Confederates by Thomas Keneally Page A

officer lost – only one of the men,
    Moaning out, all alone, the death rattle …’
    Under cover of the general absorption provided by this anthem, Usaph put another brick in Gus’s blankets and moved quietly across the meadow to the loveless corner where the conscripts sat, talking low, eating their grits and cornbread. He tried to keep out of the light of their fires, just in case Bolly and the others saw him, and he called as he walked: ‘Cate! Cate!’ All conscripts who weren’t Cate averted their eyes.
    Cate was out of the firelight, sitting against Thomas’s railing fence. It was a bright enough night for Usaph to recognise the tattered clothes Cate was wearing as Murphy’s old rags, minus of course Murphy’s Southern Comfort Society shirt. Usaph was pleased to see Cate humbled in the Irishman’s lousy tatters.
    â€˜You itching, Cate?’
    â€˜I’ve killed all the lice in these rags, Mr Bumpass,’ said Cate quietly. ‘There was – I can tell you – a multitude of them.’
    â€˜And they’ll come back. Their eggs’re still probably there in the threads. Just when you get a bit hot on the march and your body gets foul, they’ll come back – young ’uns – in their hosts.’
    But he couldn’t understand why he talked lice. Lice could bite Cate’s balls down to a stump and it would mean nothing to Usaph if the man had already had Ephephtha Bumpass.
    â€˜Get up, Cate. I want a word of you.’
    Cate looked up at him with a species of wary irony.
    â€˜You don’t want to sit by me here? None of your friends will see.…’
    â€˜Oh sweet Jesus, I tell you, friend, get up here now and jest follow in my tracks.’
    Cate obeyed, though like all such men he had a way of making his obedience seem one way or another an insult. Usaph itched and it was not entirely his own population of lice. It was the itch that comes from knowing you can’t win against a particular man, that you might never get replies that satisfy you.
    He led Cate over the zigzag fence;
    Through a line of oaks they got to the entrance avenue of Thomas’s plantation. Fireflies winked nicely amongst the foliage of the oaks.
    â€˜Let me tell you something first, Cate, I don’t want no funny answers. Do you catch my drift?’
    Cate seemed to fluff up in front of his eyes, the way a turkey does. Is the man crazy? Usaph thought Ephie couldn’t really tell the difference. Ephie would just as like think crazy was clever.
    â€˜I give funny answers only to funny men,’ the conscript answered, like an actor in a travelling play. ‘Men like your friends. Don’t you think I knew how to slip that letter to you, that you wouldn’t want it to come to you in public and by the hand of a conscript? Do you think I’m blind to your code, sir?’
    Usaph had the terrible feeling that what Cate said was all mockery, but you couldn’t be sure, because the conscript frowned while he talked, like an earnest man. It was just there was nothing to grab on to in his manner. He was about half a hand taller than Usaph and bent over him, looking hollow-cheeked and solemn as a travelling preacher foretelling doom. But you couldn’t help noticing a sort of unheard laughter from somewhere in the area of the son-of-a-bitch.
    Usaph said low: ‘You know nothing of my code, sir. Keep your goddam tongue off my code.’
    â€˜As you say, Bumpass.’
    They kept silent for a while. The bits of song came to them still. The army sounds so goddam contented, Usaph thought. I happen to have enough goddam heartburn to give a ration to everyone, to make every man goddam heavy at heart.
    â€˜How do you know my wife, Mrs Ephephtha Bumpass?’ Usaph asked suddenly, as if Ephie herself had said nothing of it in her letter.
    â€˜Why, I painted her. I’m a travelling portraitist, a limner of quality with prices