Lieutenant Straubing, having got what he wanted, turned into the soul of helpfulness, offering all sorts of suggestions so the soldiers could do the job quicker and more efficiently. He seemed to be everywhere at once. When he passed Cincinnatus’ truck, he tipped him a wink. Cincinnatus grinned and winked back.
Straubing used the quartermaster’s embarrassment to get him to order his men to run up tents in which the drivers from the truck convoy could spend the night. More and more trucks kept rattling into the depot, as those that had had punctures or breakdowns on the road down from Covington caught up with the rest.
Straubing also arranged for bedrolls and hot meals for the men in his charge. Spooning up greasy stew full of meat that might have come from an elderly cow or a fairly tender mule, Herk said, “The lieutenant, he looks out for his people, no two ways about it.”
“He does that,” Cincinnatus agreed, talking with his mouth full. He’d seen as much before, when Lieutenant Straubing placed under arrest soldier-drivers who tried to refuse to work alongside Negroes from Covington. He didn’t mention that to Herk, because he wasn’t sure the white driver would take it as supporting his point of view. “I ain’t worked for many bosses as good as he is like that. Don’t know if I ever worked for any, now as I think about it.”
Tom Kennedy had come pretty close. Like Lieutenant Straubing, though not to the same degree, he’d been more interested in the work he could get out of Cincinnatus than in what color he was. For a white citizen of the Confederate States, he’d been as good a boss as a colored resident-not citizen-of the CSA could hope for. If he hadn’t been, Cincinnatus would have turned him over to the Yankee soldiers, that night they came looking for him.
His life probably would have been simpler if he had. Too late to worry about that, though. Too late to worry about Tom Kennedy, too, except to wonder who had put a bullet through his head. Shaking his own head, Cincinnatus went back to get more stew and a tin cup full of coffee.
“Come on, boys-eat up and get some sleep,” Straubing called, like a father telling a houseful of children what to do. “We’re heading back to Covington before it gets light; they’ll need us again soon as we can be there. I told you before, the war’s not done till the Rebs roll over and play dead along the whole line.”
The men in the convoy obeyed as children would obey their father, too. Cincinnatus gulped down his coffee-he was tired enough, he knew it wouldn’t keep him awake long-and ducked into one of the tents. He took off his shoes, wrapped himself in a blanket as much to hold bugs at bay as for warmth, and drifted toward sleep.
Outside the tent, the officer from the depot spoke: “Lieutenant, I will say you have yourself a pretty fair batch of men there.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time getting them to where I want them, sir,” Lieutenant Straubing answered. “I must say, I’m not altogether displeased with them now myself. By whatever means necessary, they get the job done. They took a while to learn that from me, but now they’ve got it down solid. They get the job done, and that’s what counts.”
TheGreatWar: Breakthroughs
In Augusta, Georgia, Scipio didn’t turn around every few seconds, as if afraid his own shadow were about to rise up and stab him in the back. It wasn’t that a price didn’t remain on his head. It did. It probably would, as long as he lived: certainly as long as Anne Colleton lived. However unenthusiastically, he’d played too big a role in the Congaree Socialist Republic for that to change.
But, with the Confederate States tottering on the brink of losing the war against the USA-actually, the war was lost, but the CSA hadn’t yet been able to persuade the USA to stop advancing on the fronts where fighting went on-earlier victories over the Socialist Republics were forgotten. Whites on the streets in Augusta went around with stunned, dazed expressions on their faces. They’d never lost a war before. They’d never imagined they could lose a war. The Confederacy had gone from one triumph to another. Now the whites here were learning what the United States had learned half a century before: what defeat tasted like. Next to that, chasing Reds was of small import.
The other side of the coin was that Scipio had got to Georgia. Whatever he’d done in South Carolina, he might as well have done in a foreign country. Confederate states often seemed proud of paying no attention to what went on in their neighbors’ backyards. Georgia had reward posters up for its own Red Negro rebel fugitives, but none for those from South Carolina. Here, Scipio was just one more anonymous black man looking for work.
He was looking harder than he’d expected, too. Factories weren’t hiring the way they had been a year before. “We’re already letting people go,” a clerk told Scipio. “What’s the point of bringing more onto the lines when the war orders are gonna dry up and blow away any minute now?”
“I understands that, suh,” Scipio said, “but I gots to eat, too. What is I s’posed to do?”
“Go pick cotton,” the white clerk answered. “Reckon that’s what you were up to before the war started. Won’t hurt you to get on back. When the Army shrinks, the soldiers’ll need their own jobs back again.”
White men will need their old jobs back again, Scipio thought. And the Negroes who were doing those jobs? Well, the hell with them. They might have been good enough to help out for a little while, but now they’re going to have to learn their place again.
He’d got rebuffs from every factory he tried. For a while, he’d wondered if he would have to work in the fields. The money he’d earned from odd jobs as he made his way across South Carolina was almost gone. His life at Marshlands had convinced him of one thing: he did not want to be a field hand. But he did not want to starve, either.
And then he passed a little restaurant on Telfair Street with a sign in the window: WAITER WANTED. He started to go in, then shook his head. Reluctantly, he spent a couple of quarters on a shirt and a pair of pants that, if long past their salad days, were not ragged and falling to pieces. Then he went back to his flophouse in the Terry, the Negro district in the southeastern part of town, and bathed in a tin tub that plainly hadn’t been used as often as it should have. Only after his clothes and he were as fresh as he could make them did he head back toward the restaurant.
Inside, a colored fellow was setting cheap silverware on a table. “What you want?” he asked in neutral tones as he slowly put down the last couple of pieces.
“I seen the sign in the window,” Scipio answered. “I’s lookin’ for work. I works hard, I does.” He wondered if the proprietor had already hired the other man, in which case he’d parted with money he couldn’t afford to lose.
But the other Negro just shrugged and asked, “You wait tables befo’?”
“I’s done that.” Scipio nodded emphatically. He pointed to the place setting the fellow had just finished laying out. “De soup spoon belong on the udder side o’de teaspoon.”
Smiling now, the fellow reversed them. “You has waited tables.” He raised his voice: “Hey, Mistuh Ogelthorpe! I think we got you a waiter here.”
A white man in his late fifties came out of the back room. He walked with the aid of a stick. Scipio wondered if he’d been wounded in this war or the Second Mexican War. More likely the latter, by his age-or, of course, he might just have been in a train wreck or some other misfortune. He looked Scipio over with gray eyes that were far from foolish. “What’s your name, boy?” he asked.
“I’s called Xerxes, suh,” Scipio replied. He’d been called a lot of different things lately. He was glad he could keep them straight and remember who he was supposed to be at any given moment.