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transferred.”
    â€œNo.”
    And he lived a mile from the stables now; even that diversion was denied him. He smiled still, as when a recruit joined them and the men sent him to draw an umbrella, and the young fellow trotted off eagerly; but his smiles were brief and testy. “New men!” he said to Haller. “We need to get rid of the old ones.”
    â€œYeh. They’ll all be sick soon. Get rid of a few that way.”
    â€œSpoken like a sergeant,” Catto said. “I’d rather die like Garesche.”
    â€œGaresche?” Haller was startled. “That priest in Cincinnati? The chaplain?”
    â€œNo, hell, no, that’s his brother. The dead one was an officer at Murfreesboro. The time I talked with Rosecrans. You mean I never told you that?”
    â€œNo.” Haller half smiled. “You going to draw a long bow on me?”
    â€œGod’s truth,” Catto said. “I was scouting at Stones River and chasing back to headquarters, on foot, when Rosecrans came pounding up on that crazy-legged bay he liked, and all his staff galloping behind, and he was bright red. I mean crimson. His uniform was soaked and his hat was dripping. ‘General!’ I called out. ‘You hurt?’ And he shouted, ‘Get on with it, boy. It’s Garesche’s blood,’ and he galloped off. They told me later that he and Garesche were riding along side by side and a cannonball sheared off Garesche’s head. Clean off. One second Lieutenant-Colonel Julius Garesche, the general’s chief of staff, next second the headless horseman spraying blood like a geyser. Burst like a boil. I was damn glad to be on foot and low to the ground.”
    â€œWouldn’t have helped. I knew a man had both legs crushed by a cannonball. He was just standing there in the sunshine wondering which way to run. Hell of a thing.”
    â€œYeh. I went back for an ambulance wagon one time and passed a stack of arms and legs big as a haycock, where they were amputating. Jesus. That had a stink to it.”
    â€œWar stinks.”
    â€œWar stinks is right. Well, that’s our trade. Now I have to go and get that boy out of trouble. Rather be fighting any day. You ever been court-martialed?”
    â€œNope. I’m what they call a shrewd old soldier.”
    Catto smiled. “That’s what I hope to be some day. We got bold soldiers and we got old soldiers. But we got no old bold soldiers.”
    Haller, who had heard everything before, nodded politely.
    â€œWell, I better not be late,” Catto said. “Wish me luck.”
    â€œIt’s the boy that needs it.”
    Catto bumbled huffily up the white wooden steps, chopped a surly salute at the athletic young sentry, and after brief palaver was ushered to an anteroom, a sun parlor, bare and chill and not much warmed by the presence of Corporal Godwinson and Private Poo Padgett. “Stand up at least,” he said. They did so, Godwinson smiling slightly, and Catto said, “For God’s sake, sit down.” Padgett was one of those boys of nineteen or so, five feet nine or ten, medium-dark, fine teeth, one pimple, never sick a day since the mumps, who escorted their girl friends home from church. Godwinson was Godwinson, and sat calm, not fidgeting, invulnerable. Catto too sat down, exhaled like a blown horse, and stared in panic at his polished boots. “Greatcoat time,” he said.
    They sat in silence. In the nervous interval Catto grew conscious of his body. Not its shape or color or health, simply its corporeality. The weight of his hams on the hard chair; muscles of the thigh and calf that seemed to flex and extend now of their own will, invisibly and irresistibly; the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the air streaming through his nostrils, the light, persistent beat of his blood. And I will sit there with a rumbling stomach. Or twitch, or break wind, or the colonel will admonish me to wipe my nose.