Humphrey Selfe wasn’t interested in discussing. Like a lot of people, he wanted to lay down what he saw as the law. “I shall denounce you from the pulpit!” he said furiously.
“Remember the line about rendering unto Caesar, too, your Reverence,” Dowling said. “Lubbock is under martial law. If you try to incite riot, rebellion, or uprising, I promise you’ll be sorry.”
“I shall preach on the subject of saloons,” Selfe said.
“You do that,” Dowling told him. “I’m sure they can use the advertising. It will be fascinating to see how many of your congregants-is that the word?-decide to wet their whistles once you let them know where they can.”
The Reverend Selfe left most abruptly. The way he slammed the door, a large shell might have gone off. Major Toricelli opened the door again-to Dowling’s surprise, it was still on its hinges-and asked, “What did you do to him?”
“Talked about the Scriptures,” Dowling answered. “Really, there’s no making some people happy.”
“Uh-huh,” Angelo Toricelli said. “Why do I think you made a nuisance of yourself…sir?”
“Because you know me?” Dowling suggested. Then he added, “Sunday, we’ll need people listening to the quarrelsome fool’s sermon. If he goes overboard, we’ll make sure he pays for it.”
“That will be a pleasure,” Toricelli said.
After his adjutant withdrew once more, Dowling cursed. He’d wanted to ask the Reverend Humphrey Selfe what he thought of that camp for Negroes down by Snyder. Then he shrugged. Odds were the preacher would have said he’d never heard of the place. Odds were that would be a big, juicy lie, but Dowling wouldn’t be able to prove it.
More C.S. artillery came in. Some of those rounds sounded as if they were hitting in town, not just on the southern outskirts. Maybe, Dowling thought hopefully, they’ll knock Reverend Selfe’s church flat. He laughed. Who said he wasn’t an optimist?
Another downstate Ohio town. Having grown up in Toledo, First Sergeant Chester Martin looked on the southern part of his own state with almost as much scorn as a Chicagoan viewed downstate Illinois. Maybe people down here didn’t marry their cousins, but they were liable to fool around with them-so he uncharitably thought, anyhow.
Hillsboro had a couple of foundries and a couple of dairy plants. It sat on a plateau in the middle of Highland County. Because it lay on high ground, the Confederates were hanging on to it as an artillery base to shell the U.S. forces advancing from the north and east.
Martin was frustrated at the way the war in southern Ohio was going. “We should have trapped all the Confederates in the state,” he grumbled as he waited for water to boil for his instant coffee. “We should have given them the same business we gave the butternut bastards in Pittsburgh.”
“Isn’t there a difference, Sarge?” asked one of the privates huddled around the little campfire.
“Like what?” Chester said. What was the younger generation coming to? When he was a buck private, he wouldn’t have dared talk back to a first sergeant.
“When they were in Pittsburgh, they had orders not to pull back till after it was too late and they couldn’t,” the kid answered. “Here, they are falling back-looks like they’ll try and make the fight on their side of the Ohio.”
“Everybody thinks he belongs on the damn General Staff,” Chester said. But that wouldn’t quite do. “Well, Rohe, when you’re right, you’re right. I forgot they had those orders, and it does make a difference.”
Somewhere off to the left and ahead, a Confederate fired a short burst from one of their submachine guns. A U.S. machine gun answered. So did a couple of shots from the guys with the Springfields who helped protect the machine-gun crew. Another Confederate fired, this one with an automatic rifle. The machine gun answered again. Silence fell.
By then, Chester and the rest of the soldiers around the fire had their weapons in their hands, ready to hurry to help the machine-gun position if they had to. The Confederates in front of Hillsboro defended aggressively, probing as if they intended to go over to the attack any minute now. Martin didn’t think they would, but you never could tell.
“Gotta hand it to those bastards,” said one of the privates by the fire. “They still have their peckers up.” That wasn’t far from what Chester was thinking.
But brash Private Rohe said, “Yeah, well, I wish I did.”
That got a laugh. One of the other men said, “Hey, you can’t get laid around here, you ain’t tryin’. These Ohio broads are mighty glad-I mean mighty glad-we ran off those butternut bastards.”
Several men nodded. From what Chester had seen, the private wasn’t wrong. Some of the local women seemed convinced they had a patriotic duty to celebrate the return of the Stars and Stripes. “Do your prophylaxis, just like they’re whores,” he said: a sergeantly growl.
“They aren’t, though, Sarge. That’s what makes ’em so much fun-they’re nice gals,” Rohe said. More nods.
“You think you can’t come down venereal from laying a nice gal, you better think twice,” Chester said. “Remember, some of those ‘nice’ gals were probably screwing Featherston’s boys while they were here. They’re laying you to take the whammy off.”
“They wouldn’t do that!” Two young men spoke in identical dismay.
Chester laughed. “Hell they wouldn’t. There are collaborators on both sides. Always have been. Always will be.” He looked at his men. “You may be handsomer than the bastards in butternut-but if you are, the Confederacy’s got more trouble than it knows what to do with.”
The infantrymen jeered at him. He sassed them back. If they were laughing and loose, they’d fight better. They didn’t worry about anything like that, but he did. That was why he had those stripes, and the rockers under them.
Airplanes droned by overhead. Chester and the rest of the men looked for the nearest hole, in case those airplanes carried the Confederate battle flag. But they unloaded their ordnance on Hillsboro. Great clouds of smoke and dust rose above the town.
“Hope our people got out of there,” Rohe said, eyeing the devastation a couple of miles away.
Some of the locals probably-no, certainly-hadn’t. War worked that way. U.S. soldiers and armored vehicles started moving toward Hillsboro. Chester Martin sighed. He knew what would happen next. And it did. Lieutenant Wheat called, “Come on, men! Now that we’ve got the Confederates softened up, it’s time to drive them out of there once and for all!”
Chester heaved himself to his feet. “You heard the man,” he said. “Let’s get moving. Stay on your toes as we move forward. The Confederates may not be as beat up as we hope they are.”
He feared they wouldn’t be. He’d seen too many massive bombardments in the Great War yield little or nothing. He wouldn’t be surprised to see the same thing all over again here.
Rohe took point as the platoon moved up. He was small and skinny and sly, a good man to spot trouble before he tripped over it. The guys Chester had lugging the platoon’s machine guns were the ones who would have played the line in a football game. He would have been the sort to lug one himself in the last war.
He also had four or five men carrying captured C.S. automatic rifles. He blessed the extra firepower they gave. The whole platoon kept its eyes open for dead Confederates. Scrounging ammo never ceased-they didn’t want to run dry just when they needed it most.
They’d got about halfway to Hillsboro when mortar rounds started falling out of the sky. “Down!” Chester yelled. “Dig in!” There were plenty of shell holes that needed only minimal improvement to become foxholes. Some of them were already pretty good. Chester dove into one of those. Dirt flew as if he were part mole. Pretty good wasn’t good enough. He wanted outstanding.