Thumbs Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The buggy was progressing at a tired trot. Its two occupants had driven since before dawn and were as tired as their horses when they turned into the Rockville Pike toward Washington. The girl was tawny and lovely. Despite the July heat she wore a light blue dress of bombazine cloth and on this subject she had listened politely to her brother’s strictures during the drive down. If she was to nurse in a Washington hospital she must not present herself in gay regalia. Josie was sad about this. It was the first really grown-up costume she had ever owned. A lot of boys at home had observed the unholy glow of her hair since she was twelve, but Josie belonged to a strict family moved out to Ohio from Massachusetts. Nonetheless she was approaching the war as if she were going to a party.

“When do we get there, brother?” She dug him lightly with the handle of the buggy whip. “Is this still Maryland or are we in the District of Columbia?” Captain Doctor Pilgrim came alive.

“D.C. I guess—unless you’ve managed to turn us around. Let’s stop and get water at this farmhouse just ahead. And, Josie, don’t get enthusiastic with these people down here. Most of them are secesh, and if you’re nice to them they take advantage of it. Don’t give them a chance to get haughty with you.”

“I won’t,” she said, “I’ll show them what we feel.”

They were possibly the only people in the vicinity unaware that this part of Maryland was temporarily Confederate. To ease the pressure on the Southern army at Petersburg, and make a last despairing threat at the Capital, General Early had marched his corps up the valley to the city limits of Washington. After throwing a few shells into the suburbs he had turned his weary columns about for the march back into Virginia. The last infantry had scarcely passed, leaving a faint dust along the road, and the girl had been rather puzzled by the series of armed tramps, who had been limping by them in the last ten minutes, and there was something in the determined direction of the two men riding toward her which made her ask with a certain alarm, “What are these men, brother, secesh?”

To Josie or indeed to anyone who had not been to the front, it might have been difficult to guess the profession of these men—even more so to guess what cause they served. Tib Dulany, who had once contributed occasional verse to the Lynchburg Courier, wore a hat that had once been white, a butternut coat, blue pants that had once belonged to a Union trooper, and as his only designating badge, a cartridge belt stamped C.S.A. All that the two riders had in common were their fine new carbines taken last week from Pleasanton’s cavalry.

They came up behind the buggy in a whirl of dust and Tib said:

“Hi there, Yank!”

Remembering her brother’s caution about being haughty Josie reined in her horses.

“We want to get some water,” she said to the handsomest young man.

“We—” she stopped short seeing that Captain Doctor Pilgrim’s elbow was poked backward, his hand at his holster, but immobile; Josie saw why—the second rider was holding his carbine three feet from his heart.

Slowly, almost painfully, Captain Pilgrim raised his hands.

“What is this—a raid?” he asked.

Josie felt an arm reaching about her and shrunk forward; Tib was taking her brother’s revolver from its holster.

“What is this?” Dr. Pilgrim demanded, “Are you guerrillas?”

“Who are you?” Tib and Wash inquired in unison. Without waiting for an answer Tib said to Josie, “Young lady, walk your team up a little way and turn in yonder at the farmhouse. You can get a drink of water up there.”

He realized suddenly that she was lovely, that she was frightened and brave, and he added: “Nobody’s goin to hurt you. We just aimin to detain you a little.”

“Will you tell me who you are?” Captain Pilgrim demanded, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Calm down!” Tib told him. “You’re inside Lee’s lines now.”

“Lee’s lines!” Captain Pilgrim cried. “You think every time you Mosby murderers come out of your hills and cut a telegraph—”

The team, barely started, jolted to a stop—Wash had grabbed the reins, and he turned black eyes upon the northerner.

“Say one thing more about Major Mosby and I’ll drag you out of that buggy and clean your little old face with dandelions.”

“There’s a lady here, Wash,” Tib said, “and the officer simply isn’t informed of the news. He’s a prisoner of the Army of Northern Virginia.”

Captain Pilgrim looked at them incredulously as Wash released the reins and they drove in silence to the farmhouse. Only as the foliage parted and gave a sudden vista of two dozen horses attended by grey-clad orderlies, did he awake to a premonition that something was wrong—that his news was indeed several days behind.

“ What’s happened?” he asked Wash. “Is Lee’s army here?”

“You didn’t know that?” Tib said. “Why, right now we got Abe Lincoln in the kitchen washing dishes—and General Grant’s upstairs making the beds.”

“Ah-h-h!” grunted Captain Pilgrim.

“Say, Wash, I sure would like to be in Washington tonight when Jeff Davis walks in. That Yankee rebellion didn’t last long.”

—And Josie, she believed the whole thing. Her world was crashing around: The Boys in Blue and the Union forever and Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord. Her eyes were full of hot tears of grief.

“You can’t take my brother prisoner. Why, he’s not really just an officer because he’s a doctor. He was wounded at Cold Harbor—”

“Doctor, eh? Don’t know anything about teeth, does he?”

“Oh yes—that’s his specialty.”

They reached the porch and the scouts dismounted.

“So you’re a tooth doctor?” Tib said. “Well, that’s just what we been seeking all over Maryland, my Maryland for the last hour. If you’ll be so kind as to come in here you can probably pull a tooth of one of the real Napoleons, a cousin of the Emperor, Napoleon III.”

Captain Pilgrim cautioned Josie:

“They’re joking but don’t say anything.”

“Joking?—we’re sure not joking. He’s attached to General Early’s staff and he’s been bawling in here for the last hour but the medical men went on with the ambulances and nobody on the staff can pull teeth.”

A staff officer came out on the porch and gave a nervous ear to a crackling of rifles in the distance; then bent an eye upon the buggy.

“Lieutenant, we found a tooth specialist,” Tib said. “Providence sent him right into our lines and if Napoleon is still—”

“Good heavens!” the officer exclaimed. “Bring him in. We didn’t know whether to take him or leave him.”

Suddenly Josie had her first real picture of the Confederacy staged for her on the vine-covered veranda. There was a sudden egress: first a grizzled man in a fine grey riding coat, followed by two younger men cramming papers into a canvas sack. Then came a miscellany of officers, one on a single crutch, one stripped to an undershirt and with the gold star of a general pinned to a bandage on his shoulder, one laughing as a man laughs who has just told some joke himself but the general air was not of cheerfulness—and Josie saw in their tired eyes the reflection of some disappointment.

Then they made a single gesture as one man; perceiving her, they wheeled toward her and their dozen right hands rose to their dozen hats, topping them slightly, and they bowed faintly in her direction.

Josie bowed back stiffly, trying to bring some expression into her face—of hauteur, scorn, reproach—but she was unable to do aught but respond to their courtesy.

… In a moment the staff had swung into their saddles; the aide who had first come out of the farmhouse paused at General Early’s stirrup.

“Good enough,” the General said.

He looked for a moment at the city that he could not conquer, at the arbitrary swamp that another Virginian had conceived. “No further change in orders,” he said. “Tell Mosby that I want couriers every hour up to Charlestown. One battery of horse artillery to put up a big noise while the engineers blow up the bridge over Montgomery Creek—you understand, Major Charlesworth.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I guess that’s all, then.” He turned. “Oh, yes.” His sun-strained eyes focussed on the buggy. “I understand you’re a doctor. Prince Napoleon is in there—He’s been with us as an observer. Pull out his tooth or whatever he needs. These two troopers will stay with you. Do well by him now—they’ll let you go without parole when you’ve finished with him.”

Then all was drowned out in the clop and crunch of mounted men moving down a lane. The little group was left standing by the porch as the last sally of the Army of Northern Virginia faded swiftly into the distance.

“We got a dentist here for Prince Napoleon,” said Tib to the French aide- de-camp.

“That’s very well,” the aide exclaimed, leading the way into the front room of the farmhouse. “He is in the most great agony.”

“The doctor is a Yankee,” Tib continued. “One of us will have to stay while he’s operating.”

The stout invalid across the room, a gross miniature of his world-shaking uncle, tore his hand from his groaning mouth and sat upright in an armchair.

“Operating!” he cried. “Mon Dieu! Is he going to operate?”

“This is the doctor,” Tib said. “His name is—”

“Pilgrim,” the doctor supplied coldly. “My sister—where will she be?”

“I’ll put her in the parlor, Doctor. Wash, you stay here.”

“I’ll need hot water,” said Dr. Pilgrim, “and my instrument case from the buggy.”

Prince Napoleon groaned