Harry Turtledove - Alternate Generals

Whatever made me think that writing a moderately successful boy’s adventure like Tom Sawyer or The Prince and the Pauper ever meant that I was going to be a best selling novelist, let alone a success? Damn, I was a fool!

After the disappointing sales of Life on the Mississippi, Samuel Clemens had hocked everything to finance the publication of his even more ill-advised fictional endeavor, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, only to receive the worst reviews in U.S. publishing history and threats on his life had forced him to migrate northward. His wife opted to remain behind and join in with his detractors.

I know how to write, or at least I did when I wrote that book, he mused. Ain’t anybody ever read something in dialect before? Huck and Jim don’t know grammar the way I do. A simpleton should have seen that.

Sam took a pull from the bottle of bourbon that he kept on his desk at all times. It was part of his deal with Bennett that a new one would be provided on every third day if the bottle it was replacing was not yet empty.

This condition was in place so as to keep the dow non-his-luck columnist in reasonably sober condition at least some of the time so that he would be available to write an occasional column, feature, or whatever else his publishing master desired.

Sam thanked his dubious maker that no one ever bothered to check if the dregs of the old bottles were composed of bourbon or flat sarsaparilla that had been poured in to replace its previously more spirited liquid contents.

No matter how much money he has, he’s just another damned fool! Sam thought of Bennett as he drained the bourbon bottle on this its second day of term. Serves him right for taking pity on a Missouri has-been, or never was, or whatever!

Bennett had discovered Clemens in the gutter outside of the Water Club and recognized him from a picture that had been run in his very own New York Herald. Taking pity on the once promising writer, Bennett offered him a job, ever eager to add a new and exciting, if not controversial, name to his paper’s masthead in order to compete with Pulitzer’s burgeoning news empire.

Holding the bottle up to the light in order to ascertain its emptiness, Clemens made a mental note to pick up a bottle of sarsaparilla as soon as possible, shrugged, and conceded. Well, I guess it could be worse.

The invasive sound of waddling footsteps approaching the writer’s semi-private domain afforded him barely enough time to ditch the bottle in the concealed safety of the desks bottom drawer until its contents were safely restored to the status of not quite empty.

Two seconds later Marshall, Bennett’s personally appointed bourbon sergeant at arms, barged into the writer’s office with nary a knock nor an apology.

“The President is dead,” the Features Editor said matter-of factly

Crap! Sam thought to himself, is this how far I’ve fallen? Obituary hack?

As if reading the recalcitrant writers thought, Marshall quickly corrected the writer’s mis assumption while placing an envelope on the desk in front of him.

“Don’t give me that look,” the Features Editor said sternly.

“The obit is already done. For some reason Bennett said you should be given enough time to do a proper memorial, and since June 25 is less than two months away what could possibly be a better occasion.”

“Huh?” Clemens said, quickly trying to clear his head enough so that he could comprehend his assignment.

Marshall shook his head and put his hands on his hips as if he was straining to keep his temper while talking to a simpleton.

“June 25 is the anniversary of the Little Big Horn,” he explained condescendingly.

“Bennett thought it would be the perfect opportunity for his favorite has-been author of the American people to sing the praises of the dearly departed president. Remember, he was a friend of this paper and the publisher. So it better be good.”

Marshall pivoted and was about to leave when Clemens called after him.

“How did he die?”

Marshall stopped at the door, his hand on the knob, ready to close the door behind him.

“Sort of ironic. He was killed by an arrow shot by some crazed Indian guide… but you don’t have to worry about that, no matter how it conveniently lends itself to poetic justice.

Make him a legend. Legends don’t die.”

The Features Editor slammed the door behind him, as Clemens rolled his eyes at his new assignment. Just my luck having to make a heroic legend out of the likes of President George Armstrong Custer. It would have been easier if he had just died with the rest of his men at the hands of Black Kettle’s warriors.

Turning his attention to the envelope in front of him, the writer was not surprised to see that it contained a ticket to Washington for what he assumed was to be the Presidential funeral, as well as a hotel reservation slip.

Well, at least it gets me out of the office for a while.

Clemens was used to traveling on the fly. Stopping at the front office only long enough to wheedle some pocket money as an advance against expenses, and then at his furnished rooms for his traveling bags, he was soon southward bound on the train to the nation s capital.

The train to Washington afforded him time for a nap, a few more drinks and an opportunity to read the obituaries that were already appearing in the New York Herald, the New York World, and the other rags that passed for newspapers. As the porters brought him a new paper after each stop, per his instructions, Clemens began to piece together the information at hand about the quite unexpected assassination of the nation’s highest ranking executive.

Custer had been killed by a halfbreed Crow scout by the name of Goes Ahead who had served under him during the northern Plains campaign and had in fact, also survived the massacre at the Little Big Horn by arriving with Reno’s men after most of the carnage had already occurred. The thought-to-be-crazed Indian had killed the President with a single arrow during a Sunday afternoon picnic reunion of the Custer gang and their wives. Some of the President’s former comrades in arms had arranged for some wild west entertainment of which Goes Ahead was supposed to have been a part. The halfbreed had unexpectedly opted to use the President as his target of choice, killing Custer with a single shot, before he himself was killed in a barrage of bullets from the President’s entourage.

Most of the papers recalled the Presidents glory days as the youngest brevet brigadier general in the Union army, the victor against all odds at the Little Big Horn, and the Democratic candidate who defeated Ulysses S. Grant’s bid for a third term. The facts of his life were mostly from old presidential press releases, and the summation of the assassination had obviously been sanitized by some White House source.

Clemens immediately noticed that none of the papers covered Ouster’s lackluster years at West Point where he had earned more demerits than any other cadet to date who still had managed to graduate. Equally absent were mention of his courtmartials and suspensions from duty, and the rampant corruption in government that had escalated once he entered the White House. All of these appealing facts were absent.

Well, if it ain’t in the papers, Clemens mused, I guess it’s not true, more than aware of the faults of the man he was now charged with making a legend. If Grant had won that election or stepped down, things might have been different, but then again, maybe I wouldn’t be going to this funeral or exiled from Missouri for that matter.

The last funeral that had earned as much ink had been Grant’s, though the papers had been far from land. The publishing powerhouses focused on the financial disaster that he had left his family in at the time of death by failing to complete his memoirs, the anarchy and corruption that had pervaded his administration, and the alcoholic exploits of his earlier military career.