The Victorious Opposition (75 page)

“Dunno, Mistuh Dover,” Scipio said. “Reckon mebbe they could’ve, though.”

“What do you suppose he did?” Dover asked. “He’s never given anybody any trouble here.”

“Dunno,” Scipio said again. “Dunno if he done anything. Them
po
lice, I don’t reckon they was fussy.” They were standing right outside the kitchen, in a nice, warm corridor. He wanted to shiver even so. Nestor would have been wearing a tuxedo, too. Fat lot of good it had done him.

Jerry Dover rubbed his chin. “He’s a pretty fair worker. Let me make a call or two, see what I can find out.”

What would he have done if Nestor were a lazy good-for-nothing? Washed his hands like Pilate? Scipio wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t dwell on it. With the crew shorthanded because Nestor wasn’t there, he stayed hopping.

And Nestor didn’t show up, either. Dover wore a tight-lipped expression, one that discouraged questions. Scipio and the rest of the crew got through the evening. When he went back the next day, the missing waiter still wasn’t there. That nerved him to go up to the manager and ask, “Nestor, he come back?”

“Doubt it.” Dover sounded as if he had to pay for every word that passed his lips. “Time for a new hire. He won’t know his ass from Richmond, either.”

“Nestor, what he do?” Scipio persisted. “You find out?”

“He got himself arrested, that’s what.” Jerry Dover sounded angry at Scipio—or possibly angry at the world. “He picked the wrong goddamn time to do it, too.”

“What you mean?” Scipio asked. “Ain’t no right time to git arrested.”

Dover nodded. “Well, that’s so. There’s no right time. But there’s sure as hell a wrong time. What the cops told me yesterday was, the city jail’s full. So those niggers they caught in the Terry—you know about that?”

“Oh, yes, suh,” Scipio said softly. “I tol’ you, remember? They almost ‘rests me, too.”

“That’s right, you did. Well, I’m damn glad they didn’t, because I’d be down two waiters if they had.” If the restaurant manager was glad for any other reason that they hadn’t arrested Scipio, he didn’t show it. He went on, “Jail’s full up, like I said. So they went and shipped these here niggers off to one of those camps they’ve started.”

“Lord he’p Nestor, then,” Scipio said. “Somebody go into one of them places, I hear tell he don’t come out no mo’, not breathin’, anyways.” He’d heard it as gossip between two men he’d never seen, but that didn’t mean he didn’t believe it. It had the horrid feel of truth.

Jerry Dover shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. What had
he
heard? Back in the days when Scipio worked at Marshlands, he’d been convinced the Colletons couldn’t keep a secret for more than a few minutes before the blacks on the plantation also knew it. Here at the Huntsman’s Lodge, the colored cooks and waiters and cleaners quickly found out whatever their white bosses knew. Or did they? Just as blacks kept secrets from whites out of necessity, so whites might also find it wise to keep certain things from blacks.

But if Dover had
that
kind of knowledge, it didn’t show on his face. Scipio thought it would. Dover did what he had to do to get along in the world in which he found himself. Who didn’t, except crazy people and saints? But the manager was pretty honest, pretty decent. He was no “Freedom!”-yelling stalwart without two brain cells to rub against each other.

He said, “You want to watch yourself on the street, then, don’t you? You know I’ve got some pull. But it doesn’t look like I can do anything about one of those places.”

“I watches myself real good, suh,” Scipio answered. “You say de city jail full up?” Jerry Dover nodded. Scipio asked him, “They ’rest white folks now, de white folks go to dese camps, too?”

His boss looked at him as if he’d asked whether the stork brought mothers their babies. “Don’t be stupid,” Dover said.

That was good advice, too. It always was. What worried Scipio was, it might not be enough. He’d escaped the last dragnet as much by luck as by anything else. You could tell a man not to be stupid, and maybe—if he wasn’t stupid to begin with—he’d listen. But how the devil could you tell a man not to be unlucky?

F
ive-thirty in the morning. Reveille blared. Armstrong Grimes groaned. He had time for that one involuntary protest before he rolled out of his cot and his feet hit the floor of the barracks hall at Fort Custer outside of Columbus, Ohio. Then he started functioning, at least well enough. He threw on his green-gray uniform, made up the cot, and dashed outside to his place in the roll call—all in the space of five minutes.

What happened to men who were late had long since convinced him being late was a bad idea. Back home, his mother had made the bed for him most of the time. He’d been sloppy at it when he first got here. Now a dime bounced off his blanket, and bounced high. The drill sergeant didn’t have cause to complain about him or even notice him—the two often being synonymous.

He stood there trying not to shiver in the chilly dawn. When the time came, he sang out to announce his presence. Other than that, he kept quiet. Everybody else did the same. For once, the drill sergeants seemed in a merciful mood. They let the assembled soldiers march off to breakfast after only a minimum of growling and cursing.

Everybody marched everywhere at Fort Custer. Armstrong had begun to think
Thou shalt march
was in the Bible somewhere right below
Thou shalt not kill
and
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain
—two commandments he was learning more about violating every day.

He took a tray and a plate and a mug and silverware, then advanced on the food. A cook’s helper loaded the plate with scrambled eggs and hash browns and greasy, overdone bacon. Another one poured the mug full of coffee almost strong enough to eat through the bottom. Armstrong grabbed a seat at a long, long table. He put enough cream and sugar in the coffee to tame it a little, threw salt on the eggs and potatoes and pepper on the eggs, and then started shoveling in chow.

Nobody talked much at breakfast. Nobody had time. The drill here was simple: feed your face as fast as you could. Armstrong had never much cared for manners. He didn’t have to worry about them here. Compared to the way some of the guys ate, he might have come from the upper crust. Every once in a while, he thought that was pretty funny. More often than not, he didn’t have time to worry about it one way or the other.

As soon as he finished, he shoved his tray and dirty dishes at the poor slobs who’d drawn KP duty. Then he hustled out to the exercise yard. He wasn’t the first one there, but he was a long way from the last. Bad things happened to the guys who brought up the rear.

Of course, bad things happened to everybody right after breakfast. Violent calisthenics and a three-mile run weren’t the way Armstrong would have used to settle his stomach. The drill sergeants didn’t care about his opinion. They had their own goals. His conscription class, like any other, had had some fat guys, some weak guys. He remembered who they’d been. But the fat guys weren’t fat any more, and the weak guys weren’t weak any more. Oh, a few had washed out, simply unable to stand the strain. People said one fellow had died trying, but Armstrong didn’t know if he believed that. Most of the recruits, no matter what kind of shape they’d been in to start with, had toughened up since.

After the run, the conscripts “relaxed” with close-order drill. “Left . . . ! Left . . . ! Left, right, left!” the drill sergeant bawled. “To the rear . . .
haarch!
” He screamed at somebody who couldn’t keep the rhythm if his life depended on it. Armstrong’s company had a couple of those unfortunates, who drew more than their fair share of abuse. He’d never figured out why the Army still needed close-order drill. Doing it where the enemy could see you was a recipe for getting massacred. But he didn’t have any trouble telling one foot from the other, or turning right and not left when he heard, “To the right flank . . .
haarch!
”

Lunch that day was creamed chipped beef on toast, otherwise creamed chipped beast or, more often, shit on a shingle. Armstrong didn’t care what people called it. He didn’t care what he got, either, as long as there was plenty of it. He would have eaten a horse and chased the driver—and, considering how fast he could pound out the three miles, he probably would have caught him.

After lunch came dirty fighting and rifle practice. Like any reasonably tough kid who got out of high school, Armstrong had thought he knew something about dirty fighting. The drill sergeant who’d mercilessly thumped him in the first day’s lesson taught him otherwise. He’d been amazed to discover what all you could do with elbows, knees, feet, and bent fingers. If you happened to have a knife . . .

“Any civilian who fucks with me better have his funeral paid for,” he said.

The drill sergeant shook his head. “He may have been through the mill, too. Or he may have a gun. You can’t kick a gun in the nuts. Remember that, or you’ll end up dead.”

That struck Armstrong as good advice. A lot of what the drill sergeants said struck him as good advice. Whether he would take it was another question. He was no more interested than any other male his age in getting answers from someone else. He thought he had everything figured out for himself.

After the fighting drill, he and his company marched off to the rifle range. That did help reinforce what the sergeant had said. If you had a Springfield in your hand, you could put a hole in a man—or a man-shaped target—from a hell of a lot farther away than a man could put a boot in your belly. And Armstrong was a good shot.

“A lot of you guys think you’re hot stuff,” another drill sergeant said. This one had a fine collection of Sharpshooter and Expert medals jingling on his chest. “Listen to me, though. There’s one big difference between doing it on the range here and doing it in the field. In the field, the other son of a bitch shoots back. And if you think that doesn’t matter, you’re dreaming.”

Armstrong only grunted. He was sure it didn’t matter. He could do it here. As far as he was concerned, that meant he could do it, period.

The drill sergeant said, “Some of you think I’m kidding. Some of you think I’m talking with my head up my ass. Well, you’ll find out. It’s different in the field. A hell of a lot of guys get out there and they don’t shoot at all. There’s plenty of others who don’t aim first. They just point their piece somewhere—in the air, probably—and start banging away.”

“What a bunch of fools,” Armstrong whispered to the recruit next to him. He wanted to laugh out loud, but he didn’t. That would have drawn the drill sergeant’s eye to him, which he didn’t want at all.

As things were, the sergeant sent a scowl in his general direction, but it didn’t light on him personally. The veteran noncom went on, “There’s just one thing you’re lucky about. The other side will have as many fuckups as we do. That may keep some of you alive longer than you deserve. On the other hand, it may not, too. A machine gun isn’t awful goddamn choosy about who it picks out.” His face clouded. “I ought to know.” He wore the ribbon for a Purple Heart, too.

“Question, Sergeant?” somebody called.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Is it true the Confederates are giving their soldiers lots and lots of submachine guns?” the youngster asked.

“Yeah, that’s supposed to be true,” the sergeant said. “I don’t think all that much of the idea myself. Submachine gun only fires a pistol round. It doesn’t have a lot of stopping power, and the effective range is pretty short.” He stopped and rubbed his chin. It was blue with stubble, though he’d surely scraped it smooth that morning. “Of course, submachine guns do put a hell of a lot of lead in the air. And the goddamn Confederates can hold their breath till they turn blue, but they’re never gonna have as many men as we do. I expect that’s why they’re trying it.”

Another recruit piped up: “Why hasn’t somebody made an automatic rifle, if a submachine gun isn’t good enough?”

“The Confederates are supposed to be trying that, too, but there are problems,” the sergeant said. “Recoil, wear on the mechanism, overheating, having the weapon pull up when you fire it on full automatic, keeping it clean in the field—those are some of the things you’ve got to worry about. I wouldn’t fall over dead with surprise if we start using something like that, too, one of these days, but don’t hold
your
breath, either. And the Springfield is a goddamn good weapon. We won a war with it. We can win another one if we have to.”

He waited. Sure enough, that drew another question: “Are we going to fight another war with the Confederate States?”

“Beats me,” the drill sergeant answered. “I’ve done my share of fighting, and I am plumb satisfied. But if that Featherston son of a bitch isn’t . . . You need two for peace, but one can start a war. If he does start it, it’s up to us—it’ll be up to
you
—to finish it.”

Armstrong Grimes had no complaints. If he had to be in the Army, he wanted to be there while it was in action. What point to it otherwise? He didn’t think about getting hurt. He especially didn’t think about getting killed. That kind of stuff happened to other people. It couldn’t possibly happen to him. He was going to live forever.

The sergeant said, “And if he does start another war, you
will
finish it, right? You’ll kick the CSA’s mangy ass around the block, right?”

“Yes, Sergeant!” the young men shouted. They were all as convinced of their own immortality as Armstrong Grimes.

“I can’t hear you.” The sergeant cupped a hand behind one ear.

“Yes, Sergeant!”
The recruits might have been at a football game. Armstrong yelled as loud as anybody else.

“That’s better,” the drill sergeant allowed. “Not good, but better.” Hardly anything anybody did in basic training was good. You might be perfect, but you still weren’t good enough. They wanted you to try till you keeled over. People did, too.

Supper was fried chicken and canned corn and spinach, with apple pie à la mode for dessert. It wasn’t great fried chicken, but you could eat as much as you wanted, which made up for a lot. Armstrong used food to pay his body back for the sleep it wasn’t getting.