The Victorious opposition

XII

Cincinnatus Driver wasn't happy about walking upstairs from his apartment. He knew he should have been happy. Knowing that only made him more unhappy yet. He sighed and muttered something under his breath. The more you looked at it, the more you lived it, the more complicated life got.

He knocked on the door of the apartment just above his. The wireless was on inside, pretty loud. He had to knock twice before anybody in there heard him. Suddenly, the wireless got softer. A few seconds later, the door opened.

"Evenin', Mr. Chang," Cincinnatus said. "How are you today?"

"Oh. Hello, Mr. Driver," said the father of Cincinnatus' daughter-in-law. Joey Chang was polite. He'd always stayed polite with Cincinnatus, even if he didn't much care to have Achilles in his family. He hesitated, then brightened. "I just make new batch of beer. You want some?" If Cincinnatus had come up about homebrew, then maybe they wouldn't have to talk about… other things.

And Cincinnatus smiled and nodded and said, "I'd love to have some, for true." He meant every word of it. Iowa was a dry state, with liquor of any kind hard to come by. And Chang made damn good beer. But that wasn't why Cincinnatus had come upstairs. "I got some news you need to know."

"News?" Mr. Chang asked, and Cincinnatus nodded again. The Chinaman sighed, much as Cincinnatus had while climbing the stairs. He stepped aside. "You come in, you tell me news."

"Thank you kindly," Cincinnatus said. "Evenin', Mrs. Chang," he called to the woman sitting close by the wireless set. It was playing a comedy about a trolley driver and his friend who worked in a sewer. Cincinnatus wondered how much Mrs. Chang followed; her English wasn't as good as her husband's.

As if to underscore that, Joey Chang spoke to her in Chinese. She answered in the same language. Cincinnatus understood not a word, but she didn't sound happy. Mr. Chang sighed again, on exactly the same note. He lit a cigarette, then offered Cincinnatus one. Once they were both smoking, he said, "What is this news?"

"Achilles and Grace, they gonna have themselves another baby toward the end of the year," Cincinnatus answered.

"Baby?" Mrs. Chang said sharply. She might not have a whole lot of English, but she sure understood that.

"Yes, ma'am. That's right," Cincinnatus said.

"This is good news. Here, you wait." Joey Chang went into the kitchen. He came back half a minute later with three small glasses. He gave one to his wife, one to Cincinnatus, and kept the third for himself. "A baby. Kampai!" he said, and knocked back his glass.

"Mud in your eye." Cincinnatus followed suit. This wasn't beer. It scorched his gullet all the way down, and exploded like a bomb when it hit his stomach. "Whew!" He eyed the empty glass with respect. "You make that yourself?"

"Not me." Chang shook his head. "This place too small for proper still. Beer easy. Can make beer anywhere. But need more room for still, need place where neighbors no smell… smoke." He scowled; that wasn't the word he wanted. After a moment, he found the right one: "Fumes. Neighbors no smell fumes. For this, I trade plenty beer with fellow I know. You want more?"

"If you've got it to spare, I wouldn't mind another one. Don't want to put you to no trouble, though."

"No trouble." Mr. Chang took Cincinnatus' glass and disappeared into the kitchen again. When he returned, he had a refill, too. This time, Cincinnatus sipped cautiously instead of sending the hooch down the hatch. It was some kind of brandy, not whiskey, and strong enough to grow hair on his chest-or on Joey Chang's chest, which was a bigger challenge. "Another baby," Chang murmured, his eyes for a few seconds soft and far away. "Grandfather again."

"Yeah," Cincinnatus said dreamily. Then he pointed at Mr. Chang. "You'd like it a lot better if you saw the new baby when it comes-and if you saw the grandbaby you already got once in a while."

"I know. I know." Chang stared down into the glass he held. "But Grace, she run off, she get married when we say no. She not do what her mother, her father say. She marry fellow who is not Chinese. Things hard on account of that."

He was a little man, more than a head shorter than Cincinnatus. But he spoke with enormous pride. Reckon he'd say the same thing if I was white, too, Cincinnatus thought, bemused. He hadn't imagined a Chinaman could also look down his nose at whites. The mere idea broadened his mental horizon.

Mrs. Chang spoke, a sharp, singsong rattle of Chinese. Her husband answered in the same language, then returned to English for Cincinnatus' benefit: "She say, we not angry because your boy colored fellow. We angry because Grace disobey us. For Chinese, this is very bad. Hard to forgive."

"Don't know nothin' about that," said Cincinnatus, who suspected Chang was lying some for politeness' sake, but wasn't quite sure. He went on, "I do know you ain't just missin' out on Grace, though. You missin' out on your grandbaby. You gonna be missin' out on two grandbabies. Your pride worth all that?"

Now Mr. Chang spoke in Chinese-translating the question, Cincinnatus figured. Mrs. Chang answered right away. Again, her tone said everything Cincinnatus needed to know. You bet your life pride is worth it. That was what she'd told him, all right. Cincinnatus wondered whether Mr. Chang would show any backbone. From everything the Negro had seen, Mrs. Chang was the one who said, Jump, frog! Her husband asked, How high? on the way up.

But he said something more, and then something more, and then something more again. After his last sally, Mrs. Chang burst into tears. Embarrassed, Cincinnatus turned away. "I better go," he mumbled.

"All right, you go," Mr. Chang said. "But you see Achilles and Grace, you say they can come by here. We be glad to see them. This go on too long." Mrs. Chang protested again. Her husband, for a wonder, overrode her. They were still arguing when Cincinnatus slipped out the door and went downstairs.

"Well?" Elizabeth asked when he walked into their apartment.

"Mr. Chang say they can come visit," Cincinnatus answered, and his wife's face lit up. He raised a warning hand. "Mrs. Chang ain't very happy about it. Pretty fair chance she make him change his mind."

Elizabeth sighed. "They's powerful proud folks," she said. Cincinnatus walked over and gave her a kiss. She eyed him with as much suspicion as pleasure. "What's that for?"

"On account of that's the very same word the Changs used when they was talkin' about themselves," he said, "and only a clever lady like you would figure it out all on her lonesome."

"That a fact?" Elizabeth said. Cincinnatus solemnly nodded. She wagged a finger at him. "I tell you a fact: you only talk so sweet to me when you want something-an' I generally know what it is you want."

If she hadn't been smiling, the words would have flayed. As things were, Cincinnatus laughed. "Sure enough, you got what I want," he said. Elizabeth snorted. Cincinnatus laughed again. But, though he might have been trying to butter her up, he hadn't been lying. He hoped she felt the same way. She'd never given him any signs she didn't.

When he came home two or three days later, Elizabeth pointed to an envelope on the kitchen table. "You got a letter from Covington," she said. She hadn't opened it. She'd acquired her letters only after they came to Iowa, and still didn't read fluently. They also had a family rule that mail belonged to the person whose name was on the envelope, and to nobody else.

Cincinnatus eyed the envelope with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. His father and mother still lived in Kentucky, and they did write to him every so often-or rather, they had a literate neighbor do it, for they couldn't read or write. He was always glad to hear from them, and always suspicious when he did. Back in the 1920s, the Kentucky State Police had used a false message from them to lure him to Covington, and flung him into jail for sedition as soon as he got off the train.

He opened the envelope and took out the sheet of paper inside. He was frowning when he put it down. "What's it say?" Elizabeth asked.

"He says Ma's startin' to forget things, act like she was a little child again." Cincinnatus scowled at the letter. Up till now, Livia had always been the rock at which the family anchored. Seneca's health had been shaky now and again, but hardly ever hers. Tears stung Cincinnatus' eyes. This wasn't anything a doctor could fix, either; he knew that too well.

"That's hard to bear, sweetheart. That's right hard to bear," Elizabeth said. Both her parents, though, were long dead, so her sympathy went only so far. Sudden anxiety sharpened her voice as she asked, "He don't want you to go down there? He better not, after all you went through."

"No, no." Cincinnatus shook his head. "He say my pa's managin' for now." But then he shook his head in a different, more thoughtful way. "Reckon maybe I could, though. Ain't no more Kentucky State Police to fling me in jail."

"Sure ain't." But that wasn't agreement from his wife. It was sarcasm. "And there ain't on account o' the Freedom Party's runnin' things in Kentucky nowadays. Freedom Party fellers, they love to have another nigger come down to their state an' commence to raisin' trouble."

"I wouldn't raise no trouble," Cincinnatus said. "All I'd be doin' was seein' my own mother while she's still on this earth."

Elizabeth shook her finger at him as if he were a naughty little boy. "You stay right here where you belong."

"Ain't goin' nowhere. Already told you that. But things ain't as bad as you think in Kentucky, and that's the truth. Yeah, they got them Freedom Party fellers runnin' things now, but they can't do like they done down in the Confederate States-can't beat up all the folks who don't like 'em and keep them folks from votin'. They lose the next election, they's gone."

"You goes down there, you's gone," Elizabeth said. " 'Sides, you goes down there, what's Amanda an' me supposed to do for money? It don't grow on trees-or if it do, I ain't found the nursery what sells it."

"Even if I was to go, I wouldn't be gone long," Cincinnatus said. "It'd be to see my ma, say good-bye to her while she still know who I am. That kind of forgettin', it just gits worse an' worse. Somebody live long enough, he don't even know who he is, let alone anybody else."

Elizabeth softened slightly. "That's so," she admitted, and hugged Cincinnatus. "All right. We take it like it comes, see how she do. If you got to go, then you got to go, and that's all there is to it."

She started to let go of Cincinnatus, but now he squeezed her. "I love you," he said. "You're the best thing ever happen to me."

"I better be," Elizabeth said, "on account of you don't know how to stay out of trouble on your own." Cincinnatus wanted to resent that or get angry about it. He wanted to, but found he couldn't.

"No," Alexander Arthur Pomeroy declared, like a tycoon declining a merger offer. Mary had just asked him if he wanted a nap. At two and a half, he was liable to mean that no, too, and to be fussy and cranky at night because he hadn't had it. One of these days before too long, he'd stop taking naps for good, and then Mary wouldn't get any rest from dawn till dusk, either. She looked forward to that day with something less than delight. Most of Alec's milestones had delighted her: first tooth, first step, first word. Last nap, though, last nap was different.

Of course, Alec might also have been saying no just for the sake of saying no. He did that a lot. From what other mothers said, every two-year-old went through the same maddening phase. Maddening though it was, it could also be funny. Slyly pitching her voice the same way as she had when asking him if he wanted a nap, Mary said, "Alec, do you want a cookie?"

"No," he said again, a pint-sized captain of industry. Then he realized he'd made a dreadful mistake. The horror on his face matched anything in the moving pictures. "Yes!" he exclaimed. "Cookie! Want cookie!" He started to cry.

Mary gave him a vanilla wafer. He calmed down. The way he'd wailed, though, said he needed a nap whether he wanted one or not. She didn't ask again, but scooped him up, sat down in the rocking chair, and started reading a story. She kept her tone deliberately bland. After about ten minutes, Alec's eyes sagged shut. She rocked a little longer, then carried him to his crib.

She put him down with care; sometimes his head would bob up if she wasn't gentle. But not today. Mary let out a sigh of relief. Now she had anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half to herself. Time had been a luxury more precious than ermine, more precious than rubies, ever since Alec was born.

"Coffee!" Mary said, and headed for the kitchen. She'd always liked tea better. Come to that, she still did like tea better. But coffee had one unquestionable advantage: it was stronger. With a baby-now a toddler-in the house, strength counted. She'd long since given up trying to figure out how far behind on sleep she was.

A gently steaming cup beside her, she sat down in the rocking chair again, this time by herself. She unfolded the Rosenfeld Register and prepared to make the most of her free time. The Register was just a weekly, and so didn't bother with much news from abroad, but it did have one foreign story on the front page: CONFEDERATE STATES RESUME CONSCRIPTION Featherston of the CSA said he was doing it because of the continuing national emergency in the country, and blamed rebellious blacks. President Smith of the USA hadn't said anything by the time the Register went to press.

Mary glanced over to the wireless set. She couldn't remember anything Smith had said since the Register went to press, either. She thought about turning on the set and listening to some news, but she didn't have the energy to get up. Whatever the president of the USA said, she'd find out sooner or later.

Regardless of what President Smith said, Mary knew what she thought. If the Confederates weren't getting ready to spit in their northern neighbor's eye, she would have been surprised. She hoped they spat good and hard.

During the war, Canada and the Confederates had been on the same side. She'd wondered about that then; the Confederate States hadn't hung out a lamp of liberty for all the world to see. They still didn't, by all appearances. But, whether they did or not, one ancient rule had still applied: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

These days, Mary would gladly have allied with the Devil against the United States. Only trouble was, Old Scratch appeared uninterested in the deal-or maybe he'd taken up residence in Philadelphia. As for her country, it remained subjugated. She saw no grand uprising on the horizon. The Canadians had tried that once: tried, failed, and seemed to decide not to repeat the experiment.

That left Mary furious. She wanted to be part of something bigger than herself, something more than a rebellion of one. Other people made bombs, too, and made more of them; she read and heard about the bangs every so often, and had the feeling the papers and wireless didn't talk about all of them. The others attacked real soldiers and administrators, too, the way her father had. They didn't limit themselves to a Greek who'd come up to Canada to run a general store.

Mary looked up toward the heavens and asked God, or perhaps her father, Well, what else could I do? Other parts of life had got in the way of her thirst for revenge. One of those other parts was working in the diner across the street. Another was sleeping in the crib. She knew next to nothing about the people who planted other bombs, but she would have bet they didn't have babies to worry about.

Local stories filled most of the Register's pages: local stories and local advertising. The wedding announcements and obituaries were as stylized as the serials that ran ahead of main features on the cinema screen. If you'd seen one, you'd seen them all; only names and dates changed.

As for the ads, many of those were even more formulaic than the announcements. Peter Karamanlides bought space to plug his store every week So did Dr. Shipley, the painless dentist. Mary often wondered why, when they had the only general store and dentist's office for miles around. The same applied to the laundry and the haberdasher and to the newspaper itself. If you didn't use their services, whose would you use?

Advertisements from farmers often followed formulas, too. Those for stud services did: offspring to stand and walk was the stock phrase. If the offspring did, fine; if not, the stud fee had to be refunded. But some of those ads were different. There was no standard format, for instance, for selling a piano.

There was no formula for the little stories speckled through the inner pages of the Rosenfeld Register, either. The editor, no doubt, would have called them "human interest" pieces. Mary sometimes wondered about the sanity of any human being who was interested in stories about a two-headed calf nursed by two different cows or a man who pulled a boxcar with his teeth-and false teeth, at that.

But she looked at the filler pieces herself. A story about a mother cat nursing an orphaned puppy could make her smile. So could one about two former sweethearts who'd both moved away from the small town where they grew up, then didn't see each other for twenty-five years till they were standing in line at the same Toronto cinema. One had never married; the other was a widower. They'd fallen in love all over again.

Some of those "human interest" stories made Mary grit her teeth, because propaganda poisoned them. The one about the Yank flier who'd requalified as a fighter pilot after twenty years away from aeroplanes was particularly sappy; she had to resist the impulse to crumple up the Register and throw it across the living room. The last paragraph said, Our bold hero, now also a successful barrister specializing in occupation affairs, is married to the former Laura Secord, a descendant of the "Paul Revere of Canada," who had the same name. They have one daughter. Thus we see that the two lands are becoming ever more closely intertwined.

Mary saw nothing of the sort. What she saw was a traitor living high on the hog because she'd married a Yank. And hadn't Laura Secord been one of the people who'd betrayed the uprising in the 1920s? Mary nodded to herself. She was sure she remembered that. She wouldn't forget the name, not when she'd learned it in school before the Yanks started changing what was taught. Had the woman been intertwined with this Yank flier even then? The lewd image was enough to make Mary's cheeks heat.

She'd promised herself vengeance on the people who'd made the uprising fail. She'd promised, and then she hadn't delivered. Her father would have been ashamed of her. Up there in heaven, Arthur McGregor probably was ashamed of her.

"I'll take care of it," she whispered. "I'll take care of it if it's the last thing I ever do."

Then she had to take care of something else, because Alec woke up with a yell: "Pooping potty!" That was his signal that he needed to use the toilet-or, sometimes, that he'd just gone. Mary rushed in to lift him out of the crib and see which it was this time.

"You're dry!" she exclaimed in glad surprise after a hasty check-he did have accidents in his sleep.

"Dry as a fly," he answered, echoing one of the things she said to him.

"What a good boy!" Mary took him out of the crib, gave him a kiss, and stood him on a stool in front of the toilet. He did his business, and almost all of it went where it was supposed to go. Mary cleaned up the rest with toilet paper. "What a good boy!" she said again. Another woman in the block of flats insisted babies didn't turn into people till they were toilet-trained. Mary thought that went too far… most of the time.

His clothes set to rights, Alec went off to play. Mary went off to keep at least one eye on him while he was playing, to make sure he didn't knock over a table or pull a lamp down on his head or try to swallow a big mouthful of dust or stick his finger in an electric socket or do any of the other interesting and creative things small children did in their unending effort not to live to grow up.

This afternoon, he made a beeline for the ashtray. "Oh, no, you don't!" Mary said, and got there first. He'd tried that before. Once, he'd managed to swallow one of Mort's cigarette butts, as he'd proved by puking it up. Keeping an eye on her son, Mary understood how her mother had come to have gray hair.

Every so often, she cast a longing glance across the street at the diner. When Mort got back, she'd have another pair of eyes in the flat to keep watch on Alec. One toddler left two parents only slightly outnumbered. Dealing with Alec by herself, Mary often felt not just outnumbered but overwhelmed.

But when Mort did come home, he sank down into the rocking chair with a bottle of Moosehead and complained about how busy he'd been all day at the diner. "Lord, it's good to get off my feet," he said.

"I have the same feeling when Alec takes a nap," Mary said pointedly.

Her husband didn't take the point. "It was a madhouse over there today," he said. "We made good money, but they kept us hopping."

"Alec always keeps me hopping," Mary said.

"This little fellow? This little fellow here?" Mort grabbed Alec and stuck him on his lap. Alec squealed with glee and cuddled up. If I tried that, he'd pitch a fit. Either that or he'd just jump off ten seconds later, Mary thought. Mort ruffled the toddler's fine sandy hair. "You're not so tough, are you?"

"Tough!" Alec yelled gleefully. "Tough!"

"You're not so tough," Mort said again, and turned him upside down. Alec squealed in delight. Mary hid a sigh by turning away. Mort could do things with their son that she couldn't. She'd seen that very early on. He could get Alec to pay attention and do what he was told when she couldn't. Maybe it was just that he had a deep, rumbling man's voice. Maybe it was that he was gone more and Alec wanted to please him while he was around. Whatever it was, it was unquestionably real.

So was Laura Secord's treason. Alec has his father, Mary thought. I made a promise to mine a long time ago. I haven't kept it yet, but that doesn't mean I won't. Oh, no. It doesn't mean that at all. She nodded to herself. Then she smiled. She wasn't annoyed at Mort any more, not even a little bit.

Conscripts were filling out the ranks of the Confederate Army. It got stronger week by week. Confederate aeroplanes carried guns and bombs. The fastest Confederate fighters could go up against anything the USA built. And the United States, while they'd grumbled, hadn't done anything but grumble. As far as Clarence Potter was concerned, that would do for a miracle till a bigger one came along.

Jake Featherston had thought it would work like this. If it hadn't, whether Featherston got-extorted-the right to run for a second term wouldn't have mattered a hill of beans' worth. The country would have thrown him out on his ear if the USA didn't take care of the job.

The Confederate States were ever so much stronger than they had been. Potter knew just how strong they were-and how strong the United States were. A fight would have been no contest. But no fight came. Featherston had been sure none would. And he'd been right.

"By God, he's earned a second term for that," Potter muttered at his desk down below the War Department building.

He shook his head in something halfway between bemusement and horror. Did I say that? Did I say that? he wondered. By God, I did. I meant it, too. He'd spent more than fifteen years as one of Jake Featherston's sincerest enemies-sincerest, because he'd known Featherston longer and better than any of the other people who couldn't stand him. And now he had to admit Jake had known what he was doing after all.

Potter wouldn't have dreamt the USA would sit quiet and let the CSA rearm. He would have thought-hell, he had thought-you'd have to be crazy to take a chance like that. Featherston had taken the chance, and he'd got away with it.

So what did that make him? A crazy man saw things nobody else could see. But what about someone who saw things nobody else could see-but that turned out to be there after all? There was a word for people like that, too. The word was genius. Potter didn't like using that word about Jake Featherston. He still remembered the weight of the revolver he'd carried up to the Olympic swimming stadium, intending to get rid of Jake once for all.

But he hadn't. He'd got rid of the colored would-be assassin instead, and the whole world was different on account of it. He looked down at his butternut uniform. He wouldn't have put that on again, not in a million years.

Here he sat, analyzing reports from Confederates in the USA who talked as if they'd grown up there. The reports, of course, weren't addressed war department, Richmond, Virginia, csa. Somehow, that might have made even the sleepy United States open eyes wide and perhaps raise an eyebrow. Instead, the letters and telegrams had come to a variety of businesses scattered all over the Confederate States. They were all coded, too, so they didn't talk directly about barrels or aeroplanes. Not all the codes were particularly subtle, but they'd defeat casual snoopers.

Potter wished the reports could come straight to him. As things were, he got them anywhere from several hours to several days after they reached the CSA. As long as the United States and Confederate States stayed at peace, the delay didn't matter too much. If they ever went to war…

He laughed at himself. If the USA and the CSA went to war again, the only way letters and telegrams crossed the border would be through the International Red Cross. He suspected-no, he knew-they would be a lot slower than they were now.

He drummed his fingers on the desk, took off his spectacles and carefully polished them, replaced them on his nose, and then did some more drumming. However much he despised the USA, he hoped another war wouldn't come. The Confederacy would be fighting out of its weight, and all the more so because the United States had no second front against Canada this time.

Did Jake Featherston see that? It seemed pretty plain to Potter. As far as he could tell from cautious conversations, it seemed pretty plain to most of the officers in the War Department. The trouble was, of course, that Featherston wasn't an officer, and never had been one. He was a jumped-up sergeant, remarkably shrewd, but not trained to look at the big picture. How much would that matter? If it really came to another fight, the president would surely be shrewd enough to let trained commanders take charge of things.

Potter's musings were interrupted when a uniformed officer-not a soldier, he realized after a moment, but a Freedom Party guard-strode up to his desk, saluted, and barked out, "Freedom!"

"Freedom!" Potter echoed in more crisply military tones. "And what can I do for you, ah, Chief Assault Leader?" The other officer wore a captain's three bars on either side of his collar, but Party guards had their own titles of rank. Potter didn't know if they thought the Army's weren't good enough for them, or if they thought those were too good. It wasn't the sort of question he could ask, not if he wanted to keep wearing his uniform and not one with a big P stenciled on the back.

"Sir, I am ordered to bring you to the president at once," the chief assault leader answered.

"Ordered, are you? Well, then, you'd better do it, eh?" Potter said, pushing back his chair and stowing papers in a drawer that locked. The Freedom Party guard nodded seriously. Clarence Potter didn't smile. He'd been pretty sure a man who became a Party guard wouldn't recognize irony if it piddled on his shiny black boots. He asked, "Do you know what this is about?"

"No, sir," the officer said. "I have my orders. A motorcar is waiting outside." He turned and marched, machinelike, toward the stairs. Potter followed at a more human amble.

The motorcar was a Birmingham painted butternut. It flew a Freedom Party flag, though, not the Confederate battle flag an Army vehicle would have sported. Potter and the stone-faced chief assault leader got in. The driver, also a Freedom Party guard, whisked them away from the War Department and up Shockoe Hill to the presidential residence.

A bodyguard there relieved Potter of his pistol. That was routine these days. If the guard knew Potter had once carried a pistol intending to use it on the president, he gave no sign.

"Reporting as ordered, sir," Potter said when the captain-no, the chief assault leader-took him into Featherston's office. Formality helped. If he spoke to the president of the CSA, he wouldn't have to think-so much-about the fiery, foul-mouthed artillery sergeant he'd known during the war, wouldn't have to think that the sergeant and the president were one and the same.

"Good to see you, Colonel. Sit down," Jake Featherston replied, returning the salute. Maybe he was using formality to suppress memory, too. As soon as Potter was in the chair, Featherston waved to the Party officer. "That'll be all, Randy. You just run along. Close the door on your way out." Randy looked unhappy, but he did what everybody seemed to do around Featherston: he obeyed. The president turned back to Clarence Potter and got straight to business: "I need more from your people in Kentucky."

"Sir?" Potter needed a moment to shift gears.

Featherston's scowl made him look like an angry, hungry wolf. "Kentucky," he repeated impatiently. "Things are heating up there, and I'm going to want to know more about what's going on. I'm going to want to be able to make things happen there, too."

"I haven't got but a handful of men in Kentucky, Mr. President," Potter said. "My specialty is people who talk like Yankees, and that's not what we mostly use there, because the accent is closer to our own. Men from Tennessee don't stand out in Kentucky the way they would in Pennsylvania or Kansas."

"I know what you've got in Kentucky." Featherston reeled off the names and positions of almost all of Potter's men in the state. He wasn't looking at a list. He knew them, knew them by heart. Those names and supporting details had surely gone to him in one report or another, but that he'd remembered them… Clarence Potter was more nearly flabbergasted than impressed at that grasp of detail. I didn't know he had it in him, he thought. The president went on, "The point is, three or four of your people are in slots with the state government or a city government where they can be useful to us because everybody reckons they're Yankees."

"They can do some of that," Potter said cautiously, "but not too much. If they don't act like what they're supposed to be, they'll make the real Yankees wonder why they don't. That wouldn't be good. The last thing we want is to make the United States suspicious."

This time, Featherston's scowl was of a different sort. Potter had no trouble identifying it, though: it was the scowl of a man who wasn't used to people telling him anything he didn't want to hear. Well, too damn bad, the intelligence officer thought. You're the one who brought me back into the Army. Now you have to take the consequences. I'm not one of your Party hacks, and you'd better remember it.

"You telling me you can't do what I need?" The president's voice was harsh and dangerous.

Potter shook his head. "No, sir. That's not what I said at all. But I am asking you to make sure in your own mind that what you get now is worth the risk of losing a lot later on. If the damnyankees start looking hard for Confederate spies, they're bound to find some. And if they find some, they'll look for more, and…"

"All right." Featherston held up a hand. "I see what you're saying. But what's the point of having all these goddamn spies in place if we can't get any use out of 'em?"

"We do get use out of them," Potter said; for all his grasp of detail, Jake Featherston was missing the big picture here. "We get information. Without it, we're blind. That's really what they're there for, as far as we're concerned. If they step out of their roles, they may give themselves away."

Featherston grunted. His eyes showed his own hard suspicion. Regardless of whether his guards did, he remembered the pistol in Clarence Potter's pocket, and he had to know why Potter had had it there. "If we can't use our people to nudge things along there, how the hell do we do it?" he snapped.

"We can use our people. The ones I run just aren't the right set of tools for the job," Potter answered. "Demonstrations, riots, stories in the papers, wireless shows… We can do all that. About the most my men can do is pretend they haven't seen telegrams, things like that. If they try to do much more, the fellows they work for will start giving them fishy stares. Do you see what I'm saying?"

He waited for Jake Featherston to blow. As long as he'd known him, Featherston had had a short fuse. Now the president of the CSA didn't have anybody set above him to make him pull back. If he wanted to lose his temper, he could, and who would say boo?

But Potter had been as cool and dispassionate as he could, and the president seemed to respond well to that, or at least not to take it as a threat. "All right, then," he said. "We'll try that, and see how it works. I do want to leave your people in place, on account of we're not done with Kentucky. Oh, no. We're not done, not by a long shot. That state is ours, and I aim to get it back."

Clarence Potter could have found any number of things about which to disagree with the president of the Confederate States. Not about getting Kentucky back, though. He stood, came to attention, and saluted. "Yes, sir!" he said.

Flora Blackford remembered when going out on the floor of Congress had been a thrill. It wasn't any more. Not these days. The Freedom Party Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky made sure of that. They weren't there to do the nation's business. They were there to disrupt it, and they were good at that. The pair of Representatives Utah had elected after the end of the military occupation weren't much better. They seemed more interested in complaining about what had happened over the past twenty-sometimes, over the past sixty-years than in trying to make the next two better.

Congressman Nephi Pratt was complaining even as Flora took her seat. "I accept your correction with all due humility, Mr. Speaker," he was saying. "I would have been more fully abreast of these matters had the government not labored so long and hard to suppress my creed and oppress my state, thereby depriving me of the opportunity to participate in the decisions made by this august body since the end of the war."

Up jumped a young pepperpot Democrat from New Mexico. "Perhaps the distinguished gentleman will state on the record in which direction he pointed a gun during the war: at the foes of the United States or at her soldiers."

Pratt was a portly man with a mane of white hair. He tossed it angrily now. "I need not answer that-"

"You just did, seems to me," the Democrat shot back.

"Mr. Speaker, I resent the imputation," Pratt said.

"Mr. Speaker, I resent having to share the chamber with a damned traitor," the Congressman from New Mexico said.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The Speaker's gavel descended like the crack of doom. "Mr. Pratt, Mr. Goldwater, you are both out of order," he said. "Any further outbursts from either of you, and I will have the sergeant-at-arms remove you from the floor."

"The United States hanged my grandfather," Nephi Pratt said. "I see things have not changed much since."

"He had it coming, by God," Congressman Goldwater snapped.

Bang! Bang! Bang! "Sergeant-at-arms!" Congressman Cannon of Missouri said. The Speaker looked thoroughly disgusted as he continued, "You and your assistants are to escort the two contentious gentlemen to separate waiting rooms, in which places they shall remain until they see fit to comport themselves in civilized fashion."

Congressman Pratt left the room with majestic dignity. Congressman Goldwater shouted, "Defense of the truth is no vice! I should not be removed." He scuffled with the men who tried to take him away, and landed one solid blow before they did.

All the Freedom Party men stood up and cheered at the chaos they, for once, had not created. That made Flora signal to the Speaker, a fellow Socialist. He pointed back, intoning, "The chair recognizes the distinguished Congresswoman from New York, Mrs. Blackford."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker." She waited till the din died down a little, then said, "In my opinion, the Freedom Party has been the source of most of the problems and most of the bad manners in both houses of Congress, even if members of other parties have caught the disease from it. The Freedom Party-"

She couldn't go on, not right away, for the House chamber echoed with angry shouts from the Freedom Party Congressmen and cries of "Hear! Hear!" from Socialists, Republicans, and even a good many Democrats. Speaker Cannon again plied the gavel with might and main. At last, something like quiet returned.

Flora resumed: "The Freedom Party, as I was saying before its Congressmen so neatly proved my point, differs from other parties in the United States in one particular: that its members do not truly wish to take part in the serious business of making this country a better place."

To her surprise-indeed, to her amazement-Congressman Mahon of Houston sprang to his feet, crying, "Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! If the distinguished Congresswoman from New York will yield…"

The sight of a Freedom Party man following proper parliamentary procedure must have astonished Congressman Cannon as much as it did Flora. "Mrs. Blackford?" the Speaker asked.

"I will yield for a brief statement or question," Flora said. "Not for a harangue."

Even that didn't upset Mahon. "I will be brief," he promised. Flora nodded. The Speaker pointed to the Houstonian. Mahon said, "I would like to note that the Freedom Party Representatives do not wish to serve our states here in Philadelphia or in Washington. We-"

This time, shouts of, "Shame!" drowned him out. The Speaker of the House rapped furiously for order. With some reluctance, he said, "The gentleman from Houston has the floor. He may continue."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker," Mahon said, willing to be courteous since the presiding officer of the House had ruled in his favor. "We don't care to be here, I say, because we would rather represent our states in Richmond, since they rightfully belong to the Confederate States of America!"

"Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" his fellow Freedom Party members chanted, and, "Plebiscite! Plebiscite! Plebiscite!"

Roars of, "Treason!" and, "Never!" came from Democrats, Republicans, and some Socialists. Again, Speaker Cannon had to ply his gavel with might and main to restore quiet-or at least lower the noise. He might have done better by firing a pistol round into the ceiling. But if he'd had a pistol, other Congressman would have, too, and they might have aimed them at one another. The Speaker said, "Mrs. Blackford has the floor. You may go on, Mrs. Blackford."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker," Flora said. "However much pleasure most of us would take from no longer having the company of the members from the Freedom Party, I am also certain more than a few of us would not care to give them the satisfaction of gaining anything they want, simply because they have made themselves so obnoxious to us."

That brought jeers from the Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky, jeers largely drowned out by a storm of applause from Representatives of other parties. Flora wasn't particularly proud of herself despite the applause. She knew she'd sunk to the Freedom Party's level in condemning it.

Hosea wouldn't have done that, she thought. When he'd been a Congressman, Hosea Blackford had got on well with everyone-he'd got on better with reactionary Democrats than Flora ever had. But the men from the Freedom Party weren't just reactionaries. They were reactionaries on the march, in the same way as the Reds in the failed uprisings in the CSA and Russia had been radicals on the march. Up till the past few years, the world hadn't had to worry about revolutionary reaction. It did now.

Wearily, Speaker Cannon fought yet again for order. When he finally got it, he spoke in wistful tones: "Do you suppose we could possibly return to discussion of the trade bill before us at the moment?"

They did go on. In due course, the Speaker let Congressman Pratt and Congressman Goldwater return to the floor. They started sniping at each other again, but within-sometimes narrowly within-the rules of House decorum. The Freedom Party Congressmen from Houston and Kentucky went back to ignoring the rules, as they usually did. They cared nothing for them, and admitted as much. They didn't want to be here in the first place, and seemed to operate on the theory that, if they made all the colleagues hate and despise them, their states became more likely to leave the USA for the CSA. What worried Flora was that they might well prove right.

Thanks to their unending shenanigans-and thanks to the basically uninspiring nature of trade bills-the day crawled past on hands and knees. Speaker Cannon didn't look for a motion to adjourn till well past six that evening. When he did, a throng of Representatives tried to make it and another throng tried to second it. Wearily, the members left the floor.

Competition for cabs outside was as fierce as anything that had gone on within the hallowed hall. Flora, normally polite and gentle, brawled with the best of them. She wanted to get home to Joshua as fast as she could. Thanks to a judicious elbow, she quickly won a ride.

Her son looked up from his homework in surprise when she came through the door. "Hello," he said, his voice at fifteen as deep as a man's. "I didn't expect you back so soon. Weren't you going to do some office work before you came here?"

"The session ran long, so I came…" Flora's voice trailed away, also in surprise-not at what he'd said but at what she smelled. "That's cigarette smoke. When did you start smoking cigarettes?"

"Last year, not long after Father died," Joshua answered, resolutely nonchalant. "Everybody at school does it, and it doesn't hurt anything."

"It hurts me that you've been sneaking cigarettes behind my back," Flora said. "If you thought I wouldn't mind, why didn't you come out and tell me?"

"Well…" Her son looked uncomfortable, but he finally said, "Mostly because you're so old-fashioned about some things."

"Old-fashioned?" Flora yelped. If that wasn't the most unkind cut of all for someone who'd always prided herself on her radicalism, she couldn't imagine what would be. "I am not!"

"Oh, yeah?" Joshua said, a colloquialism that made his mother incline more toward reaction than radicalism. He went on, "If you weren't old-fashioned, you wouldn't flabble about cigarettes." As fifteen-year-old boys are wont to do, he acted monstrously proud of his own logic.

Flora blinked at the slang, then figured out what it had to mean. "I don't flabble about cigarettes-for grownups," she said. Instead of seeming pleased that she'd understood him, Joshua merely looked scornful that she was trying to speak his language. She might have guessed he would. Suppressing a sigh, she forged ahead: "No matter what you think, you're not a grownup yet."

"Father was smoking cigarettes when he was fifteen," Joshua said.

He was right about that, however much Flora wished he weren't. "Your father grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere," she answered. "When he was fifteen, he was going to the bathroom in a privy, bathing once a month, and eating food his folks had cooked over buffalo chips. Do you want to imitate him there, too?"

For a moment, she thought he would say bathing once a month didn't sound so bad. But he visibly changed his mind and changed the subject: "If cigarettes are so terrible, how come everybody smokes them?"

"Not everybody does."

"Just about!" Joshua said, by which he doubtless meant three or four people he liked did.

This time, Flora didn't suppress her sigh. She knew a losing fight when she saw one, and she saw one here. Whether she liked it or not, Joshua was going to smoke. She said, "From now on, you don't need to sneak any more." That made him happy. She wished it would have made her happy, too.

Sylvia Enos came out of the moving-picture theater with Ernie. She looked happy-she'd liked the film. He didn't, and hadn't. "What was wrong with it?" she asked. "It was exciting, and it had a good love story."

"What was wrong with it?" he echoed. "I will tell you what was wrong. The men who made it never saw war. They were boys in 1914. They had to be. Either that or they were cowards. Half the things in the film could not have happened. Soldiers would have gone to the guardhouse for the other half."

"It's only a story," Sylvia said. "It's not supposed to be true."

"But it pretends to be true," Ernie said. "That offends me."

She didn't want him angry. When he got angry, he got angry at the whole world, not just at what had bothered him in the first place. She said, "Let's go somewhere, and we'll have a couple of drinks, and we'll forget about it."

"All right," he said. "That film deserves forgetting."

They ended up having more than a couple of drinks-considerably more, in Ernie's case. Then they went back to Sylvia's apartment. Mary Jane was out with friends, and wouldn't be back till late. They had the place to themselves. Sober or drunk, Ernie made a conscientious lover. He did what he needed to do to make Sylvia happy. Then she tried to do the same for him. She'd had pretty good luck with that lately. Not tonight, though. Try as she would, nothing happened.

She did her best to make light of it, saying, "See what those last couple of cocktails will do to you?"

"My cock has more wrong with it than cocktails," Ernie answered, which was unfortunately true. "Half-cocked," he muttered. That was what Sylvia thought she heard, anyhow. He shook his head. "It is no good. It is no goddamn good at all."

"That's not true," Sylvia exclaimed. "It was fine just last week."

He didn't want to listen. "No good at all," he said again. "Sometimes I wonder why the hell I bother. What is the use? There is no use. I know that. I know that much too well."

"Don't be silly," Sylvia told him. "It can happen to anybody at all, not just to you."

"It does not happen to a real man," Ernie said. "That is what it means to be a real man. And what am I?" His laugh told what he thought he was. "A leftover. Something from the scrap heap. I ought to go to Spain. I could fight there." A Nationalist uprising backed by Trance and Britain had half the country up in arms against King Alfonso XIII. Kaiser Wilhelm had belatedly sent the Monarchists weapons to resist their would-be overthrowers, but things didn't look good for them even so.

Sylvia shook her head. "What does shooting people have to do with-this?" She set her hand on the part, or part of a part, that hadn't quite worked.

Ernie twisted away, kicking the quilt she'd got from Chris Clogston down onto the floor. "You do not understand. I knew you would not understand. Damn you anyway." He all but jumped out of the bed they'd shared and started putting on his clothes.

"Maybe I would understand, if you'd talk sense once in a while," Sylvia said.

"You are only a woman. What do you know?" Ernie stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Sylvia sighed as she picked up the quilt and put on a nightgown. This sort of thing had happened before. It would probably happen again. She sighed once more, went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and then came back and fell asleep. Whatever time Mary Jane came in, Sylvia never heard it.

George Jr., his wife, Connie, and their children came over for supper the next evening. Sylvia enjoyed spoiling her grandchildren. Bill, the baby boy for whom Mary Jane had bought another quilt, was toddling now. Sylvia also enjoyed listening to her son's stories about life on a fishing boat. They took her back to the days when her husband had told the same kind of stories. Hard to believe George was more than twenty years dead. Hard to believe, but true.

"And how are you, Ma?" George Jr. asked. "How's Ernie? Sis said you went to the cinema with him last night."

He sounded earnest himself. The pun made Sylvia laugh a little. He wants me to be happy, she thought. He really does. That's sweet. But she had to answer. "He's been better," she said slowly. "But he's been worse, too."

Her son's sigh had an indulgent quality, one that made her wonder who'd raised whom. "You really ought to-" he began.

Sylvia held up a hand and cut him off. "I really ought to do whatever I think is the best thing for me to do. And you really ought to"-she enjoyed turning George Jr.'s phrase back on him-"mind your own beeswax."

"Give up, George," Connie said. "You don't let her tell you what to do. How can you blame her if she doesn't want to let you tell her?"

"That's right." Sylvia beamed at her daughter-in-law.

"Fine. I give up. Here-I'm throwing in the towel." George Jr. took his napkin off his lap and tossed it into the middle of the table. "But I'm going to tell you one more thing before I shut up."

"I know what you're going to say." Sylvia held up her hand again, like a cop stopping traffic. "I don't want to hear it."

"I don't care. I'm going to say it anyway." George Jr. stuck out his chin and looked stubborn. "That guy is bad news, Ma. There. I'm done."

"About time, too." Sylvia knew her son was right. Ernie was, or could be, bad news. She would have known even if Mary Jane hadn't told her the same thing. The feel of danger-within limits-was part of what made him attractive. Whether he would ever break those limits… But he hadn't-quite-in all the time Sylvia had known him. And he had reasons for being the way he was. Sylvia didn't think George Jr. knew about those. She couldn't very well talk about such things with a man, and especially not with her son.

She wondered whether George Jr. could keep from bringing up Ernie again for the rest of the evening. She would have bet against it, but he managed. That made time pass a lot more pleasantly. Only when he and his family were leaving did he say, "Take care of yourself, Ma."

"And haven't I been doing that since before you were born?" Sylvia said. "A fisherman's wife who can't take care of herself is in a pretty sorry state, that's all I've got to tell you." She looked to Connie. "Am I right or am I wrong?"

"Oh, you're right, all right," her daughter-in-law said.

"You bet I am." Sylvia spoke with great certainty. Fishermen were away at sea so much, their wives had to do things on their own behalf. If the wives didn't, nobody would or could. And Sylvia had gone from fisherman's wife to fisherman's widow. Nobody gave a widow a helping hand. She'd discovered that the hard way.

For that matter, no elves emerged from the walls to help her with the dishes. She did them herself, the way she always had. She couldn't go to bed without being angry at herself till they were done. Her hard-earned, hard-learned self-reliance ran deep.

And when Ernie showed up at her door with flowers two days later to ask her out the next Saturday, she didn't say no. She didn't even ask him if he would behave himself. A question like that would just have made him angry and all the more determined to act up. She couldn't blame him for that, not when she felt the same way herself.

When Saturday came, he took her to the Union Oyster House. She smiled, remembering her last visit there with Mary Jane. Unlike Mary Jane, though, Ernie washed down his fried oysters with several stiff drinks. "Are you sure you want to do that?" Sylvia picked her words with care. He did have more trouble in the bedroom when he was drunk-and he had plenty when he was sober. And when he was drunk, he had a harder time coping with the trouble he had.

But he didn't want to listen to her tonight, any more than she'd wanted to listen to George Jr. earlier in the week. "I am fine. Just fine," he said loudly. The way he said it proved he was nothing of the sort, but also proved he would pay no attention if she tried to tell him so.

If you can't lick 'em, join 'em, she thought, and waved to the waiter for another drink of her own. After another one, and then another one yet, she stopped worrying-at any rate, she stopped curing-about how many Ernie had had, though he kept pouring them down, too. She took him by the arm. "Where shall we go?" she asked, laughing at how bold and brassy she sounded.

"We will go back to my place," he answered. "And when we get there, we will see what comes up." That made Sylvia laugh, too, though Ernie wasn't joking the way another man might have. In fact, he seemed to be trying to persuade himself something would come up. Under his leer, or perhaps stirred into it, was enough desperation to give Sylvia pause, though she was a long way from sober herself.

"Maybe we ought to have some coffee or something first," she said.

Ernie took her arm. "Come on," he said, and effortlessly hauled her up out of the booth. He was very strong, even if he didn't show it all the time. She went along with him, thinking, The walk will sober him up. It may even sober me up, too.

Her head still buzzed when they got to Ernie's apartment. She didn't want to think about what it would feel like in the morning. But the morning seemed a million miles away. Ernie closed the door behind them, then took her in his arms and kissed her, hard. He tasted of whiskey and pipe tobacco. He picked her up and carried her into the cramped little bedroom and half set, half dropped her on the bed.

"Come on," he said again, and started taking off his clothes.

Sylvia did the same, quickly. His strength and the whiskey in her and the taste and smell of him all combined to excite her. If he'd been any other man, he would have thrown himself on her and done what he wanted to do. But he couldn't. He hadn't been able to do anything like that for more than twenty years. If he was going anywhere, she would have to get him there. She sat up and leaned forward and took what there was of him in her mouth as he stood by the side of the bed.

And nothing happened. He groaned again and again, but always in frustration, not release. Try as she would, it was no use. She did everything she knew how to do. Nothing helped. Sweat ran down his face, down his chest. "Damn you," he muttered, and then, "Damn me."

She looked up at him. "What do you want?" she asked. "I'll do anything you think will do you good. You know I will."

She'd turned on the lamp by the bed a little while before. Sometimes watching helped him. Not tonight. He looked at her, looked through her. His eyes might have belonged to a dead man. His voice sounded as if it came from the other side of the grave, too: "It makes no difference, not any more."

"What do you mean?" she said. "Of course it does. Next time, we'll-" She broke off. "What are you doing?"

The blued metal of the pistol he took out of the nightstand gleamed dully in the lamplight. "Nothing matters any more," he said, and pointed it at the side of his own head.

"No!" He'd played such games before. This time, Sylvia didn't think he was playing. She grabbed for the pistol. Ernie cursed and hit her. She tried to knee him in the crotch. He twisted away. They wrestled, both of them shouting, both of them swearing, there on the bedroom floor.

Loud as the end of the world, the pistol went off. She never knew whether he'd intended to shoot her. It made no difference. It didn't matter. The bullet tore into her chest, and the world was nothing but pain and darkness.

As if from very far away, Ernie shouted, "Sylvia! Don't die! Damn you, I love you!" She tried to say something, but blood filled her mouth. From even further away, she heard another shot, and the thump of a falling body, and then nothing, nothing at all.

Jefferson Pinkard was not a happy man. He'd come to Louisiana to help run a camp for political prisoners, and what had they gone and done? They'd taken out most of the politicals and filled the camp full of colored guerrillas. The politicals had been sober, civilized, middle-aged men who did as they were told. The Negroes, on the other hand…

Though Pinkard didn't want to admit it, even to himself, the captured Negroes scared him to death. They had taken up arms against the Confederate States not in hope of victory-as the colored Reds had a generation earlier- but because they simply couldn't stand the way things were. Now that they'd been taken prisoner, they expected nothing from the men into whose hands they'd fallen. They expected nothing-and they were seldom disappointed.

Camp Dependable was a rougher place now than it had been when inoffensive politicals filled it. These days, guards always carried submachine guns. They carried the weapons with safeties off, and they always traveled in pairs in areas where prisoners went. So far, the blacks hadn't managed to steal a submachine gun from a guard. Jeff hoped that record would last. He wondered if it could.

He had other worries, too, though not of the life-and-death sort. Just keeping track of the prisoners was a record-keeper's worst nightmare. They didn't come into the camp with passbooks in the pockets of their dungarees. He assumed most of the names they gave were false. Even had those names been genuine, they wouldn't have helped much. Negroes in the CSA had never been allowed to take surnames, as they were in the USA. With passbooks, the powers that be didn't have too much trouble sorting out who was who. Without them…

The camp had an underofficer who specialized in taking fingerprints and forwarding them to Baton Rouge and to Richmond for identification. If the people in Baton Rouge and Richmond had cared as much as Pinkard did about matching those fingerprints to the ones in their files, he would have been happier. As things were, he wasn't sure who most of his prisoners were. The only thing he was sure of was that they had good reason for concealing their identity.

"We've got to be careful, dammit," he would tell the guards every morning. "These nigger bastards don't want to argue with us like the politicals did. They want to kill us. That's why they're here. Thing we can't do is give 'em the chance."

Work parties that left the barbed-wire perimeter of the camp made him especially nervous. The blacks who went out on road-building details and other hard labor were chained to one another. They wore balls and chains on their left ankles. They couldn't possibly run. So Jeff told himself. He worried even so.

And it was all his baby. When the politicals had gone off to another camp, the warden at Camp Dependable had gone with them. "You made this place a going concern," he told Pinkard before he went away. "You know it best, and that makes you best suited to keeping these black devils in line here."

Maybe he'd even been right. Regardless of whether he had, Jeff didn't love him and never would. The then-warden had had a choice between an easy job and a hard one. He'd taken the easy one himself and left the hard one to somebody else. If he'd fought in the war, he would have sent patrols forward while he stayed in a nice, safe dugout in his own trench line. Jeff had known officers like that. He'd despised them, too.

Higher rank. Fancier emblems on his collar tabs. A bigger paycheck every month. Pinkard approved of all those things. But he didn't approve of the way he'd got them.

He checked the clock in his office. Half past five. About time for the working party to come back. Pinkard heaved himself out of the swivel chair, which creaked under his weight. He headed for the front gate. He always liked to watch the gangs come in. If he could get a report on the spot, he didn't give the guards a chance to come up with any lies. He knew such things happened. He'd done the like himself, and didn't want it done to him.

His timing was good. He got to the gate two or three minutes before the work party returned. The Negroes clanked along, slowed by their chains and the weights attached to their ankles-and slowed also by doing work they didn't want to do and coming back to a place where they didn't want to be.

"How did it go?" Jeff called to the chief guard, a stocky, hard-faced man named Mercer Scott.

"Another day," Scott answered with a shrug. He shifted a plug of tobacco and spat a stream of brown juice on the ground. "Three niggers keeled over. Two of 'em croaked, and we flung 'em in the swamp. The other one got back up on his feet when we thumped him a couple times. Lazy bastard just wanted a break. I'll break his black ass, he tries that kind of shit with me." He spat again.

"Who died?" Pinkard asked. "I've got to try and keep the records straight, you know."

"Yeah, yeah." Mercer Scott screwed his face into a parody of deep thought. "One was that mincing little faggot named Dionysus. He's been poorly since that big buck beat him up last month. And the other one… Hell, who was the other one?" He turned to another guard. "Who was the other nigger we pitched in the swamp, Bob?"

"The skinny bastard," Bob answered. "Cicero, that's his name."

"Oh, yeah. That's right. I couldn't recollect if he was today or yesterday." Scott turned to Jeff. "That's who it was, all right. Dionysus and Cicero. No loss, either one of 'em."

Pinkard nodded and scribbled a note to himself. The camp held several Ciceros, but only one of them was in this work gang, so he wouldn't have any trouble with that. He said, "Good enough. Make sure the count matches, then bring 'em on inside." A mosquito lit on the back of his wrist. He smashed it Hell might have more mosquitoes than Louisiana, but he wasn't sure anyplace else did.

One by one, the Negroes counted off. The reek of their unwashed bodies was harsh in Pinkard's nostrils. The guards smelled nearly as ripe. In this heat and humidity, everybody stank.

One of Pinkard's aides pounded on the door to his quarters at half past twelve that night. He woke up grabbing for his pistol. Nobody would bother him at that time of night for anything but trouble. As far as he was concerned, trouble came in two flavors: escape and uprising. "What the hell?" he demanded, throwing the door open in just his pajamas.

"Warden, they need you at the front gate right away," the aide said.

Jeff shoved his feet into slippers and jammed his hat down onto his head so people would have some idea of who he was. "I'm coming," he said. "What am I walking into?"

"I don't exactly know," the aide answered, and Jeff wanted to clobber him with the pistol. He went on, "There's folks from Richmond there. Reckon they'll tell you what you need to know."

"From Richmond?" Pinkard's mind raced. Was he in trouble? What kind of trouble could he be in? He couldn't think of anything he'd screwed up. He'd done his job here. He'd done it back in Alabama, too. He'd been a good Freedom Party man since the days just after the war, and he'd stayed in the Party through the hard times after Grady Calkins shot President Hampton. Hell, he'd broken up with his wife because Emily was fooling around on him on nights when he went to meetings. "Get out of my way, goddammit." He pushed past the aide and hustled to the gate.

None of the guards said a word about what he had on. He could deal with them later, when he was in proper uniform. The men at the gate wore the regalia of Freedom Party guards, high-ranking ones. Their cold, hard faces would have scared the bejesus out of even a thoroughgoing son of a bitch like Mercer Scott. "You are Jefferson Pinkard?" one of them asked. He didn't say anything about how Pinkard was dressed, either.

"That's right," Jeff answered. "Who the-devil are you?"

"Chief Assault Band Leader Ben Chapman." The accent wasn't Virginia; it was Alabama, much like Pinkard's own. "I have a prisoner to deliver to this camp. You are to acknowledge receipt."

"You do? I am?" Pinkard said. The Party officer nodded. "Well, who the hell is he?" Jeff asked testily. "And what are you doing bringing him here in the middle of the goddamn night?"

"Orders," Chapman said, as if orders were the most important thing in the world. Well, maybe he had a point there. "And the prisoner is"-he lowered his voice so Pinkard could hear but the guards at the front gate couldn't- "a fellow by the name of Willy Knight."

"Holy Jesus!" Jeff exploded. Having the vice president of the CSA-well, the former vice president, after his resignation and imprisonment (to say nothing of his impeachment and conviction)-in his prison camp was the last thing he wanted. The responsibility if something went wrong… and things were only too likely to go wrong. "Didn't anybody tell you this here camp is full of niggers?"

Chief Assault Band Leader Chapman shrugged. He had an athlete's grace, and an athlete's watchful eyes, too. "Goddamn spooks deserve whatever happens to 'em," he said. "And the goddamn son of a bitch we brought down here deserves whatever happens to him, too. Nobody will say a word if he comes out of this place feet first."

That took a load off Pinkard's mind. But, still cautious, he asked, "Will you put that in writing?"

"Nothing about this business goes down in writing," Chief Assault Band Leader Chapman said scornfully. "Nothing except your name on the form that says we got Knight here in one piece."

"I might have known," Jeff muttered, and Chapman nodded, as if to say, Yes, you might have. With a sigh, the warden nodded, too. "I'll sign-as soon as I see him, so I can make sure he is in one piece."

"Right." Ben Chapman turned to his henchmen. "Bring him on up." The door to a motorcar at the edge of Camp Dependable's lights opened and then slammed shut. More Freedom Party guards hustled someone forward. Chapman pointed. "See for yourself," he told Pinkard.

It was Willy Knight. Jeff had seen him in Birmingham on the campaign trail. He was still tall and blond and still, in a way, handsome. But, where he had been full of piss and vinegar, he was thin to the point of gauntness, and suffering haunted his face-especially the eyes. "Go ahead and laugh," he said to Pinkard. "One of these days, the son of a bitch will turn on you, too."

"Shut up, you bastard," Chief Assault Band Leader Chapman told him. Chapman thrust a clipboard and a pen at Jeff. "You've seen him. Sign." Jeff did. His men took charge of the fallen Confederate hero and led him into the camp.