That would be his worry. Jeff had plenty of things to think about, too. Paying a call on Edith once he got off duty topped the list, but only barely. Part of his mind was already way the hell out in Texas. Just like Mercer Scott, he was thinking about what he'd do when he started his new post. But Edith did come first.
He couldn't telephone her. She didn't have a telephone. He drove on over that evening after sundown. Her boys said, "It's Mr. Pinkard!" when she opened the door. They sounded glad to see him. That made him feel good. He'd never had much to do with kids since he stopped being one himself, not till now.
"Well, so it is," she said. "Come on in, Jeff. What brings you here?"
He told his story all over again. This time, he finished, "An' I was wondering, if I was to go to Texas, whether you'd like to come along-you and the kids, of course." He didn't want her thinking he didn't give a damn about the boys. He wasn't even trying to fool her, because he did like them.
She said, "That depends. I could go out there and we'd keep on seeing each other like we been, or I could go out there married to you. I'm not saying you've got to propose to me now, Jeff, but I tell you straight out I won't go out there in between the one of those and the other, if you know what I mean."
He nodded. He knew exactly what she meant. He liked her better for meaning it, not less. He would gladly have slept with her if she'd let him, but he never would have thought about marrying her if she had. He said, "I'd be right pleased to marry you, if that's what you want to do." His heart pounded. Would he be pleased? One way or the other, he'd find out.
"That's what I'd like to do," she said. "I'd be proud to go to Texas as your fiancee. I'd like to wait till Chick's dead a year before I marry again, if you don't mind too much."
"I don't mind," Jeff said. Too much, he thought.
Tom Colleton had hoped to land another leave down in Columbus. Then the USA threw a fresh attack at Sandusky. It was more an annoyance than a serious effort to drive the Confederates out. The blizzard that blew into the U.S. soldiers' faces as they advanced from the east didn't make their lives any easier, either. After a couple of days of probing and skirmishing, they sullenly drew back to their own lines-those who could still withdraw, of course.
Whatever else the attack accomplished, it made the Confederate high command nervous. An order canceling all leaves came down from on high. Privates and sergeants hoping for some time away from the front were disappointed. So was Tom Colleton. One more reason to hate the damnyankees, he thought as the arctic wind off Lake Erie threatened to turn him into an icicle.
For a wonder, the Confederate powers that be actually suspected they might have disappointed their men. From officers of such exalted grade, that was almost unprecedented. Colleton put it down to Jake Featherston's influence on the Army. Say what you would about the President of the CSA, but he'd been a noncom up close to the front all through the Great War. He knew how ordinary soldiers thought and what they needed. Some of that knowledge got through to the people directly in charge of the Army these days.
They tried to make up for banning leaves by sending entertainers up to Sandusky. It wasn't the same-they didn't send a brothel's worth of women up there, for instance-but it was better than nothing.
There were some women in the troupe: singers and dancers. The soldiers who packed a high-school auditorium whooped and cheered and hollered. Officers were no less raucous than enlisted men. They might have charged the stage if a solid phalanx of military policemen with nightsticks hadn't stood between them and the objects of their desire.
Most of the acts that didn't have girls in them met a reception as frigid as the weather outside. A comic who told jokes about the war but was plainly making his closest approach to anything that had to do with combat by being here almost got booed off the stage.
"You cocksucker, you'd shit your drawers if you saw a real Yankee with a real gun in his hands!" somebody yelled. A fierce roar of approval rose from the crowd. It was all downhill from there for the luckless comic.
One exception to the rule was a Negro musical combo called Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces. Negro musicians had been part of life in the Confederate States since long before the War of Secession-and Satchmo was a trumpeter the likes of whom Tom Colleton had never seen or heard. The rest of the Rhythm Aces were good without being especially memorable. Backing the brilliant Satchmo, they shone brighter in the light of his reflected glory.
With a harsh spotlight on him, he looked like nothing so much as a big black frog. His eyes and his cheeks bulged in a way that would have been comical except for the sounds that came out of his horn. A man who made music like that? No matter what he looked like, you couldn't help taking him seriously.
A man sitting in the row behind Tom said, "I'll be goddamned if that nigger don't look scared to death."
He was right. Colleton realized as much almost at once. He'd taken Satchmo's grimaces and contortions as some ill-advised comedy thrown into the act. Colored performers often did things like that when they played in front of whites. But these weren't the usual nigger's smirks and simpers. They didn't come close to fitting the music, either, and Satchmo wasn't the sort of man who would have sullied that.
What was he so afraid of? Nobody here was going to do anything to him. On the contrary: the soldiers were listening in the enchanted silence only the finest performers could earn. When Satchmo finished a number, the cheering nearly tore the roof off the auditorium.
What, then? Tom shrugged. You couldn't expect Negroes to love the CSA. As far as Tom was concerned, they deserved a lot of what they were getting. He remembered the way the Marshlands plantation had been, and the ruin it was now. If the colored Reds hadn't risen up, that wouldn't have happened. But blacks didn't like it so much now that the shoe pinched the other foot.
Tom didn't know everything the Freedom Party was doing down in the CSA. He did know he wasn't sorry for it, whatever it was. He'd never asked himself where the phrase population reduction came from. Few whites had, though they used it. Had the question occurred to him, he might have understood why terror lay under Satchmo's music.
When the trumpeter and the Rhythm Aces finished their set, they got another thunderous hand. Tom wasn't the only man who leaped to his feet to show how much he'd liked them. They played an encore and got even more applause, enough to prompt a second encore. They could have played all night, as far as the soldiers went. At last, though, Satchmo mimed exhaustion.
"I thanks you right kindly, gentlemen," he said in a deep, gravelly voice, "but we gots us another gig in the mornin'. When the gummint done sent us up here to Yankeeland, they made sure they kep' us busy."
How many shows did they have to play? How much rest did they get between them? The answers were bound to be lots and not much, respectively. Reluctantly, the Confederate soldiers let them go-and then jeered the white song-and-dance man who had the misfortune to come on after them.
Quite a few men got up and left after Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces quit the stage. They might have been saying they were sure they wouldn't see anything else worth watching. Tom sat through the rest of the evening. He saw a few more pretty girls than the soldiers who'd walked out early, but that was about it.
He tramped back through the snow to the house where he'd been staying since his regiment reached Sandusky. The Yankees who'd lived there before him had either got out or been killed. The house itself had taken some damage, but not a lot. With wood in the fireplace and coal in the stove, it was cozy enough, even in wintertime.
A commotion-men running every which way and shouting-woke Tom before sunup the next morning. He put on his boots and the greatcoat he'd piled on top of his blanket and went out to see what the hell was going on. The only thing he was sure of was that it wasn't the damnyankees: nobody was shooting and nobody was screaming in the way only wounded men did.