Robert Quinn was wearing the uniform. That rocked Rodriguez back on his heels. Quinn had run the Freedom Party in Baroyeca since not long after the Great War. He’d put down as many roots as anyone who wasn’t born in the village could hope to do. And now he was gone? The war was longer and harder than anyone imagined it could be.
Carlos Ruiz’s son was wounded. The doctors said he would get better. That he would was good news. That he’d been hurt in the first place wasn’t. Rodriguez and Ruiz had been friends…forever. They grew up side by side, in each other’s pockets. I have to write him, Rodriguez thought.
And a couple of women were sleeping with men who weren’t their husbands since the men who were their husbands went to the front. Rodriguez sighed. That kind of gossip was as old as time, however much you wished it weren’t. Back in the Great War, Jefferson Pinkard, the man who was comandante at Camp Determination, had had the same kind of woman trouble.
Other guards read their letters from home as avidly as Rodriguez tore through his. Letters reminded you what was real, what was important. They reminded you why you put on the uniform in the first place. Helping the country was too big and too abstract for most people most of the time. Helping your home town and your family…Anybody could understand that.
Not all the news was good. One guard crumpled a letter and stormed away, his face working, his hands clenched into fists. A couple of his friends hurried after him. “Can we help, Josh?” one of them said.
“That goddamn, no good, two-timing bitch!” Josh said, which told the world exactly what his trouble was. Rodriguez wondered if the letter was from his wife telling him she’d found someone new, or from a friend-or an enemy?-telling him she was running around. What difference did it make? Something he’d thought fireproof was going up in flames.
Rodriguez crossed himself, hoping he never got a letter like that. He didn’t think he would; what he and Magdalena had built over the years seemed solid. But Josh didn’t expect anything like this, either. The trouble you didn’t see coming was always the worst kind.
He thought about that when he patrolled the women’s side of the camp north of the railroad spur that came out from Snyder. He and the two guards with him all carried submachine guns with big drum magazines. If they got in trouble, they could spray a lot of lead around in a hurry.
But life-and-death trouble mostly wasn’t the kind guards had to worry about here. In the men’s side, south of the train tracks, you were liable to get knocked over the head if you were stupid or careless. Here, your biggest worries were probably syphilis and the clap. Like anybody else, the Negro women used whatever they had to keep themselves and their children alive. What they had was mostly themselves, and a lot of them were diseased before they came here.
“Mistuh Sergeant, suh?” a pretty colored woman in her twenties purred at Rodriguez. Like most people, she knew what three stripes were supposed to mean and didn’t give a damn about Freedom Party guard ranks. “Mistuh Sergeant, you git me some extra rations, I do anything you want-an’ I mean anything.” If he had any doubts about what she meant, a twitch of the hips-damn near a burlesque-quality bump and grind-would have erased them.
He didn’t even change expression. He just kept walking. When he did, she called him something that reflected badly on his manhood. “I wouldn’t mind me a piece of that, not even slightly,” said one of the younger men with him.
“You want her, you take her,” Rodriguez answered with a shrug. “You think you pass shortarm inspection afterwards?” They had those now. Jefferson Pinkard pitched a fit when four men came down with the clap inside of three days. Rodriguez had a hard time blaming him.
The guard looked back at the woman. “I don’t reckon she’s got anything wrong with her,” he said. Rodriguez didn’t try to argue with him. She had a large, firm bosom and round hips, and that was all the younger man cared about. To Rodriguez, one of the things her looks meant was that she hadn’t been here very long. Eat prisoner rations for a bit and the flesh melted off of you.
Another black woman nodded to him. “Hello, Sergeant,” she said. She wasn’t trying to seduce him. Her gray hair said she was older than he was. But she greeted him every time she saw him. Some people were just nice. Some people were nice enough to stay nice even in a place like this-not many, but some. She was one of them.
“Hello, Bathsheba.” He had trouble pronouncing her name, which had two sounds right in the middle of it that Mexican Spanish didn’t use. Her smile said he’d done pretty well today.
Her daughter came up beside her. Even though the girl was darker than her mulatto mother, he found her very pretty. But she wasn’t one of those who tried to screw their way to safety. Maybe she realized there was no safety to be had. Or maybe she kept her morals. Some women did.
She nodded, too. “Sergeant,” she said politely.
“Senorita Antoinette.” Rodriguez nodded back.
“Can you take a message to the men’s side?” her mother asked. Some women would do anything to get word to husbands or lovers.
“Is against regulations,” Rodriguez said.
“It’s not anything bad, not anything dangerous,” Bathsheba said. “Just tell Xerxes we love him an’ we’s thinkin’ about him.” Antoinette nodded.
Rodriguez didn’t. “Even if I find him”-he didn’t say, Even if he’s still alive-“maybe it’s code. I don’t take no chances.”
“Please, Mistuh Guard, suh,” Antoinette said. “Ain’t no code-swear to Jesus. Ain’t nothin’ but a Christian thing to do. Please, suh.” Unlike her mother, she was young and pretty. Even so, she didn’t promise to open her legs or go down on her knees if Rodriguez did what she wanted. Oddly, her not promising made him take her more seriously, not less. He lost track of how many times he heard promises like that. More than he wanted to collect. More than he could collect, too.
He sighed. “I see this Xerxes”-he stumbled over the peculiar name-“maybe I tell him this. Maybe.” He wouldn’t make any promises of his own, not where the guards with him could hear.
The older woman and the younger both beamed at him as if he’d promised to set them free. “God bless you!” they said together.
He nodded gruffly, then scowled at the other two guards in gray. “Come on. Get moving,” he said, as if they’d stopped for their business, not his.
All they said was, “Yes, Troop Leader.” That was what he said when someone with a higher rank came down on him. Now he had…some rank of his own, anyway. He enjoyed using it.
Would he pass on the message if he found that man on the other side? He didn’t really believe it was code. He also didn’t really believe it mattered one way or the other. Before long, that Xerxes was a dead man, and Bathsheba and Antoinette were dead women, too.
One of the Confederates up ahead of First Sergeant Chester Martin squeezed off a short burst from his automatic rifle. Martin had been about to jump out of his foxhole and move forward maybe twenty feet, maybe even fifty. Instead, he decided to stay right where he was for the next little while. He’d been wounded once in the Great War and once in this one. As far as he was concerned, that was enough and then some.
Didn’t the Confederates know they were supposed to be on the run in this part of Ohio? Didn’t they know they’d already pulled out of Columbus and they were hightailing it down toward the Ohio River? Didn’t they know they would have to fall back across the Scioto River into Chillicothe on the west side? Didn’t they know they couldn’t hold Chillicothe, either?
By the way they were fighting, they didn’t know any of that. They were bastards, yeah, no doubt about it, but they were tough bastards.