Tom and the officer in green-gray-his name was Julian Nesmith-hadn’t agreed to that, but neither of them tried to stop it. “Won’t change how things end up one way or the other,” Nesmith remarked.
“I was thinking the same thing about smokes and grub a little while ago,” Tom agreed. He’d handed Captain Nesmith a couple of packs of Raleighs, and was now the proud possessor of two cans of deviled ham, a delicacy esteemed on both sides of the front. His mouth watered. If he could scrounge up some eggs… Even if he couldn’t, the ham would be a treat.
“We might as well be comfortable as we can while we slaughter each other,” Nesmith said.
“We’re enemies,” Tom said simply. “You won’t make me believe the United States wants to do anything but to squash my country, and I don’t expect I can persuade you the Confederate States aren’t full of villains.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you did,” Nesmith answered. “As long as you’ve got villains at the top, all they have to do is shout loud enough to make everybody else go along.”
That came close to hitting below the belt. Tom hadn’t much cared to listen to Jake Featherston on the wireless at all hours of the day and night. But Jake Featherston had got Kentucky and Houston back into the CSA after the damnyankees stole them at gunpoint in 1917. The Whigs hadn’t come close to managing that. Featherston was doing something about the Negroes in the Confederate States, too. The Whigs hadn’t known what to do. And so…
“Who’s a villain and who isn’t depends on how you look at things,” Tom said.
“Sometimes,” Julian Nesmith replied.
They shook hands again when the truce ended. Corpsmen disappeared. Men got back under cover. Almost ceremoniously, a U.S. soldier fired a Springfield to warn anybody who hadn’t got the word. In that same spirit, a Confederate soldier answered with one round from a Tredegar.
Then another Confederate squeezed off a burst from his automatic rifle. A U.S. machine gun opened up. Tom sighed. The little peace had been nice while it lasted.
Salt Lake City wasn’t hell, but you could see it from there. Armstrong Grimes peered toward the rubble of the Mormon Temple-twice built and now twice destroyed. He peered very cautiously. All the Mormons still fighting were veterans. Some of them were veterans of two uprisings. Show any body part, and they’d put a bullet through it faster than you could say Jack Robinson.
Armstrong wondered who the hell Jack Robinson was. He also wondered how life would change now that he was a sergeant instead of a corporal. He’d hesitated before sewing the new stripes onto his sleeve. The Mormons’ snipers liked to pick off officers and noncoms.
Yossel Reisen had two stripes now. He wore them, too. Their promotions both came through while the regiment was in reserve in Thistle. Somebody must have thought they were on the ball when that woman blew herself up in Provo. All Armstrong knew was that the two of them hadn’t got badly hurt when the people bomb went off, and afterward he’d done what anybody else would have. That must have been enough to impress one officer or another.
He turned to Reisen, who crouched behind a stone fence not far away. “You hear the skinny last night?” he said. “They figure Sergeant Stowe’s gonna make it.”
“Yeah, somebody told me.” Yossel nodded. “I would’ve thought he was a goner for sure. He looked like hell.”
“Boy, didn’t he?” Armstrong said.
“He’s lucky.”
“Hunh-unh.” Now Armstrong shook his head. “We’re lucky. We didn’t catch shrapnel. We aren’t in the hospital with our guts all messed up. If Stowe was lucky, he’d still be here, same as we are. Instead, he’s in a bed somewhere, and they probably have to shoot morphine into him all the goddamn time. Belly wounds are supposed to hurt like anything.”
His vehemence surprised him. It must have surprised Yossel Reisen, too. Armstrong didn’t usually argue with him. Yossel was older and more experienced, even if he didn’t care about rank. Here, though, Armstrong couldn’t keep quiet. And after a few seconds, Yossel nodded. “Well, you’re right,” he said. “He’s alive, and that’s good, but he still isn’t lucky.”
“There you go,” Armstrong said. “That’s how it looks to me, too.”
“Sarge! Hey, Sarge!” somebody yelled.
Armstrong needed a moment to remember that meant him. “Yeah? What is it?” he said, a beat slower than he should have.
“Mormon coming up with a flag of truce.”
Firing had died away. Armstrong hadn’t noticed that, either. He felt as far down on sleep as he had before his regiment got R and R. Cautiously, he stuck his head up again. Sure as hell, here came a Mormon in what the rebels used for a uniform: chambray shirt, dungarees, and boots. “Hold it right there, buddy, or you’ll never know how your favorite serial comes out on the wireless!” Armstrong yelled.
The Mormon waved the white flag. “I want to talk to an officer. I mean no harm.”
“Yeah, now tell me another one,” Armstrong said. “How do I know you’re not a goddamn people bomb waiting to go off?”
“Because I say I am not,” the rebel answered. “I am a major in the Army of the State of Deseret.” Armstrong could hear the capital letters thud into place.
Capital letters didn’t impress him. “And I’m the Queen of the May,” he said. “You want to come forward?” He waited for the Mormon to nod, then made a peremptory gesture. “Strip. Show me you’re not loaded with fucking TNT.”
If looks could kill… But they couldn’t, and TNT might. Fuming, the Mormon major shed his boots, his jeans, and his shirt. He even took off his Stetson. That left him in a peculiar-looking undershirt and longish drawers. It was getting toward long-underwear time-nights were downright chilly-but it hadn’t got there yet. The strange getup didn’t particularly bother Armstrong; he’d seen it on other Mormons. Some sort of religious rule said they had to wear it.
That didn’t mean he had to trust it. “Lift up the shirt,” he called. “The drawers are snug enough-don’t bother with those.” The Mormon did, showing a hard belly covered with hair a shade darker than the blond hair on his head. Armstrong waved to him. “Now turn around.” After the rebel did, Armstrong reluctantly nodded. “All right. Looks like you’re clean. Put your stuff back on and come ahead.”
As the Mormon major dressed, he said, “I ought to complain to your officers.”
“Go ahead, buddy,” Armstrong said. “You think they’ll come down on me? I think they’ll pat me on the back. They don’t trust you people any further than I do, and I don’t trust you at all.”
“Believe me, we feel the same way about you,” the Mormon said, bending to tie his bootlaces. “If you would only leave us alone-”
“If you hadn’t risen up, I’d be back east somewhere with Confederates trying to shoot me,” Armstrong said. “And you’d be here in Utah, happy as a goddamn clam. They didn’t even conscript you people.”
“We want to be free. We want to be independent,” the Mormon said as he picked up his white flag. “What’s so wicked about that?” He came toward the U.S. lines.
Armstrong laughed a dirty laugh. “You want to have lots of wives. Are they all in the same bed when you screw ’em? Does one lick your balls while another one gets on top?”
The Mormon’s jaw set. “It’s a good thing I don’t know your name, Sergeant.” He walked past Armstrong as if he didn’t exist. Armstrong called for a couple of privates to take him back toward the rear.
“He’s going to put you on a list even if he doesn’t know your name,” Yossel said. “You’ll be the sergeant in so-and-so sector, and those bastards will be gunning for you.”
“Big fucking deal.” Armstrong laughed again. “Easy enough to get shot around here even when the bastards aren’t gunning for you. Won’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference one way or the other.”
“You better hope it won’t.” Yossel seemed willing to look on the gloomy side of life.
“Screw it. Nobody’s even shooting right now.” Armstrong lived for, and in, the moment. The less you thought about all the horrible things that had happened, the horrible things that would happen, and the horrible things that might happen, the better off you were.