When the War Is Over (13 page)

“General, I don't know how to thank you.”

“You can help me with my coat for a start.” Willich smiled again, his fair, blond, white-toothed smile, the blue eyes warming. “Generals have their uses. Thank you. Did you come mounted, or by wagon?”

“Mounted.”

“Good.” He opened the door and bellowed for his horse to be made ready. “We'll wait in the hall here. March wind still blowing, I suppose.”

“That's right, sir.”

“Mmm. It's all right at night, with a good fire. I hope you're comfortably quartered out there.”

“Yes sir. Good tight wooden barracks and cabins. Do you live here, sir?”

“Here? McLean Barracks, you mean? Not on your life, boy. No. I stay in Mount Auburn, with Johann Stallo. Do you know Judge Stallo? You must meet him. A mathematician of note, also a physicist, and a pillar of the law. General Wallace invited him a couple of years ago to become a civilian judge advocate, a supreme court, you might say almost, for this district.”

Catto was saying “Mm. Mm. Mm. Yessir,” wishing the general's horse would arrive, wondering where this day would take him, hoping for another hooker of that foreign liquor and impatient to see old Routledge. “Routledge,” he would say, “Routledge, my lad, I'm sorry, old son, but we're going to have to let you go. Things just haven't worked out. No hard feelings.”

The general and the lieutenant jogged cautiously, hunched and wrapped against the bitter winds. “The River Rhine, way up there,” said Willich with a flourish of one gloved hand; the reins flapped. “You know what we call that section there, to the north?”

“Over-the-Rhine.”

“Ah. You know the city then.”

“Some.”

“The Black Bear.”

Catto laughed. “I've heard of it. Not been there.”

“Nor I,” Willich said, smiling. “No carousing since I was a student,” he went on in mock grief, “and not much even then. It is not good to be born into busy times. As you are discovering.”

“I don't mind.”

Willich was flagrantly a general and Catto was happy to be riding beside him. Wagons and carriages skirted them respectfully. Drivers saluted. Catto sat tall and gazed out at the world with cool, critical eyes and a severe set to his lips. After a long silence he wondered if Willich might be laughing at him.

“This is a sad city,” said the general. “You know up there the police cannot even come. My own people. Honest peasants with a love of beer. Hm, hm. Half the taverns in the city are in a few blocks over that way, and half the brothels too. And fifty families in a building, with one privy.”

Catto was silent, and thought of Phelan.

“We try,” said Willich. “You know before the war I published the
Deutsche Republikaner
. I tried to make them proud of themselves, proud to be German, also American. It made them so proud that they fought every day with the Irish or the black men. This country is worse than Europe in that—everyone belongs to a little club of his own people, and despises everyone else. You remember Morgan's raid in sixty-two?”

“I wasn't in the neighborhood in sixty-two, sir.”

“That's right. Well, Morgan came up and jabbed at Lexington, so we sent troops down to help; and the city council, God bless them, all turned into generals and sent a hundred and twenty policemen with them, in the middle of serious riots right here.”

“Draft riots?”

“Nix, nix. The Irishers and the Negers. With the war we lost most of the shipping trade on the river, so there were not so many jobs for stevedores. So the Irishers tried to drive off the black men, declared war on them, invaded Bucktown, and so forth. They burned the Shakespeare House.”

“A theater?”

Willich laughed. “A bordello.”

“Who won the war?” Catto was slowly freezing; his cold eyelids drooped.

“The Irishers, I suppose. Anyway the Negers kept away from the waterfront after that. And you know my own people were mixed up in it too. Some said the Irishers were striking, and the Germans came to take their jobs but got scared off, and then the black men, who did not scare so easily.”

“A soldier's life is simpler.” Except for listening to generals. Where are we going? Should I ask?

“You see, I worry because I think this country is the last real chance on earth. If we can save this country then in time the others will follow us, and the world will be a great republic, with free men everywhere. You understand.”

“Well, I hope you're right, sir,” Catto said.

“Mm. Well. Of course there is a certain natural depravity in man that stands in the way.”

Oh my God.

“We have too many Wallensteins and not enough Schillers,” said this stately European.

Oh my God again.

“And why do I bother you with this,” the general wondered.

“It's very interesting,” Catto said.

“I tell it to you because you are so American. Everything. Your shape, your color, your manner. Even your obvious ability to transcend ignorance.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Catto.

“Just remember. The last chance for decency. For charity and generosity and true brotherhood. Alle menschen.”

“Yes sir,” Catto said. “Alle menschen.” Omnis morris.

“And here we are,” said General Willich.

It was a grand house and suitable, as might be occupied by senators, magnates of the old blood, whiskey wholesalers and other patricians; it lacked a lick of white paint but flaunted fluted pillars fencing a deep front porch patrolled now by a strapping sentry who saluted, sullen in the cold, and descended to take the reins. The officers clumped to the porch. Catto's boots were no longer bright; he buffed buttons, and followed Willich into the house.

Once in the drawing room he quailed: a covey of generals and colonels, a few civilians, all ancient, bearded, gray. He stood to attention, but his mutinous eyes roamed; as he felt his heartbeat quicken he noted eight or nine officers, appropriate furniture, a major at a desk, writing with his back to Catto, three grave elders, a stone fireplace and the flicker and hiss of cheery flames, a patterned carpet, a sideboard, bottles, decanters, a piano against one wall and above it a life-sized painting in a scrolled gold frame of a fat woman, reclining, wearing a small sheet of paper. Her breasts were plump, her red mouth at once amused and voracious; he understood that the sheet of paper was a letter, and judged from its position and her amusement that it was a love letter. Did she come with the house? Whose house was this? Where am I and what are they doing to me?

“An amateur of the arts, I see.” It was Dunglas the dancing-master, gliding close to stare down with his ice-blue eyes.

“I just came along with General Willich.”

“So you did. I think you may stand at ease.”

Catto relaxed formally. “Sir.”

“I'll remind the general. He won't want to keep you from your duties.”

“Fact is, I'm not too busy today. I could use a few minutes more with that lady.” Soldier-talk, he was suddenly, uncomfortably aware. In truth the lady was fatter than he liked.

Dunglas laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. All boys together. Perhaps Dunglas was not such a bad fellow. Catto saw Willich and Colonel Bardsley, and Hooker behind them, laughing out of that devilish, handsome, rakehell face. Pink cheeks; he kept out of the weather. Cold eyes like Dunglas; how did he choose his aides? A blade. The uniform spotless, unwrinkled. The general heard Dunglas, and beckoned to Catto, who strode forward, snappy, half fearful. Not fear, no. What then? He straightened and felt like a lackey, a poster, until Hooker said “At ease, Catto” and order flowed back into the room, a comforting and reassuring order that regulated the universe, from God to an ant, from Lincoln to Jacob, from Hooker to Catto. “Make yourself at home for a moment, Catto. You know Colonel Bardsley, of course. Judge Dickson, Judge Stallo, Mister James Barnett there with the glass in his hand, something of a writer, you know; and General …” But the generals were too much, and the names rattled by: General Hurly and General Burly and Colonels Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum. “You'll have a drink, won't you?” Hooker asked, and Catto nodded and was still trying to squeeze out an elegant word of thanks when Hooker waved toward the assiduous, silent officer at the writing desk and said, “Oh and of course you know Major Phelan.”

“Major Phelan?” Catto blurted the name and quality in tenor outrage as the writer turned, waggling fingers and twinkling, brows bouncing.

“Phelan,” Hooker said, “a glass for Captain Catto.”

“Captain Catto?” He blurted that too, with the same outrage; they all laughed and he blushed and saw himself as he knew they must see him: naked, utterly hairless, uniformly pink. Beards wagged, rejoicing, approving. “Sir,” he said shakily, and Phelan pressed a glass into his hand.

“You'd better drink that before you spill it on my carpet,” Hooker ordered merrily. “We've already drunk to Major Phelan. This one is for you.”

“Yes sir.” Catto found to his surprise that he was capable of speech. “I believe I could profit by it.”

“Bottoms up.”

Catto complied.

“Phelan will explain all this.”

“My compliments, Captain,” said Willich. “Ah, I tell you, gentlemen, to be twenty-five once again.”

At that Catto experienced the first tickle of irritation, but he continued to smile while Phelan clapped him on the shoulder and chirped Hibernian nothings at him, begob this and me-lad that, and meanwhile the generals and colonels were buzzing and flapping and crowing. “It's not much,” Hooker said, “for a man who could have been a colonel at twenty-three,” and they gurgled and guffawed, and so did their buckles and eagles and stars and sabers and bright, bright boots, all winking and jiggling and chuckling. In a blinding and mournful moment Catto realized that he was sick of them, and one of them. But he was still grinning politely, and managed a fine, crisp, captainly salute, and turned about and left them, striding ahead of Phelan so that not even the great healer could see his burning eyes.

Thank god for cold air! He took it in like fire, like medicine, and the shock of it gentled him. “Why am I so angry?”

“I don't know, boy. You've got another bar.”

“Oh, not that. Them. They are like so many hearty uncles with sour breath. Or a corral full of mules.”

“Mules, is it. Single file here. You go ahead.”

In an unpaved alley of sooty brick buildings Catto's mount stepped carefully between two ranks of coal-wagons. The afternoon remained cold, gray, barely tolerable. “Something is wrongs with me,” he went on when Phelan had caught up with him.

“You're bored.”

“More than that. For a moment there it was as if they were laying hands all over me.”

“You flatter yourself. My God, what a wind!”

“It is. Let's get out of it.”

“A few minutes more. I'm taking you to the hospital.”

“Oh are you? Why don't you tell me about all this?”

“Later. Ride in silence now, and think upon poverty, chastity and obedience.”

“I am a captain of infantry,” said Catto.

“And like all captains, you talk too much.”

Catto laughed aloud, and laughed a bit more, and said, or chanted, a ritual “You son of a bitch,” and felt better.

“He's a strange man,” Phelan repeated. “Less so now because of that fiancé of his, that Miss Grosbeak or whatever it is.”

“Olivia Groesbeck. She's thirty-nine.”

“You dirty gossip.”

“Military intelligence,” Catto said primly.

“Thirty-nine is all right. Hooker's fifty. And her father owns half of Ohio including the railroads. That makes her young and beautiful.”

“The old fellow's a Democrat. I've heard him called a Copperhead. He hates Lincoln.”

“Well, so does Hooker. Anyway the point about Hooker is that his men come first, like sons. That's the only explanation I can give you. He wants them all to look up to him and worship him, and in return he takes care of them. When he had the Army of the Potomac he gave them furloughs and fresh vegetables, and allowed Letterman to reorganize the whole medical service. You know medicine has always been a botch in the army. You've seen them swearing in cripples and consumptives, and leaving men to bleed to death.”

“I've seen you play at surgeon,” Catto said, and tossed down a drop.

“Yes, yes. Anyhow, Hooker cares. You remember when he said this country needed a dictator? He was angry because his men were dying with no need, and discipline did not exist anywhere outside the books, and he blamed it on Lincoln, so he said that to some fool reporter.”

“What did old Abe do to him?” Catto thought of the President as possibly his uncle; at any rate a good Illinois man, not one of those New York fellows.

“Gave him the Army of the Potomac, put the future of the country in his hands, and wrote him that only successful generals could appoint dictators.”

Catto rollicked. “That's a man. That's a real man.”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Phelan said slowly. “I am rather a Democrat myself.”

“A Democrat? A Democrat?”

“Now, now. There are a few, you know. But I like Lincoln well enough. Did you know the Eighth Wisconsin had a real eagle called Old Abe? They used to show him off. He would kill a rattler and they would bet on him.”

“I heard that.”

“So. About Hooker: he had Letterman set up divisional hospitals and put them together to make a corps hospital, and reform the ambulance service, and God knows how many men are running around today who should be dead. Thousands, thousands, and they owe it to Hooker. He is a nasty, unreliable man, cold and full of self-conceit, but he stands up straight and he takes care of his men.”

Catto brooded. “He spoke to me once about that. About pride. And taking care of your own, and so forth. I thought it was only bullshit.”