Part 40 (1/2)

A rifle shot rang out. A bullet struck sparks from the bricks just behind the head of the soldier who'd thrown the grenade. He hit the dirt. Three other Confederates pointed in three different directions, which meant n.o.body'd seen where the shot came from. The machine gun might be gone, but the Yankees hadn't given up the fight for this block. It didn't seem as if they would till they were all dead.

Down in the CSA, some people-mostly those who hadn't been through the Great War-still believed U.S. soldiers were nothing but a pack of cowards. Tom laughed as he ducked down into a sh.e.l.l hole to shed his mask and smoke a cigarette-he didn't turn blue and keel over, so it was safe enough. And much better not to let the match or the coal give the d.a.m.nyankee sniper a target. He just wished Confederate propaganda were true. Pittsburgh would have fallen long since.

A runner came skittering back to him, calling his name. ”Here I am!” he shouted, not raising his head. ”What's up?”

”Sir, there's a Yankee with a flag of truce right up at the front,” the runner replied. ”Wants to know if he can come back and d.i.c.ker a truce for the wounded.”

The last time a U.S. officer proposed something like that, he'd scouted out the C.S. positions as he moved with his white flag. The d.a.m.nyankees kept the truce, but they knew just where to strike after it ended. Tom threw down the half-finished smoke. ”I'll meet the son of a b.i.t.c.h at the line,” he growled.

He made his own flag of truce from a stick and a pillowcase, then went up with the runner. The truce already seemed to be informally under way. Firing had stopped. Confederates were swapping packs of cigarettes for U.S. ration cans. Both sides deplored that. Neither could do anything about it. Commerce trumped orders. The Yankees had better canned goods and worse tobacco, the Confederates the opposite.

A U.S. captain in a dirty uniform waited for Tom. ”I could have come to you,” the man remarked.

Colleton smiled a crooked smile. ”I bet you could,” he said, and explained why he didn't want the Yankee back of his lines.

”I wouldn't do a thing like that,” the U.S. officer said, much too innocently. ”And I'm sure you wouldn't, either.”

”Who, me?” Tom said with another smile like the first. The U.S. captain matched it. They'd been through the mill, all right. Tom got down to business: ”Is an hour long enough, or do you want two?”

”Split the difference?” the d.a.m.nyankee suggested, and Tom nodded. The captain looked at his watch. ”All right, Lieutenant-Colonel. Truce till 1315, then?”

”Agreed.” Tom stuck out his hand. The U.S. captain shook it. They both turned back to their own men and shouted out the news. Corpsmen from both sides came forward. Ordinary soldiers did some more trading. Somebody had a football. C.S. and U.S. soldiers tossed it back and forth. Tom remembered the 1914 Christmas truce, when the Great War almost unraveled. He knew that wouldn't happen here. Both sides meant it now.

Corpsmen poked around through rubble. They called outside of smashed houses. Sometimes they got answers from smashed people trapped inside. Soldiers helped move wreckage so the medics could do their job. When U.S. corpsmen found wounded C.S. soldiers, they gave them back to the Confederates. Corpsmen in b.u.t.ternut returned the favor for the Yankees.

Tom and the officer in green-gray-his name was Julian Nesmith-hadn't agreed to that, but neither of them tried to stop it. ”Won't change how things end up one way or the other,” Nesmith remarked.

”I was thinking the same thing about smokes and grub a little while ago,” Tom agreed. He'd handed Captain Nesmith a couple of packs of Raleighs, and was now the proud possessor of two cans of deviled ham, a delicacy esteemed on both sides of the front. His mouth watered. If he could scrounge up some eggs . . . Even if he couldn't, the ham would be a treat.

”We might as well be comfortable as we can while we slaughter each other,” Nesmith said.

”We're enemies,” Tom said simply. ”You won't make me believe the United States wants to do anything but to squash my country, and I don't expect I can persuade you the Confederate States aren't full of villains.”

”It wouldn't matter if you did,” Nesmith answered. ”As long as you've got villains at the top, all they have to do is shout loud enough to make everybody else go along.”

That came close to hitting below the belt. Tom hadn't much cared to listen to Jake Featherston on the wireless at all hours of the day and night. But Jake Featherston had got Kentucky and Houston back into the CSA after the d.a.m.nyankees stole them at gunpoint in 1917. The Whigs hadn't come close to managing that. Featherston was doing something about the Negroes in the Confederate States, too. The Whigs hadn't known what to do. And so . . .

”Who's a villain and who isn't depends on how you look at things,” Tom said.

”Sometimes,” Julian Nesmith replied.

They shook hands again when the truce ended. Corpsmen disappeared. Men got back under cover. Almost ceremoniously, a U.S. soldier fired a Springfield to warn anybody who hadn't got the word. In that same spirit, a Confederate soldier answered with one round from a Tredegar.

Then another Confederate squeezed off a burst from his automatic rifle. A U.S. machine gun opened up. Tom sighed. The little peace had been nice while it lasted.

Salt Lake City wasn't h.e.l.l, but you could see it from there. Armstrong Grimes peered toward the rubble of the Mormon Temple-twice built and now twice destroyed. He peered very cautiously. All the Mormons still fighting were veterans. Some of them were veterans of two uprisings. Show any body part, and they'd put a bullet through it faster than you could say Jack Robinson.

Armstrong wondered who the h.e.l.l Jack Robinson was. He also wondered how life would change now that he was a sergeant instead of a corporal. He'd hesitated before sewing the new stripes onto his sleeve. The Mormons' snipers liked to pick off officers and noncoms.

Yossel Reisen had two stripes now. He wore them, too. Their promotions both came through while the regiment was in reserve in Thistle. Somebody must have thought they were on the ball when that woman blew herself up in Provo. All Armstrong knew was that the two of them hadn't got badly hurt when the people bomb went off, and afterward he'd done what anybody else would have. That must have been enough to impress one officer or another.

He turned to Reisen, who crouched behind a stone fence not far away. ”You hear the skinny last night?” he said. ”They figure Sergeant Stowe's gonna make it.”

”Yeah, somebody told me.” Yossel nodded. ”I would've thought he was a goner for sure. He looked like h.e.l.l.”

”Boy, didn't he?” Armstrong said.

”He's lucky.”

”Hunh-unh.” Now Armstrong shook his head. ”We're lucky. We didn't catch shrapnel. We aren't in the hospital with our guts all messed up. If Stowe was lucky, he'd still be here, same as we are. Instead, he's in a bed somewhere, and they probably have to shoot morphine into him all the G.o.dd.a.m.n time. Belly wounds are supposed to hurt like anything.” lucky. We didn't catch shrapnel. We aren't in the hospital with our guts all messed up. If Stowe was lucky, he'd still be here, same as we are. Instead, he's in a bed somewhere, and they probably have to shoot morphine into him all the G.o.dd.a.m.n time. Belly wounds are supposed to hurt like anything.”

His vehemence surprised him. It must have surprised Yossel Reisen, too. Armstrong didn't usually argue with him. Yossel was older and more experienced, even if he didn't care about rank. Here, though, Armstrong couldn't keep quiet. And after a few seconds, Yossel nodded. ”Well, you're right,” he said. ”He's alive, and that's good, but he still isn't lucky.”

”There you go,” Armstrong said. ”That's how it looks to me, too.”

”Sarge! Hey, Sarge!” somebody yelled.

Armstrong needed a moment to remember that meant him. ”Yeah? What is it?” he said, a beat slower than he should have.

”Mormon coming up with a flag of truce.”

Firing had died away. Armstrong hadn't noticed that, either. He felt as far down on sleep as he had before his regiment got R and R. Cautiously, he stuck his head up again. Sure as h.e.l.l, here came a Mormon in what the rebels used for a uniform: chambray s.h.i.+rt, dungarees, and boots. ”Hold it right there, buddy, or you'll never know how your favorite serial comes out on the wireless!” Armstrong yelled.

The Mormon waved the white flag. ”I want to talk to an officer. I mean no harm.”

”Yeah, now tell me another one,” Armstrong said. ”How do I know you're not a G.o.dd.a.m.n people bomb waiting to go off?”

”Because I say I am not,” the rebel answered. ”I am a major in the Army of the State of Deseret.” Armstrong could hear the capital letters thud into place.

Capital letters didn't impress him. ”And I'm the Queen of the May,” he said. ”You want to come forward?” He waited for the Mormon to nod, then made a peremptory gesture. ”Strip. Show me you're not loaded with f.u.c.king TNT.”

If looks could kill . . . But they couldn't, and TNT might. Fuming, the Mormon major shed his boots, his jeans, and his s.h.i.+rt. He even took off his Stetson. That left him in a peculiar-looking unders.h.i.+rt and longish drawers. It was getting toward long-underwear time-nights were downright chilly-but it hadn't got there yet. The strange getup didn't particularly bother Armstrong; he'd seen it on other Mormons. Some sort of religious rule said they had to wear it.

That didn't mean he had to trust it. ”Lift up the s.h.i.+rt,” he called. ”The drawers are snug enough-don't bother with those.” The Mormon did, showing a hard belly covered with hair a shade darker than the blond hair on his head. Armstrong waved to him. ”Now turn around.” After the rebel did, Armstrong reluctantly nodded. ”All right. Looks like you're clean. Put your stuff back on and come ahead.”

As the Mormon major dressed, he said, ”I ought to complain to your officers.”

”Go ahead, buddy,” Armstrong said. ”You think they'll come down on me? I I think they'll pat me on the back. They don't trust you people any further than I do, and I don't trust you at all.” think they'll pat me on the back. They don't trust you people any further than I do, and I don't trust you at all.”

”Believe me, we feel the same way about you,” the Mormon said, bending to tie his bootlaces. ”If you would only leave us alone-”

”If you hadn't risen up, I'd be back east somewhere with Confederates trying to shoot me,” Armstrong said. ”And you'd be here in Utah, happy as a G.o.dd.a.m.n clam. They didn't even conscript you people.”

”We want to be free. We want to be independent,” the Mormon said as he picked up his white flag. ”What's so wicked about that?” He came toward the U.S. lines.

Armstrong laughed a dirty laugh. ”You want to have lots of wives. Are they all in the same bed when you screw 'em? Does one lick your b.a.l.l.s while another one gets on top?”

The Mormon's jaw set. ”It's a good thing I don't know your name, Sergeant.” He walked past Armstrong as if he didn't exist. Armstrong called for a couple of privates to take him back toward the rear.