III

Catto had not consorted much with generals, only that one impassioned chat with Rosecrans; about General August Willich he was uncertain. Deference might be proper; Willich was military commandant of Cincinnati. Easy fellowship might be proper: Willich had served with distinction at Shiloh and Stones River and Chickamauga and Chattanooga. Also Catto was curious about the useless arm. And then the general was a foreigner, a revolutionary in Germany about fifteen years before. Catto was of two minds about revolutionaries. Washington and Jefferson and Ethan Allen. All those names. John Hancock. But now times had changed, and those men were lauded, by stout officials on special occasions, in much the way that police chiefs and mayors were lauded. So he wondered about Willich.

Catto took a hitch in his trousers, once more admonished his inner devils, and advanced warily; he was properly amazed when Willich glowed and twinkled like every man’s grandfather and spoke warmly: “Catto. Good to see you, son. We should have met before; I hear you were wounded at Stones River. That was quite a time. Come and sit down.” They shook hands, Willich extending his left without awkwardness; the right arm hung limp, paralyzed. Resaca, August, 1864; so short a time ago, this man was whole! Catto liked him immediately, instinctively, as one always tended to like another who reflected some feature, some quality, a strong nose or full lips or humor in the eyes. The general stood about six feet and was blond and blue-eyed and fair-skinned and bore an open and generous expression, sad, affectionate, the wrinkles of a man, the eyes and mouth of a boy. “Been wounded again since, hey? Tell me what I can do for you.”

Catto mumbled. This heartiness was irregular. Approaching Willich had been in the nature of a hard climb, a short but slippery step to the shoulder of one suspicious captain, a leap then to a bored and indifferent lieutenant-colonel, a slip sidewise to the adjutant, a day’s wait for regrouping and provisioning, and here he was with this warm and friendly gentleman, slightly rumpled, who called him son. Catto seated himself. The room was more like a parlor or a banker’s office than a general’s headquarters: a desk, a sofa, several armchairs, a few engravings of horses and game-birds, a cabinet. No crossed sabers, no racked rifles. Willich himself seemed about to potter, to pull out a feather duster and set to work. He rubbed his hands and smiled. “A cigar?”

“Why, thank you. Sir.”

“You’ve earned a cigar. I don’t use them myself.” Willich tossed him a thick phosphorous match; Catto struck it on a button (Damn! Wrong thing to do!) and waited for the gases to dissipate. “I see you turned down a colonelcy with the Twenty-fifth Corps.”

Catto blew smoke, and examined the lighted cigar in manly fashion. “Yes sir. It was quite a temptation. But I don’t much like them. Sort of uneasy around them. Never saw one till I was about twelve. And they’re temporary, I imagine; why else would anyone offer a colonelcy to a young fellow like me? And where would I be later when they took my black heroes away from me and sent them home?”

“Yes. I understand. However. You have business.”

“Yes.” Catto was relieved and emboldened. “The boy Thomas Martin has been sentenced to death. You know about that?”

Willich nodded and looked owlish.

“That’s a terrible thing for grown men to do,” Catto went on.

“Oh it is, it is,” Willich told him gravely.

Catto scowled. “Well then, well then—” He bit down on the cigar.

“You take that seriously,” the general said.

“I do,” said Catto. “I am the one he shot and I am the one who brought him in. He is a poor country boy who cannot read or write, and is the next thing to an orphan, and wouldn’t know Mister Lincoln from Jeff Davis. If you don’t mind my saying so, General, I am damned upset about this.”

“Well, I think I do mind,” said Willich. “In the first place, bad language never saved a lost cause.”

“I apologize,” Catto said stiffly.

“And in the second place, the boy has already been paroled in my charge.” Willich was grinning. Catto cursed himself for a fool. Willich said, “He has already polished my boots half a dozen times, and carried a message to Judge Stallo—halfway across Cincinnati without a guard!—and returned promptly with an answer. He is saving his tips and will surely be a success in later life.”

“I’m a fool,” Catto said.

“Ah. Then go back one step and try to think like a general. Do you know that there are still a thousand guerrillas in Kentucky? Even in southern Illinois? Illinois was settled mainly by southerners. Those people can do great damage. The death sentence has become automatic, but only to deter, only as a caution. It would hardly do to let them feel that they could kill and burn with impunity.”

“But the boy wasn’t a guerrilla.”

“We cannot be sure. We resolved the doubt in our own favor; in favor of innocent people who are potential victims. That we must do. We had no choice.”

“But the boy.” Catto’s confusion deepened.

“I interviewed the boy when they brought him in,” Willich said. “For heaven’s sake, Catto, what must you think of me? The court-martial was necessary. The verdict was necessary. The boy will have the freedom of the city and will do odd jobs for my staff. When the war ends I will give him a gold piece and a suit of clothes and send him home.”

“For God’s sake,” Catto sighed.

“You astound me, Lieutenant. A man of your talents. Now look here. In Germany I was almost killed—I was exiled, did you know that?—fighting for a republic, and against the censorship, and for life’s good things for all. And here I was an editor, a good newspaper, the Deutsche Republikaner right here in the city, and I tell you, what I care most about is injustice. All my life. Why am I here? With this useless wing?” Willich had grown vehement; Catto nodded respectfully. “Well, well,” said the general. “So. You see. Why would you want to stay in the army if the army was what you seem to think it is?”

“Now how did you know that? Sir.”

“Generals hear things. The army is people, and people are not bad, my boy. Do you think a man like Abraham Lincoln would sign an order for that boy’s execution? Ah, no. Ah, no.”

Again Catto nodded. “That occurred to me. But he’s a long way off. Maybe,” and he grinned ingratiatingly at his own impudence, “it’s because I’m a good lieutenant: an order is an order. So I didn’t believe—”

“But you are not a good lieutenant,” Willich said primly. “You are known, to me and others, as an easy officer and somewhat puppyish.”

Aghast, Catto sat silent.

“On the other hand, your men have fought well and none have deserted. So maybe you are not such a bad lieutenant after all, hey? You see, generals are not fools. In that, times have changed. When I was your age all generals were fools.”

Catto nodded sheepishly.

“Was there anything else?” Willich was now merely-polite.

“Yes.” Catto cleared his throat. “Yes sir, there is. I have a Jonah named Routledge, over forty, has nine children at home. He’s more trouble than he’s worth and I want to see if I can get him out of the army.”

Willich’s brows rose, came to half-mast, rose again.

“It just makes no sense having him here,” Catto said.

“Well, that’s another problem.” Willich’s tone was encouraging, intimate; Catto experienced a tickle of hope. “What makes sense, and what does not.” Hope died. “It depends on who is deciding, does it not. However. Over forty, you say. Large family. I’ll look into it. Anything else?”

“No sir. Happy to have met you at last and I hope I’ve been no bother.” Catto had wanted a warmer note but his tongue, or his heart, failed him.

“My pleasure, Lieutenant. Good day to you.”

Catto went out cursing himself, not sure why, needing hullaballoo and uproar to drown out a sharp and nagging inner voice, the voice of failure, of pomposity; the cracking voice of a pimpled schoolboy. Within him, mysterious calefactions, moral cramps. He stomped across a parade ground, lowering and dour, and sure enough, the thought came, adding shame to his other perplexities, quandaries and conundrums: God damn them all! He looked about him, an action unwilled and irresistible, but he was alone.

Still, he had accomplished a morning’s work. Converse with a general; the boy safe; a word in for Routledge. Not to mention a fine cigar; he drew on it briskly now, and frowned slightly to give himself importance. He felt rather a new man, one whose circle of acquaintances included those of the highest rank and attainment; one who had single-handed saved Thomas Martin; one who was shipping Routledge home, with a hearty grip of the hand and a few sound aphorisms. His stomp altered to a swagger. Vanity, vanity.

“I suppose I must accustom myself to this doing nothing.” He launched a greasy ring of cigar smoke, domestic this time, hours later; it undulated briefly in the yellow light, floated to Phelan’s cluttered table, ringed a phial, writhed, clung, decomposed, vanished.

“Not bad,” Phelan said. “I wish the flesh would behave so. Leave not a rack behind. Your boys were burying horses today. Some of them anyway. The big fellow with a beard.”

“Routledge. Probably buried his own foot by mistake, and is still out there wondering what to do about it. Is there a medical term for people who never do anything right?”

“Doctors,” Phelan said. “Here is a young lady who describes herself as twenty, minister’s daughter, cultured, seeking to cheer a military gentleman with news from home.”

“A spinster. Doomed to the single life. Bad complexion,” and Catto went on quickly, avoiding Phelan’s eye, “bow legs, doubtless overweight. What newspaper is that?”

“The Gazette. You make her sound like those female nurses. Did I tell you of the official requirements?”

“No. Nothing under sixty, I suppose.”

“Wait.” Phelan scrabbled among documents. “Here we are. Listen now, because this shows that Washington is on to you. ‘Past thirty,’” he read, “‘healthy, plain almost to repulsion in dress, and devoid of personal attractions.’”

“That would be going some,” Catto growled. “In my present state Surgeon Phelan is not devoid of personal attractions.”

“Dear me. But we are of different faiths.”

Catto sat up, swung his unshod feet to the floor, hunched forward. “Jack. I want to ask you something. Tell me about the smallpox.”

“The smallpox?” Phelan tossed aside his newspaper. “At this time of night? Well, it is still a problem. All the conditions—”

“No. Yours.”

“Mine?” Phelan blinked and mulled. “Ah no. I see what you’re at. This is not smallpox.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I thought—”

“Of course you did. I don’t mind. No, no. This is merely the chicken pox, my friend. As experienced by a young man of four, in a family of eight living in one room, in a house of twelve rooms, in each a family of six or so. A house surrounded by many other such houses, served by pumps in the street and earth closets. I was lucky it was not the black plague. That is what they call the ould sod. Although the country folk had it better.”

“God. You were lucky to get out.”

“I got out at eighteen, when it was too late. My brothers and sisters never got out, though four of them were lucky enough to die young. There were three more, you know, who died the first month. Hearth and home. The Anglo-Irish provided charity each Christmas, in joyous celebration of the birth of our Lord.”

“I know. I had nine years in a home for orphans.”

“Nasty little buggers, no doubt.”

“Yessir. And perishing cold, believe me. We used to fight just to keep warm.” He laughed awkwardly and blushed.

“Oho. What have you remembered?”

Catto laughed frankly then, in hoots and roars. “Buggers is right. The vilest set of moral cripples in the United States of America.”

Phelan applauded. “Now that’s a lovely phrase, from you.”

Catto was still red. “There was a lady used to come with exhortations three or four times a week. God and the good life and so forth. She used to hug us. She hugged all of us, so nobody was any worse embarrassed than anybody else. She was a good stout lady with a great soft bosom, and she had the trick of pulling your head right in there in between. Some of us used to line up twice. Those over twelve.”

Phelan was cackling.

“And the food. I eat better in the army. Sometimes I’m sick to my stomach just remembering that food.”

“Ah. Unlike me you never knew the ecstasies of family life.” Phelan pulled a sour face. “I wish to God my own mother had been blessed with a bosom. She was a broomstick and spent her life half-starved. I pass over any mention of the food itself. The garbage in New York was tastier. New York was paradise.”

“How’d you get there?”

“Jumped ship. Which is why I signed on. I was, if you can believe it, rather a bright boy, and won a certificate from the fathers, which impressed the captain of some tub out of Cork. Oh, I was sick.”

“Well, I’m glad you made it.”

“And now I am an honored member of a respected profession. I never sent a penny home and never wrote. Damn them all.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I mean it, all right. I never asked to be born, and starved, and disfigured. I can’t even grow a decent beard to hide the damn things. I tried once and it looked like the mange. The ladies are very polite.”

Catto brooded. “The ladies. God damn it, Jack. They drive me crazy.”

“Yes. We are born with these great cannon and no work for them. Did you ever have a look at a newborn baby boy? Enormous equipment. There is something mysterious about it: animals have their heats and such, and go sniffing about in their seasons, but men must be trained to decent behavior. We are always ready. Give us five minutes with nothing to do and we start moaning and scratching ourselves. Or burying ourselves in fat bosoms at the age of twelve. Well, boy, that’s the way of it. And it’s worse here. An army of scruffy, ill-bred louts with time on their hands. They’ll have something else on their hands every night.”

“Not me,” Catto said stiffly. “I’m too old for that.”

“Oh no. Too scared. Hell-fire or whatever. But you’re right. Save it for the ladies. You’ll enjoy it all the more. Now I wish you would let me get on with my studies here. I am looking for an advertisement by a beautiful young woman with a figger like Juno and ungovernable passions, in desperate need of an expert, pockmarked Irish surgeon of thirty-four. Her father must be a rich distiller with old-fashioned beliefs like the dowry.”

“Ask her if she has a sister,” Catto said. He groaned feebly. “Or even a widowed grandmother.”

Catto was a virgin. Virgins existed in those days. One of his great fears had been that he would die a virgin. The fear sprang not from any desire to leave descendants, but from lecherous curiosity and a poor orphan’s sense of waste. The death of a virgin was to Catto inexpressibly sad, being also a contradiction, a contravention of natural law, an unfulfillment, a betrayal of logic, of nature itself, something in it of the house that burns the day they finish glazing, or the pumpkin pie fumbled, hot from the oven, spang on the day’s heap of dust, scraps and mouse droppings. And it was easy enough to die a virgin. Millions of young people were carried off betimes by a merciful Providence, catapulted directly to the Good Place and spared poxes, thumbscrews, suppurations—and raptures. In war, yes, many. And woman was, as much as death, an ultimate mystery; sad to miss the one when the other was inevitable. Catto, in whom motive and means flourished, had lacked opportunity and courage. First because in an orphanage administered by God, or by his canting surrogates, young gentlemen tended to find pleasure in one another; Catto was fifteen before he spoke a single serious word to a female under thirty-five, and his seduction was accomplished not by a buxom, raven-haired beauty out of Walter Scott, much less by some fair, inaccessible Rowena, but by a plumpish rogue called Chester. And then because he was afraid, intensely afraid, not precisely of God (Catto was uncertain about God, and at best vexed with Him), but of lightnings, thunders, witherings, castrations and simple horsewhippings. Also of failure, and of unspecified marks of shame: a scarlet letter, boils, a permanent erection necessitating bespoke britches. And then came the war, and camp-followers, with many men behaving like animals, and Catto saw no reason not to join them, really, having long thought of himself as a mutt, a hybrid of the better beasts, lone wolf, gay dog, young cock, Tom Catto; but he made a discovery, a most inopportune, piteous and calamitous discovery: he was a coward. His cowardice took the form of a haughty belief in his own singularity, which kept him off public conveyances, so to speak, and left him waiting endlessly on crowded corners for cabs that never came. The dreams and fantasies that now and again overmastered him were trite; the evasions and lies that permitted him to live on terms of manly equality with the Phelans of this world—those painful twists and strains so alien to a young, direct, apparently uncomplicated man—left his withers always badly wrung; they were voluntary and public, and therefore more shameful than his incorrigible private passions. But he knew no “nice” girls, who were anyway not to be so rudely thought of; and in 1863 a special hospital had been established in Louisville for the treatment of venereal tragedies: the tales were harrowing. Rumor, gossip, myth, loneliness: these were what he (and more others than would confess) knew of fleshly love. Or for that matter of ethereal love. Marriage would, someday, be natural and necessary and doubtless even pleasant, and marriage implied—though Catto was of two minds about this—a creature soft, ignorant, fragile and vulnerable, above all vulnerable, whose bruising destiny it was to submit to pain and indignity, and whom it was simply not fair to sully with the residue, the leavings, of past concupiscence. (The very word, concupiscence, in use among the clergy, appalled him.) Catto had sufficient sin in his heart—those throbs of pleasure at a good shot that took a life—and felt that other slates might better be kept clean. He was always kind to children, as became a hero.

So this lieutenant fought his own war too, moving through company streets on nippy fall evenings, the sun just down, the cold air with its hint of smoke quickening his breath and blood so that his body blazed and then ached, desiring unknown warmths, as though he bore, slung in his trousers, a cold, hungry bear cub, so cold, so hungry, that often Catto turned away from his companions, from himself, with moist eyes as a deep, murderous, clutching emptiness annihilated him. “Just thinking about a girl I knew,” he would say, and Phelan would chuckle and tell him, “Ah, my boy, if I had your youth and vigor,” and they would go on to talk of other things.

Yet it was not all bad. Catto had sense enough to recognize the glory of expectations, and to suspect fulfillments, and sense enough to know that if sufficient generations honored any state of mind or body (God looks after naturals) there might indeed be something honorable in it. I wish I had a girl, he would think; someone to save it for; virtue in a vacuum was not easy. Virtue, virtue, virtue my ass, he would think, and add round expletives, as men do when profoundly embarrassed, making inner noises, profane and loud, to distract themselves, to drive off a shameful memory or an unwelcome truth. And he breathed the chill night, calming himself, remembering that he was a lieutenant of infantry and so forth. Give me time, he decided, and I will do a bit better. At the notion of a future he wondered again what that wife of his might be like. Honey-colored hair, he hoped, color of eyes unimportant, but a fine figger, she must be a fine figger; and that brought him to the beginning again, to his avid, detached, hovering lusts, and he saw himself trapped in a circle of want and wait, wax and wane, will and wont. So marched heavily back to his cabin, his men, a nip of whiskey, a game of cards. The cards eased him, fifty-two of them flying about the blanket like birds in patterns, five fluttering into his hand, raising and relieving small excitements, and the money, bits and pieces and scraps of scrip to bet, to win, to count, to stack and stow, and if all the woman he had tonight was the smallest corner of a pasteboard queen, squeezing slowly into sight after the draw, he unsure if she was one of his original pair and then knowing she was a red-headed stranger, glancing in spite of himself at the glittering money in the yellow lamplight—well, if that was all he had tonight it was better than a ball in the belly, and it was no small consolation to know that he had survived. Where there’s life there’s hope, he thought, as Silliman laid down three aces.

“Well this is a galled jade they have given me,” Phelan said.

“It’s a dark night,” Catto said. “You don’t want a horse too frisky on a night like this, and a little snow in the air too.” He trembled with excitement, and thanked God that Phelan could not see it.

“Nobody else out, anyway.”

They trotted along, just north of the city, no starlight and no moonlight but a faint glow all about them. Now and then a spark of lamplight, a farmhouse. Catto shifted in the saddle, perturbed. Fires on the hearth. Father and Mother and Little Willie and Baby Mary. “God damn,” he said aloud. “God damn,” but the vision persisted. “What’s wrong?” Phelan asked. “Nothing,” Catto said. He saw the kitchen, a long, solid wooden table, a tremendous fire in a tremendous stone fireplace. Around the table ruddy faces, in the warm air warm smells: burning wood, charred meat, leek soup. Catto blinked, and contracted in mysterious embarrassments. A cold night, November, winter closing in.

Well, all right, it would be not bad. Leek soup. Hot potatoes and butter. Worth saying grace.

He considered some future Catto, father of seven. You, Little Willie, chew with your mouth shut. Baby Mary, come here for a pat.

His face was warm in the freezing air. Where did a man pat his own daughter? Fool. This is your home. This blue suit. That’s all. Even the horse is only borrowed.

“Not long now,” Phelan sang out. They clattered across a bridge. “Check small arms.”

It was true: in the distance Catto saw a light. A mile, two. He drew in a deep breath, and the cold air seared, and abruptly his body was hot, and there was a deep, flickering, lapping ache in his belly, and all upon him, as if he lay at the bottom of the sea, yearning for air, dizzy and dying. He blinked again, firmly, and brought his knees tighter against the horse. He wondered again what she would look like. Smell like. Better than leek soup? Cold air streamed beneath his collar; he hunched; Phelan had led him into a canter and he had not really noticed. Quick! Quick!

And there they were, whickering into the stable-yard like a couple of knights-errant, with a hostler emerging to take the reins, and Phelan dismounting with all the grace and nonchalance of some silly dook somewhere, as if he would fling the man a bag of silver. Faint odors steamed from the inn, contended briefly with manure, lost, regrouped, steamed forth again. Catto had never seen, or smelled, or heard so clearly; his fingertips tingled. “Pound for pound,” he said, “I am the strongest man in the whole world.”

“That’s right,” Phelan said. “Just behave now.” An oil-lamp glowed above the door, another on the porch. Phelan strode in; Catto shut the door carefully, and removed his hat timidly. They stood in a bright hallway, before them a grand staircase rising wide, curving both ways like a ram’s horns; to the right and left of them were doors, a saloon, a dining room. Upon a polished table, candlesticks, a dancing flower of light. “Some house, hey? It was once a rich man’s.”

“I believe that.”

From the saloon peered a slight man of some distinction; his hair was brushed, his shirt ruffled. He was bare of whiskers, and wore black. “Jack Phelan.”

“Hello, host. This is Lieutenant Catto.”

“How do,” Catto said.

Their host bowed. “Stanley. Give me your hats and coats. Gloves. There’s a bottle of the best inside. Go on. Ladies be along shortly.”

The saloon was properly dark, three or four candelabra, and a low fire in a long stone fireplace. Catto, jittery, stepped to the fireplace and performed traditional rubs, claps and hand-wringings until he realized that he was not at all cold. “God’s sake,” he said, “give me a drink.”

The barkeep, who might have been Stanley’s brother, announced that his name was Horgan and handed a bottle to Phelan. “All alone tonight,” Phelan said.

“Place is yours,” Horgan agreed.

With bottle and glasses and boots Phelan clinked and creaked to a table; he drew the cork, whiskey flowed. “Drink, boy. This is more like.”

But Catto paused. He sniffed the whiskey, and dipped the tip of his tongue, and then stood calming his flutter, telling himself that he was a silly fellow: this was a beautiful night in November, a fitting fall night, and there was not a man in the house that he could not put down if necessary, and there were steaks and ladies to look forward to. So there was no need for shakes, and no need to force himself into the evening with quick whiskey, and really no need to think of this, or of himself, as unusual. A soldier’s night. No: an officer’s night. And by God! but I am glad to be an officer! Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow you will not die, and what is the sense of living if you cannot eat, drink and be merry?

Phelan raised his glass. “Now what are you thinking of?”

“Whiskey and women,” Catto said lazily. “I was wondering if you wanted advice.”

Phelan jeered silently and said, “I know your kind. Ignorant and blustery.”

“I can’t be ignorant. I spent ten years in school and was given a certificate.”

“And what did you learn?” Phelan sipped whiskey; his eyes roved. He was not listening much.

But then Catto, also sipping whiskey, was not talking to be heard. “I can read and write, and spell pretty well, and multiply and divide. I know where babies come from and I know where the continents are. I know some Latin words like amicus amici and omnis morris. The orphanage taught me all that, also to be on time for meals.”

“Even Australia?”

“Especially Australia.”

“That’s not bad. You see there is something to be said for institutions.”

“Yeh.” Catto drank again and was suddenly, almost miraculously, calm. Slightly amused. After all. Just whores. And that Stanley is only a pimp and this mansion is only a fancy house.

The whiskey stung merrily inside him, and life took on a certain clarity. There were eighteen several candles in this room. He had been shot twice and had killed eleven times for sure. He had no living kin that he knew of. He was handsome, with light brown hair, now and again reddish, and brown eyes and a ruddy face and a bushy mustache and a handsome, almost hooked, highland nose. Not merely handsome but handsome in a notably healthy way; not like a pale handsome Frenchman. But there must be red-faced Frenchmen too. “Horgan. Bring us some apples.”

“Good God.”

“I like apples. Leave me be.”

He was mercurial and sanguinary, as the almanacs had it, of noble port, and demeaned himself well in society. At the moment he was in the pink in all respects, and had washed with soap. With the war over, for most purposes, and apples arriving for his private tooth. He began—it lasted only a moment—to grope toward honest thought: always this man was within me, and what I was was the beginning of what I am, and someone else is still in the making here, with the rules and patterns already laid out.

It was almost inevitable that he would someday be a general, and wear a purfled hat. “Some day,” he said, and stopped. Horgan had come to set a dish of apples upon the grainy table.

“Some day what?”

“Nothing. You’re quiet tonight.”

“I am not here to entertain lieutenants,” Phelan said. “I was thinking of maggots and my own wisdom.”

“Ah. Surgeons know everything.”

“Surgeons know nothing,” Phelan began. He saw Catto’s eyes then, and turned.

The door had opened and two ladies were entering. Good God, Catto thought, as he was burned alive. These are beautiful. These are not just whores. These are lady whores.

He proved to be perfectly right. The one with black hair glared. “Hodja do,” she enunciated. “Do you not rise?”

Some hours later Catto whispered, “Listen,” low and urgent, “help me. Please. Teach me things.”

“Oh you great bull,” she breathed in retail delight, “oh you hot lover,” and he grinned in the dark and judged himself a devilish sly fellow, though uncomfortably breathless and scared silly of sin.