When the War Is Over (18 page)

Today there was a sentry but Catto was a whirlwind. “Stand aside,” he called, and took the steps in one leap. He plunged through the doorway, glided a long three steps to Willich's door and burst into the general's office. He saw several figures and perceived that he was among gentlemen of the first importance, so shook his head quickly, panting, and looked Willich in the eye and said, “What is all this?” Then he groped for buttons and again became a soldier, huffing, blowing, doing up his blouse and standing rather straight.

Willich said “Captain Catto” like a man still asleep. Catto knew then that it was all true. He recognized the others: Dickson, that was, and Stallo, and in a corner Captain Booth, who was Willich's adjutant He remembered the morning sky, cottony clouds.

Dickson asked, “Who are you?”

“Captain Catto, Judge. What is this about the boy?”

“What does it matter to you?” Dickson was annoyed.

Catto stared coldly.

“We are all here to do what we can,” Judge Stallo said, and Catto nodded without hostility, recalling that this man was a physicist, mathematician, philosopher and so on, and also the number one Deutscher in the city. Alle menschen.

He turned back to Willich. “Please. Tell me what's happened.”

“Yes. Sit down,” said the general. “What's the time?”

“Close on to nine, sir,” Booth said.

“Where is Hooker anyway?” Catto asked.

“En route. We're trying to find him. A message. We cannot do this.”

“Do what? Will you please tell me, sir.”

“President Johnson has signed the order for Thomas Martin's execution,” Stallo declared formally.

Catto restrained a bellow. “Do you mean Lincoln never tore it up? You mean you just left it on a desk in Washington all this time?”

“At that level there is nothing we can do,” Stallo said.

“It was Hooker,” Dickson said angrily, almost shouting, accepting Catto. “Damn the man! He was
cleaning out his files
, if you can believe it, and he found the signed verdict. He'd forgotten all about it. He inquired whether sentence had been executed.”

“And it had not,” Willich said. “We had never received an order to execute the boy. Lincoln would not sign it; he would not pardon the boy but he would not sign the order. He hated to sign them. So I told Hooker about the boy. I was laughing. I was laughing! That day he wired for authority to carry out the sentence, and the President signed an order. Hooker ordered me to shoot the boy and went off to Springfield. I said nothing until last night because I could not believe that there would be no intervention, from Washington, from Hooker himself.”

“A frightful man,” Stallo said.

“It seems there was no one to plead for a pardon,” Willich said softly. “If only his mother had been alive to plead for a pardon. Lincoln was free with pardons.”

“Where is the boy's rifle,” Catto asked tonelessly. “This is madness.”

“Locked up,” Booth said. “What about it?”

Catto and Booth exchanged the easy direct nod of comrades, professionals, men of an age; like regretful farmers on a pitching steamer they nodded. “Where's the boy?”

“Also locked up.”

“Well let's get him out of here,” Catto said, “and across the river.”

“Captain!” That was Willich. But silent Booth understood.

“You are in the presence of two judges and a general,” Stallo said sharply.

“Who I take it—with all respect, sir,” Catto said as drily as possible, “—would rather see a boy murdered than risk General Hooker's displeasure.”

“No one has been murdered,” Dickson said, “and it is not a matter of General Hooker's displeasure, I assure you. You will permit me to point out,” and Dickson was also dry, “that we have just fought a war to preserve government by law and not by impulse. Please, Captain. We are here to find a way out, and not to outrage your finer sensibilities.”

“Take a cigar, Captain,” said Willich, and wood whispered upon wood.

“Yes, thank you, thank you,” Catto said rapidly. “And when is this lunatic order to be carried out?”

“At noon today,” Willich muttered; Catto bent almost double like a man with the cramp, and just before he raised his angry face he brought a bitter iron captain's fist marteling down upon Willich's desk, hurting himself and striking up a mad dance of nibs. “Booth. Can you and I get him out and away?”

“No,” said Booth.

Catto was instantly calm. He gazed at the three older men with a helpless, earnest curiosity.

Dickson spoke first: “Captain Catto, Captain Catto, we all feel as you do.”

“Then let's do something,” Catto said.

“We are telegraphing to all likely stops on Hooker's route,” Stallo said. “A slim chance, but a chance. Then, Judge Dickson has asked Mister Gaither to send a telegram directly to Major Eckert, who will take it personally to Secretary Stanton.”

“Who is Gaither?”

“Superintendent of the Adams Express Company,” Dickson said. “My dear Captain, who are you and why are you suddenly in command?”

“My apologies,” Catto said wearily. “I am merely a captain of infantry, in charge of the hospital company, and I am the fellow who brought the boy in, long ago, and was shot by him, and I am the only man in the world who has any cause to dislike him. But I like him. I don't know him very well, but I like him. Nobody knows him very well, but that doesn't matter.
I'll
plead for the pardon. I'm not the boy's mother, but I'm his
victim
. By God, General Willich!” He rounded abruptly, ferociously. “The boy has been your, your, your
page boy
for half a year. How can you? How can you?” Willich was still. “And who is Eckert?”

“Superintendent of the military telegraph,” Stallo told him. “Major Thomas Eckert. He may be influential, and he will certainly be quick. On election night last year President Lincoln sat up with him, in the telegraph room, receiving the returns.”

“God bless Major Eckert,” Catto said. “And I take it none of you gentlemen will mind if I keep vigil with you. No, of course you won't mind. Oh, what insanity!” He flopped into a soft leather chair, lit his cigar, and dropped the match into a copper ashtray strapped to the chair's arm. “A black man brought me the news. The boy's friend. Free now, you understand. All men are created equal.”

Willich raised his shaggy, gray-blond head. “Captain Catto.” His voice was once more the voice of a general. “That will be all. I want you to stay, but I want you to remember your place. And remember too that we may bear this day to our graves.”

“Then—”

“No. Nothing you can say has not been said already this morning.”

“I'm sorry,” Catto murmured. “Can nothing else be done? Can I see the boy?”

“You may not see the boy,” Willich said. “He is locked up in this building, and you may not see him. Father Garesche is with him. And you should know that I have ordered a firing squad to be made ready, and the place will be the big ravine on the Walnut Hills road, above the Deer Creek Valley and below the Pendleton house.”

Catto closed his eyes.

“You must understand, Catto,” Stallo said. “This is a terrible period. Washington is full of grief, confusion, even hysteria. Against the rebels, against unnamed conspiracies. Seward wounded, Lindoln dead, how are they to know who is the next target?” Grave, ambassadorial, he turned to Willich. “Do you know,” he said pensively, “there is something else that could be done. A telegram to Johnson himself. Signed by the three of us, and Pendleton, and perhaps a few other first citizens.”

“Who's Pendleton?” Catto asked him.

“Who's Pendleton?” Stallo was astounded, reproving. “The Democratic candidate for vice-president last year. That is who. And Judge Dickson's wife is a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln. That might help.”

Dickson said, “Yes.”

My platoon would be more help, Catto was thinking. Move in and move out fast, like with the apples that time, and across the river and the boy is free.

But he knew that was impossible.

Willich said, “Yes. Write it out. Give it to Gaither.”

Stallo drew a wooden chair to the desk and busied himself with pen and paper.

“There's something else you can do,” Catto said. “You can delay this execution until you have an answer. This is an appeal. This is the only appeal the boy will have, and Hooker is away and you're in command.”

“A reasonable delay,” Willich said.

“Reasonable!” Catto said. “I don't see why. Nothing else about this is reasonable. And remember all that about
man
kind and revolution.”

“Yes, yes.”

“General,” Catto begged, “could I have some schnapps?”

Catto learned later, with some bitterness, that while he had been forbidden the boy's room, reporters were more privileged. “I had to,” Willich said. “I have spent my life fighting the censorship, but if the story had been printed that day a mob of ghouls would have flocked to us. So I asked the publishers to withhold the story for a day. In return I admitted reporters. Do you see?”

Catto saw. By then the fight was gone out of him. When the man from the
Cincinnati Times
arrived, Father Garesche was reading Scripture to Thomas Martin; the two were seated on the boy's bunk, which was carefully made up, as if it might be used again. Martin wore a ball and chain, and a crucifix lay beside him. A fire “snapped and crackled in the genial old-fashioned fireplace. Near the bunk was hung the scanty wardrobe of the condemned and beneath was a brown jug of water.” Martin was unsure of his age. The reporter thought him under twenty. The boy was unnaturally calm, and asserted his innocence. The
Gazette
, the
Commercial
and the
Enquirer
were also privileged to meet him. The reporters admired him. He was serene and courageous. While they took notes a roly-poly gentleman of cheerful aspect came in to Martin and took his measure. The boy expressed curiosity, and learned that the man was a carpenter, and that the measurement was for a coffin. The reporter from the
Gazette
considered this cruel. Martin remained calm. Father Garesche remained calm. The reporters remained calm. The carpenter achieved his task and left.

Willich, Stallo, Dickson and Catto did not remain calm. They paced. They sent messengers to the telegraph office. Catto chewed at expensive cigars and damned his country in silence. Stallo's telegram had been dispatched. They were all tortured by the passage of horses outside Willich's windows. Each return of the messenger was a moment of hope and grief. Catto thought of his few friends. He would unquestionably leave the army, perhaps the country. Routledge! Routledge had been right! That fat, stumbling, incompetent genius!

By mid-morning the watchers had settled into hopeless silence, and when the messenger knocked and strode into the room Catto scarcely stirred. “By heaven,” Willich said, “it's from Hooker!” And they sprang up, Catto agog and then enraged, deriving early knowledge from the messenger's glum mouth and downcast eyes. He sank back into his leather chair. After a pause Willich said in infinite dejection, “He will do nothing. He says there is nothing he can do. He cannot countermand an order from Washington.”

A new silence fell, a new dimension of horror infusing the oppressive air. “He could,” Catto said. “Any other general. Any other general.”

“Catto.” But there was little heart in Willich's rebuke.

“There is still time,” Stallo said; and to the messenger, “You may go. Be quick if there is news.”

The messenger saluted and went away.

“General Hooker will be leaving this department soon,” Dickson said. “What a difference a week or two might make!”

Stallo was even more mournful: “There will be an amnesty. We all know it.”

“The Johnny officers are being wined and dined in every Union garrison,” Catto said. “Their soldiers are paroled and gone home.”

At noon there had been no word.

“We sat there,” Catto told Phelan later, “me and Booth and that general with one withered arm and those first-class judges. All that aristocracy and they couldn't do a thing. I kept thinking there was something I could say that would change it all, some magic word, if I could only find it, if only I was a lawyer or a deep thinker. But what? All I could tell them was that men don't kill boys. It turned out they knew that. So there was nothing I could tell them that they didn't already know. Unless maybe that if something this wrong could happen, then maybe there was something wrong from top to bottom. But try telling that to judges and generals. ‘What what what,' they would say. ‘Anarchy. Anarchy.'”

“Nothing. We sat about like people with no arms and no legs. I still say Willich could have let the boy go. Sent him across the river and made up a good story about his escape. I'd have taken the blame myself.”

“Not Willich. Willich is a man of honor. A good man, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you thank God for such men. And the hundredth time is all the more bitter.”

“Honor. He promised me once that nothing would happen to the boy.”

“And who are you beside the government of the United States?”

“I wonder,” Catto said.

“I cannot wait longer,” Willich said. “An hour after the time already.”

Dickson sighed and Stallo frowned.

Willich asked, “Where do we stand, Booth?”

“The boy and the priest are ready,” Booth reported. “The provost marshal will lead. Then the troops, muskets slung, butts up. A closed carriage for the boy and the priest. A hearse following with the coffin. Then the surgeon. I'll be in command,” and briefly his gaze met Catto's “but Lieutenant Prentice will command the firing party.”

“Prentice. I thought he was gone.”