Return Engagement (76 page)

“Thank you, ma’am. God bless you, ma’am,” Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces chorused together.

“You’re welcome,” Flora said. “And I’ll do whatever I can to stop those Freedom Party goons from massacring your people. I don’t know how much that will be, but I’ll do my damnedest.” She hardly ever swore, but it seemed fitting now.

“God bless you,” Satchmo repeated. “Nice to know somebody here cares a little, anyways. Ain’t nobody south of the border cares at all.”

How many people north of the border cared at all? Too few, too few. Flora didn’t care to tell Satchmo that. He and his friends had just escaped from worse. Let them find out a little at a time that they hadn’t come to paradise. That way—maybe—their hearts wouldn’t break.

C
incinnatus Driver couldn’t believe he’d been stuck in Covington more than a year. He knew he was lucky his father hadn’t had to bury him here, but he wasn’t always sure his luck in surviving had been good.

Just the same, he
had
made progress. He still used a cane, and feared he would for the rest of his life. He was fairly spry with it now, where he had been an arthritic tortoise. He didn’t get headaches as often as he had not long after the accident, either, and the ones that did come weren’t so blinding. Progress. He laughed. It was either that or cry. He’d gone from worse to bad. Huzzah!

His mother, now, his mother went from bad to worse. She still knew who Seneca was, and sometimes Cincinnatus, but that was almost her only hold on the real world. She made messes like a toddler. The first time Cincinnatus cleaned her, he burst into tears as soon as he got out of the room. He had to harden himself to do it over and over again. He never cried after that once, but it tore at his heart every time. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. She’d done this for him when he was little. That he should have to do it for her . . .

He found himself looking at his father. Would he have to do the same for him one day? The horror of that thought drove Cincinnatus out of the house. He could have gone to the Brass Monkey; getting drunk would—well, might—have kept him from dwelling on it. Instead, he headed for Lucullus’. He couldn’t buy a drink there, not officially, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get something to wet his whistle if he wanted to. Knowing the proprietor had its advantages.

The place wasn’t crowded when he limped in. He hadn’t thought it would be, not on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon. But it wasn’t empty, either. As far as he knew, Lucullus’ place was never empty. The barbecue was too good for that. Negroes and whites both came here. As usual, whites sat at some tables, blacks at others, and. . . . There, a white man and a Negro sat across from each other at the same table. That was out of the ordinary not only at Lucullus’ but anywhere in the CSA.

Then Cincinnatus saw the Negro at the table was Lucullus himself. The bulky barbecue chef broke the rules whenever he pleased. The white man glanced up as Cincinnatus came in. The fellow didn’t look to be far from a skid row bum. His gray hair came down in odd tufts from under a disreputable hat. He’d needed a shave for three or four days. His scruffy sweater had had spots on it before barbecue sauce added a more colorful one.

None of that had anything to do with the icy lizards that walked up Cincinnatus’ back. Going around like somebody who’d been hitting the bottle too hard for too long might fool most people, but not Cincinnatus. He would have recognized Luther Bliss in pancake makeup and a little black dress, let alone this outfit.

His face must have given him away. Bliss said something to Lucullus, who looked up. He waved to Cincinnatus and beckoned him over. Cincinnatus would sooner have jumped into a nest of rattlesnakes. He didn’t see what choice he had, though. Moving even more slowly than he had to, he approached.

“Well, well. Damned if it ain’t little Mary Sunshine.” Bliss sounded like a crack-brained derelict, too, which was harder than looking like one. His eyes, though, his eyes he couldn’t disguise. They were too alert, too clever, to match the rest of his pretended persona.

“What you doin’ here?” Cincinnatus asked as he sat down—by Lucullus. Nothing in the world would have made him sit down by Luther Bliss.

“Me? goin’to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it,” Bliss answered.

For a moment, that made no sense to Cincinnatus. Then it did. It was from the Book of Job. “You don’t gotta do much talkin’ to make me believe you’re the Devil,” Cincinnatus said.

Bliss brayed out a loud, stupid laugh. “Love you, too,” he said, and blew Cincinnatus a kiss.

Cincinnatus turned to Lucullus. “What you doin’ with this man? Whatever it is, he ain’t doin’ it for you. He’s doin’ it for his ownself, nobody else.” Bliss laughed again, even more raucously. Cincinnatus glared at him once more. All that did was prove looks couldn’t kill.

Before saying anything of consequence, Lucullus waved for a waitress and told her to fetch Cincinnatus a plate of pork ribs and a bottle of Dr. Hopper. Only after she went away did he remark, “Ain’t always who you’re for what matters. Sometimes who you’re against counts fo’ mo’.”

“Yeah, sometimes.” Cincinnatus pointed at Luther Bliss. “He’s against you, for instance, on account of you’re a Red.” Keeping his voice down so the whole place wouldn’t hear what he was saying took almost more willpower than he had in him.

“I got bigger worries right now, bigger fish to fry.” Bliss talked normally. He just made sure nobody in his right mind would want to listen. That was a considerable talent. He had a lot of them. Getting Cincinnatus to trust him would never be one.

The waitress brought the food and the soda pop. Nobody said anything till she left. Cincinnatus wondered whether that was wasted caution. People who worked for Lucullus were probably involved in his schemes up to their eyebrows. Then the delicious aroma of the ribs distracted him. He dug in, and promptly got a stain on his shirt to match the one on Luther Bliss’ sweater.

“How’d you like to help us give the Confederate States of America one right in the nuts?” Lucullus asked.

He might have asked,
How’d you like to buy a pig in a poke?
Or he might have asked,
How’d you like to get killed?
Cincinnatus suspected all three questions boiled down to the same thing. “Depends,” he said. “What do I gotta do?”

“I knew he didn’t have the balls for it,” Luther Bliss said scornfully.

Cincinnatus didn’t raise his voice as he said, “Fuck your mother, Luther.”

Bliss’ mahogany eyes opened very wide, perhaps at the obscenity, perhaps because a black man had presumed to call him by his first name. Before he could say anything, Lucullus beat him to it: “That’ll be enough outa both o’ you.” He glowered at white man and black in turn, as if to say they’d have to quarrel with him before they could go at each other.

If Luther Bliss wanted a fight, Cincinnatus was ready. He didn’t even worry about being a cripple. He intended to use his cane to knock the white man ass over elbow. He didn’t figure Bliss would fight fair, so why should he?

“You reckon you can drive a truck?” Lucullus asked him.

“Can I? Hell, yes,” Cincinnatus answered. “Why do I want anything to do with this ofay bastard, though?” He pointed across the table at Bliss.

“Because it’ll heap coals of fire on Jake Featherston’s head.” Lucullus could quote Scripture for his purpose, too. “Next to that, what else matters?”

That was a potent argument with any Negro, but not necessarily potent enough with Cincinnatus. “Jake Featherston never lured me down here so he could throw me in jail,” he snarled. “This here asshole did.”

Bliss didn’t deny it. How could he, when it was true? He said, “Featherston’s killing spades by the tens of thousands—hell, maybe by the hundreds of thousands now. You gonna piss and moan about a jail cell next to that?”

He had an odd way of arguing, which didn’t mean it wasn’t effective. He didn’t care what Cincinnatus thought of him. He just worried about what the black man did. Cincinnatus didn’t look at him or speak to him. Instead, he turned to Lucullus. “Where’s this truck at? Where do I got to drive it to?”

“It’s by the train station,” Lucullus answered. “You got to bring it over to the river.”

“The Ohio?” Cincinnatus asked. You could almost spit from the station to the Ohio.

Lucullus shook his head. The soft flesh under his chin wobbled. That made Cincinnatus think of the barbecue chef’s father. Apicius Wood’s flesh had been the only soft thing about him. Lucullus said, “No, not the Ohio. The Licking, here in the colored part o’ town.”

That made sense. Cincinnatus wasn’t sure a colored truck driver could get near the Ohio without challenge. The tributary was bound to be a different story. “What’s the truck got in it?” Cincinnatus asked.

“Something I arranged,” Luther Bliss said. “You don’t need to know what.”

Cincinnatus started to get to his feet. “Obliged for the ribs,” he told Lucullus. “Reckon you don’t need me for no driver.”

“Git down off your high horse. You are the
proudest
damn nigger,” Lucullus said querulously. Cincinnatus didn’t deny it. He didn’t leave, either. He waited. If he got an answer, that was one thing. If he didn’t . . . He could always leave then. Lucullus muttered under his breath. Then he stopped muttering and spoke in that same low, breathy voice: “Got us some mines to dump in the river.”

“Do Jesus!” Cincinnatus said. Luther Bliss doubtless had connections with the U.S. War Department. Even so, smuggling infernal devices like that across the border couldn’t have been easy. Since Bliss had managed to do it, or somebody had managed to do it for him . . . “When you want me there?” Cincinnatus asked.

Two days later, wearing a pair of overalls and a cloth cap furnished by Lucullus, he made his way toward the truck. A gray-uniformed cop checked his passbook and let him go on without asking exactly where he was going and why. The Confederates thought everything in Covington was under control. Cincinnatus’ carnivorous smile said otherwise.

He found the truck right where Lucullus said it would be. One of the keys in his pocket opened the door. Another fit the ignition. The motor roared to life when he turned that key and stamped the starter.

Releasing the hand brake and putting the truck in gear felt good. He’d been driving for more than thirty years. He’d taken his surname because of what he did. Driving was a big part of his life, and he hadn’t been able to do it since coming down to Covington. Now he could.

He shook his head and clucked sadly as he went through the colored quarter. A lot of houses stood empty; their owners had been sensible enough to get across the Ohio to the USA when the CSA won the plebiscite. Cincinnatus sighed. He’d been sensible himself. Fat lot of good it had done him.

The derelict garage where Lucullus had told him to pull in was hard by the river. The building faced away from the Licking, but had a back door that opened on it. Even before Cincinnatus killed the engine, half a dozen black men stepped out from the gloom and darkness inside the garage.

“You brung ’em?” one of them asked.

“Yeah,” Cincinnatus answered. The men took half a dozen crates out of the back of the truck. They pried up the tops and carefully removed the mines, one after another. Two men on each mine, they carried them down to the river. Cincinnatus didn’t see how they placed them: whether they dropped them in, had a rowboat waiting, or what. As soon as the last mine was gone, he fired up the truck again and drove off. Lucullus’ crew of men with strong backs also broke up in a hurry.

The truck went back where he’d found it. He returned the keys to Lucullus. The barbecue chef gave him a conspiratorial wink. He returned it, then limped out of the barbecue shack and headed home.

J
ake Featherston scowled as he read the report from Kentucky. A Confederate gunboat on the Licking River had blown sky-high when it hit a mine. Two dozen men dead, another eight or ten badly hurt, an expensive piece of machinery gone to hell . . . He cursed under his breath, and then out loud.

After he’d thought for a few seconds, his curses got nastier. The Licking ran
into
the Ohio. You couldn’t drop a mine into the Ohio and expect it to go up the Licking. Sure as hell, the damnyankees had sneaked people and at least one mine from the USA into the CSA. Either that or they’d sneaked in the explosives and then used white traitors or niggers to do their dirty work for them.

After a few
more
seconds, Jake swore even louder. That
at least one mine
stuck in his head. How much time and money and manpower would the authorities in Covington have to spend before they made sure there weren’t any others—or before they got rid of the ones they found? Too much, too much, and too much, respectively.

Back before Kentucky and the abortion called Houston came home to the CSA, pro-Confederate demonstrators had been as nasty and as noisy as they could. Yankee backers in the redeemed states were quieter. If they showed what they thought, the police and Freedom Party stalwarts and guards would land on them with both feet. The Yankees had been soft-headed and let their enemies shelter under the protection of the Constitution. In the CSA, the Whigs had made the same mistake—and they’d paid for it, too.

Unfortunately, the damnyankees had wised up. They’d figured out how to play nasty, and they’d turned out to be pretty good at it. Featherston swore once more, this time at himself. He’d misread Al Smith. The man—and the country Smith led—turned out to have more backbone than he’d expected. He’d been so sure the Yankees would go for his peace offer after the CSA’s smashing victories in Ohio. He’d been sure, and he’d been wrong.

“Well, if the bastards won’t lay down on their own, we’ll just have to knock ’em flat, that’s all,” he muttered. “And we goddamn well will.” The telephone rang. He picked it up. “Yeah? What is it, Lulu?”

“General Potter is here to see you, sir,” his secretary answered.

“Send him in,” Jake said, and hung up. When Clarence Potter walked into the President’s office, Featherston fixed him with a glare. “You know about the goddamn mess in Covington?”