Return Engagement (50 page)

All the customers were out after curfew. The policemen didn’t get excited about it. They didn’t jump up and arrest Cincinnatus and his companion, either. They just went on feeding their faces. The sandwiches and coffee and whatever else Lucullus gave them looked like a good insurance policy.

The other black man took Cincinnatus to a cramped booth closer to the police than he wanted to be. The other man ordered pork ribs and a cup of coffee. Cincinnatus chose a barbecued beef sandwich. He passed on the coffee: he still nourished a hope of getting back to sleep that night. He knew the odds were against him, but he’d always been an optimist.

To his amazement, Lucullus Wood lumbered out and took a place in the booth. It had been cramped before; now it seemed full to overflowing. “What you want that won’t keep till mornin’?” Cincinnatus asked, doing his best to keep his voice down.

Lucullus didn’t bother. “What you know about trucks?” he asked in turn.

“Trucks?” Whatever Cincinnatus had expected, that wasn’t it. “Well, I only drove ’em for thirty years, so I don’t reckon I know much.”

“Funny man.” Lucullus scowled at him. “I ain’t jokin’, funny man.”

“All right, you ain’t jokin’.” Cincinnatus paused, for the food arrived just then. After a big bite from his sandwich—as good as always—he went on, “Tell me what you want to know, and I’ll give you the answer if I got it.”

“Here it is,” Lucullus said heavily. “You got a Pegasus truck—you know the kind I mean?”

“I’ve seen ’em,” Cincinnatus answered. The Pegasus was the CSA’s heavy hauler. You could fill the back with supplies or with a squad of soldiers—more than a squad, if you didn’t mind cramming them in like sardines. A Pegasus would never win a beauty contest, but the big growling machines got the job done.

“Good enough,” Lucullus said, and then, loudly, to a waitress, “You fetch me a cup of coffee, Lucinda sweetie?” Lucinda laughed and waved and went to get it. Lucullus turned back to Cincinnatus. “You know how it’s got the canvas top you can put up to keep rain off the sojers or whatever other shit you got in there?”

“I reckon I do,” Cincinnatus answered. “White truck had the same kind o’ thing in the last war. What about it?”

“Here’s what,” Lucullus said. “How come you’d take a bunch o’ them trucks and take off that whole canvas arrangement and close up the back compartment in a big old iron box?”

“Who’s doin’ that?” Cincinnatus asked.

Now Lucullus did drop his rumbling bass voice. “Confederate gummint, that’s who,” he said solemnly. Lucinda set the coffee in front of him. He swatted her on the behind. She just laughed again and sashayed off.

“Confederate government?” Cincinnatus echoed. Lucullus nodded. Cincinnatus did a little thinking. “This here ironwork armor plate?”

“Don’t reckon so,” Lucullus answered. “Ain’t heard nothin’ ’bout no armor. That’d be special, right?—it ain’t no ordinary iron.”

“Armor’s special, all right. It’s extra thick an’ extra hard,” Cincinnatus said. Lucullus started to cough. After a moment, Cincinnatus realized he was trying not to laugh. After another moment, he realized why. “I didn’t mean it like that, goddammit!”

“I know you didn’t. Only makes it funnier,” Lucullus said. “Figure this here is regular ironwork, anyways.”

“Well, my own truck back in Iowa’s got an iron cargo box. Keeps the water out better’n canvas when it rains. Keeps thieves out a hell of a lot better, too.”

“These here is Army trucks—or trucks the gummint took from the Army,” Lucullus said. “Reckon they gonna be where there’s sojers around. Ain’t got to worry ’bout thievin’ a whole hell of a lot.”

This time, Cincinnatus laughed. “Only shows what you know. You ain’t never seen the kind o’ thievin’ that goes on around Army trucks. I
know
what I’m talkin’ about there—you’d best believe I do. You start loadin’ stuff in Army trucks, and some of it’s gonna walk with Jesus. I don’t care how many soldiers you got. I don’t care how many guns you got, neither. Folks steal.”

Maybe his conviction carried authority. Lucullus pursed his lips in what was almost a parody of deep thought. “Mebbe,” he said at last. “But it don’t quite
feel
right, you know what I mean? Like I told you, these here ain’t exactly no Army trucks no more. They was took from the Army. I reckon they be doin’ somethin’ else from here on out.”

“Like what?” Cincinnatus asked.

“Don’t rightly know.” Lucullus Wood didn’t sound happy about admitting it. “I was hopin’ you could give me a clue.”

“Gotta be somethin’ the government figures is important.” Cincinnatus was talking more to himself than to Lucullus. “Gotta be somethin’ the government figures is
real
important, on account of what’s more important than the Army in the middle of a war?”

He couldn’t think of anything. Lucullus did, and right away: “The Freedom Party. Freedom Party
is
the goddamn gummint, near enough.” He was right. As soon as he said it, Cincinnatus nodded, acknowledging as much. Lucullus went on, “But what the hell the Freedom Party want with a bunch o’ gussied-up trucks?”

“Beats me.” Cincinnatus finished his sandwich. “That was mighty good. I wish you didn’t haul me outa bed in the middle o’ the night to eat it.”

“Didn’t get you over here for that.” Lucullus’ face could have illustrated
discontented
in the dictionary. “I was hopin’ you had some answers for me.”

“Sorry.” Cincinnatus spread his hands, pale palms up. “I got to tell you, it don’t make no sense to me.”

“I got to tell you, it don’t make no sense to me, neither,” Lucullus said, “but I reckon it makes sense to somebody, or them Party peckerheads over in Virginia wouldn’t be doin’ it. They got somethin’ on their evil little minds. I don’t know what it is. I can’t cipher it out. When I can’t cipher out what the ofays is gonna do next, I commence to worryin’, an’ that is a fac’.”

“Sorry I’m not more help for you,” Cincinnatus said again. “I know trucks—you’re right about that. But you know a hell of a lot more about the Freedom Party than I do. I ain’t sorry about that, not even a little bit. I wish to God I didn’t know nothin’ about ’em.”

“Don’t we all!” Lucullus said. “All right, git on home, then.” He turned to the man who’d brought Cincinnatus to the barbecue place and sat silently while he and Lucullus talked. “Git him back there, Tiberius.”

“I take care of it,” the other man promised. “Don’t want no trouble.” He caught Cincinnatus’ eye. “You ready?”

Slowly, painfully, Cincinnatus rose. “Ready as I ever be.” That wasn’t saying a hell of a lot. He knew it, whether Tiberius did or not.

They went out into the eerie, blackout-deepened darkness. Everything was quiet as the tomb: no bombers overhead tonight. A police car rattled down a street just after Cincinnatus and Tiberius turned off it, but the cops didn’t know they were around. Lights were for emergencies only. Tiberius laughed softly. “Curfew ain’t so hard to beat, you see?” he said.

“Yeah,” Cincinnatus answered. Tiberius stayed with him till he went up the walk to his folks’ house, then disappeared into the night.

Cincinnatus’ father was up waiting for him. “You
did
come home. Praise the Lord!” Seneca Driver said.

“Wasn’t the
po
lice at the door, Pa,” Cincinnatus answered. “Sorry you woke up while I was tendin’ to it.”

“Don’t worry about that none,” his father said. “Got us plenty o’ more important things to worry about.” Cincinnatus wished he could have told him he was wrong. And he could have, too—but only if he were willing to lie.

T
om Colleton felt proud of himself. He’d managed to wangle four days of leave. That wasn’t long enough to go home to South Carolina, but it did let him get away from the front and down to Columbus. Not worrying about getting shelled or gassed for a little while seemed a good start on the road to the earthly paradise.

It also proved too good to be true. As he got on the train that would take him from Sandusky to Columbus, a military policeman said, “Oh, good, sir—you’ve got your sidearm.”

“What about it?” Tom’s hand fell to the pistol on his hip.

“Only that it’s a good idea, sir,” the MP answered, his white-painted helmet and white gloves making him stand out from the ordinary run of noncoms. “The damnyankees down there aren’t real happy about the way things have gone.”

“Unhappy enough so that a Confederate officer needs to pack a pistol?” Tom asked. The MP gave back a somber nod. Tom only shrugged. “Well, if U.S. soldiers couldn’t kill me, I’m not going to lose too much sleep over U.S. civilians.” That got a grin from the military policeman.

The train was an hour and a half late getting into Columbus. It had to wait on a siding while workmen repaired damage—sabotage—to the railway. Tom Colleton fumed. “Don’t get yourself in an uproar, sir,” advised a captain who’d evidently made the trip several times. “Could be a hell of a lot worse. Leastways we haven’t had any fighters shooting us up this time around.”

“Gurk,” Tom said. No, he hadn’t come far enough to escape the war—not even close.

And he was reminded of it when he got into Columbus. The city had been at the center of a Yankee pocket. The U.S. soldiers who’d held it had fought hard to keep the Confederates from taking it. They’d quit only when they ran too low on fuel and ammunition to go on fighting. That meant Columbus looked as if rats the size of automobiles had been taking big bites out of most of the buildings.

The porter who fetched suitcases from the baggage car for those who had them was a white man. He spoke with some kind of Eastern European accent. Tom stared at him. He’d rarely seen a white man doing nigger work, and in the CSA few jobs more perfectly defined nigger work than a porter’s.

This fellow stared right back at him. That wasn’t curiosity in his eyes. It was raw hatred.
Measuring me for a coffin,
Tom thought. He’d wondered if the MP had exaggerated. Now he saw the man hadn’t. The weight of the .45 on his hip was suddenly very comforting.

Union Station was a few blocks north of the state Capitol, whose dome had taken a hit from a bomb. Fort Mahan, which had been the chief U.S. military depot in Ohio, was now where visiting Confederates stayed. It lay a few blocks east of the station, on Buckingham Street. Sentries checked Tom’s papers with scrupulous care before admitting him. “You think I’m a Yankee spy?” he asked, amused.

“Sir, we’ve had us some trouble with that,” one of the sentries answered, which brought him up short.

“Have you?” he said. All three sentries nodded. Two of them had examined his bona fides while the third covered them and Tom with his automatic rifle. Tom asked, “You have a lot of problems with people shooting at you, stuff like that?”

“Some,” answered the corporal who’d spoken before. “We gave an order for the damnyankees to turn in their guns when we took this here place, same as we always do.” He made a sour face. “Reckon you can guess how much good that done us.”

“I expect I can,” Tom said. If the United States had occupied Dallas and tried to enforce the same order, it wouldn’t have done them any good, either. People in both the USA and the CSA had too many guns and too many hiding places—and the Yankees hated the Confederates just as much as the Confederates hated the Yankees, so nobody on either side wanted to do what anyone on the other side said.

The sentry added, “It’s not shooting so much. We’ve hanged some of the bastards who tried that, and we’ve got hostages to try and make sure more of ’em don’t. But there’s sabotage all the time: slashed tires, busted windows, sugar in the gas tank, shit like that. We shot a baker for mixing ground glass in with the bread he gave us. They even say whores with the clap don’t get it treated so as they can give it to more of us.”

“Do they?” Tom murmured. He hadn’t been with a woman since the war started. But Bertha was a long way away. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. He’d thought he might . . . Then again, if what this fellow said was true, he might not, too.

“I don’t know that that’s so, sir,” the corporal said. “But they do say it.” He gave Tom his papers again. “Pass on, and have yourself a good old time.”

Don’t eat the bread,
Tom thought.
Don’t lay the women. Sounds like a hell of a way to have a good old time to me. At least he didn’t say the bartenders were pissing in the whiskey.

He found the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters without any trouble. Fort Mahan bristled with signs, some left over from when the USA ran the place, others put up by the Confederates. He got a room of his own, one of about the same quality as he would have had in the CSA. Two stars on each collar tab helped. Had he been a lieutenant or a captain, he probably would have ended up with a roommate or two.

Since the sentry hadn’t warned that they were pissing in the booze, he headed for the officers’ club once he’d dumped his valise in the room. He got another jolt when he walked in: the barkeep was as white as the railroad porter. Tom walked up to him and ordered a highball. The man in the boiled shirt and black bow tie didn’t bat an eye. He made the drink and set it on the bar. “Here you go, sir,” he said quietly. His accent declared him a Yankee.

Tom sipped the highball. It was fine. Even so . . . “How long have you been tending bar?” he asked.

“About . . . fifteen years, sir,” the fellow said after a moment’s pause for thought. “Why, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Just wondering. What do you think of the work?”

“It’s all right. Money’s not bad. I never did care for getting cooped up in a factory. I like talking with people and I listen pretty well, so it suits me.”

“Doesn’t it, oh, get you down, having to do what other folks tell you all the time? Serving them, you might say?”

He and the bartender both spoke English, but they didn’t speak the same language. The man shrugged. “It’s a job, that’s all. Tell me about a job where you don’t have to do what other people tell you. I’ll be on that one like a shot.”

Tom decided to get more direct: “Down in the Confederate States, we’d call a job like this nigger work.”

“Oh.” The barkeep suddenly found himself on familiar ground. “Now I see what you’re driving at. Some other people have asked me about that. All I got to tell you, pal, is that you’re not in the Confederate States any more.”