Breakthroughs

VIII

“All the news is bad these days,” Arthur McGregor complained to his wife over a supper plate of fried chicken and fried potatoes.

“More Yankee lies, I expect,” Maude answered. “They don’t let any of the truth get loose. Remember how many times their papers have said Toronto has fallen, or Paris to the Germans?”

“I don’t think it’s like that this time,” McGregor said. “Those other stories, you could tell they were made up. What we hear now-that Nashville place getting knocked to bits, and the Americans pushing ahead on the border farther east…those are the kinds of things that really do happen in a war. They’re the kinds of things you have to believe when you read them.”

“But if you do believe them, it means we’re losing the war,” his daughter Julia said.

“It means our allies are in trouble, anyhow,” McGregor said gravely. He bit at the inside of his lower lip before going on, “I don’t think we’re doing any too well here in Canada, either. You can hardly hear the cannon fire up north toward Winnipeg these days.”

Ever since the Yanks had overrun his farm, McGregor had used the sound of the guns to gauge how the fighting was going. When they were far away, the Yankees were making progress. A deep rumble on the northern horizon meant an Anglo-Canadian counteroffensive. He wouldn’t have minded in the least had shells fallen on his land; that would have meant the Yanks were pushed most of the way back toward Dakota. But it hadn’t happened. He was beginning to wonder if it ever would.

Mary, his younger daughter, spoke with great certainty: “We can’t lose the war. We’re right. They invaded us. They had no business doing that.” She was only eight years old, and still confused the way things should have been with the way they were.

McGregor and Maude looked at each other. They both knew better. “They can, Mary,” her mother said. “We have to hope they don’t, that’s all.”

“No, they can’t,” Mary repeated. “They shot Alexander. If they win, that means-that means-” She cast about for the worst thing she could think of. “That means God doesn’t love us any more.”

“God does what He wants, Mary,” McGregor said. “He doesn’t always do what we want. If He did, your brother would still be here, and the Yanks would be down in the USA where they belong.”

“If they win, they’ll try to turn us into Americans,” Julia said angrily. “They’re already trying to turn us into Americans.”

With American coins in his pocket, with American stamps on his letters, with American lies in the schools-so many American lies, neither Julia nor Mary went any more-McGregor could hardly disagree with her. Instead, he said, “What we have to do is, we have to remember who we are and what we are, no matter what happens around us. That may be the best we can do.”

He felt Maude’s eyes on him again. He needed a moment to understand why. When he did, his mouth tightened. Though he’d spoken indirectly, he’d never come so close to admitting Canada and her allies were losing the war.

His wife looked as grim as he did. So did Julia, who now had nearly a woman’s years and had been thinking like an adult for a long time, anyhow. If Mary didn’t follow-maybe that was just as well. Of them all, McGregor thought she was the fiercest one, even including himself. No matter how old she got, he doubted she would ever slow down to count the cost before she acted. He had to. He hated himself for that, but he had to.

After supper, and after the girls had gone to bed, he said to Maude, “I’m going out to the barn. I’ve got some work to take care of.”

The only question Maude asked was, “Shall I wait up for you?” When he shook his head, she came over and kissed him on the cheek. He blinked; they seldom showed affection for each other outside the bedroom.

He slapped at mosquitoes on the way to the barn. Crickets chirped. Frogs croaked and peeped in ponds and creeks and puddles. Spring was here. He shook his head again. Spring was here, and with it shorter nights. He could have used the long blanket of dark winter gave. But winter also gave a blanket of snow, and snow, unless it was falling hard or unless the wind was howling, meant tracks. He could not afford tracks. The family had already lost Alexander. He knew how hard a time they would have if they lost him, too.

“Counting the cost,” he muttered. He did not fear death, not for himself. He feared it for the sake of those he loved. Mary would not have feared, period. He felt that in his bones. It shamed him. It drove him on.

He did not light a lantern in the garage. The wooden box he sought was hidden, but he knew where. No Yankees on the road would see any light and wonder about it. He had to be careful.

He had to be careful about that road, too. He couldn’t travel on it, not unless he wanted to be challenged. The box under his arm, he approached the road. He didn’t approach too closely, not till nobody was coming in either direction. Then he crossed in a hurry.

His neighbors’ farm had a path leading to the road, just as his did. His neighbors’ farm also had a path leading southeast toward another road, an east-west one not so frequently traveled by Americans. If the dog stayed quiet, it would not disturb anyone in the dark, quiet farmhouse. The dog was quiet. It had known him for years, and knew him as well as it knew anyone outside its own family. Down that southeastern path he strode, and onto that east-west road.

“East,” he muttered. He had the road to himself. Alone with his thoughts: not a safe place to be, not with the thoughts filling his mind. If he set the box down and stomped on it, he would be alone with his thoughts forever. That was tempting, but he was not the sort of man to leave a thing half done.

Whenever he passed a farmhouse, he tensed, making sure it had no lamps burning. He did not want any wakeful soul noting the presence of a lone man on the road. No one could recognize him, not from those houses, but someone might note the time at which he walked by or the direction in which he was going. Either could prove dangerous.

He heard a distant rattle on the road behind him. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw tiny headlamps rapidly getting larger. He stepped into the field by the roadside and lay down. A Ford whizzed past, a Ford painted some light color, not the usual black: a light color like green-gray, for instance.

“Christ, let me be lucky,” he whispered. “Let me catch the whore and the murderer both.” He waited till the motorcar had gone a good way down the road before getting up and following it. The Americans installed rearview mirrors on most of their motorcars; he did not want whoever was in this one-Major Hannebrink’s name burned in his mind-spotting him.

On he walked, gauging time by the wheeling stars. If he could keep on, if he did not flag or falter, he might do what he had come to do.

The next interesting question, and one of whose answer he was not quite sure, was whether the Tooker family owned a dog. He didn’t really think so. If he was wrong, the best thing that could happen would be a long walk in the dark for nothing. Possibilities went downhill in a hurry from there.

A lamp went out downstairs. Lamplight showed a moment later in a room upstairs. A bedroom, McGregor thought. Paulette Tooker’s bedroom. That she would do such a thing with an American major was bad enough. That she would do such a thing and watch, or even let him watch, was depravity piled on depravity. What if one of her children woke in the night? Her son, if McGregor remembered rightly, was not far from Julia’s age-old enough and to spare to despise what his mother did…unless he was a collaborator, too.

Where was her husband? Was he dead? Was he captured? Was he still fighting for his country farther north? McGregor didn’t know. He wondered if Paulette knew, or cared.

That light would not go out. McGregor muttered under his breath. What the devil was Hannebrink doing in there, driving railroad spikes? McGregor didn’t dare approach the house, as he’d intended doing. Hannebrink had parked the Ford a good distance away from the place, though, no doubt for discretion’s sake. McGregor wanted the man who’d ordered his son killed far more than he wanted that man’s Canadian whore.

Cautious as a man could be, he went up to the motorcar. The night smelled of fresh, damp earth. He took a trowel from his belt and began to dig in the fresh, damp earth in front of the Ford’s left front tire. When he’d dug enough, he set the box in the hole, covered it over, and scattered the leftover dirt its volume had displaced. Then he headed home himself.

He got back just ahead of morning twilight. A light was burning in a room upstairs in his farmhouse, too. When he went in, he found Maude sitting up in bed sewing. Breath gusted from her when she saw him. “Is everything all right?” she demanded sharply.

“Everything is fine,” he answered. “You should have slept.”

“I tried,” she said. “I couldn’t.” She shrugged. “About time to get up now, anyhow. One way or another, we’ll stagger through the day. So long as everything’s all right.”

“Yes,” he said again. Even as he said it, though, he wondered. He should have been able to hear the explosion, even if the bomb-and the Ford-blew up when he was almost back here. What the hell had Hannebrink and Paulette Tooker been doing back at her house? How long could they keep doing it?

He did get through the day, moving like a man of ice only slightly thawed. When night came, he slept as hard as he had since he was Mary’s age.

He wanted to go into Rosenfeld, to learn what, if anything, he’d accomplished. He refrained, not wanting to draw notice to himself. To how many people had Henry Gibbon given the name of Hannebrink’s paramour? The more, the better.

Gossip brought word before he couldn’t hold back any more and made a trip to town. After supper, while the girls were upstairs playing with dolls, Maude said, “Della from across the road tells me Lou Tooker stepped on a bomb, and there isn’t going to be enough of him left to bury. He was-what? — fifteen, maybe sixteen.”

“A bit younger than Alexander.” McGregor nodded. “That’s going to be hard for Paulette to bear, eh?”

Almost as hard as it was for me, when the Yanks murdered my son, he thought. He wondered how Hannebrink had missed setting off the bomb. Maybe he’d backed the Ford up to get back onto the road. McGregor shrugged. However the U.S. major had escaped, Paulette Tooker wouldn’t be inclined to open her legs for him, not any more she wouldn’t. And, sooner or later, McGregor would get another chance at Major Hannebrink. He was in no hurry. Doing it right counted for more than doing it. No, he was in no hurry at all.

The U.S. bombardment had been short but ferocious. Now, engines bellowing, several barrels waddled forward toward the barbed wire the men of the Army of Northern Virginia had strung out to protect their positions in front of Aldie, Virginia. The wire shone in the early-morning sun; it was so newly in place, it hadn’t even started to rust.

Whistles blew in the U.S. trenches. “Come on, boys!” Captain Cremony shouted. “Time to give the Rebs another dose of medicine.” He was the first one out of the trench and heading toward the Confederate lines.

Sergeant Chester Martin nodded approval as he gathered his section by eye and led them up the sandbag staircase, out of the protection of their hole in the ground, and onto the stretch of open country where bullets could easily find them. Cremony hadn’t made it sound like fun, and it wouldn’t be. But he had made it sound like something that needed doing, and he was leading the way. Hard to ask more than that of an officer.

“Come on!” Martin shouted, echoing the company commander. He pointed to one of the barrels ahead. “Form up behind that bastard. You know the drill. You’d damn well better, by now.”

“That’s the truth, Sarge,” Tilden Russell said. “Wasn’t for those big, ugly things, there’d be a hell of a lot fewer of us left after we went over the top in front of Round Hill.”

Martin nodded, double-timing despite heavy gear to get as close to the barrel as he could. He’d seen too much hard fighting on the Roanoke front to have any doubts how much barrels were worth. With them, the unit had taken casualties, yes. Casualties were one of the things war was about. Without barrels, though-without them, the advance wouldn’t have got a quarter as far, and would have cost four times as much.

Not all the Confederates in those new trenches had been silenced. Rifle bullets whipped past Martin. He wasn’t afraid. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t. Before he went over the top, yes. When he had a chance to rest, he’d be afraid again. For the time being, he just went on, like most infantrymen. Whatever was going to happen to him would happen, and that was all there was to it.

Confederate machine guns started yammering, too. The barrels opened up on them with cannon fire and their own machine guns. The C.S. machine guns concentrated most of their fury on the barrels. They always did that, and it was a mistake. They had very little chance of hurting the great armored machines, and withheld their fire from the soft, vulnerable men they could have harmed.

Barbed wire underfoot-barbed wire crushed into the dirt by the barrel ahead. Since the opening days of the war, since U.S. forces first pushed their way down into the Roanoke valley, Martin had watched friends and comrades-and enemy soldiers, too, in Confederate counterattacks-trap themselves on wire like flies in a spiderweb and writhe and twist till bullets found them…and then, briefly and painfully, afterwards. That would not happen here. It would not happen now.

There was the battered parapet, just ahead. A black man with a rifle in his hands popped up onto the firing step, ready to shoot at Martin. Martin shot first, from the hip. It was not an aimed shot, and he did not think it hit. But it did what he wanted it to do: it made the Confederate soldier duck down again without shooting at him from short range.

A moment later, Martin was down in the trench himself. The black man wasn’t there. He’d fled from the firebay into a traverse. Martin did not charge after him. He and who could guess how many pals were waiting, fingers on the triggers of their Tredegars. Charging headlong into a traverse after the enemy was anything but smart.

Martin pulled a potato-masher grenade off his belt, yanked off the cap at the end of the handle, and tugged on the porcelain bead inside. That ignited the fuse. He flung the grenade up over the undug ground and into the traverse.

At the same time as his grenade went into the air, a Reb in the traverse threw one of their egg-shaped models at him and his comrades. Someone behind him yelled in pain. More grenades flew. More shouts rose. He and the men of his section couldn’t stay where they were. The attack had to move forward. That meant-

He scowled. Even when it wasn’t smart, a headlong charge was sometimes the only choice left. “Follow me!” he shouted.

His men did. If they hadn’t, he would have died in the next minute. As things were, that next minute was an ugly business with rifle and entrenching tool and bayonet and a boot in the belly or the balls. More U.S. soldiers came around the corner than the Rebs in the traverse could withstand. The men in butternut went down. Most of the men in green-gray went on.

Through a zigzagging communications trench they ran, deeper into the Confederate position. Somewhere not far from the far end of that trench, a machine gun stuttered out death. The barrels had taken out a lot of machine-gun positions, but not all of them. The guns that survived could wreak fearful havoc on advancing U.S. soldiers.

With one accord, Martin and his section went hunting that machine gun and its crew. The only soldiers who didn’t hate machine guns were those who served them. Martin’s lips skinned back from his teeth. There was the infernal machine, blazing away toward the front from a nest of sandbags. One white man fed belts of ammunition into it, the other tapped the side of the water jacket every little while to change the direction of the stream of bullets.

The sandbags kept the Confederates from bringing the gun to bear on Martin’s men, who approached from the side. The gun crew kept firing till the last second at the U.S. soldiers they could reach. Then they threw their hands in the air. “You got us,” the trigger man said.

“Sure as hell do,” the Reb who’d been feeding ammunition agreed.

Chester Martin shot one of them. Corporal Bob Reinholdt shot the other one at the same instant. As the Confederates crumpled, the two men who despised each other both stared in surprise. Reinholdt found words first: “Those sons of bitches can’t quit that easy.”

“Sure as hell can’t,” Martin agreed. Machine-gun crews rarely made it back to prisoner-of-war camps. For some reason, they always seemed to want to fight to the death.

Up ahead, the barrel leading the U.S. infantry exploded into flames and smoke: a shell from a Confederate field gun had struck home. Hatches flew open. Some of the machine gunners tried to bring out their weapons and fight on the ground. Most of them, though, went down as every C.S. soldier anywhere nearby turned his rifle on the stricken traveling fortress. The Confederates loved barrel crewmen every bit as much as ordinary infantrymen on both sides loved the men who served machine guns.

After brief but heartfelt curses, Martin said, “Things get tougher now. I wonder where the hell the next barrel is at.”

“Not close enough,” David Hamburger said. “We should do it like they did in Tennessee, put all the barrels together, smash on through the Rebs’ lines, and then let us tear the hole wide open.”

“Thank you, General,” Tilden Russell said. He was ragging the kid, but not too hard; Hamburger had given a good account of himself since the offensive opened. He didn’t have a veteran’s bag of tricks, but he was brave and willing and learned in a hurry.

But Russell had left the obvious line unused. Martin used it: “Listen, David, you don’t like the way we’re doing things, you write your congresswoman and give her an earful.” He laughed.

“I am doing that,” David Hamburger said. Martin hadn’t been serious, but he was. “We’ve pushed the Rebs back here, but we haven’t broken through. If it hadn’t been for the river they’re hiding behind in Tennessee, they’d be running yet.”

Shells started landing around them. They dove for cover. “Jesus,” Tilden Russell shouted, holding his helmet on his head with one hand. “God damn Rebs still have soldiers of their own in this part of the trench. What the hell are they doin’, shelling us like this here?”

“Trying to kill us, I expect,” Martin answered.

“I bet their artillery don’t care a fuck if they kill a few of their own foot soldiers,” Bob Reinholdt added. “They’re all white men back there”-he pointed south, toward the Confederate guns-“but half the bastards up here in the trenches are niggers. Probably just as glad to be rid of ’em. Hell, I would be.”

“Makes sense,” Martin agreed, after a moment adding, “The other thing to remember is, there’s no guarantee those were Rebel shells. They might have been ours, falling short.”

Nobody said anything for a few seconds. All the men in filthy green-gray huddled there knew only too well that such things happened. You were just as dead if a shell fragment from one of your own rounds got you as from Confederate artillery.

Whoever had fired it, the salvo ended. “Come on,” Martin said. “Even if the barrel’s dead, we’ve got to keep going.”

They had almost reached the far end of the network of trenches when Confederate reserves-black men with white officers and noncoms-brought them to a standstill. Some of the black soldiers in butternut fired wildly and ran. Some-more than would have been true of white troops-threw down their Tredegars and surrendered first chance they got. Counting on either, though, was risky-no, was deadly dangerous. Most of the black Confederates fought as hard as white Confederates.

With the Rebel reinforcements in place, Martin didn’t need long to figure out that he and his pals weren’t going to push much farther forward today. He got the men busy with their entrenching tools, and got busy with his own, too, turning shell holes and bits of north-facing trench into south-facing trench.

Sighing, he said, “We took a bite out of their line, but we didn’t slam on through it.”

“We need more barrels,” the Hamburger kid said. “They can really smash trenches. What else can?”

“Bodies,” Martin answered. “Lots and lots of bodies.” Anyone who’d fought on the Roanoke front, whether in green-gray or butternut, would have said the same thing.

“Barrels work better,” David Hamburger said, and Martin did not disagree with him. He’d seen too many piled-up bodies.

Anne Colleton read through the Columbia Southern Guardian with careful thoroughness over her morning eggs and coffee. Breakfast wasn’t so good as it might have been. She’d made it herself. After having servants cook for her almost her entire life, her own culinary skills were slender. But for the time while she’d languished in a refugee camp during the Red uprising, she’d have owned no culinary skills at all.

She hardly noticed she’d got the eggs rubbery and the coffee strong enough to spit in her eye. The Southern Guardian took most of her attention. Despite censors’ obfuscations and reporters’ resolute optimism, the war news was bad. It had been bad ever since the damnyankees opened their spring offensives in Tennessee and Virginia and Maryland.

“Damn them,” she whispered. Then she said it out loud: “Damn them!” The paper wasn’t printing maps of the fighting in Maryland and Virginia any more. Anne had no trouble understanding why: maps would have made obvious how far the Army of Northern Virginia had fallen back. Unless you had an atlas, you couldn’t tell where places like Sterling and Arcola and Aldie-which had just fallen after what the Southern Guardian called “fierce fighting”-were.

But Anne did have an atlas, used it, and didn’t like what she was seeing. What had her brother Tom said? That there were too many damnyankees to hold back? Virginia looked to be the USA’s attempt to prove it.

Nashville, though, Nashville had been something different. The paper went on for a column and a half about the horrors the city was suffering under Yankee bombardment. Anne scowled at the small type. What was in there might well be true, but it wasn’t relevant. If the line that held U.S. guns out of range of the city hadn’t collapsed, it wouldn’t be under bombardment now.

But that line, which had held even under the heaviest pressure since the autumn before, went down as if made of cardboard when the Yankees hammered it with a horde of their barrels. That hammering worried Anne more than it seemed to worry the Confederate War Department. U.S. forces weren’t using their barrels like that anywhere else. But if they did…

“If they do, they’re liable to break through again, wherever it is,” Anne said. She could see that. Why couldn’t they see it in Richmond?

Maybe they could see it. Maybe they simply didn’t know what to do about it. That possibility also left her unreassured.

She looked at her plate in some surprise, realizing she’d finished the eggs without noticing. She sighed. Another day. She’d never felt so useless in all her life as she did here in St. Matthews now. Were she back at Marshlands, she would be fretting about the year’s cotton crop. But there would be no cotton crop this year. She dared not go back to the plantation that had been in her family for more than a hundred years.

Her back stiffened. No, that wasn’t true. She dared to go back, even if she would not have cared to spend the night there. In fact, she would go back-with militiamen, and with a Tredegar slung over her shoulder. The plantation was ravaged. It was ruined. But it was hers, and she would not tamely yield it to anyone or anything.

No sooner decided than begun. She did not officially command the St. Matthews militia, but she had enough power in this part of the country-enough power through most of South Carolina, as a matter of fact-that within an hour she and half a dozen militiamen were rattling toward Marshlands in a couple of ramshackle motorcars.

Some of the militiamen wore old gray uniforms, some new butternut. Some of the men were old, too-too old to be called into the Army even during the present crisis at the front. One, a sergeant of her own age named Willie Metcalfe, was a handsome fellow when viewed from the right. The left side of his face was a slagged ruin of scars. He wore a patch over what had been his left eye. Anne wondered why he bothered. In that devastation, who could have said for certain where his eye socket lay? A couple of his comrades were surely less than eighteen, and looked younger than Anne’s telegraph delivery boy.

Half a dozen miles made a twenty-minute ride along the rutted dirt road between St. Matthews and Marshlands. It would have been twice that long if one of the motorcars had had a puncture, but they were lucky. When Willie Metcalfe-who, predictably, was driving in the lead automobile, to avoid displaying his wrecked profile for a while-started to pull into the driveway that led to the ruins of the Marshlands mansion, Anne spoke up sharply: “No, wait. Stop the motorcar here and pull off to the side of the road.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sergeant Metcalfe’s voice was mushy; the inside of his mouth was probably as ravaged as the rest of that side of his face. But he said the words as he would have said Yes, sir to a superior officer, and obeyed as promptly, too. The other motorcar followed his lead.

Because she hadn’t had to shout at him, as she’d had to shout at so many men in her life, she deigned to explain: “The only motorcars likely to come here will have white people in them-probably white soldiers in them. What better place to hide a bomb than in the driveway there?”

Metcalfe thought for a moment, then nodded. “That makes sense,” he said. “That makes a lot of sense.”

Linus Ashworth, who with his white beard looked a little like General Lee and was almost old enough to have fought under him, said, “We ain’t likely to be bringing niggers into the militia any time soon, not when we’re chasin’ ’em, and I don’t give a…hoot what the Army does.” He got out of the automobile and spat a stream of tobacco juice into the lush grass. A brown drop slid down that white beard. A yellow streak in it said that sort of thing happened to him all the time.

Anne and the militiamen advanced on the wreckage of the Marshlands mansion in what Metcalfe called a skirmish line. He unobtrusively took the left end. They all had a round in the chamber of their Tredegars. Anne didn’t expect any trouble. The Red rebels shouldn’t have known she was on the way to Marshlands. She herself hadn’t known she would be till not long before she was. But taking chances wasn’t a good idea.

Linus Ashworth spat again. “It’s a shame, ma’am,” he said, “purely a shame. I seen this place when it was like what it’s supposed to be, and there wasn’t no finer plantation in the state of South Carolina, God strike me dead if I lie.”

“Yes,” Anne said tightly. Ashworth had seen Marshlands before the war, but she’d lived here. Coming back after the men of the Congaree Socialist Republic were driven back into the riverside swamps had been hard enough. Coming back now…

Now the Marshlands plantation wasn’t ruined, as it had been then. Now it was dead. The cabin where she’d lived after the mansion burned was itself charred wreckage. The rest of the cabins that had housed the Negro field hands were deserted, glass gone from the windows, doors hanging open because nothing inside was worth stealing. One door had fallen off its hinges and leaned at a drunken angle against the clapboard wall. White bird droppings streaked the door’s green paint.

Anne looked out to what had been, and what should have been, broad acres of growing cotton. Weeds choked the fields. No crop this year. No chance of getting a crop this year, even if she could find hands who would work for her and not for Cassius and Cherry and the rest of the Reds-and good luck with that, too. No money coming in from Marshlands this year. But the money would keep right on bleeding out. War taxes…outrageous wasn’t nearly a strong enough word. Her investments had kept her afloat so far, but they were tottering, too.

“This here is sad, ma’am,” Sergeant Willie Metcalfe said. “This here is really sad.” Just for a moment, he raised a hand to the black cord that held his patch. “This here place got hurt the same way I did.”

“Yes, it did,” Anne said. She would not-she would not-let him hear the tears in her voice.

And then she forgot about tears, because something moved up ahead. She was on the ground, her rifle aimed, before she knew how she’d got there. A couple of the young militiamen stood gaping for a few seconds. The others, the men who had seen combat of one sort or another, were on their bellies like her, offering targets as small as they could.

“Come out!” Metcalfe shouted. “Come out right now or you’re dead!”

Anne wasn’t even sure she’d seen a human being. Motion where nothing had any business moving had been plenty to send her diving to the ground. She wondered if they’d have to go hunting through the field hands’ cottages. If the Reds had come back for some reason, that might not be any fun at all.

But why would the Reds come back to Marshlands? she thought, trying to reassure herself. It wasn’t as if she had any treasure buried on the plantation to tempt them. If she’d had anything like that, she would long since have dug it up herself.

Then anticlimax almost made her burst out laughing. From around the corner of the nearest cabin came a pickaninny, a Negro girl ten or eleven years old. After a moment, Anne recognized her. “What are you doing sneaking around this place, Vipsy?” she demanded. “You almost got shot.”

“I’s jus’ lookin’ fo’ whatever I kin find,” Vipsy answered artlessly-so artlessly, Anne’s suspicions kindled.

“Where are you staying these days, Vipsy?” she asked. “There’s nothing for your father and mother to do at Marshlands now.”

Vipsy pointed northward, toward the Congaree: “Over yonder where I’s at,” she answered.

How far over yonder? Anne wondered. All the way into the swamp? Are your father and mother Reds? If they were…She looked down at the ground so the colored girl would not see her smile. “All right, go on your way,” she said when she looked up again. “I’m just glad you weren’t coming around sniffing after the treasure. If you were, we would have had to shoot you.”

“Don’ know nothin’ ’bout no treasure,” Vipsy said, and strolled off with as much dignity as if she wore a gingham frock rather than a dress cut from a grimy burlap bag.

The next trick, of course, would be convincing the militiamen she had no treasure buried here at Marshlands. If she couldn’t do that, half the people in St. Matthews would be out here by day after tomorrow at the latest, all of them armed with picks and shovels. But if she could persuade the militiamen-well, something useful might come from that.

Gordon McSweeney walked up to Captain Schneider. After saluting the company commander, he said, “Sir, I wish you wouldn’t have done what you did.”

Schneider frowned. “I’m sorry, McSweeney, but I don’t see that you left me any choice in the matter.”

“But-” Except when discussing matters of religion, McSweeney was not a particularly eloquent man. He touched the top of his shoulder, and the new shoulder strap sewn onto his tunic. No insigne marked the strap, but its mere presence disturbed him. “Sir, I don’t want to be an officer!” he burst out.

“Believe me, second lieutenants barely deserve the name,” Captain Schneider answered with a wry chuckle.

“I was comfortable as a sergeant, sir,” McSweeney said. “I was-I was happy as a sergeant.” It was, as far as he could recall, the first time in his life he’d ever admitted being happy about anything.

“If you go on with this, Lieutenant McSweeney”-Schneider bore down on the title-“you will make me angry-but not angry enough to bust you back to sergeant, if that’s what’s on your mind.” He paused to roll a cigarette. Once he’d sucked in smoke, he went on, “God damn it, McSweeney, look at it from my point of view. What the hell am I supposed to do with you?”

“Sir, you could have-you should have-left me where I was,” McSweeney answered. “That was all I expected. That was all I wanted.”

For some reason he did not fathom, Captain Schneider looked exasperated. Seeing he did not fathom it, Schneider spelled it out in words of one syllable: “You are wearing the ribbon for one Medal of Honor. God knows you deserve an oak-leaf cluster to go with it for what you did to that machine-gun position, but the War Department would think I was shell-shocked if I put you up for it twice, no matter how much you deserve it. Any lesser medal fails to do you justice. What choice did I have but promoting you?”

“I didn’t do what I did for glory, sir,” McSweeney answered, deeply embarrassed. “I did it because it was my duty.”

Schneider studied him. Slowly, slowly, the company commander blew out a long, gray cloud of smoke. “You mean that,” he said at last.

“Of course I do.” McSweeney was embarrassed again, in a different way. “I always mean what I say.”

After another long pause, Captain Schneider said, “You may be the most frightening man I have ever met.”

“Only to the enemies of God and the United States of America, sir.”

Schneider suddenly snapped his fingers. “I know part of what’s troubling you, damn me to hell if I don’t.” If he kept talking like that, McSweeney was sure God would damn him to hell. But, however harsh he was to those under him, McSweeney could not and never would reprove his superiors. Schneider continued, “You don’t want to give your flamethrower to anybody else.”

McSweeney looked down at the muddy ground under his feet. He hadn’t thought Captain Schneider would be able to read him so well. Now it was his turn to hesitate. Finally, he said, “When I carry it, I feel myself to be like the fourth angel of the Lord in Revelations 16, who pours out his bowl on the sun and scorches the wicked with fire.”

“Hmm.” Schneider scratched his chin. Stubble rasped under his fingernails. “Tell you what, McSweeney. Think of it like this: you’re not the only one in this war. We’re all scorching the Rebs together, and it doesn’t matter whether we’ve got rifles or.45s or flamethrowers. How’s that?”

“Sir, when the Good Book speaks of searing those who curse God’s name, I believe it means what it says-no more, no less,” McSweeney replied.

“Of course you do,” Schneider muttered. He paused to sigh and to stamp the butt of his cigarette into the dirt. “Well, we’re going to make it hot for the Rebs, all right. They’re going to take us out of the line here and put fresh troops in our place, to hold. We shift to the right, about five miles over.”

“And do what, sir?” McSweeney asked.

“There’s about a square mile of woods there-it’s called Craighead Forest on the map,” Schneider answered. “If we can push the Confederates out of it, we outflank ’em and we may be able to shove ’em clean out of Jonesboro.”

“So long as we’re fighting, sir, it suits me,” McSweeney said.

“Well, it doesn’t suit me, not for hell it doesn’t,” the company commander told him. “We haven’t got the barrels to go in there and do the dirty work for us, the way they do on the other side of the Mississippi. We have to take that forest the old way, the hard way, and it’s going to be expensive as the devil.”

“Where I go, my men will follow, and I will go into that wood,” McSweeney said positively. Schneider looked at him, shook his head, and went off down the trench still shaking it.

Replacements began filing into the line that afternoon, under desultory Confederate shelling. They were clean-faced, neatly shaven men in clean uniforms. They seemed present in preposterous numbers, for action had not thinned their ranks faster than replacements could refill them. They stared at the lean, grimy veterans whose trenches they were taking over. Gordon McSweeney was far from the only veteran to stare back in cold contempt.

He led the platoon he did not want down a series of winding tracks shielded-but not too well-from enemy observation. A few shells fell around them. A couple of men were wounded. Stretcher-bearers carried them back toward dressing stations. But for the wounded men, nobody thought it anything out of the ordinary.

Up through the zigzags of communications trenches they went. McSweeney stared ahead, toward the wood of pine and oak. Fighting there hadn’t been heavy, not till now. Most of the trees were still standing, not lying smashed and scattered like a petulant giant’s game of pick-up-sticks. Under those trees, men in butternut waited in foxholes and in trenches much like these. Between the U.S. line and the edge of the wood lay a few hundred yards of low grass and bushes, all bright green. Tomorrow morning…

“Tomorrow morning, uh, sir,” Ben Carlton said to McSweeney, “a lot of us are going to end up dead.”

McSweeney gave the cook a cold look. “Take it up with the Lord, not with me. I am going forward. So are you. God will choose who lives and dies.” Carlton went off muttering to himself. McSweeney checked his rifle, read his Bible, rolled himself in his blanket, and slept the sleep of an innocent man.

The U.S. bombardment blasted him awake a little before dawn. He nodded his approval. Short and sharp-that was the way to do it. A week-long bombardment only gave the Rebs a week to get ready, and didn’t kill nearly enough of them to be worth that.

Whistles blew, up and down the line. “Come on, you lugs!” McSweeney shouted. “Follow me. I’ll be the one they shoot at first, I promise you.”

With that encouragement, he led his platoon over the parapet and through the grass toward the edge of the now more battered wood, from which little winking lights-the muzzle flashes of machine guns and Tredegars-began to appear. Bullets clipped leaves from bushes and stirred the tall blades of grass almost as a stick might have done.

“By sections!” McSweeney yelled. “Fire and move!”

Half the men he led went down, though only a few had been shot. The ones on their knees and bellies blazed away to cover the advance of the rest. After a rush, the men ahead hit the dirt and fired while the former laggards rose and dashed past them.

They took casualties. Had it not been for their tactics-and for the artillery still falling in the woods, knocking over trees fast enough to make Paul Bunyan jealous-they would have taken more. But the survivors kept going forward in ragged waves. Several bullets cracked past Gordon McSweeney close enough for him to feel the wind of their passage. One brushed at his sleeve, so that he looked over to see if a comrade close by was tugging his arm. Seeing no one close by, he realized what must have happened. “Thank you, Lord, for sparing me,” he murmured, and ran on.

Then he was in among the trees. The covering barrage moved deeper into Craighead Forest, leaving it up to the men in green-gray to finish dealing with the men in butternut it had not killed or maimed. The Confederates were there in distressing numbers; they knew, as U.S. soldiers knew, how to lessen the damage artillery did.

That left hard, hot work to do. Many-not all-of the C.S. machine-gun crews stayed at their guns even after U.S. soldiers had got by them on either flank, lingering to do their foes as much harm as they could before they were slain. They were brave men, brave as any in green-gray.

McSweeney knew as much. He’d known as much since the day he crossed the Ohio into Kentucky. “The Egyptians who followed Pharaoh into the opening in the Red Sea after the children of Israel surely were brave men,” he muttered. “The Lord let the Red Sea close on them even so, because they were wicked.”

Confederates fired from behind and from under trees. Snipers fired from in the trees. The Rebels fought from their trenches. They popped up out of foxholes. Sometimes they hid till several U.S. soldiers had passed them, then turned around and fired at their backs.

McSweeney had blood on his bayonet before he was a hundred yards into the woods. He’d been changing clips when a Confederate soldier lunged at him. How the Reb had screamed when the point went into his belly! He would scream like that forever in hell.

“Schneider’s down!” somebody shouted. McSweeney waited for one of the other lieutenants, all of them senior to him, to start directing the company. None of them did. Maybe they were down, too. He shouted orders, driving the men on. He was loud and sounded sure of what he was doing, the next best thing to being sure of what he was doing.

Forming any firm line in the forest was impossible. The Confederates kept filtering past the U.S. forward positions and raising Cain. They knew the woods better than their foes-some of them had probably hunted squirrels and coons through these trees-and did not mean to lose them.

“Here!” McSweeney threw aside the bodies of two Rebs from the machine gun at which they’d fallen. He grabbed a couple of his own men and turned the machine gun around. “If you see any of those miscreants, shoot them down.”

“Miscre-whats, sir?” one of them shouted at him.

“Confederates,” he answered, which satisfied the soldier. He and his pal wouldn’t be so good as a properly trained crew, but they would be better than nothing for as long as their ammunition held out. McSweeney did that several more times, getting firepower any way he could.

U.S. machine guns started coming forward into Craighead Forest, too. By nightfall, most of it was in U.S. hands, though Confederate cannon kept shelling the woods their side had held when day began. Maybe the men in green-gray would be able to mount a flank attack on Jonesboro afterwards, maybe not. McSweeney couldn’t tell. He didn’t care, not too much. He’d done his job, and done it well.

Scipio squatted on his heels in the mud by the Congaree River, reading a newspaper one of the black fighters of what still called itself the Congaree Socialist Republic had brought back from a Fort Motte park bench. Going into a town was dangerous; actually buying a newspaper from a white man would have been suicidally dangerous.

“Do Jesus!” Scipio said, looking up from the small print that gave him more trouble than it had a few years before. “Sound like the Yankees is kickin’ we where it hurt the most.”

Cassius was gutting catfish he’d pulled out of the muddy river. When they were fried, they would taste of mud, too. Cassius threw offal into the river before cocking his head to one side and giving Scipio a glance from the corner of his eye. “Them Yankees ain’t kickin’ we, Kip,” he said at last.

Scipio snorted. “Don’ tell me you believes we gwine lick they any day now, an’ we jus’ fallin’ back to fool they. De papers prints de lies like that to keep de stupid buckra happy.”

“I knows it,” Cassius answered calmly. “De lies makes de buckra mo’ and mo’ stupid, too. But, Kip, you gots to recollect-de Congaree Socialist Republic ain’t at war wid de United States. The Confederate States, they is at war, but you ain’t no Confederate citizen, now is you? Never was, ain’t, never gwine be. This here the onliest country you gots, Kip.”

Instead of answering, Scipio buried his nose in the newspaper again. He did not trust himself to keep from saying what he really thought if he spoke at all. Since he would surely be shot the moment he did, shot and tossed in the river like catfish guts, he thought silence the wiser course.

A country! A country of mud and weeds and muddy water and stinks and furtive skulking and shells falling out of the sky whenever the militia managed to lay their hands on some ammunition. A country surrounded by a real country intent on wiping it from the face of the earth. A country that existed more in Cassius’ imagination than in the real world.

“We is the free mens,” Cassius said. “The ’pressors o’ de world got no power here.” Methodically, he gutted another fish.

Cherry came striding up in her tattered trousers. She moved like a free woman, or perhaps more like a catamount, graceful and dangerous at the same time. Scipio could readily understand how she’d enthralled Jacob Colleton. She didn’t just smolder. She blazed.

Now she squatted down beside Cassius and said, “What you think o’ dis story Vipsy bring back from Marshlands?”

“Woman, you knows what I thinks,” Cassius answered impatiently. “I thinks Miss Anne bait a trap fo’ we. I thinks I ain’t gwine be foolish enough to put this here head”-he tapped it, almost as if to suggest he had another one stored somewhere not far away-“in de noose.”

Cherry’s lips skinned back from her white teeth in a hungry smile. “But if it so, Cass, if it so an’ we can git our hands on de treasure-”

“But it ain’t, an’ you knows it ain’t, same as I knows it ain’t,” Cassius said, his voice still good-natured, but with iron underneath.

“How you know that for a fac’?” Cherry demanded. “You was a hunter. You wasn’t into the mansion all de time, no more’n me.”

Cassius pointed at Scipio, as Scipio had known he would. “Dis nigger here, he know if anybody do. Kip, you tell Cherry what you done tol’ her before. See if maybe she listen dis time, damn stubborn gal.”

Scipio found himself longing for the polite, precise formality of the English he’d spoken as Anne Colleton’s butler. He could have disagreed without offending much more readily in that dialect than in the speech of the Congaree. “Cassius, he right,” he said, as placatingly as he could-he might have been more afraid of Cherry than of Cassius. “Ain’t no treasure.”

“How you know dat?” Cherry snapped. “How kin you know dat? Miss Anne, she one white debbil bit of a ’pressor, but she one sly white debbil bitch, too. Couldn’t never git away from we las’ Christmas, she weren’t one sly white debbil bitch.”

In the other English, the English he spoke no more, Scipio would have talked about probabilities, and about the impossibility of proving a negative. He could not do that in the dialect of the Congaree. Instead, at last losing his temper, he answered, “I knows Miss Anne’s business better’n any other Marshlands nigger, and I says there ain’t no treasure. You wants to go lookin’ fo’ what ain’t dere, go on ahead. An’ if de buckra wid de guns blows yo’ stupid head off ’cause they layin’ fo’ you like you was a deer, don’ you come back here cryin’ afterwards.”

Cherry’s eyes blazed. Her high cheekbones and narrow, delicate chin told of Indian blood; now she looked as if she wanted to take Scipio’s scalp. Her voice was deadly: “An’ when I comes back wid de money, drag you down an’ cut your balls off-or I would, if I reckoned you gots any.”

“Easy, gal, easy,” Cassius said. Sometimes Scipio thought Cherry alarmed the hunter who led the Reds, too. Cherry had not an ounce, not a speck, of give anywhere about her splendidly shaped person. Cassius went on, “You make a man ’fraid to tell you de truth, or what he reckon de truth, sooner o’ later you gwine be sorry you done it.”

Cherry tossed her head in a gesture of magnificent contempt Scipio had seen from her many times before. Pointing to him, she said, “He don’ need me to make he afraid. He wish he was still Miss Anne’s house nigger, still Miss Anne’s lapdog.” She spat on the ground between Scipio’s feet.

Scipio violently shook his head, the more violently because she told nothing but the truth. He’d never wanted anything to do with the revolutionary movement, partly because of a suspicion-an accurate suspicion, as things turned out-the Red revolt would fail, partly because he had indeed been comfortable in the life he was living at Marshlands. He’d always assumed that, if anyone in power among the revolutionaries learned as much, he was a dead man.

But then Cassius said, “I knows dat. We all knows dat. De lap dog like de sof’ pillow an’ de fancy meat in de rubber dish. He cain’t he’p it.”

Right then, Scipio was glad of his dark, dark skin. No one could see the flush that made him feel he was burning up inside. He schooled his features to the impassivity required of a butler. Let no one know what you are thinking. He’d had that beaten into him in his training. It served him in good stead now.

Cassius went on, “But Kip, he keep he mouf shut. He don’ never say boo to Miss Anne ’bout we. De proletariat, dey gots nuffing to lose in de revolution. Kip, he gots plenty to lose, an’ he wid us anyways. If dat don’ make he a hero o’ de revolution, you tell me what do.”

Cherry tossed her head again. “Shit, he jus’ too ’fraid to betray we. He know how he pay fo’ dat.”

She was right again. Fortunately for Scipio, Cassius didn’t think so. The hunter said, “He have plenty chances to give we away an’ git away clean, an’ he never done it. He wid us, Cherry.”

“He ain’t,” Cherry said positively. “Miss Anne spread she legs, he come runnin’ to lick dat pussy wid de yellow hair, same as he always done.”

“Liar!” Scipio shouted now, a mixture of horror, embarrassment, and fury in his voice. Only after that anguished cry passed his lips did he realize she might have been using a metaphor, if a crude one. Part of the embarrassment, he realized with a different kind of horror, was that Anne Colleton was beautiful and desirable. But a black man who was found out looking on a white woman with desire in the CSA was as surely dead as one who betrayed the revolutionary movement.

Even Cassius looked distressed. “Enough, Cherry!” he said sharply. “You gots no cause to rip he to pieces dat way.”

“Got plenty cause,” Cherry retorted. “An’ when I comes back with the treasure, Cass, we see who am de gen’l sec’tary o’ de Congaree Socialist Republic after dat.” She stalked off.

Cassius sighed. “Dat one hard woman. Ain’t nobody gwine stop she-she gwine try an’ fin’ dat treasure, an’ it don’t matter if it ain’t there. She try anyways.”

“She gwine get herself killed,” Scipio said. “She gwine get whoever go wid she killed, too.”

“I knows it,” Cassius said unhappily. “I ain’t no fool, an’ I weren’t borned yesterday. But how is I s’posed to stop she? If I shoot she wid my own gun, she dead, too-an’ dat bitch liable to shoot first. I done told her, don’ go. But she don’ listen to what I say.” He sighed again, a leader hard aground on the shoals of leadership. “I brings her up befo’ de revolutionary tribunal, they liable to do like she say, not like I say. Dere some stubborn revolutionary niggers on de tribunal. I oughts to know. I put ’em dere my ownself.”

“Maybe you jus’ let she go, then,” Scipio said. “Maybe you jus’ let she go an’ get herself killed.” His voice turned savage. “Maybe dat jus’ what she deserve.” If he could find a way to get a message to Anne Colleton, letting her know when Cherry was going to try to plunder Marshlands, he would do it, and it would be a true message, too. Letting-helping-one of the women who’d made the past year and a half of his life a nightmare dispose of the other had a sweet ring of poetic justice to it.

But Cassius was watching him with those hunter’s eyes. Somebody was watching him all the time. The surviving revolutionaries did not altogether trust him. They had good reason not to trust him. Casually, as if he weren’t thinking at all, he took from his belt a tin cup that had once belonged to a Confederate soldier now surely dead. He dipped up water from the river and drank. The water tasted of mud, too. Only because he’d grown up in a slave cabin not far away could he drink it without having his guts turn inside out.

Cherry and half a dozen men went treasure hunting the next day. Cassius watched them go with a scowl on his face. If by some accident Vipsy had been telling the truth, if by some accident Miss Anne had done something of which Scipio was ignorant, Cassius’ place at the head of the Congaree Socialist Republic was indeed in danger. Could the Red rebels survive a leadership struggle? Scipio had his doubts.

But Cherry came back after sundown, empty-handed. Scipio had hoped she wouldn’t come back at all. The glower she aimed at him almost made her return worthwhile, though. He concentrated on his bowl of stew-turtle and roots and other things he ate and tried not to think about.

“I knows dat treasure there,” Cherry said. “I’s gwine find it. I ain’t done. Don’t nobody think I’s done.” She glared at Scipio, at Cassius, at everyone but the men who’d followed her. Scipio wore his butler’s mask. Behind it, he kept on trying to figure out how to get a message to Anne Colleton.

Marie Galtier held out a tray loaded with stewed chicken to Dr. Leonard O’Doull. O’Doull held up both hands, palms out, as if warding off attack. “Merci, Mme. Galtier, but mercy, too, I beg you,” he said. “One more drumstick and I think I’ll grow feathers.”

Marie sniffed. “I do not see how you could grow feathers when you do not eat enough to keep a bird alive.”

“Mother!” Nicole said reprovingly, and Marie relented.

Dr. O’Doull looked over to Lucien Galtier. “Seeing how she feeds you, it is to me a matter of amazement that you do not weigh three hundred pounds.”

“Our father is very light for his weight,” Georges said before Lucien could answer.

“In the same way that you, my son, are very foolish for your brains,” Galtier said, and managed to feel he had got a draw with his son, if not a win over him.

Serious as usual, Charles Galtier asked, “Is it true, monsieur le docteur, that U.S. forces continue their advance against Quebec City?”

“Yes, from what I hear at the hospital, that is true,” Dr. O’Doull told Galtier’s elder son.

“Is it also true that fighting alongside the forces of the United States is a corps from the soi-disant Republic of Quebec?” Charles asked.

“Charles…” Lucien murmured warningly. Speaking of it as the so-called Republic of Quebec before an American, one of the people who called it that, was something less than the wisest thing his son might have done.

But Leonard O’Doull, fortunately, took no offense. “Not a corps, certainly, for there are not nearly enough volunteers for a Quebecois corps,” he replied. “But a regiment, perhaps two regiments of Quebecois from the Republic-yes, I know they are in the line, for I have treated some of their wounded, being called upon to do so because I am lucky enough to speak French.”

It was a straightforward, reasonable, matter-of-fact answer. Lucien waited with some anxiety to hear how his son replied to it. If Charles denounced the Republic, life could grow difficult. But Charles said only, “I do not see how Quebecois could volunteer to fight Quebecois.”

“In the War of Secession, brother fought brother in the United States-what was the United States,” O’Doull said. “It is not an easy time when such things happen.”

“But no one outside created the Confederate States, n’est-ce pas?” Charles said, doggedly refusing to let go. “They came into being of themselves.”

To Lucien’s relief, his son once more failed to get a rise out of Dr. O’Doull. “Perhaps at the beginning, yes,” the American said, “but England and France have helped prop them up ever since. Now, though, the props begin to totter.”

Charles could have said something like, Just as the United States prop up the Republic of Quebec. But O’Doull made it plain he was likely to agree with a statement like that, not argue with it. That took half-more than half-the fun away from making it. To his father’s relief, Charles kept quiet.

After Marie, Nicole, Susanne, Denise, and Jeanne cleared the plates away from the supper table, Lucien got out a bottle of the homemade apple brandy that helped keep nights warm in Quebec. “Is it possible, M. Galtier, that I might talk to you alone?” Dr. O’Doull asked, staring at the pale yellow liquid in the glass in front of him as if he had never seen it before.

Lucien’s head came up alertly. Charles and Georges looked at each other. “Well, I can tell when I am not wanted,” Georges said, and stomped upstairs in exaggerated outrage. Charles said nothing. He simply rose, nodded to O’Doull, and left the dining room.

“And for what purpose is it that you desire to talk to me alone, Dr. O’Doull?” Galtier said, also examining his applejack with a critical eye. He could without much difficulty think of one possible reason.

And that proved to be the reason Dr. Leonard O’Doull had in mind. The American physician took a deep breath, then spoke rapidly: “M. Galtier, I desire to marry your daughter, and I would like your blessing for the match.”

Galtier lifted his glass and knocked back the applejack in one long, fiery gulp. No, O’Doull’s words were not a surprise, but they were a shock nonetheless. Instead of answering straight out in brusque, American fashion, the farmer returned a question: “You have, I take it, had somewhat to say of this matter with Nicole.”

“Oh, yes, I have done that.” Dr. O’Doull’s voice was dry. “I will tell you, sir, she likes the idea if you will give your approval.”

“And why would she not?” Galtier replied. “You are a personable man, you are a reasonable figure of a man, and you are skilled in your profession, as I have reason to know.” He patted the leg O’Doull had sewn up. “But even so, before I say yes or no, there are some things I must learn. For example, suppose that you marry her. Where would you live when the war ends? Would you take her back to the United States?”

“As a matter of fact, I was thinking of setting up shop in Riviere-du-Loup,” O’Doull answered. “I’ve been asking around when I go up into town, and you folks here can use a good surgeon. I am a good surgeon, M. Galtier; any doctor who works in a military hospital turns into a good surgeon because he has so many chances to practice his trade.” He gulped down his own applejack, then muttered in English: “Damn the war.”

“You would speak French, then, and mostly forget your own language, except”-Galtier’s eyes twinkled-“when you need to swear, perhaps?”

“I would,” O’Doull said. “I speak French better than many people who come to the United States speak English. They do well enough in my country. I should be able to do well enough in yours.”

“I think you have reason there,” Galtier said. “That you can do this, I do not doubt. The question I was asking was whether you were willing to do it, and I see you are. And you are a Catholic man. That I have known for long and long.”

“Yes, I am a Catholic man,” O’Doull said. “I am not a perfectly pious man, but I am a Catholic.”

“The only man I know who believes himself to be perfectly pious is Bishop Pascal,” Galtier said. “Bishop Pascal is surely very pious, as he is very clever, but he is neither so pious nor so clever as he believes himself to be.”

“There I think you have reason, M. Galtier,” Leonard O’Doull said, chuckling. He blinked a couple of times; if a man drank apple brandy when he was tired, it hit even harder than usual. After a moment’s thought, he went on, “May I now tell you something to help you decide?”

“Speak,” Galtier urged. “Say what is in your mind.”

“No-what is in my heart,” O’Doull replied. “What I want to tell you is that I love your daughter, and I will do everything I can to take care of her and make her as happy as I can.”

“Well,” Lucien Galtier said, and then again: “Well.” He picked up the bottle of applejack and poured a hefty dollop for Dr. O’Doull and another for himself. He raised his glass in salute. “I look forward to my grandchildren.”

O’Doull’s long face was normally serious almost to somberness. Galtier had not imagined such a wide smile could spread over it as happened when the doctor understood his words. Still smiling that broad smile, Dr. O’Doull reached out and shook his hand. The doctor’s skin was soft, uncallused from manual labor, but not smooth-poisons to kill germs had left it rough and red.

“Thank you, my father-in-law to be,” O’Doull said. “Thank you.”

“Now you make me feel old,” Galtier said in mock severity. He raised his glass. “Let us drink, and then let us tell the rest of the family-if Nicole has not already done as much in the kitchen.”

Only as the brandy slid warmly down his throat did he reflect on how, after the United States had overrun his country, he had been certain-he had been more than certain; he had been resolved-he would hate the invaders forever. And now his daughter was going to marry an American. He had just given permission for his daughter to marry an American. He shook his head. Life proved stranger than anyone could imagine.

When he called, his wife and daughters flew out of the kitchen and his sons came leaping down the stairs like mountain goats. They might not know what he would say, but they knew what he was going to talk about. He got up, walked over to Leonard O’Doull, and set a hand on his shoulder. “We are going to have in our family a new member,” he said simply. “Our friend, monsieur le docteur O’Doull, has asked of me permission to marry Nicole, and I have given to him that permission and my blessing.”

He remembered then that O’Doull had not asked for permission, only his blessing. He wondered what would have happened had he refused it. Would O’Doull have done something foolish? Would Nicole? He had no way of finding out now. Perhaps-no, probably-that was just as well.

And then he forgot about might-have-beens, because Nicole squealed with joy and threw herself into his arms, her three little sisters squealed with excitement and started jumping up and down, Charles and Georges went over to O’Doull and pounded him on the back (that Charles did so rather surprising Lucien), and Marie squeezed between them to kiss the American doctor on the cheek.

“Thank you, Papa. Thank you,” Nicole said over and over.

He patted her on the back. “Do not thank me now, my little one,” he said. “If you thank me ten years from now, if you thank me twenty years from now, if le bon Dieu permits me to remain in this world so that you may thank me thirty years from now, that will be very good.”

“If I want to thank you now, I am going to thank you now,” Nicole said. “So there!” To prove it, she kissed him.

He glanced over to O’Doull, one eyebrow upraised. “See how disobedient she is,” he said. “You should know what you are getting into.”

“I’ll take my chances,” O’Doull said with a laugh.

“And we will at last get our older sister out of the house!” Georges said. If the dance he and Charles danced wasn’t one of delight, it made an excellent counterfeit.

Galtier waited for Nicole to explode into fury. It didn’t happen. She said, “This is the happiest day of my life, and I am not going to let my two foolish brothers ruin it for me.”

The happiest day of my life. When the USA first invaded Quebec, Galtier had never imagined those words in connection with an American. Now Nicole spoke them altogether without self-consciousness. And now he did not explode into fury on hearing them. He poured himself more applejack, to serve as a shield against strangeness.