Heinz was crying as he spoke, and Molly realized her own cheeks were wet with tears.
“When the ambulances went out again, I did too. This time we picked up only the dead. In some ways they were worse than the wounded. Some of them just looked at you with open eyes on their blank dead faces, as if they were accusing you of causing them to die. When we couldn’t find any more bodies, we started picking up the bits and pieces. When the cart was full, we went back to the camp.” His voice broke and his chest heaved with racking sobs that nearly tore her apart.
Molly held his head to her bosom and rocked him gently as the two of them cried together. After some time, Heinz disengaged himself. “You better get back to your room,” he said gently, trying not to look at her.
Molly smiled and wiped both their tears with a corner of the covers. “When I’m ready.” She shifted so that this time her head was on his shoulder. Almost instinctively he put his arm around her. They sat silently for a few moments.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he insisted.
“Do you really want me to leave?”
“No. I don’t ever want you to leave,” he said softly, his face now full of a youthful sincerity that charmed her. “Where will you go when this war is over?”
She shrugged. “Boston perhaps. I seem to recall we have cousins there. Of course,” she giggled, “we Irish have cousins almost everywhere. Except Ireland, of course; everyone’s over here.”
“Any kin in Ohio? Cincinnati?”
“None I’m aware of. Why?”
“I want to take you home with me and I wouldn’t want you to be lonely for your folk.”
She sat up in the bed and turned so that she was kneeling, facing him. “Heinz, don’t joke with me.”
“No,” he said with deep sincerity. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that for a long time.”
A long time? They had known each other only a few weeks, but war has a way of making otherwise short periods of time seem eternal. Go with him to Ohio? Be the Irish wife of a German husband? No, she reminded herself, he is not a German. Heinz is an American and, as she’d been reminded several times, so is she. “If you really want me to, I’ll go with you,” she said softly.
They hugged and he kissed her. When was the last time a boy had kissed her? Billy McCaffrey, she recalled. It was about a year ago and the little pig was trying to run his hand up the inside of her thigh at the same time. She and Heinz kissed again and she felt her body meld into his as the kisses grew more eager, more intense, as they grew more familiar with each other.
Heinz was acutely aware that she wore nothing under the thin gown and that it had ridden well up her legs. He could feel her young breasts against him, and he was aroused as he’d never been in his life. “Now I think,” he gasped, “you’d really better leave.”
Molly sat up and smiled. “I think not,” she said as she slipped the gown over her shoulders.
A few minutes later and a few feet away, a shocked and confused Katrina Schuyler lay in her bed and tried to sort out her feelings and thoughts. She had awakened and found Molly’s bed empty. Assuming only that the girl had to answer a call of nature, she’d thought nothing of it. When, after a decent interval, Molly hadn’t returned, a drowsy Katrina started to worry. She got up and peered into the hallway, where, to her surprise, she heard sounds coming from Heinz’s room.
Unknowingly repeating Molly’s actions, she placed her ear to the door and listened. For a moment she was puzzled, then astonished. Although she had never before heard two people making love, she knew exactly what the excited and passionate moans and murmurs meant. Her face flushing, she dashed back to her bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.
Oh, my lord, she thought. She had hoped they would become friends, but she had never anticipated or desired that they would become lovers. This was going to complicate things. Or would it? It likely meant that she and Molly would be seeing a lot more of both Heinz and his commanding officer, the strangely intellectual Patrick Mahan. Would that be so bad?
That there was an element of jealousy she cheerfully acknowledged. Like many young and wealthy women of her era, she had had no sexual experiences. Oh, she knew where babies came from and how they were made, but she had never participated in the exercise. Still a virgin, she had to acknowledge the fact that she was considered an old maid. Many of her younger friends were already married and had become mothers several times. A few had taken lovers, discreetly and within the limits that society permitted. As to herself, she had been kissed a few times, always chastely, by a handful of would-be swains, most of whom were more likely after her family’s money than her own thin body. No one had ever suggested she go to bed with them, and no one had ever tried anything really sexual. Indeed, she realized ruefully, the only man who had ever intentionally touched her breast had been the thug who’d tried to kidnap her as they fled New York.
She imagined Molly and Heinz naked and entwined only a few feet away. They were naked, weren’t they? People making love should be. Then her imagination replaced them with herself and Patrick Mahan. Again she flushed. Molly, so many years her junior, had a much fuller and more feminine figure. As to Patrick, she could only imagine. He was taller than she, well built and muscular looking. So what if his hair was receding a little. She found the thought of lying with him a pleasant one. But what if he didn’t find her attractive? Well, he keeps coming around; that must mean he thinks something of her. God, she thought, what if he thinks of me as a sister? That had happened before and was something she could not bear. Was it her fault she came on so strong about women being educated and able to vote? Was it also her fault she had such small breasts when men expected much more?
She thought again of Patrick’s body against hers and his hands caressing her gently and intimately. Damnit, she thought. Damn, damn, damn.
The handful of men in the president’s office constituted his brain trust. They were his secretary of state, John Hay, and the secretaries of war and navy, Elihu Root and John Long. Long had arrived late and had been enduring some reasonably good-natured ribbing from Hay, who, as usual, was taking it on himself to make the situation less tense. Hay was also puffing on a long and smelly cigar. He glanced at Roosevelt and saw that the ruddiness and color were back in his cheeks. The man was amazing, he thought. Just a day or two ago he had looked as if the weight of the world had fallen on him. Now he looked as if he could take on the world alone.
Which, Hay thought, he might have to do.
“Gentlemen,” Roosevelt said, smiling, “we are gathered here to embark on the journey we should have started back in June. It is, after all, never too late. Except, of course, for the poor dead who have already given their all for their country.”
There were murmurs of polite assent and he continued. “Events tend to repeat themselves. Do any of you recall what happened to Winfield Scott at the beginning of the Civil War?”
Since Roosevelt was looking directly at Hay, the latter removed his cigar and responded. “Of course. Scott was an ancient of seventy-five, a hero of the Mexican war and the War of 1812, and the commanding general of the Union army at the time of Fort Sumter. He came up with a complex military creation called the Anaconda Plan by the press. It would have involved a blockade of the South, and a long series of campaigns to cut up and isolate the Confederacy, to win a war that he estimated might last three years.”
“Precisely. And what happened?”
Hay took a long pull on his cigar. “The poor man was forcibly retired. No one wanted to even think of a war lasting any longer than a few weeks. Hell, ‘On to Richmond’ was the cry, and they meant right now and not next year. Of course we got our asses whipped at the first Bull Run and a few other spots until we settled on generals like Grant and Sherman to win the war.” Hay smiled. “And, yes, they basically did so by implementing the Anaconda Plan and taking four and a half years to complete the task instead of three.”