The Grapple (27 page)

He took a deep breath and set out down the road through the fields. A few years earlier, they would have been full of colored sharecroppers. Tractors and harvesters and combines drove Negroes off the land in swarms, though. Like so many towns in the CSA, Augusta had filled with farm workers who couldn’t find work. Having them in the cities made it easier for the Freedom Party to scoop them up, too.

Here came a motorcar. It was fairly new and in good repair—not noisy, not belching smoke. That made it a good bet to belong to a white man. Cassius straightened up, squared his shoulders, and kept walking along as if he had every right to be there. Every Negro learned that trick: if you pretended you belonged somewhere, the ofays would believe you really did.

And it worked, damned if it didn’t. The driver here wasn’t a white man but a white woman, her blond hair blowing in the breeze that came in through the open windows. Her head didn’t even turn toward Cassius. As far as she was concerned, he was part of the scenery, like a cow or a dog or a turkey vulture sitting on a telegraph pole.

In a way, that was good. She didn’t notice him, and he couldn’t afford to be noticed. In another way…He thought he deserved to be more important than a cow or a dog or a turkey vulture. Whites in the CSA didn’t see things like that. They never had. Odds were they never would.

We have to make ’em see,
Cassius thought fiercely.

Then a white
did
notice him, and it made his heart leap into his throat. He was walking past a farmhouse when somebody shouted, “Hey, you! Yeah, you, boy!” The farmer wore bib overalls and a big straw hat. He carried a shotgun, at the moment pointed down at the ground.

“What you want, uh, suh?” Cassius tried not to show how scared he was.

“You chop wood? Got me a pile of wood needs chopping,” the farmer said. “Pay you a dollar for it when you get done.”

Part of Cassius wanted to leap at that. The rest…The rest was naturally leery of trusting any white man. “Half a dollar now, half when I get through,” he said.

“Reckon I’d stiff you?” the farmer said. Cassius just spread his hands, as if to say you never could tell. The farmer shrugged. “All right. But if you take off halfway through, I’ll send the sheriff after you, hell with me if I don’t.”

“That’s fair,” Cassius allowed. “Reckon I could get me a ham sandwich an’ maybe a Dr. Hopper at noontime ’long with my other four bits?” If he was going to bargain, he’d go all out.

The farmer took the request in stride. “Don’t see why not. Good Book says something about not binding up the mouths of the kine that tread the grain. Reckon that goes for people, too.”

How could he quote the Bible and go along with what was happening to Negroes in the CSA? Maybe he didn’t go along, or not all the way, anyhow. He didn’t ask to see Cassius’ passbook, and he didn’t ask any inconvenient questions about what a young black man in city clothes was doing here.

As soon as Cassius saw the mountain of wood he was supposed to chop, he understood at once why the man didn’t ask questions. If he chopped all that, he’d earn his dollar three or four times over. He was tempted to light out with the farmer’s two quarters in his pocket. One thing held him back: fear. County sheriffs were supposed to use bloodhounds to track people, just the way their grandfathers did back in slavery days. If this one caught him…He didn’t want to think about that.

With a sigh, he set to work. Before long, sweat ran down his face even though the weather wasn’t too warm. He got blisters on his palms bigger than the ones on his heels. The farmer came to check on him, took a look at those, and gave him strips of cloth to wrap around his hands. They helped.

At least an hour before noon, the man brought him an enormous sandwich, a big slice of sweet-potato pie, and a cool Dr. Hopper. The bottle was dripping; maybe it had been in the well. “Much obliged, suh,” Cassius said.

“You’re doing an honest job,” the farmer said. “Looks like you could use a meal.”

“Maybe some.” Cassius wolfed down the food. He savored the Dr. Hopper, and smiled when bubbles went up his nose. “Can I pour a bucket o’ water over my head? Feel mighty good if I do.”

“Go right ahead,” the farmer answered.

Cassius walked over to the well and did. He finished somewhere between three and four in the afternoon. The farmer didn’t make any fuss about giving him the second installment of his pay, and even brought him another sandwich without being asked. “Thank you kindly,” Cassius said with his mouth full.

“Want to stick around for a spell?” the white man asked him. “I could use a hand, and you pull your weight. Say…four dollars a week and board?”

The money was chicken feed, though a place to sleep and three—or at least two—meals a day made up for some of that. But Cassius shook his head. “I better keep movin’ on,” he said.

“You won’t find many better deals,” the farmer warned.

Not from ofays,
Cassius thought. With Negroes, though, he had a chance for something this fellow couldn’t hope to give him: vengeance. That still burned in him. “Obliged,” he said again, “but I got places to go.”

“And I know where you’ll end up: in trouble,” the farmer said. “You come sneakin’ round here after dark raisin’ Cain, I’ll give you a bellyful of double-aught buckshot. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

That meant guerrillas were active in these parts: for Cassius, good news. Still, he said, “I wouldn’t do nothin’ like that with you, suh. You treated me fair. You treated me better’n fair, an’ I know it.”

“How long will you remember, though?” The white man shrugged. “Reckon we’re quits. I don’t have anything against you—you did a job of work there. Ain’t seen anybody go at it like that for a long time.”

“I was hungry,” Cassius said with a shrug.

“Makes a difference,” the farmer agreed.

“You know what they’re doin’ in the city, suh?” Cassius asked. “You know they got all the niggers shut up inside barbed wire? You know they’re takin’ ’em to camps an’ killin’ ’em? They took my ma and my pa and my sister yesterday.”

“No. I didn’t know any of that. They don’t talk about it much,” the farmer said.

Only after Cassius was a couple of miles down the road, still another sandwich tied up in a rag, did he realize the man had to be lying. Who were
they
? What
did
they say? He wondered why the man bothered to waste time lying to a black. Why not just tell the truth and gloat? One answer occurred to him after another half a mile or so. He’d been closer to the axe than the farmer was, and he’d shown he knew how to use it.

A
rmstrong Grimes was fit to be tied, and he didn’t care who knew it. What was his reward, what was his regiment’s reward, what was his division’s reward for making the Mormons realize they couldn’t throw enough bodies on the fire to put it out? Why, to go to Canada, to go up against a bigger rebellion. He’d called the shot too well.

“How many people in Utah?” he demanded of Yossel Reisen.

“I don’t know,” his fellow sergeant answered as the train rattled along through the upper Midwest—or maybe it was in Canada. One stretch of plain looked just as dreary as another. Yossel went on, “Half a million, maybe?”

“Yeah, and not all of ’em were Mormons, either,” Armstrong said. “All right—how many people in Canada?”

“Millions,” Reisen said. “Got to be millions.”

“Fuckin’-A it does. That’s what I figure, too,” Armstrong said. “So what do we have to do? Kill every goddamn one of them?”

“Hey, don’t get sore at me,” Yossel told him. “I didn’t give the orders. I’ve got to take ’em, same as you do.”

“I’ll tell you what’s sore. My ass is sore,” Armstrong grumbled. The car he was in had hard benches packed too close together to squeeze in as many soldiers as possible. The smell and a dense cloud of cigarette smoke thickened the air. The Army cared nothing for comfort. It valued efficiency much more. Armstrong shifted from one weary cheek to the other. He nudged his buddy. “You oughta write your Congresswoman.”

“Armstrong, the first time you said that, it was funny,” Yossel Reisen said. “The fifth time you said it, I could put up with it. By now, though, by now it gives
me
a fucking pain in the ass, you know?”

“All right, already. Got a butt?” Armstrong asked.

“Sure.” Yossel passed him a pack. He lit up. It helped pass the time. When Armstrong returned the pack, Reisen stuck one in his mouth. Armstrong leaned close to give him a light. After Yossel’s first drag, he said, “We’ve got to lick the damn Confederates. If we don’t, we’ll be stuck with our own shitty tobacco forever.”

“There you go.” Armstrong blew out a cloud of smoke. “One more reason to hate Jake Featherston. I thought I already knew ’em all. We’ve got to kick his scrawny butt, all right. I wish
we
could do it, too, instead of fucking around with the goddamn stinking worthless Canucks.”

Yossel chuckled. “I don’t quite follow you. Tell us how you really feel.”

Before Armstrong could answer, he discovered they were already in Canada: somebody shot out a window in his railroad car. The bullet missed everybody, but glass sprayed soldiers. Everybody jumped and yelled and swore.

Machine gunners on the roofs of two or three cars opened up on the sniper. Armstrong had no idea if they hit him, but he did hope they made the bastard keep his head down. Then he said, “My guys—you all right?” He still had his platoon. No eager young second looey had come out to take his place.

“I got somethin’ in my eye, Sarge,” somebody right behind him said. “Is it glass?”

“Lemme see.” Awkwardly, Armstrong turned around. “Don’t blink, Boone, for Christ’s sake.” He yanked at the private’s eyelid. Damned if he didn’t see a chunk of glass not much bigger than a grain of salt. “Don’t flinch, either, dammit.”

“I’ll try,” Boone said. Not flinching when somebody’s hand came at your eye was probably harder than holding steady in combat. The soldier managed…pretty well.

“Hang on.” Armstrong peered down at his thumb. Sure as hell, he’d got the glass out. He flicked it away. “Blink. How’s your eye?”

“Better, Sarge,” Boone said in glad surprise. “Thanks a million.” He blinked again. “Yeah, it’s all right now.”

“Bully.” Armstrong didn’t know why he said that. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever used it. Even his old man hardly ever said it. But getting something out of somebody’s eye made you feel fatherly, and fathers talked in old-fashioned ways.

Yossel Reisen gave him a quizzical look. “Bully?”

“Well, what about it?” Armstrong snapped. He was embarrassed he’d come out with it, too.

“Nothing,” Yossel said. But it wasn’t nothing, because he added, “You sounded like George Custer, that’s all.”

“Thanks a lot, Yossel.” Armstrong had often wondered why his father gave him Custer’s middle name and not his first one. George Grimes would have been a perfectly ordinary handle. Armstrong…wasn’t. He shrugged. Yossel had a funnier name yet, although maybe not if you were a Jew.

A few minutes later, the train screeched and squealed to a stop. They weren’t anywhere that Armstrong could see—just out in the middle of the damn prairie. Before long, though, officers started yelling, “Out! Out!”

“What the fuck?” Boone said. Armstrong only shrugged. He didn’t know what was going on, either.

He was standing out on the prairie with his men, waiting for somebody to tell him what to do next. Either nobody was in a hurry to do that or nobody knew. He looked around. In Utah, he’d got used to always having mountains on the horizon. No mountains here. This was the flattest country he’d ever seen; it made Ohio look like the Himalayas. The train tracks stretched out toward infinity. As far as he could tell, the two rails met there.

“Next town ahead is Rosenfeld!” yelled somebody with a loud, authoritative voice. “Canucks ran the Frenchies out of there, and they hold the train station. We’re going to take it back from them. Rosenfeld sits at a railway junction, so we need the place if we’re going to be able to use both lines. You got that?”

“Goddamn Frenchies,” Armstrong muttered. The soldiers from the Republic of Quebec showed no enthusiasm for fighting their former countrymen. He’d heard Mexican troops in the CSA didn’t jump up and down at the idea of shooting at—and getting shot by—the spooks down there. Both sets of soldiers from small countries probably figured they didn’t really want to do big countries’ dirty work for them.
Well, the hell with ’em,
he thought.
I don’t want to get my ass shot off, either.

Yossel Reisen, on the other hand, summed things up in half a dozen words: “This is where we came in.” Armstrong grunted and nodded. They’d got off the train and fought their way forward in Utah, too.

He hoped the Canadians wouldn’t be as fanatical as the Mormons. He had trouble imagining how they could be, but a soldier’s life was full of nasty surprises. The men in green-gray shook themselves out into skirmish lines and moved forward. A woman with hair once red but now mostly gray stood outside her farmhouse staring at them as they tramped past.

“She saw Americans come this way in 1914, too,” Yossel murmured.

“Yeah, and her husband probably made bombs or something,” Armstrong said. Yossel trudged on for another couple of paces, then nodded.

One good thing, as far as Armstrong was concerned: this flat, flat ground offered far fewer ambush points than Utah’s rougher terrain. The first gunfire came from a farmhouse and its outbuildings. The American soldiers went after the strongpoints with practiced ease. Machine guns made the Canadians stay down. Mortar teams dropped bombs on the buildings and set some afire. Only then did foot soldiers approach. A few Canucks opened up on them. More mortar and machine-gun fire silenced the position.

Then something new was added to the mix. A beat-up old pickup truck bounced across the fields. It turned broadside to the American soldiers. “Get down!” Armstrong yelled to his men. Whatever the bastard driving that truck was doing, it didn’t look friendly.

And it wasn’t. Two Canucks in the pickup’s staked bed served a machine gun on a tall mount. The gun chattered. Bullets sprayed toward the Americans. Wounded soldiers shouted and screamed. A few men in green-gray had the presence of mind to shoot back, but only a few. Leaving a trail of dust in the distance, the truck bucketed away.