That made Granville McDougald laugh some more. “See, I know what happened. You asked the wrong question. Maybe he got tired of looking, but do you ever get tired of touching?”
“Good point.” O’Doull looked down at the wounded woman. “I do believe she’ll pull through. Haven’t had to try that particular surgery for quite a while.”
“You looked like you knew what you were doing, whether you really did or not,” McDougald said.
“Thanks a lot, Granny. You really know how to make a guy feel good about himself.” As O’Doull started closing the outer wound and the incision that had widened it, a new thought struck him. “Where are we going to put her? Can’t just dump her with the wounded POWs, you know.”
“No, that wouldn’t work,” McDougald agreed. “Where’s the closest civilian hospital?”
“Beats me. Somewhere north of us-that’s all I can tell you. Oh, there are bound to be some farther south, too, but passing her through the lines won’t be easy. And if we keep moving forward, we’re liable to blow wherever she’s staying to hell and gone.”
“Be a shame to waste your hard work,” McDougald said. “Tell you what we ought to do-we ought to just send her back to the division hospital and let them figure out what to do with her. They’ve got more room for her and more people to deal with her than we do, anyway.”
O’Doull had dealt with the military bureaucracy long enough to know a perfect solution when he heard one. “We’ll do that, all right,” he said. “Fixing her up was my worry. Let the guys in back of the line figure out where she’s supposed to go.”
She went off to the rear in an ambulance with the wounded soldier on whom O’Doull had operated not long before. “They’ll probably be pissed off,” McDougald remarked.
“Too damn bad,” O’Doull answered. They both stood outside the tent, watching the ambulance head off toward Sparta. “What’s the worst they can do? Write me a reprimand, right? Like I give a shit.”
“There you go, Doc,” McDougald said. “That’s one nice thing about coming in for the duration-you don’t care what the brass hats who run things think of you. Must be nice.” He sighed wistfully.
“You’re in about the same place, aren’t you?” O’Doull pulled out a captured pack of Raleighs. “They probably won’t bump you up to lieutenant, and you’d really have to screw up big for them to take your stripes away. You’re free.” He lit a cigarette and smiled as he inhaled.
“Let me have one of those, would you?…Thanks.” McDougald leaned close for a light, then took a deep drag of his own. “You’re right and you’re wrong, Doc. Yeah, I can tell ’em where to head in, I guess. But I don’t really want to most of the time, ’cause this is my outfit. I’ll be here till they don’t want me any more. You’re freer than that.”
“I suppose.” One of O’Doull’s hands touched the oak leaf on his other shoulder. He didn’t feel very free. “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk. That’s what the fellow said when they tarred and feathered him and rode him out of town on a rail, isn’t it?”
“You know who told that joke the first time?” McDougald asked, and O’Doull had to shake his head. “Abraham Lincoln, that’s who.”
“Did he?” O’Doull decided he wouldn’t tell it again. Eighty years ago, the things Lincoln did-and the things he didn’t do-made sure the USA and the CSA would go at each other till the end of time. Few Presidents were better remembered: Washington and Jefferson, perhaps (their memories somewhat tarnished in the USA because they were Virginians), and undoubtedly Teddy Roosevelt. But only James G. Blaine came close to Lincoln as a failure, and Blaine wouldn’t have had the chance to botch the Second Mexican War if Lincoln hadn’t botched the War of Secession. Yes, that was one joke Leonard O’Doull would forget.
Jefferson Pinkard eyed the letter in front of him with several different kinds of pained incomprehension. He understood that it was from Magdalena Rodriguez down in Sonora. But he didn’t understand much that was in it because, although she tried to write English, what they thought of as English in Sonora wasn’t the same as it was in the rest of the CSA. Still, he knew what she had to be asking: why the devil did her husband go and shoot himself?
“I wish to Christ I knew,” Pinkard muttered. Every once in a while, a guard couldn’t stand what he was doing, and he ate his gun or got rid of himself some other way. Pinkard knew that-nobody knew it better. If it weren’t true, he wouldn’t be married to Chick Blades’ widow. But that Hip Rodriguez should blow off the top of his head…“Goddammit, he fucking hated niggers!”
Still muttering, Jeff wondered if he ought to call in another guard from Sonora or Chihuahua to get an exact translation. After a few seconds, he shook his head. Whatever was in the letter would be all through the guard barracks in nothing flat if he did. He shook his head again. He didn’t want that to happen. Hipolito Rodriguez was a good man. He didn’t deserve to get his name dragged through the mud any more than it had to be. And that wasn’t Jeff’s only reason…
“He was a friend, dammit,” Jeff said. And that scared him a couple of different ways. Anything that happened to Hip might happen to him, too. Ever since Rodriguez shot himself, the weight of the ceremonial.45 on Jeff’s hip seemed larger and more ominous than it ever had before. And when he picked up a submachine gun to walk through Camp Determination, he often shivered. What was Hip thinking when he turned his the wrong way?
And Jeff hadn’t realized how much having a real friend here mattered till he suddenly didn’t any more. He could talk about stuff with Hip without fearing that Ferd Koenig or Jake Featherston would find out what he said. He could use his war buddy as a back channel to the guards-and they could use Rodriguez as a back channel to him, too. It worked well for everybody.
Except now it didn’t. And under all that lay the hole one friend’s death left in the life of another who survived. Hip and Jeff went through desperate and deadly times together. No one else remembered them-no one else Jeff knew, which was all that mattered. When he and Hip talked, they both understood the mud and the blood and the stinks and the fear and the occasional flashes of crazy fun that lit up the horror and the wild drunken furloughs they’d got to take too seldom. Now all that stuff was locked inside Jefferson Pinkard’s head. He could explain it to other people, but that was the point. He never needed to explain it to Hip. Hip knew.
The telephone rang. Pinkard jerked in his swivel chair. “Son of a bitch!” he burst out. His hand shook as he reached for the telephone. I’m jumpy as a goddamn cat, he thought. Can’t let anybody see that, or I’m in big trouble. “Pinkard here.” His voice came out as a satisfactory growl. “What’s up?”
“Sir, we’ve got a new shipment coming in.” The guard officer at the other end of the line sounded both pleased and more than a little astonished. “Should be here in an hour or two.”
“Good God!” Pinkard said. “Why the hell didn’t somebody tell us sooner?”
“Only thing I can think of, sir, is that they didn’t want the damnyankees listening in,” the officer replied.
Jeff grunted-that did make some sense. “Could be,” he said. “And maybe they’ll let up on this place for a while anyway. They’ve had their damn propaganda offensive. It’s not like they really give a rat’s ass about niggers. I mean, who does, for Christ’s sake?”
“Not me, sir,” the youngster on the other end of the line replied with great conviction.