Armstrong wondered who the hell Jack Robinson was. He also wondered how life would change now that he was a sergeant instead of a corporal. He’d hesitated before sewing the new stripes onto his sleeve. The Mormons’ snipers liked to pick off officers and noncoms.
Yossel Reisen had two stripes now. He wore them, too. Their promotions both came through while the regiment was in reserve in Thistle. Somebody must have thought they were on the ball when that woman blew herself up in Provo. All Armstrong knew was that the two of them hadn’t got badly hurt when the people bomb went off, and afterward he’d done what anybody else would have. That must have been enough to impress one officer or another.
He turned to Reisen, who crouched behind a stone fence not far away. “You hear the skinny last night?” he said. “They figure Sergeant Stowe’s gonna make it.”
“Yeah, somebody told me.” Yossel nodded. “I would’ve thought he was a goner for sure. He looked like hell.”
“Boy, didn’t he?” Armstrong said.
“He’s lucky.”
“Hunh-unh.” Now Armstrong shook his head. “We’re lucky. We didn’t catch shrapnel. We aren’t in the hospital with our guts all messed up. If Stowe was lucky, he’d still be here, same as we are. Instead, he’s in a bed somewhere, and they probably have to shoot morphine into him all the goddamn time. Belly wounds are supposed to hurt like anything.”
His vehemence surprised him. It must have surprised Yossel Reisen, too. Armstrong didn’t usually argue with him. Yossel was older and more experienced, even if he didn’t care about rank. Here, though, Armstrong couldn’t keep quiet. And after a few seconds, Yossel nodded. “Well, you’re right,” he said. “He’s alive, and that’s good, but he still isn’t lucky.”
“There you go,” Armstrong said. “That’s how it looks to me, too.”
“Sarge! Hey, Sarge!” somebody yelled.
Armstrong needed a moment to remember that meant him. “Yeah? What is it?” he said, a beat slower than he should have.
“Mormon coming up with a flag of truce.”
Firing had died away. Armstrong hadn’t noticed that, either. He felt as far down on sleep as he had before his regiment got R and R. Cautiously, he stuck his head up again. Sure as hell, here came a Mormon in what the rebels used for a uniform: chambray shirt, dungarees, and boots. “Hold it right there, buddy, or you’ll never know how your favorite serial comes out on the wireless!” Armstrong yelled.
The Mormon waved the white flag. “I want to talk to an officer. I mean no harm.”
“Yeah, now tell me another one,” Armstrong said. “How do I know you’re not a goddamn people bomb waiting to go off?”
“Because I say I am not,” the rebel answered. “I am a major in the Army of the State of Deseret.” Armstrong could hear the capital letters thud into place.
Capital letters didn’t impress him. “And I’m the Queen of the May,” he said. “You want to come forward?” He waited for the Mormon to nod, then made a peremptory gesture. “Strip. Show me you’re not loaded with fucking TNT.”
If looks could kill… But they couldn’t, and TNT might. Fuming, the Mormon major shed his boots, his jeans, and his shirt. He even took off his Stetson. That left him in a peculiar-looking undershirt and longish drawers. It was getting toward long-underwear time-nights were downright chilly-but it hadn’t got there yet. The strange getup didn’t particularly bother Armstrong; he’d seen it on other Mormons. Some sort of religious rule said they had to wear it.
That didn’t mean he had to trust it. “Lift up the shirt,” he called. “The drawers are snug enough-don’t bother with those.” The Mormon did, showing a hard belly covered with hair a shade darker than the blond hair on his head. Armstrong waved to him. “Now turn around.” After the rebel did, Armstrong reluctantly nodded. “All right. Looks like you’re clean. Put your stuff back on and come ahead.”
As the Mormon major dressed, he said, “I ought to complain to your officers.”
“Go ahead, buddy,” Armstrong said. “You think they’ll come down on me? I think they’ll pat me on the back. They don’t trust you people any further than I do, and I don’t trust you at all.”
“Believe me, we feel the same way about you,” the Mormon said, bending to tie his bootlaces. “If you would only leave us alone-”
“If you hadn’t risen up, I’d be back east somewhere with Confederates trying to shoot me,” Armstrong said. “And you’d be here in Utah, happy as a goddamn clam. They didn’t even conscript you people.”
“We want to be free. We want to be independent,” the Mormon said as he picked up his white flag. “What’s so wicked about that?” He came toward the U.S. lines.
Armstrong laughed a dirty laugh. “You want to have lots of wives. Are they all in the same bed when you screw ’em? Does one lick your balls while another one gets on top?”
The Mormon’s jaw set. “It’s a good thing I don’t know your name, Sergeant.” He walked past Armstrong as if he didn’t exist. Armstrong called for a couple of privates to take him back toward the rear.
“He’s going to put you on a list even if he doesn’t know your name,” Yossel said. “You’ll be the sergeant in so-and-so sector, and those bastards will be gunning for you.”
“Big fucking deal.” Armstrong laughed again. “Easy enough to get shot around here even when the bastards aren’t gunning for you. Won’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference one way or the other.”
“You better hope it won’t.” Yossel seemed willing to look on the gloomy side of life.
“Screw it. Nobody’s even shooting right now.” Armstrong lived for, and in, the moment. The less you thought about all the horrible things that had happened, the horrible things that would happen, and the horrible things that might happen, the better off you were.
After a bit, Captain Lloyd Deevers came over and got down in the hole with him. Armstrong liked Deevers a lot better than Lieutenant Streczyk, who ran the platoon. Deevers actually had a pretty good idea of what he was doing. He nodded to Armstrong now and said, “I don’t think that Mormon likes you.”
“Now ask me if I care, sir,” Armstrong answered. “I don’t like him, either.”
Deevers chuckled. “All right. I’m not going to flabble about it-except if you want to transfer to some other outfit on the line, I won’t say no.”
“No, thanks, sir. I already told Reisen I can stop one as easy somewhere else as I can here,” Armstrong said. Captain Deevers grinned and slapped him on the back. Armstrong asked, “Did that Mormon say why he wanted the truce?”
“Not to me,” Deevers answered. “He wanted to talk to the high mucky-mucks. I passed him back to Division HQ, and we’ll see what they do with him. If I had to guess, I’d say he wants to dicker a surrender that isn’t really a surrender, if you know what I mean. But that’s only a guess.”
“Good fucking luck, uh, sir,” Armstrong said. Lloyd Deevers laughed.
“He would have had a better chance before they started blowing themselves up,” Yossel said. “If we let ’em off the hook now, it’s like they screwed it out of us. And if they want something else, they’ll think all they have to do is use a few more people bombs to make us give in.”
“That’s how it looks to me, too, especially since we’ve almost got ’em licked,” Armstrong said.
“Well, boys, I won’t argue with either one of you, ’cause I think you’re dead right,” Deevers said. “But it isn’t up to me, any more than it’s up to you. We’ll see what the fellows with the stars on their shoulders have to say-and maybe the fellows in the cutaway coats, too.”
“They’ll screw it up,” Armstrong predicted. “They always do.” He waved a hand at the devastation all around. The wreckage and the smell of corpses might not prove his point, but they didn’t come out and call him a liar, either.
Captain Deevers just shrugged. “Like I told you, I can’t do anything about it, either. I suppose what they decide to do here depends a lot on how things look in Pennsylvania and up in Canada.”