George said good-bye, but so faintly the reb couldn't possibly have heard him above the bubble of the stream. He turned slowly toward the railroad. Sunshine poured over his face, blinding him. Stick, he thought. Stick.
He walked a less than straight course toward the sound of the hammering, stumbling twice. Just as the trestle came in sight, he had to turn back into the trees, where he hid and cried for five minutes, remembering his friend and the April fire.
Work on the trestle was finished before noon. In the mess where George stopped for Sunday dinner, he sat apart, not bothering to introduce himself to other officers, as he usually did. The mess was located behind one of several redoubts he had passed on his way to get this food he found he didn't want. The redoubts and adjoining trenches, packed with bored, yawning men, gave off increasingly noxious odors as the temperature climbed. He could smell the reek as he stared at his plate. It was the stench of ruin. Of a loss he could not yet accept or even believe.
Dully, he raised his head in response to faint music from the siege lines. A fife or piccolo, soon joined by a cornet, then by an improvised drum — it sounded to George like a stick on a large tin can. The melody was "Dixie's Land."
"There they go again," a captain complained to others at his table.
Out in the rifle pits, someone yelled: "Hey, Johnny, turn off that tune. Go home and beat your niggers if you have any left."
The response was a series of mocking rebel yells, more amusing than frightening today. George covered his face with both hands, then quickly dropped his hands to his lap when he realized others might be staring. They were. He didn't look at any of them straight on. He was too miserable.
"Here they come. Let the boys through with their instruments —"
That, too, came from outside, as did a general commotion. Several officers hastily finished their meals, grabbed their hats, and hurried out. He wondered why as "Dixie" continued to ring merrily over the Union lines.
Suddenly a second musical group, larger and including, from God knew where, a glockenspiel, began "John Brown's Body." Applause and cheers greeted the opening bars of the retaliation.
Singly or in groups, more and more officers left, until George was the last man seated at the stained trestle tables. Wearily, he picked up his cap and trudged outside. Both bands played at maximum volume, each trying to drown out the other. George was astonished to see soldiers in shirt sleeves on the parapets of the redoubts. Others were leaning over the forward edges of the rifle pits, enjoying the sunshine or a puff on a cob pipe or some raillery exchanged with the other side.
He walked slowly toward the stinking trenches. Looking beyond them, across the strip of scarred and trampled ground, he saw other soldiers, toy figures in gray and butternut, emerge from the fortifications; the lines were close here.
The musical conflict quickly became mere noise, one melody canceling the other. Then, abruptly, George heard men repeating a word to one another. "Hush. Hush." Someone else said, "Listen." Both bands fell silent.
Raising his hand over his eyes again, he tried to see the source of the sweet, piercing cornet notes. At last he did. The player was a small, dim figure on the other side — a musician of very small stature or, more likely, quite young. He had climbed to the top of a half-destroyed redoubt, his tattered shirt fluttering at the elbows, his horn flashing like an exploding star whenever the sun struck the metal at a certain angle.
George recognized the song before he heard the voices of the enemy soldiers who were climbing out of the rifle pits around the cornetist. It was the piece played and sung most frequently on both sides. Near George, an ugly top sergeant began to sing.
A baritone joined in, a tenor added harmony. The voices swelled, on the Union side and the Confederate side, and reached out and fused to form a single, strong-throated chorus.
Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, they sat or stood in full view of those who, at other hours and other places, were devoted to killing them. One or two Union men waved to soldiers on the other side. Here and there the waves were returned. But mostly it was just singing — austere, sober, loud as a hymn from a fervent congregation — as though both groups of Americans charged with shooting down other Americans were saying there was a deep and private place in each of them where dwelled a resistance to that awful idea. They said it with the cliched words of a sentimental ballad — and with tears, George saw suddenly. He counted at least a dozen men weeping while they sang.
The voices died away and then the last held note of the cornet. George donned his cap, giving it a smart tug. He felt a little more like himself again, conscious of his responsibilities. The song had reminded him of Belvedere. Madeline. He doubted she knew of her husband's death.
He loathed the thought of being the one to send the news. But it would be greater cruelty to refrain. No message from Richmond would ever reach her in Pennsylvania. He wasn't even sure she would be informed if she were living in the South. He heard that all the amenities were breaking down on the other side. The task was his.
As he set out to rejoin his men — they had taken their meal with one of the Negro regiments — he decided he must write immediately. He would send the letter to Constance, relying on her to know the best way to approach both Madeline and Brett.
Laughing, joshing, the Union soldiers continued to sun themselves in the mild afternoon air. A shot rang out.
"Damn you, Johnny," someone shouted. "That's a rotten thing to do."
Scrambling, men dropped out of sight with remarkable speed. The intermission was over. The concert of the guns was ready to resume.
122
February. In the dark over Washington, a freak electrical storm boomed and blazed. The intermittent lightning lent an eerie glow to a large diamond pendant Jeannie Canary wore between her small pink-pointed breasts. She lay nude in the sweaty bed, happily playing with her new jewel.
Stanley tied the sash of his dressing gown of royal blue velvet. Then he poured from the whiskey decanter. There was only a small amount left. In plush slippers, he walked to the pantry of the five-room flat in which he had installed his mistress. He returned with a fresh bottle of sour mash and topped off his glass.
Miss Canary bounced the big stone in her palms; another lightning burst made it twinkle. "You're drinking a lot tonight, loves."
"Oil for the machinery of the mind." And defense against constant fear that all of this — the little dancer, the six million dollars that had accumulated in the profit column of Lashbrook's, his power in Republican circles — would be snatched away because he was undeserving. He took a hefty swallow, a third of the glass.