The Grapple

Bliss went on, “I was hooked in with Lucullus Wood and the other colored activists, but only from the outside.” He brushed one hand across the back of the other, noting his own white skin. “Cinci

“Well, that’s what we’re looking for,” the major said. “We want to try to stir things up in Covington so the Confederates will be busy when we go over the river.”

“You go

“What business of yours is that?” the lieutenant colonel demanded in a voice like winter.

Cinci

The officer with the silver oak leaves on his shoulder straps gaped like a boated bream. Luther Bliss laughed. “You see, Ray?” he said. “He’s nobody’s fool. He didn’t come to town on a load of turnips.”

Cinci

“You are insubordinate,” the major growled.

“Bet your ass,” Cinci

“Tell him what’s going on,” Luther Bliss advised. “He won’t blab. He never said anything to me that he shouldn’t have, and I squeezed him, too.”

“Most irregular,” the lieutenant colonel-Ray-muttered. Reluctantly, he said, “The unrest will involve members of both principal racial groupings in Covington.”

“He means whites and Negroes,” Luther Bliss put in.

“Why don’t he say so, then?” Cinci

“You going to give us a hand?” Luther Bliss asked. “This’ll happen with you or without you. It may work a little better, kill more of the right people and not so many of the wrong ones, if you give us a hand. How does that sound?”

“Sounds like the best deal I’m go

V

With a theatrical flourish, Brigadier General John Wade pi

“Thank you, sir.” Pound feared he sounded as enthusiastic as he felt. He didn’t want to be an officer. He’d also done things a lot more dangerous than the ones that got him this medal. Nobody’d paid any attention to them, though. This time, the wounded Lieutenant Griffiths went on and on in writing about what a wonderful fellow he was. And so…He had the decoration, which he didn’t mind, and the promotion, which he did.

“You’ll have a platoon of barrels,” General Wade said. “I’m sure you’ll fight them as bravely and effectively as you fought your own machine after the commander got hurt.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.” Pound liked giving orders only a little better than he liked taking them. The other four barrel commanders in the platoon would be sergeants who didn’t want to hear from a lousy second lieutenant, even if Pound wasn’t your everyday shavetail. Getting them to pay attention to him would be a pain in the neck, or probably points south of the neck.

But then Wade said, “Because of your excellent service and your long experience, Lieutenant, we’ll give you a platoon of the Mark III machines. These are some of the first ones we have, just down from the factories in Michigan.”

Suddenly, Michael Pound didn’t mind the promotion. He didn’t mind the prospect of giving orders to sergeants who didn’t want to take them. He didn’t mind a thing. He tore off a salute that would have turned a drill sergeant green with envy. “Thank you very much, sir!” he exclaimed. “Are they here? Can I see them?” He’d heard about the new machines, but he had yet to set eyes on them.

Brigadier General Wade smiled. He was somewhere close to Pound’s age, with a chestful of medals and service ribbons-and with a scar on his face and a finger missing from his left hand that said he’d really and truly earned his decorations. “I know enthusiasm when I hear it, Lieutenant,” he said. “Why don’t you come with me?”

“Sir, I’d follow you anywhere,” Pound said, and John Wade laughed.

Hamilton, Ohio, was an industrial town of about 50,000 people, maybe a third of the way from Cinci

Now some new military hardware had joined those late-eighteenth-century guns. Michael Pound eyed the sleek lines of the new barrels with as much admiration as he would have given those of Daisy June Lee, even if of a slightly different sort. The armor on the green-gray machines-splotched here and there with darker green to help break up their outlines-was as well sloped as anything the Confederates had ever built. And that long 3?-inch gun would make any C.S. barrel, including the enemy’s latest and greatest, say uncle.

Brigadier General Wade looked as proud of the new barrels as if he’d designed them himself. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said genially, “what do you think?”

Pound knew what he was supposed to say. He was supposed to burble on about how wonderful the new barrels were and what a howling wilderness they would make of the Confederate States. If John Wade expected him to say things like that, it only went to show the general didn’t know his newest and most junior officer very well.

“Sir, they’re fine machines,” Pound said, and General Wade beamed-his new lieutenant was on the right track. Pound promptly proceeded to drive off it: “I’d like them a lot better if we had them at the begi

General Wade’s smile faded. “That wouldn’t have been easy,” he said, the geniality leaking out of his voice word by word. “In fact, I doubt it would have been possible.”

“Oh, yes, it would, sir.” Pound didn’t mind correcting an officer with a star on each shoulder strap-Wade was wrong, and anybody who was wrong needed correcting. (No wonder he went gray before making officer’s rank himself.) He went on, “We had everything we needed in place to build machines like this twenty years ago-and then we turned our backs on barrels, because they were too expensive and we probably wouldn’t need them any more. If we’d just followed up, this is where we would have been going into the war, this or better.”