The Bride of Texas, page 48
“You were so crazy scared,” said Salek, “you couldn’t tell the Stars and Stripes from the Confederate rag.”
“Not so, friend,” said Shake. “It was the Stars and Stripes all right, but the ones flying it couldn’t tell us from the Rebels, and who could blame them? When they’ve got a fellow in tails and a nigger with a rifle coming at them — and remember, word had got out that Jeff Davis had finally ditched his theory and armed the slaves. And everybody knew the South had finally run out of uniforms. So in the end it was a Carolina skunk that prevented us from rejoining the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin. On the other hand, it got our names written into the annals of the most famous chapter of the Battle of Bentonville.”
“Even if their aim was rotten,” said Paidr. “But, as usual, you high-tailed it out of there.”
“And so would you!” Houska said angrily. “We didn’t know their aim was rotten. There were only the four of us, and any damn fool could have hit us in that downpour just by accident.”
“That’s God’s truth,” said Shake. “We were simply forced to retreat back towards the enemy again. But the rain made it so hard to see that we weren’t sure which way we were going. Every so often, flustered riders would appear from behind the curtains of falling water and then disappear again, but they never seemed to be on our side, so all we could do was retreat one way, then the other, until we got our directions confused. We knew we were in North Carolina, but that was about all.”
“Never seemed to be on our side?” Paidr repeated scornfully. “How could you tell, when it was pissing rain and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face? Do Southern fillies smell different from Northern ones?”
“They do!” Zinkule chimed in.
“Look at who’s the expert!” said Paidr. “How could you smell anything besides yourself?”
“I couldn’t,” said Zinkule. “Southerners look different. When they charge, they hold the reins between their teeth and shoot with both hands. At least that’s what they did at Bentonville. They think they’re hot and they’re barely out of kneepants.”
“By then you must have been near Hardee’s wing,” said the sergeant. “So you’d have retreated some distance. Three miles, if not more.”
“You lose track of time and distance when it’s pouring like that,” said Shake, taking another poke at the goose.
“When you’ve got a fire under your butt and you’re shitting your pants,” said Paidr, “you can work up to speeds that brave men can only dream of.”
“Fire under our butts? In that rain?” Shake said incredulously.
“That’s just a way of putting it,” said Paidr. “Have you forgotten everything Czech?”
“What was driving us was the desire to get back to our side,” said Shake. “But we’d lost our bearings and we were getting farther away instead. When it was obvious we weren’t getting where we wanted to be, we decided to hide in the woods, wait till nightfall, and follow the stars west.”
“And it was a cloudy night,” said Paidr.
“Probably,” conceded Shake. “But we found our troops at four in the afternoon — not our own unit, but General Mower’s famous division.”
“Pop,” said Breta, “I’m ringing the dinner bell.”
“Matej ran away that night,” Josef continued, while Mother Toupelik piled food on their plates. Everyone was there but Lida. In a month she was expecting to give birth to Baxter Warren III in San Francisco (she gave birth instead to Linda Warren II, but two years later a third male Warren generation would finally see the light of day, followed by Maureen, named after her grandmother). “On those earlier trips Matej had heard there was a Yankee consulate in Matamoros, and if you signed up there they’d send you north by boat. If you enlisted in the army, that is. I knew Matej was going to run off. We were best friends and we’d planned to run off together, but when Vitek showed up out of nowhere —”
“But how did he get to Hardee? All the way from Texas, in the spring of ’64?” Cyril asked. He was still astonished.
“I don’t know that part of it,” said Josef. “They took him on with the ox teams in place of Matej. He gave me money to get him some civvies in Matamoros, which I did. But as soon as we got to Galveston, the Rebs grabbed us for the army. By then they were taking anybody they could get. They put us in General Kirby Smith’s army and sent us with General Taylor to Louisiana, where General Banks was on the offensive. I lost track of Vitek at Shreveport. What happened to him after that I don’t know. He hardly knew any English at all. I got slightly wounded, and when I rejoined my company half of them were gone already. They’d sent them somewhere else, or they’d deserted —”
“Wait a minute,” Cyril interrupted. He desperately hoped for a moment that, just as Vitek had been blown to Bentonville by the winds of a crazy war — though late, when it was practically a lost cause — perhaps his own Dinah might have been carried by the same madness of coincidence, or by the laws of love, or of the novels she so loved to read —
But his tea-rose was lost. She seemed to have vanished into the huge maw of the rebellion. Nothing of her remained, not a trace, not a thing.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Did you tell Vitek that Lida had escaped to Savannah?”
“I didn’t know that then. Not even Father knew. She just left him a letter saying she was marrying de Ribordeaux and taking Deborah with her. She never said where she was going. Maybe she forgot in the rush.”
Had Vitek found out somehow? During the march through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, all the way to Savannah? And why hadn’t he stayed there? Had he deserted from Kirby’s army as he had from Thun-Hohenstein’s expeditionary force? Or had they driven him there in some ravaged outcast unit, and then across a hastily constructed bridge with Hardee’s troops, through South Carolina and North Carolina, until his trek ended when he got his legs shot off during the last desperate charge at Bentonville?
Cyril never did find out. But that was how it came about that, during the Washington parade, Lida pinned a black mourning ribbon to her hat in memory of her dead “brother”.
They ran through the downpour till they got to the woods. Steam rose from the moss, making it hard to see between the trees. The wind flung sheets of water through the waving crowns of the pine trees, and grey-black clouds flew by over their heads like an ocean turned upside-down. Gunfire crackled from every point of the compass, and cannon barked like hoarse St. Bernards. They advanced in single file — first Zinkule in his now torn and water-soaked suit, then Breta, barefoot and in shirt-sleeves, then Houska in a uniform that looked like a bundle of rags, and, bringing up the rear, the relatively neat-looking Shake. They had no idea where they were.
A row of bushes loomed ahead in the mist. They walked faster. Soon they were sitting on the ground surrounded by dense foliage, isolated from the battle by a sense of safety. Speaking softly, they agreed that it made no sense to leave their hiding-place with the rain pouring down and the overcast skies making it impossible to determine direction. They disagreed about how long they had been running around in the rain and fog, trying to evade the enemy and avoid being shot by their own men firing at shadows. To Shake it seemed like five or six hours. Houska kept tapping a looted pocket-watch he had wound that very morning; it had stopped on the Roman numeral II so this must be afternoon, but the question was, how late was it? There was nothing to do but wait till the rain stopped and the ragged clouds parted to let the sun or the stars through. So they stretched out on the ground under a shelter of dense brush, and neither the rain nor the rising and falling music of battle could keep them awake.
It was actually the silence that awakened Shake, between the occasional clanking of iron on tin, musket on canteen, revealing the nearness of a still invisible army. His eyes opened wide. The downpour was over but it was drizzling. He realized that he was staring into a pair of equally wide eyes in a black face. He sat up, and that awakened the others. On all fours they set out through the mist rising from soil and moss, towards the sounds of the marching army.
They crept to the edge of the bushes. Beyond them lay a broad ravine, rain-washed and green, and, winding through it, a forest path thick with pine needles.
Through the leaves they saw a reconnaissance unit striding quickly down the path, wearing Union caps. They were reluctant to reveal themselves, for they knew that scouts don’t think until after they’ve pulled the trigger. A man in tails, a Negro, and a soldier who looked more like a scarecrow would hardly encourage a thoughtful response.
The forward ranks of the army emerged from the mist. Rifles at the ready, they strode with the rapid gait of Sherman’s swift troops. At the very head of the army marched a black-bearded general on foot, between two men in captains’ uniforms.
Farther down the path, around the bend where the scouts had disappeared, there was a sudden commotion of gunfire.
The proceeds from the ladies’ dance party had vanished, possibly to Siberia, and the prospect of red trousers for the militia unit had shrunk to practically nothing, because John Hubatty’s tailor shop had given them an estimate of three dollars and fifty cents per uniform. Many recruits couldn’t afford that, so the business-minded Hubatty had come up with a less splendid but more practical uniform with ordinary grey-blue trousers for only two dollars and ninety cents, but the idea of going to war outfitted so drably put most of the recruits off. Of the original fifty-two volunteers, the unit’s first drill on the green behind Slavik’s Tavern was attended by only twelve men in civilian clothes and Captain Mihalotzy, who arrived in the uniform of Hungary’s Honved Infantry. Another twenty potential defenders of the Union sat inside the tavern, squeezed around the tables by the window, waiting to see what would happen.
“They were soon sorry,” Shake said. “Even though Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles without red trousers weren’t nearly as colourful doing their drill as the zouaves had been, the prettiest girls in all of Czech Chicago stood smiling at them from around the green, including many of the wives of the fellows watching from the tavern window. Schroeder, banned from taking part for reasons of Czech chauvinism, was scowling from the sidelines beside Molly Kakuska, who was wearing the folk costume she’d worn to the party. Though they didn’t have red trousers, they did have the handsome Captain Geza Mihalotzy. The fellows in the tavern realized this when Geza bellowed out the first order: ‘Marschieren, marsch!’ The squad stepped out smartly, if not entirely in step, and Vasek Lusk — though soldiering was in his blood — got his feet tangled up and fell on his face —”
“Marschieren, marsch?” Houska interrupted Shake. “In a Slovak company?”
“Slavonic,” Shake corrected him. “And how did you expect Mihalotzy to give his orders? In Hungarian? The only people who could understand that would be him and Tonda Kovacz.”
“Why not in English, then?”
“All the English Geza knew back then was what he needed as a physician’s valet: ‘Come in, please,’ and ‘The doctor will see you now, madam.’ The Czechs hadn’t had an army of their own since the Battle of White Mountain, except Oxiensterna’s in the Thirty Years War, and there the orders were given in Swedish. Nobody in Chicago knew how to give orders in Czech or in English, so Geza used German, like the Austrians did.”
Language aside, Mihalotzy was such a virtuoso commander that the girls and ladies on the sidelines kept breaking into spontaneous applause, and would-be soldiers started drifting out of the tavern to join the men on the green. By the end of the exercise — which lasted three hours, thanks to the intense interest of the women and the resulting enthusiasm of the participants — a full forty warriors were marching up and down the green in tight ranks, and at the next training session, three days later, the company showed up in full strength.
Because Captain Mihalotzy —
When a delegation consisting of Slavik, Padecky, and Kafka arrived at the front door of the white house on Canal Street with its gold-lettered sign: “William Walenta M.D., 3 PM – 6 PM and by appointment” (it was after office hours), they were startled to hear groans coming from behind the door.
“He must be operating,” whispered Kafka. “Let’s wait, neighbours.”
They waited. The groans sounded odd.
“And the door isn’t quite shut,” said Kafka, “He wouldn’t be operating behind an open door.” His curiosity got the better of him and he poked the black mahogany door with his finger. It opened noiselessly. A massive fellow in a grey valet’s tunic had a bald-headed man in a physician’s smock in a vicious full nelson.
The delegation stopped in the doorway and the bald man noticed them. The tips of his black patent-leather shoes were dangling several inches above the floor.
Padecky came to his senses and yelled, “Let him go!”
The bald man gave a bit of a moan and said, “Won’t you come in, gentlemen. I help others, but I can’t help myself. Damned lumbago! You can let me go now, Mister Mihalotzy.”
That was how they first met their future commanding officer.
“It was all the same whether he was a Slovak or a Magyar,” Shake explained over what was left of the campfire. Only he and the sergeant remained; the fire was down to smouldering coals, and the North Carolina horizon was dotted with dying fires in the turpentine forests. “When he used to indulge at Slavik’s Tavern, he’d say, ‘We all share a single nationality,’ by which he meant Slavonic. When he got drunk, which wasn’t that seldom” — Shake sighed — “he’d recite Hungarian poetry, which I would say was pretty fiery stuff, considering how excited he got. He was strange for a valet, and the fact is that he wasn’t a valet at all. He was a soldier. Sometimes he claimed he was an officer, but he was very vague about it, so personally I think his first officer’s rank was the one he got from us when we elected him Commander of Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles. He translated the rank of ‘setnik’ into English as ‘captain’, though I’d say he was a corporal in the Austrian army, a Feldwebel at best. But in the long run he was a better commander for the Twenty-fourth Illinois than many a Yankee career officer would have been. He was a Forty-eighter. He had a cause.”
“What cause?” asked the sergeant.
“Freedom, of course,” said Shake. “The rest of Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles were more interested in the red trousers.” Shake laughed. Was it a bitter laugh? Perhaps. “To be fair, twelve of us saved the honour of the banner, and in fact one was a Jew, Eda Kafka, though he was also an anti-Semite, which made him a true Slav. They discharged him after Chattanooga, because he got yellow fever or something. After that he married Sara Ohrenzug, daughter of our honorary colonel, which goes to show that his sex drive helped him shuck his anti-Semitism. Except that he died soon afterwards. The first to drop out of the company was Joska Neuman, who lost a leg at Perryville. His dad was German but a Forty-eighter, and his mom was born Krepelickova and hadn’t got a Teutonic hair on her head. In America Joska got Americanized, but obviously not entirely, since he joined up with the Slavonic Rifles. Josef Jurka — they amputated his foot at Murfreesboro, and I hear he’s in a veterans’ home somewhere. And Lojza Uher used to be a pastry chef before he joined up, but he was absolutely fearless and dedicated to Lincoln. When the company was attached to Haecker’s regiment, he made sergeant. Poor Franta Kouba they say died in a Southern jail.” Shake took his pipe apart and put the sections in his knapsack. “Twelve. Two more than the Good Lord required in Sodom. But the rest?”
After that first successful drill, which ended up with forty men participating (there were a full fifty-two at the second one, and the women’s circle also increased in size after Geza Mihalotzy showed up with a waxed mustache), the captain told them that, if their unit was to become part of the Union army, they had to send a formal petition to the Governor of Illinois asking him to grant them the status of a regular volunteer regiment, and to issue them with weapons. They called a meeting where Trevellyan (there with Schroeder, who was there because of Molly Kakuska, who was holding hands with Kouba) formulated an English letter according to Mihalotzy’s instructions, whereupon they celebrated by getting drunk.
After recovering from their hangovers, most of the company met again next evening at Slavik’s. Kabrna, a cigar-maker, was upset. “Nobody translated it into Czech for us! God knows what they sent the governor. What if that Hun sold us out? What if he’s put us in some kind of danger? What if they send us west to fight the Indians? What then?”
“In short, some of them began to realize that red trousers carried a certain risk,” said Shake, “and the result was a near mutiny. They were afraid of Indians and proceeded to fortify themselves with more drinking, and in the end not even the intrepid Barcal could disabuse them of the notion that Geza Mihalotzy had sold them down the river to the Indian wars, where their scalps were definitely at risk. They demanded that the petition be translated into Czech.”
Mihalotzy himself wasn’t up to the task, so he turned it over to Molly Kakuska, and at the next meeting she read it to them out loud:
“Resolved that we, American citizens of Slavonic and Hungarian language, in demonstration of our love for our new homeland, form a company of militia; that in so doing we gladly offer our services to the Government of the United States to defend the Flag and Constitution if the need should arise; that our secretary forward a fair copy of this resolution to the Governor of the State of Illinois with a request that he call upon our services as soon as the need shall arise.”
When she finished, they were silent. In the back of the room Schroeder was also silent. He didn’t understand this version of the petition, but he listened attentively because he liked the sound of Molly’s voice. The silence persisted until finally Kabrna, the cigar-maker, rose at a table in the rear.
