At last, though, a bespectacled captain said, "All right, gentlemen-your IDs check out. Welcome back to the U.S. Army."
"Gee, thanks." Moss had trouble sounding anywhere close to enthusiastic.
The captain took his sarcasm in stride. "I also have the pleasure of letting you know that you're now a lieutenant colonel, sir-and you, Mr. Cantarella, are a major. You would have reached those ranks had you not been captured, and so they're yours. They have been for some time, which is reflected in the pay accruing to your accounts."
"That's nice." Moss remained hard to please. Nobody got rich on an officer's pay, and the difference between what a major and a light colonel collected every month wasn't enough to get excited about.
"When can we start fighting again?" Cantarella demanded, as he had before.
"You'll both need some refresher training to get you back up to speed," said the captain with the glasses. "Things have changed over the past couple of years, as I'm sure you'll understand."
"How much hotter are the new fighters?" Moss asked.
"Considerably," the captain said. "That's why you'll need the refresher work."
"Will I get back into action before the Confederates throw in the sponge?"
"Part of that will be up to you," the captain answered. "Part of it will be up to the Army as a whole, and part of it will be up to Jake Featherston. My own opinion is that you shouldn't waste any time, but that's only an opinion."
"We are going to lick those bastards?" Nick Cantarella said.
"Yes, sir. We are." The captain with the specs sounded very sure.
"What'll happen to Spartacus and his gang?" Moss asked, adding, "They're damn good fighters. They wouldn't have stayed alive as long as they did if they weren't."
"We've started accepting colored U.S. citizens into the Army," the captain said, which made Moss and Cantarella both exclaim in surprise. The captain continued, "Since your companions are Confederates, though, they'll probably stay auxiliaries. They'll work with us, but they won't be part of us."
"And if they get out of line, you won't have to take the blame for anything they do." As a lawyer, Moss saw all the cynical possibilities in the captain's words.
The other officer didn't even blink. "That's right. But, considering everything the enemy has done to them, not much blame sticks to Negroes acting as auxiliaries in the Confederate States."
"Is it really as bad as that?" Having been away from even Confederate newspapers and wireless broadcasts since his escape, Moss had trouble believing it.
"No, sir," the captain said. "It's worse."
S omewhere ahead lay the Atlantic. Cincinnatus Driver had never seen the ocean. He looked forward to it for all kinds of reasons. He wanted to be able to say he had-a man shouldn't live out his whole life without seeing something like that. More important, though, was what seeing the ocean would mean: that the United States had cut the Confederate States in half.
He hadn't been sure it would happen. This thrust east across Georgia had started out in a tentative way. The United States was trying to find out how strong the Confederates in front of them were. When they discovered the enemy wasn't very strong, the push took on a life of its own.
And anywhere soldiers went, supplies had to go with them. They needed ammo. They needed rations. They needed gasoline and motor oil. Cincinnatus didn't like carrying fuel. If an antibarrel rocket-or even a bullet-touched it off…
"Hell, it's no worse than carrying artillery rounds," Hal Williamson said when he groused about it. "That shit goes up, you go with it."
He had a point. Even so, Cincinnatus said, "Artillery rounds blow, they take you out fast. You get caught in a gasoline fire, maybe you got time to know how bad things is."
"Well, maybe," the white driver said. "They give you a truckload, though, I figure it'll go off like a bomb if it goes."
"Mmm…maybe." Cincinnatus paused to light a cigarette. "Got us plenty o' cheerful stuff to talk about, don't we?"
"You wanted cheerful, you shoulda stayed home," Williamson said.
Cincinnatus grunted. That held more truth than he wished it did. But he said, "I tell you one cheerful thing-we're beatin' the livin' shit outa Featherston's fuckers. That'll do for me. Only thing that'd do better'd be beatin' the shit outa Featherston."
"Could happen," the other driver said. "You believe even half of what Stars and Stripes says, he won't be able to stay in Richmond much longer. Where's he gonna run to then?"
With another grunt, Cincinnatus replied, "You believe half o' what Stars and Stripes says, we won the goddamn war last year."
Hal Williamson laughed. "Yeah, well, there is that. Those guys lie like they're selling old jalopies."
"They got a tougher sell than that," Cincinnatus said. "They got to sell the war."
"Soon as the Confederates jumped into Ohio, I was sold," Williamson said. "Bastards tried to knock us flat and steal the war before we could get back on our feet again. Damn near did it, too-damn near."
He was right about that. "Same here," Cincinnatus said. "'Course, they ain't as likely to shoot our asses off as they are with the kids in the front line."
"Still happens, though. You know that as well as I do. We've lost more drivers than I like to think about," Williamson said.
"Oh, yeah. I won't try to tell you anything different. All I said was, it ain't as likely, and it ain't," Cincinnatus said. He waited to see if the other driver would keep arguing. When Williamson didn't, Cincinnatus decided he'd made his point.
The next morning, he picked up a load of canned rations and headed for the front. He liked carrying those just fine. The soldiers needed them, and they wouldn't blow up no matter what happened. He couldn't think of a better combination.
About every third Georgia town had Negro guerrillas patrolling the streets along with U.S. soldiers. Whenever Cincinnatus saw some of them, he would tap his horn and wave. The blacks commonly grinned and waved back. "You a Yankee nigger?" was a question he heard again and again.
"I'm from Kentucky," he would answer as he rolled past. Let them figure that out. Yes, he'd grown up in the CSA, but he'd spent most of the second half of his life under the Stars and Stripes. His children were Yankees-no doubt about it. They even sounded as if they came from the Midwest…except when they got upset or angry. Then an accent more like his own would come out. But he was more betwixt and between than any one thing. He probably would be for the rest of his life.
U.S. authorities here took no chances. Bodies hung in almost every town square. That was supposed to make the living think twice about giving the USA any trouble. Seeing how much trouble the living gave the USA, Cincinnatus had his doubts about how much good it did. But those dead men wouldn't bother the United States again. He had no doubts about that at all.
Would the United States need to kill every white male in the Confederate States above the age of twelve? If they did need to, would they have the will to do it? Cincinnatus wasn't so sure about that, either. And even if the United States did set out to slaughter white male Confederates, wouldn't it be the same kind of massacre the Confederate whites had inflicted on their Negroes?
"Damn ofays have it coming, though," Cincinnatus muttered, there in the cab of his deuce-and-a-half.
Reluctantly, he shook his head. You couldn't play God like that, no matter how much you wanted to. Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party really and truly believed blacks had it coming, too. Nothing Cincinnatus had seen while stuck in Covington or while driving a truck through the wreckage of the CSA gave him any reason to think otherwise. Sincerity wasn't enough. What was? What could be?
"We got to stop killing each other. We got to," Cincinnatus said. Then he started to laugh. That would have been a fine thought…if he'd had it somewhere else, when he wasn't hauling food to soldiers dedicated to putting the Confederate States of America out of business for good.