“Well, I don’t like it, either,” George said. He put down his sons. “They’re heavy. I think you must be feeding ’em rocks.” That made Leo and Stan giggle. Connie rolled her eyes. George aimed to enjoy his leave as much as he could. And when it was up…when it was up, he would go back, and that was all there was to it.
With the front stabilized not far southeast of Lubbock, Jefferson Pinkard stopped worrying about the damnyankees. He had more urgent things to worry about instead-making sure Negroes went through Camp Determination in a hurry chief among them. He didn’t have numbers to let him know how the other camps in the CSA were doing, but if his wasn’t the biggest he would have been mightily surprised. One thing seemed clear: they were reducing population faster than blacks could possibly breed. Every day they did that was a victory.
And then the United States started making his life difficult. U.S. bombers and fighters came overhead with little opposition from Confederate Hound Dogs. The antiaircraft guns around the camp boomed and bellowed, but didn’t shoot down many enemy airplanes. Jeff telephoned the local C.S. field commander to ask for more help. “If I could give it to you, I would,” Brigadier General Whitlow Ling said. “I don’t have the aircraft myself, though.”
“Where’d they go?” Jeff asked. He didn’t quite add, Did they fly up your ass? He wanted the Army man to give him the facts, and pissing Ling off wouldn’t help.
“Damnyankees pounded the crap out of ’em, that’s where,” Ling said glumly. “They got a whole new air wing sent in, and it gives ’em a big edge, dammit.”
“Why can’t we get more, then?” Pinkard demanded.
“I’m trying.” Ling sounded harassed. “So far, no luck. Everything we make, they’re keeping east of the Mississippi.”
“But the Yankees can afford to send airplanes out here,” Jeff said.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“And we can’t?”
“Right now, that’s about the size of it, too.”
“Shit,” Jeff said, and hung up. If the USA could do some things the CSA couldn’t match, the Confederacy was in trouble. You didn’t need to belong to the General Staff to figure that out. Only a matter of time before the damnyankees used their air superiority to…do whatever they damn well pleased.
And before long, what they pleased became pretty obvious. They started bombing the railroad lines that led into Snyder. You needed a lot of bombs to tear up train tracks, because the chances of a direct hit weren’t good. The USA had plenty of bombs. And U.S. fighters strafed repair crews whenever they could.
U.S. airplanes started pounding Snyder, too. That terrified Jefferson Pinkard, not for the camp’s sake but for his own. If anything happened to his pregnant wife and his stepsons, he had no idea what he’d do. Go nuts was all he could think of.
The house where Edith and Frank and Willie were staying-the house where Pinkard stayed when he didn’t sleep at Camp Determination-wasn’t that close to the tracks. But when the damnyankees hit Snyder, they didn’t seem to care. They did their best to knock the whole town flat. Maybe they figured that would interfere with the way Camp Determination ran. And maybe they were right, too.
Pinkard got a call from Ferdinand Koenig. “What’s this I hear about niggers piling up on sidings halfway across Texas?” the Attorney General barked. “Doesn’t sound like your camp is doing its job.”
The injustice of that made Pinkard want to reach down the telephone line and punch Koenig in the nose. “Mr. Attorney General, sir, you repair the railroads for me,” he growled, clamping down on rage with both hands. “You get the fighters out here to shoot down the Yankee airplanes that are chewing up the line. You do that stuff, and then if I fall down on the job you can tell me I’m slacking off. Till you do it, though, you just back the hell off.”
“Maybe you want to watch your mouth,” Ferd Koenig said. How often did people talk back to him? Not very-Jeff was sure of that. The Attorney General went on, “I can have your job like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“If you’re gonna blame me for shit that’s not my fault, you’re damn well welcome to it,” Jeff said. “If I screw up, that’s fine. Rake me over the coals on account of it. But if you want me to take the heat because some asshole on the General Staff won’t send airplanes way the hell out here, I’m damned if I’ll sit still for it. Go and find some other whipping boy. Then see how long he lasts. Me, I’ll get the fuck outa here and go someplace safer.”
A long, long silence followed. At last, Koenig said, “Maybe I was hasty.”
“Maybe you were…sir,” Jeff said. “I’ve got my family. Maybe you ought to can me. Then I can send them back to Louisiana, and I won’t have to worry about getting ’em blown to smithereens.”
“I’ll get back to you.” The Attorney General hung up.
He didn’t call back. Pinkard hadn’t really thought he would. Nobody wanted to admit he’d got his ears pinned back. But no more C.S. fighters appeared in the skies above west Texas. Maybe the CSA truly couldn’t spare them, no matter how much this front needed them. If the Confederacy couldn’t…
One more thing Jeff didn’t want to think about.
He was in Snyder for the worst air raid he’d ever gone through. His driver had just delivered him to his house and sped away when the sirens began to howl. Bombs started falling a few seconds later. Snyder boasted no fancy electronic detection gear-or if it did, Pinkard didn’t know about it. Somebody had to eyeball those airplanes before the sirens could cut loose.
He almost knocked down the front door flinging it open. “Get in the cellar!” he roared.
Edith was already herding her boys into it. “Come on, Jeff-you, too,” she said.
“I’m coming.” He tried not to show how scared he was. A storm cellar gave almost perfect protection against a tornado, as long as you got there in time. Against bombs…There was no guarantee. Nothing this side of reinforced concrete gave you a good chance against a direct hit. A wooden trapdoor wasn’t the same.
But going into a cellar was a lot better than staying out in the open. Fragments couldn’t get you. Blast probably wouldn’t, not unless the bomb came down right on top of the house.
“Make it stop, Papa Jeff!” Frank wailed as explosions shook the earth.
“I can’t. I wish I could,” Pinkard said.
His stepson stared up at him in the dim yellow light of a kerosene lantern. “But you can do anything, Papa Jeff.”
That was touching. If only it were true. “Only God can do everything,” Pinkard said. And the way things were going for the CSA, even God looked to be falling down on the job.
“God and Hyperman,” Willie said. The younger boy sounded utterly confident. There was another comic with a similar name in the USA, but that one was banned down here. Its hero frequently clobbered Confederate spies and saboteurs. But it was so vivid and exciting, banning it wasn’t good enough. People smuggled it over the border till the powers that be in Richmond had to come up with an equivalent. Even now, from what Jeff heard, the Yankee comic circulated underground in the CSA. But Hyperman, who’d wrecked New York City at least three times and Philadelphia twice, made a good enough substitute.
Edith might have explained that God was real and Hyperman only make-believe. She might have, but bombs started falling closer just then. The thunder and boom, the earth rocking under your feet, made you forget about funnybooks. This was real, and all you could do was hope you came out the other side.
One hit so close that the lantern shuddered off the tabletop and started to fall. Jeff caught it before it hit the ground-miraculously, by the handle. He put it back where it belonged. “Wow!” Frank said, and then, “See? I told you you could do anything.”
Catching a lantern was one thing, and-Jeff knew, even if Frank didn’t-he was lucky to do even that. Making the damnyankees stop dropping their bombs was a whole different kettle of fish. Jeff had no idea how to say that so it made sense to a little boy, and so he didn’t try.