Here came a battalion of infantry, marching through the mud by the side of the road because the guns were occupying the mud in the middle of the road. “Give us some help, boys!” Jake called to the foot soldiers. “Can’t afford to lose any guns.”
Some of the infantrymen started to break ranks, but the lieutenant in charge of the company shouted, “Keep moving, men. We have our own schedule to meet.” He gave Featherston a hard stare. “You have no business attempting to delay my men, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Jake said, as he had to: he was just a sergeant, after all, not one of God’s anointed officers. How he hated that smug lieutenant. Because of his arrogance, the Confederate States would lose a gun they could have kept, a gun they should have kept.
“What’s going on here?” someone demanded in sharp, angry tones. An officer on horseback surveyed the scene with nothing but disapproval.
Featherston kept quiet. He was only a sergeant, after all. The lieutenant answered, “Sir, this, this enlisted man is trying to use my troops to get out of his trouble.”
“Then you’d better let him, hadn’t you?” Major Clarence Potter snapped. The lieutenant’s jaw dropped. He stared up at Potter with his mouth wide open, like a stupid turkey drowning in the rain. The intelligence officer went on, “Break out some ropes, get your men on that gun, and get it moving. We can’t afford to leave it behind.”
“But-” the infantry lieutenant began.
Major Potter fixed him with the intent, icy stare that had impressed Jake on their first meeting up in Pennsylvania-and how long ago that seemed. “One more word from you, Lieutenant, and I shall ask what your name is.”
The lieutenant wilted. Featherston would have been astounded had he done anything else. Twenty men on a rope and more on the hubs and carriage got the three-inch gun up out of the morass into which it had sunk. On more solid ground, the horses could move it again.
“Thank you, sir,” Jake said, waving the rest of the guns from the battery around the bad spot in the road.
“My pleasure,” Potter said, crisp as usual. “We’ve done a pretty fair job of fighting the enemy in this war, Sergeant, but God deliver us from our friends sometimes.”
“Yes, sir!” Jake said. That put his own anger into words better than he’d been able to do for himself.
“Keep struggling, Sergeant,” Potter said. “That’s all you can do. That’s all any of us can do.”
“Yes, sir.” Jake stared furiously after the now-vanished infantry lieutenant. “He could have been heading up a labor brigade, and if he was, he wouldn’t have let me use any niggers, either.”
“I’d say you’re probably right,” Potter said. “Some people get promoted because they’re brave and active. Some people get promoted for no better reason than that all their paperwork stays straight.”
“And some people don’t get promoted at all,” Featherston said bitterly.
“We’ve been over this ground before, Sergeant,” Potter said. “There’s nothing I can do. It’s not up to me.”
Jake would not hear him. “That damn lieutenant-beg your pardon, sir-wouldn’t pay me any mind, on account of I wasn’t an officer. I command this battery, and I damn well deserve to command it, but he treated me like a nigger, on account of I’m just a sergeant.” He glanced over to the intelligence officer. “It’s true, isn’t it? They are going to give niggers guns and put ’em in the line?”
“It’s passed the House. It’s passed the Senate. Since President Semmes was the one who proposed the bill, he’s not going to veto it,” Major Potter said.
“You know what, sir?” Featherston said. “You mark my words, there’s gonna be a nigger promoted to lieutenant before I get these here stripes off my sleeve. Is that fair? Is that right?”
Potter’s lips twisted in what might have been a sympathetic grin or an expression of annoyance at Jake’s unending complaints. The latter, it proved, for the major said, “Sergeant, if you think you’re the only man unfairly treated in the Army of Northern Virginia, I assure you that you’re mistaken.” He squeezed his horse’s sides with his knees. The animal trotted on.
“Ahh, you’re just another bastard after all,” Jake said. Thanks to the rain, Potter didn’t hear him. Featherston turned back to the battery. “Come on. Let’s get moving.”
They bogged down again, less than half a mile in front of the bridge. This time, Jake had no trouble getting help, for a Negro labor gang was close by, and the white officer in charge of it proved reasonable. Featherston worked the black men unmercifully hard, but he and his comrades were working hard, too. The guns came free and rattled toward and then over the bridge.
The firing pits that waited for them on the south side of the Potomac were poorly dug in and poorly sited. “Everything’s going to hell around here,” Featherston growled, and went tramping around to see if he could find better positions no other guns would occupy.
He had little luck. If the artillery hadn’t had to stay close to the river to defend the crossing, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with the area. When the Yankees came down and got their guns in place, his crew was going to catch it.
He’d come down close by the Potomac when the engineers blew the bridge and sent it crashing into the water, as he’d predicted. Somebody near him cheered to see it fall. Featherston’s scowl never wavered. How long would the wrecked bridge keep the Yankees out of Virginia? Not long enough, he feared.
XIX
Destroyers and a couple of armored cruisers screened the Dakota and the New York as the two battleships steamed southeast through the Pacific. On the deck of the Dakota, Sam Carsten said, “I won’t be sorry to leave the Sandwich Islands, and that’s a fact.” As if to emphasize his words, he rubbed at the zinc-oxide ointment on his nose.
“You’re gonna bake worse before you get better,” Vic Crosetti said with a chuckle. He could afford to laugh; when he baked, he turned brown. “We’re going over the equator, and it don’t get any hotter than that. And besides, it’s heading toward summer down in Chile.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Carsten said mournfully. “Sure as hell, I forgot all about that.” He looked at his hands, which were as red as every other square inch of him exposed to the sun. “Why the devil didn’t the Chileans get into trouble with Argentina six months ago?”
Crosetti poked him in the ribs. “Far as I’m concerned, all this means is, we’re doing pretty well. If we can detach a squadron from the Sandwich Islands to give our allies a hand, we got to figure ain’t no way for the limeys and the Japs to get Honolulu and Pearl away from us.” He paused, then added, “Unless that John Liholiho item tells them exactly what we’ve got and where everything’s at.”
“You know, maybe we ought to send a letter back to the Sandwich Islands when we get to Chile,” Sam said. “About him being a spy, I mean. They’ll rake him over the coals, you bet they will.”
“Yeah, maybe we should do that,” Crosetti said. “Hell, let’s.”
“Reckon you’re right about the other, too, dammit.” Carsten scratched one of his sunburned ears. Did being happy for his country outweigh being miserable at the prospect of still more sunburn? That one was too close to call without doing some thinking.
“Right about what?” Hiram Kidde asked as he came up. Carsten and Crosetti explained. The veteran gunner’s mate nodded. “Yeah, the brass has got to think the islands are ours to keep. We’ve got enough guns and enough soldiers on ’em now that taking ’em away would cost more than the limeys can afford.”
“What about the Japs?” Sam said. “They showed better than I ever figured they could, there in the Battle of the Three Navies.”
“Yeah, I suppose the Japs are a wild card,” Kidde admitted. “But as long as we don’t fall asleep there at Pearl, I expect we’ll be able to take care of them all right.” He studied Carsten. “You’re looking a little down in the mouth. You find a gal in Honolulu you didn’t feel like leaving?”