"They're damnyankees-of course they're liars," Jenkins said, as if stating a law of nature. "You got a good way of lookin' at things, pal. Thanks." He went off, whistling a dirty song.
Having made his friend happy, Reggie discovered he was unhappy himself: Jenkins had made his bump of curiosity itch. He went off looking for Senior Lieutenant Briggs. The naval officer being an educated man, he would be the one to know where Verdun was and what its fall meant.
He found Briggs without much trouble, then wished he hadn't. The Navy man sat on the ground in front of his barracks, head in hands, the picture of misery. Bartlett didn't think the news the Yankees had announced could do that to a man, and wondered if Briggs had just got word his brother had been killed or his sweetheart had married somebody else.
But when he asked what the matter was, Briggs, like Poe's raven, spoke one word and nothing more: "Verdun."
"Sir?" Reggie said. Losing one town didn't sound like that big a catastrophe to him. The Confederacy had lost a good many towns, all along the border, but was still very much in the fight.
"Verdun," Briggs repeated, and climbed heavily to his feet. "From everything I heard, the French were swearing they'd defend the place to the last man. Now they've pulled back instead. The Germans have hit 'em such a lick, they couldn't afford to keep on fighting where they were, not if they wanted to hang on. Best they think they can do now, looks like, is make the Huns pay such a price for the land they get that they decide it's not worth the cost."
"That's not so bad," Reggie began, but then corrected himself: "It's not so good, either. The Germans, they're inside France, and the French, they don't have any soldiers inside Germany."
"Now you're getting the picture," Briggs agreed. "Same sort of picture we've got over here, too-a goddamn ugly one."
"Yes, sir." Reggie tried to look on the bright side: "We've still got us Washington."
"For now," the Navy man said-the report from France seemed to have taken all the wind from his sails. "I tell you this, though, Bartlett: our country is going to need every man it can lay its hands on if we're going to give the American Huns what they deserve." He paused to let that sink in, then added in a low voice, "It is the positive duty of every prisoner of war to try to escape."
Reggie felt a sudden hollow in the pit of his stomach having nothing to do with the hunger that never left. "The Yankees can shoot you if they catch you trying to escape," he remarked. "They catch you after you've got out, they can pretty much do what they want to you." Under the laws of war, Confederate guards had the same rights with U.S. prisoners, but he didn't dwell on that.
Briggs just nodded, as if he'd remarked on the weather. "If we once get out, we can get away. We wouldn't be like Frenchmen stuck in the middle of Germany. We speak the same language as the Yankees."
"Not just the same language," Reggie objected. "They talk ugly."
"I think so, too," Briggs said. "But I know how they talk and how it's different from the way we talk. I can teach you. Come with me." The last three words had the snap of an order. Bartlett followed him into the barracks. The senior lieutenant picked up an object made of galvanized sheet iron and walked across the room with it, asking, "What am I doing?" as he walked.
"Why, you're toting that pail, sir." Reggie stated the obvious.
But Briggs shook his head. "That's what I'd be doing in the CSA," he said. "If I'm doing it in the USA, I'm carrying this bucket. You see?"
"Yes, sir," Bartlett said, and he did see. For that last part of the sentence, Briggs hadn't sounded like a Confederate at all. He'd not only chosen different words, he'd sort of pinched his mouth up, so all the vowel sounds were somehow sharper. "How'd you do that?"
"Got started in theatricals at the Naval Academy down in Mobile," Briggs answered. "If we can get outside the wire, it'll come in handy. Like I say, I can teach you. Do you want to learn? Do you want to do the other things you'll have to do to get outside the wire?"
It was a good question. If he stayed here, Reggie could sit out the war, if not in comfort, at least in security. If he tried to escape, he guaranteed himself all the risks involved with Yankee guards and patrols. If he managed to evade them and got back to the CSA, what would happen next? He knew exactly what would happen: they'd pat him on the back, grant him a little leave, and then hand him a new uniform and a Tredegar and put him back in the line. Hadn't he had enough of that for a lifetime?
"I'm carrying the bucket," he said, trying to pronounce the words as Briggs had. He wasn't getting them right. He could hear that.
"Listen." Briggs repeated the phrase. Bartlett tried it again. "Better," the Navy man said. Reggie didn't know exactly how he'd agreed to try to escape from the prisoner-of-war camp, but, by the time he left Briggs' barracks, he had no doubt he'd done just that.
"Closing time, gentlemen," Nellie Semphroch said as the clock in the coffeehouse finished striking nine. When none of the Confederate officers-or the Washingtonians who'd grown rich dealing with them-showed any sign of being ready to leave, she added, "I'm following the regulations you people set down. You wouldn't want me to break your own rules, would you?"
A plump, gray-haired colonel who did not look to be the sort for late night adventures rose from his chair, saying, "We must set an example for the lovely ladies here." He tossed a half-dollar down on the table and walked out into the night.
With him taking the lead, the rest of the men and the handful of women-loose women, Nellie thought, for what other kind would consort with the occupiers?-drifted out of the coffeehouse. Last of all went Nicholas H. Kincaid, who paused outside the doorway to send a mooncalf look back at Edna till Nellie almost broke his nose by slamming the door in his face.
"Ma, you keep doin' things like that, he won't come back no more," Edna said, gathering up cups and saucers and plates and tips, some in scrip, some in good silver money.
"God, I hope he doesn't," Nellie said. "He's not here for the coffee and victuals. He's here because he's all soppy over you." The reverse, as she knew, also held; she'd caught them kissing and well on their way to worse a year before, and had watched Edna like a hawk ever since.
Her daughter just tossed her head. "He's all right," she said carelessly. "There are plenty of others, though." That was calculated to make Nellie steam, and achieved the desired effect. Nellie was bound and determined that her daughter should go to the altar a maiden-she knew too well how grim the alternative could be. But Edna, and Edna's hot young blood, weren't making things easy.
Work helped. Running the coffeehouse kept the two of them hopping from sunup till long past sundown. If you were busy, you didn't have time to get into trouble. Nellie said, "Start doing up the dishes. I'll help in a minute-I want to count up what's in the till first."
"All right, Ma," Edna said. She would work, Nellie admitted to herself, more than a little grudgingly. She wasn't a bad girl, not really, just a wild girl, wild for life, wild for anything she could get her hands on, wild to let life-and the men crawling through life-get their hands on her.
The cash box was nicely heavy. Nellie had thought it would be. If she could do any one thing, it was gauge how busy the place had been through the day. Most of the take was in silver, too; as her place had become a favorite stop for the occupiers, they became more likely to give her real money and fob off their nearly worthless scrip on merchants whose goodwill mattered less to them.