In at the Death (68 page)

Some of the sailors weren’t satisfied even so. “We ought to blast the shit out of that place,” Wally Fodor said. “Those assholes fucked with us, not with the Army. We ought to give them a fourteen-inch lesson.”

“Sure works for me,” George said. All right, so battleships were shore-bombardment vessels these days. There was a shore that needed bombarding, and it was lying there naked and undefended in front of them.

But the order didn’t come. The men pissed and moaned. That was all they could do. They couldn’t open up on Miami without orders. Oh, maybe they could—the men on the smaller guns, anyhow—but they were looking at courts-martial and long terms if they did. Nobody had the gall to try it.

Discipline tightened up amazingly. They’d taken it easy after the Confederate surrender. They didn’t any more. You never could tell what might happen now. George would have bet skippers and execs all around the fleet were preaching sermons about the battleship. That was just what he wanted, all right: to serve aboard the USS
Object Lesson
.

“Isn’t it great?” he said to Fodor. “All those guys are going, ‘See? You better not be a bunch of jerkoffs like the clowns on the
Oregon
. Otherwise, the Confederates’ll blow your nuts off, too.’”

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it, all right,” the gun chief agreed. “They can fix up the scar on the side of the ship and slap fresh paint all over the place, but the scar on our reputation ain’t gonna go away so fast. Goddamn Confederate cockknockers took care of that in spades.”

“Fuck it,” George said. “I just want to get back to Boston in one piece. Goddamn war was supposed to be over months ago.”

“You think we were down here for no reason?” Fodor patted the gun mount. “I wish they would’ve lined up the hostages right there on the beach. Then we coulda opened up on ’em with the 40mms. Boy, we would’ve gone through ’em in a hurry.”

“Yeah.” George hadn’t thought of the antiaircraft guns as weapons that could substitute for a firing squad. But Wally Fodor wasn’t wrong. “You turn these babies on people, you know what you’ve got? You’ve got Grim Reapers, that’s what.”

“I like it,” Fodor said, and damned if he didn’t show up the next day with a can of white paint and some stencils.
GRIM REAPER
1 went on the right-hand gun barrel,
GRIM REAPER
2 on the gun on the left. “Way to go, Enos. Now they’ve got names.”

“Oh, boy.” George tried not to sound too gloomy. He was stuck on the
Oregon
, though, and he wished to God he weren’t.

A
fter so long in the war zone, Cincinnatus found Des Moines strange. Sleeping in his own bed, sleeping with his own wife—that was mighty good. Getting used to a peacetime world wasn’t so easy.

He flinched whenever an auto backfired or a firecracker went off. He automatically looked for somewhere to hide. He noticed white men half his age doing the same thing. They noticed him, too. “You go through the mill, Pop?” one of them called when they both ducked walking down the street after something went boom.

“Drove a truck all the way through Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia,” Cincinnatus answered. “Wasn’t right at the front, but I got bushwhacked a couple-three times.”

“Oughta do it,” the white man agreed. “I was in Virginia, and I got shot. Then they sent me to Alabama. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being jumpy.”

“Man, I know what you mean,” Cincinnatus said with feeling. They gave each other waves that weren’t quite salutes as they passed.

Cincinnatus knew just where he was going: to the recruiting station where he’d signed up to drive a truck. It was right where it had been.
UNCLE SAM STILL NEEDS YOU
! said the sign out front. He went inside.

Damned if the same recruiting sergeant wasn’t sitting in there, doing paperwork with a pen held in a hook. The man looked up when the door opened. “Well, well,” he said, smiling. “I know you, and your name will come to me in a second if I let it. You’re Mr.—Driver.”

“That’s right, Sergeant.” Cincinnatus smiled, too. “I first came in here, I called you
suh
.”

“You didn’t know the ropes then. I see you do now,” the noncom answered. “I’m glad you came through in one piece. I bet you cussed the day you stuck your nose in here plenty of times.”

“Best believe I did,” Cincinnatus said. “You mind if I sit down?”

“Not even a little bit. I remember you had a bad leg. And you can see I’m busy as hell right now, right?” The sergeant got to his feet. “Can I grab you a cup of coffee?”

“I’d thank you if you did,” Cincinnatus replied. “Stuff ’s startin’ to taste good again.”

“We’re getting real coffee beans for a change, not whatever kind of crap we were using instead,” the recruiting sergeant said. “You take cream and sugar?”

“Both, please.” Cincinnatus hesitated. “You know, I never learned your name the las’ time I was here.”

“I’m Dick Konstam—a damn Dutchman, but at your service. You’ve got a fancy handle. I remember that, but you’d better remind me what it is.”

“Cincinnatus—that’s me…. Thank you kindly.” Cincinnatus sipped from the paper cup. The coffee was strong, but it hadn’t been sitting on the hot plate long enough to get bitter yet. He took another sip. Then he asked the question he’d come here to ask: “Sergeant Konstam—uh, Dick—how the hell do I get myself to fit back into things? Wasn’t near so hard the last time around.”

Konstam paused to light a cigarette. It was a Niagara. He made a sour face. “Tobacco still sucks.” He blew out smoke. “You sure you want to talk about that with me, Cincinnatus? What makes you think I’ve got any answers?”

“You done it yourself. And you’ve seen plenty of other fellows come and go through here,” Cincinnatus said. “If you don’t know, who’s likely to?”

“Well, I hated everything and everybody when I caught this.” Sergeant Konstam held up the hook. Cincinnatus nodded; he could see how that might be so. The white man took another drag—he handled a cigarette as deftly as a pen. After he exhaled a gray stream of smoke, he went on, “But life is too short, you know? Whatever you’ve got, you better make the most of it, you know?”

“Oh, yeah. I hear that real good,” Cincinnatus said.

“Figured you did. You’re a guy who busts his hump. You made something out of yourself, and that’s pretty goddamn tough for somebody your color. Probably a lot easier to be a shiftless, no-account nigger the way most people expect.”

“Know somethin’?” Cincinnatus said. The sergeant raised a questioning eyebrow. Cincinnatus explained: “Think maybe this is the first time I ever heard a white man say
nigger
an’ I didn’t want to punch him in the nose.”

“Yeah, well, some colored guys
are
niggers. It’s a shame, but it’s true. And some Jews
are
kikes, and some Dutchmen
are
goddamn fuckin’ squareheads—not me, of course.” Konstam flashed a wry grin. “We got rid of all those assholes, we’d be better off. Good fuckin’ luck, that’s all I got to tell you. We’re stuck with ’em, and we just have to deal with ’em the best way we know how.”

“Like them Freedom Party goons,” Cincinnatus said.

Sergeant Konstam nodded. “They fill the bill, all right. Only good thing about them is, we
can
shoot the fuckers if they step out of line. Nobody’s gonna miss ’em when we do, either.”

“Amen,” Cincinnatus said. “If I was whole myself…” He didn’t want to go on and on about his physical shortcomings, not when he was talking to a mutilated man. “My work was messed up after I got back from Covington. Ain’t gonna get no better now.”

“Remind me what line you were in.”

“Had me a hauling business. Had it, yeah, till before the war. Damned if I know how to put it back on its feet now. Ain’t got the money to buy me a new truck. Even if I did, I need somebody to give me a hand with loadin’ an’ unloadin’ now.”

“Got a son?” Konstam asked.

“Sure do,” Cincinnatus said, not without pride. “Achilles, he graduated high school, an’ he’s clerking for an insurance company. He don’t want to get all sore and sweaty and dirty like his old man. And you know what else? I’m damn glad he don’t.”

“Fair enough. Good for him, and good for you, too. Insurance company, huh? He must take after his old man, then—wants to make things better for himself any way he can. Maybe his kids’ll run a company like that instead of working for it.”

“That’d be somethin’. Don’t reckon it’d be against the law up here, the way it would in the CSA. Don’t reckon it’d be easy, neither. Achilles’ babies, they’re half Chinese.”

Konstam laughed out loud. “Ain’t that a kick in the head! Who flabbled more when they got hitched, you and your wife or your son’s new in-laws?”

“Nobody was what you’d call happy about it,” Cincinnatus said. “But Achilles and Grace, they get on good, and it ain’t easy stayin’ mad at people when there’s grandbabies. Things are easier than they were a while ago, I got to say that.”

“Glad to hear it.” Dick Konstam whistled through his teeth. “I wasn’t exactly thrilled when one of my girls married a Jewish guy. Ben hasn’t turned out too bad, though. And you’re sure as hell right about grandchildren.” His face softened. “Want to see photos?”

“If I can show you mine.”

They pulled out their wallets and went through a ritual as old as snapshots. If people had carried around little paintings before cameras got cheap and easy, they would have shown those off, too. Cincinnatus and the sergeant praised the obvious beauty and brilliance of each other’s descendants. Cincinnatus didn’t think he was lying too hard. He hoped Dick Konstam wasn’t, either.

The sergeant stuck his billfold back in his hip pocket. “Any other problems I can solve for you today, Mr. Driver?”

He hadn’t solved Cincinnatus’ problem. He had to know it, too. But he had helped—and he sounded like a man who wanted to get back to work. “One more thing,” Cincinnatus said. “Then I get out of your hair. How can I keep from wantin’ to hide behind somethin’ every goddamn time I hear a loud noise?”

“Boy, you ask the tough ones, don’t you?” Konstam said. “All I can tell you is, don’t hold your breath. That took me years to get over. Some guys never do. Poor bastards stay nervous as cats the rest of their days.”

“Don’t want to do that.” But it might have more to do with luck than with what he wanted. Slowly and painfully, he got to his feet. “I thank you for your time, Sergeant, an’ for lettin’ me bend your ear.”

“Your tax dollars in action,” Konstam replied. “Take care of yourself, buddy. I wish you luck. You haven’t been back all that long, remember. Give yourself a chance to get used to things again.”

“I reckon that’s good advice,” Cincinnatus said. “Thank you one more time.”

“My pleasure,” the sergeant said. “Take care, now.”

“Yeah.” Cincinnatus headed for home. A work gang with paste pots were putting up red, white, and blue posters of Tom Dewey on anything that didn’t move.
HE’LL TELL YOU WHAT’S WHAT
, they said.

They were covering up as many of Charlie La Follette’s Socialist red posters as they could. Those shouted a one-word message:
VICTORY
!

Cincinnatus still hadn’t decided which way he’d vote. Yes, the Socialists were in the saddle when the USA won the war. But they also helped spark it when they gave Kentucky and the state of Houston back to the CSA after their dumb plebiscite. The promise of that vote helped get Al Smith reelected in 1940.

The colored quarter in Covington was empty because of the plebiscite. If Cincinnatus wanted to, he could blame the auto that hit him on the plebiscite. Oh, he might have had an accident like that here in Des Moines chasing after his senile mother. He might have, yeah. But he
did
have it down in Covington.

How much did that count? He laughed at himself. It counted as much as he wanted it to, no more and no less. Nobody could make him vote for the Socialists if it mattered a lot in his own mind. Nobody could make him vote for the Democrats if it didn’t. “Freedom,” he murmured—in the real sense of the word, not the way Jake Featherston used it. Cincinnatus grinned and nodded to himself. “I’m here to tell you the truth.” The truth was, he was free.

When he got back to the apartment, he found his wife about ready to jump out of her skin with excitement. Half a dozen words explained why: “Amanda’s fella done popped the question!”

“Do Jesus!” Cincinnatus sank into a chair. When he left Des Moines not quite two years earlier, his daughter hadn’t had a boyfriend. She did now. Calvin Washington was a junior butcher, a young man serious to the point of solemnity. He didn’t have much flash—hell, he didn’t have any flash—but Cincinnatus thought he was solid all the way through. “She said yes?”

Elizabeth nodded. “She sure did, fast as she could. She thinks she done invented Calvin, you know what I mean?”

“Expect I do.” Thoughtfully, Cincinnatus added, “He’s about the same color she is.”

“Uh-huh.” His wife nodded again. “It don’t matter as much here as it did down in Kentucky, but it matters.”

“It does,” Cincinnatus agreed. That an American Negro’s color did matter was one more measure of growing up in a white-dominated world, which made it no less real. Had Calvin been inky black, Cincinnatus would have felt his daughter was marrying beneath herself. He didn’t know whether Amanda, a modern girl, would have felt that way, but he would have. Were Calvin high yellow, on the other hand, he might have felt he was marrying beneath himself. Since they were both about the same shade of brown, the question didn’t arise. “When do they want to get hitched?” Cincinnatus asked.

“Pretty soon.” Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled. “They’re young folks, sweetheart. They can’t hardly wait.”

“Huh,” Cincinnatus said. It wasn’t as if his wife were wrong. Whether he was ready or not, the world kept right on going all around him.