Even talking about breakthroughs made a Great War veteran nervous. “We’ll see what happens, that’s all, Bobby Lee,” Tom answered. “And I reckon we’d better tighten up our own procedures.”
“What do you mean, sir?” Bobby Lee asked.
“What goes around comes around,” Tom answered. “You don’t suppose the damnyankees have men who sound like they come from the CSA? You don’t suppose they can get their hands on our weapons and uniforms? Like hell they can’t. I think we came up with this one first-I hope to God we did-but we’re liable to be on the receiving end one day.”
“Son of a bitch,” the young captain said. “My hat’s off to you, sir.” He took himself literally, doffing his helmet.
Tom snorted. “Never mind that. Just have our men ready to move fast if the order comes.”
“Yes, sir. They will be, sir,” Bobby Lee promised.
By the time Tom got back to Beaver, the buses that brought in the phony U.S. soldiers had gone. But Confederate barrels-with, he devoutly hoped, real Confederates inside them-were rumbling into town.
The storm broke the next afternoon. The barrels slammed into the shaky U.S. position, and it turned out to be even shakier than anybody would have expected. Enemy reinforcements showed up late, showed up in the wrong places, or didn’t show up at all. Unlike a lot of people, Tom Colleton had a pretty good notion of why that was so. He wondered what it was costing the Confederates in U.S. green-gray. We’d better make it worthwhile, he thought, and pushed his own men forward without mercy.
Jonathan Moss mooched back toward the barracks at the Andersonville POW camp from the latrine trenches. Nick Cantarella was coming the other way. He gave Moss a sour nod. “They still have guys looking up your ass when you take a crap?” he asked.
“Just about,” Moss answered. They both rolled their eyes. Ever since that downpour made part of the U.S. escape tunnel fall in on itself, the Confederates had been as jumpy as mice at a cat’s wedding. Moss knew they had every reason to be. Knowing it didn’t make him like it any better.
“Such fun,” Cantarella said. The Confederates still didn’t know who’d built the tunnel. That Cantarella kept on walking around proved as much. If the guards had had any idea what was what, he would have been in solitary confinement or manacles or leg irons or ball and chain or whatever else they thought up to keep POWs from absquatulating.
“I wonder if anyone has anything else going on,” Moss remarked.
“You never can tell,” said the captain from New York. “One of these days, the guards are liable to wake up and find out we’ve all flown the coop. What do they do then? Jump off a cliff? Here’s hoping.”
“Yeah. Here’s hoping.” Moss knew his own voice sounded hollow. He wanted out. He wanted out so bad he could taste it. He wasn’t the only POW who did, of course. The guards knew as much, too. They’d known that even before the tunnel collapsed. Now, with their noses rubbed in it, they tried to keep an eye on everybody all the time.
Wrinkling his own nose, Captain Cantarella walked on toward the latrine trenches. Jonathan Moss ambled back to the barracks. Other POWs nodded to him as he went by. He was one of the boys by now, not a new fish who drew dubious glances wherever he went and whatever he did. Having the enemy suspicious of you was one thing. It came with being a prisoner of war. Having your own side suspicious of you felt a lot worse.
“ ’Day, Major,” First Lieutenant Hal Swinburne said.
“Hello, Hal.” Moss hid a smile at his own thoughts of a moment before. Hal Swinburne hadn’t been at Andersonville very long, but nobody suspected him of being a Confederate plant. For one thing, three officers already incarcerated vouched for him. For another, he was a Yankees’ Yankee: he came from Maine, and spoke with such a thick down-East accent, half his fellow POWs had trouble following him. Moss couldn’t imagine a Confederate plant talking like that.
“Hot today,” Swinburne said mournfully.
“Hot yesterday. Hot tomorrow. Hot the day after, too.” Moss kicked at the red dirt. Dust rose from under his foot. He pointed up into the sky, where big black birds circled. “See those?”
Swinburne looked, shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand. He was about six-one, on the skinny side, with dark blond hair and a thin little mustache that almost disappeared if you looked at it from the wrong angle. “Ravens?” he asked.
Did you see ravens soaring over the Maine woods? Moss wouldn’t have been surprised. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen one, but he was no birdwatcher. He did know the birds he was watching now weren’t ravens. “Vultures,” he said solemnly. “Waiting for something to fall over dead from the sun so they can come down and have dinner.”
“Vultures.” The way Swinburne said it, it sounded like vuhchaaz. He nodded. “Ayuh. Seen ’em on the field, time or two. Nasty birds.” He stretched out the a in nasty and swallowed the r in birds. After wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, he went on, “How do folks live in weather like this all the time, though?”
People wondered the same thing about Maine, of course, for opposite reasons. Moss said, “I’m from Chicago. I don’t think there’s any kind of weather in the world you don’t see there.”
“That’s not so bad,” Swinburne said. “That’s variety, like. But this here every day?” He shuddered. “I’d cook.”
There was a variation on this theme. When it wasn’t hot and muggy and sunny, it was hot and muggy and pouring rain. Moss didn’t bother pointing that out. He doubted the other POW would find it an improvement.
With another nod, Hal Swinburne went on his way. He didn’t move any faster than he had to. In this heat and humidity, nobody moved any faster than he had to. Sweat coated Moss’ skin, thick and heavy as grease. It welded his shirt and even his trousers to his body.
Coming into the shade inside the barracks hall was a small relief, but only a small one. “A little warm out there,” Moss remarked.
That made even the men in the unending corner poker game look up. “Really?” one of them said.
“Never would have guessed,” another added.
“Come on, Major,” a third poker player put in. “You knew hell was supposed to be hot, right?”
Moss laughed. A moment later, he wondered why. If this wasn’t hell, it had to be one of the nastier suburbs of purgatory. He went over to Colonel Summers. “Could I talk with you for a moment, sir?” he asked.
The senior U.S. officer in the camp nodded. “Certainly.” He closed the beat-up paperbound mystery he’d been reading. “I already know who done it, anyhow.” Moss knew who done it in that one, too. The camp library didn’t hold enough books. Anyone who’d been here for a while and liked to read had probably gone through all of them at least once. Monty Summers got to his feet. “What’s on your mind, Major?”
Till they walked outside again, Moss kept it to small talk. Summers didn’t seem surprised or put out. When Moss was sure neither guards nor fellow prisoners could overhear, he asked, “Are we still working on an escape?”
“Officially, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Colonel Summers answered. “Officially, I had no idea there was a tunnel under these grounds till the rain showed it. I was shocked-shocked, I tell you-to learn that some men here were planning to break out. The Confederates couldn’t prove any different, either. I’m glad they couldn’t. It would have been troublesome if they could.”
He wouldn’t admit a damn thing. That was bound to be smart. The less he said, the less the Confederates could make him sorry for. The less Moss heard, the less the enemy could squeeze out of him. All the same… “I do believe I’m going to go smack out of my mind if I stay cooped up here much longer.”