“Will the country stand for it?” she asked. “Cleveland was supposed to hold up the Confederates for a long time. It didn’t, not for nearly long enough. It’s gone. It’s lost. If Pittsburgh goes the same way, won’t we just say, ‘Oh, no, we can’t win this one,’ and throw in the towel?”
“That’s what Jake Featherston hopes we’ll do, anyhow,” Dowling said. “We’ve got elections coming up this fall. Now, I’m just a soldier. I’m not supposed to know anything about politics, and I mostly don’t.” Soldiers, even soldiers acting as reliable sources, had to say such things. Dowling-and, no doubt, Ophelia Clemens with him-knew he was being disingenuous, but he couldn’t help it. He went on, “One thing I haven’t seen is anybody from any party campaigning on a ‘Peace Now!’ platform.”
Scritch, scritch, scritch. “Well, neither have I,” the reporter said. “Why do you suppose that is?”
“Because everybody figures Featherston would kick us while we’re down,” Dowling answered at once. “Don’t you? What else could it be? He’s made it pretty damn clear that he tells lies whenever he opens his mouth. Or do you think I’m wrong?”
“Me?” She shook her head. “No, sir. Not even a little bit. You know the number of the beast, all right. I’ve been in this business for as long as you’ve been in the Army-longer, really, because I watched my father before I was old enough or good enough to do it myself. Jake Featherston scares the spit out of me. I’ve never seen anybody like him, not on this continent. Some of the people in Action Francaise, maybe, and that Mosley fellow in England, but nobody here comes close.”
“We should have smashed him when we had the chance, just after he got power,” Dowling said. But Featherston didn’t look so dangerous then. And the USA was stuck in the economic collapse. And so… Yes, Dowling thought sourly. And so…
Hipolito Rodriguez sat on his cot in the guards’ barracks at Camp Determination, methodically cleaning his submachine gun. He’d learned in the dirt and mud and dust of the trenches that a clean weapon could make the difference between life and death. The submachine gun had a more complicated apparatus than his old Tredegar, too.
Another guard, an Alabaman named Jonah Gurney, said, “Anybody’d reckon you was married to that gun.” He carried his weapon when he walked through the camp and ignored it the rest of the time. He was a younger man, not a recruit from the Confederate Veterans’ Brigades. He’d never seen combat, and it showed.
“Married? No.” Rodriguez shook his head. “My wife screw me, I like that. This gun screw me, I don’t like nothin’ no more.” He pushed an oily rag through the barrel with a cleaning rod.
The rest of the men in the barracks laughed. “He got you, Jonah,” somebody said. “He got you good.”
By the dull flush rising on Gurney’s blunt features, he already knew that. He liked ragging on other people. Oh, sure-he liked that fine. It wasn’t so much fun when somebody turned the tables on him. If Rodriguez had had a dime for everybody like that he’d met, he would have been one of the richest men in Sonora, certainly too rich to be a camp guard.
Scowling, Gurney said, “You’re asshole buddies with the big cheese in the camp, ain’t you?”
“We were in the war together,” Rodriguez answered with a shrug. Because he’d practiced stripping and assembling the submachine gun so much, he could let his hands do it while he kept an eye on the other guard. “I dunno about asshole buddies. I don’t think I like the sound of that too much.” He did like the sound with which a full magazine went into place: a satisfying click.
Jonah Gurney didn’t seem to notice. “No?” he said. “What you aim to do about it, greaser?”
One step up from niggers-that was how Sonorans and Chihuahuans seemed to a lot of whites in the CSA. Another, smaller, click from Rodriguez’s gun: the safety coming off. Casually, calmly, Rodriguez said, “What do I aim to do? I aim to blow your fucking head off, pendejo.” All at once, the barrel of the gun pointed straight at Gurney’s nose. Rodriguez’s finger twitched on the trigger.
That wasn’t what shook the Alabaman. The smile on his face was. Gurney’s own face went pale as a plate of grits. He tried a smile of his own. The only word that suited it was ghastly. “Hey,” he said with lips and tongue that suddenly seemed numb, “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, honest to God I didn’t.”
“Kiss my ass,” Rodriguez said succinctly.
“Put down the piece, Rodriguez.” That was Troop Leader Porter, the noncom in charge of Rodriguez’s squad. “There ain’t gonna be any killing here today.”
“Thank you, Troop Leader,” Jonah Gurney gabbled. “You see what that crazy Mexican fucker was gonna do to me? Ought to take him out and-”
“Shut up.” Porter’s voice was flat and hard. “Pack up your shit and get the hell out of here. You’re reassigned, as of now. Maybe some other camp’ll take you. I don’t know. I don’t care. But you’re not gonna stay at Camp Determination another minute, and you can take that to the bank. You’re a troublemaking son of a bitch, and we’ve got no need for people like you. Get out. Fuck off.”
Gurney stared at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “You’re gonna back a goddamn dago against a white man?”
“I’m going to back a guard who pulls his weight against a slacker who does as little as he can to get by,” Porter said. “I wouldn’t have been real sorry to see you dead, Gurney, if it wasn’t for the paperwork I’d have to fill out to make sure Rodriguez didn’t end up in hot water over your worthless carcass.”
Gurney plainly thought himself as much abandoned and thrown over the side for no good reason as the original Jonah. He gestured toward the rest of the guards in the barracks, a wave full of angry disbelief. “Come on, y’all!” he cried. “You gonna let him get away with that? You gonna let him screw over a white man for the sake of a goddamn Mexican?” Disbelief stretched his voice high and shrill.
For close to a minute, nobody said anything. Nobody seemed to want to look at Gurney, or at Rodriguez, or at Troop Leader Porter. For that matter, nobody seemed to want to look at anybody else. Finally, somebody behind Gurney said, “He’s got the stripes, Jonah. Reckon that gives him the right.”
“Like hell it does!” Jonah Gurney shouted furiously. “We’re white men! That gives us the right. That’s what this here country’s all about, ain’t it? That’s what the Freedom Party’s all about, ain’t it?”
Again, silence stretched. This time, Porter broke it. “Go on, Jonah,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Go on now, and don’t get yourself any deeper in Dutch. I’m gonna make like I didn’t hear any of what you said just now. A man’s gotta blow off steam. I know that. But you don’t want me to have to tell the commandant you were trying to make a mutiny, now do you?”
When Rodriguez was in the Army, they’d read out the Articles of War every so often. Making a mutiny was one of the things they could shoot you or hang you for. Even mentioning it put a chill in the hot, muggy air. Rodriguez didn’t know if camp guards came under the same military law as soldiers, but he would have bet they did.
The ominous words seemed to get home to Gurney, too. “This ain’t right, dammit,” he muttered. “My Congressman’s gonna hear about it, so help me God he is.” But he might have shrunk, standing there in plain sight. He filled his gray canvas duffel bag, slung it over his shoulder, and trudged out of the barracks.
Rodriguez nodded to Porter. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“I didn’t do it for you,” the noncom answered.
“Thank you anyway,” Rodriguez said.
His gratitude only embarrassed the troop leader. “I didn’t do it for you, dammit,” he repeated. “I did it for all of us. When we’re in there with the coons, we’ve got to know we can trust each other to guard our backs. Anybody who doesn’t care to help another man who wears the same uniform no matter what, I don’t want that son of a bitch here. I can’t trust him. Nobody can trust him.” He looked around the barracks. “We got anybody else who feels the way Gurney did? Anybody who does, clean out your footlocker and head out the door. I won’t put a bad word on your fitness report-swear to Jesus I won’t-but I want you doin’ somethin’ else. Anybody?”