The Grapple

Apuleius worked his way forward again. Moss presumed he did, anyhow; were the point man visible to him, he would have been visible to whoever was inside the village, too. Moss didn’t see the grenade fly, either.

He sure heard it when it went off. And all of a sudden that village didn’t seem abandoned any more. Militiamen, some in gray uniforms, others with clothes no fancier than the guerrillas wore, boiled out of the tumbledown shacks that hadn’t been anything much when they were in good repair and looked even more sorrowful now. The white men were cussing and clutching their weapons and pointing every which way. Some of those flying fingers aimed at Apuleius, but others flew in the opposite direction.

“Now!” Spartacus said.

Along with the rest of the riflemen in the band, Moss started shooting at the youths, mutilated men, and old-timers who made up the local militia. The machine gun spat death at the village. Death had visited it before-where were the sharecroppers who once lived there? Where were their wives and children? Gone to camps, most of them, if they were like most of the Negroes in Georgia.

As soon as the gunfire gave him cover, Apuleius tossed another grenade into the village. This one made the militiamen yell and scream even more than they were already doing. The kids, the ones who’d never seen real fighting before, suffered worse than the veterans. Men who’d come under fire knew they needed to get down and get behind something when bullets started flying. The youngsters stayed upright much too long-and paid for it.

“Fish in a barrel,” Nick Cantarella said happily, sprawled behind a bush not far from the one that hid Moss.

A bullet snapped past between them. “Fish don’t shoot back,” Moss said.

One of the militiamen had got his hands on a fancy C.S. automatic rifle. He sprayed bullets back at the guerrillas almost as fiercely as the machine gun fired at his side. A couple of Negroes howled when they were hit, but the noise they made was as nothing beside that from the militiamen caught in the ambush.

When Spartacus ordered a withdrawal, the machine gun gave covering fire. The militiamen didn’t seem to have any stomach for coming after them, anyhow. Were Moss one of them, he wouldn’t have, either, not after the way they got shot up.

“Keep movin’!” Spartacus called. “They be all over the place round these parts now.” He was sure to be right, though Moss wasn’t sure how many militiamen and Mexican soldiers the local authorities could scrape together.

Litter bearers carried one of the wounded men. The other, shot through the right arm, was able to walk-and to swear with remarkable fluency. Moss looked around for Apuleius. He didn’t see the point man, but that proved nothing. Apuleius might need to wait till dark before making his getaway, and he’d caught up with the band before. Odds were he could do it again.

Would any of it matter? Could they hang on till the U.S. Army came down here or put the Confederates out of business? Moss had no idea. With his scheme for stealing an airplane as dead as too many of the men who’d helped him try, he could only hope.

“Bad one, Doc!” Eddie called as he brought the casualty into the aid station.

Leonard O’Doull knew the medic was right even before he saw the casualty. When you smelled something that reminded you of a pork roast left too long in the oven…then it was a bad one, all right.

Vince Donofrio wrinkled his nose. “Christ, I hate burns!” he said.

“Me, too,” O’Doull said. “But I sure don’t hate ’em near as much as the poor bastard who’s got one.”

The wounded man came out of a barrel. That much was plain from what was left of his coverall. One leg was charred, and he was howling like a wolf. “Has he had morphine?” O’Doull asked.

“Three shots, Doc,” Eddie answered. O’Doull bit his lip. Sometimes even the best painkiller was fighting out of its weight. Eddie went on, “Ether’ll put him out.”

“Yeah.” O’Doull turned to Sergeant Donofrio. “Get him under, Vince.”

“Right,” Donofrio said tightly. The man’s hands were burned, too, and so was his face, though not so badly. He tried to fight when Donofrio put the ether cone over his mouth and nose. As gently as Eddie could, he held the wounded man’s arms till they went limp. His screams faded then, too.

“How much can you do for him, Doc?” Eddie asked.

“Me? Not much. I just want to get rid of the tissue that’d go gangrenous if I left it. Then the specialists take over.”

“That ta

“That’s right,” O’Doull said. “Tans their hide, scars it fast so they don’t weep fluid out through the burns. They get better results with it than with anything they used to do.”

“Tans their hide…” Donofrio shuddered. “Must hurt like hell while the poor guy’s going through it.”

“I bet it does, yeah,” O’Doull said. “But if you’ve got burns like that, you already hurt like hell. You heard this guy before you knocked him out. How many syrettes of morphine did you say he had in him, Eddie?”

“Three,” the medic answered. “I hear these guys with the burns, a lot of ’em turn into junkies ’cause they need so much dope to get ’em through it while it’s bad.”

“I’ve heard the same thing,” Donofrio said.

“Yeah, so have I,” O’Doull said. “You can’t blame ’em, though. If they didn’t have the drugs, a lot of them would kill themselves. There just isn’t pain much worse than a bad burn.”

He methodically went on debriding flesh that would never heal. The smell made him hungry and nauseous at the same time. That was one more reason to hate burns. “What happened to the rest of the barrel crew?” he asked.

“Don’t know for sure,” Eddie said. “All I know is, he’s the only one we brought back. Maybe the other guys all got out and didn’t get hurt. Here’s hoping.”

“Here’s hoping,” O’Doull agreed. His eyes met Sergeant Donofrio’s over their masks. They both shook their heads. Much more likely that the other four men in the crew never made it out at all. Much more likely that they burned to death. What kind of memories were now dimmed inside this fellow’s head? Would he hear his buddies’ shrieks for the rest of his life? Too bad there’s no morphine for the soul, O’Doull thought.

The burned soldier was still mercifully unconscious when the corpsmen took him off for more treatment farther back of the line. O’Doull shed his mask. So did Vince Donofrio. “That was a tough one,” Donofrio said.

“Burns are about as bad as it gets,” O’Doull agreed. “I’m going outside for a cigarette. You want one?”

“After a case like that? What I want is a good, stiff drink. I guess a butt’ll have to do.” Donofrio was another one who didn’t drink when he might have to deal with patients soon. O’Doull approved, though he wouldn’t have said anything as long as the medic didn’t show up smashed.

He pulled out a pack of Raleighs, gave one to Donofrio, and lit another for himself. After the first drag, he said, “Getting away from the smell in there is good, too.”

“Bet your ass,” Donofrio said. “That’s another thing smoke is good for.” He inhaled, held it, and then blew out a blue-gray cloud. Even after that, he made a face. “You know what it reminded me of? Like there’s spare ribs in the oven and the telephone rings, you know, and it’s the gal’s sister, and she gets to yakking and doesn’t look at the clock till she smells stuff burning-and then it’s too damn late.”

“That sounds about right,” O’Doull said. “I wonder why they call them spare ribs. I bet the pig didn’t think so.”

Donofrio laughed. “Good one, Doc! I bet I steal it.”

“You better not,” O’Doull said, so seriously that the medic looked surprised. He went on, “You’ll cut into my royalties if you do.”

“Royalties?” Donofrio snorted. “You want royalties, go to Mexico or France or England.”