demanded.
“Winnipeg,” he said. The one word was plenty. It made Julia cry harder than ever. Maude turned away, as if she could not bear to hear such news-and if she could not, who could blame her?
Mary’s mouth fell open. “God doesn’t love us,” she whispered, no doubt the worst thing she could think of. Then, as a grown man might have done, she gathered herself. Over Julia’s shoulder and bent head, McGregor watched the process with nothing but admiration. A word at a time, Mary went on, “I don’t care if God loves us or not. I won’t be a Yankee, and there’s nothing they can do that will make me be one.”
“I won’t be a Yankee, either,” Julia said, and stood straighter. McGregor affected not to notice the dark tear stains on the front of his denim overalls. “I won’t be a Yankee,” Julia repeated. But she, more than anyone else in the family, had a way of looking at things over the long haul. “I won’t be a Yankee,” she said for the third time, and then added, “but what will my children be, if I ever have children? What will their children be?”
McGregor, thus prodded, thought of those distant, hypothetical great-grandchildren he probably wouldn’t live to see, since they’d be born around 1950, a year that seemed impossibly distant from mundane 1917. What would they be like?