The Victorious Opposition (26 page)

Despite the gunfire, Morrell stood up in the cupola again. He wanted to see what was going on. A bullet cracked past his ear. The turret traversed through a few degrees, bringing the main armament to bear on the heart of the crowd. The cannon bellowed at point-blank range. Barrels carried only a few rounds of case shot, for gunners seldom got the chance to use it. Sergeant Pound might have fired an enormous shotgun at the rioting Houstonians. The results weren’t pretty, and another round hard on the heels of the first made them even more grisly.

People ran then. Not even trained troops could stand up to that kind of fire. Sergeant Pound and the bow gunner encouraged them with a series of short bursts from their machine guns. The other barrel in the park was firing its machine guns, too, and the soldiers were pouring volley after volley into the dissolving crowd. Such treatment might not make the Houstonians love the U.S. government, but would make them pay attention to it.

They had nerve, even if they had no brains to speak of. Some men lay down behind corpses and kept shooting at the U.S. soldiers. And a whiskey bottle with a smoking wick arced through the air and smashed on the front decking of Morrell’s barrel.

It smashed, spilling flaming gasoline across the front of the machine. “God damn it!” Morrell shouted in furious but futile rage. What soldiers here in Houston called Featherston fizzes had proved surprisingly dangerous to barrels. Flames spread over paint and grease and dripped through every opening, no matter how tiny, in the fighting compartment. “Out!” Morrell yelled. “Everybody out!” He ducked back into the turret to scream the same message into the speaking tube, to make sure the driver and bow gunner heard him.

Then he scrambled out the cupola and down the side of the barrel. Escape hatches at the bow and on either side of the turret flew open. The rest of the crew got out through them, closely followed by growing clouds of black smoke. “Move away!” Sergeant Pound shouted. “When the ammo starts cooking off—”

Morrell needed no more encouragement. Neither did any of the other crewmen. They put as much ground between them and the doomed machine as they could. Morrell looked back over his shoulder. Smoke was pouring out of the cupola now, too. A moment later, the most spectacular fireworks display this side of the Fourth of July in Philadelphia finished the barrel.

“Do you know what we need, sir?” Pound said. “We need a good fire extinguisher in there. Could make a lot of difference.”

“I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong, because you’re—” Morrell knew he was repeating himself. A bullet thudded into a tree trunk behind his head. He threw himself flat. So did the rest of the barrel crew. Lying on his belly, he finished with such aplomb as he could muster: “—not. But do you think you could remind me about it when I haven’t got other things to worry about, like getting my ass shot off?”

“That was your ass, sir?” Michael Pound asked innocently, and Morrell snorted. Pound said, “I will, sir; I promise.” Morrell believed him; he wouldn’t forget something like that. The sergeant went on, “It did cross my mind just now for some reason or other.”

“Really? Can’t imagine why.” Still prone, Morrell watched another Houstonian get ready to fling a Featherston fizz at the second barrel in the park. A U.S. soldier shot him in the arm before he could let fly. The incendiary dropped at his feet, broke, and engulfed him in flames. A shrieking torch, he ran every which way until at last, mercifully, he fell and did not rise.

“Serves him right,” Sergeant Pound said savagely. Morrell would have been hard pressed to argue, and so didn’t try.

What happened to the fizz-flinger sufficed to scare even the Houstonians. Still shouting, “Freedom!” they fled the park. Soldiers in green-gray moved among the wounded. They weren’t helping them; they were methodically finishing them off, with single gunshots or with the bayonet.

“Grim work,” Pound said, getting to his feet, “but necessary. Those people won’t see reason, and so we might as well be rid of them.”

“You kill everybody who doesn’t want to see reason, people will get mighty thin on the ground mighty fast,” Morrell remarked as he too got up and brushed off his coveralls.

“Oh, yes, sir,” the sergeant agreed. “But if I kill everybody who won’t see reason and who’s trying to kill me, I’ll sleep better of nights and I’m a lot likelier to live to get old and gray.”

Sometimes perfect bloodthirstiness made perfect sense. This did seem to be one of those times. Morrell mournfully eyed the burning barrel, which still sent a thick column of black, stinking smoke up into the brassy sky.

Sergeant Pound looked toward the barrel, too. His thoughts, as usual, were completely practical: “I wonder how long they’ll take to ship a replacement machine down here.”

“Depends,” Morrell said judiciously. “If Hoover wins the election come November, it’ll be business as usual. But if it’s Al Smith, and the Socialists get back in . . .” He shrugged.

Sergeant Pound made a sour face. So did the rest of the barrel crew. Pound said, “I’m going to vote for Hoover, too. What sane man wouldn’t? And yet, you know, it’s a funny thing. Charlie La Follette makes a ten times better vice president than what’s-his-name running with Hoover—Borah, that’s it.”

“Bill Borah’s got no brains to speak of. I won’t argue that,” Morrell said. “Still, you have to vote the party, and the man at the top of the ticket. Odds two presidents in a row would drop dead are pretty slim.”

“Oh, yes, sir. Certainly. I said the same thing.” Pound wasn’t currying favor. Morrell didn’t think such a ploy had ever occurred to the gunner. If it had, he would have become an officer years ago. He
had
said that, and was just reminding Morrell of it.

A lieutenant with a .45 still in his hand strode up to the barrel crew. Seeing Morrell’s eagles, he started to come to attention. Morrell waved for him not to bother. “Aren’t you glad we’re in the USA, sir?” the young officer said. “If we’re not careful, though, they’ll send us to a country where the people don’t like us.”

Morrell clamped down hard on a laugh. If he started, he wasn’t sure he could stop. “I’ve served in Canada, Lieutenant,” he said carefully. “It’s nothing like this. The Canucks don’t like us, but even the ones who shoot at us aren’t . . . wild men like these.”

“Oh, good.” Real relief showed in the lieutenant’s voice. “I thought it was just me. I couldn’t imagine how they held their ground so long with the punishment they took.”

He might still have been making messes in his drawers when the Great War ended. Wearily, Morrell said, “People will do all kinds of mad things when their blood is up, son.” He hadn’t intended to add that last word, but the lieutenant had to be young enough to suit it, and hadn’t seen a quarter of the things Morrell had. Only after a couple of seconds did Morrell realize that made the other man lucky, not unlucky.

The lieutenant had seen enough to keep a firm grip on fundamentals: “A lot of those bastards won’t get their blood up again, on account of it’s
out
.”

“I know,” Morrell said. “That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

“Yeah.” Shaking his head, the lieutenant went away. His feet were unsteady, as if he’d had too much to drink. Morrell knew he hadn’t. He’d simply seen too much. That could produce a hangover of its own, and one more painful than any that sprang from rotgut.

Sergeant Pound said, “We’re alive and they’re dead, and that’s how I like it.”

Ammunition was still cooking off inside the burning barrel. The flames had caught in the dry grass under it. Had the grass been less sparse, the fire would have spread farther and been more dangerous. Beyond the barrel lay the dead men—and a few women, too—who’d wanted to drag the state of Houston back into the CSA.

Morrell took a pack of cigarettes—Raleighs, from the Confederate States—out of the breast pocket of his coveralls and lit one. A moment later, he stubbed it out in the dirt. The smoke seemed to taste as greasy and nasty as the thick black stuff pouring from the barrel. He wondered if he’d ever want another cigarette again.

“I
t’s all right, Ernie.” Sylvia Enos heard the fright in her own voice, heard it and hated it. “It really is. That sort of thing can happen to anybody, not just to—” She broke off. She hadn’t helped. Her hands folded into fists, nails biting the flesh of her palms.

“Not just to someone who got his dick shot off,” Ernie finished for her,
his
voice flat and deadly. “Maybe it can. But there is a difference. For me, it happens all the goddamn time.” He glared at her as if it were her fault. Half the time, these days, he seemed to think it was.

Sylvia twisted away from him on the narrow bed in his flat. She almost wished they hadn’t succeeded so often when they were first starting out. Ernie had begun to think he could whenever he wanted to. He’d begun taking it—and her—for granted. Then, when he’d started failing again . . .

He reached down, plucked a bottle of whiskey off the floor, and took a big swig. “That won’t help,” Sylvia said. “It’ll only make things worse.” Drunk, he was always hopeless in bed. And when he proved hopeless, that made him meaner.

He laughed now. “Depends on what you mean by ‘things.’ ” He took another long pull at the bottle. “I do not know why I go on. There does not seem to be much point.” He reached into the drawer of the nightstand by the bed and pulled out a .45. He held it about a foot from his face, staring at it as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Ernie!” Sylvia wasn’t frightened any more. She was terrified. She snatched the pistol out of his hand. “Leave this damned
thing
alone, do you hear me?”

He let her take it. She shuddered with relief. He didn’t always, and he was much stronger than she was. When the black mood seized him . . . But now he smiled with a wounded tenderness that pierced and melted her heart even through her fear. “You never stop trying to make me into an angel, do you?” he said. “I am not an angel. I am from the other place.”

“You’re talking nonsense, is what you’re doing.” Sylvia got out of bed and started to dress. “What you need is sleep.”

“What I need . . .” Ernie cupped what he had with one hand.

Sylvia thought about taking the .45 with her when she left. The only reason she didn’t was that Ernie’s apartment was a young arsenal. She couldn’t carry off all the guns he owned.

She’d been standing on the corner waiting for a trolley at least five minutes before she realized her knees were shaking. When the streetcar came up, she staggered as she boarded it. She threw a nickel in the fare box, then all but fell into the closest seat. She looked down at her hands. They were shaking, too.

Her daughter Mary Jane was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee when she walked into the apartment. “Hi, Ma,” Mary Jane said cheerfully, and then, her smile fading and her jaw dropping, “My God, what happened to you? You’re white as a sheet.”

“Ernie.” Sylvia poured herself coffee, put in cream and sugar, and then poured in a good slug of whiskey, too.

“Ma, that guy is nothing but trouble.” Mary Jane spoke with the air of someone who knew what she was talking about. No doubt she did; at twenty-four she probably had more practical experience with men than did Sylvia, who’d found George, stuck with him, and then done very little till the writer came back into her life. Her daughter went on, “I know you’ve got a soft spot for him because he helped you with the book about Dad, but he’s a little bit nuts, you know what I mean? Maybe he was good for you once, but he isn’t any more.”

Before answering, Sylvia took a big gulp of the improved coffee. It wasn’t improved enough to suit her, so she put some more hooch in it. With a sigh, she said, “Chances are you’re right. But—”

“Wait.” Mary Jane held up a hand. “Stop. No buts. If he’s trouble, if you
know
he’s trouble, you don’t walk to the nearest exit. You run.”

“It’s not that simple.” Sylvia drank more of the coffee. She could feel the whiskey calming her. “You don’t understand, honey. When he’s right—and he is, most of the time—he’s the sweetest man I ever knew, the sweetest man I ever imagined.” That was true. Saying it, she almost forgot the cold weight of the .45 she’d wrenched from Ernie’s hand.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Mary Jane admitted. “But I’ll tell you what I do know. If he makes you come home looking like you just saw a ghost when he
isn’t
right, you don’t want anything to do with him.”

“He’s coping with more than most men ever have to. He’s got this war wound. . . .” Sylvia had never gone into detail about Ernie’s injury. She’d never even admitted they were lovers, though she was sure Mary Jane and George Jr. knew. Now shock and the potent coffee loosened her tongue. She explained what the wound was.

“Poor guy,” Mary Jane said when she finished. “I’m sorry about that. It’s terrible, and he can’t do anything about it. Fine. Now I understand better why he’s the way he is. But you’re not the Red Cross, Ma. You can’t go on giving like this when all you get back is grief. What if he decides to use you for a punching bag one of these days?”

“He wouldn’t do that.” But Sylvia was uncomfortably aware that she spoke without conviction.

Her daughter noticed, too. “How many times have you told me not to be dumb?”

“Lots.” Sylvia managed a wry grin. “How many times have you listened?”

“A few, maybe.” Mary Jane grinned, too. “But you’re my mother. You’re supposed to have good sense for both of us, right? Don’t be dumb, Ma. You want to find somebody? Swell. Find somebody who doesn’t scare you to death.”

“I’ll . . . think about it.” Sylvia hadn’t expected to say even that much. But she found herself continuing, “He’s working on a book about how he got wounded, about driving an ambulance up in Quebec. He’s let me see some of it. It’s really good—and when he’s writing, things go better.”
Sometimes. Not tonight, but sometimes.

Mary Jane threw her hands in the air. “Honest to God, Ma, I swear you didn’t hear a word I said.”

Sylvia shook her head and lit a cigarette. Mary Jane held out a hand. Sylvia passed her the pack. She leaned close to get a light from her mother. Sylvia said, “I heard you. But I’ll do what I think I ought to, not what you think.”