The Bride of Texas, page 2
Kapsa and Kakuska stood up and walked over to the tent. Behind the canopy a wet band huddled in the rain, the bells of their instruments freshly polished. Towering over the wedding guests ahead of him was the tall figure of Franta Stejskal, who had mended his ragged uniform for the occasion. The holes were patched with scraps of green velvet, apparently the remains of some plantation lady’s evening gown, but their unseemly contrast to the faded hue of his coat was lost among the older patches, which reflected all the colours of the heavenly phenomenon overhead except red. Stejskal’s comrade, Vojta Houska, exhibited no such respect for the bride, for a hairy white thigh showed through a tear in his trouser leg. The last member of the threesome concluding the short procession had patched the seat of his trousers with two crossed stripes of bright blue silk that bore a remarkable resemblance to the bars on the Confederate flag. The sergeant wondered if this was pure coincidence. Hardly, knowing Jan Amos Shake.
“A Czech day,” grumbled Kakuska.
“A Czech bride,” said the sergeant, and they joined the threesome. A lieutenant unfurled a fancy parasol and held it over the bride, and the sergeant tried to remember where he had last seen that article of Southern finery. It was pink with little blue flowers on it, with a strip of white lace around the edge. The inside was lined with blue satin set with tiny gold stars that glistened over the bride’s coiffure. Then the scene came alive in his mind. A funny war — horrible, but funny all the same. Shake, the clown, loping among stinking corpses of mules, wearing a lady’s huge yellow chapeau with bright green plumes and carrying the very same parasol that was now protecting the bride’s immaculate dress as she crossed the open space between the canopy and the tent. Behind Shake had been an indignant Negress — a handsome, pale brown hunk of woman holding her skirts above her knees so you could see an occasional flash of white underwear — screaming something in a dialect the sergeant didn’t understand, but he didn’t need to, it was obvious. Then Shake tripped, the hat fell off and rolled in the dust, and the brown beauty let go of her skirt and dived for the hat while Shake covered his face with his hands, thinking she was about to tackle him. But she just picked up the plumed chapeau and dusted it off. Shake got up and stood there warily while the woman shook her fist at him. Finally he understood what she was saying: “Robbing us poor niggers. My Sunday go-to-church hat!”
“Sorry, ma’am, sorry!” Shake muttered, and the woman’s gaze fell on the parasol he had dropped in the dust.
“You-all can keep that,” she said, and strode off, carrying the hat before her like a holy relic. They watched the proud figure walking away towards the white plantation house, and it occurred to the sergeant that perhaps she had beaten the scavengers to it and helped herself to her mistress’s chapeau and the fancy dress she was wearing. But God knew. She was obviously a house nigger, the aristocracy of the slave world.
That was the last time he’d seen the parasol, until it resurfaced above the golden locks of Linda Toupelik.
Kakuska said, “Another Moravian girl finds happiness.”
“And another Yankee dunce sticks his head in the yoke,” Shake grumbled, then added, “and it’s going to be one hell of a yoke, my friend. A Moravian yoke.”
The parasol was snapped shut and the bride, on her brother’s arm, followed the groom into the tent, accompanied by the diminutive Kil. There was room inside for the groom’s fellow officers, but the enlisted men had to stay outside in the rain. The front of the tent was open, though, so they could see old Reverend Mulroney waiting behind the prie-dieu, holding his well-thumbed Bible and smiling an appropriate smile.
It was still raining on the sycamores.
Then the clergyman’s gaze fell on the bride, and suddenly his smile didn’t seem so appropriate to the sergeant after all. It was as if the chaplain were looking at one of those smutty pictures Corporal Gambetta carried in his haversack and rented to soldiers for a penny when they felt the need to take off into the bushes. The minister looked from bride to groom and, when he spoke, his voice confirmed the sergeant’s suspicion.
“Dearly beloved,” he intoned, “listen while we read from the Book of Ezekiel the Prophet, chapter sixteen, verse thirteen,” and there was a gleam in his eyes as he recited in a singsong voice, “Thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom.…”
Shake gave a quiet chuckle.
“What is it?” whispered the sergeant, but Shake placed a finger on his lips and listened to the chaplain, who was speaking the words as if he had a mouth full of butter. The sergeant decided he’d better start paying attention too. He recalled the preacher’s first sermon for the military, before Kennesaw Mountain — the one that had made him famous, practically a legend. Mulroney had joined the army in a fit of patriotism, forsaking the safety of his parish, where his duties had included caring for the spiritual welfare of the wards of Mrs. Terrence-Willoughby’s Academy for Young Ladies, a responsibility that had certainly not prepared him for life in the army. On the eve of the bloody massacre he chose the loss of virginity as the subject for his maiden sermon. With a sheaf of yellowing paper trembling in his fingers, he stumbled over every other word, even though he was reading from his notes. As a matter of fact, since everyone’s sphincter muscles were clenched in dread of the upcoming battle, it wasn’t such a bad topic. There was none of the usual coughing and throat-clearing, and Lieutenant Matlock even quit picking his teeth with a splinter of wood, as was his custom when listening to the word of God. Even the colonel listened with interest, at least as long as the preacher stuck to virginity, its loss, and the social and physical consequences thereof. But then Mulroney switched to the consequences that lay in the hereafter, and unfortunately he departed from his yellowed notes. Perhaps it had finally dawned on him that when he’d written this sermon so many years ago, he hadn’t done so with an audience of soldiers in mind. Now he addressed his warning to men who, in his words, had sunk so low as to rob some poor maiden of her maidenhead or, worse, had actually paid money to commit a mortal sin. The association between virginity and sin was pretty flimsy, but the clergyman made up for it with a colourful description of the torments awaiting the sinner in hell. That was when the colonel began coughing meaningfully, louder and louder, until the reverend noticed and returned to his notes, concluding with a fervent plea to virgins to preserve their treasure till marriage. Then a cannonade sounded from beyond the woods. Sergeant Kapsa thought the colonel had been set coughing by the mention of sin for sale — he was a notorious customer of the camp followers, regardless of their colour — but he was wrong; the colonel’s displeasure was moral and praiseworthy. He thanked the chaplain — very curtly — and in his most sonorous voice announced that of course those boys who went straight from the impending battle to the other world would, without exception — deflowered virgins notwithstanding — go straight to heaven. The soldiers’ sphincter muscles tightened again, and all thought of the succulent pleasures of peacetime vanished.
The chaplain had improved since Kennesaw Mountain. Not that he’d abandoned his favourite themes, but there were no more notes. Nowadays he spoke of virginity extempore, and sounded to the sergeant like someone reading from one of those blue novels Corporal Gambetta rented out for three cents a day, though the chaplain cleverly shrouded the erotic details in biblical allegory. The sergeant watched the ears of the two men flanking the bride — the groom, Baxter Warren, and the best man, Cyril Toupelik — grow redder and redder. “How beautiful are thy feet, the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman” — even the sergeant could recognize Mulroney’s departure from Ezekiel — “thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins —” sighed the preacher, gazing at the bride with lascivious eyes. None of this brought so much as a blush to the bride’s cheeks.
It was still raining on the sycamores.
At last the blushing groom kissed his pale bride, and the best man kissed his sister and spoke aloud, but in Czech: “Well, Lidunka, you’ve humped your way into the upper classes after all!” Now it was the bride’s turn to blush, and cold fire flashed in her blue eyes. She turned her back on him and planted a kiss right on the mouth of the diminutive general. Kilpatrick flushed. The sergeant thought it over. That evening, at the campfire, Shake said, “So Kil was one of her …?”
“But he didn’t pan out, he couldn’t have,” declared Kakuska. “He’s the biggest wick-dipper in Sherman’s army. He’ll never get hitched.”
“That’s what I can’t figure,” said Stejskal. “Ugly runt like him, practically a hunchback, and women —”
“He ain’t a runt where it matters,” said Kakuska. “Believe me, I saw it with my own two eyes.” The sergeant had heard the story before — how, one November night, little Kil had come galloping up to the house by the train tracks leading another horse bearing two black girls mounted like men. A platoon of the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin was marching past, led by Corporal Gambetta, and the sight of those dark thighs in the moonlight drew an almost unanimous whistle of appreciation from the unit. Laughing, Kilpatrick hopped down from his saddle and helped the two beauties dismount.
Kakuska saluted and said, “A good night to you, general, sir!”
Kilpatrick’s smile flashed in the gathering darkness. “And to you, corporal.” He turned and ushered the two young women to the other side of the building, where the door was. Soon the upstairs windows were filled with light and Kakuska could hear the tinkling of glass and the sounds of girlish giggles. Later on, silence fell, bedsprings creaked, and conquered women moaned. Then several shots rang out in the distance. Apparently Braxton Bragg’s sharpshooters were practising over near Augusta, or maybe Wheeler’s cavalry had brushed up against Kil’s skirmishers. Kakuska felt horny, and he cursed his general, though it wasn’t his fault. In the end he relieved himself and fell asleep.
He was awakened by a terrible racket. From the barricades on the other side of the train tracks he could hear the ringing of horses’ hoofs, the clash of metal on metal, shouting, the crack of pistols. He jumped up as someone tossed a burning torch over the fence onto a woodpile near a chicken coop. Terrified chickens flapped and cackled loudly as they shot out the door. Kil’s cavalrymen, who had been sleeping in blankets around the dying fire, woke up. The horses strained at their tethers in panic. On the other side of the house someone slashed at the door with a sword, and an upstairs window flew open. In the moonlight a group of riders carrying a banner with two crossed bands of stars galloped around the fence. Kakuska untied his horse but, before he could mount, a figure in a white nightshirt jumped out of the upstairs window, the nightshirt ballooning, and by the light of the burning woodpile and the full moon Kakuska caught a glimpse of his general’s natural endowments.
“But he sure knows how to brawl,” Kakuska said later. “He was still there come dawn, yelling orders at the troops, in his nightshirt. Finally we fell back to Waynesboro, where the Wisconsins had built light fortifications, and he strutted about half-naked behind the palisades until his orderly found him another pair of trousers. Wheeler took Kil’s own trousers as booty, along with those two black tarts, but they got away from him and when we took Augusta, Kil had them in tow again, this time in a carriage.”
The flames of the campfire flickered on the faces of these soldiers, all of them from a distant land. Long, tall Stejskal, ten years in the land of the Yankees, more than two in the army, a veteran of General Sigel’s Eleventh Corps, a survivor of Chancellorsville. He’d almost met his Maker there, but in the end it only cost him a silver pocketwatch and twelve bucks and he’d ended up in Libby prison. Actually, he didn’t end up there, because back then they were still exchanging prisoners. He made the whole march from Georgia and now he was in his general’s bodyguard. The sergeant glanced over to Vojta Houska, another South Bohemian. He looked just as Kapsa had always imagined Silly Jack in the fairy-tales — narrow forehead, hair down to his eyebrows, but, like the inveterate fairy-tale hero, he was no coward. He had volunteered for Farragut’s insane expedition along the unnavigable rivers and bayous around Vicksburg. Beside Houska sat Paidr, tireless writer of letters home to his mum in Iowa, letters he’d read aloud at the drop of a hat to anyone who’d listen. Item by item, they contained his entire military career: Gettysburg under General Howard, Chattanooga with the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin, Wauhatchie, McLaren’s nocturnal assault on General Hooker, the battle for Lookout Mountain. Not an undistinguished military record. And Kakuska, whose love of horses dated back to his native village near Tabor in Bohemia, and later the farm near Manitowoc where he’d enlisted when Lincoln issued his first call for volunteers. Why? In his knapsack he carried a picture of his pretty young wife, who had set out all by herself across the pond to join him, and whom he hadn’t seen in almost three years. Why? Once he had tried to get some leave. By then he’d been in the army a year and three months.
“A year and three months?” smiled the benign General Ritchie, famous for having had his life saved by the Bible in his breast pocket. He used to show it around — there was in fact a piece of lead shot, a minnie, buried in it, as though a jeweller had mounted it there. “A year and three months? I haven’t seen my wife in two years, corporal. If a general can lay a sacrifice like that on the altar of the Union, so can a corporal.”
“Well, general, sir,” Kakuska responded circumspectly in his South Bohemian accent, so that the pious general apparently wasn’t sure he quite understood, “I don’t know you and your missus, but the good God made me and my wife a little bit different.” Perhaps the devout general understood the words but not the idea. The sergeant wondered what the pretty farmer’s wife in Wisconsin was sacrificing on the altar of the Union, but he quickly suppressed the nasty thought and moved his attention to the next soldier. Jan Amos Schweik — known in the army as Shake — veteran of Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles of Chicago, who, unlike almost everyone else in the company, hadn’t deserted, though there was hardly a greater coward in all of Sherman’s army. Once he had held up an attack at Vicksburg for twenty minutes by starting to pray very loudly; his colonel, who was more pious than General Ritchie and a Catholic to boot, deferred to that sublime piety, distressed by the rosary Shake was shifting through his fingers. Finally, at the sixth decade, he broke into Shake’s pleas to the Almighty with a vigorous “Amen!” and “Forward!”, at which point everyone jumped up and charged the palisades except for Shake, who kept right on praying. Finally a canister shot exploded behind him, pushing him in the direction of the assault. By this time, however, the others were all rushing back, led by the colonel, so Shake ended up leading the retreat. Now he was sitting by the campfire, puffing on an oddly incongruous meerschaum pipe — which he carried in his haversack in three segments — and by the light of the fire his smooth, round face looked like a blue-eyed moon.
The bride emerged from the tent on the arm of the groom, who by now had recovered his normal colour, and the band struck up the Wedding March. The rainbow still hung in the sky, its colours reflected in the bells of the trumpets pointing backwards over the musicians’ shoulders towards the spectators. A cabriolet arrived, drawn by a white horse and driven by a Negro equerry. The bridegroom helped his bride up onto the seat, then swung up beside her. His youthful face shone with an ingenuous look of bliss.
It was still raining.
On the sycamores.
“God knows where my father is these days,” Cenek Dignowity had continued, back in the trench at Vicksburg. “They say he’s in Washington, drawing up plans to invade Texas. He got away by the skin of his teeth, so they took it out on me and my brother.”
The big guns boomed behind them and the Vicksburg palisades bloomed with fiery grey blossoms.
“Father was a Sam Houston man from start to finish,” young Dignowity explained. “He could hardly have been anything else. He grew up in a garrison town back in Bohemia. He watched them torture soldiers. You know what running the gauntlet is?” The sergeant knew all too well. “So when the tsar’s Russians were advancing on Warsaw, he got all the way across Prussia, to the famous Fourth Infantry Regiment under Romarin. He watched Polish farmers with nothing but scythes with hooks tied onto them mow down regiment after regiment of the tsar’s best cavalry. And the priests were with the revolution. The Fourth Regiment was armed with money the priests collected by selling monstrances to Jews. General Klopocky kept hoping France would lend a hand. No such luck — they had to deal with the enemy on their own. Marvels of courage, they were, but there were just too many Russians, a bottomless supply of cannon-fodder. From the Urals, from Siberia, from the black bowels of that stinking country that thinks it’s the salvation of bloody Slavdom and whoever disagrees is their enemy. Father was one of only ten survivors in Romarin’s regiment,” Dignowity said while Sherman’s cannoneers rained canned hell-fire down on the palisades at Vicksburg. “So he lit out for America. Here, we think we do things better than anywhere, and if you can do better, we’ll learn from you. Secede from the Union? Considerations for their peculiar institution? Father wasn’t having any of that. He’d fought for the Poles, hadn’t he? So he talked, he made speeches, he argued with the patients in his dispensary, and then —” Dignowity ran his fingers through his hair. “Finally, one afternoon, somebody banged on the back window, damn near broke the glass. It was Judge Collins’s slave Sam — the judge was a Sam Houston man too, but not what you’d call brave — and he says, ‘They’re coming for you, Doc, they want to string you up,’ and sure enough, my father looks out on the square and there’s this mob gathering, and old man Kearney is waving a coil of rope over his head. Father didn’t hang around, he went out the window and onto his horse till all I could see were his coat-tails flapping. That’s the last I saw of him. They say he’s in Washington now, and I sure hope so. I’m going to try to get there to see him, but —” A petard interrupted him; the heavy artillery had joined in the bombardment. Clumps of dirt and splinters of wood from the palisades came flying through the air onto the roof of their trench.
