Settling Accounts_ Drive To The East Part 27

Rain came down as if Noah were somewhere just over the next rise. Moss didn't know about forty days and forty nights, but the next forty minutes marked as ferocious a cloudburst as he'd ever imagined. Lightning crackled again and again, a couple of times close enough to make all his hair stand on end. The thunder that followed sounded like a dress rehearsal for the end of the world.

"Liable to be tornadoes on the edge of a storm like this," a POW observed.

"We're safe, then. We're not on the edge. We're in the G.o.dd.a.m.n middle," another prisoner said.

"Besides, who'd notice anything as small as a tornado in the middle of this?" a would-be wit added. He got a laugh, but all he did was prove he didn't know the first thing about tornadoes, as several POWs from the Midwest loudly explained to him. Moss agreed, even if he didn't fuss and fume about it. Wherever tornadoes went, they made themselves noticed.

Colonel Summers looked less and less happy with each minute the downpour went on. Moss had a pretty good notion why, too. He sidled up to the senior officer and murmured, "How well is the tunnel sh.o.r.ed up?"

"We'll find out, won't we?" was all Monty Summers said. Moss nodded. If something went wrong, there was d.a.m.n-all he or any other prisoner could do about it right this minute.

Before too long, he stopped worrying about the tunnel. He started worrying about whether they would have to be rescued by rowboat instead. That seemed a much more immediate problem. He also wondered whether the Confederates had any rowboats handy. Had they antic.i.p.ated storms this big?

Looking out the windows helped very little. Except when lightning tore across the sky, it was almost night-dark. And what the lightning illuminated was mostly a b.u.mper crop of raindrops.

But after something less than an hour, the storm eased. The thunderheads glided off to the east with ponderous dignity. The subtropical sun of Georgia summer came out again. The ground started to steam-not just the puddles and ponds the rain had left behind but the ground itself.

Colonel Summers strode to the north-facing window. The starch came out of his shoulders; he might have aged ten years in ten seconds. "There's a hole in the ground not far from the deadline inside the fence," he said, his tone that of a man in the room with a deathbed. And so he might have been, for that hole meant the pa.s.sing of many men's hopes.

No one had ever accused the Confederate guards of brilliance. If they'd had any brains at all, they would have been at the front doing something more useful for their country than this. But they didn't have to be Sir Isaac Newton to figure out that holes in the ground, especially long, straight ones like this, didn't happen by themselves.

One of the guards who'd squelched through the mud to the subsidence sighted along it as if down the barrel of a rifle. What he saw when he did was the barracks where Moss stood waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He didn't have to wait long. The Confederates advanced on the building. One of them fell on his can in the slick red mud. Normally, the U.S. captives would have laughed and jeered at his clumsiness. No one made a peep now. The guards were unlikely to find much funny about an escape attempt, especially one they hadn't noticed till the storm betrayed it.

"Y'all come out right now!" one of them shouted. "Y'all come out or else."

The prisoners did did come out; Moss, for one, didn't think the guards were kidding about that come out; Moss, for one, didn't think the guards were kidding about that or else. or else. Crashing sounds from inside the barracks declared that the Confederates were taking the place apart, looking for where the tunnel started. Along with everybody else in green-gray, Moss stood glumly in the mud, waiting for them to find it. Crashing sounds from inside the barracks declared that the Confederates were taking the place apart, looking for where the tunnel started. Along with everybody else in green-gray, Moss stood glumly in the mud, waiting for them to find it.

And they did. He'd known they would. They were stupid, but not stupid enough to miss it. Their leader came out with his face even hotter than the weather. "You sons of b.i.t.c.hes!" he screamed. "How dare you try and escape from this here prison? How dare dare you?" you?"

"We have the right." Moss spoke up, the lawyer in him touched by that peculiar brainless fury. "The Geneva Convention says so."

That rocked the Confederate guard officer back on his heels. But he rallied, barking, "It also says I got the right to punish the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who try an' break out. 'Fess up, y'all. Who worked on that there tunnel? Rest of you'll have an easier time if we can punish the real criminals."

Every single U.S. prisoner raised his hand at the same time. Most of them hadn't had anything to do with the tunnel. Some, the new fish, hadn't even known it was there. They raised their hands anyway, without hesitation. Moss was proud of them.

What the guard officer felt was something else again. "All right. All right, All right," he said heavily, and snorted like a boar hog. "Y'all reckon you're so G.o.dd.a.m.n smart. Well, you'll all catch it together, then, and see how you like that. that." He stormed away. Moss hoped he would take a pratfall in the mud, but no such luck. The rain was on the Confederate side every which way today.

Dr. Leonard O'Doull was about to get on a train that would take him back from Virginia to Ohio (or perhaps, given the way things were going, only to western Pennsylvania) when a clerk bounced out of a command car with a canvas sack slung over his shoulder. "Hang on, Doc!" he called. "I got mail for youse guys."

Youse guys was as far outside the bounds of ordinary English as the Confederate was as far outside the bounds of ordinary English as the Confederate y'all. y'all. A lot of languages had separate forms for second-person singular and plural. English didn't, but kept trying to invent them. The thought flashed through O'Doull's mind and flew away in a split second, replaced by simple joy. "Give it here," he told the clerk. "I thought it would be weeks catching up with us." A lot of languages had separate forms for second-person singular and plural. English didn't, but kept trying to invent them. The thought flashed through O'Doull's mind and flew away in a split second, replaced by simple joy. "Give it here," he told the clerk. "I thought it would be weeks catching up with us."

Red Crosses adorned the tops of the cars and the sides of the locomotive. Locomotive and cars alike were painted white. With luck, that would keep the Confederates from dropping bombs on the train or machine-gunning it from the air. There had been a few horrible incidents, but only a few. There had also been a few south of the Mason-Dixon line. O'Doull wondered if Jake Featherston's propaganda machine had manufactured those, but wouldn't have been surprised if they proved real. War was full of things like that.

He stopped worrying about the war when he saw his wife's handwriting on a letter with a stamp from the Republic of Quebec. Sorting through the pile, he found several of those, and one from his brother-in-law, Georges Galtier. Seeing that one made him smile in a different way. Among his wife's relatives, Georges was the zany, the cuckoo, the odd man out-sometimes very odd indeed.

"Gotta go, Doc. Good luck to you." Without waiting for a reply, the Army mail clerk hopped back into the command car and drove away.

O'Doull carried the stack of envelopes and magazines and newspapers and small packages up into the train. "Mail call!" he shouted, and for the next couple of minutes he was the most popular guy around.

Once the mail was all doled out, that popularity naturally faded. Only Granville McDougald hung around. He looked glum. To show why, he held up an envelope. It had a big handstamp on it: RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESSEE DECEASED RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESSEE DECEASED.

"I'm sorry, Granny," O'Doull said. "Who is it?"

"Fellow I've known since the Great War. He lost a hand then, so they wouldn't let him stay in the Army, not even as a medic. Dammit, Don was a good guy-one of the best. Now I've got to see if I can come up with his sister's address, find out what happened to him."

The letter had gone to Trenton, New Jersey. Confederate bombers certainly reached that far. But other things could happen to a middle-aged man, too. As a middle-aged man himself, O'Doull knew that much too well. "I'm sorry he's gone," he repeated. "Whatever it was, I hope it was quick."

"Yeah. Amen," McDougald said. They'd both seen too many men who lingered in agony and would not let go of life, even if some of them wanted to. A fast end-dead before he knew what hit him-was far from the smallest mercy the world had to offer, and the world didn't offer it often enough.

"Here." O'Doull reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of brandy. "Have a knock of this. Medicinal, you know."

"Sure. Thanks, Doc. You're a medical genius." McDougald took the bottle and raised it in salute. "Here's to you, Don." He took one long swig, then handed it back. O'Doull put it away and closed the bag.

As an officer, O'Doull had a Pullman berth. He took his letters there to read them in curtained-off privacy. He opened the one from Georges first. It was the usual nonsense from his brother-in-law: the usual nonsense with the usual ironic sting. Aren't you glad I am not an English-speaking Canadian? Aren't you glad I am not an English-speaking Canadian? Georges wrote-in English, not the French that was his usual language and that he used for almost all of the letter. He went on in English for one more sentence: Georges wrote-in English, not the French that was his usual language and that he used for almost all of the letter. He went on in English for one more sentence: If I were, you might have to shoot me. If I were, you might have to shoot me. After that, he returned to his own tongue and the usual doings in and around Riviere-du-Loup. After that, he returned to his own tongue and the usual doings in and around Riviere-du-Loup.

O'Doull wondered whether Georges had had someone else compose that English for him. He would have studied the language in school before the Great War, when Quebec was still part of Canada, but when would he have needed it since? Of course, being Georges, he might have remembered it just so he could make a sarcastic nuisance of himself thirty years later. The uprising in anglophone Canada worried O'Doull, too, and not because he might be called on to pick up a rifle himself.

He went through his wife's letters one by one, starting with the earliest. He got more gossip from Riviere-du-Loup, and a different view of a small scandal involving a greengrocer and the butcher's wife. Georges had treated the whole thing as a joke. To Nicole, the butcher was a brute and his wife looking for happiness wherever she could find it. O'Doull himself knew all the people involved, but not well. He wouldn't have cared to judge where, if anywhere, the rights and wrongs lay.

Nicole didn't talk about the Canadian uprising till her next to last letter. Then she wrote, There is a bill in the House of Deputies to extend military service. I am lighting candles and praying it does not pa.s.s. There is a bill in the House of Deputies to extend military service. I am lighting candles and praying it does not pa.s.s.

"So am I, sweetheart," O'Doull muttered, and then, "Moi aussi." "Moi aussi." He'd seen news about that bill, too. The United States were doing everything they could to get the Republic of Quebec to contribute more men to quelling the revolt north of the forty-ninth parallel. That way, the United States wouldn't have to pull so many of their own men off the fighting front against the Confederates, or even out of rebellion-wracked Utah. He'd seen news about that bill, too. The United States were doing everything they could to get the Republic of Quebec to contribute more men to quelling the revolt north of the forty-ninth parallel. That way, the United States wouldn't have to pull so many of their own men off the fighting front against the Confederates, or even out of rebellion-wracked Utah.

But if the Republic of Quebec did contribute more soldiers, one of them was much too likely to be a young man named Lucien O'Doull. One of the great advantages of living in Quebec was that the country was technically neutral, even if it inclined toward the USA. Leonard O'Doull hadn't had to worry about his boy's becoming a soldier. He hadn't had to-but now he did.

Nicole, naturally, kept a close eye on the bill's progress. Her latest letter reported that it had come out of committee. I do not know anyone who favors this bill, not a single soul, I do not know anyone who favors this bill, not a single soul, she wrote bitterly. she wrote bitterly. It moves forward anyway. It moves forward because the politicians are afraid of what the United States will do to us if it fails. It moves forward anyway. It moves forward because the politicians are afraid of what the United States will do to us if it fails.

She was bound to be right about that. Without the United States, there wouldn't have been a Republic of Quebec. The Republic's economy had very strong ties to the USA, as strong as the Americans could make them. If Quebec made the United States unhappy, the USA could make the Republic unhappier.

O'Doull swore under his breath. He understood both sides, but, because of Lucien, hoped the Republic's politicians would show some backbone. All politics is personal, All politics is personal, he thought. he thought.

After getting everything off her chest, his wife went back to family chatter and the nine-days' wonders of Riviere-du-Loup. It was as if she didn't want to look at what she'd written about the bill, either. Only one more sentence at the end of the letter betrayed her worry: I wish you were home. I wish you were home.

"I wish I was home, too, dammit," O'Doull muttered. But he d.a.m.n well wasn't, and whose fault was that? No one's but his own. The United States were his country, and he'd volunteered to help them in a way that best matched his skills and talents. And so here he was in a white-painted train, rumbling along toward more trouble. "Happy day."

He wondered how the United States could find more trouble than they already had. With j.a.pan bearing down on the Sandwich Islands, with the Confederates raising h.e.l.l in Ohio and heading for Pennsylvania, with the Mormons still kicking up their heels in Utah and the Canucks north of the border, that looked as if all the troubles in the world, or at least on the continent, had come home to roost.

Back before the Great War, people had talked about how encircled the United States were, with the CSA, Canada, Britain, and France all keeping a wary eye on the giant they'd tied down. The country had burst its bounds in the war, and dominated North America for a generation. Now everybody else was trying to get the ropes back on again.

If Canada broke away from U.S. occupation, if British influence returned to the northern part of the continent, how long could the Republic of Quebec stay independent? That had to be on the minds of the politicians in Quebec City. It was on Leonard O'Doull's mind, too. But so was his son, and his son counted for infinitely more.

Engine puffing, iron wheels screeching against the track and throwing up sun-colored sparks, the train stopped. O'Doull opened the curtains in front of the window and looked out. They were, as far as he could tell, in the middle of nowhere. Something had gone wrong up ahead, but he couldn't make out what.

The conductor was a Medical Service corporal. O'Doull hoped he made a better corpsman than conductor, because he wasn't very good at his secondary role. But he did have an answer when the doctor asked him what had happened farther west: "Sabotage." He seemed to take a certain somber pleasure in the word.

" 'Osti!" O'Doull burst out, which made the noncom give him a curious look. O'Doull looked back in plain warning. The other man decided walking down the corridor would be a good idea. O'Doull burst out, which made the noncom give him a curious look. O'Doull looked back in plain warning. The other man decided walking down the corridor would be a good idea.

O'Doull shook his head. It wasn't that he didn't believe the corporal. No, the trouble was just the opposite. As long as Confederate operatives sounded reasonably Yankeelike, they could hide in plain sight till they went off to work mischief in the middle of the night.

No doubt U.S. operatives were doing the same thing on the other side of the border, and helping C.S. Negroes in their sputtering civil war against Jake Featherston's government. O'Doull hoped they were, anyhow. But that didn't do him, or this train, any good at all.

Three hours later, after a repair crew filled in a crater and laid new track across it, the train got rolling again. By then, the sun was going down in the west and O'Doull was going up in smoke. If he was going to be useful, he wanted to be useful. useful. He couldn't do a d.a.m.n thing stuck here on a train track. He couldn't do a d.a.m.n thing stuck here on a train track.

Unlike most trains, this one rolled through the night all lit up. Trains full of soldiers and weapons and raw materials sneaked along, trusting to darkness to hide them from Confederate aircraft. This one showed its true colors, and the enemy left it alone.

There were whispers that the Confederates sometimes used the Red Cross to disguise troop movements. O'Doull hoped that wasn't so. It would make C.S. raiders want to disregard the symbol when the USA used it, and it would make the United States distrust even legitimate Confederate uses. Things were hard enough as they were. Did they have to-could they-get even worse?

XI.

Back when Cincinnatus Driver lived in Confederate Covington before the Great War, he hadn't liked going to the zoo. Animals in cages had reminded him too strongly of the black man's plight. Then when he moved up to Des Moines after the war, he'd been able to take his kids to the zoo there and enjoy it himself. He'd felt freer there-and, to be fair, Des Moines had a much fancier zoo than Covington's.

Now things had come full circle. Here he was, back in Covington. Here he was, back in the CSA. And here he was, caged.

When the barbed-wire perimeter around the colored quarter went up, a few blacks figured it was just for show, to let colored people know who was boss without really intending to imprison them. Cincinnatus could have told them they were fools. The Freedom Party lied about plenty of things, but not about what it thought of Negroes. Some of the optimists tried to slip between the strands or attacked them with wire cutters, right there where the guards could see them.

Cincinnatus had known for years what automatic-weapons fire sounded like. Hearing it again saddened him without greatly surprising him. The guards' callousness afterwards did did surprise him. They left the bodies they'd shot where they fell, so the sight and, after a day or two, the stench would intimidate the Negroes inside the perimeter. surprise him. They left the bodies they'd shot where they fell, so the sight and, after a day or two, the stench would intimidate the Negroes inside the perimeter.

He didn't talk to Lucullus about the odious and odorous events. For one thing, visiting Lucullus probably put him on some kind of list. The powers that be in Covington already had too many reasons to put him on a list. And, for another, Lucullus remained in a state of shock at being closed off from the outside world. Cincinnatus had never dreamt the barbecue cook could stay downcast for so long, but that seemed to be what was going on.

With Lucullus . . . disabled, Cincinnatus took his troubles to the Bra.s.s Monkey instead. He didn't talk about them in the saloon, but that didn't mean they didn't go away. A lot of things dissolved in beer, and there was whiskey for what beer wouldn't melt.

Covington's colored quarter had always had a lot of saloons. People there had always had a lot of trouble that needed dissolving. Saloons were the one kind of business in the colored part of town that was doing better now than before the wire went up. Even more sorrows than usual needed drowning. And the Confederate authorities no doubt learned all sorts of things from saloon talk. Some of what they learned might even have been true.

Cincinnatus perched on a stool under one of the two lazily spinning ceiling fans. He slid a dime across the bar. "Let me have a Jax," he said.

"Comin' up." The bartender took one out of the cooler, popped the cap with a church key, and handed Cincinnatus the beer.

Resting his can against one knee, Cincinnatus closed both palms around the cold, wet bottle. "Feels good," he said, and held it for a little while before lifting it to his lips and taking a long pull. "Ah! That feels even better."

"I believe it." Sweat beaded the barkeep's forehead the way condensation beaded the bottle. In his boiled shirt and black bow tie, he had to be hotter and more uncomfortable than Cincinnatus was.

Motion up near the ceiling caught Cincinnatus' eye. He glanced up. It was a strip of flypaper, black with the bodies of flies it had caught, twisting in the breeze from a nearby fan. That strip had been there since Cincinnatus started coming into the Bra.s.s Monkey, and probably for a long time before that. The dead flies couldn't be anything but dried-up husks. Plenty of live ones buzzed in the muggy air.

Two stools down from Cincinnatus, a very black man in dirty overalls waved to the bartender. "Gimme 'nother double," he slurred. By his voice and his potent whiskey breath, he'd had several doubles already. The bartender took his money and gave him what he asked for.

The drunk stared down into the gla.s.s as if the amber fluid inside held the meaning of life. Maybe, for him, it did. He gulped it down. When the gla.s.s was empty, the drunk set it on the bar and looked around. Whatever he saw, Cincinnatus didn't think it was in the Bra.s.s Monkey. During the last war, soldiers had called the glazed look in his eyes the thousand-yard stare. Too much combat and too much whiskey could both make a man look that way.

"What is we gonna do?" the drunk asked plaintively. Was he talking to Cincinnatus, to the bartender, to himself, or to G.o.d? No one answered. After half a minute of silence, the Negro brought out the question again, with even more anguish this time: "What is is we gonna do?" we gonna do?"

The barkeep ignored him, polishing the battered bar top with a none too clean rag. G.o.d ignored the drunk, too-but then, G.o.d had been ignoring Negroes in the CSA far longer than the Confederacy had been an independent country. If the man was talking to himself, would he have asked the same question twice? That left Cincinnatus. He thought about ignoring the drunk like the bartender, but he didn't have a polishing rag handy. Swallowing a sigh, he asked, "What are we gonna do about what?"

"Oh, Lordy!" Resignation and annoyance mixed in the bartender's voice. "Now you done got him started."

The drunk, lost in his own fog of alcohol and pain, might not have heard the barkeep. But Cincinnatus' words somehow penetrated. "What is we gonna do about what?" he echoed. "What is we gonna do about us us?-dat's what."

He might have been pickled in sour mash. That didn't mean the question didn't matter. No, it didn't mean anything of the sort. Cincinnatus wished it did. "What can can we do about us?" he asked in return. we do about us?" he asked in return.

"Damfino," the drunk said. "Yeah, damfino. But we gots to do somethin', somethin', on account of they wants to kill us all. Kill us all, you hear me?" on account of they wants to kill us all. Kill us all, you hear me?"

His voice rose to a frightened, angry shout. Cincinnatus heard him, all right. So did about half the colored quarter of Covington, Kentucky. Even the bartender couldn't ignore him anymore. "Hush, there. Easy, easy," the man said, putting away the rag. He might have been trying to gentle a spooked horse. "Ain't nothin' you you kin do about it, Hesiod." kin do about it, Hesiod."

Hesiod muttered and mumbled to himself. "Gots to be somethin' somebody kin do," he said. "Gots to be. If'n they ain't, we is all dead." to be. If'n they ain't, we is all dead."

Before the barbed wire went up, Cincinnatus would have taken that for no more than a drunk's maunderings. He still took it for a drunk's maunderings-what else was it?-but not just for that, not any more. If Freedom Party goons wanted to reach into the quarter they'd cordoned off, take out some Negroes, and do away with them, they would. Who'd stop them? Who'd even know for certain what they'd done?

Hesiod slapped four bits on the bar. "Gimme 'nother double," he said, and then, as if still ordering the drink, "Gots to kill them ofays. Kill 'em, you hear me?"

"Here you is." The bartender set the drink in front of him. "Now you get outside o' this. When you ain't drinkin', shut your d.a.m.n mouth. You gonna open it so wide, you falls in."

There was another home truth, even if the Bra.s.s Monkey was a long way from home. Somebody in the dive-maybe even the barkeep himself-was bound to be spying for the white man, spying for the government. Some blacks thought they could make deals with the devil, grab safety for themselves at the expense of their fellows, their friends, their families.

Cincinnatus didn't believe it, not for a minute. Like any wild beast, sooner or later the Freedom Party would bite the hand that fed it. Anyone who thought it would do anything else was bound to be a sucker. No, Jake Featherston had never bothered lying about what he aimed to do with and to Negroes, because that was exactly what so many whites in the CSA wanted to hear.

"Them ofays come in here, we gots to shoot 'em! Shoot Shoot 'em, hear me?" Hesiod said. 'em, hear me?" Hesiod said.

The only trouble with that was, the white men would shoot back. And they were the ones with the heavy weapons. Lucullus Wood had seen as much, and Lucullus knew more than anybody else about the guns the Negroes in Covington had. Lucullus, no doubt, had brought a lot of those guns into the colored part of town.

Expecting a drunk to know what Lucullus knew was bound to be blind optimism. Cincinnatus did say, "Anybody shoot at the ofays, everybody gonna be real sorry." He didn't want Hesiod grabbing a .22 and trying to blow out the brains of the first white cop he saw.

"Everybody real sorry already," Hesiod said, breathing more bourbon into Cincinnatus' face. "How you reckon things git worse?"

Before Cincinnatus could say anything to that, the bartender spoke up: "Things kin always always git worse." He did not sound like a man who intended to let himself be contradicted. git worse." He did not sound like a man who intended to let himself be contradicted.

And he did not impress Hesiod. "What they gonna do? Line us up an' shoot us?"

"Matter of fact, yes." This time, Cincinnatus spoke before the barkeep could. "They'd do that. They wouldn't lose a minute o' sleep, neither."

"But they's already doin' it. Already, Already," Hesiod said triumphantly. "They ship your a.s.s to one o' them camps, you don't come out no more. They shoots you there, else they kills you some other kind o' way. Might as well shoot back at them ofay motherf.u.c.kers. They come after us, we gots nothin' to lose."

A considerable silence followed. Both Cincinnatus and the bartender wanted to tell Hesiod he was wrong. Both of them wanted to, but neither one could. He was too likely not to be wrong at all.

Cincinnatus finished his Jax, set the bottle on the bar, and walked out of the Bra.s.s Monkey. The tip of his cane tapped against the sawdust-strewn floor, and then against the battered sidewalk outside. He still carried the cane everywhere he went, but it wasn't a vital third limb for him the way it had been when he was first getting around after the car hit him. He wasn't as spry as his father, but he got around tolerably well these days.

Seneca Driver was listening to the wireless when Cincinnatus came back to the house where he'd grown up. The Confederates and the Yankees were jamming each other's stations extra hard these days, and most of what came out of the wireless set's speakers were hisses and unearthly whines.

"What you doin' home so quick, Son?" Seneca had been born a slave, and still spoke with the broad accent of a black man who'd never had a chance to get an education. "Reckoned you'd stay down at de saloon longer."

"No." Cincinnatus shook his head. "Can't get away from bad news anywhere." After so many years in Iowa, his own speech sounded half-Yankee, especially by comparison to what he heard around himself here. He laughed bitterly. And a whole fat lot of good not sounding ignorant was likely to do him!

"These is hard times," Seneca said. "We gots to be like turtles an' pull our heads into our sh.e.l.l an' not come out till things is better."

Most of the time, that would have been good advice. Cincinnatus was sure it had worked for his father many times before. But what were you supposed to do when those troubling you wanted to smash the turtle's sh.e.l.l to get at the meat inside? What then? Cincinnatus had no answers, and feared no one else did, either.