Her work was not all it might have been. Mr. Winter proved more forbearing than she’d expected. “You’re doing the best you can, Mrs. Enos; I can see that,” he told her. Was he saying that because he was a veteran himself, and a widower, too, and so knew what suffering was like, or because he had an ulterior motive if George really was lost? With no way to be sure, she cautiously gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Another four days went by. Sometimes life seemed almost normal. Sometimes Sylvia thought she was losing her mind. Sometimes she hoped she would.
Press, step, press, step, press, go back to the beginning and begin the cycle anew…She had succeeded in immersing herself in the rhythm of her machine when another Western Union delivery boy interrupted her. “Mrs. Enos?” he said, holding out a yellow envelope. “They told me at your apartment house where you was at, ma’am.”
She signed the sheet he had on his clipboard. He got out of there in a hurry-telegraph delivery boys were not welcome visitors, not in wartime. Cans began to stack up as Sylvia pulled none of her three levers.
She opened the envelope. Yes, from the Navy Department-who else? Isabella Antonelli came hurrying over to her. She didn’t notice. Again, she was reading: MY PLEASANT DUTY TO INFORM YOU YOUR HUSBAND, ABLE SEAMAN GEORGE ENOS, CONFIRMED AS UNINJURED SURVIVOR OF LOSS OF MONITOR USS PUNISHMENT. TO BE REASSIGNED, LEAVE POSSIBLE. She read but did not notice the Secretary of the Navy’s name.
“God hears my prayers,” said Isabella, who had been looking over her shoulder.
“Good heavens!” Sylvia exclaimed. “The line!” All at once, life stretched out ahead of her again. Small things mattered. Waving the telegram like a banner, she hurried back to deal with all the cans that had stacked up. Mr. Winter never said a thing.
“This west Texas country would be wonderful terrain for tanks,” Stinky Salley said.
Several of the Confederate soldiers gathered around the campfire looked at him. “You mean barrels, don’t you?” Jefferson Pinkard said at last.
“I prefer to use the name our allies have given them,” Salley said loftily, with his usual fussy precision. “Let the damnyankees call them what they will.”
“Oh, give it up, Stinky,” Pinkard said. “Everybody’s calling the damn things barrels, us and the Yanks both.”
“That does not make it proper,” Salley returned, “any more than it is proper to call me Stinky rather than my given name.”
“Proves my point, doesn’t it?” Jeff said, and got a laugh from his squadmates. Stinky Salley glared, but he spent a lot of time glaring.
“It would be good country for barrels, except only for one thing,” Hip Rodriguez said, holding one finger up in the air.
“What the devil do you know about it, you damn greaser?” Salley said with a snort. “It’s perfect country for tanks.” He kept on using his word, regardless of what anyone else did. Waving a hand, he continued, “It’s flat, it’s wide open-it’s ideal.”
Rodriguez looked at him expressionlessly. “I gonna tell you two things,” he said in his uncertain English. As he had before, he held up one finger. “It ain’t no perfect country for barrels on account of ain’t no train stations close to here nowhere. Barrel got to run by itself, barrel breaks down.”
“Everything I’ve heard about them damn things, he’s right,” Sergeant Albert Cross said. “Bastards break down if you look at ’em sideways.”
“Gracias.” With considerable dignity, the Sonoran soldier inclined his head to the noncom. Then he undid his bayonet from his sheath and made as if to clean his nails with it. Looking straight into Salley’s face, he went on, “I tell you the second thing now. You call me a damn greaser again, I cut your fucking throat.” His voice was flat and emotionless-not so much a threat as a simple statement of how the world would be.
Salley’s pale eyes went wide. His mouth formed a startled O. He turned to Cross. “Sergeant, did you hear that?”
“I heard it,” the noncom answered. “I heard you, too. If I was you, I’d watch the way I ran my big mouth.” He noisily sipped coffee from his tin cup.
Salley stared at Hip Rodriguez as if he’d never seen him before. Maybe he hadn’t, not really. Sonorans and Chihuahuans and Cubans-Cubans without black blood in them, anyhow-had a curious place in the CSA: better off than Negroes, but not really part of the larger society, either, cut off from it by swarthiness, language, and religion. But a Sonoran with a weapon in his hand was not something to take lightly. Stinky Salley kept quiet after that-he made a point of keeping quiet after that.
Instead of making cornmeal into little loaves, Rodriguez wet his share and shaped it into patties he fried in lard and wrapped around his tinned rations. Pinkard and a couple of other soldiers in the squad were doing that, too; beans and beef went down easier and tastier. Pinkard took a bite out of his-tortilla, Hip called a cornmeal patty-then said in a low voice, “You shut him up sharp.”
Rodriguez shrugged. “If you step on a scorpion when he is small, he don’t get no bigger.”
“Yeah.” Jeff’s eyes slid to Stinky Salley. The ex-clerk still didn’t look as if he knew what had hit him. That, Pinkard thought, wasn’t so good. Stinky’d done well enough against U.S. soldiers, out at a distance. But when Rodriguez delivered his warning, he’d folded up. In a way, it was just Stinky’s problem. But in another way, it warned of a weakness in the squad, and that was everybody’s problem.
Off in the distance, a rifle barked. Pinkard’s head came up, as a watchdog’s would do at the sound of someone walking past his house. Another shot followed, also a long way off. Then silence. He relaxed.
Rodriguez swigged from his canteen and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He’d already put the bayonet away, having made his point with it. “You know what?” he said to Pinkard. “I miss my esposa. How you say esposa, Jeff? My woman, my-”
“Your wife?” Pinkard said.
“Si, my wife.” Rodriguez pronounced the word with care. “I go to sleep in the night, I see my wife in a sueno.” Not knowing or not caring that wasn’t English, he went on, “When I wake up, all I see is soldados feos-ugly soldiers.” Sueno was something like dream, Jeff realized. Hip Rodriguez sighed. “I do better, I stay to sleep.” He glanced over toward Pinkard. “You got a wife, yes, Jeff?”
“Yeah. I wish I was home with her, too.” Pinkard was amazed at how little he’d thought of Emily since he got his notice from the Conscription Bureau and reported for duty. Now that she flooded into his mind, he understood why he’d done his best to block the memories-they hurt too much, when set alongside the squalid reality of the life he was living.
Fleas and lice and fear and mutilation and stinks and-He turned away from the campfire, a scowl on his face. If he weren’t here, if he hadn’t got that damned buff-colored envelope, he could have been in Emily’s arms right now, making the bedsprings creak, her breath warm and moist on the skin of his neck, her voice urging him on to things he hadn’t imagined he could do or else rising to a cry of joy that must have made Bedford Cunningham and all his other neighbors jealous. Dear God, she loved to do it!
Courteous as a cat, more courteous than most curious Confederates would have been, Hip Rodriguez left him alone with his thoughts. For a few seconds, Jeff was glad of that. And then, all at once, he wasn’t.
Back before the government put him in butternut and stuck a rifle in his hands, he’d matched Emily stroke for stroke, given her everything she’d wanted in the way of loving. Now he wasn’t there any more. She’d grown used to making love all the time. Would she be looking for a substitute?