“We love you, Jeff!” Edith said through her tears. She carried Raymond out. The boys were still crying, too.
“Come on, Pinkard,” said a guard on Jeff ’s side of the visiting room. “Back to the cell you go.”
Back he went. The cell was familiar. Nothing bad would happen to him while he was in it. Pretty soon, though, they’d take him out one last time. He wouldn’t be going back after that. Well, what else did one last time mean?
Two days later, he had another visitor: Jonathan Moss again. “Thought you gave up on me,” he said through the damned unyielding mesh.
“I don’t know what else I can do for you,” Moss said. “I wish I did. I haven’t got a hacksaw blade on me or anything. Even if I did, they would have found it when they searched me.”
“Yeah,” Pinkard said. “So—no reprieve from the governor. Hell, no governor. Son of a bitch thinks he’s President of Texas now. No reprieve from the President of the USA. No reprieve from the assholes on the Yankee Supreme Court. So what else is there?”
“Well, you’re not the only one they’re coming down on, if that makes you feel any better,” Jonathan Moss replied.
“You mean, like misery loves company?” Jeff shrugged. “I’d love it if I didn’t have the misery. But yeah, go ahead—tell me about the others. I don’t have a wireless set, and they don’t give me papers, so I don’t know jack shit about what’s going on out there.”
“They hanged Ferdinand Koenig and Saul Goldman yesterday.”
“Goddamn shame,” Pinkard said. “They were good men, both of ’em. Confederate patriots. Why else would you Yankees hang people?”
“For murdering millions? For telling lies about it in papers and magazines and on the wireless?” Moss suggested.
“We didn’t get rid of anybody who didn’t have it coming,” Jeff said stubbornly. “And like your side didn’t tell any lies to your people during the war. Yeah, sure.”
The military attorney sighed. “We didn’t tell lies about things like that. We didn’t do things like that—not to Negroes, not to Jews, not to anybody.”
He undercut what Jeff would have said next: that the USA didn’t have many Negroes to get rid of. The United States were crawling with Jews. Everybody knew that. Instead, he said, “What other kind of good news have you got for me?”
“If it makes you feel any better, you aren’t the only camp commandant and guard chief to get condemned,” Moss told him. “Vern Green goes right with you here. And…you knew Mercer Scott back in Louisiana, right?”
“Yeah.” Pinkard scowled at him. “You know what? It doesn’t make me feel one goddamn bit better.”
“I’m sorry. If there were anything else I could try, I’d try it. If you have any ideas, sing out.”
Jeff shook his head. “What’s the use? Nobody in the USA cares. Nobody in the USA understands. We did what we had to do, that’s all.”
“‘It looked like a good idea at the time.’” Moss sounded like somebody quoting something. Then he sighed. “That isn’t enough to do you any good, either.”
“Didn’t reckon it would be,” Jeff said. “Go on, then. You tried. I said that before, I expect. Won’t be long now.”
In some ways the days till the hanging crawled past. In others, they flew. The last days of his life, and he was stuck in a cell by himself. Not the way he would have wanted things to turn out, but what did that have to do with anything? He asked the guards for a copy of Over Open Sights.
“Wouldn’t you rather have a Bible?” one of them said.
“If I wanted a Bible, don’t you reckon I would’ve told you so?” Jeff snapped.
A little to his surprise, they brought him Jake Featherston’s book. He paged through it. Everything in there made such good sense. A damn shame it hadn’t worked out for real. But the Negroes in the CSA were gone, or most of them were, and the damnyankees couldn’t change that even if they did win the war.
The night before they were going to hang him, the guards asked what he wanted for supper. “Fried chicken and fried potatoes and a bottle of beer,” he answered. They gave it to him, except the beer came in a tin cup. He ate with good appetite. He slept…some, anyhow.
They asked him what he wanted once more at breakfast time. “Bacon and eggs and grits,” he told them, and he got that, too. He cleaned his plate again, and poured down the coffee that came with the food.
“Want a preacher?” a guard asked.
Pinkard shook his head. “Nah. What for? I’ve got a clean conscience. If you don’t, you need a preacher worse’n I do.”
They cuffed his hands behind him and led him out to the prison yard. They’d run up a gallows there; he’d listened to the carpentry in his cell. Now he saw it was a gallows built for two. Another party of U.S. guards led Vern Green out from a different part of the jail.
Vern looked like hell. His nerve must have failed him at last. He gave Jeff a forlorn nod. “How come you ain’t about to piss yourself like me?”
“What’s the use?” Jeff answered. “I’d beg if I thought it’d do any good, but it won’t. So I’ll go out the best way I know how. Why give these assholes the satisfaction of watching me blubber?”
Reporters watched from a distance. Guards made sure they stayed back. Otherwise, they would have got up to the condemned men and yelled questions in their faces. Jeff figured Yankee reporters had to be even worse than their Confederate counterparts, and the Confederates were pretty bad.
A guard had to help Vern Green up the stairs to the platform. Jeff made it under his own power. His knees were knocking, but he didn’t let it show. Pride was the last thing he had left. And much good it does me, too, he thought.
Along with more guards and the hangman, a minister waited up there. “Will you pray with me?” he asked Jeff.
“No.” Jeff shook his head. “I made it this far on my own. I’ll go out the same way.”
Vern talked with the preacher. They went through the Twenty-third Psalm together. When they finished, Vern said, “I’m still scared.”
“No one can blame you for that,” the minister said.
A guard held out a pack of cigarettes to Jeff. “Thanks,” he said. “You’ll have to take it out for me.”
“I will,” the guard said. The smoke was a Raleigh, so it tasted good. Vern also smoked one. The guards let them finish, then walked them onto the traps. The hangman came over and set the rope around Jeff ’s neck. Then he put a burlap bag over Jeff ’s head.
“Make it quick if you can,” Jeff said. The bag was white, not black. He could still see light and shadow through it. His heart pounded now—every beat might be the last.
“I’m doing my best,” the hangman answered. His footsteps moved away, but not far. They’ve got no right, damn them, Jeff thought. They’ve—A lever clacked.
The trap dropped.
Stuck in fucking Alabama,” Armstrong Grimes grumbled. “What could be worse than this?”
Squidface was cleaning his captured automatic Tredegar. He looked up from the work. “Well, you could be in hell,” he said.
“Who says I’m not?” Armstrong said. “It’s a godforsaken miserable place, and I can’t get out of it. If that’s not hell, what do you call it?”
“Pittsburgh,” Squidface answered, which jerked a laugh out of Armstrong. After guiding an oily rag through the Tredegar’s barrel with a cleaning rod, Squidface went on, “If you’re gonna get screwed any which way, lay back and enjoy it, you know?”
“Tell me another one,” Armstrong said. “Army chow. The people fucking hate us. We’re not careful, we get scragged. Even the broads are scared of us now. If they get friendly, they end up dead. And we don’t take hostages for that, so there’s nothing to hold the locals back.”
“Army chow’s not so bad,” Squidface said. “There’s always enough of it nowadays, anyhow. Back before I went in, I couldn’t always count on three squares.” He was skinny enough to make that easy to believe.
But Armstrong was
in the mood to bitch, and he wasn’t about to let anybody stop him. “You’re just saying that ’cause you’re turning into a lifer.”
“Yeah? So? You oughta do the same,” Squidface answered. “God knows how long you’re gonna stay stuck here. You make a pretty good soldier, even if you are a big target. Why not leave the uniform on? You go back to Civvy Street, you’ll end up bored outa your skull all the goddamn time.”
“I’d sooner be bored than bore-sighted,” Armstrong said.
Squidface ignored the joke. That pissed Armstrong off, because he thought it was better than most of the ones he made. But, as if he hadn’t spoken, the PFC continued, “Besides, you can’t tell me you aren’t getting any down here. Up in the USA, the girls’ll slap your face if you try and cop a feel. You want to fuck, you gotta get married.”
“There’s still whorehouses in the USA,” Armstrong said.
“Yeah? So?” Squidface said again.
He left it right there. Armstrong grunted. With a whore, it was nothing but a business deal. Some of the gals down here were looking for love. They wanted to think they mattered to you, so you mattered to them. They weren’t just going through the motions. That did make it better.
All the same…“You figure because you want to stay in, everybody ought to want to stay in.”
“My ass,” Squidface retorted. “Plenty of the cocksuckers in this company, I wish they’d get the fuck out. Raw recruits who don’t know their nuts from Wednesday’d be better. But you’re all right. You could do it. You might even end up an officer.”
“Christ! What’re you smoking?” Armstrong laughed out loud. “Whatever it is, I want some.”
“I’m serious, man,” Squidface said. “Me, I’m a noncom. It’s what I’m made for. You’ve got more of the ‘Yes, sir!’ they like when they promote people.”
“Oh, man, give me a fucking break,” Armstrong said.
“You do,” Squidface insisted. “Shit, you’re Armstrong. You never got a gross nickname hung on you or nothin’.”
“That’s ’cause I’ve got a gross name instead,” Armstrong said. “Hot damn.”
“All the same.” Squidface wasn’t about to let up. “I can see the newspaper story now. It’s fucking 1975, and Colonel Armstrong Grimes gets a Medal of Honor for leading the regiment that takes Paris away from the Germans.”
“If the Germans want the place, they’re welcome to it, far as I’m concerned,” Armstrong said. “It’s full of Frenchmen—or it was till they blew it up.”
“So don’t listen to me.”
“Like I ever did.” As long as they were zinging each other, Armstrong was happy enough. But they’d come much too close to getting serious there, and getting serious made him nervous.
He wasn’t the only U.S. soldier who got nervous in Alabama. Somebody well up the chain of command had the bright idea that a football game between occupiers and locals might show people that men from the USA weren’t so different from anybody else—no horns, no tails, no pitchforks.
The company CO asked Armstrong, “Didn’t you play football in high school?”
“Some,” he answered. “I was second string. I wasn’t that great or anything.”
“You want a chance to knock Confederates on their ass without getting gigged for it?”
“Where do I sign up?”
Squidface wanted nothing to do with that. “I’m glad I’m a little guy,” he said. “Those assholes on the other side, they’re gonna be lookin’ for a chance to rack you up. This ain’t gonna be no friendly game.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll work out on them, too,” Armstrong said.
“They better have plenty of ambulances ready,” Squidface said darkly.
They got uniforms. Whoever was in charge of what they were calling the Peace Bowl had clout. U.S. soldiers wore blue suits, their Confederate counterparts red. They got cleats to take the place of their boots. They got helmets. Armstrong wondered if he wouldn’t do better with his regular steel pot than with this leather contraption.
The athletes on the U.S. team were in much better shape than the high-school guys had been. Armstrong felt he’d earned something when he got named a starting tackle. They had a quarterback who could really throw and a couple of ends who could catch. The ends weren’t the swiftest in the world, but they’d do.
They played the Peace Bowl at a high-school stadium. U.S. soldiers filled half the stands, locals the other half. To make sure the bowl stayed peaceful, the locals got frisked before they could go inside.
Armstrong got his first look at the red team then. He didn’t like what he saw. They were slimmer and rangier than the U.S. players. They looked fast. That wasn’t what worried him, though. One glance told him these guys were going to play as if they were fighting to hold the U.S. Army out of Chattanooga. Squidface had it straight. Peace Bowl, nothing. This wouldn’t be football. This would be war.
The red team—they seemed to call themselves the Wolves—won the toss. When the U.S. kicker booted the ball, Armstrong thundered down the field. The first collision was always welcome. He slammed into a guy in red. “Yankee cocksuckin’ motherfucker,” the man said, and tried to lift a knee into his family jewels.
“Kiss my ass, Charlie.” Armstrong twisted and took the knee on his hip pad. “You want to play like that? We’ll play like that.”
“Bring it on,” the other guy said.
And they did. Both sides did, the whole game long. Armstrong got punched and elbowed and gouged and kicked. Every tackle was a piling-on penalty. It was trench warfare, only without trenches. The Confederates were faster. The U.S. team was a touch stronger.
One Confederate broke his leg. As far as Armstrong could tell, that was an accident—the tackle looked clean. One U.S. player had his shoulder dislocated. On the next play, the Wolf who dislocated it got racked up. Armstrong couldn’t see just what happened to him; somebody was trying to step on his face. Whatever it was, the guy in red got carried off on a stretcher.
With four minutes to go, the Confederates punted to the U.S. team. The blues were on their own thirty, down 28–24. “This is it,” the quarterback said in the huddle. “We get a touchdown, we win. We fuck up, we look like chumps in front of these shitheads and in front of our own guys. We gonna let that happen?”
“No!” they chorused.
“All right. Short pass into the left flat on three. Let’s go get ’em.”
“You shot my brother, asshole,” said the guy across the line from Armstrong.
“Don’t worry, cuntlips,” Armstrong said sweetly. “You’re next.”
And he was right, but not the way he meant it. The first mortar bomb hissed in then, and burst right on the midfield stripe. But the red team shielded the blue from most of the fragments. As soon as Armstrong heard the bang, he flattened out. So did the Alabaman who didn’t like him, but the guy in red was bleeding from his back and his leg.
“Fuck,” he said hoarsely.
Another Confederate player was down with a ghastly head wound. It proved again what Kaiser Bill’s army had found out the hard way in the Great War—leather helmets didn’t do one damn thing to stop shell fragments. A couple of U.S. soldiers clutched at themselves and groaned, too. Their uniforms showed the blood more than their opponents’.
Armstrong crawled over to the closer one. He didn’t want to rise up, in case more mortar rounds landed on or near the football field. And they did—one near the far end zone, and another, gruesomely, in the side of the stands filled with people cheering for the red team. Screams and shrieks and wails rose high and shrill.
“Son of a bitch!” Armstrong said, not entirely displeased. “We may not even have to take hostages this time. They’re doing it to themselves.”
The wounded U.S. player expressed an opinion that would have assigned every white person in the former Confederacy to an even warmer if less humid clime. Then he said, “I wish I could bandage myself. This cloth doesn’t tear for shit.”
“Hang on.�
� Armstrong extracted a small clasp knife from his right sock. “I’ll fix you up.”
“What are you doing with that?” the other soldier asked.
“Never can tell when it’ll come in handy,” Armstrong said, slicing at the fellow’s shirt. “If I could’ve got my hands on a derringer, I would’ve packed one of those, too.” He cut at the soldier’s tight trousers so he could see the wound. “Not too bad. Looks like you’re sliced up some, but I don’t think there’s any iron in there.”
“Oh, boy,” the injured player said. Armstrong knew it was easier to be optimistic if you weren’t the guy who’d stopped one.
Another round burst on the far side of the field, and then another one in the Confederate side of the stands. The bastards with the mortar could have done much worse to the people they were trying to harm. Instead, they unleashed horror on the men and women who would have applauded had damnyankees been sliced to cat’s meat.
“I think the game’s over,” somebody not far away said.
“Boy, I bet he had to go to college to be smart like that,” Armstrong said.
“Heh,” said the wounded football player lying beside him. “I hope they drop on that fucking mortar crew pretty damn quick.”
“Good luck,” Armstrong said. Mortars didn’t make a great big bang when they went off. If you drew a mile-and-a-half circle around the football field, the crew was…somewhere in there. If they wanted to throw their weapon in a Birmingham, go somewhere else, and set up again, they could do that, too. And most of the soldiers who could be chasing them were here at the game instead.
The guys in green-gray were emptying from the stands as fast as they could without panic. Medics came out to get the injured off the field. They’d been there for the football injuries, but they knew how to deal with battlefield wounds, too. They’d had plenty of practice. Armstrong stayed right where he was. He wished he could have stashed an entrenching tool in his sock. Like every U.S. soldier in the CSA, he felt pinned down.
Everything faded. Cassius found that out the hard way. He could remember the fierce, incredulous joy he’d known when he shot Jake Featherston, but he couldn’t feel it any more. All he had now was the memory, and it wasn’t the same thing.
In at the Death Page 72
