“I don’t know why you expect Roosevelt to listen to Flora,” David Hamburger said. “He hasn’t listened to anybody else since he got elected.”
Martin laughed. Corporal Reinholdt, on the other hand, scowled. “Shut up,” he said in a flat, hostile voice. “Nobody’s gonna make fun of the president of the United States while I’m here to kick his ass.”
“Hey, take it easy, Bob,” Martin said. “Nobody’s getting in an uproar about this.”
“Oh, now you’re gonna undercut me, are you, Sarge?” Reinholdt growled. “Must be another goddamn Red yourself.”
Had he left off the adjective and smiled, he might have got by with it. As things were, Martin couldn’t ignore it. He’d been waiting for this moment since he got here. It had held off longer than he’d expected, but it wouldn’t hold off any more. His right hand went into a trouser pocket and came out in a fist. “Get up,” he snapped at Reinholdt, who was hunkered down over a tin coffeepot.
“Yeah?” the corporal said as he got to his feet. He was shorter and stockier than Chester Martin; they probably weighed within five pounds of each other. By the way Reinholdt leaned forward, he knew the time was here, too. He took a step toward Martin. “Come in here and take the slot that shoulda been mine, will you?” A season’s worth of resentment boiled in him. “I ought to-”
“Oh, shove it up your ass, or I’ll-” In the middle of the sentence, without warning, Martin threw a left. Reinholdt ducked with a scornful laugh. Martin laughed, too. He hadn’t expected much from that left. The arm still wasn’t so strong as it should have been, not after the wound he’d taken.
His right, though…The uppercut caught Bob Reinholdt square on the point of the chin. Reinholdt didn’t fall over; he was made of stern stuff. But the punch he had on the way ran out of steam before it got near Martin, and was hardly more than a pat when it connected with his ribs. Reinholdt’s eyes stayed open, but they weren’t seeing much.
Martin had the luxury of deciding whether to kick him in the crotch. He kicked him in the belly instead, with precisely measured viciousness. Reinholdt folded up like a sailor’s concertina. Martin hit him in the face again for good measure as he was going down.
“He didn’t need that last one,” Tilden Russell said, sudden respect in his voice over and above that to which Martin’s three stripes entitled him. He studied Reinholdt, who lay unmoving. “He wasn’t going anywhere anyway.”
“Maybe not.” Martin shrugged. “You ever get in a saloon brawl, though, one of the first things you learn is, never let the other guy think he could have licked you if you hadn’t got lucky.”
“Sarge, I don’t think you need to worry about that,” David Hamburger said.
Martin wondered whether the kid was right. When the real fighting started, would he be able to trust Reinholdt behind his back with a rifle? He’d have to do some thinking there. For now, though, he’d taken care of what needed taking care of. “Throw some water in his face,” he told Hamburger. “He’s got no business sleeping on the job.”
His hand went back into his pocket. The short, fat steel cylinder he stashed there was just about as good as a set of brass knuckles, and a hell of a lot less conspicuous. Such toys were commonplace in the saloon fights among steelworkers in Toledo; Martin gave hardly more thought to having one than he would have to a box of matches.
Reinholdt groaned and spat blood when David Hamburger flipped water on him. After a while, the battered corporal sat up. His eyes still didn’t want to focus. He spat again. This time, the red had a couple of white flecks in it. He looked up at Martin. “What the hell you hit me with?”
“This.” Martin showed him his right fist. He didn’t show him the steel cylinder he’d had in it. He went on in a pleasant tone of voice: “You better pay attention to what I’m telling you now, Bob. You try messing around with me again and one of us is liable to end up dead. I’m going to tell you one other thing, too-it won’t be me. Now, you got all that?”
“I got it,” Reinholdt said. Maybe he was even convinced. Martin couldn’t tell. The battered corporal tried to get to his feet. On the second try, he made it. His legs were still wobbly. He rubbed his jaw. “Shit, feels like I got bounced with a rock.” He spoke like a man with considerable knowledge of such things.
“Just remember that next time, is all,” Martin said.
Reinholdt nodded, then winced. Martin had caught a couple on the buzzer in his time, too; he knew Reinholdt had what felt like the world’s worst hangover, without even the fun of getting drunk first. “Oh, yeah,” the corporal said. “I’ll remember. Shit, tomorrow’s Remembrance Day.” He turned and walked down the trench. Privates made a point of getting out of his way as fast as they could.
Later that day, Captain Cremony summoned Martin to the dugout where he was filling out ammunition requisition forms. The company commander looked up from the forms and said, “I hear you and Reinholdt had a little talk about the weather this morning.”
“Sir?” Had Martin looked any more innocent, a halo would have sprung into being above his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“Of course you don’t-and if pigs had wings, we’d all carry umbrellas,” Cremony said with heavy irony.
“If pigs had wings, they’d be generals, sir,” Martin answered. “And you’re right, we’d all carry umbrellas.”
Cremony stared at him, then started to laugh. “If you’d said ‘captains,’ you’d be on your way back to the guardhouse this minute.” His eyes narrowed. “But you’re not going to distract me with a joke.” Since that was what Martin had hoped to do, he stood still, a serious expression on his face, as if the idea had never entered his mind. He’d had plenty of practice looking opaque for officers. Captain Cremony grunted. “Dammit, Martin, I understand why this happened, but the timing was very bad.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” Martin said. “I couldn’t really take care of that as well as I might have, though. If a fellow wants to talk about the weather right then and there, sometimes you just have to listen to him.”
“Sergeant, if there’s no more talk of the weather between the two of you, I will forget this discussion,” the company commander said. “If there is, I’ll have to remember it. After all, tomorrow is Remembrance Day, and we’ll have all sorts of things to remember then.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Martin said. “I know that, sir. In a way, I’m just as glad Bob and I had this little talk now instead of waiting till later. We might have said sharper things to each other later, if you know what I mean.”
“As I said, I’m not remembering any of this. And I’d better not have a reason to remember it. I’m telling that to you, and I’ll tell it to Reinholdt. If I do have reason to remember it, you’ll both be sorry. Dismissed, Sergeant.”
Martin tromped over boards and through mud back to his section. When he got there, he found Bob Reinholdt drinking coffee out of the side of his mouth. He didn’t say anything to Reinholdt about Captain Cremony’s warning; that would have made him into the teacher’s pet. He’d seen that Cremony knew what he was doing. The company commander would get the message across.
Reinholdt didn’t say anything to him, either. That suited him fine.
An engineer came along the trench. Every so often, he would pause, get up on the firing step, and peer through binoculars south toward Round Hill, Virginia, and the Confederate lines in front of it. Then he’d scribble something in a notebook, go on a little farther, and look south again.
“You don’t mind me saying so, sir, that’s a hell of a good way to get yourself shot,” Chester Martin remarked.
“Do tell?” the engineer said, as if the notion had never crossed his mind. “Chance I take, that’s all. Have to hope the niggers in those Rebel trenches over yonder can’t shoot.”