A bner Dowling had dreamt of seeing Richmond in his professional capacity ever since his West Point days. Those were long behind him now, but here he was, striding through the streets of the captured Confederate capital with not a care in the world…except for breaking his neck in the rubble, stepping on a mine, setting off a booby trap, or getting shot by one of the snipers who still haunted the ruins.
He turned to his adjutant. "You know, it's a funny thing," he said.
"What's that, sir?" Angelo Toricelli was sporting silver oak leaves instead of gold on his shoulders-the spoils of victory.
"We mashed this damn place flat, but next to what happened to Philadelphia and Newport News it's nothing but small change."
"Oh." The younger officer nodded. "Well, we had to do it the hard way, not all at once. If they'd held out a little longer, though…"
"Wouldn't have broken my heart," Dowling said. "I know that sounds cold, but it's the Lord's truth. A superbomb's about the only thing that would have got these people's attention."
As if to underscore the point, somebody with an automatic weapon opened up in the distance. Dowling started to dive for cover, then checked himself: none of the bullets came anywhere near. A shattered storefront nearby had FREEDOM! painted on it. That graffito and CSA were everywhere in Richmond. The locals didn't like the idea of living under the Stars and Stripes for the first time since 1861.
Something moved back behind the storefront. Dowling's hand dropped to the.45 on his belt. It wasn't much of a weapon against an automatic Tredegar, but it was what he had. Lieutenant Colonel Toricelli's pistol leaped from its holster. "Come out of there!" he barked.
The kid who did couldn't have been much above seven years old. He looked at the green-gray uniforms, then asked, "You a couple of nigger-lovin' damnyankees?" Before Dowling or Toricelli could answer, the kid went on, "Got any rations? I'm mighty hungry."
"Why should we feed you if you call us names?" Dowling asked.
"What names?" The little boy didn't get it. He'd probably never heard U.S. soldiers called anything else. He rubbed his belly. "Gimme some rations. Y'all got any deviled ham?"
"Here, kid." Toricelli took a can out of a pouch on his belt and tossed it to the boy. "Now you got some. Scoot." The boy disappeared with his prize. Looking faintly embarrassed at himself, Toricelli turned to Dowling. "Maybe he'll grow up civilized."
"Yeah, maybe," Dowling said, "but don't hold your breath."
High overhead, a swarm of bombers flew south like wintering birds. Below the James, the Confederates still fought as stubbornly as they could. If they wouldn't give up, what was there to do but keep pounding them till they didn't have any choice? Dowling wished he could see something, but he couldn't.
"Once we win, do we really want to try to run this place?" he asked, speaking more to God than to his adjutant.
But his adjutant was the one who answered: "What choice have we got, sir?"
Dowling wished he knew what to say to that. If the USA beat the CSA, what happened next? As far as Dowling could see, the USA had two choices. The United States could leave an independent Confederacy, or they could reunite North America under the Stars and Stripes. An independent Confederacy was dangerous. What had just happened to Philadelphia told how dangerous it was.
But if Virginia returned to the USA…well, what then? If all these states that had been their own nation for eighty-odd years returned to the one from which they'd seceded, wouldn't they spend years trying to break away again? Wouldn't there be guerrillas in the mountains and the woods? Wouldn't there be people bombs in the cities? Wouldn't the locals send Freedom Party bastards to Congress, the way Kentucky and Houston had between the wars?
"Winning this goddamn war will be almost as bad as losing it would have been," Dowling said in a voice not far from despair.
"That crossed my mind, too, sir," his adjutant said. "How many of these sons of bitches will we have to kill?"
"As many as it takes," Dowling answered. "If we don't kill any more than that just for the fun of it, our hands are…pretty clean, anyway."
He had to look around to orient himself. The United States had knocked most of Richmond flat, while the Confederate defenders had flattened much of the rest. They'd fought hard. They never seemed to fight any other way. But there hadn't been enough of them to keep U.S. soldiers from breaking in.
Jefferson Davis. Robert E. Lee. Stonewall Jackson. Old Pete Longstreet. Woodrow Wilson. The famous Confederates of ages past had to be spinning in their graves-unless U.S. bombs had already evicted them. A pity Jake Featherston wasn't spinning in his. Well, the time for that was coming.
"You know, sir, in a way they're lucky here," Lieutenant Colonel Toricelli said.
"Oh, yeah? How's that?" Dowling asked.
"It's like I said before-if they'd kept fighting a little longer, they would have had a uranium bomb come down on their heads. Then they'd think what's left here was paradise by comparison."
"Well, you're bound to be right about that," Dowling said. "Except most of them wouldn't be doing any thinking-"
"Like they do anyway," his adjutant put in.
That stopped him, but only for a second. "Because they'd be dead," he finished. A lot of them already were. The stench in the air left no doubt of that.
Stench or no stench, though, he'd done something a lot of the most important people in U.S. history never managed. He'd remembered long-gone Confederate dignitaries before. Now Lincoln and McClellan, James G. Blaine and John Pope, and Teddy Roosevelt and George Custer sprang to mind. Not a one of them had ever set foot in Richmond. But here I am, by God! Dowling thought proudly.
"General! Hey, General Dowling, sir!" somebody behind him yelled. "Guess what, sir!"
"That doesn't sound so good," Angelo Toricelli said.
"No, it doesn't." Slowly, ponderously, Dowling turned. "I'm here. What is it?"
"Guess what?" the soldier said again, but then he told what: "We just found a whole family of nig-uh, Negroes, all safe and sound."
"Well, I'll be damned," Dowling said. A few blacks had come out of hiding when U.S. soldiers entered Richmond, but not many. After the uprising here, Jake Featherston's goons had been uncommonly thorough. Every surviving Negro seemed a separate surprise. "Who are they? How did they make it?"
"They were servants to some rich guy before the war," the soldier answered. "Carter, I think his name was, from the Tarkas estate. Or maybe I've got it backwards-dunno for sure, sir. But anyway, he and his people have been hiding them ever since colored folks started having trouble here."
"How about that?" Lieutenant Colonel Toricelli said. "Just when you think they're all assholes, somebody goes and does something decent and fools you."
"They're human beings," Dowling said. "They aren't always the human beings we wish they were, but they're human beings." He raised his voice to call to the soldier: "Send this Carter fellow to my headquarters. I'd like to talk to him."
"Will do, sir," the man replied.
Dowling's headquarters were in a tent in Capitol Square, not far from the remains of the statue of Albert Sidney Johnston. George Washington's statue, smothered in sandbags, still stood nearby. He got back there just before Jack Carter arrived. The Virginian was tall and trim and handsome, with gray eyes, black hair, and weathered features; he looked to be some age between thirty-five and sixty. "Welcome," Dowling told him. "I'd like to shake your hand."
Carter looked at him-looked through him, really. "I'm sorry, General, but I don't care to shake yours."