7TH INFANTRY INFIRMARY, FORT TEXAS
Mr. Judah Paine, Chief Surgeon
Mr. Ivor Sickles, Surgeon & Diagnostician
Rev. Mr. Virgil McKnight, Chief Nurse
PFC John Greenfield, Assistant Nurse.
DATE:May 5, 1846
ADMITTEES & NEW CASES:
The six sided frying pan of the fort sizzled, sighed, spat grease, and smoke. Our tireless Major ran across the ramparts, from our Bomb- Proof view silhouetted by the purple sky. Down in that dark and dirty cave, Sarah hugged the red eyed Mrs. Seawell, afflicted with Nervous Hysteria. Two lieutenants quarreled and their companies came to blows. The end of the fisticuffs was celebrated with a whipping. I crammed my face into the dugout wall.
Hardly had that fight ended when another threatened. The southern boys watched with detached amusement as two Company B boys from Albany started an argument about the Anti-Rent War that had been going on for seven years now, and was still going on. All the New Englanders itched to spend their two cents of words on it, too, cursing the silver button silk cravat swanky gothic-scrivened Van Nabobs. The boys were so mad about it they almost came to blows. Seems that one of the boys said the Van Rensselaers should be shot and fed to dogs, and the other said no, they should be hung and fed to rats. Then one of the better groomed southerns suggested that it was the ordained result of the northern Loose Labor system. Most of the boys didn't care about the argument, but they were sorely irked by the challenge.
Captain Mansfield was hammering one of the cracked supports back solid, when he smelled another brawl coming. He asked P. P. F. S. to do something - something! - to lift the spirits of the men. The Moral Surgeon seemed oddly plucky, for some reason. During the night he had somehow gotten his steam pressure up again. I saw him making his toilet, snorting hot steam to melt off all the tar from yesterday afternoon's sport. After that abuse we had served him, the women gave him all the affection of their feminine charity. Sarah watched Mrs. Frederickson touch up the scratches boys' tough frolick had made on the pink circles on P. P. F. S.'s porcelain cheeks. With a bashful laugh, she took up the rouge brush herself, and went to work dandying-up the smudges left by hot tar, although she had helped feather him, I recalled. Mrs. Hampton and Mrs. Forrest lead a Fort Texas Committee of Ladies for the Protection of American Strangers and the Promulgation of Hospitality, and reintroduced the Metal Man into our company. Neither lady made no mention of the unfortunate incident, but a warning was implicit by the sternness of their cheerfulness. The Metal Man ticked and hissed happily. I wondered where we found the fuel to get all his dander - I mean boiler pressure - up.
The Moral Surgeon puffed steam and pondered, ticking his Babbage Calculating Machine brain-wheels.
<<Tick!...Sss-sss-Tick! - Sss-sss-Tick!...Tick-ick-ick!>> he ticked. The Moral Surgeon puffed steam and pondered, ticking his Babbage Calculating Machine brain-wheels.
<<I have Eight Lectures," he ticked. << - # % * @ - Something patrio-Tick! Number Seven. The Devil and Daniel Shays, a Ditty Fit for Drinking...# % * @ - >>
His ever-benign countenance moved nary porcelain hair as only his grey glowing glass eyes betrayed the warmth of the boiler furnace, building more steam-pressure. And then, to our common amazement, the Metal Man began to sing! His tone resounded like a bell, his rhythm chimed most regularly; but there was a tremulous, boiler-bubbly quality to his hiss-lisped vowels, and a shrillness that showed his pressure too high for steam-whistling in an enclosed space -
"The Devil and Daniel Shays"
In `86 the Devil come to Captain Daniel Shays,
Saying, "Daniel! Aye, you've set your last Union Jack ablaze!
But when the Banks have got your farms, how can you be free?
When the Senate hears no prayer of the Sons of Liberty?
"The Gov'nor's caterwaulin' Tory rhetorics,
But we larnt how to skin a cat in `76 -
Come Farmers! Come Debtors! Come Poor Men & All!
Follow Daniel to the Springfield arsenal!"
With firelocks the Farmers made the Big Court run;
In Concord the Devil talked up revolution:
"To hell with the Senate! Justice ain't funny
When Nabobs strip you bare & there ain't no paper money?
"The Gov'nor's caterwaulin' Tory rhetorics,
But we larnt how to skin a cat in `76 -
Come Farmers! Come Debtors! Come Poor Men & All!
Follow Daniel to the Springfield arsenal!"
Bad Luck stopped the Continentals of Luke Day's,
A thousand men alone followed Captain Shays -
No sooner was brave Daniel's "Charge'm boys!" said,
The Bay State Militia bombed four Debtors dead.
"Hold the line!" cried Daniel. " - But blood's been shed!
Is Daniel worth dyin' for?" the Devil said;
"Your Wives & Wee Ones weep for retreat -
Patience (not Daniel) will rise out of defeat."
Four Debtors dead & a thousand more surrendered;
The Senators thanked the Devil for his service rendered;
Daniel Shays was jailed a year, forgotten ever after,
But in his dreams the Devil come & sang to him in laughter:
The Gov'nor's caterwaulin' Tory rhetorics,
But we larnt how to skin a cat in `76 -
Come Farmers! Come Debtors! Come Poor Men & All!
Follow Daniel to the Springfield arsenal!"
Before it was over - before it had even begun, in fact, the men picked up pebbles and pelted the most unpopular of metal men. The pebbles pinged and clanged and entertained the men a great deal, so I guess you could say that our moral surgeon accomplished Captain Mansfield's request.
So the Major's aid, lantern-jawed Lieutenant Frederickson, found us in a good humor when he come down into the dark and dirty Bomb- Proof. He strode the gallery, holding up his hand for silence. When he got it (out of curiosity) he called for twenty volunteers to drag a big gun to the east side walls. It was a dangerous business, the yard getting pounded and bowled by hot 9-pound shot. "But zee bombardment haz a bit abated," he assured us, which meant the Lunars were moving their cannons again. There was no dirth of volunteers. Your average Cotton Baler never was one to shirk duties, not counting deserters. Maybe we were just bored, but we Crawdads of Company C jumped up fast, right behind Kelly. Dugouteers numbered 1, we got elected by one vote - luck's. "Vee must proceed vit all due alacrity!" called Frederickson, ducking his tall frame as he lead us up and out. Oddly, the Metal Man followed.
Under the confusion of iron balls and bursting shells, through the acid clouds and electromagnetic thunder, we Crawdads followed the Major on the run, hauling at and kicking Martha Mule across the yard. The yard looked more like the Moon than Texas, all churned lumpsie- daisy pocked with craters - sort of like army pudding. At the Number 2 guns, Captain Lowd was waiting. We leaned on the spokes of the wheels, and lightning canon creaked down the slope, the iron rims cutting deep into the sand. The going was slower along the level yard, and Martha Mule was too terrified to cooperate. While I heaved on that heavy iron tube, the gunners running back and forth past me, from Number 2 to Number 4 and back again, I was so inspired as to think theologically. For instance, when a shot appeared in the sky - just a dot - fast growing larger, as we all hunched down flat against the carriage of the cannon, I got to feeling I should telegraph my apologies to my Creator for my doubt in his existence. It plunked down a few yards to the side, spitting hot sand in my face. As I stared at it, spinning lazily, I figured that was the Creator's way of Morsing me:
TO JACK BORGINNIS QUIT YOUR SINNING WAYS STOP. FROM YOUR CREATOR STOP. END MSG.
Well, as I sweated corporeally, driving my hob-nails into the slope as we pressed, pushed, persuaded with our pain that that ordinance should roll upward, my soul sweated as well, if such is possible. Just as we reached the Number 4 platform I heard the horrible screech of a mortar shell plummeting down right on us -
"NO!" I thought in an electric flash - with the sentiment that I would not stop sinning until I receive some divine punishment for past sins; the moral accounts were sorely in arrears, I felt, the Deity's credit under question (although not his Awfulness), and in fact this old business of Belief sorely bankrupt - Defying the worse, I cowardly covered my hands over my eyes.
The shell swooshed and landed just out wide the rampart with a thud. I wiped the splashed dirt from my face, dirt mixed with a tear or two of gratitude - maybe the Awful Deity wasn't so Awful after all - in which case I could -
"Miss," called the Major, standing up. "All right! Well done, Company C! Back in the Bomb-Proof with you! Captain Miles, if - "
Just then, Prince-President Franklin Stove, who had followed us all the while with the unflinching bravery of clockwork automation, now suddenly clicked, <<Tick - ! Err-err-oo!>> and threw up his hands. That motion tipped him back awkwardly, and he toppled over, falling down the inner slope, coming to a stop as us departing Crawdads' feet. At the same time, the mortal shell rolled over the rampart, kicking sparks, following the old gutter cut by a 9 pound ball, and dropped onto the platform, where -
I felt a fiery wind. My ears ached, but I didn't hear the detonation. It flung our commander down the slope. He slid down beside the Metal Man, his uniform in tatters.
"THE MAJOR! THE MAJOR!"
A mob formed around him as the men left their posts. We turned him over slowly, shouting. He tried to smile to reassure us. He stood up shakily, and pushed our hands away. He blinked and gestured at the abandoned posts. Red spots grew all over him. He stared at us. Frightened mice quivered in the cages of his eyes. We laid him in a wheelbarrow and wheeled him to the Bomb-Proof.
"That's dirty cards," I prayed, down in the dark and dirty Bomb-Proof. "I don't care to wager faith with no Sneak-Thief. If that makes me evil, well, I'm sorry. You had your chance to punish a sinner - that being me - a murderer! - but you chose a fine and virtuous man. You don't play fair, now, do you? I'd be insane to sing hosannahs to the miserable likes of you, liar! You're a fraud, a fake, a charlatan, a quack, a hypocrite! You ain't nice, you ain't cultivated, and you ain't even sensible, you are so insane! You cheat. Deal me out!
"You should be tarred and feathered and rode out of town on a rail! You're worse than a Horse-Thief. You're Savage! I pledge myself to sin and sin again!"
And I was mad and we were all mad at the Metal Man. We felt he had a part in this bad business
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