A MILITARY INTERLUDE
By Ernest Haycox
The hut was both cold and dark. There were no windows to admit the light of the waning day, but through every crack and chink penetrated the sharp, bitter air of January. Alva Jukes, standing in the doorway, saw only white ovals of faces staring upward from the wretched pallets and, though he was a brash, hard-tempered man, oft called upon to witness suffering, the sight of so much unnecessary misery fed the latent rebellion in his Scotch-Irish heart. He struck a posture, put a hand to a hip as if caressing a sword-hilt and mimicked the voice of a colonel well known but not well loved by the brigade--
“And what have you got for supper, my brave fellows?”
The answer came back to him in mock respect from half a dozen throats--
“Fire-cake and water, sir!”
“Ah,” purred Jukes, plucking at an imaginary cloak, “and what have you for breakfast, sons of freedom?”
“Fire-cake and water, sir!”
“And now, my laddies, tell me what you eat for dinner.”
“Fire-cake and water, sir!”
Jukes, grinning dourly through his whiskers, joined them in the chorus--
“God send our commissary of purchases to live on fire-cake and water.”
Snow blanketed Valley Forge, dampened the lesser camp sounds and made the crackling-cold air seem doubly severe. A cart, loaded with wood, crept past the hut, drawn by ten or twelve men hitched to a rope; men who moved with dreadful slowness, heads bent, feet slipping on the ground. Here and there fires burned on the brigade street, surrounded by the feeble and the ragged. An officer rode by--a queer sight with a counterpane covering him from head to foot and a shawl, wrapped turban fashion around his head. Alva Jukes stared at these scenes with somber eyes, his hatchet-faced visage growing more and more pointed.
“What’s become o’ the fire I left burnin’?” he asked. “---- of a crew you are to let it die!”
“There ain’t no more wood, Serg’nt,” croaked a remote voice. “I give it the last lick an’ a promise, but it didn’t seem to help. Here’s a letter fer you--come by the courier a small time back.”
“Hey, a letter?” muttered Jukes. “An’ who’d be writin’ to me?”
He crossed the threshold and met a man’s outstretched hand. Retreating to the open, he broke the seal and spread the paper before puzzled eyes. It took some time for him to decipher the illiterate, poorly formed scrawl, for he had no more education than the common run; but at last he mastered the sentences, face settling.
D’r son, you been gone 2 years now, ain’t it time to come hame I ben worrit for y’r helth, the Neely boys went to war for 3 months an come hame braggin fit to kill. Y’ve did your share, pa is doin porely, seems he cant get his wind back after the cold. I never eat but think you must be starvin. Come hame, y’r lovein mother.
He folded the message and tucked it in his pocket. Some one coughed spasmodically, ending with a strangled sigh.
“I don’t figger there’d be room left in the hospital er I’d go. Serg’nt, you better look at Will Cordes; he ain’t answerin’ no questions lately.”
Jukes stepped around a body and knelt in a corner.
“Will, me lad, ’tis a poor time to be sleepin’.” There was no answer and Jukes’ hand, crossing the man’s face, found it stone cold. “Will,” said he, sharply, “you’ll be freezin’ unless you move about. Come now.”
He spoke to unheeding ears. His fingers, resting over the flat chest, found no reassuring movement. He rested on his knees for a long period, while a dismal silence pervaded the hut.
“I reckon,” said a husky voice, “he’s done passed out, eh, Serg’nt?”
Jukes rose.
“I’ll be gettin’ a buryin’ detail. ’Tis the third from this hut in a month. Well, he was a strong lad or he’d gone earlier.”
Another voice broke in:
“Jukes, you heard anything ’bout them clothes supposed to be comin’? Fella told me a ship was in from France with enough to supply the hull army.”
“Huh,” said Jukes, retreating to the doorway. “All I heard was the Congress had sent a committee down here to see why we ain’t satisfied.”
“---- the Congress! What’ve they ever done fer us? Yah, sendin’ a committee! All they do is send committees! Washington could’ve won this war by now if Congress was anything but a pack o’ shilly-shally lawyers! Look at poor Will--the boy’d never died if the cursed Congress had only kep’ us in clo’s an’ vittals. ---- the Congress fer a pack o’ spineless, jealous rats! They talk fine but they ain’t got spunk enough to take keer of the army. Better keep their noses outen this camp or they’ll have no army.”
It was a white-hot indictment, spoken in half hysterical tones. All the man’s fears, all his outraged emotions, unleashed by the death of a comrade, went into the diatribe. At the end he was left with his breath coming in gasps while the others of the hut muttered their approval. He had spoken the almost unanimous opinion of the army, an army who daily saw the carts wheeling a dozen bodies like that of the unfortunate Will Cordes through the streets. Jukes, though possessed of tempestuous emotions and a stern sense of justice, bridled his feelings with a sardonic pressure of lips and retreated from the hut.
Turning up the street, he trudged toward the hospital tent, a long, thin figure with the face and eyes of a malcontent. Nature in forming him had done him injustice; for he was not as bad nor as ill-disciplined as the sullenness of mouth and cheek would indicate. The expression was an inheritance from Covenanting ancestors, people who had never found life an easy affair. Nevertheless, men gave him the compliment of legends. His taciturnity in camp and his profane frenzy in battle made him a known figure throughout the brigade.
He reached the hospital hut, left a report of the dead man and retraced his way through the snow, observing here and there footprints edged with crimson. It made him all the more bitter-eyed and his sharp nose sank nearer his chest. He passed several fires and came again to his own cheerless hut. He tarried only long enough to take an ax leaning by the door and went on, aiming for a stand of timber beyond the brigade street.
A certain shapely tree drew him through a deep snowdrift. Getting a position knee deep in the snow, he sank the bitt of the ax into the bark and sent the chips flying.
“Guess paw must be doin’ poorly,” he muttered, between blows. “Else why should maw be spendin’ money on a letter? That cussed Bige done said he’d provide fer ’em while I was gone.”
But then Bige was only a shiftless cousin, too afraid of his own skin to join the army, and perhaps two years’ providing for the family had set him to grumbling. Born grumblers, all the Jukes. He balanced the ax and measured the fall of the tree; he too, he decided, was a grumbler.
His labor was arrested by a sudden disturbance in the street. A lieutenant strode along the line of huts shouting:
“Turn out, men! Turn out for grand parade! Turn out, Pennsylvania!”
Jukes stared at the graying sky and left the bitt of the ax buried in the tree, determining to finish the chore when he had returned from parade. Floundering through the drift, he reached the street, only to be assailed by an entirely new and unexpected commotion. The men were turning out, no doubt, of that; but they were coming not with muskets and belts, nor in the usual lethargic manner. They emerged from the huts bearing pots and pans, beating them together, sending a racket toward the leaden sky and breaking into a chant that, started by one voice, was immediately taken up by others until the camp rang with it.
“No meat, no soldier! No bread, no parade! Poor Dick a-freezin’! No meat, no soldier!”
The officer raised his arms futilely while the ragged soldiers made a ring around him. At every instant fresh voices joined the chorus and more pans swelled the tumult. Jukes, elbowing his way to the fore of the circle, saw angry faces, sick faces, faces that were flushed and faces that were ghastly white.
The whole affair had an undertone of desperation; they were not men revolting from discipline; they were men who had very nearly reached the limit of endurance. Ill, discouraged, and brooding over the obvious injustices done to them, one man’s catch-phrase had set them off. Jukes’ temper flamed in sympathy. He reached the center of the throng in time to hear the lieutenant, an angry and puzzled man, sing out:
“Stop it, men! D’you want to turn this camp upside down? ---- of an example we’ll make for other regiments. Stop the infernal racket!”
He was too young to command influence and his words were drowned by the redoubled cry:
“No meat, no soldier! No more fire-cake an’ water!”
One side of the ring parted precipitately and four horsemen, led by a plump brigadier with ruddy cheeks, forced a path to the center. The brigadier leaned over to catch the lieutenant’s words. And then as suddenly as all this racket had begun it subsided, leaving the crowd moving uneasily, some exhausted, others implacably rooted to their places. The brigadier’s face was very solemn, and when he spoke it was not in anger but with compassionate gravity.