“Well, hard to say if it’s done us good or bad, but it’s about what you’d expect. There ain’t much of Gettys left to tell about. When word about gold got here, most all the townsfolk who could pull up and go, went. Then the orders came to bring the prisoners back as a workforce. That took the prisoners out of Gettys, and a’course their guards went with them, plus some of the regiment to escort them. My regiment was already at low strength from disease, death, and desertion. But now we aren’t even a regiment. The commander and most of the high-ranking officers packed up and went west when their orders come through. Only two companies left here now, just a token force to keep the place from falling down, and our highest-ranked officer is a captain. It’s like they went off and forgot some of us here. Told us to ‘hold the fort.’ Didn’t tell us how.”
“So…” I said, and wondered what to ask next. Would Spink and Epiny and Amzil and the children have gone west with the others? “But you’re still here?”
“Guess I been soldiering too long.” He took a bite of the corn dodger in his hand. With a finger, he poked it to the back of his mouth before chewing it, and I recalled that he’d always had problems with his teeth. He made noises as he ate now, trying to move the food around to where he had teeth to chew it. When he spoke, his words were muffled with food. “Obeying orders went past being a habit with me a long time ago. It’s in my bones now. Me and most of the old dogs, we stayed. Sit. Stay. Guard. That’s us. Played havoc with our chain of command when so many officers went back west. There’s some kind of new law, some priest thing back west about nobles and their sons. Evidently a lot of them noblemen lost their eldest sons in that plague bout they had, and they didn’t like it too much. Some of our officers that were born soldier sons heard they might get jumped up to heirs if some new rule gets approved. Sounds unnatural to me. A man should be what he’s born to be and not complain. But it’s going to mean a lot of changes if men that were supposed to be officers suddenly have to go back west and be their fathers’ heirs. ’Course, there’s a few we wish would leave! That fellow in charge now, I don’t think he could lead a troop of new recruits into a whorehouse, if we still had a whorehouse, but we’re stuck with him. Captain Thayer isn’t what you’d call beloved by his troops. But we’ll still obey old stick-up-his-arse, because he’s got the shiny bits on his uniform that says we should.”
“Captain Thayer’s the commander now?” Nausea roiled through me.
“You know Thayer?”
“No, no. I meant, Captain Thayer is running the whole regiment?”
“Well, I told you, the most of the regiment left. Only a couple of companies left now. And they didn’t have much choice as to who to leave in charge. He was ranker than most, as the saying goes, so he got it. They’ll probably jump him up in rank to make it appropriate when they get around to it. I just hope that when they do, he doesn’t think that means he has to get even more straitlaced than he is now.”
“Pretty narrow-minded, is he?” He was the same old Kesey as ever. It only took a few words of encouragement to keep him talking.
He filled his cup again with a mixture of black coffee and grounds. “You don’t know the half of it,” he grumbled. “Goes on about the good god every time he talks to us. Ran the whores out of town; sent them off when the prisoners left. No one could figure that out. They were all honest whores, for the most part. But Captain Thayer says now that women are most often a man’s downfall. Had a man flogged for sneaking round to see another soldier’s wife, and told the first soldier he should have kep’ his wife at home and busy so she didn’t put wrong thoughts in a man’s head. Wife and hubby both spent a cozy day in the stocks.”
“The stocks? I didn’t even know we had stocks! That’s harsh! Sounds like he’s wound pretty tight.” I was puzzled. That didn’t seem like the sort of man who would have wooed and won Carsina.
“Oh, he’s a big one fer telling us all about our sins and how they brought misfortune down on all of us. And he says that public shame is the best remedy for private sins. So we got stocks now, and a flogging post, near the old gallows. He hasn’t used them that much—hasn’t had to. Makes a man’s blood run cold just to walk by them. Captain says lust and whores and women of bad repute are the worst things that can befall a soldier, and he intends to keep us all safe. Well, I’ll tell you, we’d all like to be a bit less safe.”
