Every few weeks, the latest batch of Negro trusties who thought they'd dodged death by playing along discovered they'd made their last mistake. The only thing Jeff kept on being unhappy about was the ovens. The company that made them had come out a couple of times to try to get them to perform better, but without much luck. Pinkard's conclusion was that the contractor had sold him a bill of goods from the start. The greasy black smoke that belched from the stacks and the burnt-meat stench that went with it were part of the operation, and he couldn't do a thing about it.
Trains still brought Negroes to the camp, trains from Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Arkansas and Texas. He'd also had loads of blacks from Florida and Cuba arrive. The local authorities rounded up their Negroes and sent them to Houston or Galveston by ship. He'd heard reports that subs operating in the Gulf of Mexico had sunk some of those ships. That was funny, in a grim way: the damnyankees were doing some of the Confederacy's work for it.
The telephone on his desk rang. He scowled. Why couldn't people just leave him alone and let him take care of his job? It rang again. Scowling still, he picked it up. "Pinkard here," he rasped.
"This here's Lou Doggett, General," the mayor of Humble said. Pinkard wasn't a general; he had a Party rank instead. But he didn't argue. He'd been a PFC the last time around. If somebody wanted to call him General, he didn't mind a bit.
"What's up?" he asked now.
"Well, I'll tell you, General-the wind's blowing this way from your camp, and it's pretty bad," Doggett answered. "This ain't how you told me it was gonna be when you put that camp in."
"It ain't the way I thought it was gonna be, neither," Jeff answered. "But it's the way it is. I don't know what else I can tell you."
"If it don't get better pretty damn quick, I'm gonna talk to the Governor," the mayor warned.
Jeff Pinkard laughed. "Go right ahead. You do that. Be my guest. You reckon the Governor amounts to anything when you set him next to Ferd Koenig and Jake Featherston?"
To his surprise, the mayor of Humble answered, "Matter of fact, General, I sure do. Richmond's gone. Even if it wasn't, there's damnyankees in between here and there. What the hell can Koenig and Featherston do way out here?"
He might be right. A nasty chill of fear ran through Pinkard when he realized as much. Like any government, the Confederacy ran because people agreed it ought to. What happened if they stopped agreeing? What happened if Texas Rangers came out here with guns? How could you know ahead of time?
"Let me ask you a question, your Honor," Pinkard said heavily. "Who went down on his knees beggin' for me to put this here camp where it's at? Who damn near jizzed in his dungarees when I said I would? Was that anybody who looks like you?"
"That was then," Doggett returned. "You didn't tell me it was gonna stink the way it does and belch out black smoke you can see for miles."
"I didn't know, goddammit. Those bastards who put in the ovens and the stacks went and rooked me," Jeff said. "But even if it does stink, it's doing something the country needs. You gonna try and tell me I'm wrong?"
"Well, no. I got no more use for coons'n any other decent, God-fearing white man does," the mayor said. "But godalmightydamn, General, it sure does stink. Makes the whole town smell like a barbecue pit some stupid fool went and forgot about. You're in a fancy uniform, so you get to give orders. Me, I got voted in, and I got a hell of a lot of people here in Humble who sure ain't gonna vote for me again 'cause of that smell. I mean, gettin' rid o' niggers is one thing. Doin' it so you can smell 'em roast-that's a whole different story."
"You want to eat roast beef, but you don't want to butcher your cow," Jeff said. "Camp's gotta be somewhere. I liked it where it was at before, too, but the damnyankees went and ran us out of there. That ain't my fault."
"I didn't say it was, but it's another problem. Suppose we go and lose the war."
"That's defeatism," Jeff said automatically.
The mayor of Humble astonished him by replying, "Oh, cut the crap, General. We're fucked, and you know it as well as I do. Like I said, Richmond's gone. They chopped us in half in Georgia. The President's on the run. How are we gonna win? I wish we could, but I ain't a blind man. And suppose we lose, like I said. What if the damnyankee soldiers march in here and ask, 'What the devil were you doin' with a murder camp there on your doorstep, Mr. Mayor?' What do I tell 'em then, hey?"
"Fuck," Pinkard muttered under his breath. That was insubordination so bad, it was damn near treason. Or it would have been, if it weren't such a good question.
Suppose we do go and surrender. Suppose the Yankees do come marching in. What do I tell them? The only answer that came to mind was, I was just doing what the bigwigs in Richmond told me to do. Would they buy that? What would they do to him if they didn't?
"General? Hey, General! You there?" How long had Doggett been yelling in his ear? A little while, evidently. He'd had other things to worry about.
"Yeah? What is it?" he managed, dragging himself back to the business at hand.
"You don't get that camp cleaned up in jig time, I will talk to Governor Patman. You see if I don't."
"You'll be sorry if you do." Jeff thought he meant that, anyway. He knew damn well he had more firepower than the Texas Rangers could bring to bear against him. But whether his guards had the will to fight other Confederate white men…He wasn't so sure about that. He hoped like anything he wouldn't have to find out.
"If you're smart, General, you'll take off your uniform, put your wife an' young 'uns in a civilian motorcar, and head for some town where nobody knows your face. You think the damnyankees'll have questions to ask me? What'll they say to you?"
Pinkard hung up. He did it by sheer reflex. The mayor's thoughts didn't just run parallel to his. They'd got ahead of them on the same road. If U.S. soldiers came here, they would have things to say to him.
Unpleasant things.
"But I can't leave," he said aloud. No matter what the Yankees had to say to him, he was proud of everything he'd done here, and over in Snyder, and outside of Alexandria, too. He'd had an important job to do, and he'd done it well. If not for him, the whole population-reduction program would have been a hell of a lot less efficient. Didn't that count for anything?
The Attorney General thought so. Hell, the President of the Confederate States of America thought so. What else mattered?
Nothing else mattered-as long as his side was calling the shots. Never mind Texas Rangers. U.S. soldiers wouldn't like what he'd done. And the main reason they wouldn't like it-or so things seemed to him-was that his own side did.
"Fuck 'em," Jeff muttered. "Fuck 'em all."
He wondered whether Mayor Doggett would send cops around to give Edith and the boys a hard time. He didn't intend to put up with anything like that. Maybe his guards would have trouble against the Rangers. Against this little town's one-lung police force, though, they could start a reign of terror.
No sooner had that crossed his mind than the telephone rang again. He said some things that should have melted the glass out of the windows in his office. What did Doggett want now? "Pinkard here," he snarled.
"Jeff, it's me." That wasn't the mayor-it was Edith. "My pains have started. We're going to have us a baby."
"Oh, good God!" Jeff said, mentally apologizing to the Lord whose name he'd done worse than take in vain a moment before. "You ready to go down to Houston?"
"I sure am!" his wife answered. "Miss Todd next door, she'll take care of Willie and Frank till you can get home."