In at the Death (72 page)

“And now the United States have to pick up the pieces. The buck stops with us. If we do this wrong, our grandchildren will be down here fighting guerrillas. If we do it right, maybe we can all remember that we started out as one country. We have a lot of things to put behind us before we’re one country again, but we can try.”

His voice toughened. “That doesn’t mean the USA will be soft down here. You people who spent your lives as Confederates have no reason to love us, not yet. And we have to be careful about trusting you, too. You stained yourself with the darkest crime a people can commit, and too many of you aren’t sorry enough. So things won’t happen in a hurry, if they happen at all.

“But, for the past eighty-odd years, people in the USA and people in the CSA have all called themselves Americans. Maybe, if we work together, one day that will mean what it did before the War of Secession. Maybe it will mean we really are all part of the same country once again. I hope so, anyhow. That’s what President Dewey and I will work for. We’ll be as firm as we need to be. But we won’t be any firmer than that. If people down here work with us, maybe we’ll get where we ought to go. God grant we do.”

He stepped away from the lectern. This time, the applause from the soldiers was less enthusiastic, that from the civilians more so. Pound didn’t think it was a bad speech. Truman was setting out what he hoped would happen, not necessarily what he expected to happen. If the survivors in the CSA got rambunctious, the Army could always smash them.

The Vice President–elect didn’t just go away. He plunged into the crowd, shaking hands and talking with soldiers and locals alike. Reading the ribbons on Michael Pound’s chest, he said, “You had yourself a time, Lieutenant.”

“Well, sir, that’s one way to put it,” Pound said.

“I just want you to know that what you’re doing here is worthwhile,” Truman said. “We have to hold this country down while we reshape it. It won’t be easy. It won’t be quick. It won’t be cheap. But we’ve got to do it.”

“What if we can’t?” Pound asked.

“If we can’t, some time around the turn of the century the new Vice President–elect will come down here to tell your grandson what an important job he’s doing. And they’ll still search the locals before they let them listen.”

Pound had no children he knew about. The Army had been his life. But he understood what Truman was talking about. “What do you think of our chances?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Truman didn’t seem to have much patience with beating around the bush. “We’ve got to try, though. What other choice do we have?”

“Treating these people the way they treated their Negroes.” Michael Pound sounded perfectly serious. He was. He faced the possibility of massacring twenty-odd million people as a problem of ways and means, not an enormity. The Army had been shooting hostages since it entered the CSA. Now the whole Confederacy was a hostage.

But Truman shook his head. “No. Not even these people will ever turn me into Jake Featherston. I’d sooner blow out my own brains.” He passed on to another officer.

Had Pound worried about his career, he would have wondered if he’d just blighted it. He didn’t. He could go on doing his job right where he was. Even if they busted him down to private for opening his big mouth, he could still help the country. And they wouldn’t do that. He knew it. He had his niche. He fit it well. He aimed to stay in it as long as he could.

W
inter in Rivière-du-Loup started early and stayed late. After close to three years in warmer climes, Leonard O’Doull had to get used to the weather in the Republic of Quebec again. He tried not to grumble too loud. People here would just laugh at him. They took month after month of snow in stride. They’d never known anything else.

O’Doull had to get used to a new office, too. He hadn’t sublet the other one when he rejoined the Army; he’d just let it go. He reached for things in places where they had been, only to find they were somewhere else. Little by little, he made such mistakes less often.

And he had to get used to a practice that wasn’t nearly so frantic as what he had been doing. A sty on the eye or a boil on the butt hardly seemed exciting, not after all the quick and desperate surgery he’d performed. In a way, that was heartening. In another way…He felt like a man who’d gone from ten cups of coffee a day to none, all at once. Some of the energy had leaked out of his life.

His wife was convinced that was a good thing. “You’re home. You can relax,” she told him—and told him, and told him. After a while, he got better at pretending to believe her.

One freezing morning in early December, his receptionist said, “A
Monsieur
Quigley is here to see you.” She made a hash of the name, as any Francophone would have. O’Doull had had to get used to speaking French again, too. That came back fast. These days, he sometimes switched languages without noticing he was doing it.

“Send him in,” he said at once.

Jedediah Quigley had to be well up into his seventies now. The retired U.S. officer was a little stooped, but still seemed spry. “Your country owes you a debt of gratitude, Dr. O’Doull,” he said in elegant Parisian French. The back-country patois spoken here had never touched his accent, the way it had O’Doull’s.

“That’s nice,” O’Doull replied in English. He waved to the chair in front of his desk, then pulled out a couple of Habanas. “Cigar?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Quigley said. “Where’d you come by these?”

“Friend of mine—a sergeant named Granny McDougald—is a medic in the force occupying Cuba. He sent me a present,” O’Doull answered. They both lit up and filled the air with fragrant smoke.

Quigley eyed the cigar with respect. “Smooth! That was mighty kind of him.”

“I’ll say.” Leonard O’Doull nodded. “The box got here a few days ago. Granny and I worked together for a long time, till he took a bullet in the leg. He remembered the name of my home town, and so…
Damn
kind of him.” O’Doull smiled. McDougald didn’t have to do anything like that. If he did it, it was because he wanted to, because he thought the doc he’d worked with was a pretty good guy. Knowing somebody you thought well of figured you were a pretty good guy would make anybody feel good.

“I’m glad you came through in one piece,” Quigley said. “I would have felt guilty if you stopped something.”

O’Doull didn’t laugh in his face, but he came close. “Tell me another one,” he said. “You’ve got the conscience of a snappy turtle.”

“Why, Doctor, you say the sweetest things.” Damned if Jedediah Quigley didn’t bat his eyes. It was as ridiculous as watching Michelangelo’s David giggle and simper.

This time, O’Doull did laugh. “Well, what can I do for you, you old fraud?” he said. “Or what are you trying to do to me?”

“Do to you? If I hadn’t taken Lucien Galtier’s land for that hospital, you never would have met your wife. Is this the thanks I get?” Quigley said.

“
Merci beaucoup
. There. And you sent me off to war, and I almost got ventilated more times than I can count. I’d call that a push, or close enough,” O’Doull returned. “And you never come around for no reason. What’s your game this time?”

“Game?” Quigley was the picture of offended innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And then you wake up. Now tell me another one—one I’ll believe.” O’Doull blew a smoke ring.

“I never could do that,” Jedediah Quigley complained. He tried, and blew out a shapeless cloud of smoke. He puffed again, and again managed only a smoke blob. O’Doull sat and waited, smoking his own Habana. Sooner or later, the retired colonel would come to the point. If he wanted to go slow, he could go slow. Maybe a patient would come in. That would give O’Doull an excuse to throw him out.

Time stretched. Quigley smoked his cigar down small. He eyed the glowing coal. O’Doull kept on waiting. Here in Rivière-du-Loup, nothing was likely to happen in a hurry. Relearning that had taken O’Doull a while.

“If you were going to improve U.S. Army medical care, how would you go about it?” Quigley asked at last.

“Simple,” O’Doull replied. “I wouldn’t get in a war.”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” the older man told him.

“Who’s joking?” O’Doull said. “It’s the God’s truth. And I’m a citizen of the Republic. You can’t do anything horrible to me unless I’m dumb enough to decide I’ll let you.”

“The way you were when you put on the uniform again?”

“
Oui. Certainement
. Just like that,” O’Doull said. “And I damn well
was
dumb, too.
Calisse!
Was I ever!”

“How many lives did you save?” Quigley asked.

“A good many. But any other doc could have done the same. Hell, Granny McDougald could have saved most of them. An experienced medic gets to where he’s just about as good as an M.D. He makes up in experience what he’s missing in education.”

“That’s something we’d want to know. Can you write it down, along with anything else you can think of?”

“Why are you picking me? Why are you picking
on
me?” O’Doull asked. “You’ve got lots of doctors down in the USA and CSA who still belong to the Army. Let them crank out the recommendations.”

“Some of them will.” If anything fazed Quigley, he didn’t let on. “But we want you, too, exactly because you’re an outsider. You don’t have a military career to care about. You don’t need to worry about stepping on toes.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” O’Doull inquired. “You and your tapeworm? We’ve got some new medicines for that, too.”

He couldn’t get a rise out of his not especially welcome guest. “Come on, Doctor. don’t be silly. You know I still have connections.”

“Sure you do. You’re the guy the USA uses to tell the Republic which way to jump,” O’Doull said. “But I’m not the Republic, and you’re not in Quebec City. So you can play nice or you can get lost.”

“I am playing nice,” Quigley said. “I could be much less pleasant than I am. But if I browbeat you, you wouldn’t do a good job. You really would be helping here, if you’d take the time to do it.”

How nasty could Jedediah Quigley be if he set his mind to it? O’Doull wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. The thought reshaped itself. He was sure he didn’t want to find out. Yes, that was a lot more accurate.

“You talked me into it,” he said. Quigley didn’t even look smug. He knew he was a power in the land, all right. Grumpily, O’Doull went on, “You know, you’ll be making me remember some things I’d rather forget.”

People here didn’t understand what this war was like. They didn’t understand how lucky they were to be ignorant, either. O’Doull would have been happy to let his memories slide down into oblivion, too. But Quigley, damn him, was going to make sure that didn’t happen. Once you started putting things down on paper, they were yours forever-more.

All Quigley said was, “This is for your country’s good.”

O’Doull wasn’t having that. “Guys get their balls blown off for their country’s good. You think that makes them feel any better about it?”

“No, of course not,” Quigley said. “I doubt this will hurt quite so much, though.”

He was right, dammit. Sighing, O’Doull asked, “When do you want this report?”

“Two weeks?”

With another sigh, the doctor nodded. “You’ll have it.”
And stay out of my hair after that
.

“Thank you kindly.” By the way Quigley said it, O’Doull was taking care of something he wanted to do, not something he’d been browbeaten into taking on. The older man rose, nodded, and went on his way.

Outside, snow would lie at least ankle deep. This was Rivière-du-Loup, all right. O’Doull had grown up in Massachusetts. He was used to rugged weather. Rivière-du-Loup outdid everything he’d ever known back in the States. It wasn’t even close.

Half an hour later, he had a patient. “Hello, Doctor,” said Martin Lacroix, a plump, prosperous baker whose shop lay down the street from O’Doull’s new office.

“
Bonjour
,” O’Doull replied. “What seems to be your trouble,
Monsieur
?”

“Well, I have this rash.” Lacroix pulled up his shirt sleeve to display his left biceps. “I’ve tried home remedies on it, but they don’t do much good.”

“I’m not surprised—that’s ringworm,” O’Doull said. “You should keep it covered as much as you can, because it can spread. I’ll give you a prescription to take to the pharmacy. Put it on twice a day, and it should clear things up in a month or so.”

“A month?” the baker said in dismay. “Why not sooner? If you give me a shot or some pills, can’t I get rid of it in a few days?”

People knew there were new medicines that could cure some ailments quickly and easily. Naturally, people thought the new medicines could cure any ailment quickly and easily. But things didn’t work that way. O’Doull spent a while explaining the difference between microbes and fungi. He wasn’t sure Lacroix got it. The baker left carrying the prescription but shaking his head.

After a case like that, writing about the work O’Doull had done during the war didn’t seem so bad. That, at least, had mattered. This? While he was sewing and splinting and cutting, he’d looked forward to this with a fierce and simple longing. Now that he had it again, he discovered the danger of getting exactly what you thought you wanted. It could prove as unfortunate in real life as in fairy tales.

He was home with Nicole. That was as good as it always had been. But his practice…After you’d spent time as a battlefield surgeon, prescribing ringworm salve didn’t seem the same.

Another patient came in. Françoise Boulanger had arthritis. And well she might—she was seventy-seven, and she’d worked hard all her life. She hurt, and she had trouble moving. O’Doull didn’t have much to offer her: aspirin to take the edge from pain and inflammation, heating pads and warm baths to soothe a little. He would have given her the same advice before the Great War. If he’d been practicing before the War of Secession, he would have substituted laudanum for aspirin. Françoise might have got hooked on the opiated brandy, but it would have done as much for her pain as the little white pills did, maybe more.

Leaning on her cane, she shuffled out of the office.
Is this what I’ve got to look forward to for the rest of my professional life? God!
If he could have brought Nicole with him, he would have run for Alabama and a military hospital.