Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

Again, Dalby and Gustafson poured down their drinks in nothing flat. Again, they waited not too patiently for him to finish his. He was about to go bottoms up when a brawl broke out behind him.

He never knew what started it. An argument over a barmaid? Two sailors from the same ship who didn’t like each other? Sailors from two ships that didn’t like each other? The roll of the dice at a corner table?

Whatever got it going, it was everywhere fifteen seconds later. Nobody tried to stop it; everyone just joined in. If that didn’t prove there were a lot of drunks in the place, nothing ever would have.

Somebody swung at George: a big, burly machinist’s mate. The haymaker would have knocked him into the middle of next week had it landed, but it missed by at least a foot. George threw what was left of his drink in the other sailor’s face. The man roared and rubbed frantically at his eyes. George hit him in the belly. He folded up with an explosive, “Oof!”

Oh, shit! The bartender was probably yelling it, but George had to read his lips to understand it. Everybody in the joint was shouting at the top of his lungs. The noise of things breaking didn’t help.

Somebody took a swing at Fremont Dalby. The gun chief ducked so the punch caught him on top of the head. That hurt the puncher much more than it hurt Dalby. One of the things you learned in a hurry was not to punch bony places. By the way the sailor clutched his wounded hand, he’d probably broken a knuckle or two. A heartbeat later, he had other things to worry about. Dalby, a barroom veteran, didn’t waste time fighting fair. He kneed the sailor in the crotch. The man howled like a wolf.

George stopped a punch with his forehead. He saw stars. It probably hurt the other guy worse than it hurt him, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it. Plenty of sailors got into fights for the fun of it. George didn’t understand that. Watching a fight was fun. Getting punched and kicked and elbowed? That wasn’t what he called a good time.

He hit the other guy in the ribs. He’d aimed for the sailor’s solar plexus. If he’d hit it, that would have taken the SOB out of the brawl till his motor started working again.

But a shot to the ribs just pissed the sailor off. He gave George a punch identical to the one he’d just taken. George grunted and swore. That would leave a bruise, and he’d probably be sore whenever he breathed for the next week.

Nobody in a barroom brawl played much defense. George slugged the guy in front of him again. Then Fritz Gustafson hauled off and belted the sailor in the chops. The man went down like a felled tree. With a small smile, Gustafson displayed a set of brass knucks. He would have made a hell of a Boy Scout. He was prepared for anything.

Halfway down the bar, somebody who didn’t have brass knuckles improvised. He picked up a long-legged stool and swung it like a flail, felling whoever he could reach. Maybe the rising and falling screech that burst from him was intended for a Rebel yell. Maybe it just meant he was enjoying himself.

Whatever it meant, the screech abruptly cut off. Someone coldcocked the stool swinger from behind with a beer bottle. The bar stool crashed to the floor. So did the sailor, bleeding from a scalp wound.

A fighting knife gleamed in the hand of a Marine in a forest-green uniform. George didn’t see the leatherneck stick anybody. All the same, he decided he was up way past his bedtime.

Getting out of a brawl without getting a name for running away from brawls wasn’t so easy, though. George didn’t want to skip out on his buddies. And so he stayed there and took some punches and dealt out a few more. Dalby and Gustafson both seemed happy enough where they were.

Then somebody yelled, “Shore patrol!” That sent everybody surging toward the door. George hoped the bartender had shouted out the warning to get the sailors to quit tearing his place to pieces. No such luck. The Navy equivalent of MPs waded into the fray, nightsticks swinging.

George counted himself lucky-he didn’t get hit in the head. He did get hit in the ribs, which made the punch he’d taken there seem a love pat by comparison. Fremont Dalby got a bloody stripe over one eye. Fritz Gustafson knocked a shore patrolman ass over teakettle with his knuckleduster. That could have won him a pounding to end all poundings, but none of the shore patrolman’s pals saw him do it. Some people had all the luck.

Gustafson’s luck didn’t keep him-and George, and most of the rest of the people in the bar, including the barkeep-from getting grabbed and tossed into one of the paddy wagons that pulled up outside.

The SPs had a brig set up a couple of blocks away. It had probably been there for years, but George hadn’t known about it. They found out he and Dalby and Gustafson had legitimate liberty papers, and they found out the three men from the Townsend hadn’t started the fight. When they discovered Gustafson’s persuader, they took it away from him. He looked aggrieved, but he didn’t say anything. Under the circumstances, that was bound to be smart. Of course, Gustafson never had much to say.

Another paddy wagon delivered them to their ship and two more men to the destroyer tied up next to her. The officer of the deck eyed them as if he’d found them in his apple. “Well, well,” he said. “What have we got here?”

“Drunk and disorderly, sir,” a shore patrolman answered. “Tavern brawl on Hotel Street.”

“All right. We’ll take care of them,” the OOD said.

And they did. No one got very excited about it. Captain’s mast was something that happened now and again. George had never come up in front of one before. He might have been more worried if he were less hung over. That made him think more about internal miseries than any the Townsend ’s skipper would inflict.

By their expressions, Dalby and Gustafson also had a bad case of the morning afters. Lieutenant Commander Brian McClintock glowered at each of them in turn. “Anything to say for yourselves?” he growled.

“No, sir,” Dalby said. George and Fritz Gustafson shook their heads. George wished he hadn’t. It only made the throbbing behind his eyes worse.

“Why the devil didn’t you get out of there before the SPs came? Now I have to notice this.” McClintock sighed. “Three days in the brig, bread and water.”

The brig was tiny and cramped. Through most of the first day, George didn’t want anything resembling food. He drank lots of water. It helped the hangover a little. By the time he got out, he was sick of piss and punk: Navy slang for the punishment rations. Making him sick of them so he didn’t want to do it again was part of the point of the sentence, but that didn’t occur to him.

Ordinary chow on the Townsend was no better than it had to be. It tasted like manna from heaven when they turned him loose. Greasy fried chicken? Lumpy mashed potatoes? Coffee like battery acid? He made a pig of himself.

“Didn’t figure you for a brawler, Enos,” somebody said.

“Yeah, well…” George shrugged and let the well-gnawed bone from his drumstick fall to the plate in front of him. He had a few bruises to show he’d been in a fight, and delivered the classic line with as much conviction as if no one had ever said it before: “You ought to see the other guy.”

Some British poet talked about ending the world with a whimper, not a bang. Tom Colleton figured that meant the limey had missed out on the Great War. It sure as hell proved he’d never set foot in one of the two or three Confederate pockets left in Pittsburgh.

That Tom didn’t know how many positions his countrymen still held spoke volumes about how bad things were. He was hungry. He was cold. He was lousy-he itched all the time. The regiment he commanded might have had a company’s worth of effectives, which made it one of the stronger units in this pocket. They were desperately low on ammo for their automatic weapons. Most of them carried captured U.S. Springfields instead. They had no trouble scrounging cartridges for them.