Yet he knew he swam against a flooding tide. When his part of the office was temporarily deserted, he unlocked a bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. He had slipped the first bottle into the drawer on the first business day of the new year; this was the third replacement.
A swift look at his surroundings. Safe. Moted sunlight flashed from the bottle as he tilted it. The loudly ticking clock showed twenty before ten.
The thunder blow — "Missing in action" — had fallen on the Hazards late last year. In mid-February, George finally learned something definite about Billy's fate, and with mingled relief and reluctance telegraphed Lehigh Station: YOUR HUSBAND SHOWN ON LATEST ROSTER LIBBY PRISON RICHMOND.
Brett packed the instant she got the news and took the first available train for Washington. When she arrived at the house in Georgetown — thinner now; nervous from months of anxiety — her first question was "What can we do?"
"Officially, the answer is very little," George said. "The mills of the exchange system have nearly ceased to grind. Too much bad feeling on both sides. Each receives reports of the other starving and mistreating prisoners. The War Department's furious because the rebs won't follow protocol when they capture men from Negro regiments. They treat them as runaways and ship them back to slavery. White officers commanding Negro units are threatened with flogging or hanging. It's all gotten very nasty."
Brett flared. "You're right, that isn't much of an answer."
"Did you hear me precede it with the word officially?" George retorted. "I do have another suggestion."
Constance stepped behind his chair, reached down, and gently kneaded his shoulders. He was sleeping poorly these days, worrying about his brother and about his transfer to military railroads. It had not come through.
Brett was waiting. He cleared his throat. "In his post in the Richmond War Department, Orry may be able to help us. Old Winder has direct responsibility for Libby and Belle Isle and the rest of those —" he caught himself before saying hellholes "— places. But Seddon oversees Winder. And Orry works for Seddon."
Constance, eagerly: "You think Orry might be able to arrange Billy's release?"
"He's in the central government, and I'm sure he took an oath to serve loyally. I wouldn't ask him to break it. Even more important than that, he's my best friend. I would never risk endangering him by asking him to intervene directly."
Brett struck her skirt with her fist. "Billy's your own brother!"
"And Orry's yours. Be so kind as to let me finish, will you?" George jerked away from his wife's hand, rose, and paced from the breakfast table. "I can ask Orry to find out all he can about Billy's condition, and exactly where he is in Libby." "How will you do that?" Constance asked, skeptical. George looked at her. "By doing what he did when he wrote me last year. Break the law."
Out of uniform and wearing a dark overcoat, he rode south through a mid-March snowfall two nights later. He reached Port Tobacco after eight and paid the sly, toothless man who was waiting for him the sum of twenty dollars, gold. He gave the man a letter addressed to Orry, and a warning.
"You must give this to Colonel Main without drawing attention to him or to the act of delivery."
"Don't fret, Major Hazard. It'll be done just that way. I deliver secret mail into offices all around Capitol Square. You'd be astonished at how many."
And with the wink of the experienced profiteer, he slipped out the tavern's back door into the blowing snow.
Grant had come to Washington at the first of the month. His hard hand was already being felt. A huge campaign would start in the spring, perhaps the final one. Fewer men would be exchanged because slowing paroles or stopping them entirely hurt the South more than it hurt the North.
Meantime, George and Brett and Constance waited. George had said nothing to Stanley about the illegal letter. When informed of Billy's capture last fall, Stanley had expressed only perfunctory sorrow.
George seldom saw his older brother these days. The war had transformed Stanley into a man of enormous personal wealth and a degree of importance in the radical Republican faction. It had also transformed him, incomprehensibly, into a person almost constantly under the influence of spirits. Stanley would have been dismissed, literally and otherwise, as a mere drunkard had he not been rich. Instead, he was tolerated by most and avoided by some, George being among the latter.
George had given up on Virgilia in much the same way. He had sent a letter to her hospital at Aquia Creek, reporting Billy's capture. She didn't reply. Fearing the chaos of the mails, he wrote again. The second time, he decided the silence was deliberate.
As spring drew closer, one of George's worries was relieved. He received orders to report for duty with the Military Railroad Construction Corps on the first of the month.
"I'll be working for old McCallum of the Erie instead of Herman, but at least it's field duty. No more contracts, crazed inventors, water-walkers — Winder Building!" He gave Constance a hug as they lay in bed the night he got the news. He felt her shiver, quickly added, "Don't fret over this. I'll be in no danger."
"Of course you'll be in danger," she said, a certain rare note in her voice, which told him something unusual was happening. He touched her cheek and found it damp.
She took the hand in hers. "But I shall pack up our things, dutifully return to Lehigh Station, and try to pretend otherwise."
Taking him by surprise, she shifted his hand to her breast and pressed it there. "If you'd make love to me, I might be able to sleep tonight."
He laughed softly, nuzzled her neck. "A pleasure, dear lady."
"Portly as I am?"
"Portly is in the eye of the beholder. If you call yourself portly, then portly's perfect."
"Oh, George — you are such a dear man. You can be obstinate. You're short-tempered. Sometimes even a bit vain. And it's impossible for me not to love you."
"Wait now — just a minute —" During the last part of her affectionate little speech, he had done a great lot of rolling and thrashing and flinging of bedclothes, propping himself at last on one elbow. "Since when do I deserve to be called vain?"
"You know as well as I that age is affecting your eyesight. Every evening I watch you bring the Star so close to your nose you almost poke a hole in the paper. But you won't admit you need spectacles — George, don't snort or harrumph like Stanley. What I said was all part of paying you a compliment. Heaven knows neither of us is perfect, but I was clumsily trying to say you could have a thousand faults instead of your one or two, and I'd still love you."
He cleared his throat, paused, then did it again. She could hear the smile in his voice as he relaxed and reached for her waist, drawing her in.
"Well," he said, "you'd better. And right away, too."
George exploded when the toothless man showed up in the Winder Building next morning.
"Good God, what possessed you to come here?" He shoved the courier toward the stairs, past the usual collection of contract-seekers and saviors of the Union who continued to treat the department as a second home.
" 'Cause I thought you'd want this right away." The man dangled a soiled and wrinkled envelope in front of his client. "It was waiting at the Richmond drop day 'fore yesterday."
"Not so loud," George whispered, scarlet. A brigadier coming upstairs cast a distrustful eye on the scruffy visitor. "I suppose you also brought it here expecting extra pay."
"Yessir, that did enter my mind. That's what this yere war's all about, ain't it? A chance for the enterprising fellow to make himself comfortable for the future —"