“John Paul Jones I’m not,” Moss answered, and Cantarella laughed. What the Italian said made an unfortunate amount of sense. Moss faced the general direction of Atlanta. “North, then.”
“Right. Maybe we can steal some clothes so we look like a coupla ordinary Confederate assholes, buy train tickets, and get up to Richmond or somewheres in style,” Cantarella said.
They carried no papers. They wore elderly U.S. uniforms (Cantarella did remember that). They had the wrong accent. They probably didn’t have enough money for train tickets. But for those minor details, it struck Moss as a terrific plan. He didn’t criticize, not out loud. He liked the idea of hoofing it across Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia no better than Cantarella did.
They hadn’t got very far into the pine woods north of Andersonville before gunshots rang out behind them. “Ahhh, shit,” Cantarella said, which summed up Moss’ feelings, too. The guards had noticed prisoners escaping, then.
Without Nick Cantarella, Moss figured he would have been recaptured in short order. The younger man was an infantry officer, and actually knew what he was doing as he clumped along on the ground. He and Moss splashed along creeks to throw hounds off the scent. “Didn’t they do this in Uncle Tom’s Cabin?” Moss said.
“Beats me,” Cantarella answered. “All I know is, this shit works.”
Maybe it did. Moss heard several more bursts of gunfire, but he didn’t see any C.S. prison guards or soldiers. He did get tired. His feet got sore. He knew he was slowing Cantarella down. “If you want to go on without me, it’s all right,” he said.
“Nah.” Cantarella shook his head. “Like you said, two heads are better than one. ’Sides, you can come closer to talking like these assholes than I can.”
“I wonder,” Moss said. Midwest overlain by Canadian didn’t sound much more Confederate than strong New York City. He figured he’d worry about that when he had to, not before. He had other things to worry about now: not only his feet but also the growing emptiness in his belly. If this were a planned escape, he would have brought food along. Now, he and Cantarella would be raiding henhouses before long. That would leave a trail a blind idiot, or even a Confederate guard, could follow.
They came out of the woods into cotton country. Moss had always pictured swarms of darkies in the fields with hoes. It wasn’t like that. Except for a cultivator chugging along in the distance, the countryside was eerily empty. Cantarella had the same thought. “Where’d all the smokes go?” he said.
“Beats me.” Moss had trouble believing the atrocity stories he’d heard. Seeing that landscape without people, though, he had less trouble than before.
He and Nick went on up a poorly paved road till nightfall. Then they lay down by the roadside. All they had to cover themselves with were cotton plants. That would help give them away, too. But it got chilly after the sun went down. The plants weren’t good blankets, but they were better than nothing. Moss wasn’t sure he could fall asleep on bare ground. Five minutes later, he was snoring.
Morning twilight turned the eastern sky gray when he woke. But the growing light wasn’t what roused him. Those voices weren’t just part of his dreams. He saw three men silhouetted against the sky. They all carried rifles.
He nudged Nick, who’d stayed asleep. “Wake up!” he hissed. “We’re caught!”
One of the armed men came up to them. In a low voice, he asked, “You some o’ the Yankees what got outa Andersonville?”
“That’s right.” Suddenly hope flared in Moss. “Are you… fighting against the Confederate government?”
“Bet your ass, ofay,” the rifle-toting Negro answered. “How you like to he’p us?”
Moss looked toward Nick Cantarella. Cantarella was looking back at him. Moss didn’t think it was the sort of invitation they could refuse, not if they wanted to keep breathing. He got to his feet, ignoring creaks and crunches. “I think we just joined the underground,” he said. Nick Cantarella nodded.
Scipio didn’t think he’d ever heard “Auld Lang Syne” sung when it wasn’t New Year’s Eve. He didn’t think he’d ever heard it sung in such a variety of accents, either-none of them the least bit Scots.
Jerry Dover grinned at the cooks and waiters and busboys and dishwashers he’d bossed for so long. “I’d like to tell y’all one thing,” he said. They waited expectantly. His grin got wider. “Fuck you, you sons of bitches!”
They laughed like loons. Scipio laughed as loud as anybody, but his mirth had a bitter edge. With Jerry Dover gone, all the Negroes who worked for the Huntsman’s Lodge were liable to get fucked. Who could say what the new manager would be like? Would he take care of his people the way Dover had? Scipio supposed it wasn’t impossible. He also knew only too well it wasn’t likely.
“You go kill them damnyankees, Mistuh Dover! Shoot ’em down like the yellow dogs they is!” a cook shouted. He swigged from a bottle of champagne. Jerry Dover’s sendoff was going to put a dent in the restaurant’s liquor stock.
“If I have to pick up a gun, this country’s in deeper shit than anybody ever figured,” Dover said, and got another laugh. “It’s the Quartermaster Corps for me.”
That actually made good sense. The Confederate Army was doing it anyway. Jerry Dover knew everything there was to know about feeding people. Feeding them in the Army was different from doing it in a restaurant, but not all that different. He’d help the CSA more doing that than he would in the infantry, and somebody must have realized as much.
Scipio had an almost-empty glass in his hand. A moment later, as if by magic, it wasn’t empty anymore. He sipped. He had had bourbon in there. This was Scotch. He’d feel like hell in the morning. Right now, morning felt a million miles away.
“T’ank you, Senor Dover. You give us work.” That was Jose, one of the dishwashers from the Empire of Mexico. He’d taken a job from a black man. Scipio wanted to hate him because of that-wanted to and found he couldn’t. Jose was only trying to make a living for himself, and he worked like a man with a gun to his head. How could you hate somebody like that?
“For he’s a jolly good fellow!” The staff at the Huntsman’s Lodge started singing again, louder and more raucously than ever. In some ways, blacks and whites in the CSA understood one another and got along with one another pretty well… or they would have, if the Freedom Party hadn’t got in the way.
Jerry Dover hoisted his own glass. He’d been drinking as hard as his help. “You bastards are good,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t reckon y’all know how good you are. I’m gonna have to whip some new folks into shape, and I don’t figure they’ll be a patch on you.”
“Take us with you!” somebody behind Scipio shouted. In an instant, everyone was yelling it: “Take us with you! Take us with you!”
“Hell, I would if I could,” Dover said. “I don’t think that’ll happen, though.”
The clamor went on all the same. Scipio understood why: if these black men were busy cooking for soldiers and serving them, they’d be less likely to go to a camp. Anything-anything at all-seemed better than going to a camp.
“I don’t want anybody to get in trouble for being out too late,” Dover said after a while. The response to that was angry and profane. This was a night of license, and would have been even if not fueled by booze. Whatever the restaurant staff did short of burning the place down, he would let them get away with it.
Aurelius tapped Scipio on the arm. “How you like bein’ an old man at a young men’s fling?” the other veteran waiter asked.