Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 9

continuing to idle at his task. "All of us. Stands to reason. They tell us in chapel: we all rise up, and we all go low down, just like boats bobbing in the Bay. And when we're up, we done got to remember that we'll be down one day. But these officers, they're forgetting. They're thinking, 'We have blue uniforms, so we'll always be the best.' But they won't. They'll die, and they'll become us."
    The other men nodded; they'd all stopped work now to listen to Doyle. "Honey boy, you got the right of it," said Lexington, one of my best privates, who had been one of my best watermen in past years. "Ain't nobody knows what they'll be in the future. Ain't nobody knows what they've been in the past-"
    "'Less they seen it," added Fulton, wiping his forehead with a dirty handkerchief. "Cycle forward and cycle back."
    "I'm telling you." Doyle nodded vigorously. "Them officers, they ought to be plain feared, knowing they'll be enlisted men in some future life. Even if they don't see cycle forward or cycle back, they got their faith, right? They know that the cycle of rebirth will bring them low some day."
    There was a murmur of agreement all around as several men laid down their shovels. I surmised that it was time I took official notice of the strike. Stepping forward, I said, "I couldn't agree with you more, Doyle."
    "Hey?" He twisted around, looking confused.
    "We all go down, and we all go up," I said. "And the determinant of whether we go up is whether we do our duty." I turned my scrutiny on the other men, who looked abashed. Lexington quickly picked up the shovel he'd laid aside. He was a good man, though easily led into trouble by other soldiers, for he was an orphan; he considered the men in my battalion his only family.
    Doyle merely shrugged. "But what if the officers ain't doing their duty to care for us? Why should we follow their orders then?"
    There was a pause again as the trench-digging party awaited my answer. I could see that some of my other men were listening in.
    "Why," I said, "if we're given an order by an officer who fails to do his duty, we just keep doing our own duty, which is to obey orders. Then, in the next life, when we're above that officer, we can order him to dig trenches."
    Doyle scowled. The other men laughed. Fulton shyly offered me a drink from his water bottle. I waved away his offer with a smile. I didn't want to tell him that I was worried about the water arrangements There was no spring on the summit; Spearman had sent several of his engineers to the western foot of the hill to ascertain whether any water could be found there.
    Still scowling, Doyle finished the trenchwork assigned to him, threw down his shovel, and stalked off to a nearby bush. A moment later, when I glanced back at the bush, it was shaking.
    I looked quickly around, but Davey was watching the signalmen as they set up their station near the western crest, my messenger-lad was safely tucked into his cot at the camp, the General's messenger-lad rarely strayed from his side, and Tice had no messenger-lad, for Eighth Landstead soldier-servants did double duty as couriers.
    To my thinking, all of the other soldiers here were welcome to let Doyle show him his "guidebook," if they wanted. But the men digging the trenches showed no inclination to follow Doyle into his hideaway. They were whispering amongst themselves; finally Fulton got up the courage to be their spokesman.
    "Sir," he said, "may I ask you a question?"
    "Certainly," I replied, bracing myself for whatever demands Doyle had convinced them they should make.
    "Why don't they just give up, sir?"
    "They?" I raised my eyebrows in a not-very-credible imitation of Fairview.
    "The Mippites, sir. See, we got thousands of soldiers—"
    "Twenty thousand," contributed Lexington, who was always ready with exact numbers, having tallied many an oyster barrel in his day.
    "And the Mippites got—" Fulton looked to Lexington.
    "Two thousand men," said Lexington promptly. "And we've got fifty big guns, while they've got seven. We've had some bad luck so far," he said, phrasing the General's bungling politely. "But we're sure to win this battle today. Stands to reason, as Doyle would say. So why don't the Mippites just give up?"
    All around him, my men were nodding. I paused as I tried to think of a way to answer my men's question without revealing my own fears. From where I stood, facing south, I could see, out of the corner of my eye, a gold disk swimming in the mist: the sun,