Settling Accounts_ Drive To The East Part 19

"Heh," Ferd Koenig said. "Well, I hope we can do it, that's all." He was listening to the gunfire from the north, too. He didn't brush it aside the way Jake did. It worried him, and he made no secret about that, not even to Featherston.

Showing what he thought took nerve. Lesser men had ended up in camps for lesser offenses. But regardless of whether Koenig agreed with Jake's policies, his personal loyalty was unshakable. Jake could count the people he fully trusted on his fingers-sometimes, on a bad day, on his thumbs-but Ferd always had been, was, and always would be one of them.

"We will." Featherston retained his conviction in his own destiny. "The show will be starting soon, and we'll squash 'em flat. You'll see."

"Expect I will." Koenig didn't say one way or the other. one way or the other. He didn't even leave it hanging in the air. He believed in Jake's destiny, too. He'd gone on believing in it through the black years in the middle twenties, when so many others wrote Jake and the Freedom Party off. He asked, "You need me for anything else?" He didn't even leave it hanging in the air. He believed in Jake's destiny, too. He'd gone on believing in it through the black years in the middle twenties, when so many others wrote Jake and the Freedom Party off. He asked, "You need me for anything else?"

"Don't think so," Jake answered. "But we do need some kind of way to get rid of more n.i.g.g.e.rs faster. You put some bright boys on that and see what they can come up with."

"Right." Ferdinand Koenig heaved himself out of his chair and headed for the door. Jake had no idea what he would come up with or even if he would come up with anything, but had no doubt he would look, and look hard. If you looked hard enough, you generally found something. something.

Muttering, Jake went back to looking through his paperwork. He wished he thought he would find anything else important, or even something interesting, in there. "Fat chance," he muttered. "Fat f.u.c.king chance." He made sure he kept his voice down; Lulu didn't like to hear him swear. That didn't always stop him, but it did a good part of the time.

And then he turned up a report from an outfit called the Huntsville Rocket Society. He wondered how the h.e.l.l anything that bizarre had made it onto his desk. Then he saw why. The brigadier general in charge of air defense of Alabama and Mississippi endorsed it, writing, However startling these claims sound, I believe they can be made real soon enough to prove useful in the present conflict. However startling these claims sound, I believe they can be made real soon enough to prove useful in the present conflict.

That made Jake read it more carefully than he would have otherwise. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h," he murmured halfway through. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h. Wouldn't that be something if they could?" of a b.i.t.c.h. Wouldn't that be something if they could?"

VIII.

As the weather heated up, the POW camp near Andersonville, Georgia, did an increasingly good impression of h.e.l.l. With the heat came humidity. With the humidity came thunderstorms that awed Jonathan Moss. The red dirt in the camp turned to something not a great deal thicker than tomato soup after one of those downpours.

And the mosquitoes came. Moss had known mosquitoes up in Canada, too. These seemed a larger and more virulent breed. He slapped and swore and itched. He was anything but the only one. Nick Cantarella said, "This one I smashed last night, you could hang machine guns under its wings and go to war in it."

"Who says they don't?" Moss answered. "That would account for the size of some of the bites I've got."

The other officer laughed. "You're a funny guy, Major."

"Funny like a crutch," Moss said, and then, "Colonel Summers ought to do something about it. We could all come down with yellow fever."

"Do what?" Cantarella asked in reasonable tones. "Moses parted the Red Sea, but all he did was plague the Egyptians with bugs. G.o.d was the one who had to call 'em off."

Patiently, Moss answered, "Moses couldn't ask for bug repellent and Flit. Come to think of it, Pharaoh couldn't, either. But Summers d.a.m.n well can."

"Oh." Cantarella looked foolish. "Well, yeah."

Moss didn't ask him how escape efforts were going. He a.s.sumed they were were still going. He also a.s.sumed that much rain did tunnels no good. He looked out the window, out beyond the barbed wire. Even if the prisoners did get out of the camp, could they cross several states and get back to the USA? They spoke with an accent very different from the locals'. They would be pursued-he pictured bloodhounds straight out of still going. He also a.s.sumed that much rain did tunnels no good. He looked out the window, out beyond the barbed wire. Even if the prisoners did get out of the camp, could they cross several states and get back to the USA? They spoke with an accent very different from the locals'. They would be pursued-he pictured bloodhounds straight out of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Uncle Tom's Cabin. And the people they met-the white ones, anyhow-would be Freedom Party fanatics. Put that all together and staying in the camp started to seem the better bargain. And the people they met-the white ones, anyhow-would be Freedom Party fanatics. Put that all together and staying in the camp started to seem the better bargain.

But life here was no picnic, either. And prisoners of war had a duty to escape. Moss knew he'd run if and when he found a chance. As for what would happen after that . . . He'd worry about such things when he had to, not before.

In due course, citronella candles appeared in the prisoners' barracks. They filled the air with a spicy, lemony scent as they burned. The odor was alleged to discourage mosquitoes. Maybe Moss got bitten a little less often after that. On the other hand, maybe he didn't. He wasn't convinced, one way or the other.

Guards went through the camp with spray pumps. The mist that came out of them smelled something like mothb.a.l.l.s and something like gasoline. Moss had no idea what it did to mosquitoes. It made him want to wear a gas mask. Since he didn't have one, he just had to put up with it.

Again, he wasn't sure how much difference the spraying made. The bugs didn't disappear, however much he wished they would. Of course, n.o.body was spraying outside the camp. Even if mosquitoes died by the thousands inside the barbed wire, plenty of replacements flew on in to sample the flavor delights of prisoner of war on the hoof.

Colonel Summers, once prodded, kept right on complaining, both to the Confederate authorities and to his fellow prisoners. "What they really need to do is spray a thin film of oil over every pond and puddle they can find," he said. "That would kill the mosquito larvae, and then we really might get some relief."

"Well, why don't they?" Moss said. "It wouldn't just benefit us. Their own health would get better, too." He thought like the attorney he was, weighing advantages and disadvantages.

Summers only shrugged. "They say they haven't got the manpower for it."

"In a way, that's good news," Moss said. "If they're stretched too thin to take care of important things behind the lines, pretty soon they'll be stretched too thin to take care of things at the front." Like a lawyer-and like a prisoner-he bent reality so it looked better than it really was.

"That hasn't happened yet." Colonel Summers brought him back to earth with a dose of the current news.

"Are you sure, sir?" Moss asked. "Anything you see in the papers the guards give us is just so much Freedom Party garbage."

"I'm sure." And Summers sounded very sure indeed. Moss knew there were a couple of clandestine wireless sets in the camp. He knew no more than that, which was a good thing for all concerned. He looked around the barracks. Two or three of the men were new fish, new officers for whom n.o.body here could vouch. They probably came from the United States. They talked as if they did. But good Confederate spies would sound like Yankees. The less Summers said while they were around, the better.

Machine-gun fire woke Moss in the middle of the night not quite a week later. His first reaction was fury. They'd pulled off an escape attempt, and they hadn't included him. His second reaction was despair. If the guards were shooting, the attempt couldn't have amounted to much. Was this the best his countrymen could do?

He got very little sleep the rest of the night.

At roll call the next morning, the Confederate guards swaggered and strutted like pouter pigeons. "d.a.m.n n.i.g.g.e.rs came sniffin' round the camp last night," one of them said. "We drove 'em off, though-you better believe it."

However proud of themselves they were, their posturing only filled Moss with relief. Nothing inside here had gone wrong. If the guards wanted to jump up and down because they'd beaten back a few sorry guerrillas, they were welcome to, as far as he was concerned.

Later that day, he found an excuse to amble around the grounds with Nick Cantarella. As casually as he could, he asked, "Do we have any way of getting in touch with those colored men on the other side of the barbed wire?"

Cantarella took a couple of steps without saying anything. What he did say, at last, was, "I ought to tell you I don't know what you're talking about."

"Why?" Moss asked. "They could do us a lot of good if we ever happened to get on the other side of the wire ourselves."

"Maybe." Cantarella paused to light a cigarette. It was one of the lousy U.S. brands that came in Red Cross packages from the north. Prisoners could sometimes get the much better Confederate tobacco from the guards. Quiet little deals like that happened every now and again. After the first drag, Cantarella made a face. "Tastes like straw and horses.h.i.t." A moment later, he added, "Want one?"

"Sure." Moss took one, then leaned close to get a light. The tobacco was was bad, but bad tobacco beat the h.e.l.l out of no tobacco. He blew out smoke and then asked, "How come just maybe?" bad, but bad tobacco beat the h.e.l.l out of no tobacco. He blew out smoke and then asked, "How come just maybe?"

The other officer looked around before answering. Satisfied n.o.body else was in earshot, he said, "For one thing, if the Confederates catch us with them, we're dead. No ifs, ands, or buts. Dead."

That was probably true. Moss shook his head-no, that was bound to be true. The Confederate States played by the usual international rules when they fought the United States. They played by no rules at all when they fought their own Negroes. By all the signs, the Negroes returned the favor-if that was the word. Moss said, "But if we've got a better chance of not getting caught at all . . ."

"Maybe," Nick Cantarella said again, even more dubiously than before. "But why should they help us get back to the USA?"

As if to a child, Moss answered, "Because we're fighting Featherston, too."

"Terrific," the younger man said. "Doesn't that make them more likely to give us rifles and enlist us? You want to be a guerrilla yourself? I don't, or not very much. It's not what I was trained for, but I wouldn't have a Chinaman's chance of convincing the smokes of that." He'd been an artilleryman before he got caught.

"Some of the people here would be good at it," Moss said. Infantry officers might make the black guerrillas considerably more effective. They really did have training in what the Negroes were trying to do. Moss himself was in Cantarella's boat. All his military expertise, such as it was, centered on airplanes. He didn't think the guerrillas would be taking to the air anytime soon.

A flight of a dozen biplanes buzzing along at not much above treetop height made him wonder if he was wrong. Those weren't military aircraft, except in the sense that any aircraft could be military when you had them and the other fellows didn't. As if to prove the point, and to show whose side they were on, they dropped bombs on the woods out beyond the prison camp. The explosions set Moss' teeth on edge.

"Think they'll hit anything in there?" he asked Cantarella.

"Oh, they'll hit something, something," the other officer answered with an expressive shrug. "Whether it'll be anything worth hitting . . . That's liable to be a different question."

"Looking like they were just tossing those bombs out of the c.o.c.kpit," Moss said. "That's how this whole business got started, back when the Great War was new."

"If you say so." Cantarella wasn't old enough to remember the start of the Great War. He sure as h.e.l.l hadn't been flying then, as Moss had.

A few days later, Moss put the question he'd asked Cantarella to Colonel Summers. The senior officer looked at him as if he'd suddenly started spouting Cherokee. "Trust a bunch of raggedy-a.s.s n.i.g.g.e.rs? You must be kidding, Major." But for his accent, he sounded like a Confederate himself.

With such patience as he could muster, Moss asked, "Do you know anybody who hates Jake Featherston more-or who has better reason to?"

Summers ignored that. "Besides, Major, we've got no way to get in touch with the spooks." He sounded like a man anxious to close off a subject he found distasteful. He might have been a maiden lady forced into talking about the facts of life.

Moss didn't laugh in his face, which proved military discipline still held. He did say, "Sir, we have all kinds of deals cooking that stretch farther than the camp. Spread a few dollars around and you can do d.a.m.n near anything."

"Not this." Summers spoke as if from On High. "Not this, by G.o.d. No Confederate guard is going to go out and get hold of the n.i.g.g.e.rs for us. That'd be like asking them to cut their own throats."

He had a point-of sorts. "There are bound to be ways if we look for them," Moss persisted. "We haven't even tried."

"Once we're outside the barbed wire, Major, you may put your faith in n.i.g.g.e.rs or Christian Science or any other d.a.m.nfool thing your heart desires," Colonel Summers said. "Until then, I make the decisions, and I have made this one. Is that clear enough for you, or shall I be more explicit?"

"You are very clear . . . sir." Moss turned the t.i.tle of respect into one of reproach.

Summers heard the reproach and went red. "Will that be all, Major?" he asked in a voice like ice.

"I suppose so," Moss answered bitterly. "After all, we're not going anywhere, are we?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Jefferson Pinkard slammed down the telephone and scowled at it as if it were a rattlesnake. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" he added for good measure. He slammed a fist down on his desk. His coffee mug and the gooseneck lamp there jumped. He had to grab the lamp to keep it from toppling over.

He'd hated calls from Richmond ever since he started running camps. He had good reason for hating them, too. Richmond had a habit of wanting miracles, and of wanting them yesterday.

Jeff had already given them one-a more efficient, more secure way of disposing of excess Negroes than they'd ever had before. Now that wasn't good enough for them anymore. He had to come up with something better yet. He hoped the other people who were running camps had got the same call. Let one of them have a brainstorm for a change!

"Fat chance," he muttered. Some of those people could blow their brains out if they sneezed, G.o.ddammit.

He knew the question was ridiculous and unfair. That didn't stop him from worrying at it like a dog worrying at a bone that was plumb out of meat. How could could you get rid of more spooks faster than with this fleet of special trucks? you get rid of more spooks faster than with this fleet of special trucks?

Oh, you could use more trucks, but that wasn't the answer Richmond wanted to hear. Richmond wanted something different, something spiffy, something where you could wave a hand and all of a sudden a thousand Negroes weren't there anymore.

And Richmond needed something like that, too. Pinkard couldn't very well deny it. All he had to do was look across the railroad tracks at the new women's half of the camp. Towns were getting their colored districts emptied out one after another. The blacks came into places like Camp Determination. They came in, and they didn't come out again-not alive, anyway.

How many n.i.g.g.e.rs were there in the Confederate States? How many could the camps dispose of every day? How long would the CSA need to start really cutting into their numbers?

"Gotta be done," Jeff said heavily, as if someone had denied it. "It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it." Every now and then, the sheer amount of work he had to do tempted him toward self-pity.

He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. He could look out at the camp from the window-no subst.i.tute for prowling through it, but sometimes a fast way to spot trouble before it got out of hand. Barbed wire and machine-gun towers separated the administrative block from the seething misery in the main compound. At the moment, a long line of blacks was snaking forward, the skinny men often eager to board the trucks that would, they thought, take them to another camp. In fact, their journey would be strictly one-way. That they didn't know it, was one of the beauties of the scheme, for their ignorance kept them docile.

Pinkard shook his head. How could you come up with anything better than this? Oh, sure, it used a lot of trucks, but so what? It did the job, didn't it? Some people were just never satisfied, that was all.

He stuck his head into the chief guard's office. Vern Green was second in command here, and needed to know where Jeff was when he wasn't at the camp. "I'm going into town for a little while," Pinkard told him. "Anything goes wrong, send somebody after me."

"Will do, boss." Green knew Jeff wouldn't be anywhere but three or four places in Snyder, one of them far more likely than any of the other. Finding him wouldn't be hard. Green couldn't help adding, "Things are smooth, though."

"Yeah, I know. They're smooth now, anyways," Pinkard said. "But just in case, I mean."

"Sure, sure." Vernon Green nodded. He smiled. He was no less ambitious than Mercer Scott had been back in Louisiana. Like Scott, Green undoubtedly reported back to someone in Richmond about how Jeff did his job. But he wasn't so obnoxious about it. Scott had had a drill sergeant's manner and a face like a boot. Green smiled a lot of the time, whether there was anything to smile about or not. He caught his flies with honey, not vinegar. He caught a lot of them, however he did it, and that was what a second-in-command was for.

As camp commandant, Pinkard had a motorcar laid on. He could have had a driver, too, but he didn't want one. He could drive himself just fine. Guards saluted as he left the camp. He would have to go through all the boring formalities getting back in. He shrugged. He would have had the guards' heads if they were anything but careful about letting people into Camp Determination.

Snyder, Texas, was a nice little town of perhaps three thousand people. Before the camp went up, business there had centered on cattle and on ginning the cotton grown in the surrounding countryside and making cottonseed cake that the cattle ate. The influx of guards had everybody in the four-street central business district smiling. By local standards, they made good money, and they weren't shy about spending it. And new houses were going up, because a lot of the guards were married men, and didn't want to live right by the camp.

Whoever'd named the roads in Snyder had no imagination at all. The ones that ran east-west were numbered streets. The ones that ran north-south were avenues, identified by letter. He pulled up in front of a house on Thirty-first Street near Avenue Q, in the southern part of town. Two boys were wrestling on the threadbare lawn in front of the house. They broke off when he got out of the motorcar.

"Papa Jeff!" they yelled. "It's Papa Jeff!" They ran up to him and tried out a couple of tackles that would have drawn flags on any football field in the CSA or USA. Fortunately, they were still too little to flatten him.

He ruffled their hair. He liked Chick Blades' sons. He liked Chick Blades' widow even more. "Easy, there," he told the kids, trying to pry them loose from his legs without damaging them. It wasn't easy; they clung like limpets. "Is your mama home?" he asked them.

That did the trick better than any wrestling hold. "She sure is," they said together, and dashed toward the house yelling, "Ma! Ma! Papa Jeff's here!" If the racket wasn't enough to wake the dead, it would have made them turn over in their graves a couple of times.

Edith Blades came out on the front porch. She was a nice-looking blond woman in her early thirties. Each time Jeff saw her, she seemed a little less ravaged by her husband's suicide. Time did heal wounds. Jeff had got over the disastrous end of his first marriage to the point where he was game to try it again. And so was Edith, though she wouldn't tie the knot till after the first anniversary of Chick Blades' death. They were getting there.

"h.e.l.lo, Jeff. Good to see you," she said as he walked up to the porch. "How are things?"

"Things are . . ." He paused. "Well, they could be better."

"Come in and tell me about it," she said, and then, "Boys, go on and play. Papa Jeff will be with you in a little bit."

They made disappointed noises, but they didn't argue too much. They were good boys, well-behaved boys. She'd done a fine job with them, before Chick died and afterwards. Jeff admired that. He also admired the way she listened to him. He'd never known that with another woman-certainly not with his first wife. Animal heat had held him and Emily together-and then broken them apart.

"Set yourself down," Edith said when she and Jeff went back into the living room.

"In a second." He kissed her. She let him do that. In fact, she responded eagerly. Whenever he tried for more than a kiss, though, she told him they had to wait. That didn't make him angry. He thought the more of her for being able to say no. Emily hadn't, with him or with his best friend. But he didn't want to remember Emily. "How you doin' here?" he asked. "You got everything you need?"

"Sure do," Edith answered. "And I'm not sorry to be out of Alexandria, out of that house, and there's the Lord's truth."

"I do believe it." Jeff wouldn't have wanted to live in a house where somebody'd committed suicide. Actually, Chick had done it in his auto, but still. . . . "What do you think of Texas?"

"There's so much of it, and it's so big and flat," Edith answered. "Seemed like we were on the train forever, and that was just getting most of the way across one state. People act nice enough." She held up a hand. "But tell me what's gone wrong at the camp."

Jeff did. The only thing he didn't tell her was that Chick's suicide with auto exhaust had given him the idea for the trucks that used their fumes to kill off Negroes. He would never say a word about that, not even if he was on fire. There was such a thing as talking too d.a.m.n much.

When he finished, Edith was suitably indignant for him. "They've got their nerve," she said. "After everything you've done cleaning up the colored problem for them, then they expect more more? They should get down on their knees and thank G.o.d they've got a good man like you, Jeff."

"Ha! Those . . . people in Richmond don't notice anybody but their own selves," Jeff said. Only belatedly, after venting his spleen, did he notice the size of the compliment she'd paid him. "Thank you, darlin'. You say sweet things."

"You're my sweetheart," Edith said, her voice dead serious. "If I don't stick up for you, who's going to?"

Instead of answering with words, he kissed her again. She pressed herself against him. But when, ever optimistic, he let his hand fall on her thigh as if by accident, she knocked it away. He didn't get mad-he laughed. "You're somethin'."

"So are you." Edith was laughing, too. Even if she was, he remained sure she'd keep right on holding him at bay till their wedding night. It wasn't as if she were a virgin-or she could have doubled up on Mary-but she was a respectable woman, and she acted like one.

For a moment, Jeff thought the deep thrumming he heard was the pounding of the blood in his veins. Then he realized it was outside himself. No sooner had he realized that than Edith's kids ran in, yelling, "Ma! Papa Jeff! There's a million airplanes up in the sky! Come look! Quick!"