Return Engagement (65 page)

He had none of his own. He loved school. He said over and over that he was the biggest boy in his class, and the toughest. He had fights on the schoolyard, and he won them. Every once in a while, his teacher paddled him. He seemed to take that in stride—part of the price of being exuberant. Mary still sometimes had to whack him to get his attention, too.

“He’s a little hell-raiser, isn’t he?” Mort said, more proudly than not, one day after Alec came home with a torn shirt and a fat lip.

“Does he take after you?” Mary asked.

“Oh, I expect so,” Mort answered. “I got into trouble every now and again. Not a whole lot of kids who don’t, are there? Boys, anyway, I mean. Girls are mostly pretty good.”

“Mostly,” Mary said, and Mort laughed. He didn’t know about the bomb she’d put in Karamanlides’ general store, or about the one she’d sent to Laura Moss. She had no intention that he find out, either.

The laugh drew Alec into the kitchen. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“You are, kiddo,” Mort said.

“I’m not funny. I’m tough,” Alec said.

“You sure are, kiddo,” Mort said. “Here—put up your dukes.” He and Alec made as if to turn the kitchen into Madison Square Garden.

“You’d better be careful, champ, or he’ll knock you out when you aren’t looking,” Mary said. Alec threw haymakers with wild enthusiasm. Mort caught them with his hands. He didn’t let his chin get in the way of one. When Alec stepped on Mary’s toes twice in the space of half a minute, she chased him and her husband out of the kitchen. Had she married a different man, she might have threatened him with having to do his own cooking. That didn’t work with Mort, though.

“Good chicken,” he said once she finally got it on the table. Threats might not work with him, but his compliments counted for more than they would have from a man who didn’t know anything about food.

Alec gnawed all the meat off his drumstick, then thumped it against his plate. That was taking the word too literally for Mary. “Cut it out,” she said, and then, louder, “Cut it out!” Next stop was a spanking. Alec knew as much, and did cut it out. His mother sighed. “He
is
a little . . . what you said earlier.”

“A what?” Alec asked. “What am I? I’m a what?”

“You’re a what, all right,” Mort Pomeroy said. “Try to be a good what, and do what your mother tells you to.”

“I’m a what! I’m a what! What! What!” Alec shouted. He liked that so well, he wasn’t about to pay attention to anything else.

When supper was done, Mary got up from the table, saying, “I’m going to wash dishes. How would you like to dry them, what?”

The what didn’t like that idea at all. He retreated into the living room, where he loudly told the cat what he was. If Mouser was impressed, he hid it very well. Mort said, “I’ll dry. I’m less likely to drop things than Alec is, anyway.”

“I’m not Alec! I’m a what!” The what, like a lot of little pitchers, had big ears.

Most husbands who volunteered to dry would have got nothing but gratitude from their wives. Mort made Mary feel guilty. She said, “You mess around with dishes all day long.”

“A few more won’t hurt me,” he said gallantly, and then, lowering his voice, “Besides, maybe we can talk a little without the hell-raiser listening in.” Since Alec didn’t know he was a hell-raiser, he didn’t rise to that.

Mary started running water in the sink. The splashing helped blur their voices. “What’s up?” she asked, also quietly.

“They gave Wilf Rokeby ten years,” Mort answered as he grabbed a dish towel. “Five for having subversive literature, and five for lying about you and that bomb. He swore up and down that he wasn’t lying, but he would, wouldn’t he?”

“He knew my father. He remembered what happened to my brother. He thought the Yanks—well, the Frenchies—would believe any old lie about me on account of that.” Mary had no trouble sounding bitter. She
was
bitter about everything the USA had done to her family and made it do to itself. That the postmaster was telling the truth was something only he and she knew—an odd sort of intimacy, but no less real for that. In an abstract way, she pitied him. He had to be out of his mind with rage and frustration because he couldn’t make anybody believe him.

“He’s got a lot of . . . darn nerve, trying to get you in trouble on account of what happened a long time ago.” Mort slung a couple of forks into the silverware drawer. He was furious, even if he didn’t raise his voice.

“Ten years is a long time. He’ll be an old man when he gets out, if he doesn’t die in there,” Mary said.

Mort slipped an arm around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. “You’re a peach, you know that? I want to murder Wilf Rokeby, and here you are sticking up for him after he did his best to ruin you.”

He had his reasons, too. The only difference is, I managed to ruin him instead.
Mary shrugged. “He didn’t. He couldn’t. Not even the Frenchies would believe him without evidence, and he didn’t have any.”
I made sure of that.

“I should hope not!” Mort let his hand rest on the swell of her hip.

She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Sooner or later, you-know-who’s got to go to bed.” She didn’t name Alec, and so he didn’t notice that.

“Well, I guess he does.” Mort gave her a quick kiss. “I can hardly wait.”

To Mary’s surprise, Alec didn’t stay up too late, or fuss too much about going to sleep. Maybe he’d worn himself out running around at school, or maybe the chasing game he played with the cat—who was chasing whom wasn’t always obvious—did the trick. Mort read him a story from England about a talking teddy bear and his animal friends. Even the Yanks enjoyed Pooh; Alec adored him. As usual, he listened, entranced, till the end of the tale. Then he kissed Mort and Mary and went off to his room. Five minutes later, he was snoring.

Those snores brought a particular kind of smile to Mort’s face. “Well, well,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mary answered demurely. “I suppose we could think of something, though.”

And they did. Mort locked the bedroom door and left one of the bedside lamps on, which made everything seem much more risqué than it did in the usual darkness. Mary wasn’t sure whether it would excite her or embarrass her. It ended up doing a little of both. Her nails dug into his back.

Then it was over, and he suddenly seemed very heavy on her. “You’re squashing me,” she said, sounding . . . squashed.

“Sorry.” He rolled off and reached for a pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. “Want one?”

“No, thanks.” Mary had tried to smoke, but didn’t care for the burning feeling in her chest. She put on a housecoat, belted it around her, and went into the bathroom to freshen up. When she came back, Mort was blowing smoke rings. She liked that as much as Alec did. It was the one reason she’d ever found that made smoking seem worthwhile.

He went out to the bathroom in a ratty old bathrobe. By the time he got back, Mary had got into a flannel nightgown and bundled under the covers. He put on pajamas and got in beside her. “Time for long johns soon,” he said.

Mary sighed and nodded. “I hate them, though,” she said. “They itch.”

“Wool,” Mort said, and Mary nodded again. He went on, “You need ’em, whether you like ’em or not.”

“I know.” Mary thought about going out without long underwear when it got down to fifteen below. Even the thought was plenty to make her shiver.

Mort leaned over and gave her a kiss. “Good night. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said, and she did. She yawned, rolled over, twisted once or twice like a dog getting the grass just right, and fell asleep. Next thing she knew, the alarm clock started having hysterics. Mort killed it. Yawning, Mary went out to the kitchen to make coffee. She would rather have had tea, but it was impossible to come by with the USA at war with Britain and Japan. Coffee was harsher, but it did help pry her eyes open.

After a hasty morning smooch, Mort hurried across the street to the diner. It was still dark outside; the sun came up later every day. Mary poured herself a second cup of coffee and turned on the wireless. Pretty soon she’d haul Alec out of bed and start getting him ready for school, but not quite yet. She had a few minutes to herself.

“And now the news,” the announcer said. “Confederate claims of victory in Virginia continue to be greatly exaggerated. U.S. forces continue to advance, and have nearly reached the Rapidan in several places. Further gains are expected.”

Mary had been listening to U.S. broadcasters for as long as she’d had a wireless set. By now, she knew what kinds of lies they told and how they went about it. When they said the other side’s claims were exaggerated, that meant those claims were basically true. Mary hoped they were. She had no great love for the Confederate States, but they’d never bothered Canada.

“U.S. bombers punished targets in Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Texas in reprisal for the terrorist outrages the Confederates have inflicted on the United States,” the newsman continued. “Damage to the enemy was reported to be heavy, while C.S. antiaircraft fire had little effect.”

Again, no details, but it sounded good to anyone who already liked the USA. Since Mary didn’t, she hoped the Yanks were lying again. She expected they were. What else did Yanks do but lie? They’d lied about Alexander, lied so they could line him up against a wall and shoot him.

What goes around comes around,
Mary thought.
And it hasn’t finished coming around yet.
One of these days, she would get back to the farm where she’d grown up. Not yet—the time wasn’t ripe quite yet. But it would be.

XVII

R
obert Quinn looked up from the papers on his desk when Hipolito Rodriguez walked into Freedom Party headquarters in Baroyeca. “
Hola, Señor
Rodriguez,” Quinn said. “I don’t often see you except on meeting nights.”

“Usually, I am working on the farm during the day,” Rodriguez said. “But I’ve been thinking about what you said about the Confederate Veterans’ Brigades.”

“Ah. Have you?” Quinn smiled broadly. “I’m glad to hear it,
señor.
And what have you decided about them?”

“I would like to join,” Rodriguez said simply.

“¡Bueno!”
Quinn jumped up from his chair and stuck out his hand. He pumped Rodriguez’s. “Congratulations! I think you are doing the right thing for yourself and the right thing for your country.”

“For myself, I’m sure I am,” Rodriguez replied. “I’ve studied what the law gives, and it’s generous. It gives more than I could make if I stayed on my farm.” He knew why that was so, too, though he didn’t mention it. The law that set up the Veterans’ Brigades was bound to be geared to the richer Confederate northeast. What would have been barely enough to get by on there seemed like a lot more in Sonora and Chihuahua. He went on, “Do you have the papers I will need to sign?”

Quinn shook his head. “No. They are not here. You will find them at the
alcalde
’s office. This is a government matter, not a Freedom Party matter.”

“What is the difference?” Rodriguez asked, honestly confused.

“Many times, it is not so much,” Quinn admitted. “But military affairs—except for the Freedom Party guards—belong to the government, and even the guards end up getting their gear through the Attorney General’s office. So yes, you do this there.”

“Then I will.
Muchas gracias, señor.
Freedom!”

Back before the Freedom Party rose to power, the
alcalde
’s office had been a sleepy place. It had been a center of power, yes, but a small one. The dons, the big landowners, were the ones who’d given the orders. But the Party had broken them; Rodriguez had been in a couple of the gunfights that turned the trick. These days, the
alcalde
and the
guardia civil
took orders from Hermosillo and from Richmond, which meant from the Party. If those orders sometimes came through Robert Quinn, they did so unofficially.

All the same, the clerk to whom Hipolito Rodriguez spoke seemed unsurprised to see him. The man had the paperwork ready for him to fill out. He even had a voucher for a railroad ticket, though not the exact date. A telephone call to the train station took care of that. “You leave for Texas day after tomorrow. The train goes out at twenty past ten in the morning. You must be here by then.”

“I will.” Rodriguez knew the train often ran late. But it didn’t always, and he didn’t think he could get away with taking a chance here. In the last war, the Army had been very unhappy with people who ran late.

“One other thing,” the clerk said. “How is your English? You will have to use it when you go to the northeast.”

They’d both been speaking the English-laced Spanish that remained the dominant language in Sonora and Chihuahua. Rodriguez shrugged and switched to what he had of real English: “I do all right. Learn some when I fight before, learn some from
niños,
learn some from wireless. No is
muy
good, but is all right.”

“Bueno,”
the clerk said, and then, “That is good.” His English was smoother than Rodriguez’s—almost as good as, say, Robert Quinn’s Spanish. He went on in the CSA’s leading language: “Be on the train, then, the day after tomorrow.”

Rodriguez was. His whole family—except for Pedro, who was in Ohio—came with him to the station to say good-bye. He kissed everybody. The train pulled in two minutes early. He’d hoped for more time, but what you hoped for and what you got too often had little to do with each other. He climbed on board, showed the conductor the voucher, and took a seat by the window. He waved to his wife and children till the train chugged off and left them behind.

He hadn’t gone this way since he headed off for basic training more than half a lifetime before. He’d been jammed into the middle of a crowded car then, and hadn’t had much chance to look out. Now he watched in fascination as the train climbed up through the Sierra Madre Occidental and then down into the flatter country in Chihuahua.

Some Chihuahuans got on the train as it stopped at this town or that one. They and the Sonorans jeered at one another in the same mixture of Spanish and English. To English-speaking Confederates, Sonorans and Chihuahuans alike were just a bunch of damn Mexicans. They knew how they differed, though. Rodriguez made as if he were playing an accordion.
Norteño
music, with its thumping, German-based rhythms and wailing accordions, was much more popular in Chihuahua than in Sonora, though some musicians from the northern part of his state played it, too.

More things than the music changed when the train got into northern Chihuahua. Rodriguez started seeing bomb damage. Once, the train sat on a siding for most of a day. Nobody gave any explanations. The men going into the Veterans’ Brigades hadn’t expected any—they’d been in the service before, after all. Rodriguez’s guess was that the damnyankees had managed to land a bomb, or maybe more than one, on the tracks.

Eventually, the train did start rolling again. When it went over a bridge spanning the Rio Grande between El Paso del Norte and El Paso, it crossed from Chihuahua into Texas. Rodriguez braced himself. So did a lot of the other middle-aged men in the car with him. They weren’t entering a different country, but they were coming into a different world.

Some of the men who got on near the Rio Grande were short and dark and swarthy like most of them, and spoke the same English-flavored Spanish. But some—and more and more as the train rolled north and east—were big, fair, light-eyed English-speakers. They eyed the men already aboard with no great liking. They thought of Rodriguez and his kind as greasers and dagos—not quite niggers, but not white men, either. Rodriguez remembered his soldier days, and threatening to kill a white man who’d called him names once too often. He wondered if he’d have to do it again.

Then one of the Texans peered through bifocals at one of the men who’d got on the train in Chihuahua. “Luis, you stinking son of a bitch, is that you?”

The other fellow—Luis—stared back. “Jimmy?
Sí, pendejo,
is me.” He got up. The two men embraced and showered each other with more affectionate curses in English and Spanish.

“This little bastard drug me back to our lines after I got hit on a trench raid over in Virginia—drug me on his back, y’all hear?” Jimmy said. “I coulda bled to death or been a prisoner for a coupla years, but he done drug me instead. Doc patched me up, an’ I was back in the line in three weeks.”

“Then he save me,” Luis said in English no better than Rodriguez’s. “He—
¿como se dice?
—he kick grenade away before it go off.”

“Hell, I was savin’ my own ass along with yours,” Jimmy said. “It wasn’t nothin’ special.”

After that, none of the other white men in the car acted rude toward the brown men they rode with. Rodriguez didn’t know what they were thinking. He doubted that had changed much. But so what? A man’s thoughts were his own business. What he did, he did in public.

When the train stopped in Fort Worth, the conductor shouted, “All out for guard training here!”

Rodriguez had to push past his seatmate on the aisle. “Excuse, please. Is me.” He grabbed his denim duffel bag from the rack above the seats, slung it over his shoulder, and went up the aisle to the door. A good many others, some brown like him, others ordinary Texans, got out, too.

Stretching his legs on the platform felt good. A man in a uniform of military cut but made from gray rather than butternut spoke in a loud voice: “I am Assault Troop Leader Billy Joe Hamilton. I have the honor and privilege to be a Freedom Party guard. Freedom!” The last word was a fierce roar.

“Freedom!” Rodriguez and his comrades echoed.

Assault Troop Leader Billy Joe Hamilton sneered at all of them impartially, caring no more for white than for brown. “y’all have a lot to learn, and you won’t learn some of it till you get to a
real
camp,” he said. “Come on, now, let’s get you off to where you’re supposed to be at, get your paperwork all done, and then we’ll see what the hell we got in you. Follow me.” He did a smart about-face and marched off the platform.

“Ain’t it nice they’re so glad to see us?” Jimmy didn’t bother to keep his voice down. Assault Troop Leader Billy Joe Hamilton’s back got even stiffer than it was already; Rodriguez hadn’t thought it could. The Freedom Party guard didn’t stop or turn around, though.

Buses waited outside the station. The recruits for the Veterans’ Brigades filled two of them. Rodriguez got into the second one. The cloud of black, stinking smoke that belched from the tailpipe of the first almost asphyxiated him. If the Confederate States weren’t using it for poison gas, they should have been. His own bus coughed out the same sort of fumes, but he didn’t have to breathe those. Gears grinding, the bus groaned into motion.

Decatur, Texas, was about forty miles northwest of Fort Worth. Getting there took an hour and a half—not bad, not as far as Rodriguez was concerned. The town was bigger than Baroyeca, but not very big. It stood on what the locals called a hill. To Rodriguez, who knew what mountains were supposed to be, it seemed like nothing more than a swell of ground, but he saw no point in arguing.

On the flat land below Decatur stood a compound surrounded by barbed wire. There was a ramshackle barracks hall inside; a guard tower with a machine gun stood at each corner. The guard towers were manned. Negroes wandered inside the barbed-wire perimeter. Outside the compound were neat rows of butternut tents.

Assault Troop Leader Billy Joe Hamilton said, “This here is Training Camp Number Three. y’all are gonna learn to take care of nigger prisoners by taking care of the stinkin’ sons of bitches. Ain’t no better way to learn than by doin’ what you got to do. Am I right or am I wrong?” When the men didn’t answer fast enough to suit him, he donned an ugly scowl. “I said,
Am I right or am I wrong?
”

He may have a funny rank because he is a Party guard and not a soldier, but he is nothing but a top sergeant,
thought Rodriguez, who remembered the breed well. “You are right, Assault Troop Leader!” he shouted along with the rest of the veterans. By the way some of them smiled, they were remembering their younger days, too.

The paperwork was about what Rodriguez expected: fitting pegs into slots. He had to ask for help two or three times; he spoke more English than he read. He didn’t feel bad or embarrassed about it. Others from Sonora and Chihuahua were doing the same thing, some more often than he.

He got a gray uniform like Hamilton’s but plainer. He got a pair of shiny black marching boots. He got a submachine gun, but no ammunition for it yet. And he got assigned to a cot in one of those tents. His tentmate turned out to be a Texan named Ollie Parker. “You ain’t no nigger-lover, are you?” Parker demanded. Rodriguez shook his head. Parker, who’d looked worried, relaxed. “In that case, I reckon we’ll get on just fine.”

R
ain poured from the night sky. Scipio put on his galoshes and his raincoat and took his umbrella out of a wastebasket at the Huntsman’s Lodge. He’d get wet walking home anyway. He knew that ahead of time, and knew how inconvenient it was. He also knew he couldn’t do anything more than he’d already done.

“See you tomorrow, Xerxes,” Jerry Dover said.

“Reckon so,” Scipio answered, although, since it was half past one, his boss would really see him again later today.

He slid out the door and started for the Terry. The thick, black clouds overhead only made it darker than it would have been otherwise—which is to say, very dark indeed. He tried to stride carefully, feeling with each foot as well as stepping. He didn’t want to walk off the curb and fall in the gutter or land in a pothole and sprain his ankle.

He’d got almost to the Terry when a flashlight beam stabbed into his face from up ahead. He gasped in surprise and fear. With the raindrops drumming down on his umbrella, he hadn’t heard anyone up there. And, coming out of the gloom, the beam felt bright as a welder’s torch.

“What the hell you doin’ out after curfew, nigger?” The voice that snapped the question belonged to a white man.

Scipio realized the raincoat hid the tuxedo that told without words what he did. “Suh, I waits table up at de Huntsman’s Lodge,” he answered. “I jus’ git off work a few minutes gone by.”

By now, just about every cop in Augusta had stopped him at one time or another. From behind the flashlight, this one said, “Show me you got on your fancy duds under that there raincoat.”

“Yes, suh. I do dat.” Scipio shifted the umbrella from his right hand to his left and used his right to undo the top couple of buttons on the coat and tug it wide so the policeman could see the wing collar and bow tie beneath it.

“It’s him, all right,” another policeman said. “I almost blew the bastard’s head off a few weeks ago.” Scipio still couldn’t see anything but the dazzling beam of light and the raindrops falling through it. He heard more cops muttering agreement. How many were out there? He got the idea there were quite a few.

“Whereabouts exactly you live, uncle?” asked the policeman behind the flashlight.

After giving his address, Scipio buttoned the raincoat to keep out the November chill. “How come you wants to know dat, suh?” he asked. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”

“You’re out after curfew. We wanted to jug you, we sure as hell could,” the cop said, and the cold of a winter from much farther north took root in Scipio’s vitals. But the white man went on, “You just get your sorry black ass home, then. This here ain’t got nothin’ to do with you.”

“This here what?” Scipio inquired.

“Cleaning out transients and terrorists.” Abruptly, the flashlight beam winked out. Green and purple afterimages danced in front of Scipio’s eyes. Aside from them, he couldn’t see a thing. He’d hardly been able to before, but this was even worse. “Come on through,” the policeman told him. “Come on. You’ll be fine.”