"Let's get moving," Captain Connolly shouted. "You don't want to fall out of line hereabouts-niggers'd sooner cut your throat than look at you. Sooner we put these stinking Reds down, sooner we can get back to whipping the damnyankees. Train can't do the work, so your legs got to. Keep movin'!"
Keep moving Pinkard did, though his feet began to ache. He wondered if the CSA really could recover from this rebellion as if nothing had happened. The captain certainly seemed to think so. Looking at the devastation through which they were marching, Pinkard wasn't so sure. Who would repair everything that had been damaged?
A couple of Negroes, a man and a woman, were working in a garden plot near the tracks. They looked up at the column of white men in butternut. Had they been rebels a few days before? Had they hidden their weapons when government forces washed over them? Would they cut his throat if they saw half a chance? Or were they as genuinely horrified by the uprising as a lot of blacks in Birmingham were?
How could you know? How were you supposed to tell? Pinkard pondered that as he tramped past them. Try as he would, he found no good answers.
Lucien Galtier spoke to his horse as the two of them rolled down the road from Riviere-du-Loup toward his home: "This paving, it is not such a bad thing, eh? Oh, I may have to put shoes on you more often now, but we can go out and about in weather that would have kept us home before, n'est-ce pas?"
The horse didn't answer. The horse never answered. That was one of the reasons Lucien enjoyed conversing with it. Back at the house, he had trouble getting a word in edgewise. He looked around. Snow lay everywhere. Even with overcoat, wool muffler, and wool cap pulled down over his ears, he was cold. The road, however, remained a black ribbon of asphalt through the white. The Americans kept it open even in the worst of blizzards.
They did not do it for him, of course. The racket of an engine behind him and the raucous squawk of a horn told him why they did do it. Moving as slowly as he could get away with, he pulled over to the edge of the road and let the U.S. ambulance roar past. It picked up speed, racing with its burden of wounded men toward the hospital the Americans had built on Galtier's land.
"On my patrimony," he told the horse. It snorted and flicked its ears, as if here, for once, it sympathized with him. His land had been in his family for more than two hundred years, since the days of Louis XIV. That anyone should simply appropriate a piece of it struck him as outrageous. Had the Americans no decency?
He knew the answer to that, only too well. Major Quigley, the occupier in charge of dealing with the Quebecois, had blandly assured him the benefits of the road would make up for having lost some of his land. Quigley hadn't believed it himself; he'd taken the land for no other reason than to punish Lucien. But it might even turn out to be so.
"And what if it is?" Lucien asked. Now, sensibly, the horse did not respond. How could anyone, even a horse, make a response? Thievery was thievery, and you could not compensate for it in such a way. Did they reckon him devoid of honor, devoid of pride? If they did, they would be sorry-and sooner than they thought. So he hoped, at any rate.
Another ambulance came up the road toward him. He took his time getting out of the way for this one, too. That was a tiny way to resist the American invaders, but even tiny ways were not to be despised. Perhaps a man who might have lived would die on account of the brief delay.
He glanced toward the west. Ugly clouds were massing there: another storm coming. Even on a paved road, Galtier did not care to be caught in it. He flicked the reins and told the horse to get moving. The horse, which had been listening to him for many years, snorted and increased its pace from a walk…to a walk.
Here came a buggy toward his wagon. He stiffened on the seat. The man in the seat did not wear American green-gray. American soldiers at least had the courage to fight their foes face to face, however reprehensible their other habits might be. The small, plump man in black there, far from fighting his foes, embraced them with a fervor Galtier found incomprehensible and infuriating.
The priest waved to him. "Bonjour, Lucien," he called.
"Bonjour, Father Pascal," Galtier called back, adding under his breath, "Mauvais tabernac." Even English-speaking Canadians thought the Quebecois way of cursing peculiar, but Lucien did not care. It satisfied him more than their talk of manure and fornication.
Father Pascal's cheeks were always pink, and doubly so with the chilly wind rising as it was now. "I have given those poor injured men a bit of spiritual solace," he said, smiling at Lucien. "Do you know, my son, a surprising number of them are communicants of our holy Catholic church?"
"No, Father, I did not know that." Galtier did not care, either. They might be Catholics, but they were unquestionably Americans. That more than made up for a common religion, as far as the farmer was concerned.
Father Pascal saw the world differently. "C'est vrai-it's true," he said. Father Pascal, Lucien thought, saw the world in terms of what was most advantageous for Father Pascal. The Americans were here, the Americans were strong, therefore he collaborated with the Americans. Nodding again to Lucien, he went on, "I had the honor also to see your lovely daughter Nicole at the hospital. In her whites, I did not recognize her for a moment. The doctors tell me she is doing work of an excellent sort. You must be very proud of her."
"I am always very proud of her," Lucien said. That had the virtue of being true and polite at the same time, something which could not be said about a good many other possible responses. Galtier glanced over toward the building clouds. "And now, Father, if you will pardon me-" The horse broke into a trot this time, as if it truly did understand how much he wanted to get away.
"Go with God, my son," Father Pascal called after him. He waved back toward the priest, hoping the snowstorm would catch him before he got back to Riviere-du-Loup.
If Lucien was to reach the farmhouse, he had to drive past the hospital. It was almost as if Major Quigley had set a small town on his property: the hospital certainly had more ambulances coming to it and leaving it than Riviere-du-Loup had had motorcars at the start of the war. It also had a large gasoline-powered generator that gave it electricity, while trucks and big wagons brought in coal to keep it warm against the worst a Quebec winter could do.
People bustled in and out the front door, those going in pausing to show their bona fides to armed guards at the doorway. A doctor stood outside the entrance, smoking a cigarette; red spattered his white jacket. Out came a U.S. officer in green-gray, a formidable row of ribbons and medals on his chest and an even more formidable scowl on his face. Lucien would have bet he hadn't got what he wanted, whatever that was. And here came a couple of women pulling overcoats on over their long white dresses to fight the chill outside.
Galtier steered the wagon toward them and reined to a halt. "Bonsoir, mademoiselle," he said, formal as a butler. "May I offer you a ride to your home?"
Nicole Galtier smiled at him. "Oh, bonsoir, Papa," she said. "I didn't expect you here at just this time." She started to climb into the wagon, then turned back toward the other nurse. "See you tomorrow, Henrietta."
"See you tomorrow," Henrietta said. She went over to the doctor. He gave her a cigarette and lighted it with his own, leaning his face close to hers.
The horse had taken several strides before Lucien fully noticed what he'd heard. "You spoke to her in English," he said to Nicole.
"I am learning it, yes," she answered, and tossed her head so that the starched white cap she wore almost flew off. "If I am to do anything that is important and not just wash and carry, I have to learn it." She glanced at him to see how he was taking that. When he didn't say anything, she went on, "You have learned it, and use what you have learned, is that not so?"