"Somebody let me borrow a pair, I reckon," Scipio said.
The cook's trousers he got didn't really go with his jacket and shirt. But they were black. Anybody who saw the rest of the outfit would probably fill in what he expected to see. The pants didn't fit all that well, either. They would do for a shift. He had that other pair back home. Now he'd have to go out and buy one more. Jerry Dover didn't offer to cover that expense.
Customers talked about the bombing. A lot of them thought, as Scipio did, that it was foolish for Negroes to bomb their own kind. "I bet they're in the damnyankees' pay," one man said. "They're trying to disrupt our production."
"Wait till we catch them," said another white man, this one in a major's uniform. "We'll send them to-" But he broke off, noticing Scipio within earshot.
What was he going to say? Did he know about the camps? Did he think Scipio didn't? Whatever it was, Scipio never found out, because the major did know how to keep his mouth shut.
None of the prosperous whites eating at the Huntsman's Lodge thought to ask Scipio if he'd been anywhere near the bomb when it went off. He looked all right now, so it didn't occur to them. No one here cared what he thought about it. He wasn't a person to these people, as he was to Jerry Dover. He was only a waiter, and a colored waiter at that. His opinions about the day's specials and the wine list might be worth hearing. Anything else? No.
That didn't surprise Scipio. Normally, he hardly even noticed it. Today, he did. After what he'd been through, didn't he deserve better? As far as the Confederate States were concerned, the answer was no.
All Irving Morrell wanted to do was put together enough barrels to let him counterattack the Confederates in Ohio instead of defending all the time. If he could act instead of reacting… But he couldn't. He didn't know where all the barrels were going, but he had his dark suspicions: infantry commanders were probably snagging them as fast as they appeared, using them to bolster sagging regiments instead of going after the enemy. Why couldn't they see barrels were better used as a sword than as a shield?
Fed up, Morrell finally took a ride in a command car to see Brigadier General Dowling. The ride proved more exciting than he wanted it to be. A low-flying Confederate fighter strafed the motorcar. Morrell shot back with the pintle-mounted machine gun. The stream of tracers he sent at the fighter made the pilot pull up and zoom away. The fellow hadn't done much damage to the command car, but the flat tire from one of his bullets cost Morrell almost half an hour as he and the driver changed it.
"Good thing he didn't take out both front tires, sir," the driver said, tightening lug nuts. "We've only got the one spare, and a patch kit's kind of fighting out of its weight against a slug."
"Try not to attract any more Hound Dogs between here and General Dowling's headquarters, then," Morrell said.
"I'll do my best, sir," the driver promised.
Morrell got into Norwalk, Ohio, just as the sun was setting. Norwalk was the last town of any size south of Sandusky and Lake Erie. It had probably been pretty before the fighting started. Some of the houses still standing looked as if they dated back to before the War of Secession. With their porticoes and column-supported porches, they had an air of classical elegance.
Classical elegance had a tough time against bombs, though. A lot of houses probably as fine as any of the survivors were nothing but charred rubble. Here and there, people went through the wreckage, trying to salvage what they could. The sickly-sweet smell of decay warned that other people were part of the wreckage.
Dowling had his headquarters in one of those Classic Revival houses. He was shouting some thoroughly unclassical phrases into a field telephone when Morrell came to see him: "What the hell do you mean you can't hold, Colonel? You have to hold, hold to the last man! And if you are the last man, grab a goddamn rifle and do something useful with it." He hung up and glared at Morrell. "What the devil do you want?"
"Barrels," Morrell answered. "As many as you can get your hands on. The Confederates are smashing us to pieces because they can always mass armor at the Schwerpunkt. I don't have enough to stop them when they concentrate."
"I'm giving you everything that's coming into Ohio," Dowling said.
"If that's true, we're in worse trouble than I thought," Morrell said. "My guess was that infantry commanders were siphoning some of them off before I got my hands on them. If we're not making enough new ones…"
"Production isn't what it ought to be," Dowling said. "Confederate bombers don't have any trouble reaching Pontiac, Michigan, from Ohio, and they've hit the factories hard a couple of times. They're also plastering the railroad lines. And"-his jowly features twisted into a frown-"there are reports of sabotage on the lines, too: switches left open when they should be closed, bombs planted under the tracks, charming things like that."
Morrell used several variations on the theme Dowling had set on the telephone. The Confederates were doing everything they could with saboteurs this time around. That looked to be paying off, too. Anything that added to the disarray of U.S. forces in Ohio paid off for the CSA.
"I'm sorry, Colonel," Dowling said. "Believe me, I'm sorry. We're doing everything we can. Right now, it isn't enough."
"I've got an idea." Morrell snapped his fingers. He pointed at the fat general. "Once the barrels come off the line in Michigan, let 'em drive here. It'll cost us fuel, but fuel we've got. I'd like to see one of those Confederate bastards try to sabotage all the roads between Pontiac and here, by Jesus."
Dowling scribbled a note to himself. He grunted when he finished. "There. I've written it down. I'd forget my own head these days if I didn't write down where I kept it. That's not a bad idea, actually. It'll tear up the roads-they aren't made for that kind of traffic-but-"
"Yes. But," Morrell said. "The damned Confederates can already plaster Sandusky. But what they plaster, we can repair. If they break through again, if they reach the lake, they cut us in half. I saw this coming. That doesn't make me any happier now that it's here."
If the Confederates broke through to Lake Erie, the War Department would probably put General Dowling out to pasture. Someone, after all, had to take the blame for failure. Morrell realized the War Department might put him out to pasture, too. That was the chance he took. They were asking him to make bricks without straw. They'd deliberately withheld the straw from him, withheld it for years. And now they could blame him for not having enough of it. Some people back in Philadelphia would leap at the chance.
"Sorry I haven't got better news for you, Colonel," Dowling said.
"So am I," Morrell told him. "I think I've wasted my trip here. The way things are, we can't afford to waste anything."
Before Dowling could answer, the field telephone jangled again. Looking apprehensive, the general picked it up. "Dowling speaking-what now?" He listened for a few seconds. His face turned purple. "What? You idiot, how did you let them get through?… What do you mean, they fooled you?… Oh, for Christ's sake! Well, you'd better try and stop them." He hung up, then glowered at Morrell. "Goddamn Confederates got a couple of our damaged barrels running again and put them at the head of their column. Our men didn't challenge till too late, and now they're making us sorry."
"Damn!" Morrell said. At the same time, he filed away the ploy in the back of his mind. Whoever'd thought it up was one sneaky son of a bitch. Morrell would have loved to return the favor. But the Confederates were advancing. His side wasn't. The enemy had more access to knocked-out U.S. barrels then he did to C.S. machines. He saluted. "If you'll excuse me, sir, I'm going to get back to the front." As he left, General Dowling's field telephone rang once more.
Out in front of the house, Morrell's driver was smoking a cigarette, his hands cupped around it to hide the coal in the darkness. "Get what you wanted, sir?" he asked.