A lot of men who’d come over from Virginia with Jorge and Gabriel were dead or wounded now. Jorge didn’t think much of their replacements. Old-timers in the company doubtless hadn’t thought much of him when he first joined it, either. Two company commanders had gone down since Captain Hirsch. They were both supposed to recover, but that didn’t help much now. A first lieutenant named Jubal Frisch had the company at the moment, and didn’t seem to know what to do with it.
Sergeant Hugo Blackledge hadn’t got a scratch. He was another reason Jorge and Gabriel were friends-they both hated him. He had a platoon now, not just a squad. That let him spread his bad temper around more, but did nothing to make it good.
“Why don’t they bring in a lieutenant to take over for him?” Medwick mourned.
“Even if they did, he’d still be running the platoon,” Jorge said. “That’s what sergeants do. The officer would just be-how do you say?-the guy in front.”
“The front man,” Medwick said.
“That’s it. Thanks. The front man, yeah,” Jorge said. “Blackledge, he can handle a platoon-no doubt about that.”
“Oh, I know. I know.” Gabriel Medwick looked around carefully and lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “He can run it, sure. That ain’t the problem. The problem is, he’s a fuckin’ asshole.”
“You got that right,” Jorge whispered. They both nodded, satisfied they’d figured out at least one small part of how the universe worked.
Blackledge couldn’t have heard them. He would have come down on them harder than a six-inch shell. Somehow or other, though, they both ended up on sentry-go that night. The front wasn’t quiet. Snipers and raiding parties slipped back and forth. That was the small change of war, and nobody worried much about it one way or the other except the people who got wounded or killed. But sentries were a trip wire, too. If a big push came, they were supposed to get word back to the main force.
Jorge peered out into the darkness, all eyeballs and nerves and apprehension. Every time an owl hooted, he thought it was a damnyankee signal. Every time a firefly blinked, he feared it was a muzzle flash. He clutched his automatic rifle and hoped nothing would happen till his relief took over.
Out of the darkness came a low-voiced calclass="underline" “Hey! You there! Yeah, you, Confederate!”
Jorge crouched in good cover. Even if a machine gun opened up, he was safe enough. So he cautiously called back: “Yeah? What you want?”
“Got some smokes?” The other man had a funny accent-a Yankee accent. “Wanna swap ’em for rations? I can use coffee, too, if you got it.”
“I got cigarettes,” Jorge answered. “Not much coffee. You got deviled ham?”
“Buddy, I got a dozen cans,” the U.S. soldier said proudly. “I came prepared-bet your butt I did.”
“I got three-four packs I can trade you,” Jorge said. “You see a stump by a rock up in front of you?”
A pause, presumably while the would-be merchant scanned the area. “Yeah, I see it.”
“Bueno,” Jorge said. “Put four cans on it, then go away. I put four packs on it, then I go away. You come back and get ’em.”
“And you shoot my sorry ass off,” the U.S. soldier said. “I’ll put two, you put two, then we do it again. Got to be some kind of way to keep both of us interested in the deal all the way through.”
“All right,” Jorge said, though he didn’t much care whether it went through or not. The only thing that kept him going was the reasonable certainty that killing him would cause more trouble than it was worth. “Go ahead. I don’t shoot.”
“Fuckin’ better not,” the U.S. soldier said, which was true enough under the circumstances.
He moved quietly. When he came, Jorge didn’t know he was there till he got to within a few feet of the stump and boulder. He set down the cans, waved in Jorge’s general direction, and disappeared again. But he had style; he made more noise retreating than he had advancing, so Jorge could be sure he really was leaving.
Even so, Jorge’s heart pounded as he went up to the stump. If more Yankees waited nearby, they could jump out and capture him. He’d picked this spot himself, but…
He grabbed the cans and almost forgot to set down the cigarettes. After he did, he headed back to his foxhole. Up came the U.S. soldier. “Yeah, you play fair,” he said as he snatched up the packs. “Here’s the rest.” He set down two more cans and withdrew again.
After Jorge took them and left the last two packs of Dukes, he was tempted to shoot the U.S. soldier when he came forward. But what was the point? It wouldn’t win the war. It wouldn’t move the war toward being won by even a hair’s breadth. It would only start a firefight in which he was liable to get hurt himself. He would fight when he had to. When he didn’t have to, he didn’t want to.
Like a ghost, the U.S. soldier materialized. “Thanks, buddy,” he said, collecting the last two packs of Dukes. “Stay safe. I won’t plug you unless I’ve got to. Try and do the same for me.” He vanished into the darkness again.
The deviled ham would be good. Jorge could always get more smokes. He wondered how long that would last, though. The United States had overrun a lot of tobacco country. How long could the Confederacy go on turning out cigarettes? There was a scary thought.
When his relief came up, he almost shot the other Confederate soldier. It wasn’t even that his countryman messed up the password; he was just jumpy. He went back to the company’s forward position, rolled himself in his blanket, and slept till sunup.
He got coffee and fried eggs from the company cook. When he spooned deviled ham into his mess kit to go with the eggs, his buddies gave him jealous looks. “Where’d you get that?” Gabe Medwick asked.
“Found it on a tree stump,” Jorge answered, which was technically true but not what anybody would call responsive. Medwick rolled his eyes.
Sergeant Blackledge was blunter: “You trading with the enemy?”
“Uh, yes, Sergeant.” Jorge didn’t have the nerve to lie.
“Didn’t pay more than one pack of smokes for a can, did you?” Blackledge demanded.
“Uh, no, Sergeant.”
“Goddamn well better not. You jack up the price for everybody else if you do.” The sergeant tramped off. Jorge let out a sigh of relief louder and more heartfelt than the one that had escaped him after he finished the deal with the damnyankee.
He was just finishing his coffee when somebody yelled, “Mail call!” He hurried over to see if there was anything from his brothers (POWs were allowed occasional letters, so Pedro sometimes wrote) or from his family back in Sonora. The field-post corporal had a devil of a time pronouncing his last name, but a lot of ordinary Confederates did, so he took that in stride.
“Who’s it from?” Gabe Medwick asked. He had a large family in Alabama, and got letters all the time.
“My mother,” Jorge answered. “Got to remember how to read Spanish.” He said that only for effect. He wouldn’t have any trouble, and he knew it.
When he opened the letter, what he got wasn’t what he expected. They say your father killed himself, his mother wrote. I don’t believe them. I will never believe them, not just because killing yourself is a mortal sin but because your father would not do it. He would only do such a thing if he found out he had committed some great wrong and he had no other way to make up for it. And that is not so. He was doing something great, something wonderful, something important. He always said so when he wrote me. And so it must be a lie. Maybe they tell me these things because he died fighting and he promised me he would not go into any danger when he left to put on the uniform again. I cannot think of anything else that would make them say such things. And they are paying me a pension for him. Would they do that if he really killed himself? I don’t believe it.