"That seems fair," O'Doull allowed.
He wondered how long the United States would be able to occupy the Confederate States. The government might want to do it, but the soldiers on the ground were a lot less enthusiastic. They chafed under the discipline they'd accepted without thinking when their country was in peril.
They drank whatever they could get their hands on. They got into brawls with the locals and with one another. Despite all the thunderous orders against fraternizing with Confederate women, they chased skirt as eagerly as they would have back home. And what they chased, they caught. They caught all kinds of things-the penicillin they got stuck with testified to that.
"I don't know what the hell her name was," said a private most unhappy about his privates-he had one of the drippiest faucets O'Doull had ever seen. "It was dark. She said, 'Five dollars,' so I gave it to her. Then she gave it to me."
"She sure did. Bend over. I'm going to give it to you, too," O'Doull said. The soldier whined when the shot went home. O'Doull persisted: "Where was this? At a brothel? We need to know about those."
"No…" The soldier sighed with relief as the needle came out. "I was going back to my tent after I stood sentry, you know? And she called, and I felt like it, so I paid her and I screwed her in the bushes. And the bitch gave me something to remember her by."
O'Doull sighed. "Oh, God, I am so tired of this."
"Yeah, well, let me tell you somethin', Doc-it's even less fun on this end of the needle." The soldier did up his pants. "Is that it? Am I done?"
"No. You have to come back in three days for another shot," O'Doull answered. The other man groaned. O'Doull felt like groaning himself. This is why I need to get out of the Army, he thought glumly. "And I have to see your dogtags. Your superiors in the line need to know you came down venereal."
The soldier with the clap really didn't like that. If Goodson Lord and Eddie hadn't opportunely appeared, he might have stormed out of the aid station and forgotten about the second half of his cure. Eddie held a wrench; Sergeant Lord had a tire iron. O'Doull got the information he needed.
As soon as he'd written that down, he started in on the letter to the powers that be in the Republic of Quebec. Finding an envelope for it was easy. Coming up with a postage stamp wasn't. Soldiers in Confederate territory who were writing to the USA got free franking. Writing to Quebec, O'Doull didn't, and he'd used his last stamp a few days before on a letter to Nicole. He thought about using Confederate stamps, but they'd been demonetized. Eventually, a mail clerk came up with the requisite postage, and the letter went on its way.
And then he forgot about it. He went back to being a busy Army doctor, because an auto bomb killed several U.S. soldiers and wounded two dozen more. He hated auto bombs. They were a coward's weapons. You could be-and, if you had any brains, you were-miles away when your little toy went off. And you could laugh at what it did to the people you didn't like.
Digging jagged chunks of metal out of one soldier after another, O'Doull wasn't laughing. He didn't think the locals would be laughing very long, either, even though they probably were right now. "How many hostages will the authorities take after something like this?" he asked.
"Beats me," Goodson Lord answered. "But they'll shoot every damn one of 'em. You can bet your last nickel on that."
"I know. And that will make some diehard mad enough to build another bomb, and then it just starts up again. Ain't we got fun?" O'Doull said.
"Fun. Yeah," Lord said. "How's this guy doing?"
"We would have lost him in the last war-this kind of belly wound, peritonitis and septicemia would have got him for sure. But with the antibiotics, I think he'll pull through. His colon's more like a semicolon now, but you can live with that."
"Ouch!" Lord said. The pun seemed to distress him more than the bloody work he was assisting with. He'd done the work lots of times. The pun was a fresh displeasure. O'Doull had pulled it on Granny McDougald before, but not on him. I'm getting old, he thought. I'm using the same jokes over and over.
After he'd repaired as best he could the wounded who were brought to him, he took a big slug of medicinal brandy, and poured another for Goodson Lord. He wouldn't have done that during the fighting. No telling then when more casualties were coming in, and he'd wanted to keep his judgment as sharp as he could. Now he could hope he wouldn't have anything more complicated than another dose of clap to worry about for a while.
He lit a cigarette. It was a Niagara, a U.S. brand, and tasted lousy. But the C.S. tobacco firms were out of business-for the moment, anyway. Bad smokes beat no smokes at all.
Puffing on a Niagara made him think of heading north again, out of the USA and back to the country he'd adopted. Living in the Republic of Quebec meant returning to a backwater. Things happened more slowly there. Movies got to Riviиre-du-Loup months, sometimes years, after they were hits in the United States. Most of them were dubbed into French; a few had subtitles.
O'Doull's English would have got even rustier than it had if not for the need to read medical journals and try to keep up with the miracles happening in the USA-and the miracles the USA imported from Germany. Back before the United States fostered Quebecois independence, Canada tried ramming English down the locals' throats. Older people still remembered the language, but not fondly. Younger ones wanted nothing to do with it.
He could live with that if he had to. He had lived with it, for years. You took the bad with the good wherever you went. By now, his college French had picked up enough of the local accent to let people who didn't know him think he was born in La Belle Province himself. Of course, not many people in Riviиre-du-Loup didn't know him. As far as he was concerned, that was part of the good.
"Penny for 'em," Sergeant Lord said.
"Thinking about going home again," O'Doull answered.
"Figured you were," Lord said. "You're right here, but your eyes were a million miles away."
"Better than the thousand-yard stare the poor mudfoots get when they've been through the mill," O'Doull said. Lord nodded. They both knew that look too well.
O'Doull stubbed out the cigarette and lit another one. He'd done something useful today, anyhow. If Colonel Tobin had sent him home, it would have been up to Goodson Lord. The guy with the shrapnel might have died then. Granny McDougald could have pulled him through, but O'Doull didn't think Lord was up to it.
But if the Confederates kept a rebellion smoldering for years, was that reason enough for him to stay down here till it finally got stamped out, if it ever did? He shook his head. He'd paid all the dues he felt like paying-more than he'd had to pay. He wasn't so goddamn young any more. He'd had that thought not long before, too. He wanted the rest of his life for himself.
Whether the U.S. Army or the authorities in the Republic wanted him to have it might be a different question. Well, he'd done what he could along those lines. Off in the distance, a train whistle blew. He smiled. If all else failed, he could hop a freight. What did the the soldiers say when you came out with something stupid? And then you wake up-that was it.
Doctor Deserts! Heads for Home in Spite of Orders! He saw the headlines in his mind's eye. Yes, it would be a scandal. It would if they caught him, anyhow. If they didn't, he was home free. The Republic wouldn't extradite him-he was sure of that.
Stop it, he told himself. You'll talk yourself into it, and then you'll really be up the creek.
Seventeen days after he wrote his letter, one with a Quebecois stamp came back. He opened the envelope with a strange mix of apprehension and anticipation. If they said no…But if they said yes…!
And they did! In stilted English, a bureaucrat in Quebec City proclaimed that he was a valuable medical resource, and vitally needed to serve the populace of Riviиre-du-Loup. He grinned from ear to ear. He'd been called a lot of things before, but never valuable, let alone a medical resource. He hurried off to show Colonel Tobin the letter.