“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.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Summers said. “They’ll put you in a straitjacket, and those things are uncomfortable as the devil, especially in this weather.”
“Yes, sir,” Moss said resignedly. He should have known he wouldn’t get a straight answer. As a matter of fact, he had known it, or had a pretty good idea. That he’d squawked anyhow was a telling measure of how fed up and cooped up he was feeling.
Voice far drier than the dripping air they both breathed, Summers said, “Believe me, Major, you aren’t the only one incompletely satisfied with the accommodations around here.”
“No?” Moss’ spirits revived, or tried to. “Is there anyone in particular I should talk to? Is anybody besides me especially unhappy about them?”
“If someone is, I’m sure he’ll get in touch with you,” Colonel Summers said, which again told Moss nothing. “Was anything else troubling you? As I say, you’re not the only one who doesn’t like it here. Remember that and you may keep from winning one of the guards a furlough.”
“Bastards,” Moss muttered. The POWs didn’t know for a fact that their guards got time off for shooting a prisoner who’d set foot on the smoothed ground just inside the barbed wire-or, sometimes, for shooting a prisoner who looked as if he was about to do such a thing. They didn’t know it, but they believed it the way a lot of them believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
“Of course they’re bastards,” Summers said. “They get paid to be bastards. You don’t want to make things easy for them, do you?”
“Well, no, sir,” Moss said.
“Good.” Summers nodded in a businesslike way. “I should hope not.” He waved to Lieutenant Swinburne, who was on his way back to the barracks. “What do you think of the guards, Lieutenant?”
“Me, sir? Pack of bastards,” Swinburne answered at once. The word was bahstuds in his mouth, giving it only a vague resemblance to what Moss had called the guards.
“Thanks. I couldn’t have put that better myself,” Summers said. The officer from Maine touched his cap with a forefinger and went on his way. Colonel Summers turned back to Moss. “You see? You’re not the only one who loves these people.”
“I never said I was, sir.” Moss scowled. “I’ve got more right to complain than he does. I’ve been here longer.”
“Yes, but they interrogate him more. They’ve already squeezed everything out of you that they’re going to get,” Summers said. “He’s new, so they still have hopes.”
“If there’s more than three Confederate officers between here and Richmond who don’t know my name, rank, and pay number, I’d be amazed. And not a goddamn one of them knows anything but that.” Moss spoke with a certain somber pride.
“They’ve grilled all of us, Major,” Summers replied, wearily rolling his eyes as if to say, Haven’t they just! “I know they get more out of some people than they do from others.” He held up a hasty hand. “I’m not talking about you, and I’m not talking about Swinburne, either.”
“I know, sir. I understood that. Some men will talk more than others, and they lean on some harder than others, depending on what they think the poor sons of bitches know.” Moss sighed. “I can’t even cuss ’em for that, or not real hard, because I know damn well we do the same thing.”
Monty Summers shrugged. “It’s war,” he said: two words that covered a multitude of sins. “We all do the best we can.”
“Yes, sir,” Moss agreed mournfully. “And look what that’s got us.” His wave encompassed the camp. “God knows what would have happened if we tried to screw up.”
“Heh,” Colonel Summers said-a noise that sounded like a laugh but wasn’t. “A hell of a lot of people who didn’t do their best are dead right now.”